SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[bvanevery]

Maybe your mod does something similar to give player things to play with at the beginning.

Clean Reactors.  When in doubt, they're always a safe investment.  You can always make progress on your empire that way... until you get to the point that you have more Formers than you could ever possibly need, or more garrison units stacked up than could ever be justified by any invasion.  But generally you'll get some other tech to pursue by then.  So Clean Reactors is always a valid "buffer" for how to spend your mouseclicking energy.

We may be already slightly spoiled by that and forgot how long and dull vanilla was with its yield restrictions where there were nothing to do except colony spamming for quite a while.

I played my own mod in between your 222 and 225 release.  My mod's early game is way faster than yours.  I think.  The most obvious and uncontroversial reason, is I didn't try to make Colonists expensive.

Another reason is if you're going to go mindworm pod popping, I've got the fast vanilla behavior of mindworm offense wins.  You do get to steamroll a pile of mindworms that way, instead of the "skulk and shame" mechanics of your mod.  I can clear pods in your mod, I've figured out how to just stand there and let them attack.  Or just avoid them, run away.  I'm just never going to sweep the map with the same breakneck speed, because you don't allow mindworm capture to go habitually well for me.  In vanilla and my mod, the drill is kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill capture kill kill kill kill kill....  In your mod it's like Monty Python.  "Run away!"

You've also raised cost on a number of basic facilities, like a Command Center.  That means you're using delay as your primary game design tool.  I can completion scum some of it, but not always.  When you pile up delay after delay after delay, it has an impact on the pace of the game.  It remains to be seen if the available player audience accepts that as challenging, or misguided.  My jury's out on that.  I think there are limits on how much of the game you can "take away" from players.

Finally, my unit movements are tailored to Huge maps.  My Foils move 5.  My Cruisers move 8.  My Needlejets move 12.  Huge maps are my design center.  I tell players that playing on a Standard map is a mistake.  Of course, because I'm working with the limitations of the stock binary AI.

It is easy to build mineral output due to recycling tanks and other mineral multiplier moved slightly closer.

Excessive early game Recycling Tanks on bases that don't actually yield much additional minerals for having done it, will bankrupt you.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

It is easy to build mineral output due to recycling tanks and other mineral multiplier moved slightly closer.

Excessive early game Recycling Tanks on bases that don't actually yield much additional minerals for having done it, will bankrupt you.

Who is talking about anything excessive? You cut my second phrase off context.
😀

[bvanevery]

It's not exactly clear how bases are supposed to develop in WTP.  You get bombarded by lotsa techs in WTP, but many of them are useless, like weapons and armor that are too expensive to have any battlefield relevance for a long time.  Meanwhile it can take a surprisingly long time get something like, a Children's Creche.  Which does seem like it should be useful, but I don't know yet if it actually is.  Now it seems you've got Hab Complexes sorta competing with CCs for the growth functionality, and I don't understand the tradeoffs between those yet.

So if you did learn Recycling Tanks - which doesn't always happen, as you could be researching differently and factions will not just trade it to you - then you think well shoot I don't have enough minerals, should I be building these???  It looks like an early game tech, since Recycling Tanks is very basic to vanilla SMAC.  But it may actually be a serious liability in a lot of cases.

I'm kinda having suspicions about your base facilities, that I have about your SE table choices.  Mostly useless.  Best avoided.    Except for the clearly obviously good choices, like Fundamentalist and a Command Center.  I just haven't proven that this is the case yet.

It reminds me of my learning curve about Freeciv.  For a long time, the ultimate answer to that game, was to rush everybody with the super cheap Horsemen.  Their 2-1-2 unit.  You shouldn't even bother with Chariots, the 3-1-2 unit.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

It's not exactly clear how bases are supposed to develop in WTP.

Please be specific. I believe it doesn't matter which mod people play the mechanics is there and they know they can build stuff and push units.

You get bombarded by lotsa techs in WTP, but many of them are useless

What's the nature of the complain? Too many techs? You want less?
Techs provide useless items? That is to vanilla designers.

like weapons and armor that are too expensive to have any battlefield relevance for a long time.

What is useless weapon??? Everybody are going with about same pace. When you get 4 weapon/armor others get the same. Why now 4-4-1 is useless?

Meanwhile it can take a surprisingly long time get something like, a Children's Creche.

I never thought this is some critical element new base cannot live without comparing say to Recreation Commons, for example.

Which does seem like it should be useful, but I don't know yet if it actually is.  Now it seems you've got Hab Complexes sorta competing with CCs for the growth functionality, and I don't understand the tradeoffs between those yet.

