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Author Topic:   Ecology Damage - Ridiculous!

WorldBuster posted 05-06-99 07:12 PM ET
Can someone explain the massive increase in Eco-damage that begins to occur towards the later part of the game.
I have cities with all the benevolent planent facilities - Hybrid Forest, Tree Farm and the Centauri Preserve, the cities are size 16, as I have yet to discover the Hab Dome. They are of course 2 higher than normal with one of the secret projects. I also have a large number of citizens shifted to specialists to deter the effects of fungus exposions and the subsequent wave of worm attacks--- yet the eco damage is rampant, I can keep some down by turning citizens to specialists - in return for the much reduced energy and minerals.
In one game, I did not pay attention to the ecological damage and suffered an onslaught of worms that was worse than having all the other factions simultaneusly land with Shard Hovertanks! The worms came out of the ground everywhere, in less than three turns, many of the my prime cities were wiped of garrisons and seriously reduced in population and facilities.
I have read that some players have had cities of 50+. I cannot see how this could happen with the resulting eco-damage caused by such city sizes. You would never be able to supply them with food, even if you did have numerous Orbital facilities.
What is a cure for this non-sense. The Planet fighting back by destroying your improvements and launching horde attacks by worms takes the fun out of building and conquering in the game. You spend more time, trying to govern your cities against eco-damage then actually doing the turn movement.
There has to be a way to reduce this eco-damage. A city of size three with eco-damage 8 is absurd. This has to be a bug! Some of the larger cities with 17 minerals are at 17 eco damage or a 17% chance of a fungus bloom each turn - this % should be reduced by at least 75%.
The only benefit of these worm attacks - is that if you take out a stacked nest - you usually get 650 energy units to treasury - a windfall of cash - enough to complete hybrid forests, tree farms, and preserves, but too what use - they only lower by a small fraction. Yet the misprint in the manual - says the hyrid and the tree farm negate eco-damage entirely!

Greyhawk posted 05-06-99 07:43 PM ET
Go to the HQ and check your planet rating in the socio-economic choices. Make damned sure its above 0 otherwise its mindwormville! Miriam is at a disadvantage from the start getting -1 at the outset which makes for an entertaining time protecting your new bases. Use the Neural Amplifier secret project to get +50% Psi defence and have garrisons with the 'trance' special ability (gained with Secrets of the Human Brain) to stave off those attacks. High morale units have a better chance against the worms too. Its not that bad having worms attack you if you take the attack to the worms and get them before they attack you as you get lotsa energy for destroying them also with a positive Planet rating you stand a chance of capturing the worms. Always always always build sensors within two spaces of a base as they let you see approaching worms even in Xenofungus plus giving you +25% to your defence if you're within two squares.
Your eco damage goes up when you build orbital facilities I think too for some reason.
Hope that helped!
Smeagol posted 05-06-99 08:58 PM ET
Worldbuster-- Hybrid Forests combined with tree farms eliminate eco-damage caused by terraforming, but not by mineral output. Orbital facilities that increase mineral output at your bases will of course give you problems, along with facilities that increase mineral output.
CatsAt8 posted 05-06-99 11:51 PM ET
The *ECO-DAMAGE* is caused by the gas of the Planet Cows munching on the alien fungus.
Light a match !!!
WorldBuster posted 05-07-99 07:23 PM ET
Thanks for the info - but I do use the Planet setting in social, but it helps very little. The worms are still attacking - and fungus blooms are erupting - destroying enhancements that I have painstakingly built since the beginning of the game - sinister worms!
I even changed the Planet rating in the Alpha.txt file by increasing it by two plusses, still no good. I attack them and a message says "Mind worm capture fails - it seems some other more powerful force is controlling these - yea, show me where the sucker is and I'll plant 10 quantum busters down its gullet.
I'm looking for a clear cut solution to this problem - like and adjustment to the game files to reduce it to a manageable level.
G e o r g e r i f i c posted 05-07-99 08:08 PM ET
Make sure your planet rating is as high as possible in Social Engineering. Wait before building mineral-boosting facilities (except Nanoreps-they help). You might not want to build the Singularity Inductor as well. Don't worry, it can be done: with the Gaian's, I have cities with 250 production and NO ecodamage.
TheHelperMonkey posted 05-07-99 08:35 PM ET
The same thing happens to me. My planet rating was 4 and my cities only had 14 eco-damage. Still i get about 3 stacks of 13 mindworms pooping up per turn. Possibly a bug, I don't know. But it's pissing me off.
