With BE coming out soon, I figured we'd have some new people. So I made this.
Feel free to add to this if you want, and I'll add it to this post.
The output is: food-minerals-energy.
Note that I did check on other websites, such as strategywiki to make sure I remembered all the options correctly.
Forests
"Foresting is such an integral part of the game. In almost everyones game foresting is at least a start to effective terraforming if not an end to terraforming. Departures may take place from foresting but by and large forestation is a viable means to have a well balanced output of factors of production namely: Nuts, mins and energy. " -Civgaming.net - SMAC Academy
Basic forest output - 1-2-1
Max output - 3-2-3 (with +2 economy)
Forests also sometimes expand on their own without a former's help. Good if you need a little bit of everything, or if you have idle Formers (which you shouldn't in most cases) you can plant them where you plan to expand too.
Mines, Farms, and Solar Panels
MFS = mine, farm, Or solar panel
If you are lacking one resource specifically, this is an option to get more resources, although a singular MFS on a normal piece of soil without any other modifiers is worse than a Forest.
These are all fairly self-explanatory. Mines give 1 extra mineral, except on rocky tiles (With roads required too, I believe) where they give three extra. Farms give 1 more nutrient, solar panels give one more energy (and for every 1000m of elevation, it gives another energy). Echelon mirrors increase solar panel output by 1 per mirror.
Boreholes
0-2-2 base, potential for 0-6-6
These take 24 turns to make these if you have no modifiers for them (a lot of turns), and cause a huge amount of eco-damage, although if you have a base on a small 3x3 island or something to that effect, and spam these, you can produce things EXTREMELY fast. (If you do that though, I'd reccomend making some colony pods to increase the population of the base so you can work the tiles).
Echelon Mirrors
These cause a fair amount of eco-damage. Produces the same amount of energy as your basic solar collector, but if you place it next to solar collectors, all of them will get +1 energy. You can get alot of energy out of 1 solar panel if you spam these, although why would you do that?
Fungus removal/planting
Fairly self explanatory, once again. I would reccomend removing it around your main base, to protect from Mindworms.
Same thing with sea fungus.
Road
Allows units to move faster, as they only use .33% of a move when they use roads. So, every three roads is 1 movement. Make these connecting from base-base in your main territory at the minimum.
Elevation Terraforming
Anything in Italics until I say it's not is taken from StrategyWiki's article on Terraforming for SMAC. I saw no need to re-type it.
Level Terrain
Reduces the Rockiness of a tile from Rocky to Rolling, or Rolling to Flat.
Lower Land
Reduces the tile's elevation by about 1000m. Costs energy credits to perform, amount is determined by the current elevation and the distance of the operation from your nearest base. If used by a sea former outside of a coastal base it can lower the base into the sea, drowning all the inhabitants (unless the base is equipped with a pressure dome).
Raise Land
Raises the tile's elevation by about 1000m. Adjacent tiles will be brought up, allowing you to create a mountain by raising a single tile. Costs energy credits to perform, amount is determined by the current elevation and the distance of the operation from your nearest base.
Sensor Arrays
These are good defense against Native Life. Takes away 2 fog's of war around it, and any units in those 2 squares around it get a 1/4 defense bonus.
Soil Enricher
Honestly, I don't use these. Even if I should. You probably should, though.
Increases food prod. in the square you put it at by 50%.
No more direct quotes in italics, italics is my own words now.
Mag Tube
The ultimate road...
If you have a line of these across Chiron, you can literally go from on side of Planet to the other.
Units use 0% of a movement point when they go on Mag Tubes.
Here are some Terraforming options I don't use at all.
Until the next ******** all this is taken DIRECTLY from strategywiki. Might seem lazy, but I don't want to misinform anyone.
Prerequisite: Doctrine: Air Power
Base terraforming time: 10
Allows Air units to refuel here.
Aquifer
Prerequisite: Ecological Engineering
Base terraforming time: 18
Taps an underground aquifer, creating a river. Rivers yield energy bonus of +1 and a X3 movement boost. The energy bonus stacks with all improvements. One terraform from a high mountain and can enhance the terrain of several cities.
When implementing, check the numerical height of the terrain; the number, not the graphical representation determines where the river will go.
Bunker
Prerequisite: Advanced Military Algorithms
Base terraforming time: 5
Units in a Bunker have a 50% bonus to defense and do not suffer from collateral damage when another unit in the bunker is attacked.
Condenser
Prerequisite: Ecological Engineering
Base terraforming time: 12
A condenser increases the raininess of its square and all adjacent squares and increases its square's food production by 50%. Condensers also cause significant amounts of eco-damage.
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Strategies
Alright, so I don't know many of these. I'll need some help to fill this up.
Mass Forester
Pines... Pines everywhere...
Dang man, you pine crazy
This is what most people who don't know terraforming well do.
It consists of planting forests literally everywhere. I tried it once, and I can't say it's bad.
Do this to possible expansions, but if they are at risk of being taken over you may not want to save your enemy the trouble.
Industrial Holes
Life in the old Industry-Hole was rough, but as soon as payday came I remembered why I bothered to stay.
If you have well-defended bases (mindworms will attack), build a crap-load of these. Gives you a ton of minerals, and as an added bonus, causes a ton of eco-damage. You can make a base dedicated to secret projects with this.
Roadies
Spam roads on every square for faster movement, and then later make them all mag-tubes. Hope you don't get attacked.
That's all I got. Help me out if you can think of something I missed.
New SMAC quizzes available.
