Fungal Blooms - Dangerous

[Earwicker]

quote: Originally posted by Solver on 05-10-2001 12:02 PM I was also creating Planet Busters, using my first to get rid of the Drone HQ, where most of their units came from, and some others to weaken Morgan from behind. . . . [snip] . . . But before that, I even used a Planet Buster to get rid of one of worm centres, without harming any bases.

It's the PB's, they are killers for rampant ecodamage. I play without using them in my SP games and avoid major worm trouble. However, I continued beyond the completion of a recent game to vent some frustration on Lal, and decided I'd vaporize him with a couple of singularity PB's. After running the entire game with very little ecodamage (the occasional single-square blowup and worm-harvest), the use of only two PB's caused Planet to go nuts on me. As I'd suspected. I played it out to see the effects and they were not pretty. The same thing happened in a similar situation with just a little nerve gas. I was so busy building replacement 1-1t-1 scouts that I had no time for pressure domes. Bloop.

So go easy on those PB's.

Fitz -- I've seen that practice suggested before but haven't seen it play out in practice. With a couple of bases habitually in the 15-20 ecodamage range, and blowups every other turn or so, I'd expected that to "inoculate" Planet. But to no avail. Does it need to be more extreme than that, or are there other factors to consider?

[Fitz]

We're heavily debating the eco-damage formula right now in another thread, but:

It depends on the amount of eco-damage. Every atrocity (using the conventional formula) produces #techs*.5 eco damage. So in the late game, that can be a lot (given 20-30 techs minimum). If you use the conventional formula it is permenant.

Using the potential corrections we have found:
If the blooms do reduce eco damage, it still takes five blooms to negate every single atrocity. Alternately, building five Tree Farms, Hybrid Forests, Centauri Presevres or Temples of Planet would do the same.

In addition, if Atrocity damage is reduced to a fraction from Centauri Preserves, Temples of Planet, and Nanofactories, then the first in a base would halve the total damage, the second reduce to 1/3, and the last to 1/4. This could potentially work in concurance with the previous negation of one point per bloom or facility.

[Googlie]

Best worm hunter IMHO is the good old empath chopper - I usually give mine both empath and SAM so they double as interceptors (means giving them a good weapon, though) - for pure wormhunting use the cheapest weapon (not always the simple laser - often it's no more expensive to go impact) and churn them out.

With the cloudbase they'll repair themselves in 1 turn, and they quickl;y get to elite status when the worms are plentiful.

G.

[Solver]

Before this, I never considered fungal blooms anything more than just simple irritants. But now, after my last game, I have absolutely changed my mind.
I was playing Yang, and waging a war vs. allied Morgan and Domai on their continent, creating the bulk of attack units at my best bases, and keeping the connection with heavily armoured transports. Also, I used lots of aircraft, and had the Cloudbase Academy. I had Vendetta with everyone, so didn't worry much about the economical sanctions. I was also creating Planet Busters, using my first to get rid of the Drone HQ, where most of their units came from, and some others to weaken Morgan from behind. My land was terraformed almost perfect, Mag Tubes everywhere, Farms and Sensor Arrays, lots of other stuff, no fungus. Suddenly, a fungal bloom happened one turn. It spawned something like 8 worms. I didn't worry much, but I had little energy, of course, and what I had was invested in war efforts. Examining my bases, I noticed that my garrisons are Photon Sentinels, but without Trance, AAA instead. That was because the enemies only disturbed me with rare Chaos Planes visits, but I wasn't garrisoning too hard.
Next turn this happened again, with more worms, but I thought I can still deal with this. A special unit, Worm Hunter was designed: Infantry, Resonance Laser, Resonance armor, Trance and Empathy given as special abilities. But I could only buy one such a turn, when Fungal Blooms came each turn. And then, sea levels started to rise - it promised that they will rise up to 3 kilometres over 20 years. My empire was divided into Islands. But before that, I even used a Planet Buster to get rid of one of worm centres, without harming any bases.
But, I lost. Worms kept coming, with about 120 Worms playing on my continent in the end. And their damned Spore Launchers destroyed my improvements. My good bases couldn't do anything, since the Supply Crawlers were gone, too.
Well, I wonder if anyone has ever had so much problems with ecology. Gonna play Deirdre now . But in fact, it was interesting to see how dangerous these things are in reality.
Thank you for listening .


