Alpha Centauri 2 Forum Community Succession Game

[Bodissey]

Please allow me to apologize from being away from this board. Real life has taken its toll lately. Feel free to skip my turn in order to speed the process.

[binTravkin]

So.
Should we switch to Hive?
Just for the fun of it.
And attempt to drag it out of the hole it's in.
Even if we fail, it could still be quite fun to try.

I think we should be able to conquer Morgan quickly.

[Geo]

Should we switch to Hive?

Let's not do that until another forum game where we're sure everybody uses the exact same info in Alphax.txt.
Very frustrating to have to solve drones all the time which fall out of the sky.


Report:

MY 2221
Had to start with adjusting specialists and the budget slider. 4 bases were on the verge of rioting. Energy allocation is now 30/40/30. Next research finished in 11 turns now.
Put a number of HT's in the pipeline. Rushed some productions in occupied territories to put formers in their queue.
One of our Unity Foils discovered the Believer base Terrible Swift Sword. It sits in the Monsoon area. Another Unity Foil picked up an artifact.
Pod popped at 101,13 finishes the Sea Former production at Resplendent Oak.

MY 2222
Triple Energy event kicks in.
Despite my specialist allocation, 3 bases rioted. Don't understand why since things looked okay in the citizen screen.
Sunny Mesa pod pop cloned our impact infantry. Its clone destroyed a mind worm.
Another mind worm destroyed and captured at the north pole detachment.
And now the bad news. Our southern foil (with AA onboard) encountered an IoD. We'll probably lose it next turn.
Probed a Believer laser skimpship for 37 ec.

MY 2223
One of our probe teams was returned by Morgan. Didn't even know we had one in Morganite territory.
We lost a foild and AA due to native life activity.
Believer base The Lord's Mercy discovered. 2 tiles north of Terrible Swift Sword.
One of our Mesa units popped a pod full of native life. Quite a sight, its completely surrounded.
An AA arrived in Blackroot Palace.
Rushed the NN in Chiron Preserve for the AA next turn.
Rushed the HT in Lucky Autumn.

MY 2224
AA gives us Cyberethics. I switched to Knowledge in SE.
UN Equality Village remains a thorn. Can't get heads nor tails from the drone situation there. I let the base starve to get control back.
Rushed some Nodes so HT's can be started next turn.
Polar patrol killed a SL.

MY 2225
Drone riots at Equality Village and The Colony have ended, but now The Pines got 'm.
Morgan urgently requested to remove our units from his territory. I complied with the provision he'd do the same.
Rushed the Research Hospital in Gaia's Landing and placed Stockpile Energy in the queue.
Rushed the Network Node in Thorny Vineyard and placed Stockpile Energy in the queue.


Okay, inbetween turns Zakharov cornered our Foil in Believer territory, contacted us and declared Vendetta. We lost the foil.
The Pines has stopped rioting, but Equality Village got 'm back (and the base suddenly grew to size 5? WTF?).
MY 2227 should give us a "Discover" tech.

[binTravkin]

Rushed the Research Hospital in Gaia's Landing and placed Stockpile Energy in the queue.
Rushed the Network Node in Thorny Vineyard and placed Stockpile Energy in the queue.

I think this does not work with Yitzi's 3.4.

[Kirov]

Guys, cashing AA towards techs is actually not that a good idea, in 99% cases it's better to hold it for project purposes. I'm quite sure it was discussed earlier here.

Had to start with adjusting specialists and the budget slider. 4 bases were on the verge of rioting. Energy allocation is now 30/40/30. Next research finished in 11 turns now.

Why would you do that? It took me some pains to take care of the slider situation. 40% PSYCH is not an acceptable price for higher population. We had a nice popboom, true, and it was detrimental to our economy. That's precisely the opposite of what popboom is supposed to do.

I believe that mitigating high PSYCH is our most important thing to do now. We don't have to keep our eye on booming anymore, the bases which were supposed to grow have grown already. Let's cap that population and take care of research.

