Population growth facilities maintenance

[Hagen0]

I'd only consider it with Morgan I think.

You are correct about the super drones. However, those only really matter if you use psych as drone control.

[bvanevery]

If you have the PTS you can profitably ICS with Morgan until you win the game.

Winning the game within the standard 500 turn limit is not hard.  "You can win" is not an interesting statement to make about different strategies.  "You can win in 100 years," that would be interesting.  And I think impossible.

Leaving aside artificial scenarios like Tiny maps.  Winning on either a Standard or Huge map.

[Hagen0]

I tend to think about this kind of thing in the context of MP so playing against other human factions. My point was that for Morgan just founding an obnoxious amount of small bases is a good strategy.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Have you tried it once?

[Nexii]

Each extra base only adds 1 drone somewhere in your empire. So no matter how many base you make with ICS at worst it is -2 PSYCH per base. Which really isn't so bad.

ICS benefits in many other ways. Faster pop growth, smaller bases are easier to police with units (cheaper than facilities), more support, more clean minerals.

If you look at most speed runs it's ICS with PTS, rushing to Cloning Vats and satellites with very few facilities built.

Nerfing specialists hurts ICS more than vertical growth, as they're immune to inefficiency. Colony pod price increases help a bit too, at least till you get Fusion reactors.

I'm not so sure what kind of system would more fairly cut down the power of ICS. Perhaps EFFIC applying to minerals, like waste in Civ2. Cheaper facilities helps too but I'd say probably not cheaper maintenance as much... smaller bases make less energy. So low cost, high maintenance on facilities might be something to try too.

[Hagen0]

No, you are wrong. As tnevolin already stated the negative Psych from bureaucracy drones increases indefinitely. If, for example, you have 18 bases on a standard size map with 0 Efficiency you have -4 Psych in each base. That matters if you use Psych for drone control (including the HGP).

I also agree with tnevolin that infinite ICS is only viable with the PTS which is an issue with the secret project chiefly. I also would only strongly consider infinite ICS with the PTS with Morgan (and maaayyybe Zak).

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Each extra base only adds 1 drone somewhere in your empire.

Hmm. Where did you get that information from? Extra base can add from 0 to infinity b-drones at any of your existing bases. Another thing is that this infinity is probably capped by base size times 2 (all super drones). However, it means that all your big bases may be quite badly affected by that and the effect accelerates with number of bases.

However, all these cappings diminish the impact somehow.

If you look at most speed runs it's ICS with PTS, rushing to Cloning Vats and satellites with very few facilities built.

Do you mean vanilla? If so then I don't even question this is the best strategy possible.

Nerfing specialists hurts ICS more than vertical growth, as they're immune to inefficiency. Colony pod price increases help a bit too, at least till you get Fusion reactors.

Yes. These are all components to solution. I also think to let reactor increase armor instead of lowering price. That would keep colony pod same price for whole game.

I'm not so sure what kind of system would more fairly cut down the power of ICS. Perhaps EFFIC applying to minerals, like waste in Civ2. Cheaper facilities helps too but I'd say probably not cheaper maintenance as much... smaller bases make less energy. So low cost, high maintenance on facilities might be something to try too.

I don't think we need to penalize empire size. Otherwise, faction will just cease expanding at some point. We need to make vertical growth comparably beneficial to expanding.

Size 3 base works 3 tiles. Building a colony and founding new base makes if 4 with doubled total growth rate. Meaning each one can build another colony - quadruple growth rate, and so on. No any early base improvement changes total output at this rate. Not even any late one.

The problem is that vertical growth is hardly limited in so many ways making development impractical. Like slowed down growth rate, population limits, exhausting of good workable spots, drones, just pretty much physical limit of 20 workable tiles, and on and on. Whereas expansion is just penalized by corruption and extra drones. Which, as you correctly pointed out, do not put a hard stop on ICS.

I believe this is impossible to correct. You cannot go beyond 20 workable tiles per base. Nutrient/mineral/economy/labs/psych increase is just so much per base. Take the ecodamage, for instance. This is clear limit that tells you - don't grow this base but better split it in many smaller ones.

