posted 03-05-99 02:47 PM ET        

In each of these posts, I'll try to pick a specific topic (I'll do Terraforming as a part of this post) and stick to it. I'll try to be as logical and clear as the Analyst 8-).

TERRAFORMING

The Auto-forming seems pretty random. So, here's the logical ordering (as in, translates to if-thens easily 8-) which is very effective for me - hence I would like to see the auto-forming do this so I don't have to micro manage it! (hint hint)

Land Forming, to start
Land is Flat, or Rolling and Arid: Road then Forest
Land is Rolling, not Arid: Farm, Solar, Road
Land is Rocky, Fungus: save til last, then level to Rolling or clear Fungus and look above
Once the entire area is forested or terraformed, the Formers should check to make sure no Forest covers a Rolling terrain

Mid-Game Land Forming, once you get Eco Engineering
Using Aquifers and Condensers, you can now ensure that all Rolling terrain is Rainy. Naturally, the Condensers should be built on Rolling terrain. Solar cells aren't really all that productive until late-game forming:
Boreholes: One per city is plenty. Prefer to put these one Rocky, as the build time seems irrespective of terrain type. Otherwise put on Flat. Note that because of the mineral restrictions, MINES are essentially useless -- do Boreholes! Also, if there are numerous Formers around, they should be smart enough to work in teams.
Viable team projects: Borehole, Aquifer, Atmo-Condenser, Eche-Mirror

Late game Forming: Hi pop + mineral enhancers tends to cause eco-damage. eco-damgage BAD, so:
Convert Forests back to Flat, and give them the same treatment as Rolling, above. Do this until Eco-Dam goes to zero. Preferentially target forests w/o Sensors, but don't worry about removing Sensors, as a city this well developed is going to be deep in safe territory.
Solar cells are becoming common place, plus you can raise-lower land now. So start raising land up to the max energy limit, and then adjust raininess.

Aside on Wierdness: with all the land raising, where does the water go? 8-)

Overall, even under Late Game conditions, if terraforming a new area for a new city, following the Early game priority would tend to rule, except for putting in a Condenser here and there.

Where to put roads and mag tubes: Every square within sight range of a city. The auto-functions don't, at present.

Where to put sensors: This Auto mission really needs work. There are many edges on a fully occupied island which would increase the overall coverage -- most are missed. The Auto-former should:
1) Maximize coverage while staying inside the sight zone of the parent cities. Further out, and they get subverted or destroyed to easily. Put all Sensors on Flat land since the formers will tend to put Forests there.
2) Sensors are popular targets, because that defense bonus is really nice. Hence, maximize redundancy by filling all forests with Sensors.

Various Military Enhancements: Do not build these! They only help an attacker survive in enemy territory. A great way to hold the enemy in their own territory while waiting for some heavy reinforcements.

New Auto command: Plant Forests: I do a lot of this early on, so having a former which can leave city site range and prepare a new area by planting Forests and the flat spots would be very nice!

Sea Forming:
I divide this up into Little or no land, half land, lotsa land.
Little or No Land: Most Sea Colonies are like this. Sea Formers do not built enough Mining platforms! They should start early with Mining, doing two Mines for each Tidal Harness. Later, if there's ever a pollution problem (never happened yet), then those Mines can be turned to Harnesses. Eventually, the Centauri techs makes Sea Fungus the best, by far. Convert Mines to Sea Fungus until get to eco dam, then convert them to Harnesses.

Half Land: If the parent city is on land, build all harnesses. Otherwise, build 3 or 4 Mines to get production started -- later the city can build a transport (or an amphibious land former?) to get a former on the land if needed. If Sea Fungus is highly productive, put that everywhere.

Lotsa Land: Sea Harnesses. Land will be so productive, probably no point to building Fungus.

Ok, there's my first installment if I don't know how many parts. It seems like a fairly simple case of if-then statements, except for the part about making decisions based on eco-dam of parent city. If that can't be done, don't worry about it. I can manually use the Auto-farm+solar+road pretty easily on my forests to bring polution down.

posted 03-05-99 03:47 PM ET            

1. First teraform squares that are currently utilized by the city.

2. Try to teraform squares next to the completed square (don't waste moves going to next square to be teraformed).

3. A lower priority, but still important, is to select squares that are in the direction of the nearest cities (so roads eventually link cities).