Putting stockpile in queues does nothing in Yitzi's newest.

[Geo]

Kirov, your drone number in alphax must be different then mine. I simply needed psych+doctors to handle the drone situation. I tried to get around it but it simply wouldn't work. I placed the stockpile in the queue of those 2 bases exactly as was done by the player before me, to indicate to the next one in line that this base needs a new production and because its his tenure its his choice to make.
And please stop trying to make this game as perfect as possible through your suggestions. It simply won't work with half a dozen or so players.

[Mart]

We are at cap population 7 presently.
The best would be having all of them as workers, but for that we need terraformed tiles.
A moist rolling giving 1-1-0 is something not good. Forests, farms with solar on higher altitudes give us better yields.
Unfortunately in standard SMACX this means micromanaging larger number of formers. There is no good way around it, unless someone has good experience with automating formers, like there are these settings what they can and cannot do. In singleplayer that is acceptable (only in multiplayer strongly not-recommended)
Personally I can micromanage certain number of formers, just not too large...

On infrastructure side, our bases should be getting facilities, that make them more productive. Network Nodes, at least in larger bases, if not everywhere, but we are already with 6 of them and soon will be more.
Recycling tanks are ok, though it may be one of the first or the first facility (after Recreation Commons), that we build in a new base.
And we can now build Research Hospitals. And though they are high maintenance, our largest bases should have them. That is my view. The Res. Hospital also gives +25% Psych. And when we have more of such facilities, that is including Hologram Theatres (+50% Psych), we can have some psych allocation constantly. Probably that is something for base size 14, when we hit the second population limit.

[Mart]

Such games always create more heated conversations.
But I guess, that is why we play them, to have exchange of views and experience in interacting.
Like in RL, anyone in coordinating/managing job position probably knows how it is.

[binTravkin]

In this turn Gaia's Landing is a prime example what an early popboom looks like (though it's not early as we delayed it). 
Single 4-food tile allowing a bunch of forests to be worked to the point of reaching ecodamage.
It only lacks holotheatre and has network node and research hospital, which could've come after popboom, had we decided to do it earlier.
It can build a holotheatre in 5 turns even with a -3 mineral support.

MY 2226
 - our mind worms encounter a University former @ 13,1

MY 2227
 - 3 of the condensers not having farms finally will

MY 2228
 - we lost a foil to malfunctioned pod @ 89,15 I didn't see that coming
 - Optical Computers and our next tech is Conquer

MY 2229
 - we stole High Energy Chemistry from University

MY 2230
 - our next tech is Build! It will be ready in 11 turns.
 - scaled down psych to 30%,


However, Morgan will also have a Build tech in 5 turns.
That tech will most likely be IA.
So, I suggest using the probe team @92,14 and the transport foil @ 110,12 (Garden of Paradise) to steal it and back this combo up by the Skimship probe team @ 104,2 and the one currently in progress @ Blackroot Palace.
There's also a probe team @ 69,21 and it may make sense to redirect it for this effort too. It was previously going to University.

There is now a SINGLE base which prevents us going to 0% psych and it's called The Pines, please allow holotheatre to finish in this base, and then switch to 0% or 10% psych, whatever makes sense at the moment
Otherwise all my investment in bringing psych down will be in vain.

[binTravkin]

We had a nice popboom, true, and it was detrimental to our economy. That's precisely the opposite of what popboom is supposed to do.

I would not say it was detrimental, we now have quite a few bases running 3 librarians, which doubles their labs output.
But it may seem so because popboom means you have to build drone control either immediately after starting to boom or pre-build it.
Research hospitals are nice, but they aren't really a drone control measure and are expensive. The delay we made building Nodes and Hospitals is what made us run into high psych allocation.
Since we refused to build hologram theatres, many bases had problems.
I almost fixed this in my turns by building them, but I did not notice that a single base that is building a network node is the main culprit.
So let's fix that one base (The Pines), reduce psych to normal levels and finally enjoy the results of our popboom.

