Optimal Land Use: Cities, and Crawlers, and Formers, oh my!

[Earthmichael]

On the way to the MMI beeline, I usually go for Neural Grafting and Gne Splicing first, before D:AP, unless I feel hard pressed to defend myself right away.  And I then go for Bio-Engineering next, even though it is a sidetrack from MMI.  Because the support minerals that I save by upgrading all of my formers and other units to clean is a much faster and higher payoff than I could get from lifting the mineral restrictions.  This allows me to now be able to produce clean terraforms in mass quantities, without worrying about crippling my production with support costs.

Sidetracks to Ecol Engin and Environ Econ are useful, but one has to judge whether you get fast enough payback from these to account for the delay getting to MMI.  And do you have the formers to terraform so that these will be very useful?  Since I typically starting with 90% roads and forests, these techs don't have such an early payoff unless the map starts with enough terrain features that can be exploited without my terraforming.

Then 6 tech to beeline to D:AP, and then MMI next.

[Earthmichael]

On the way to the MMI beeline, I usually go for Neural Grafting and Gne Splicing first, before D:AP, unless I feel hard pressed to defend myself right away.  And I then go for Bio-Engineering next, even though it is a sidetrack from MMI.  Because the support minerals that I save by upgrading all of my formers and other units to clean is a much faster and higher payoff than I could get from lifting the mineral restrictions.  This allows me to now be able to produce clean terraforms in mass quantities, without worrying about crippling my production with support costs.

Whoa, you must produce a lot of clean formers if that's a bigger boost than being able to use boreholes.

Since I typically starting with 90% roads and forests, these techs don't have such an early payoff unless the map starts with enough terrain features that can be exploited without my terraforming.

How do you use those forests?  Crawl them or work them?  Because pre-Environmental Economics, they only produce 1 nutrient.

[Earthmichael]

Whoa, you must produce a lot of clean formers if that's a bigger boost than being able to use boreholes.

I do make a lot of clean formers! 

It is really a chicken and the egg problem.  If I don't have a lot of formers, it takes forever to terraform things, especially boreholes.  So rather than prioritize mineral limits to take advantage of boreholes, I prioritize clean to be able to build more formers.  By the time the I have enough formers and other terraforming done to consider making boreholes, I usually have gotten MMI and am ready for the EE and EE.

Forest are much more of a priority, because I can make 5 forests for the time formers take for 1 borehole.  And I get the benefit of self-growth of forests, which can save a lot of terraforming time if you get your forests started early, particularly since spreading forest squashes fungus.  Plus, forests don't trigger ecodamage like a borehole does.  I generally try for a very close to zero ecodamage game.

How do you use those forests?  Crawl them or work them?  Because pre-Environmental Economics, they only produce 1 nutrient.

I almost always work them.  With a normal base (not on a Nut special or jungle) with recycling center, I can work 3 forests.  The rest of the work land has to be 2 or more food.  (I often get rid of the Nut limit early with Gene Splicing.)  When I really need to boost food, I will occasionally farm; each farm means one more forest worked.  Rather than crawl a forest and get 2 M, I will sometimes insteasd crawl a square for 2-3 N, which allows me to fully work 2-3 more forests.

I should also explain that I build a LOT of road; I almost always build a road before any improvement on a square.  I think roads are cheaper to build if you don't already have a forest there.  So I create a network of roads.  Then I can send a pack of 4 formers down the road, and they can build a new forest EVERY TURN, as long as I do not move them more than 2 squares down the road from the last forest.

[Earthmichael]

I do make a lot of clean formers! 

It is really a chicken and the egg problem.  If I don't have a lot of formers, it takes forever to terraform things, especially boreholes.  So rather than prioritize mineral limits to take advantage of boreholes, I prioritize clean to be able to build more formers.  By the time the I have enough formers and other terraforming done to consider making boreholes, I usually have gotten MMI and am ready for the EE and EE.

