Alpha Centauri Forums
Strategies and Tactics
Best Bases
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Alpha Centauri Forums
Strategies and Tactics
Best Bases
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| Author | Topic: Best Bases |
| Sector7G |
posted 06-14-99 03:56 PM ET  
Its braggin' time, Now for all you masters out there I'd like to know what your best bases have been and how you got it to that stage. For example: In Civ2 I remember getting a base with 30+ citizens in a city with 4 gold in mountains and the proper engineering and as much caravans dilivered to the right trade route to crank out 1000+ in trade or a 20 size base ( only enough to work all the squares) with 4 coal in hills and transorming anything that does not make a shield to hill so to get a 200+ production. For some reason I have yet to find out how to make a super base in SMAC, please share your wisdom. |
| Krushala |
posted 06-14-99 04:51 PM ET
Ok super science base which probably will be you best base in most areas. Of course Supercollider and Theory of everything, but also if possible merchant exchange, network backbone, and space elevator. And build lots of sky hydroponic labs. If possible make this base in an area with 3 special resources. A few times I have been able to build bases with 4 special resources. |
| Krushala |
posted 06-14-99 04:58 PM ET
My best science base would have to be Monitoring Station size 57. Economy 480,Labs 2340,Pysch 222 (this with pysch set to 0). SP's supercollider,theory of everything,network backbone, space elevator. I always miss merchant exchange. Not my best mineral base I'm always busy building sp's to build factories etc. |
| Sector7G |
posted 06-14-99 05:04 PM ET
Gulp!! |
| Veracitas |
posted 06-14-99 05:28 PM ET
In civ, under Deity, I've made a forty-eight (I think that's right haven't looked at it in a while) size base that concentrated mostly on science (I tend to concentrate my energy towards science, so my best base naturally had Isaac Newton's college and Copernicus's Observatory). I forget what the exact numbers were, but they were pretty high, with science almost tripling everything else. Of course, I built the city with democracy's pop boom and loads of farms and some caravans. However, I have never made a base near so large in SMAC. Does anyone have any suggestions? --Veracitas |
| NoMercy |
posted 06-14-99 05:42 PM ET
To get super science: Merchant Exchange All Labs/Facilities with econ bonus As many supply crawlers as you can with echelon mirrors/boreholes (outside of base) ESESE..... E-Echelon Mirror This will give +6 to +8 energy per solar collector (depending on elevation and SPs) So 12 supply crawlers = Lots of money. Base is entirely covered in forest with Tree Farm and Hybrid Forest (+3,+3,+3?) per square! 40-60 Sky Hydroponics Labs gives you population of 50-60! (All those Transcendi then give you Lab,Econ,Psych bonus plus permanent Golden Age) |
| Koshko |
posted 06-14-99 09:38 PM ET
For your Super Science City, build it where you have good land and sea squares. Example, on Huge Map of Planet on the North side of the Freshwater Sea, there is 2 Mineral Deposits both on rocky squares. With the proper placement, I got about 5 Freshwater Squares (1 with a nutrient deposit), a few reg water squares (1 w/ energy deposit), those 2 mineral squares, and the rest are Forested. On every water square, build kelp and solar cells. Even w/o a single Convoy With that Super Science City, you can produce a load of Research. You can easily have more research with that one city than most of your other cities combined. In the later goings, I can set Labs to 10% and still pick up at least 1 Tech a Turn. I usually Trascend before I get my cities up real high. The highest population I got was about 40 (with the aid of a couple of nutrient deposits). |
| MichaeltheGreat |
posted 06-15-99 01:29 AM ET
I find huge megabases are harder to support and have more effect on stirring up planet than the same population divided among several smaller cities. I usually build about 40 cities by 2200, and concentrate far more on building the best society, not the best single base. |
| quizara tafwid |
posted 06-15-99 07:44 AM ET
Keep in mind that there is no upper limit to the population of a base that you can't increase with colony pods (assuming you have all of the Hab enhancements in the base). So making a large base is easy to do. Just have all of your other 80+ bases build a colony pod (with drop pods  ) and viola! you now can add 80+ pop to your base next turn. |
| quizara tafwid |
posted 06-15-99 07:47 AM ET
Of course you have to have the infrastructure to support such a huge base...many supply crawlers set in the forest to collect food and Sky Farms to supply food (1 for each pop in the base). |
| M_ashwell |
posted 06-15-99 10:27 AM ET
rember thateach pop needs 2 food therefore sky hydro labs can only ad an extra 75% to the max pop! |
| Provost Harrison |
posted 06-16-99 04:05 AM ET