No trade-offs no competitions. They both affect GROWTH in some way. There is a synergy between them - having both is better.
CC effect is constant.
HC negative effect is triggered by population being close to limit. So it is more restrictive around the limit.
HC positive effect is slightly higher than CC one but the facility is more costlier. You may rush it only if you have plenty of money and nothing else to do.

So if you did learn Recycling Tanks - which doesn't always happen, as you could be researching differently and factions will not just trade it to you - then you think well shoot I don't have enough minerals, should I be building these???  It looks like an early game tech, since Recycling Tanks is very basic to vanilla SMAC.  But it may actually be a serious liability in a lot of cases.

Level 2 in WTP. Use normal judgement when building multiplier - there should be something to multiply. I usually go for it when I have 10 minerals in base. Could go as low as 6 if I need to increase production in this particular base.

I'm kinda having suspicions about your base facilities, that I have about your SE table choices.  Mostly useless.  Best avoided.    Except for the clearly obviously good choices, like Fundamentalist and a Command Center.  I just haven't proven that this is the case yet.

Cannot tell either way. It's your strategy.
If you are saying some choices are not viable - let me know with specific example.

[bvanevery]

What is useless weapon??? Everybody are going with about same pace. When you get 4 weapon/armor others get the same. Why now 4-4-1 is useless?

All of the weapons except Lasers and Synth, appear way too soon, and are way too expensive, for the minerals productivity at the point in the game in which they appear.  If you chase after the "better weapons" as they appear, you will never have more than 1 or 2 units in your army.  Which are gonna die, because your combat system has a fair amount of volatility.

I usually go for it when I have 10 minerals in base.

You either have a much more effective beginning game drill for minerals than I do, or you are waiting much longer to build them than I was trying to. 

Details minerals centric opening

minerals centric opening

It's MY 2166 and I think this is the best case of what I could have done, given the starting conditions.  My initial landing site was poor land, and I popped things like commlinks to human factions, which of course are useless at the beginning for the Caretakers.  I had to move a little bit to get settled.  I made an arc resulting in Decision: Manifold, Great Intertwining, and Melody of Souls.  The first 2 had poor land and I settled mainly because it's unwise to keep walking forever.  Who knows who your continental neighbors are?

The 3rd had a Nutrient special, and I managed to Completion Scum a Command Center.  I decided this would be the focus of my nascent empire's terraforming investments.  I got the Nutrient built up, then the Mine on a river square, but I hadn't learned to exceed the mineral limit just yet.  I brought my Ogre in to pacify and worked the river farm square.  The other 2 bases languished with Biology Labs and their extra Scout wandering around.

My bush troops started to pick up and I started getting mindworms etc.  Thanks to lots of Unity Rovers, which seem to do much better at psi attack for some reason than a Hatchling, I had a pretty easy time sweeping pods out of the lands to the east.  I wouldn't say I got rich, but I didn't lack for money.  To the west, my sweep stalled out, because I did not send as many Scouts that way initially.  Ocean sweeping has been local but successful, clearing the Sargasso Sea of pods.  Unlike on land, it took a long time to capture some Isles, but I've got 2 now.

I've been trying to get a 2nd minerals heavy site going, and choosing settlements accordingly, but it's just taken forever to do it.  I do have everything fully garrisoned with trained Trance Scouts.  The policy was basically military first, Formers second, and that latter part has just been dragging and dragging.  You really do make everyone feel like po folks, Tim.

I just killed a Fungal Tower that was blocking up what could be some good mining land, south of my main minerals city.  However that's still a lot of fungus and I haven't learned Fungicidal Tanks yet.  I need to clear at least 1 fungal square for correct city placement.  I'm scarce on Formers and it may be some time before I get to that.  But at least, the prep of getting that obstruction out of the way, is done.

I've prototyped Lasers and Synth by brute force.  Lasers are the minimum needed for land invasions, and a little bit of armor on ships is darned useful at sea.  Good prep for Fusion Reactors at some point "soon" too.

Went Fundamentalist.  Research rate is still fine compared to production requirements.  Only now am I studying Recycling Tanks.

Just ran into Cha Dawn, at a fair distance to the northeast.  He declared war.  Looks like he put a city on the continent, and has a base in water.  Not a strong presence.  In principle, I can go destroy these settlements.  In practice, they're rather far away and it doesn't look valuable to do.  I will at least send some stuff that way to check though.