Gord McLeod posted 05-07-99 08:53 PM ET
What factions are people using here? I've played most of them and I find it varies wildly from faction to faction and depends too on the settings you have for your social engineering and the facilities you build.
WorldBuster, the powerful force you've described as preventing attempts to capture worms is Planet itself, that usually happens when Planet is acting directly against you.
Victor Galis posted 05-07-99 09:42 PM ET
Live with it, I was Gaian and getting 52 damage off 59 production in a size 10 city. In that game I was the only one causing eco-damage. The Voice of Planet was a tremedous help.
Urban Ranger posted 05-07-99 10:16 PM ET
There's acutally a help screen on this under "Advanced Concepts" with an equation (which does not seem to be correct) and explanations of the computation.
There are a number of factors involved, such as the difficulty setting, amount of native life forms during setup [apperantly the more they are around, the more sensitive the Planet is to most of the terrain improvements (except forests)], total number of technology discovered, your Planet rating, number of atrocities committed (PB definitely counts here), etc.
WorldBuster posted 05-08-99 02:13 PM ET
Thanks for the info. It seems that all the eco has gone away - now I'am faced with an ever increasing water table. The launch Solar Shade in council meeting is crap - it only lowers it 66 meters each time - big deal!
That is alright, in the next game, the water will not increase one drop - thanks to editing the alpha.txt file. It appears that editing the alpha.txt file is not retroactive once a game is in play - sneaking programmers have created a temp variable!
Warp Warrior posted 05-08-99 04:00 PM ET
The last two games I played, I never had any mindworms attack except for the periodic isle-of-the-deep dumping a single mindworm on land and the random windworm you may find in a unity pod, also the water level never rose (it fell but that was a stupid idea by the other factions to do, made it much easier for me to take over sea bases and forest started growing everywhere). Previous games I used to have the same problem with fungus blooms everywhere and size 16+ getting totally destroyed by mindworms/locusts. I usually go for the Sherwood Forest Strategy now - forest everything and I mean everything - which seems to work just perfect. Get rid of all the breeding grounds for mindworms/locusts. Nature helps you with this strategy, so go with it. Getting 3 food out of the forest with treefarm and Hybrid forest in the city is not bad, 2 minerals per forest is not bad either and NO eco-damage. You can also still build sensors in the forests for protection and you can build a condensor on it to support the farms you will need in the beginning of the game before you get treefarms. Right after I get the tech for treefarms, the farms and mines get converted to forest. The only time I started getting eco-damage was when I started adding too many mineral multiplying facilities to the city without also adding the ecology bonus facilities in between. Don't forget to build the Pholus Mutagen also. Also build the Singularity Inductor so you don't have to build eco-damaging Quantum Convertors in your cities, its also great for starting up tiny cities too when coupled with Cloning Vats. In the game I am in now, I'm seeing the computer played factions getting attacked more often by the natives than I am, might have something to do with the mines and farms that are not ecologicaly friendly that the other factions have built. This game seems to be squewed in a way that you are supposed to let the automated former make the decisions as to what to build, and unforunately those decisions can sometimes be deadly. No more Autoforming for me!
Its not easy being Green, but it helps. A later in the game has more energy coming in than Freemarket, and if coupled with Cloning Vats has no disadvantages.
Forests are quickly constructed, only two turns with a superformer and Weather Paradigm. Why waste the time building a mine, farm, soil enricher on the same square when you can get more with less work? You can build a size 63 city with forest and 63 satellites,(assuming no bonuses or food transports) is that big enough for you? I did it once and haven't done it since, better to make two size 31 cities or three size 21 cities in the same area, they don't take so long to max out, and they have a lot less eco-damage.
Find the jungle if you can, and get several cities in there. Excellent food production, and you can grow forests in the same square and still no eco-damage. This is IMHO the best place to start the game - never even need to build mines or farms just forests and a few roads, population and tech will sky rocket, and it has lots of minerals as well. Max city size is 84 with jungle in all 21 city squares (no bonuses or food transports), but I recommend several smaller cities though. I just wish the jungles would expand as fast as the forests do - maybe in P4 or SMACX.
Fenryswulf posted 05-08-99 05:15 PM ET
A good way that I have found to cut down on mind worm attacks and terraforming time is to create a map without any Xenofungus. As time goes on, you will get a small amount, and there are always the random marauding mind worms, but it's a lot more manageable. Some people might think this is cheating, but it helps out the other factions just as much as your own. Besides, I would rather focus on the city development and military aspects of the game and not have to worry about so much damn terraforming. But this strategy isn't for everyone.
