Forests vs. everything else - help needed

[Bibor]

EDIT: The biggest question of all: Can you (by buildings or Green policies) remove the ecological damage from terrain improvements (I know minerals still count). And if yes, by which ones? nevermind, RTFM

I reinstalled SMACX recently and I encountered the same old problem.

Eco damage and terrain improvements. Or to be more specific, I always end up carpeting my land in forests. And it gets quite boring. Places like Monsoon Jungle or Uranium flats are usually my initial "all forest" zones and from there I seem to be too attracted to the "hey, I already invested into Tree Farms and Hybrid forests, why not use the max out of them?" routine. Crawling resources like minerals on rocky terrain is a no-brainer. But what I really want to learn is how to work with other stuff like Boreholes, farms and solar panels to maximize my empire output.

Forests with Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests provide a balanced economy, even more so with good economics (+1 energy per square) regardless of elevation. The downside of course is that every tile needs to be worked. But the benefits just seem too good to skip.

Farms, mines and solar collectors produce 1 more food respectively, with an additional 1 for Mirrors and Condensers. And with these I have to choose, with forests I get all.

It's very confusing. How to make a borehole+farm+solar collector economy? I mean, the ecological damage is much more severe and the effects are similar to a forest economy. If anything, these should yield more "stuff" than forests, considering all the micro and Eco effects they have.

Lets take the generic terrain type: rolling moist, elevation over 1000.
That's 1F 1M 1E.
With Farm and Mine its 2F 2M 1E. Condenser nearby: 3F2M1E. (6 stuff). And this is the best it gets till like Soil Enrichers when it becomes 4F2M1E (7 stuff).
Meanwhile, a forest (with TF and HF) on the same tile will yield 2F2M2E (6 stuff) with helluva less micro and way less eco damage.

Boreholes with their 6M6E are 12-stuff tiles. Should I base my economy on boreholes and farms?

Also, should I place solar collectors with Farms? it seems that farms don't reduce food output like mines do?

Uh, so many questions.

 

[civac]

There are very detailed threads on this at civgaming.com both in their SMAC academy and the forums.

Although I'm hardly an expert, I would say that farm/solar collector cobos are rarely worth it and farm/mine combos as good as never (Sometimes, you can put them on flat or rolling rainy tiles with mineral bonus pre restriction lifting. )

To my knowledge, there are three possible ways to set up your economy. The first one is your method of building hybrid forests everywhere interspersed heavily with boreholes.

Secondly, you can use condensor farms to feed borehole workers and specialists (preferably engineers).

Lastly, you can go for an energy park to feed a super science city. The other base would then probably be mainly production centers for crawlers, formers and troops. I'm actually not sure as I have never tried this.


Ecodamage can be manipulated by buying and selling Centauri preserves. It's a bit cheap but seems to be an accepted strategy.

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

Why not embrace eco-damage? Build a few empath scout rovers to fight the native life and rake in the credits and build a ton of clean reactor formers to raise your terrain as rising sea levels destroy your enemies.

 

[Ari Rahikkala]

There's always Sikander spacing+boreholes+condensorfarms. Lay your bases out on a regular grid with a distance of two between each base, a borehole south of each base, and farms+condensers (for five food per tile before soil enrichers), like so:

BFBFBFBF
FOFOFOFO
BFBFBFBF
FOFOFOFO
BFBFBFBF
FOFOFOFO

Crawl the farms and work the borehole in each base. This gives you thirteen food per base, optimal for Morgan with Ascetic Virtues and almost optimal for everyone else, without having to build hab complexes. A marketeering Morgan will collect enormous amounts of money from having a quarter of his empire as base tiles, and with your empire being so compact and having only one non-specialist citizen per base, neither efficiency nor B-drones will be a concern. It's actually somewhat difficult to thin out bases from this pattern, because with no forests and relatively little infrastructure this is just about the amount of advanced terraforming you can have per base without getting enormous ecodamage.

(If you actually try to play like this and start to feel symptoms of fatigue and tedium, immediately stop and play a no-overlap Peacekeepers game with forest-and-forget terraforming instead. We wouldn't want SMAC to cause you permanent psychological damage )

 

[IdaGno]

Bibor, my shared dilemma. Having discovered the Forest-&-Forget approach to terraforming early on, it's been my approach for over a decade now. As you note: can get to feel somewhat boring due to repetition. Just to break the cycle, will probably have to force myself into a NO FORESTS policy game. Also early on, became discouraged w/the Farm+Solar Collector approach when a Meteor Shower Random Event wiped out so much production & made me instantly energy poor. Felt like an AI cheat. Rather difficult to embrace such happenings w/glee.

 

[Kilkakon]

I think that a high planet score reduces the ecodamage percantage at a base... from memory +3 is all that's necessary for maximum effectiveness there.