'Crawler spam'

[Strategist83]

Reading around a bit on this interwebz I get the impression many players build many more crawlers than I do. But I don't see why. For example, people are apparently putting them on forests. Why would you do that? The best yield from that is arguably the +2 minerals. Isn't that a really poor investment of your time/production (when you could have been building other useful stuff, such as the Creche or the Node). I can see putting crawlers on condensor farms, mineral bonus mines and even boreholes before energy restrictions come off, but I don't understand the idea behind this 'crawler spam' which by the sound of it is game-breakingly good. I'd rather be investing the production into more colony pods, extra drones or not. Can somebody explain?

 

[vyeh]

Crawlers are also good for insta-building secret projects when the tech finally gets through. Forests are quick to terraform and they offset eco-damage. Producing too many colony pods means a lot of small bases. Besides fewer drones (and the need for drone controlling facilities), fewer yet larger bases means the ability to produce advanced military units faster, especially if the production of the bases is right at the edge of the clean mineral limit (or maybe slightly above it if your strategy is to have some controlled pops to raise the clean mineral limit -- nothing like having only forests wiped out, since they are easy to replace),

 

[Strategist83]

Perhaps it depends also on what difficulty setting you're playing on as Transcend limits the number of bases much more than for example Librarian. I suppose it also makes a difference what the political situation looks like; that is, whether you even have land to expand on or not. The higher the difficulty the more adversity expansion creates.

Still, I don't think your response really addresses my question. Yes, there are advantages to large bases - but there are advantages to more numerous, smaller bases as well. You are correct that a large base would be able to finish ie a costly prototype faster but overall production capacity is greater if you have smaller bases. That is due to the fact each base works the city tile itself for free - basically, a size one base really has two workers whereas a size two base 'only' has three. Thus, the larger the base gets, the more the advantage diminishes. Besides, growth is fastest when bases are small so the more [small] bases you have, the more efficiently you are growing. Also, aren't crawlers also precisely one of the ways to circumvent the need for large bases for costly projects? Just convoy resources in there and even a measly tiny base could take on even secret project constructions.

Also, I understand the obvious advantages of the forest (easily the best early game improvement) but my point was that if you crawl them you'll only be able to pick up two minerals or two energy which doesn't seem like a whole lot compared to the cost of the crawler and what else you could have spent that production on. Yes, crawlers are 'free' in that they can be 'cashed in' but by delaying building infrastructure in favor of crawlers you are slowing down ie your tech rate by getting the network nodes up that much later. So, I was just wondering if that many crawlers are really optimal if the best tiles you can work are +2 ones (though I guess for my smaller bases, the advantages of crawlers over infrastructure is in fact greater). Then again, crawlers of course cost a lot less than the mentioned node. Perhaps this is your point?

I suspect my estimations of the strength of various approaches may be a bit off since I've only played the AI and it clearly is much more forgiving than a human opponent would be. Sorry about the rambling style post I've created here, hope it still makes sense.

 

[Petek]

I guess one question is whether building lots of crawlers is more effective than other strategies. Another question is whether crawling two mins from a forest tile is advantageous. Here's how I handle these issues when playing a specific faction.

When playing as the Uni (and on really huge maps), I typically beeline for Ind Auto, while building in each base a Former, a garrison and then cranking out CPs. My formers first make sure their home base has a tile that provides at least two nuts and then another tile that produces at least two mins (usually with a forest). Formers from my core bases then plant more forests. Will also mine min specials. By the time I discover Ind Auto, I usually have six or more bases. Fringe bases continue to build CPs, while core bases start building crawlers. The crawlers convey mins from the forest tiles (or from min specials, if available). When the bases produce 12-15 mins, I start working on SPs (typically available at this point are WP, ME, HG, VW and PTS).

I believe that crawling mins from forests is effective pre-lifting of production restrictions (mainly because only min specials provide more mins). After lifting, then I will crawl mined/roaded rocky tiles, forests less so. I might build an energy park and work it with crawlers homed to my HQ. I'll also plant farms/condensers/soil enrichers and crawl them to support specialists.

So, in short, crawl forests early when bases are small and don't produce many mins by themselves. Later, tend to crawl tiles that produce mostly a single FOP.

 

[vyeh]

The problem with a lot of low production bases is that advanced weapons and armor cost more minerals to produce. Being able to produce military units quickly is important.

2 minerals per turn is quite significant (a crawler only costs 30 minerals). The problem with the node is that it costs 1 energy credit per turn to maintain. If you are only producing 2 labs per turn at a base, you are paying 1 energy credit per turn to produce an extra lab. Crawlers don't cost anything (either energy or minerals) to maintain. They can be used to boost mineral, energy OR food production (and you can switch between these three as needed).

 

[Maniac]

Crawlers cost 30 minerals and return 2 minerals per turn. So they win back their investment in 15 turns. Their return of investment is 1/15. For you to want to build anything else than crawlers (as long as there are free forests available), the return on investment needs to be bigger than 1/15. Network nodes cost 80 minerals, cost 1 maintenance, and provide +50% labs. The common exchange rate is 2 energy = 1 mineral (derived from hurry costs). So a base already needs to produce 22 labs before it become more profitable than a crawler on a forest.