Best base: Morgan Industries: Size 86 Lots of labs 3000+. projects: Merchant, Theory oE, Supercollider, Ascetic Virtues, Space Elevator, Network Backbone, The Longevity Vaccine, The Universal Translator, Voice of Planet. Can't remember exact specifics at this point. |
| Rackam |
posted 06-16-99 12:19 PM ET
Highest mineral output 553. 23 boreholes, 14 condensors, 7 sea mines and it's pop was up to 56 before the worms ate it. ~Rackam |
| RGE |
posted 06-16-99 07:16 PM ET
NoMercy, I've seen those Echelon Mirror Parks in other posts, and while pondering how to turn a strangely deserted Sunny Mesa into a mirror park, I found a pattern that seems much better than the one I've seen so far. ESESE... If you put your Echelon mirrors and Solar collectors in rows like this, you'll get +4 echelon effect for a collector at the end of a row, while getting +6 for any collector which is inside a row. With the chequered pattern you only get +3 for the collectors at the edges, while getting +4 for the ones inside the pattern. With the small 5x3 examples this means +28 for the rows and +22 for the chequered pattern. Note that this is only the echelon effect, not the total energy value...and with the low effect for the 'edge-collectors', you might as well replace them with boreholes, assuming the terrain permits it On another, but similar note, I find it strange how supply crawlers who work forest squares give/get no bonus for Tree Farm or Hybrid Forest while still getting the energy bonus for +2 (or higher) Economy. According to the texts, both Economy and the forest enhancements should only affect squares that are being worked by a base...right? Now I'll go on dreaming about my 7x7 Echelon Mirror Park RGE |
| Kefaed |
posted 06-17-99 12:58 AM ET
This isn't my best base, but my coolest one. Size 40 Morganic sea base, built in the middle of the freshwater sea. Supply crawlers in forests (for nutrient) and boreholes. SP's: Ascent to Transcendence. All facilities except p. sphere. |
| Plato90s |
posted 06-17-99 09:38 AM ET
There was a discussion on the best pattern to lay out echelon mirrors. Quite interesting, since the time of construction for each pattern, plus overall energy production of the area was factored in. The hedge-row pattern was judged to be the 3rd most efficient pattern. And yes, you should gain all the bonuses from Tree Farm and Hybrid Forest when using a supply crawler. But those facilities must be present in the city the crawler is originating from. If you use a crawler based in a non-Tree farm city to harvest a forest square within the city radius of a city which does have Tree Farm, you won't get the nutrient bonus. OTOH, things like Merchant Exchange applies to supply crawlers as well. A crawler based in a city with ME can still harvest 7 energy from a borehole across the continent. |
| RGE |
posted 06-17-99 02:01 PM ET
So which pattern was the *most* efficient then?  As I see it, time isn't as much of a factor as area is; efficient for me is as much energy as possible from a small an area as possible. And if I start surrounding my collectors with less than six mirrors I gain one extra collector with less than +6 bonus, which becomes less efficient compared to leaving a mirror where it is.About those supply crawlers not getting extra nutrients and energy from tree farm and hybrid forest, maybe it's been fixed in a patch? Because according to my base screen, the crawlers have the 'correct' number of resources under them in the unit section, but if I remove a '3 energy crawler' from a forest square, I only lose 2 energy from the energy balance. And when I start to harvest a forest square, I get asked whether I want 1 nutrient, 2 minerals or 2 energy (with Free Market/Wealth). I don't really care though, I was just confused. I think crawlers are too powerful anyway...the AI never seem to use crawlers for free resources. RGE |
| Plato90s |
posted 06-18-99 09:20 AM ET
Well, I've seen AI factions use crawles, although never to the extent human players do. I forgot which is the most labor and energy efficient design but this modified hedge is already more efficient. E...S...E total energy output is the same, but it takes far less time to construct |
| RGE |
posted 06-18-99 11:00 PM ET