Forest are much more of a priority, because I can make 5 forests for the time formers take for 1 borehole.  And I get the benefit of self-growth of forests, which can save a lot of terraforming time if you get your forests started early, particularly since spreading forest squashes fungus.

But if you can only use 3 forests per base (less if you want the base to grow more), that does limit it quite a bit.  Once you have as many forests as you can use (which needs maybe 1 former per several bases max before tree farms), you might as well get started on boreholes.

Plus, forests don't trigger ecodamage like a borehole does.  I generally try for a very close to zero ecodamage game.

Borehole ecodamage really isn't that bad; it's about as much as 1 extra mineral.  And of course without mods ecodamage is easy to control anyway, via the magic facilities.

[Earthmichael]

I've thought about it more, and I realized that the real issue is the "doubling time".  With a low doubling time, you need a huge number of formers to keep up with it even when using fairly easy terraforming like forests, and stuff like boreholes and condensers is generally not going to happen.  With a larger "doubling time" (or even more, when you've reached maximum size), formers become less important, and more advanced terraforming becomes used more; crawlers are therefore more powerful with a larger "doubling time" since advanced terraforming (except for boreholes) is more likely to favor single-resource stuff, whereas forests are very crawler-unfriendly.  (In between is the standard farm/solar, which actually usually comes out weaker than just a farm, crawling it, and having the citizen be a specialist instead.)

Thus, my questions for you are:
-What's your doubling time in your games?
-Do you ever use farm/solar?

Because I'd like to see a game with fairly large "doubling time" after the very beginning (30-40 turns seems good for once you have several bases), and where farm/solar does see substantial use for much of the game.

[Earthmichael]

However, even so, crawlers become overpowered as the game progresses.  Consider, for example, someone who's reached the following tech level:
-He has engineers available.
-He has hybrid forests.
-He can get 4 nutrients from a square, whether by farm/enricher (and condensers don't further increase it for whatever reason), or farm/condenser (and he hasn't learned AEE yet.)
-He either has hab domes, or has raised his city density to the point where it doesn't matter.
-He has expanded all he can; any more would run into either efficiency-related problems or the territory of other factions.
-He does not have satellites; either he lacks the tech, or just never got around to it, or is afraid they'll be shot down.

Now, consider two ways he can use his territory:
1. Forests.   These are worth 3/2/2 each, so for each 2 forests he has enough surplus nutrients to use a specialist, say an engineer.  Thus, each square is worth 2 minerals, 2 energy, 1.5 economy, and 1 labs.
2. Crawl nutrients.  He can then support 2 specialists per square, so each square is worth 6 economy and 4 labs.  He doesn't get any minerals, but at 4.5 economy per square more than option 1 (which is then multiplied by facilities into 13.5 more economy, or 16.75 more if he has a quantum lab), he can easily afford to make up the difference by rush buying.
Thus, option 2 is vastly superior to option 1.
With satellites, it's even worse:
1. With forests, he can support 3 citizens per square, so each square is worth 5 minerals, 5 energy, and 2 specialists, for a total of 5 minerals, 5 energy, 6 economy, and 4 labs.
2. With crawling nutrients, he can support 4 citizens per square, worth 4 minerals, 4 energy, 12 economy, and 8 labs.

Again, option 2 is vastly superior.
If anything other than "crawl nutrients" is to be effective into the late game, crawlers would have to be depowered.  (Not "made cheaper", but actually "made less effective".)