Calculation: 50% of 22 = 11 labs = 5.5 hammers; 5.5/80= ~1/14.5

 

[Strategist83]

Yeah, I shouldn't have used Nodes as an example. My bad. More realistic alternatives to the crawlers are more Colony Pods, Recreation Commons and Childrens' Creches - basically, more bases. And you need quite a few crawlers to surpass even the output of a single additional base. That has pretty much been my overall strategy for the games I've played: Expand as rapidly as possible, plopping down bases to the very limit.

vyeh, being able to get those military prototype units out is clearly important. I just think it has to be balanced with the fact that more, smaller bases are more productive and efficient - especially at the very beginning of the game where you can upkeep two units for free per base (an indirect way in which smaller bases produce even more hammers). So, as long as you can get away with forsaking military I'd go for the smaller bases instead.

By the sound of it one important thing is whether you are playing by nondefault rules and have tech selection switched on. I always play with blind research so my crawlers come into play that much later on average. I could see opting for a crawler early on rather than a new base if technology permits it.

 

[civac]

Crawler spam is really only effective on high difficulties (in particular transcend).

As Maniac pointed out you'll break even on your investment after 14 turns assuming Wealth. There are very few other things in the game which can compare to this (early game). I would say only formers and colony pods can even compete. Formers are a special case. You can only work as many tiles as you have citizens and crawlers, so there is a hard limit on their usefulness.

Very early in the game colony pods are indeed (considerably) better than crawlers. However, you'll run into a wall very soon. After 6 bases on standard map size additional bases will give you bureaucracy drones. Not only are new bases less useful now they even negatively impact your existing ones. At this point your expansion noticably slows down as you'll have to build stuff like garrisons, recreation commons or use doctors.

 

[Strategist83]

Indeed, it's definitely about what difficulty you're playing on as well. I actually played a lot of Talent level games at first because I thought that was the 'normal' difficulty level when it in fact appears that's Librarian, which is the level I'm testing out now. As you say, the higher you move up the difficulty the more advantageous crawler usage becomes and maybe I just got the wrong idea because of having played just a few Transcend games.

Like you're pretty much getting to, the whole crawler vs pod thing ties in with bureaucracy. I honestly still haven't figured out how the bureaucracy works, even after looking through the documentation and the formula listed in the datalinks. What I can't figure out is whether there are any exceptions to that formula. That is, the datalinks file says one extra drone is added somewhere in the colony. That doesn't sound too bad. But that's also not what you are saying, is it? There's something more to it?

Not only are new bases less useful now they even negatively impact your existing ones.

Why are new bases less useful? Don't they have the exact same happiness limit as previous bases, just they spawn a drone somewhere in the empire? That's what the formula seems to suggest, anyway.

I've noticed, of course, that there are several 'levels' of bureaucracy penalty and that you get a warning when you start to build your (12th?) base. Do these bases spawn more than one drone, despite what the formula says? If so, how many?

 

[Maniac]

It's been a long time, but doesn't every base past the first bureaucracy limit add TWO drones, meaning that when you hit the second bureaucracy limit, all your bases will have one extra drone.

As you might suspect yourself, the answer to the question if a crawler or a colony pod is best, is it depends.

 

[civac]

It's been a long time, but doesn't every base past the first bureaucracy limit add TWO drones, meaning that when you hit the second bureaucracy limit, all your bases will have one extra drone.

As you might suspect yourself, the answer to the question if a crawler or a colony pod is best, is it depends.

Maniac is correct again. After the first bureaucracy warning each new base adds two extra drones on average in your empire. The distribution of the extra drones depends on position of your bases on the list of all bases of all factions sorted by founding order. (For all intents and purposes, it's random as you simply don't have this information.) Once you reach twice the first bureaucracy limit each base will have exactly one extra drone. From here on it gets worse. From the second bureaucracy warning forward each new base will cause on average four extra drones to appear until at three time the bureaucracy limit each base has exaxtly two extra drones. The pattern continues.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Very early in the game colony pods are indeed (considerably) better than crawlers. However, you'll run into a wall very soon. After 6 bases on standard map size additional bases will give you bureaucracy drones. Not only are new bases less useful now they even negatively impact your existing ones. At this point your expansion noticably slows down as you'll have to build stuff like garrisons, recreation commons or use doctors.

Or you can just play Yang and spam 1/1/1s, preferably with Non-Lethal Methods.

Getting to Industrial Automation can be a bit of a problem with Yang. The standard solution is to feed one base population with Colony Pods from the other, thereby pushing it to size 5. Then make a bunch of Librarians to get up to IA. Works great as long as you have some Nutrient Resources in one of your bases, which you generally do.

 

[Strategist83]

Maniac is correct again. After the first bureaucracy warning each new base adds two extra drones on average in your empire. The distribution of the extra drones depends on position of your bases on the list of all bases of all factions sorted by founding order. (For all intents and purposes, it's random as you simply don't have this information.) Once you reach twice the first bureaucracy limit each base will have exactly one extra drone. From here on it gets worse. From the second bureaucracy warning forward each new base will cause on average four extra drones to appear until at three time the bureaucracy limit each base has exaxtly two extra drones. The pattern continues.

Well, thanks for clearing that up. I just don't understand why the datalinks then lists that - and I quote, from the bureaucracy page - "For each base a faction builds in excess of this number, one additional drone will appear at some base somewhere in the colony." No mention of new bases adding four drones there! But, I suppose the datalinks entry just isn't giving you the whole story - the game itself does warn you that "your colony is growing large and more difficult to manage" aka the bureaucracy warning.

 

[ahmed5]

I haven't had time to read all the discussion but what I do with crawlers is to gather loads of energy from boreholes away from base (mainly for the capital due to 100% efficiency), all for a significant increase in econ, labs and psych