Help, TI players, with terraforming?

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Author Topic:   Help, TI players, with terraforming?

DerekM posted 03-24-99 01:10 PM ET
OK, this has been my terraforming strategy. What have I been doing wrong?
Ocean shelf -- usually kelp and tidal harness, unless the base is totally ocean or the square has mineral resources. Then I'll build a mining platform.
Moist or rainy, rolling -- soil enhancer, solar collector
Rocky -- mine
Rainy, flat -- usually soil enrichers and solar collectors
Arid and flat or rolling, or moist, flat -- Forest, although I usually build one borehole per city on a square like this.
Sensors go in forest squares. I usually do not build bunkers.
I hate fungus, as a matter of personal preference.
Mines usually get worked by supply crawlers. I'll also send out crawlers to pick of minerals or resource bonuses outside of city radii.
If a square has a bonus, I'll ususually try to take advantage of it, flattening rocky terrain with nutrient bonuses, for example, to build farms and soil enrichers.
I will sometimes build condensors or mirrors if the location is very good.
This is undoubtedly not the most efficient it could be.
PS: What measures do you take to compensate for ecological damage? I would rather not have to face 50 demon boils every turn, which is why I'm so stingy about boreholes and such.
player2 posted 03-24-99 02:10 PM ET
Your terraforming strategy sounds pretty good to me. One exception, though: I have never built a single borehole, simply to avoid the ecological consequences. I have played games as the Gaians, under a green economy, with Centauri Preserves and Forests EVERYWHERE, with NO boreholes, and I STILL generated enough production to cause moderate eco damage! If you've got to have boreholes, do it only for cities that rely primarily on Forests, since forest squares reduce the negative eco effects of other types of terraforming.
uncleroggy posted 03-24-99 02:11 PM ET
DerekM,
I think most of what you do makes pretty good sense. I could only offer a couple of small things to help.
Once I am able, I build tree farms, hybrid forests, Centauri preserves and that SP that reduces eco damage(Pholus Mutagen?-not sure). I then pretty much carpet with forest except for mines and a few boreholes. Needless to say, you have to be able to build instead of fight in order to do this.
The other thing that I do is to build improvements in unused areas that lie between the bases and use crawlers to collect those resources. It seems to me that the a/i doesn't hold this against you and you can keep the number of mines down by quite a bit by doing this.

