Home planet turning into farm planet with prod races?

Discussion on how to play against other humans.
TheEpigoni
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Home planet turning into farm planet with prod races?

Postby TheEpigoni » Wed Mar 28, 2007 5:08 pm

Hello everyone, I'm new to the community. First post even, I'm a bit of a lurker. =). But I was testing some of the strategy guide races against a hard computer in single player and was consistently haveing a problem with my my home planet quickly becoming a farm planet and having to waste pp/turns on building freighters. Once I had soil enrichment (rlab->afact->soil enrich) the problem ussualy dropped off but what often happened was that my home planet would quickly lose pop to farming and my research would drop off drastically.

I was wondering if this was a common problem and if there was any good solution (besides having a convenient gaia nearby) that was consistently used, or if this was normal?

I think the worst though was when my farm planet had a spacial anomoly on it. =P.

Thanks for the help. Hope to become an active part of the community.

-Epigoni

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Matthew
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Postby Matthew » Wed Mar 28, 2007 7:03 pm

Welcome to the MOO2 forum.

There are few things you can do to improve food production without having to use a lot of population. The first is to pick Unification. This boost farming and production output by 50%. Aquatic is also a strong pick, you can usually do without Soil Enhancement and go with cloners instead. Lithovore doesn't need food or farmers. Other races should pick up Soil early the game to avoid needing too many farmers. I sually go with Rlabs, RHull, AutoFacts, Biospheres, Soil and so on.

Also, we usually turn off random events for multi-player in the setup. :wink:

TheEpigoni
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Joined:Wed Mar 28, 2007 5:03 pm

Postby TheEpigoni » Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:17 am

Hmm... Looks like I'm doing everything right then. As far as the race picks I've been playing UniTolProd1LGHW for now just getting a feel for the 100 pop by turn 100 and the population/production rush as well as getting used to a non-creative tech tree. I'll probably ask about battle techs in another thread later. =P. But in the mean time I've been doing everything as you described.

With a UniTol race, going the same tech route as you described I have trouble about 25-50% of the time with being forced to put too much pop on farming and no science in my HW, having to pump out freighters, and generally having problems keeping my population fed. Not necessarily starvation problems but I feel I'm depending way too much on my home planet to provide the food my colonies need and way too many turns just building freighters (even at 1 per turn).

So maybe I need some more specific questions...
Is what I described above pretty normal?
Should I try to make one of my other planets a food planet early on? (Although it isn't often I get a terran/gaia, should I just suffice with a swamp/tundra?)
Should I ever put pop on food production on any planet that isn't terran/swamp/gaia?
Any issue I have is almost always alleviated as soon as I have and build soil enrichment on my HW but if I don't find another food planet moderately soon afterwards I tend to have most of my HW devoted to food production. Is this normal?

Really all I'm asking is... is there something I'm missing or is this all normal stuff? =P

P.S.
I still havn't set up DOSBOX or the replay features. Will be working on that at some point but I just want to have a bit of fun and test things out in single player. Maybe until I can at least beat an impossible computer.

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Matthew
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Postby Matthew » Thu Mar 29, 2007 9:01 am

It sounds like you are trying to store population on a non-food planets. The smaller planets that are often barren, radiated or toxic usually can't farm so don't try to store too much pop on them, at least not until later in the game. I mainly use them for housing. For holding population you want a large Terran or better. Tundra and swamps will do if nothing better is available.

UniTolProd1LGHW is the strongest race pick but is often banned. Don't get too used to it. That's what I did at first and now it's a struggle to play with other picks. I suggest practicing with other production races to get a feel for them.

You will eventually find that beating the AI with UniTolProd1 is too easy. If you want a good challenge from the AI drop Unification for Dictatorship. On Impossible this handicaps you enough for the AI to keep up for a while.

I'm still learning a lot by playing MP myself. I think being able to adapt to each map and opponent is the best way to win consistently

TheEpigoni
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Joined:Wed Mar 28, 2007 5:03 pm

Postby TheEpigoni » Thu Mar 29, 2007 4:56 pm

Aha. I see, so you only ever store pop on farmable worlds. Hmm. All too often I'll get a system that has 4 barren/radiated planets that are Rich/URich that I'm tempted to use. Hmm...

As far as UniTol, yeah I figured it would be too easy but I'm still not consistently beating an impossible computer so I figure I might as well work on micro/tech/ship-design first until it gets too easy and then I'll try challenging myself with some of the other races.

Currently actually I'm playing a few impossible games with UniAquaSub...

I havn't quite played enough single player to own the computer yet. =)

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Matthew
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Postby Matthew » Thu Mar 29, 2007 6:29 pm

You might check out Siron's Orange mod and the goodmaps3 mod. Both make for a much better selection of planets. Most systems have one or more wet planets for food production. It's fairly popular with the online players.

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siron
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Postby siron » Thu Apr 05, 2007 2:44 pm

Aha. I see, so you only ever store pop on farmable worlds. Hmm. All too often I'll get a system that has 4 barren/radiated planets that are Rich/URich that I'm tempted to use. Hmm...
UniTol surely uses rich and urich planets early on for colony ship production etc. Since these riches are extremely productive you shouldn't worry that the HW will become a food planet. The HW alone can feed your empire the first ~90turns. At turn 80ff. you should take out monsters to gain further food (and prod of course) especially in case you haven't found any further food planet until then.


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