As you can see, with all the possible optimizations, the problem becomes very complex. As an alternative, I would suggest:

When a teraform unit requests a command, allow the user to define a "teraforming script" that the termaform unit will follow. All the valid city squares will be displayed, with current attributes (is there a way to tell rolling from flat by the display? I always need to right click on the squares). The user then defines the sequence of squares to teraform, and the action at each square. The script can define everthing from one square to all squares. The teraform unit keeps working until the script is complete. It would be easier if you could define a default teraform action based on the square attribute (e.g. - like the actions defined by the first post). So, unless you wish to change the teraform action, it would only be necessary to specify the square sequence.

Also, regards teraform units, I would like them to stop work, and ask for further commands, if an enemy unit or mind worms move into an adjecent square.

I also agree that the auto-teraform is poorly implemented. It would be diffucult to win at the higher level with auto-teraform enabled.

posted 03-05-99 07:01 PM ET            

First of all, I find the Governers don't know when to build units. I use the advanced options to dissallow that, it works ok if you've selected Discover as your Governer's priority. As for the AI, it needs to recognize central, well protected, large cities, and allow them to finish all the improvements before setting them to build units. Plus, I'm a bit tired of having to content with enemies who too often use green units.

A couple of places where the Governers fail:
The Governers can't manage people at all. I've seen them turn workers to Doctors after a riot. Next turn, since the riot is over, they turn the Doc back to a Worker! From experience, the game checks for a riot before production, so why not just put a little check there: if riot=true and gov.people=true then goto gov.makehappy
i.e., have the governer prevent the riot before it occurs. Oh, and have them only check for optimum distribution of workers whenever an item is built. Plus, when I move them around, don't have that remove the people placement ability from the Governer. Those Cloning Vats are hell at Transcend level.

Next, I'd like to be able to have the Gov manage the ammount of eco-damage. There are two settings that would be usefull:
1) Minimize eco-damage, but still use every square possible. Large cities may not be able to avoid eco-dam without also causing starvation.
2) No eco-dam allowed! In this case, some of the production enhancing squares will not be used if it would cause eco-dam.

On Building
Later on, when many items are availabe, having all the choices in one scrolling box doesn't work to well, especially since the scroll bar is very jumpy. I wouldn't mind being able to select from a list of pages:
Buildings, Unarmed units + natives, a Page for each Armed Chasis type.

Using "Hurry" is also a bit of a pain. As a monetarily challenged transcendent player, it becomes important to hurry just enough so that one turn of production will finish the item. You still need the full Hurry, for riots, but it seems to me this would be an easy option to set up. Just set the price as costing ((needed_minerals - net_minerals) * cost) after all.

posted 03-07-99 01:06 AM ET            

Did you know that if a square contains ONLY an Echelon Mirror or Condenser that forest can expand into it? Condensers are especially good because trees seem to be attracted to moisture and the Condenser continues to provides an extra nutrient after the forest arrives. You can't PLANT trees on top of a Condenser or EM; trees have to EXPAND there naturally.

Any rolling territory 2000m or higher should be farmed. Any rocky territory below 2000m should be remote mined. Any rocky territory 2000m or higher should be either leveled for farm or remote mined depending on need. Anything else should be forested.

"Raising" terrain confers 2 advantages: it increases altitude AND increases rockiness. Raising one square to 3000m raises all adjacent to 2000m, but the more you raise in a single terraforming operation, the more it costs in energy credits.

Obviously finessing your bases to get the mirrors & condensers in the 1000m ridge to get trees to grow over them, while their bonuses are conferred to the adjoining 2000m "farm / solar highlands", is a delicate art.

Landlocked bases w/ 3000m areas make for even more involved landscaping, and when you add aquifers when your terraformers start running out of other things to do your decisions require even more thought.