-FenrysWulf
TheHelperMonkey posted 05-08-99 10:35 PM ET
If you create a map with very little fungus patches, it counts as "rare lifeforms" on your scoreshhet. This lowers your score by 25%.
Xerxes314 posted 05-08-99 10:52 PM ET
I hate to point out the obvious, but the solution to your problem here is
STOP planet busting everything!
Let's think: Planet is pissed and keeps sending hordes of mindworms to kill me. I have a tree farm and low minerals at my base, but that doesn't seem to help. What should I do? Oh, I don't know, why don't I launch nuclear missles all over the globe. That should improve the environment significantly.
As your name immediately suggests, your short-sighted game strategy of "if it moves, nuke it" is not working. Also, turning off all the options that you don't know how to play with really doesn't do much to show off your amazing strategy-gaming talent.
Perhaps you should ask Firaxis to add in Alpha.txt:
Win_Automatically = TRUE
Urban Ranger posted 05-09-99 12:12 AM ET
When you want to play the Gaians, it is so much fun to start a custom world with abundant native wildlife forms. Fungus squares aren't that bad, and there are lots of worms around for you to capture.
TheHelperMonkey posted 05-09-99 09:28 AM ET
I don't know about WorldBuster, but I never planet bust. STill, I get around 3 or patches of 14 mw each turn. I guess it's a bug.
Chowlett posted 05-09-99 10:58 AM ET
FYO, I have a feeling that Nessus Mining Stations DON'T increase ecological damage. Which is fair enough, I suppose, you haven't just wrenced the minerals out of planets surface.
Urban Ranger posted 05-09-99 12:13 PM ET
Warp Warrior:
Yes, a "Green Sea" stretagy works well, esp with the Gaians. In the beginning, I usually find a couple of "rolling/moist" squares for farm/solar combo. This will let the bases grow bigger. Of course, if there are nutrient resources around, so much the better.
After the discovery of Tree Farm and Hybrid Forest, forest squares become very cost effective, so I'll just change everything to forests, except for an odd mine or two.
I think it is better if the bases are placed in a regular pattern with some overlapping squares between them. In that way, a minimalist road grid can be developed.
Urban Ranger posted 05-09-99 12:15 PM ET
HelperMonkey:
Nuking other cities contribute to worm attacks, but it is not the only factor. Production of minerals and your Planet rating counts a lot.
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Author	Topic: Ecology Damage - Ridiculous!
WorldBuster	posted 05-06-99 07:12 PM ET Can someone explain the massive increase in Eco-damage that begins to occur towards the later part of the game. I have cities with all the benevolent planent facilities - Hybrid Forest, Tree Farm and the Centauri Preserve, the cities are size 16, as I have yet to discover the Hab Dome. They are of course 2 higher than normal with one of the secret projects. I also have a large number of citizens shifted to specialists to deter the effects of fungus exposions and the subsequent wave of worm attacks--- yet the eco damage is rampant, I can keep some down by turning citizens to specialists - in return for the much reduced energy and minerals. In one game, I did not pay attention to the ecological damage and suffered an onslaught of worms that was worse than having all the other factions simultaneusly land with Shard Hovertanks! The worms came out of the ground everywhere, in less than three turns, many of the my prime cities were wiped of garrisons and seriously reduced in population and facilities. I have read that some players have had cities of 50+. I cannot see how this could happen with the resulting eco-damage caused by such city sizes. You would never be able to supply them with food, even if you did have numerous Orbital facilities. What is a cure for this non-sense. The Planet fighting back by destroying your improvements and launching horde attacks by worms takes the fun out of building and conquering in the game. You spend more time, trying to govern your cities against eco-damage then actually doing the turn movement. There has to be a way to reduce this eco-damage. A city of size three with eco-damage 8 is absurd. This has to be a bug! Some of the larger cities with 17 minerals are at 17 eco damage or a 17% chance of a fungus bloom each turn - this % should be reduced by at least 75%. The only benefit of these worm attacks - is that if you take out a stacked nest - you usually get 650 energy units to treasury - a windfall of cash - enough to complete hybrid forests, tree farms, and preserves, but too what use - they only lower by a small fraction. Yet the misprint in the manual - says the hyrid and the tree farm negate eco-damage entirely!
