Author Topic: Terraforming strategies  (Read 5922 times)

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Offline vonbach

Terraforming strategies
« on: February 03, 2016, 06:47:54 PM »
What terraforming strategies do people use? I've never been one for advanced setups.
I like to just plant forests everywhere.  I sometimes make myself an energy park and feed all
that energy into my capitol. What strategies does everyone use? Anyone else like to plant forests
everywhere because you like the way it looks?

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Re: Terraforming strategies
« Reply #1 on: February 03, 2016, 08:09:06 PM »
I always plant a forest first -unless I make a road on the square before, as it's a tossup whether the turn that saves later is worth the extra time before having the benefit of the forest- and let that sucker spread.

Offline Eadee

Re: Terraforming strategies
« Reply #2 on: February 03, 2016, 08:09:46 PM »
Usually I tend to use the "Forest and Forget"-former-strategy as well :)

However I need a lot of food in the early-game, therefore I usually build a couple of farms so that every base has at least SOME 2 nutrient-tiles.
I used to improve special ressources to give maxmium yield of their type (farm on nutrient, mine on minerals, collectors on energy), but I'm testing building forests instead right now since in a new base you can only can work a single tile and therefore it is nice if this one tile yields all kind of ressources.

When most of my bases have a decent number of forest-tiles I tend to  remove fungus where it is too close to a base and build sensor-towers like a maniac.
As soon as mineral-restriction is lifted I buil a couple of Boreholes too.
Disclaimer: No mind worms were harmed in the making of this post.

Offline Agent Miles

Re: Terraforming strategies
« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2016, 04:59:28 PM »
I use an exponential system. I get to a 3 pop base with RC and three worked forests. Then I convert the three forests to Farm + Condenser and pop boom to 7. Each Base gets two Boreholes too. Add an infrastructure of 14 NUT, MIN and Energy satellites each to continue to boom to 14 per base. Lots of small three square bases can be added with two crawled squares containing a Farm + Condenser + Soil Enricher. Pop boom to 14 again with only a Creche, Aerospace complex and Hab complex. Lots of specialists for EC's, labs or psyche.

Also, a "solar energy farm" of 9 squares (6 solar collectors and 3 Echelon Mirrors) at max altitude nets about 50 energy. Three small bases as above get you 45 energy...and 45 minerals with 42 specialists. ;)

Offline Nexii

Re: Terraforming strategies
« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2016, 06:35:16 PM »
Mostly forests if unmodded.  More condensors/boreholes once uncapped.  Everything else takes too long.

Though I mod terraforming so a mix is better.  With forests at 8 turns and farms at 2 turns, it's a tougher decision.  Farm+solar still takes about as long 6-8 turns.  More or less, bad land gets forest and land that's more arable or higher altitude gets farm+solar.  Sadly mines don't get a lot of use and there's no way to mod them better...1M just isn't as good as 1E (generally).  Especially with ecodamage on.

I'd say that kelp+tidal is one of the most underrated terraforming choices.  The AI doesn't like to Pact that much but if you have a few the Commerce is really powerful.  Did a pacifist trial game where I played all factions for a bit.  The Believers were outteching everyone in spite of their penalties, because they happened to have more sea bases.

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Re: Terraforming strategies
« Reply #5 on: January 14, 2017, 11:32:52 AM »
In earliest part of game, always at least 1 forest on flat terrain per base, to increase minerals output of terrain.  Similarly, settle the base on flat terrain.  Don't waste rolling terrain with that, you're going to want farms there soon.  When a base lacks a resource special, you will often see 1-1-0 tiles being worked, or even 1-0-0 if you've got piss poor land.  It is a slam dunk obvious optimization, that it is better to get 1-2-1 from some tile, than 1-1-0.  In the very beginning, you are also often managing your people's happiness.  You do NOT necessarily want to have your population explode, without providing you productive capacity.  A forest does that.  Also when that base gets to size 2, you want it to cough out a colony pod quickly, at the beginning.  So that may be 2 forests or 1 forest and 1 farm.  NOT 2 farms.  Your people will get fat, you will not have much minerals for doing things you want, they will riot.

If you have the good luck of settling on a flat tile with a nutrient special, you can support LOTS of forests.  Like 3 maybe.  The minerals yielded, are as good as having a high quality mine.  You can get early secret projects done this way.  Or build good trained troops from 1 Command Center.

Because I plant these forests at the beginning to get the minerals, they tend to spread.  They will cover up good farmland squares.  That's ok: you will get 5 minerals added to your production when you rip the sucker up to make farmland.

Lately I am heavily into The Weather Paradigm on 256x128 maps.  I make heavy use of Condensers, and will also do a land bridge to connect a starting island to a larger continent.  Condensers go on rolling, arid terrain, that is adjacent to yet more rolling, arid terrain.  Or at least not rainy terrain.  This gives nice farmland with minerals.

Putting the Condenser on a river is nice because otherwise you can't get energy from a Condenser square.  Later on, when I have spare Former capacity, I will Drill to Aquifer on Condensers and rocky mines.  Those are places lacking energy and the river gives some.  I drill right on top of the Condenser or mine because I'm not really sure I can aim the river to run where I'd like it to go.  Doing it right on top of target is a sure thing.  For more rivers, start them simultaneously.  Once you have made a river, you can't drill another river anywhere adjacent to it.  If you think this is weird or a cheat, just call it your Everglades terraforming project.   ;lol

I build solar collectors on my farms, always, unless there are certain resource specials.  I always farm rolling terrain.  If it's flat terrain, I'll try to do something else with it.  Planting forests makes sense for flat, moist terrain.  If it's flat and rainy, well maybe I will farm it eventually but never at the beginning.

I will raise land near my bases, to "fish" for resource specials.  Quite often they appear, blocking you from doing any further expansion that way, if you want to keep the special.  Which I do.  I don't like destroying valuable stuff.  If you can't figure out how to make use of those things with a base, you can send out sea supply crawlers to suck up the benefits.

Earlier in the game, raising land near your bases to maximize your land footprint, and minimize your "seaport" squares, can be a good idea.  Land generally yields more productive benefits earlier in the game.  The tile manager that you click on is also pretty stupid about sea tiles, and I don't like manually micromanaging a city's tile choices.

I have experimented with raising land energy squares to 3000 m, but this tends to destroy coastal resources, so I don't do it much.  I'd change my tune if I found those land energy squares in the interior of a big continent.

Trying to raise land to increase rainfall, is risky.  It tends to change lots of things around, making other areas worse off.  The behavior of Condensers is much more reliable IMO.  Also faster, and doesn't cost you money.

 

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