Miriam's allied and sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, across the water to the north.  A Morganite city is visible near her, but she hasn't made contact yet.  I'm in Truce with Zhakarov but I don't know where he is.


MY 2172.  Rushed Skunkworks, rushed Recycling Tanks, resulting in Command Center base with a minerals output of 12.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

All of the weapons except Lasers and Synth, appear way too soon, and are way too expensive, for the minerals productivity at the point in the game in which they appear.  If you chase after the "better weapons" as they appear, you will never have more than 1 or 2 units in your army.  Which are gonna die, because your combat system has a fair amount of volatility.

It is better to divide specific problems from personal perceptions/preferences. Otherwise, it is difficult to find a real improvement worth suggestions within tons of claims.

There are 13 weapons in game. So on average one should research one each 25 turns or so depending of research paths. I can try to adjust their appearance a little but generally they are more or less on target. See diagram attached.

What's the specific problem with having 1-2 units in army? That is how early combats are in any game with evolving production potential. Why should it be any different in this one?
Does it incapacitate player brain activity having so few units?

They are not gonna die against weaker units. You need to get your fact straight first. Check winning odds I specifically displayed for that purpose. Even with volatility 4 weapon against 2 armor has 4:1 winning odds. That is one 4-unit kills four 2-units on average with that mod volatility! Of course, vanilla volatility is even lower and one stronger unit will just kill infinite number of lower ones but that is a different story. Even with this volatility you complained about twice stronger unit is twice as more economically effective in isolated combat. So it is always beneficial to build stronger units.

[bvanevery]

There are 13 weapons in game. So on average one should research one each 25 turns or so depending of research paths.

You might want to think about player real wall clock time rather than simulation game turn time.  Early game turns do not have the same number of moves in them as later game turns.  I'm seeing lots and lots of weapons whizzing by at the the beginning of the game, that I can't use.  I play a game for 6 hours and my perception is, what is all this useless stuff.  That I can't produce effectively, and the defenders are vastly Scouts anyways.  I have yet to push past a 6 hour game, that's the max so far.

What's the specific problem with having 1-2 units in army?

That even in your 4:1 example they die 20% of the time.  Which means you can easily be SOL on a long distance campaign.  March march march march march march march march march, oops bad luck, die.  All eggs in one basket, no fallback.

Reliability of odds, only matters if you are using large numbers of units.  Which so far, I've had a great deal of trouble producing.  I'm "on track" to do better this game, but this is looking like a long distance naval / marine war.  My 2 coastal cities are the crappiest I've got, my strength happened to have developed inland.  I don't know how fast that geographic production reality is going to turn around.

So it is always beneficial to build stronger units.

Nope.  Per above, you got that flat out wrong.

Also, FYI, over and over again in gazillions of wargames, I have observed the phenomenon that controlling the battle space with the largest number of cheapest units available, generally determines the game.  The question is, can you stand to push all those units?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Delaying items at one stage will make them be discovered faster at other. Like in vanilla in midgame you could observe quick succession of 4-5 weapons. Most of which would be a complete research waste since player won't even prototype them waiting for next one in line. How is this better? Would you prefer to play 6 hours with a single researched weapon?

[bvanevery]

Would you prefer to play 6 hours with a single researched weapon?

Yep!  That's a little exaggerated but it's not far off from my early gameplay.  You will be using Impact weapons for a long time.

I'm not exactly sure why I pulled this off in my mod's tech tree, whereas yours is like a lickety split succession of weapons and armor.  I built a whole bunch of prototypes at my inland Skunkworks base, only because I didn't have any new bases to settle (per my more vertical minerals expansion policy).  The game's up to freakin' missiles and we're still not in any kind of real shooting war.  Even with maybe 2 more 'good' minerals cities coming online, there's no way I could afford the more expensive equipment.  Currently MY 2200.

Maybe it's because I use Secret Projects to block the AI from trading various techs with you.  I'm generally not blocking weapons and armor techs, but I do a whole lot of blocking, which slows down tech development quite a bit.  Whereas, your AIs will trade techs very cheap at the drop of a hat.  Except for a few weird exceptions where they do block on certain SPs.  Seems to be the cheap SPs.

Maybe your AI is making an assessment of how likely it is to finish a given SP.  If it decides (rightly so, considering your expense levels) that it's hopeless, maybe it just freely trades the tech.  Which is shortsighted / bad policy.  Default should be to never trade any tech that has a SP that hasn't been completed.