Greyhawk	posted 05-06-99 07:43 PM ET Go to the HQ and check your planet rating in the socio-economic choices. Make damned sure its above 0 otherwise its mindwormville! Miriam is at a disadvantage from the start getting -1 at the outset which makes for an entertaining time protecting your new bases. Use the Neural Amplifier secret project to get +50% Psi defence and have garrisons with the 'trance' special ability (gained with Secrets of the Human Brain) to stave off those attacks. High morale units have a better chance against the worms too. Its not that bad having worms attack you if you take the attack to the worms and get them before they attack you as you get lotsa energy for destroying them also with a positive Planet rating you stand a chance of capturing the worms. Always always always build sensors within two spaces of a base as they let you see approaching worms even in Xenofungus plus giving you +25% to your defence if you're within two squares. Your eco damage goes up when you build orbital facilities I think too for some reason. Hope that helped!
Smeagol	posted 05-06-99 08:58 PM ET Worldbuster-- Hybrid Forests combined with tree farms eliminate eco-damage caused by terraforming, but not by mineral output. Orbital facilities that increase mineral output at your bases will of course give you problems, along with facilities that increase mineral output.
CatsAt8	posted 05-06-99 11:51 PM ET The ECO-DAMAGE is caused by the gas of the Planet Cows munching on the alien fungus. Light a match !!!
WorldBuster	posted 05-07-99 07:23 PM ET Thanks for the info - but I do use the Planet setting in social, but it helps very little. The worms are still attacking - and fungus blooms are erupting - destroying enhancements that I have painstakingly built since the beginning of the game - sinister worms! I even changed the Planet rating in the Alpha.txt file by increasing it by two plusses, still no good. I attack them and a message says "Mind worm capture fails - it seems some other more powerful force is controlling these - yea, show me where the sucker is and I'll plant 10 quantum busters down its gullet. I'm looking for a clear cut solution to this problem - like and adjustment to the game files to reduce it to a manageable level.
G e o r g e r i f i c	posted 05-07-99 08:08 PM ET Make sure your planet rating is as high as possible in Social Engineering. Wait before building mineral-boosting facilities (except Nanoreps-they help). You might not want to build the Singularity Inductor as well. Don't worry, it can be done: with the Gaian's, I have cities with 250 production and NO ecodamage.
TheHelperMonkey	posted 05-07-99 08:35 PM ET The same thing happens to me. My planet rating was 4 and my cities only had 14 eco-damage. Still i get about 3 stacks of 13 mindworms pooping up per turn. Possibly a bug, I don't know. But it's pissing me off.
Gord McLeod	posted 05-07-99 08:53 PM ET What factions are people using here? I've played most of them and I find it varies wildly from faction to faction and depends too on the settings you have for your social engineering and the facilities you build. WorldBuster, the powerful force you've described as preventing attempts to capture worms is Planet itself, that usually happens when Planet is acting directly against you.
Victor Galis	posted 05-07-99 09:42 PM ET Live with it, I was Gaian and getting 52 damage off 59 production in a size 10 city. In that game I was the only one causing eco-damage. The Voice of Planet was a tremedous help.
Urban Ranger	posted 05-07-99 10:16 PM ET There's acutally a help screen on this under "Advanced Concepts" with an equation (which does not seem to be correct) and explanations of the computation. There are a number of factors involved, such as the difficulty setting, amount of native life forms during setup [apperantly the more they are around, the more sensitive the Planet is to most of the terrain improvements (except forests)], total number of technology discovered, your Planet rating, number of atrocities committed (PB definitely counts here), etc.
WorldBuster	posted 05-08-99 02:13 PM ET Thanks for the info. It seems that all the eco has gone away - now I'am faced with an ever increasing water table. The launch Solar Shade in council meeting is crap - it only lowers it 66 meters each time - big deal! That is alright, in the next game, the water will not increase one drop - thanks to editing the alpha.txt file. It appears that editing the alpha.txt file is not retroactive once a game is in play - sneaking programmers have created a temp variable!