I don't think we need to somehow prevent expansion. This is a cornerstone of 4X game after all. We just need to make the expansion speed dependent on total empire production. So the one with better infrastructure and production output in already existing bases would expand proportionally faster. Thus expansion is prerequisite for winning but vertical development is prerequisite for expansion. Currently, it is not, as you illustrated by ISC with PTS example.

Possible fixes for that

Increase in colony mineral cost. Just doubling it in WPT already quite noticeable tilts the expansion speed in favor of those prepared (terraforming + bigger bases). I.e. faction invested in formers and bigger bases is behind the pure colony spamming initially but then overtakes it in expansion speed. It's not 100% rule but happens from time to time.

Reworking the growth rate per population size. Currently base size 3 grows twice as slow comparing to base size 1 and base size 5 is three time slower. No wonder smaller bases succeed. This needs to be changed somehow to equalize growth rates. Then problem will disappear by itself. It won't be beneficial to split bases hoping for faster population return.

[Hagen0]

For the record, I don't think just founding endless new bases is a good strategy even in vanilla (again Morgan, PTS are special cases). Vertical growth is extremely efficient due to pop-booming with the limiting factor being drone control and terraformer capacity.

[bvanevery]

Each extra base only adds 1 drone somewhere in your empire.

Hmm. Where did you get that information from?

It's in the Datalinks.  Advanced Concepts.. Bureaucracy.  The claim is very clear.  Where are you getting the idea that the Datalinks are wrong?

Extra base can add from 0 to infinity b-drones at any of your existing bases.

That is true for any one base in your empire.  But the phenomenon is better explained by the Datalinks:

For each base a faction builds in excess of [the Bureaucracy limit according to the formula given], one additional drone will appear at some base somewhere in the colony.

This is very easily seen in practice.  If you're running a "tight" empire spending only the bare minimum on happiness, founding 1 new base usually results in 1 base immediately getting a drone riot.  You can see that immediately by hitting F4 after colonizing.  You'll likely have a city marked in red, because it's now rioting.  You can possibly do something about it now, before being told about it next turn when you'll have to suffer the consequences.  Sometimes I do stuff immediately when I know I will have problems.  Like, turn a Worker into a Doctor.  Most of the time I do nothing and get the Drone Riot the next year, because I'm not paying that good attention.  Then I rush a Recreation Commons that I was already working on, because I know this is going to happen.

Nerfing specialists hurts ICS more than vertical growth, as they're immune to inefficiency.

I've substantially delayed most specialists in my mod.  So, glad to hear that I did something to thwart ICS.  I'm all for that.  Transcedii, you're not even allowed to have until you're on the Threshold of Transcendence.  I figure the game's over then, so now you can have your "toys".

I'm not so sure what kind of system would more fairly cut down the power of ICS.

Delays delays delays.  It's what you do to anything in the game that's overpowered.

Vertical growth is extremely efficient due to pop-booming with the limiting factor being drone control and terraformer capacity.

Which is why I don't allow it even through much of the midgame at all.  In my SE table, you can now get +1 GROWTH from Theocratic (my Fundamentalist).  That's it.  You need at least +2 GROWTH to pop boom, assuming you have a Children's Creche and a Golden Age.  You're simply not gonna get it.  Only exception is the Hive, which has a +1 GROWTH bonus in my mod, for reasons that seemed like a good idea at the time.  I might take it away in a future release, because my +1 GROWTH used to come from Socialist (my Planned), not Theocratic.  Nowadays it's not natural for the Hive to go Theocratic.  A human player could do it, but they'd be giving up their Police State to do so.  Not inconceivable if they have Thought Control, but it's kinda lame to have a GROWTH bonus for a faction that won't make much use of it in practice.

In my mod, you need Eudaimonia to get your +2 GROWTH.  Then you'll still need to come up with your own Golden Age.  That won't be easy because my Eudaimonia doesn't give you money.  It has become my Planet-friendly option.  You're not likely to get this anyways until late midgame.  Pop booming as a game mechanic, I seriously put on a diet.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Hmm. Where did you get that information from?