I disagree. According to my calculations the modified hedgerow gives less energy, and the saving on terraforming turns isn't quite worth it; a higher reward is well worth the initial time investment, assuming that you will use the mirror park for quite some time (why else build one?). It took some thinking on my part to realise why a less energy-effective pattern might still be more effective than a more time consuming, but once I realised that the quicker you can harvest the energy, the better, I also realised that the actual difference in time becomes lower the more formers you deploy to build the pattern. I use at least 12 clean superformers to build a 7x7 pattern. The bigger the pattern, the better the standard hedgerow pattern will pay off compared to the modified pattern, but the real maker or breaker is still the amount of formers and the time during which the mirror park will be used. In my case, most of the squares has an inherent energy production of 3 energy/turn (+2 from 1001+ meters and +1 from high Economy). Obviously a higher energy bonus makes it more rewarding to finish the pattern faster, thus speaking for the modified hedgerow pattern. In my calculations I let the modified hedgerow pattern work for the amount of turns between the completion of that pattern and the completion of the standard hedgerow pattern. In short, with 12 Superformers you only need to use the mirror park for less than two decades for the standard hedgerow pattern to be more effective, and I plan to use my mirror park for a lot longer than that Also, since the echelon mirror squares will give pretty low energy, I suppose I will only use those squares for supply crawlers waiting to contribute to a secret project, which in my case means that the number of supply crawlers needed to harvest the actual solar collectors is somewhat important. And the hedgerow pattern has more echelon effect concentrated to fewer solar collectors, which means that I will have to build less supply crawlers to collect the same amount of energy. E = Echelon Mirror Modified hedgerow pattern, 3x4 +16 echelon effect, 3 energy/square ==> 52 energy/turn Standard hedgerow pattern, 3x4 +20 echelon effect, 3 energy/square ==> 56 energy/turn [(4-2.67 turns) x 52 energy/turn] / (56-52 energy/turn) = 17.29 turns before standard hedgerow has provided more energy per turn spent terraforming Modified hedgerow pattern, 7x7 +84 echelon effect, 3 energy/square ==> 231 energy/turn Standard hedgerow pattern, 7x7 +114 echelon effect, 3 energy/square ==> 261 energy/turn [(12.83-10.83 turns) x 231 energy/turn] / (261-231 energy/turn) = 15.4 turns before standard hedgerow has provided more energy per turn spent terraforming
And boy was I close to embarrass myself :O I assumed that Sunny Mesa had a +1 energy bonus, which was wrong. I also seemed to get less bonus from my echelon mirrors, and was about to call out "Bug!". But a test showed that the lack of energy was because some of my echelon mirrors were beyond my borderline, which made them not count...better build a base over there ASAP. RGE |
| Sector7G |
posted 06-20-99 05:09 AM ET
Wow...I'd better come back when I'm sober...gesh |
| Sector7G |
posted 06-21-99 07:29 PM ET
I'm sober now and I still have to read that last post a few times to just understand what the suject was. A couple of questions reguarding bases, Can you increase a base size using "join base" reguardless of the hab facilities...and... Is it just me or am I the only one who misses the Best Bases In one of the pull down menus of Civ2. I know there's not much use for it but how I loved seeing all 5 of my top bases on the list...whahahaha |
| Series II |
posted 06-24-99 12:13 PM ET
I don't have a 'best' city, but I have about 34 cities that I am pretty proud of. I connected 4 islands by rasingin terrain and created an 'inland sea'. I have 34 cities in the sea surrounded completely by my land cities. The only way in is through my city names Panama. My sky gardens are starting to go into orbit and the cloning vats are almost done. My population should be going up about 110 per turn (i person per city). Unfortunatally, I think that I just have 45 years left. |
| Bluemax |
posted 06-24-99 02:19 PM ET
I just love it when everyone gets into the whole echelon mirror/solar collector debate. |
| Earwicker |
posted 06-24-99 05:24 PM ET
Given the technology situation of a typical game, Hab Domes don't come around until you're within sight of Transcendance, and really big bases are a matter of playing a tedious end game. As a result, I rarely have bases over size 30. Get tech, finish what base is doing, build dome, watch it grow, finish and start a new game. With this in mind, an interesting challenge would have to do with the best productivity out of a size 16 or 18 base (since that is going to have the most impact within the part of the game that really matters). (but I do have to try quizara's idea of adding a lunatic number of colony pods once the Dome is finished). |
| JayPegg |
posted 06-25-99 09:30 AM ET
Hey Micheal, I agree with you on this, I find that 10 or 20 size 30 bases work better than one size 80. New challenge- Highest mineral output in a base (without eco damage, rackam!) |
| Provost Harrison |
posted 06-25-99 10:12 AM ET
80 size bases are invariably better if you have the space improvements. Think, +80 minerals, +80 energy, +80 nutrient (which is the reason why you can get such staggering sizes), as well as good terrain already around them and loads of supply crawlers, SPs etc. And all of those transcendi! No way will one of your smaller bases be better than a huge megalopolis |
| Earwicker |
posted 06-25-99 11:06 AM ET
