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[Strategist83]

Heard so much good about this game I finally decided to give it a go.

A question has fast arisen: Is it possible to change what base a unit is being supported by?

Thanks.

 

[Petek]

Heard so much good about this game I finally decided to give it a go.

A question has fast arisen: Is it possible to change what base a unit is being supported by?

Thanks.

Welcome to the Alpha Centauri forum!

Yes, you can change a unit's home base. Move the unit to the desired base and press Ctrl-H.

 

[Strategist83]

Cheers Petek. I just discovered it myself and alt-tabbed out to post. So, units must be moved into the city you wish to change as their supporter, got it. A quite well-hidden feature I must say, I found no info on how to do this in the civilopedia.

 

[splunge the 2nd]

Does that work to change what settlement you convoy resources to with a supply crawler?

 

[Petek]

Does that work to change what settlement you convoy resources to with a supply crawler?

Yes. Build a crawler in one base, move it to another base and press Ctrl-H. The crawler will now convey resources to the second base.

 

[Strategist83]

New question -

How do you handle needlejet unhappiness in a free market economy? It seems they are always considered away from base - even if actually in the base - and so contribute +2 drones. Is there any way to stop this? Or should you simply avoid needlejets if you're running a free market?

 

[Petek]

New question -

How do you handle needlejet unhappiness in a free market economy? It seems they are always considered away from base - even if actually in the base - and so contribute +2 drones. Is there any way to stop this? Or should you simply avoid needlejets if you're running a free market?

Yes, standard NJs (and choppers) cause unhappiness as you described. Here are some ways to work around this problem:

1. If you have the Bio-engineering tech, give all the air units clean reactors (so they won't require support). Create one base that won't have drone riots (see below). Re-home all the air units to that base.

2. If you don't have Bio-engineering, again create a drone-riot free base and crawl lots of minerals to it (to support the air units). Re-home the air units to that base. (This strategy might cause eco-damage, which can be controlled, however.)

Here are some ways to create a base that won't riot:

A. Build a Punishment Sphere in the base (requires Advanced Military Algorithms), or
B. Build a new base and make all its citizens Doctors. The base won't be very productive, but can support all your air units without rioting.
C. For a base of size 5 or larger, crawl enough nutrients to convert all citizens to more useful specialists. An all-specialist base will never riot.

3. Make all or some of your air units interceptors. Interceptors only cause extra drones when actually outside your territory, which presumably will be brief. You don't have to re-home the units. However, interceptors have a penalty when attacking ground units.

4. You might be able to increase your Psych allocation enough to negate the drones.

5. Consider leaving Free Market.

I usually employ the clean reactor/Punishment Sphere option.

HTH

Petek

 

[Strategist83]

Thanks again.

Those would be ways to work around it but I'm sure you agree it's a bit much just to be allowed to field a couple of jets. What do you think their reasoning was behind this making (some?!) air units impossibly cumbersome to use? It seems odd to me to create a 'balance' where free market democracies allowed to have any air power at all without having to jump through all kinds of hoops. It's too obvious to be a bug, though.

 

[Herfelt]

Free market is terrible for wartime (if you are the aggressor). Green or planned is the better choice during wars.

If you just defend and keep your air units inside your border, free market is a perfectly viable option which will allow you to gain money and tech much faster than the attacking faction.

 

[Strategist83]

Absolutely. I understand that much. FM would obviously be overpowered if it allowed you to wage war.

What I was getting at is questioning why you have to be doubly penalized for building an air unit seeing as how they're the only ones always considered away from base.

On that note, I'm curious as to what the effects are of frequent social engineering policy choice changes. So far, I haven't seen there be much of a penalty even from doing something crazy like switching a free market democracy into a totalitarian communist dictatorship - and back. Civ4 has anarchy to stop you from doing this. If Alpha Centauri penalizes you only with that minor energy fee I believe it is an area in which the game is lacking.

