I used to think it was a good idea to nerve staple a couple times in the first 40 turns, because obviously it's good to have the extra resources, and the sanctions are lifted long before you've got significant trade income.
But I quickly realized that people remember your "past atrocities against your own people" for a long long time. That makes it really seem stupid to staple at all, because even if you're at war with everybody, the "past atrocities" make everything more difficult. I have never been able to get any faction in a submissive pact after stapling. When I'm destroying every last city of theirs, they only communicate with me to say something about finding pleasure in seeing me executed.
So, am I correct here in thinking that any nerve stapling is fairly ignorant? Is it true that the effects never go away?
Another thing I've been wondering about is the way attrocities factor into eco damage. In a recent game, I was playing Santiago and quickly eliminated Zak/Mirriam, then crippled Morgan and the University while Yang fought with the Gaians. So, in the late 2200's, it was down to me basically owning the right half of the map and Yang owning the left half. For some reason Yang didn't have his usual horde of Needlejets by the time I had Orbital Insertion and Singularity, so I just made the chop/drop crew of about 10 blink choppers, a few tanks with drop pods, and some ridiculous 24/12 clean Gravships for taking sea bases and "because I could"--the damn things cost 715 minerals each
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Anyway, I didn't really feel like dealing with a million captured Hive bases, so I started a systematic Chop/Drop/Obliterate campaign and nuked Yang's command center. They wouldn't let me repeal the charter--I guess they're smart enough to know when I'm the only one who has a PB, but regardless, everything seemed to be going just fine, because I was already fighting Yang, and everybody else was too weak to do a single thing besides pick off a couple crawlers when they all declared war on me.
But then all of a sudden I started getting some
SERIOUS eco damage. I mean harsh. I had two main production centers making 60 minerals/turn with no eco damage (even had Temples of Planet in each)... I didn't need much production with The Nano Factory and huge cash from all my population being Transcends. But then I started getting
400+ eco damage at those bases. So much damage that I stopped all my mineral crawlers, scrapped my robot factory, and changed my planet rating to 4, and I was
still getting eco damage... then fungus popped up at all my cities, I got a message saying the seas were rising 900m in the next 20 years. I managed to upgrade about 20 crawlers to expensive models with Anti-grav Struts, get them on the mag tubes, and transcend in 3 turns, but I would've been taught a serious lesson if I hadn't been able to take the easy way out.
This all made me want to take a look back at the Eco Damage formula, where it says "add +5 for each major atrocity". The forumla is very vague, because even though it gives specifics about the equations and variables involved, it doesn't say what the "Ecology%" you come up with is supposed to mean in the first place--your bases eco damage is obviously not given in some sort of percent. It doesn't say how that percentage applies to base's eco damage and threshold of allowable industry...
But I'd be willing to bet that the +5 for major atrocities applies to every single base you obliterate, seeing as I had cities down to single-digit mineral production with Temples and a planet rating of 4 and was still getting damage.
Really, I just wanted to know if someone could verify this form me. Is it true that the effects, both diplomatic and ecological, of all attrocities (even stapling) last for the entire game?
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