Jaypegg is dead-on about the superiority of many large-but-not-huge bases, and Provost Harrison's point about space improvements actually solidifies the point opposite the one he was presenting. SMAC's orbital improvements really accentuate the advantage of several big bases over very few mega-bases. Take for instance: A size 80 base, with 80 of each orbital floating around, can produce the following: Ten size 30 bases, as JayPegg suggests, is too many for a fair comparison. Let's say five: Even assuming that each base uses 40 energy/ turn to support base facilities, that's still an energy advantage of 170 to 84 in favor of the spread-out bases. The overall mineral production advantage is much more pronounced: counting only one mineral increaser, the 5 bases outproduce 1110 to 186. Build the Singularity Inductor and it's 1480 to 248. That said, the Provost's point about the transcendi might be the wildcard. That's 58 transcendi to 40 in favor of the size 80 base. I'll leave it to the floor to assess those extra 18 transcendi would do for economy and labs -- enough to offset the raw energy differential? Maybe. |
| JayPegg |
posted 06-25-99 12:31 PM ET
Hmmm. Earwicker has brought up a pretty good point about those transcendi.... Anyone have the time to work this out in the god-awful scenario editor? I sure dont. |
| JayPegg |
posted 06-25-99 12:39 PM ET
And I almost forgot. It would be much cheaper and quicker to launch 30 sats and end up with 150+ (assuming 5 size 30's) of energy instead of 80+ from one base. Provost may now argue..... PS Anyone up to my challenge of minerals (eco-damage-free) in a single base? |
| Earwicker |
posted 06-25-99 02:03 PM ET
>>>cheaper and quicker to launch 30 sats and end up with 150+ (assuming 5 size 30's) of energy instead of 80+ from one base. Good point, JayPegg. This whole argument is essentially moot for my style of play, since even for the 5 size 30 bases, that's 90 satellites to be launched. The single size 80 base would take 240 satellites. Has anyone ever launched that many? Either way, that's toooo much work for my tastes. I don't remember ever using more than 30-40 satellites. |
| MichaeltheGreat |
posted 06-25-99 02:25 PM ET
A slight problem with those mega bases with everything is when some sneaky SOB (like me) hits you with a PB and leaves a crater in place of all those SP's. I've had over a hundred satellites up - but I don't even go for size 30 bases - I usually do size 15 to 20 times however many I feel like building. |
| Plato90s |
posted 06-25-99 03:29 PM ET
Why would it be fair to compare 5 size 30 bases to a single size 80 base? That's 150 population points compared to 80. Logically, you must have at least twice the production level in order to justify the comparison. On the mineral side, you obvious have a big bonus. On the energy side, the extra transcendi will drop the multiplier to ~1.7x. However, the efficiency of the large # cities is far lower. To supply a size 80 city, you need an additional 34 food. Assuming you set up an enricher/condensor farm area to collect food, it'll take about 8 squares to generate the 34 food. Size 80 base takes up a total of 28 map squares to achieve its production effect. Those 5 size 30 cities will cover 100 map squares. It takes 3.5x the map area to give you a 2x increase in mineral and about a 1.7x increase in energy-related output. And I wouldn't worry too much about PBs. By the time you can get 80 hydro lab, mining station, and energy satellites into orbit, you have so many ODPs that no bombardment can possibly succeed. |
| JayPegg |
posted 06-25-99 03:38 PM ET
Who says that the pop's have to equal! That is the point of the arguement here! |
| NoMercy |
posted 06-25-99 05:07 PM ET
RGE, thanks for your posts on echelon mirrors. I've just realized what a klutz I've been For some reason I thought/assumed echelon mirrors provided 0.1.0 instead of How on earth I don't know. Now I can go try some hedge patterns NoMercy |
| Plato90s |
posted 06-25-99 07:38 PM ET
"Who says that the pop's have to equal! That is the point of the arguement here! " What is the point then? That 150 population points can generate more resources than 80 population points? If that was the question, then the answer is obvious and hardly requires any analysis. |
| JayPegg |
posted 06-25-99 10:54 PM ET
Hmm, Plato, you seem to be trying to get a lock on me, so I'll have to shake it... The point is not only the most resources, but how many specialists in a base and their bonus to lab/psych/econ... 80 size base- 20 pop on work Orbital improvement bonuses... 80 size base- 80 energy/nuts/mins at a cost of 240 launches And something we haven't really covered yet, which is better, one size 80 with 124 minerals or 5 30's with 74 minerals? And don't forget the hundreds of other little things like eco-damage and efficiency.... See, this is an arguement and not an unfair fight. |
| Rackam |
posted 06-26-99 10:18 AM ET
JayPegg - 186 minerals, 0 Eco damage. |
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