It's in the Datalinks.  Advanced Concepts.. Bureaucracy.  The claim is very clear.  Where are you getting the idea that the Datalinks are wrong?

Out of all the players I would expect you to question game help. It is quite often wrong as in this case too.
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=3506.0

At least it sounds a little misleading. Each new base generates more than 1 drone total. It cannot add more than 1 in existing base but it does add them in multiple existing bases at once plus it can add unlimited number of drones in itself.

For simplicity let's say limit is 10 bases.
Then each base over 10 adds 2 drones total. Not exceeding 1 b-drone per base.
Each base over 20 adds 4 drones total. Not exceeding 2 b-drones per base. So in this case it may add 2 drones to itself.
Each base over 30 adds 6 drones total. Not exceeding 3 b-drones per base.
And so on ad infinum.

[bvanevery]

I flat out don't believe Yitzi's claim in that post at all.  I've never seen a base suddenly jump by 2 or 3 drones.  They go one at a time.

When have you ever observed 2 or 3 drones "just added" in a real game?

The only "common ground" I can systemically think of, is if my Huge map and Vertical play tendencies, have kept my number of bases in practice, below some threshold at which the 2 or 3 drone phenomenon does occur.  I will certainly swear that in the real world of how I play, I've never seen this.

Sometimes I've conquered a lot of bases on the map, instead of obliterating them.  I wasn't watching for this pheomenon but I don't recall seeing any such thing then either.  Nowadays it is typical for me to build Punishment Spheres if I leave distant captured bases alive.  That wasn't always so, but I've been doing the PS drill for at least a year now.

[Nexii]

Yes, with some testing it seems the datalink description is misleading. Bureaucracy causes more than 1 drone per base eventually. You'll reach a point where all bases go drone-superdrone-...

There is also another bug (or feature) which I think Yitzi also later described, where the first drone in a base can't be a superdrone from B-drone effects. So this masks some of the B-drone creation

There's also this visual drone bug... as an aside.. the base actually doesn't riot.

An open question is whether facilities should quell superdrones as though they were drones. Seems to be the opposite of Civ2 where PSYCH treated superdrones better than facilities. Which is probably why the superdrones are never much of a real problem on huge map games. Between police and facilities both quelling superdrones as though they are drones, bureaucracy has little effect until bases are very large (larger than flat drone reduction facilities, plus all police freebies)

No pop booming would seem to make vertical growth even worse to me. Maybe with more flat nutrient costs it can work. I do agree a full pop per turn is a bit much...but as it is vertical has little going for it

[bvanevery]

To me the biggest reason to go vertical is just so you don't have as many damn bases to administrate.  And until someone demonstrates some kind of speed run in my mod where they achieve much earlier victory than I would believe possible, I really don't care about ICS at all.  I think it sucks, having to deal with that much stuff.  It's not aesthetically pleasing, and I've put so many delays on so many things that I seriously doubt there can be a performance advantage.

AFAIK the multiplayer crowd hasn't been beating down my door to play my mod.  So if ICS is some kind of multiplayer "bees kees" I really don't care.  I don't even know how to set up an internet game.  Neither does anyone else, judging by the posts in r/alphacentauri.  PBEM, sure, but live internet?  Seems like it's always "Uuuuuuh..."  And if it weren't for COVID-19, I wouldn't even bring it up, because under ordinary circumstances who has time to play SMACX live?

I think my personal concept of sprawl, and it's certainly not infinite, is conquering enough bases to win Diplomatic Victory.

[Nexii]

Yea that is my issue with ICS. Not so much that there's a dominant strategy but that the game doesn't provide a good UI for mass managing so many cities.

[bvanevery]

I'm forced to conclude, over a few decades, that mass management of anything simply isn't a good game.  Not cities, not units.  I regularly lose brain cells trying to solve this fundamental theoretical problem, and after all this time I still basically don't have an answer.  What tends to happen is I just shift into other aspects of game development for a while, because I get so sick of trying to beat my head against it.