I always wondered why at times in the stock binary, the AI 'goofed' on this point.  It was especially noticeable with the Data Angels and the Cybernetic Consciousness.

[bvanevery]

Details can I really control the sea

can I really control the sea

MY 2224.  After building a SP forever in one early "good minerals" city, I finally complete the Maritime Control Center.  3 Artifacts also went into the project.  A long time ago, I decided I didn't really need a navy.  I needed armored transports and marines.  Then I could leverage my land power.  So I set this goal, and it's the only SP I've completed.  I don't believe it would have been possible to get done any faster, with this empire and start.

The Gaians have subsequently filled up almost this entire strip continent I'm on.  I'm on ok terms with them, and I actually want to go Green.  I don't know how to do that yet, although I am researching it.  I became poor and have happiness due to lack of EFFIC.  Free Market is not correct for the warmongering I want to do.  Planned would merely make me more miserable.

Supply pods were useful for spurring my early growth, but they've mostly dried up now.  I saw that economic writing on the wall and built Energy Banks everywhere.  My economy is stable but not a moneymaker.  I had to go to a 30-40-30 budget this turn to deal with yet more unhappiness.  I make 1 credit per turn and have 182 credits in reserve.

I can't afford the maintenance on any more facilities.  I make Fungicidal Rover Formers nearly everywhere because they don't cost credits to maintain.  If I make enough of these things, eventually I'll be able to make better improvements or raise land bridges to enemies.  Doesn't look like I'll need to build roads to anybody like I first thought, as Deirdre will surely come to me.  Meanwhile I'm working on basic homeland improvement.  So far I've only managed to sustain bases of size 5.

My original Command Center base is building a Genejack Factory.  I have 1 coastal base doing so as well.  Hopefully this is enough to get some marines out there killing stuff.  If it isn't, well frankly this will have been a whole lotta prep for no real action.  So I hope we're finally about to get to the action.  Otherwise I will say that the game is way too slow.

I mean, I started at 4 PM, and it's now 1 AM.  I did eat dinner and watch 1 episode Stargate SG-1.  Maybe I did some Reddit stuff, can't remember.  This game might have 5 hours into it already.

Since I am Alien, I can use chemical weapons and obliterate bases without economic sanctions, or fear of Planet vengeance and global flooding.  But can I actually eliminate the Cult before they nuke me in retaliation?  It's not a good idea to commit atrocities against an enemy you can't eXterminate.  On the other hand, I estimate the AI's competence at building a Planet Buster, to be pretty low.  Based on all the Scouts everywhere.

What if the world floods for other reasons, like some faction going nuts with Democratic Free Market and -3 PLANET ?  The world going underwater, slows down your ability to access other factions to destroy them.  Then again, the time that happened to me, Planet was taking vengeance on me.  This time it won't.  So I might MCC my marines everywhere they need to be, just fine.

Looks like WTP has inherited Thinker's "baby nerf" settings for global flooding anyways though.  1/3 rd probability of occurring.  Well unless Thinker was set even lower.  Anyways I'm used to 1/1.

[bvanevery]

Details pointless war

pointless war

MY 2240.  It's 2:20 AM.  Getting Genejack Factories ain't that great, because then you need Hologram Theaters to keep people happy.  And now I need Tree Farms everywhere to make money.  I've stolen everything Cha Dawn has and they're not a land adjacent enemy.  I also went Green so they're not a natural enemy.

We had sunspots for awhile and I was shelling one of their cities the whole time.  I'd kill a Scout or a Sea Former occasionally, but I didn't have any navy to really do any kind of job.  Thus, I never inflicted an atrocity on Cha Dawn.  It wasn't exactly hard to call this quits.

Now I'm only at war with the Hive.  They're straight north of me, as far as one can get just going north.  They're a smaller empire by WTP standards.  Perhaps I can eXterminate them?

I expect my alliance with the Morganites will eventually disintegrate.

Is the world going to get better once I have Tree Farms?  Will I finally have enough production to do something useful?

You know what?  I'm looking at this and, it just doesn't work.  I quit.  The MCC was an expensive complete waste of time.  It's a super duper drag to push a navy all the way across a Huge map, to chemically purge an enemy that isn't even a threat to you.

Fundamentalist doesn't work as well as I thought.  I'm right about its tech penalty being meaningless, as I got crazy stupid amounts of tech.  Fusion weapons, like I'm really gonna build those.  Built a prototype anyways for sake of form.  The problem with Fundamentalist is, you don't grow much.   I don't know if Democratic Planned will fix that, or if it's actually desirable.