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Solver the "Running Beer" - http://www.aok.20m.com

[Fitz]

Try ramping up your eco-damage early and getting fungal blooms then. They generally produce 0-2 mindworms at this point, and each fungal bloom increases the mineral and/or atrocity damage you can endure. According to conventional wisdom, revoking the U.N. Charter also negates the eco-damage affect of Atrocities.

[Ned]

For a wormhunter, I like empath artillery. Every base should have one. Make the second slot "police." Ned

[Solver]

I don't think Nerve Gas causes much eco-damage. If I'm playing vs. H'Minee or Marr, I gas them with choppers - and see little eco damage around my empire. But using 4 Planet Busters in this game made Planet send me a present being tons of worms there.
Googlie - the unit seems nice, but the worst thing about it, and every other worm hunter is: for one base, only one hunter can be made in a turn. While you might have like 15 new worms appear each turn.
And then, hunting them down isn't all. In my situation, global warming was going to absolutely flood all the continents soon. AFAIK, there's no way to stop the global warming once it triggered. And so, I would anyways lose all my bases, with the Ocean waves covering them. If the oceans promise to raise to levels of 2000 metres, it's a very bad situation. For me, they promised to raise over 3000 metres, taking in account thay my highest-elevated base was approx. 3100 metres high. Only Svensgaard can reap benefits of this - while everyone else might lose half of bases, assuming waters raise 1000 metres, while Sven doesn't lose his waterbases, and he gets even more room to expand.

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Solver the "Running Beer" - http://www.aok.20m.com

[Chowlett]

Curiously, nerve gas only causes eco-damage because it's an atrocity - so gassing the aliens has no effect. Go figure.

You can mitigate global warming if you can persuade council to launch a solar shade.

[Googlie]

Ah, but Solver, your Chopper gets multiple attacks at them - not uncommon for an elite chopper to take out 8 to 10 mindworms in a turn then retreat to base for repairs. (And if your base has decent crawlers, a genejack and nano factory, giving some 50 or 60 minerals per turn then you can get a new chopper every turn.

Must admit I've never tried arty on them - but that just weakens every one in the stack, doesn't it? (Making them easier to kill off with conventional units, I'm guessing)

And re the rising floodwaters, good planning would have you with pressure domes in all your bases by the 20 turn timelimit, wouldn't it?

G


[This message has been edited by Googlie (edited May 11, 2001).]

[Ned]

If the stack has a Spore Launcher, and they normally do, killing the SL kills the whole stack. If it does not have a SL, Arty so damages the stack that your 1-1-1 police infrantry can kill it with less that one movement point left. Ned

[DilithiumDad]

Ned & Fitz:

Your eco-damage formulas are all wrong. Tech reduces eco-damage, not increasing it as you say. And eco-damage is cumulative --rather than innoculating against further damage it exacerbates it.

Looks like I am going to have to run a scenario test to prove you wrong. I started a scenario on the Islanders/Hive in the Middle map but terraforming via the scenario editor on 7 identical islands gets tedious.

[Ned]

Dilithium Dad, I used to think the same as you that techs decreased ED. However, what actually was happening was that I was building more and more Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests. It is the process of BUILDING them that creates a permanent increase in CLEAN MINERALS, which initially starts at 16. There is a catch, this effect does not begin until after the first pop.

SE checks do not normally check for processes, just static conditions. This is why this may not have been confirmed hitherto.

Ned

[Solver]

Oops. I forgot about those Pressure Domes. But still, it would serve Svensgaard so much.

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Solver the "Running Beer" - http://www.aok.20m.com

[knowhow2]

solver,

if you have an army of Formers (30-40) you probably could raise yourself out of the sea and sit there on the top the world and see the rest go under. With "superformer" it takes I think 4(?) turns to raise land for ONE former. Imagine what would happen with 30.

Which bring me to a entire new question:

What would happen if sealevel keeps rising even though you have maximized your landrising? Will it ALL go under water (land not bases)? So the entire map could be fild with water and seabases? Ever happen to anyone?

,,,,,

[Solver]

Try a scenario. Create tons of eco-damage, and wait for the entire world to sink. It's possible, I think.