 

[Strategist83]

Is there really no penalty for making changes in social engineering other than the completely insignificant energy fee? You are free to be a free market democracy one second and a communist dictatorship the next (and back!), and all you have to pay is ~50e, tops?

 

[Petek]

You might take a diplomatic hit with some factions by changing SE policies, but there are no other financial disadvantages. However, note that changing more than one SE policy in a single turn is more costly than making the changes on different turns.

There also are some exploits associated changing SE policies. I can elaborate, if you're interested.

 

[Strategist83]

OK, I really think that is quite flawed, then.

As for the exploits: You're probably referring to the fact one can change SE choices to suit other leader's tastes to get an upper hand in diplomacy. I did find a note about that somewhere. Either way, no, no need to elaborate - I really dislike using exploits to win. But thanks.

I have yet another question, though, for those who haven't tired of them already: I'm wondering about the 'commence X resource convoy' feature on supply crawlers. Could you detail how it works? I suppose it means whatever you have in excess of the resource you choose is ferried from origin base to destination base, but: does it ferry the full amount? Could you, for instance, convoy 30+ energy per turn from one base to another or is there some kind of limit or 'fee' on it? Otherwise, it seems you could simply convoy resources from whatever far away base to capital in order to work around the inefficiency distance drain. So, I find this quite interesting.

 

[Petek]

AFAIK, a crawler can convey only one nutrient, mineral or energy unit per turn. I once tried a strategy similar to your idea: My HQ was landlocked, but I had two bases on the coast trawl energy from the sea and then conveyed the energy to my HQ. It wasn't very efficient and involved lots of micromanagement. Probably better to trawl nutrients to the port bases to support specialists (which aren't effected by inefficiency). I can't recall anyone finding a use for the "convey resources" crawler action.

 

[Strategist83]

You're right, upon further inspection it seems it convoys just a single resource - utterly useless. I wonder why they put that in the game, then.

 

[Strategist83]

One more question: I don't understand why the AIs seem to think they're getting a sweet deal by trading ie my tier 2 technology for one of their tier ones. Doesn't the research system work in a such way that tech costs go up based on the number of techs you possess rather than the level of the tech? So that, counter-intuitively, an expensive tech like Fusion is in fact 'no more valuable' in terms of cost than, say, Applied Physics?

If this is not the case and higher tier techs are in fact more valuable, how is one supposed to understand the 'tech cost' number on the F2 science overview screen?

 

[Petek]

The following formula is supplied by the Prima Strategy Guide. It is, apparently, an approximation to a more complex formula. The Guide isn't 100% reliable, but the following is probably accurate.

First, assign a value to your difficulty level: 0=citizen, ..., 5=transcend. This is DIFF

TECHS=number of techs you have

MOSTTECHS = greatest number of techs owned by any one faction

TURNS = number of elapsed turns.

WORLDSIZE = 0.6 for Tiny, 0.8 for small, 1 for standard, 1.1 for large, 1.6 for huge.

then

Research cost = [11+(DIFFx4)+((TECHSx6)/5)-(TURNS/8)-(MOSTTECHS/5)]xTECHSxWORLDSIZE

for tech stagnation, divide TURNS by 8 not 12, and multiply final result by 1.5.

Does this answer your questions?

 

[civac]

You are right. Research costs do not depend on the level of a tech but on the number of techs you already possess.

On the other hand, suppose you play a game against another human player and she offers to give you Applied Physics in return for Fusion. Would you make such a deal? While both technologies would cost you the same amount of energy to research there is no question that Fusion is more valuable (especially if research times are large). In that sense, the AI might consider the level of a tech as a rough indicator for its value.

Edit: The tech cost formula appears to be off by a large margin.

 

[Strategist83]

Thanks again, both of you.

 

[bhavv]

Try to build the Ascetic Virtues if you want to wage war in Free Market. If you play as the Spartans and get the Ascetic Virtues, you can wage war with one unit supported per base without creating unhappiness, and keeping citizens content with a second one per base as well is very easy.