Might be that one has to swallow Free Market penalties.  Just make war with unhappy people.  -2 PLANET seemed unpalatable as the Caretakers, but I suppose my mindworms were eventually not useful.  I just kept them on border duty, as they're good at preventing wild mindworms from arriving.

It's a lot easier to make and use money in my mod.

Another lesson is your 'distant' land neighbor is gonna swallow your supercontinent soon enough.  I should have thought about eXterminating Deirdre.  Probably easier than pushing units to Yang.  Still, I wonder if there was any point.  Well, at least eventually the Gaians were land adjacent.  Unlike the distraction known as Cha Dawn.

Finally, my capital sucked this whole time.  I wonder if that had any indirect effects.

[bvanevery]

New game, started at 10:30 PM.  12:15 AM now, so 1 hour 45 minutes in.  MY 2179.  I drew the sucky University, but wanted to see if my better Mining tactics could improve my performance.

I left my research on the default Discover only focus, as the AI would experience it.  I have not learned Social Psych and it is causing me problems.  I don't know if the AI would suffer similarly in the absence of Social Psych, as maybe it cheats.  But inability to learn it, is a problem I've definitely seen in my own mod.  The answer to that is to give it a research weight of 1 in some other category, as a "breadcrumb" for factions to figure it out.

I started out landlocked.  Ran into hostile Usurpers fairly early, but they haven't sent any units my way.  My capitol was well supplied with minerals, so I have used it to garrison everything with ECM Scouts.  At some point my exploration started setting off piles of mindworms, and they hammered my bases quite a bit.  I lost a few Scouts but generally was able to hold, and didn't suffer any loss of facilities.

I was really hemmed in for expansion though.  There simply wasn't any room to put a base where either the mindworms wouldn't get it, or the Usurpers wouldn't get it.  This has resulted in an eastwards march to the sea.  I've now got coastal bases from the excessive colonists I produce to get rid of the unhappy people.

I've hit my Bureaucracy limit and need Social Psych soon or this empire is going to become degenerate.  I did try increasing my Psych budget at one point, but it failed to keep even my capitol happy at size 4, even with a Battle Ogre in it.  So, I haven't really seen a reason to try again.

For awhile, I had all my "minerals inferior" bases build Rover Formers.  I've got enough of those now, so I've been building Biology Labs.  Hoping to bolster my free Network Nodes.  I've got piles of cash, I'm not exactly sure why, since I haven't been able to explore much lately.  So far I have no use for it, because what I really need are instant Rec Commons once I finally learn Social Psych.  Or if I learned Police State maybe that would work.  Maybe Free Market would give me enough money that I'd be able to make people happy.

But I don't have any of these yet.  I haven't met anybody but the Usurpers, and now you can see the result of my attempt to infiltrate and steal from them.  The plan was to go to the cleared river square.  Then walk 1 square along the river through the fungus, step into the open, and with my remaining movement infiltrate the base.  Easy peasy, right?

Details AI fails to attack probe team

AI fails to attack probe team

Well, I was pretty surprised to see a really big load of Usurper troops there.  I ended my movement where I clearly should have been killed.  Miraculously, i.e. totally buggily, they didn't attack.  I think there were at least 3 troops there, 2 of them with at least strength 3 guns.  No excuse not to slaughter me.  Yet, they just shuffled around and left me alone.  So, what is the source of the AI's extreme stupidity in this regard?

Now I will move the heck out of the way.  I'll build some Impact Speeders, slaughter the opposition, and finally do my infiltration.  I scouted this whole frontier a lot earlier, and didn't see any sign of Usurpers coming my way.  So I figured the AI was doing its usual passive not effective at projecting force thing, and just concentrated on my own empire internals.

On the same turn as I wrote this up, I finally met Domai at sea.  He wanted an alliance against the Pirates and I acquiesced, as I really needed his tech.  I acquired both Free Market and Social Psych, so now I'll finally be able to get something of an empire together.

[bvanevery]

MY 2233, at 3:40 AM, I called it quits.

The Usurpers made a nominal effort to send forces at me, which is an improvement over previous AI behavior.  However, their tactics were sad.  They did kill 1 relatively weak unit once.  Mostly I just blocked them on Rocky terrain with strong armored units, pummeled them with a piece of Chaos artillery, and then inflicted grievous bodily harm with 2 X Missile Synth Speeders.  They didn't have any answer for those, they simply got destroyed.  So, it didn't really matter what forces they brought, they just died.  Eventually they seemed to get a little tired of it.  As did I, because if you shoot fish in a barrel with the same repetitive mouseclicks for enough hours, you start to get sleepy.