Conversely, consider an early-game (recently got tree farms) base with 1 farm/solar square (let's say it's rainy and rolling but less than 1000 elevation) and 1 citizen.  It can use the citizen to work the square, producing 3 nutrients, 1 minerals, and 1 energy, or build a crawler to crawl one square for 3 nutrients and turn the citizen into a specialist for 3 energy.  So a crawler lets you give up 1 mineral for 2 energy, which seems to me it'll usually be a very good deal.
But let's say that crawlers have been made less effective, at the crawler will only produce 2 nutrients.  Then you're giving up 1 mineral and 1 nutrient for 2 energy, which seems a lot more balanced.  Even so, that means that a crawler is worth as much as a worker.
But in that case, let's say you have a rainy/rolling square and are trying to decide how to terraform it for your worker.
If you terraform it with farm/solar, then you get 3/1/1, which feeds the worker and keeps him happy, produces 1 mineral for building facilities, and will get you another worker in 50 turns (for, say, a size 4 base.  At this stage, size 9 is probably more realistic for your core bases).  Or you can terraform it with a forest for 2/2/1, which feeds the worker and keeps him happy, and produces 2 minerals; if we devote 1 mineral to facilities as before, then the other one can be used to produce a crawler in 30 turns, giving you the same value for cheaper.
Thus, we get the result that unless crawlers are made more expensive and depowered, it's still not worth working farm/solar unless you really don't care about energy (or are running Market, but in a balanced game that'll only be roughly 1/3 of the time.)  I call that a problem.

[Earthmichael]

But if you can only use 3 forests per base (less if you want the base to grow more), that does limit it quite a bit.  Once you have as many forests as you can use (which needs maybe 1 former per several bases max before tree farms), you might as well get started on boreholes.

I generally prefer to expand as much as possible during this phase, and use the formers to keep the new cities productive with lots of roads and forests.

It is not that I never build boreholes; but they are a distant priority to forests, and I really don't usually bother with them until after I have MMI, and have gone back to get EE and EE, so that I can actually get 6/6 for them.

-What's your doubling time in your games?
-Do you ever use farm/solar?

I don't know how to answer the doubling time question.  Once I reach a certain maximum expansion, doubling can occur with respect to population, but even more, doubling can occur with respect to econ/labs and production.  If I take a wild guess, I suppose at midgame, doubling slows down to 20 turns or so.

I do sometimes use farm/solar, particularly if there is an energy special on the square so I can take full advantage of altitude.  For example, on the Vets map, each starting position has a square that I feel is just begging for farm/solar, although some people choose to forest due to the lower terraforming cost and the extra mineral.  After energy limits are lifted, I often farm/solar high altitude squares to get 3/1/5 or so.

Now, consider two ways he can use his territory:
1. Forests.   These are worth 3/2/2 each, so for each 2 forests he has enough surplus nutrients to use a specialist, say an engineer.  Thus, each square is worth 2 minerals, 2 energy, 1.5 economy, and 1 labs.
2. Crawl nutrients.  He can then support 2 specialists per square, so each square is worth 6 economy and 4 labs.  He doesn't get any minerals, but at 4.5 economy per square more than option 1 (which is then multiplied by facilities into 13.5 more economy, or 16.75 more if he has a quantum lab), he can easily afford to make up the difference by rush buying.

This is not a crawler verses non-crawler question.  A city can harvest high nutrient squares even if crawlers did not exist.  The fact is that IF you are capable of booming without excessive trouble, then at a certain point food is the highest value commondity, since it can translate to 5E specialists, with each person also getting 1/1/1 from sats.  This is not showing that crawlers are overpowered, since a city can reap the same benefit with no crawlers at all.  It is showing that food is very high value in the late midgame, once you get the techs to boost food production.  Is that overpowered?  I don't think so; I think it is a nice evolution for food to move to the top of the food chain, so to speak  .  But it says nothing about crawlers.

You might argue, but why have a worker when I can crawl the square to get another specialist?  If the square is something like a 4/x/5 square (max altitude, solar collector, mirror, food enhancements), I get more value working the square than crawling it, since I also pick up x minerals.

Finally, if the Econ SE setting is high enough (and the vast majority of the games I play it is), then each worked square gets an extra energy, putting it way out front of the crawled squares, with 20% more energy and some bonus minerals.

[Earthmichael]

With respect to solar collectors, there is one other really good use for collecters and crawlers: energy farms.  If you have some SPs at your HQ that provided special single city boosts, such as ME, Supercollider, Theory of Everything, Network Backbone, Longevity Vaccine, etc., then dedicating some squares to energy farms can be a very smart use of land.