It doesn't help either that we're running on different drone rules.
So people with 8 like me and Geo have to rearrange citizens at the start of our turns.
With rule 0 I could run 0% or 10% too, so the point about detrimental popboom would vanish entirely.
People running drone rule 0 should not see any detrimental results whatsoever as 2 drones are taken by police, 2 by reccomms and the remaining 3 citizens can be made librarians as it is in quite a few of our bases.

[Kirov]

And please stop trying to make this game as perfect as possible through your suggestions. It simply won't work with half a dozen or so players.

Sorry, I think I got dismayed about how I spent my entire tenure to control the slider, only to see it undone with one click. I don't know about the number of your drones, but even starving down bases to 5-6 is better that this high PSYCH.

The only thing that brings me in is discussing ideas and mistakes. Otherwise it's just clicking around in singleplayer, and I don't even play it since like 2008. Maybe I was hoping for some brainstorming like at 'poly.

[Kirov]

Since we refused to build hologram theatres, many bases had problems.
I almost fixed this in my turns by building them, but I did not notice that a single base that is building a network node is the main culprit.
So let's fix that one base (The Pines), reduce psych to normal levels and finally enjoy the results of our popboom.

Look, I recommended against building holo-theatres, I didn't veto it. I don't expect anyone to do what I say, but rather to have good reasons to do what they do. So, we can either build Holo-T or get more condensers and work them (crawl them soon) for doctors. Or both, really.

[Geo]

We're top dog anyway, so it won't hurt in the long run.
And starving bases deliberately is not an option in my book. They're necessary bits in the byte that is our faction.

[binTravkin]

Sorry, I think I got dismayed about how I spent my entire tenure to control the slider, only to see it undone with one click. I don't know about the number of your drones, but even starving down bases to 5-6 is better that this high PSYCH.

The only thing that brings me in is discussing ideas and mistakes. Otherwise it's just clicking around in singleplayer, and I don't even play it since like 2008. Maybe I was hoping for some brainstorming like at 'poly.

1.
You were only able to do this because you are using drone rule 0.
With drone rule 8 you'd have to do different things, like build holotheatres, to be able to bring psych down.
Which is exactly what I just did and succeeded except for one base.

2.
Brainstorming requires flexibility to be productive.
It doesn't help to say that you hate this and that and refuse to do it or do even if it makes no sense.
The situation we're facing in this game is starkly different and the "usual tactics" which are fine for directed research and no stagnation just don't work here.
It's not anyone's fault, just how this game developed.
We're getting angry because of not realizing how different game is for drone rule 0 and 8 and because we're trying to fit "usual tactics" where it is not even possible.
We don't have IA or EE yet and even after we will have IA crawlers will make sense only in a few of our cities simply because we're at ecolimit already and no treefarms to start working on it yet.

Here are 2 reasons which people sometimes forget:
1.You build crawlers to get minerals.
2.You build treefarms to get food for popbooming.

And our solution to these problems are:
1.We have them by popbooming.
2.We have it from condensers.

We just did it in a different way, because crawlers and treefarms is not the only way and because it's not even available for us.

Look, I recommended against building holo-theatres, I didn't veto it. I don't expect anyone to do what I say, but rather to have good reasons to do what they do. So, we can either build Holo-T or get more condensers and work them (crawl them soon) for doctors. Or both, really.

The end result is that they didn't get built for some 25 game turns.
Which is directly the reason why we have psych problems now.
So instead of getting worked up how something went wrong, let's just realize we made mistakes.
And I already almost fixed it, so we can move on merrily.


It's Kurvivor's turn.

[Mart]

Have you noticed, how Yang is rebuilding, I would say, skillfully?
He has 3 bases now with sizes: 4,3,1.
Building a colony pod (there is 1 active transport foil, possibly he will use it?) and 2 (!) sea colony pods. So soon 6 bases.
He has no land connection with Morgan, but that was to be expected, how game places escaping pods.