It was a stalemate because I never really felt like I had any productivity outside of my 3 "good minerals" cities.  I got a couple of cheap SPs done, the Supercollider and the Universal Translator.  I went Democratic Green for awhile.  Later I went Police State Planned Cybernetic.  I don't think that was actually helping me.  I think it mostly made people more unhappy, which wasn't the goal.  That's a lot of why I quit.

So that was another 5 hour game.  The pace is really slow.  It feels like everything is too expensive and restrictive to ever get anything done quickly.

On the positive side, the presence of Usurper armored resistance, did prevent me from Recon Rover rushing them.  Or even infiltrating them, for that matter.

But... it's not clear what would break the logjam.  If I have to rely on "good minerals" cities to build an army, then this is never going to work.  I'm not sure if "ordinary minerals" cities are actually sustainable.  In previous games, they just seemed to drive me into bankruptcy.  I did a lot of defensive Energy Bank building this game, so I did have money.  But, I didn't really get productivity.  There's just always yet another piece of crap that's needed, and so troops don't get built.

[bvanevery]

Played a game as the Data Angels.  Quit in MY 2193, about 3 or 4 hours maybe, at 1 AM.

I kept settling up a coast, thinking that I was utilizing "good" land.  But in hindsight, Rainy land is common in this game and not worth much of anything for early empire development.  You do need a bit of it to offset your minerals deposits or mines, but a whole bunch of Rainy land isn't basically useful.  It just leads to cities that can't make anything.

I managed 2 "good minerals" cities, my capitol and one other midway up the coast.  I had a 3rd started at the end of my expansion, but all my Formers got trashed by mindworms.  I was rebuilding that capability when I quit.  Generally I have my "bad minerals" cities contribute the Rover Formers, then they go improve the "good minerals" cities.  I think I did as well at this drill as could have been done.  Part of the reason I kept expanding along the coast, is my Formers were well ahead of what my bases needed.  Until I started working on that third "good minerals" city, as it was near a bunch of fungus.

I got the 2 cheap SPs done, the Merchant Exchange and the Universal Translator.  Getting other faction's techs for free was convenient in the beginning.  Easy to get started on the cheap SPs.  Not sure if I was going to have such a good time with the Human Genome Project.  Growth in my "good minerals" cities was requiring other things, like Hologram Theaters.  I had the capability to build the very expensive Virtual World, but I doubt it can be worth it.  That BTW, harms the University.

Early on, I had Domai as a nearby naval enemy.  Then we had sunspots for awhile.  I met various other factions without being able to talk to them.  A land war with the Believers looked possible in the future.  I wouldn't have had that problem if I hadn't kept going up that coast.  At least, not for some time yet.  When I quit, sunspots were still active.

I really didn't see my empire as having sufficient output for making war.  There's always just too much damn stuff that needs to get done and not enough minerals.  I don't think I did a bad job at minerals making either.  I was a little recalcitrant about rushing the 3rd Recycling Tank because I wasn't sure if the mine was going to get done quickly enough.  I never did complete that mine.

[bvanevery]

Played yet another game as the University.  Quit at 12:45 AM.

I had a particularly poor minerals start, just 1 special.  As I developed bases, I made it a point to develop 1 Mine and 1 Rainy Farm as often as I could.  It was not easy to get such operations off the ground, outside of my 1 "good minerals" base.  Originally I thought I was going to use that base to pump out some Formers, but lots of mindworms were headed my way.  So I did the Command Center thing.  I have my doubts that it's possible to get away with an untrained defense.

Later on, it seemed like I had a handful of "ok minerals" cities, but I wasn't getting much of anything done.  And I was becoming poor.  My ability to invade someone else was nil.  I'm not convinced that building conventional Mines can make an empire put out much of anything.

I started right on top of the Manifold Nexus.  Founding my capitol put it within my radius.  Guess how many mindworms I captured?  One, the whole game.   I never learned Centauri Empathy, but in the stock game, I definitely don't have to.  The capture chance may not seem that great for "awhile", I'm not exactly sure how it works.  But even on +1 PLANET you can get some mindworms.  This was particularly sad and undermotivating.

Democratic Planned never seemed like a good idea.  Why get more population if you can't make them happy?  And you need minerals to build the facilities to make them happy.  Or money from popping pods, but my mindworm situation really wasn't happening.  I did explore but it wasn't lucrative.