You raise 9 squares to maximum altitude, put an Echeolon Mirror in the middle, surrounded by 8 solar collectors, with 9 crawlers homed to your HQ gathering energy, you can feed a lot of energy into those single city multiplying enhancements!  On a few occasions, I have had a single city producing a breakthrough every turn.

So yes, solar collectors can be quite useful, without or without a farm!

[ete]

In lategame (soil enhancers and stuff) I'm totally fine with Crawlers+Specialists beating out forest, in fact they should in my opinion (though not necessarily by a huge margin). Forests are pretty cheap and easy, and they're great for most of the game. Rewarding a player who in lategame is willing to reterraform with much more time consuming enhancements (farm/condensor/soil enhancer, some boreholes) and produce a load of crawlers, more than you reward a player who just sits on mass forest forever and builds Tree Farms/Hybrid Forests seems entirely fair. And quite fitting, as you get more advanced the citizens are turned over from manual collecting jobs (which are mechanized) to more service/research/entertainment type jobs.

[Earthmichael]

I totally agree, ete, and I would just add that you do not have to use crawlers to achieve this benefit; in fact, as long as you raise elevation and add solar collectors to your farm/condensor/soil enhancer, direct collection is better than crawlers.

[ete]

hm, I'm curious what you generally crawl in the early/mid game (before Boreholes, Soil Enrichers, Condensors) Earthmichael? I've always found myself crawling almost exclusively minerals from rocky/mine/road squares (especially those with a mineral bonus), and occasionally nutrient bonus farmed squares. It seems like using Crawlers gives me massively more minerals in the early/mid game compared to when I don't use them, because there's not spare nutrients to support  lot of population growth on top of workers working Mines, and there's no mineral boosting facilities until GJ factory.

Actually, you know what I'd really like to see? A series of screenshots from your games, one every 10-20 years centered on your main population center (ideally with a large monitor and directdraw off so you can see a large area of the map at once).

[Earthmichael]

Here is an AAR report I did on the Nomad scenario with lots of screen shots.  The prohibition against expansion made it a little bit different from my normal game, but I think it shows my playstyle pretty well.

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=2663.msg13769#msg13769

My first crawler priority is the same as yours: rocky squares with a mineral bonus.  My second crawler priority is any other bonus square, improved as well as I can for that particular resource.  My third crawler priority (until mineral limits are lifted) is any square that can give me 2 minerals, especially those that can do this without any terraforming, like certain crater squares, but I will also crawl surplus forests and such.  Once I get the minerals lifted, I put most of the crawlers on rocky mines.

[ete]

hm, okay. A lot of times that game you were piling on the crawlers mostly because you had space to, and had already built the infrastructure you were able to/wanted.

I think I'm figuring out what about crawlers I find uncomfortable. It's their unlimited nature, almost total lack of long term drawbacks, and fairly short payback time. They feel like a unit you can always use more of, and the rest of the game is designed to not have that. More bases causes issues with Bdrones, more formers need constant support until clean reactors, larger cities need more nutrients, facilities are one per city and most need upkeep, armies need support, the only other long term "free" units are probes and captured worms/natives in fungus which don't have unlimited exponential increase.

I do see why they're appealing, and perhaps if the AI used them at all properly I'd get accustomed to them as a core game feature, but having something so.. universally useful to build, and so cheap, eh.

[Yitzi]

I don't know how to answer the doubling time question.  Once I reach a certain maximum expansion, doubling can occur with respect to population, but even more, doubling can occur with respect to econ/labs and production.  If I take a wild guess, I suppose at midgame, doubling slows down to 20 turns or so.

Around how many bases do you have by that point?

I do sometimes use farm/solar, particularly if there is an energy special on the square so I can take full advantage of altitude.

Yes, with high altitude (as well as rainy and maybe rolling, I presume).  That's a fairly rare occurrence.

For example, on the Vets map

Vets is not exactly a normal map.  Most random maps with random start positions won't have you start on a large mountain.