Warp Warrior	posted 05-08-99 04:00 PM ET The last two games I played, I never had any mindworms attack except for the periodic isle-of-the-deep dumping a single mindworm on land and the random windworm you may find in a unity pod, also the water level never rose (it fell but that was a stupid idea by the other factions to do, made it much easier for me to take over sea bases and forest started growing everywhere). Previous games I used to have the same problem with fungus blooms everywhere and size 16+ getting totally destroyed by mindworms/locusts. I usually go for the Sherwood Forest Strategy now - forest everything and I mean everything - which seems to work just perfect. Get rid of all the breeding grounds for mindworms/locusts. Nature helps you with this strategy, so go with it. Getting 3 food out of the forest with treefarm and Hybrid forest in the city is not bad, 2 minerals per forest is not bad either and NO eco-damage. You can also still build sensors in the forests for protection and you can build a condensor on it to support the farms you will need in the beginning of the game before you get treefarms. Right after I get the tech for treefarms, the farms and mines get converted to forest. The only time I started getting eco-damage was when I started adding too many mineral multiplying facilities to the city without also adding the ecology bonus facilities in between. Don't forget to build the Pholus Mutagen also. Also build the Singularity Inductor so you don't have to build eco-damaging Quantum Convertors in your cities, its also great for starting up tiny cities too when coupled with Cloning Vats. In the game I am in now, I'm seeing the computer played factions getting attacked more often by the natives than I am, might have something to do with the mines and farms that are not ecologicaly friendly that the other factions have built. This game seems to be squewed in a way that you are supposed to let the automated former make the decisions as to what to build, and unforunately those decisions can sometimes be deadly. No more Autoforming for me! Its not easy being Green, but it helps. A later in the game has more energy coming in than Freemarket, and if coupled with Cloning Vats has no disadvantages. Forests are quickly constructed, only two turns with a superformer and Weather Paradigm. Why waste the time building a mine, farm, soil enricher on the same square when you can get more with less work? You can build a size 63 city with forest and 63 satellites,(assuming no bonuses or food transports) is that big enough for you? I did it once and haven't done it since, better to make two size 31 cities or three size 21 cities in the same area, they don't take so long to max out, and they have a lot less eco-damage. Find the jungle if you can, and get several cities in there. Excellent food production, and you can grow forests in the same square and still no eco-damage. This is IMHO the best place to start the game - never even need to build mines or farms just forests and a few roads, population and tech will sky rocket, and it has lots of minerals as well. Max city size is 84 with jungle in all 21 city squares (no bonuses or food transports), but I recommend several smaller cities though. I just wish the jungles would expand as fast as the forests do - maybe in P4 or SMACX.
Fenryswulf	posted 05-08-99 05:15 PM ET A good way that I have found to cut down on mind worm attacks and terraforming time is to create a map without any Xenofungus. As time goes on, you will get a small amount, and there are always the random marauding mind worms, but it's a lot more manageable. Some people might think this is cheating, but it helps out the other factions just as much as your own. Besides, I would rather focus on the city development and military aspects of the game and not have to worry about so much damn terraforming. But this strategy isn't for everyone. -FenrysWulf
TheHelperMonkey	posted 05-08-99 10:35 PM ET If you create a map with very little fungus patches, it counts as "rare lifeforms" on your scoreshhet. This lowers your score by 25%.
Xerxes314	posted 05-08-99 10:52 PM ET I hate to point out the obvious, but the solution to your problem here is STOP planet busting everything! Let's think: Planet is pissed and keeps sending hordes of mindworms to kill me. I have a tree farm and low minerals at my base, but that doesn't seem to help. What should I do? Oh, I don't know, why don't I launch nuclear missles all over the globe. That should improve the environment significantly. As your name immediately suggests, your short-sighted game strategy of "if it moves, nuke it" is not working. Also, turning off all the options that you don't know how to play with really doesn't do much to show off your amazing strategy-gaming talent. Perhaps you should ask Firaxis to add in Alpha.txt: Win_Automatically = TRUE
Urban Ranger	posted 05-09-99 12:12 AM ET When you want to play the Gaians, it is so much fun to start a custom world with abundant native wildlife forms. Fungus squares aren't that bad, and there are lots of worms around for you to capture.
TheHelperMonkey	posted 05-09-99 09:28 AM ET I don't know about WorldBuster, but I never planet bust. STill, I get around 3 or patches of 14 mw each turn. I guess it's a bug.
Chowlett	posted 05-09-99 10:58 AM ET FYO, I have a feeling that Nessus Mining Stations DON'T increase ecological damage. Which is fair enough, I suppose, you haven't just wrenced the minerals out of planets surface.
Urban Ranger	posted 05-09-99 12:13 PM ET Warp Warrior: Yes, a "Green Sea" stretagy works well, esp with the Gaians. In the beginning, I usually find a couple of "rolling/moist" squares for farm/solar combo. This will let the bases grow bigger. Of course, if there are nutrient resources around, so much the better. After the discovery of Tree Farm and Hybrid Forest, forest squares become very cost effective, so I'll just change everything to forests, except for an odd mine or two. I think it is better if the bases are placed in a regular pattern with some overlapping squares between them. In that way, a minimalist road grid can be developed.
Urban Ranger	posted 05-09-99 12:15 PM ET HelperMonkey: Nuking other cities contribute to worm attacks, but it is not the only factor. Production of minerals and your Planet rating counts a lot.