Dealing with fungus as a terraformer

[Elliot]

I'm playing Zak in v10 monarch difficulty and the mindworms are so frustrating! I've cleared the fungus from my land but my sea bases will get pops since I still need to clear more sea fungus. No problem though, i have 2-3 submarines in my sea bases to deal with them. Once the isles of the deep show up though my subs have terrible odds. The IOD's have a 50% def bonus(I think this is from the IOD's 50% sea fungus attack- but apparently it works even on defense. It could also be from "walk with planet" but my flowering counter is only at 28. The info in civilopedia says its 50% bonus is only active once the flowering counter reaches 100). I have the +attack vs mindworm special ability on my subs and I'll still get 28% odds on the IODs in fungus. I need 2 subs per IOD. Subs aren't cheap either! If I wait for more subs to arrive before attacking I risk another pop and if my land tiles become eligible for pops its game over. Land fungus pops are crazy! 2-3 mindworms and a fungal tower! How do I deal with this? At least the sea fungus pops are manageable with only 2 IODs.

Am I missing something? Is there some other special ability that I'm missing, or should I not use subs? I don't have the tech for bunkers yet so no shooting into the water with them.

BTW, its a giant pain in the ass to clear all the fungus to avoid the potential of pops. Its not the 20 squares in your base radius that I need to clear but all adjacent squares. Thats 45 total squares! I'm using the terraformed civic and the wonder that decreases terraforming time but thats a lot of terraforming time. And if you have a base on the edge of your territory, prepare for it to be weak because it will have squares in its radi that are in enemy territory and the computer doesn't clear its fungus well.

The game gets so frustrating that I just go into the world builder and remove all the fungus from my territory.

Am I doing something wrong strategically or are others having similar problems? Here's a save game. It starts in 2234. Look at Academy Park. In 2237 a fungal pop should appear. But its not even adjacent to its Big fat cross. Does fungal pop eligibility come from cultural borders?

 

[mindlar]

My experience has been with v8 (haven't started a v10 game yet). For clearing sea fungus, what I found to be the most efficient way was to have a stack of 4 sea formers and 2 subs dedicated to clearing fungus. Since 4 formers can clear a plot of fungus in a turn, the stack shouldn't ever be ending the turn on a fungus square. Two subs means that it will typically take about 3 IODs or SLs to disable the full stack of sea formers. You will probably want to have some extra subs to rotate in for defense duty as other subs get damaged in the line of duty.

Fungal pops appear to be anywhere from the edge of the extended fat cross (think Kurioates borders from FFH2). I seem to also remember a setting to disable fungal blooms as one of the game settings for an advanced game.

 

[Maniac]

Ideas:

1) Per 50 culture a base has, one fungal bloom can be prevented. Native life will still spawn, but no fungus will grow.

2) If you're running the Terraformer civic, per 50 culture you produce faction-wide, a fungus feature gets removed in your non-blockaded teritory.


I checked out your save by the way, and noticed that except for three plots, your entire coastline consists of highlands and peaks. Fungus can only bloom on Highlands at 60 Flowering Counter. So it actually might be a valid strategy to just let the fungus grow on the seas surrounding you, and focus your energies on other stuff (like colonizing more highland terrain).