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SFDebris' Review of Alpha Centauri (Plus History of Civ)

There is some good reading to be had here: http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Main_Page

smile
fnord
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(April 26th, 2017, 18:01)Dp101 Wrote: Where do you fit so many cities?

On one continent.




Quote:Also, is it worth working boreholes before you get the techs that uncap production and energy yields? Also, is it the right move to expand until you cannot any more, and only then pop-boom?

Not before the production cap lift.  Build other things first with the formers.  Start your first boreholes while researching the tech that uncaps mineral yield so they complete together.  It's quite OK to work a borehole for 6 minerals while still capped on energy; it lifts in just a few more techs.

Expand vs pop-boom isn't an either-or choice.  Do both at the same time, you can keep building colony pods even while booming.  A new base can build a Children's Creche first and then pods after.

(April 26th, 2017, 19:40)Thoth Wrote: SMAC rewards dense base placement.  Hardcore ICS can work very well (base--tile--base-tile--base ect ad infinitum)  though memory suggests that "Sikander spacing" was also highly effective.  ( bases 2t apart on the diagonal with a borehole in between and condenser farm or forests on the other tiles,  roads go only on the boreholes)

SMAC rewards fast base placement.  Density is merely a side effect of speed.  You don't get anything out of density itself, except coverage by sensor fields and maybe a percentage point less on the efficiency penalty.

But Sikander spacing is good, because 2 spaces in any direction is the fastest way to get a pod to its site, and on the diagonal is the least overlap to add the most workable tiles, and still allows maximum borehole density.  (City density doesn't matter but borehole density does, because boreholes-per-city is a desirable parameter.)  It's not a hard-and-fast rule; it's better to walk one more space past a fungus/rocky tile than to spend the former time clearing it for the sake of the grid.
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I've come across a fascinating thread on city spacing. One player advocates full 20-square base radii. T-hawk's game is mentioned on page 5 and the player in question comments on it on page 6. Pages 2-5 contain most of the interesting discussion:

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=2853.15

Apparently many players did not favour ICS. I did not realize this.
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Man, wish I would have been in that thread four years ago. smile

They're mostly saying the same things I am. Full max density isn't necessary. You don't gain anything by overlapping bases more than you need to. Bases in a chain of Sikander spacing are never any worse than bases in a maximum density grid, as long as they got founded equally quickly.

But I'd certainly outplay anyone advocating for maximum radius with my relaxed-ICS Sikander spacing. They say why not just build a hab complex to go beyond size 7. Because of opportunity cost. That's 80 minerals that adds nothing to productivity, but could instead be another colony pod and formers to develop it, and new instances of all the per-city boons like the free unit support and the Human Genome Project talent and another new set of drones for a police infantry to quell.

They also compared to Civ 3. I think ICS was actually worse in Civ 3. SMAC was better about providing productive alternatives to ICS in better city multipliers and specialists and crawlers that encourage more land per city and cheap growth in pop-booming. Civ 3 encouraged you to work every land tile as soon as possible (and as much water as you could reach), and there really wasn't any reason not to blanket the landscape in small (size 6) cities as the fastest way of doing that while avoiding the doubled growth costs above size 7.
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(April 27th, 2017, 17:37)T-hawk Wrote: But I'd certainly outplay anyone advocating for maximum radius with my relaxed-ICS Sikander spacing.  They say why not just build a hab complex to go beyond size 7.  Because of opportunity cost.  That's 80 minerals that adds nothing to productivity, but could instead be another colony pod and formers to develop it, and new instances of all the per-city boons like the free unit support and the Human Genome Project talent and another new set of drones for a police infantry to quell.

Another problem with running a bunch of size 14 bases, like I'm accustomed to in my private games, is that you have to ease off on max boreholes because otherwise eco-damage can go out of control.  Two size 7 bases produce twice as many clean minerals as a size 14 base with the same total production.  A size 7 base isn't usually going to work more than 2 boreholes, which doesn't produce that much eco-damage.  A single size 14 base working 4+ boreholes will pump out a ton of eco-damage for a while, but if you have only one of them it's not that big a deal.  Multiple size 14 bases working 3-4 boreholes each are going to literally sink your economy.

