Are there drawbacks to selling buildings?

Question

I've hit the end of the science tree in Civ V, so I want to divert as many resources as possible into other areas (wealth, culture, production etc). I see that you can now sell buildings but if I sell off all my universities, schools, libraries, etc will I suffer any drawbacks?

I know that if I sell these buildings I'll get back some of the effort put into building them as gold, their maintainence cost is removed and their specialist slots are removed (which will cause the AIs to allocate specialists away from Science towards other goals instead) so it seems like an obvious thing to do. But if I do it will it hurt my ability to produce high-tech items such as stealth fighters or death robots?

Answer

No, if you're no longer interested in science production, removing Libraries, Universities, Observatories, Public Schools, and Research Labs should be safe.

You'll lose out on:

• Science production from the buildings themselves and specialists
• Specialist contribution towards Great Scientists

I believe in some iterations of the Civ series there were high-level science buildings that aided in the production of the spaceship for the technology victory, (Civ4 had the Laboratory building, for example) but I don't believe this is the case in Civ 5.

The only other concern is that researching Future Tech counts towards your score at the end of the game, if you're concerned with your score.

If you go this route, make sure you also check and make sure that you're not science focused in any of your cities, and that you aren't producing "Research" anywhere, since those will mean very little if your science production is nearly halted.

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Brood war mining worker micro

Question

Background: I played sc:bw when it came out but I was extremely casual just playing the campaign and a couple for-fun LAN games with friends.

I now play SC2 and, probably due to the internet community, I have developed much more strategy to the extent that I think about things like efficient mining and micro-management during battles.

I went back to play sc:bw yesterday just for fun, after probably 10 years. I was ASTOUNDED how difficult it was. Choppy animations, annoyances everywhere, only selecting 8 units at a time, units running off in the wrong direction, not being able to select more than 1 building (for example to train many units at a time i had to individually click buildings and hit the hotkey, instead of selecting many buildings and hitting the hot key many times).

The most annoying thing was how workers mined. I noticed workers just clumping up at one mineral patch instead of mining, and i would have to tell them all to mine. I set my rally point on a mineral patch and apparently in sc:bw this does not tell them to mine automatically.

My question is: What is the best way to get workers to work in sc:bw? Do you have to select each worker as they are trained and tell them to mine? That just seems like mindless repetition. What does worker management generally look like for sc:bw?

Also, what are the optimal worker numbers per patch for sc:bw? How many per patch? How many per geyser?

Answer

Before SC2, you had to tell each worker to begin mining manually. Simply setting a rally point on a mineral patch did not get the job done. Basically, you get used to setting a rally point in an area right next to the town hall building where workers aren't constantly pathing back and forth. That way, when the worker is done, you can go select it quickly and have it start mining. There was no 'idle worker' button in SC1, unfortunately, so that shortcut won't work.

As for workers per patch, it's roughly the same as SC2: You get diminishing returns when you go from 2 workers per patch to 3 workers per patch, and using more than 3 workers per patch is not worth it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is a guide to BroodWar for SC2 players on Team Liquid's site for the differences between SC:BW and SC2. If you're going to be playing SC:BW a lot, check it out. It covers the worker and building selection items you mentioned as well as a few other points.

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Using Mules to ramp up Terran Economy

Question

After watching some of my replays, I realized that when playing against other Terrans their economies jump significantly larger than mine even though I don't keep unspent resources long (average unspent about 200-300), and I think it's due to the use of Mules. Is this true? Do Mules significantly impact the initial economy size of Terrans? I realize that one Mule can produce about 250 minerals at no impact to supply requirements, and that the rate they pull in minerals is significant.

So, my basic question here is that if I'm not using Mules I really can't hope to compete economically with a Terran who is?

Answer

Short answer: No.

Long answer: The reason is fairly simple. You will fall behind in income. If you fall behind in income they will be able to make more units/tech up more than you. This will win your opponent the game in the long run. Think of it this way, if you have more money, you can get more stuff.

Now keep in mind that you might want to keep enough energy for one scan just in case you need detection for a cloaked banshee, but with proper scouting of your opponent you will know if you can spend the energy on a scan or a mule.

You will always want to use MULES to keep your income up, ideally dropping them at your expansions before your main. The reason for this is to extend the time that you can keep mining from your main base which is generally more secure. If you end up mining out your expansion quicker it's not a big deal because it's a more exposed position so you want to gain as much as you can from it in the shortest amount of time.

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Selling items in dark souls

Question

I've been grinding my character a fair bit and as a result ive ended up with a fair few longswords, battleaxes, hollow armours, etc. I was wondering if there is any way of selling these items?

(In terms of progress im at the dragon guarding the bridge and am attempting to obtain the drake sword).

Answer

There is a NPC, Kingseeker Frampt, that will consume your items in exchange for souls. He appear near the Firelink Shrine after you have rung the two bells. So yes, there is a way to sell item, but not until later in the game.