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Solver the "Running Beer" - http://www.aok.20m.com

[Skanderbeg]

quote: Originally posted by knowhow2 on 05-12-2001 01:35 PM solver, Which bring me to a entire new question: Will it ALL go under water (land not bases)? So the entire map could be fild with water and seabases? Ever happen to anyone? ,,,,,

I have tried this once. It is NOT possible to drown whole planet.
Even with endless use of nerve gas, the sea level rising (and the fungus blows) will stop at one point, and the highest mountains remain as islands.

[Chowlett]

What happens if you then melt the polar ice caps?

[Alinestra Covelia]

What happens if you play on a map with no fungus whatsoever? Can you ever be swamped by fungus if it doesn't actually come from anywhere? More importantly, could you ever win by Ascent to Transcendence if there is no Planet-mind since there is no fungus?

Tricky questions indeed.

[Akaoz]

I usually play on a map of earth with _no_ fungus at all. Whaen you build the prerequisitte(sp?) SP for trancendance a lot of fungi will appear out of nowhere, and then no more... But Trancendence is no problem

-Alex

[Aredhran]

Using choppers to kill worms is nice, except for one little catch: one chopper will kill only one worm per attack (and IIRC, it fights with 1:1 ratio but I might be wrong on that one)

Take a ground-based wormhunter, say, 1e-2t-2. It has 1 move to get in position, then will kill the entire stack with just one attack (and fights with 3-2 ratio). It's always a good idea to have a few of these guys lying around.

Later in the game, build the same guy on a Tank chassis. Some variations: use SAM ability, drop... Of course, it's always a good idea to have a few Googlie-style choppers, but only to snipe at isolated worms. For stacks, ground units are the key.

Of course, you should always be prepared to face Planet's Wrath *before* launching your nukes or go gas-happy on your foes (ie plenty of high-morale 1-3tr-1 clean ready to defend your bases, plus some hunters for counterattacks)

[Hydro]

When blooms and worms appear go Green. I know that as Yang it is hard to wean yourself from penalty-free Planned, but there are benefits: less eco damage and (most importantly) you will capture some worms (free defenders/attackers, and if you are lucky you might capture a stack of worms if they are in one hex) and have a better attack against the worms (+2). So, go Green. It will help.

[Thantos]

About a month ago in a multiplayer game with a friend of mine I was playing the Drones towards the end game around 2350 or so, and I found myself at war with pretty much every computer player on planet. As I had already had a much larger chunk of territory that I wanted anyways I decided to simply eliminate any and everyone that irritated me with frequent us of nerve gas pods (I went so far as to use Tachyon helos with nerve gas enabled just to take out formers and indiscriminate use of Planet busters. I probably dropped 10 in a 20 year period and turned the monsoon Jungle into the Monsoon bay which greatly extend the reach of my carrier taskforces.

I was getting lowball 24 worms a turn to about 70 worms a turn. In the end even though I was pumping out a 1,000 energy a turn income I was makeing twice that on average from planet pearls. One thing I did to cut down on the water world effect was making frequent us of Techtonic missiles to get me some dirt beneath my feet

[Ned]

Bombs Away! As Fitz said, we have made significant discoveries in the Pollution thread on how to control ED. The concepts can be extended to permit "liberal" use of PBs without ED. How? you ask. Simply build 5 of any of Tree Farms, Hybrid Forests, Centauri Preserves or Temples of the Planet for each PB. You can then sell them and repeat. Ned

[tyler666]

Hell ya there ****ing dangerous especially if your like me and your average city produces around 50 pollution pretty early on hard road to hoe

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Tyler Messer
"Theres no time to discriminate hate every mother****er thats in your way!"

[Ned]

Tyler, Think Tree Farms, Centauri Preserves, Hybrid Forests and Temples of the Planet. Build lots of these. The more you build, the more your FACTION is protected. You can even build, sell, and build again. Giving aways bases with these facilities in them does not lessen the ED benefit.

Ned

[Earwicker]

quote: Originally posted by Thantos on 05-16-2001 01:45 AM One thing I did to cut down on the water world effect was making frequent us of Techtonic missiles to get me some dirt beneath my feet

Don't tectonic missiles raise land at the cost of causing more ED? If so, then a vicious cycle would ensue . . .