(April 27th, 2017, 17:37)T-hawk Wrote: They also compared to Civ 3.  I think ICS was actually worse in Civ 3.  SMAC was better about providing productive alternatives to ICS in better city multipliers and specialists and crawlers that encourage more land per city and cheap growth in pop-booming.  Civ 3 encouraged you to work every land tile as soon as possible (and as much water as you could reach), and there really wasn't any reason not to blanket the landscape in small (size 6) cities as the fastest way of doing that while avoiding the doubled growth costs above size 7.

I don't think it actually works out that way, in later versions/patches of Civ 3:
  • You can get a free aqueduct a lot of the time in Civ 3 by settling on fresh water.
  • There are no caravans or supply crawlers in Civ 3 that allow you to shift production from one city to another -- it helps more for each city to be able to produce on its own.
  • Having more cities, especially in later versions/patches, incurs increased corruption.
  • Producing a Civ 3 settler is harder than producing a SMAC colony pod: it costs twice the population, and effectively more production even though they're both base cost 30 (no free 10 minerals on founding, no +Industry bonuses, mineral bonuses are weaker, no boreholes, cash-rushing is less effective).

ICS pays off much more in earlier versions (where distance to the capital/FP is the dominant effect on corruption), and before the patch that nerfed ring city placement.  (RB games tended to be on earlier versions.)

This still means you want a few cities that can reach large sizes (for max production in the Industrial Age and later), but the rest should cap at 12 tiles (you get Sanitation to lift that cap too late for it to really matter).

In Civ 2, you want about the same as in SMAC/X: one super science city that can use all 20 of its tiles, and dozens of size 8 cities.  Those size 8 cities actually still produce decent levels of science, and you don't actually want to ICS with them, because that means you're building too many extra libraries and universities.

So I think full-blown ICS is really only best with earlier versions of Civ 1 (the bureaucracy penalty was introduced in version 3), earlier versions of Civ 3, and SMAC/X if you're playing Morgan.
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ICS is broken in Civ3 because the AI can actually expand. You'd never hit significant corruption until you've already won the game so it's just extra tiles to work.
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T-Hawk Wrote:SMAC rewards fast base placement. Density is merely a side effect of speed. You don't get anything out of density itself, except coverage by sensor fields and maybe a percentage point less on the efficiency penalty.

But Sikander spacing is good, because 2 spaces in any direction is the fastest way to get a pod to its site, and on the diagonal is the least overlap to add the most workable tiles, and still allows maximum borehole density. (City density doesn't matter but borehole density does, because boreholes-per-city is a desirable parameter.) It's not a hard-and-fast rule; it's better to walk one more space past a fungus/rocky tile than to spend the former time clearing it for the sake of the grid.

(disclaimer: it's been around 10 years since I last played SMAC(X) and I'm working from memory)

Higher base density means more build queues, more pop faster due to parallel growth (2 cities can add pop twice as fast as one), more unit support, better potential Planet Buster protection via overlapping Flechette Launchers and if you are not building Hab complexes it means more total population. Plus more bases = higher clean minerals limit at all bases due to more Tree Farms ect.

That being said, I did prefer the Sikander spacing to hardcore ICS. Easier to pop boom (especially with a boom-handicapped faction) and less micromanagement drudgery.

"Boreholes per city" seems a less important metric than "borehole worked in total across the empire". wink
fnord
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(May 1st, 2017, 11:28)Thoth Wrote: Higher base density means more build queues, more pop faster due to parallel growth (2 cities can add pop twice as fast as one), more unit support, better potential Planet Buster protection via overlapping Flechette Launchers and if you are not building Hab complexes it means more total population.  Plus more bases = higher clean minerals limit at all bases due to more Tree Farms ect.

This is exactly the misconception I've been trying to debunk.  You're only arguing (correctly) for more bases, not for density. None of that except the Flechettes is dependent on density.  All of that only cares about quantity of bases.  It doesn't matter where they are or how dense their pattern is, only that they got planted in quantity.  Density occurs only as a side effect of speed, because closer sites are faster to reach with the colony pods.  Sikander spacing done right plants the bases just as quickly, and has space for more boreholes, both per city and overall quantity.
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