You might argue, but why have a worker when I can crawl the square to get another specialist?  If the square is something like a 4/x/5 square (max altitude, solar collector, mirror, food enhancements), I get more value working the square than crawling it, since I also pick up x minerals.

So working the square instead of crawling it is worthwhile only in the extreme case of "rolling square at max altitude with a mirror"?  When crawlers are more powerful except in the extreme case, I'd say that makes them overpowered.

Finally, if the Econ SE setting is high enough (and the vast majority of the games I play it is), then each worked square gets an extra energy, putting it way out front of the crawled squares, with 20% more energy and some bonus minerals.

That's still assuming near-max squares.  Also, if you run FM in the vast majority of games, that itself suggests an imbalance (not directly relevant to this issue, but does suggest that we have to consider what happens when that imbalance is fixed.)

With respect to solar collectors, there is one other really good use for collecters and crawlers: energy farms.  If you have some SPs at your HQ that provided special single city boosts, such as ME, Supercollider, Theory of Everything, Network Backbone, Longevity Vaccine, etc., then dedicating some squares to energy farms can be a very smart use of land.

You raise 9 squares to maximum altitude, put an Echeolon Mirror in the middle, surrounded by 8 solar collectors, with 9 crawlers homed to your HQ gathering energy, you can feed a lot of energy into those single city multiplying enhancements!  On a few occasions, I have had a single city producing a breakthrough every turn.

I believe having alternating rows of mirrors and collectors is a more efficient use of land, though not of terraforming time.
That said, that further supports the contention that crawlers are overpowered, as that's far more efficient than worker-based approaches.

So yes, solar collectors can be quite useful, without or without a farm!

Yes, solar collectors have uses, farms have uses, and even workers have some uses until the late game.  But combining the three seems too weak, because crawlers are so strong.

In lategame (soil enhancers and stuff) I'm totally fine with Crawlers+Specialists beating out forest, in fact they should in my opinion (though not necessarily by a huge margin).

If they just beat out forest, that wouldn't be such a problem.  The problem is that without forest, crawlers always beat out workers except in extreme cases (I consider a case extreme when it has at least 3 "bonuses" ("bonuses" here are rainy, rolling, and each full 1000 feet).

And quite fitting, as you get more advanced the citizens are turned over from manual collecting jobs (which are mechanized) to more service/research/entertainment type jobs.

There's an idea, I'll have to think about that.

I totally agree, ete, and I would just add that you do not have to use crawlers to achieve this benefit; in fact, as long as you raise elevation and add solar collectors to your farm/condensor/soil enhancer, direct collection is better than crawlers.

I'm pretty sure that you can't have condensers and solar collectors in the same square.

[Yitzi]

In lategame (soil enhancers and stuff) I'm totally fine with Crawlers+Specialists beating out forest, in fact they should in my opinion (though not necessarily by a huge margin). Forests are pretty cheap and easy, and they're great for most of the game. Rewarding a player who in lategame is willing to reterraform with much more time consuming enhancements (farm/condensor/soil enhancer, some boreholes) and produce a load of crawlers, more than you reward a player who just sits on mass forest forever and builds Tree Farms/Hybrid Forests seems entirely fair. And quite fitting, as you get more advanced the citizens are turned over from manual collecting jobs (which are mechanized) to more service/research/entertainment type jobs.

Ok, I suppose that makes sense.  The problem is that even earlier in the game, an energy farm (crawler-based) tends to beat out forests (worker-based).  And it's not necessarily even that much more terraforming time: Having 3 collectors per mirror in a square pattern costs only 50% more terraforming time than filling the space with forests and produces an average of 3.25 FOP per square, +1 FM (forests with tree farms are worth 5+1 FM, but use 3 on supporting the workers with nutrients and psych).  Alternating rows takes only twice the terraforming time of forests, and gives 4 per square (+1 FM).  And that's lowlands; if the area is naturally elevated it's even better.