uncleroggy out
Thue posted 03-24-99 02:21 PM ET
If you have tree farm and hybrid forest there is no reason not to put lots of boreholes, condensers and mirrors (except that your minerals migth get too high). Just keep an eye on your ecodamage. As long as it is zero all is well.
Also, (I think) your first centauri preserve HALVES ecodamage in ALL your cities. With a total of 4 preserves ecodamage is 1/4! Put up some boreholes then!
micje posted 03-24-99 02:34 PM ET
What about this: I build tree farms, hybrid forests, centauri pres., and temples of planet in ALL my 10 bases, and I still had eco damage. Not much (about 10) but this surprised me. And no, I didn't use PBs or take part in other ecological harmful activities. Anyone knows how the formula goes???
Analyst posted 03-24-99 02:41 PM ET
That seems a reasonable enough terraforming program to me. Here's a couple short cuts that I find helpful.
First, don't forget that special resources will be added to the output of a forest tile. Ex: A nutrient resource in a flat and arid square doesn't seem very useful, but plant a forest there and in a mere four turns your former will have created a tile that yeilds 3n/2m/1s that you can put into production immediately.
Second, the "second wave" of terraforming improvements can be pretty powerful because they increase production in bulk. Try the "energy fields" idea from the Morganic strategy thread. Also, a single condenser can add an across the board nutrient increase to an area that will allow you to shift a lot of mine, borehole and/or forest tiles into production that you were too nutrient poor to be using before. The long lead time to buid second level terraforming is agonizing, but if you sit down and work out the idfference between the extra food from a condenser and the extra food you'd get from farming in that same period, you'll realize it's worth it.
I don't usually face eco-damage because I'm usually agressive enough to end my games before my cities get large enough to generate siginificant damage, so I'm sorry that I can't help there. From what I understand, once development reaches a certain level, the ecodamage from population, technology and industry is going to make boreholing look like parking tickets anyway, so I wouln't skimp on the drilling over that.
Last tip: Don't forget about terraforming as a form of combat. I'm not just talking about sinking cities into the ocean or cutting land bridges. I once started a game sandwiched between Santiago to the West and Lal to the East. I concentrated on war with Santiago and peace with Lal, but I sent two extra terraformers to my Easern border. Their job? Screw up Lal's biome. They started raising a ridge on that border until there was a 3000 foot ridge 10 tiles wide. They also built condensers on my side of the ridge. The result? Lal's lands started to look like the Sahara. Every tile for 20 tiles East of that ridge was arid. He built forest everywhere to compensate, but the AI never seems to build Tree Farms. Ultimately, I watched UN HQ (and half a dozen other bases) shrink from a size nine base to a stagnated size four. He was decimated before I fired the first shot.
Darkstar posted 07-20-99 02:45 PM ET
A little Terraforming advice...
-Darkstar
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Author	Topic: Help, TI players, with terraforming?
DerekM	posted 03-24-99 01:10 PM ET OK, this has been my terraforming strategy. What have I been doing wrong? Ocean shelf -- usually kelp and tidal harness, unless the base is totally ocean or the square has mineral resources. Then I'll build a mining platform. Moist or rainy, rolling -- soil enhancer, solar collector Rocky -- mine Rainy, flat -- usually soil enrichers and solar collectors Arid and flat or rolling, or moist, flat -- Forest, although I usually build one borehole per city on a square like this. Sensors go in forest squares. I usually do not build bunkers. I hate fungus, as a matter of personal preference. Mines usually get worked by supply crawlers. I'll also send out crawlers to pick of minerals or resource bonuses outside of city radii. If a square has a bonus, I'll ususually try to take advantage of it, flattening rocky terrain with nutrient bonuses, for example, to build farms and soil enrichers. I will sometimes build condensors or mirrors if the location is very good. This is undoubtedly not the most efficient it could be. PS: What measures do you take to compensate for ecological damage? I would rather not have to face 50 demon boils every turn, which is why I'm so stingy about boreholes and such.
player2	posted 03-24-99 02:10 PM ET Your terraforming strategy sounds pretty good to me. One exception, though: I have never built a single borehole, simply to avoid the ecological consequences. I have played games as the Gaians, under a green economy, with Centauri Preserves and Forests EVERYWHERE, with NO boreholes, and I STILL generated enough production to cause moderate eco damage! If you've got to have boreholes, do it only for cities that rely primarily on Forests, since forest squares reduce the negative eco effects of other types of terraforming.
uncleroggy	posted 03-24-99 02:11 PM ET DerekM, I think most of what you do makes pretty good sense. I could only offer a couple of small things to help. Once I am able, I build tree farms, hybrid forests, Centauri preserves and that SP that reduces eco damage(Pholus Mutagen?-not sure). I then pretty much carpet with forest except for mines and a few boreholes. Needless to say, you have to be able to build instead of fight in order to do this. The other thing that I do is to build improvements in unused areas that lie between the bases and use crawlers to collect those resources. It seems to me that the a/i doesn't hold this against you and you can keep the number of mines down by quite a bit by doing this. uncleroggy out
Thue	posted 03-24-99 02:21 PM ET If you have tree farm and hybrid forest there is no reason not to put lots of boreholes, condensers and mirrors (except that your minerals migth get too high). Just keep an eye on your ecodamage. As long as it is zero all is well. Also, (I think) your first centauri preserve HALVES ecodamage in ALL your cities. With a total of 4 preserves ecodamage is 1/4! Put up some boreholes then!
micje	posted 03-24-99 02:34 PM ET What about this: I build tree farms, hybrid forests, centauri pres., and temples of planet in ALL my 10 bases, and I still had eco damage. Not much (about 10) but this surprised me. And no, I didn't use PBs or take part in other ecological harmful activities. Anyone knows how the formula goes???
Analyst	posted 03-24-99 02:41 PM ET That seems a reasonable enough terraforming program to me. Here's a couple short cuts that I find helpful. First, don't forget that special resources will be added to the output of a forest tile. Ex: A nutrient resource in a flat and arid square doesn't seem very useful, but plant a forest there and in a mere four turns your former will have created a tile that yeilds 3n/2m/1s that you can put into production immediately. Second, the "second wave" of terraforming improvements can be pretty powerful because they increase production in bulk. Try the "energy fields" idea from the Morganic strategy thread. Also, a single condenser can add an across the board nutrient increase to an area that will allow you to shift a lot of mine, borehole and/or forest tiles into production that you were too nutrient poor to be using before. The long lead time to buid second level terraforming is agonizing, but if you sit down and work out the idfference between the extra food from a condenser and the extra food you'd get from farming in that same period, you'll realize it's worth it. I don't usually face eco-damage because I'm usually agressive enough to end my games before my cities get large enough to generate siginificant damage, so I'm sorry that I can't help there. From what I understand, once development reaches a certain level, the ecodamage from population, technology and industry is going to make boreholing look like parking tickets anyway, so I wouln't skimp on the drilling over that. Last tip: Don't forget about terraforming as a form of combat. I'm not just talking about sinking cities into the ocean or cutting land bridges. I once started a game sandwiched between Santiago to the West and Lal to the East. I concentrated on war with Santiago and peace with Lal, but I sent two extra terraformers to my Easern border. Their job? Screw up Lal's biome. They started raising a ridge on that border until there was a 3000 foot ridge 10 tiles wide. They also built condensers on my side of the ridge. The result? Lal's lands started to look like the Sahara. Every tile for 20 tiles East of that ridge was arid. He built forest everywhere to compensate, but the AI never seems to build Tree Farms. Ultimately, I watched UN HQ (and half a dozen other bases) shrink from a size nine base to a stagnated size four. He was decimated before I fired the first shot.
Darkstar	posted 07-20-99 02:45 PM ET A little Terraforming advice... -Darkstar