However, there is almost no limit to the number of items you can have in your inventory (see this question Is there a limit to the number of item in inventory?). You can hold up to 1984 different items in your inventory, and if you purchase the Bottomless Box, from a merchant in the Depth, you can store all those items in it and have a manageable inventory.

However, I think you should just drop the duplicate items because the resell value is really low. This table, from one of the Dark Souls wiki, show how much souls you'll gain from each class of item:

Weapons                    50
Armor                      100
Dung Pie                   200
Cracked Red Eye Orb        500
Copper Coin                1000
Some unique items          5000

Even if you resell 1000 longswords, you'll only gain 50000 souls. Compared to the time it will take you to sell all of them, and to manager your inventory, I think it is not a good trade-off. There are quicker way farm souls.

During your second play through, reselling some of the unique items may be a cheap way to get some souls. However, reselling basic items does not seems interesting to me.

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Where can you find the unit production for a town?

Question

Navigating a town's menu I can't find this information anywhere. Is there a way to see how many of each unit a given town is producing per week?

Answer

In Heroes VI, creature production has been divorced from towns entirely, as recruitment is map-wide. This means, for instance, that "creatures produced by a town per week" is less useful than "creatures produced by your entire realm".

As far as I know, there's only support for the latter - clicking the arrow on the minimap will bring you to the kingdom overview screen, which will show you your current heroes, their armies, and your creature production.

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See the unit production for a town

Question

Navigating a town's menu I can't find this information anywhere. Is there a way to see how many of each unit a given town is producing per week?

Answer

In Heroes VI, creature production has been divorced from towns entirely, as recruitment is map-wide. This means, for instance, that "creatures produced by a town per week" is less useful than "creatures produced by your entire realm".

As far as I know, there's only support for the latter - clicking the arrow on the minimap will bring you to the kingdom overview screen, which will show you your current heroes, their armies, and your creature production.

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Which buildings utilize mined resources?

Question

Can someone give a brief overview which resources can be processed into by which industry building?

I know for example that you can make jewels out of gold in the jewel factory, but what can you do with iron or salt?

Are there resources that are only good for exporting? Which resources are there that you can only get by import?

Answer

• Bauxite has no use aside from exporting as far as I've seen.
• Canneries turn coffee, fish, and pineapple into canned versions of those products.
• Cigar factories turn tobacco into cigars.
• Jewelry Factories convert gold into Jewelry and Fine Jewelry.
• Lumber Mills can convert logs into lumber. Furniture shops can turn lumber into furniture.
• Oil Refineries convert crude oil into refined oil.
• Rum Distilleries convert sugar into rum and spiced rum.
• Salt cannot be refined, but having a salt mine boosts the production of canneries and ranches.
• Weapons Factories convert iron into weapons.

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How can you saturate mineral fields effectively?

Question

I know that you should have 3 workers on each mineral to harvest it most effectively, but how can you manage how many workers you have to use per base?

The number should obviously be 3 x mineral patch, but how can you easily keep track of that quantity? How can you re-build them (reaching again optimum quantity) after some of them being killed? If some patches are depleted, how can you easily transfer some of them to an expansion (leaving some to finish off the ones that are not depleted)? When you expand, should you build workers from that base once it finishes building or transfer some from the main base?

I think that with those questions I'm asking for a drone/SCV/probe guide.

Answer

The most important thing to realize is that 3 workers per mineral is the max you would want. It is not necessarily optimal however. The third worker is not as effective as the first 2. Once you have more than 2 workers, one of them will always be "hanging around" waiting for its turn to be useful. Therefore, if you have an expo with less than 2 workers per patch, you would do better to move some workers there. You will get more minerals per minute by having 2 workers per patch at your main and 1 per patch at your expo than you would with 3 workers per patch at your main.

With that in mind, here are some answers:

How to keep track of how many you have at a specific base? Make sure all your mineral patches and gas geysers are visible on the screen. Now double click on one of your workers. This will select all your workers. At the bottom middle of your screen you'll see wireframes of all of them, 8 per row. if you have 3 rows full, that's 24 workers, which is a decently saturated base. "Full" saturation would be about 24 on minerals and 6 on gas, or 30. But if you have an expo, you're better off moving some of them... (Note that MULEs do not conflict with SCV's for mining time, so they should not factor into your counts.)

When you expand, should you build workers from that base or transfer?

This depends on the situation. If your expo is far away from your main, and there are potentially enemy forces in between, then transferring is probably a bad idea. If you have more than 2 workers per patch in your main, and your natural is nearby and well defended, then transferring makes sense. In my experience, Zerg players usually expand before they have much more than 2 workers per patch, while a 1 base terran or protoss will often build up 30 workers on one base before expanding.

*Rebuilding after some being killed *

I'm not sure what the question is here - you can just rebuild them like you normally build them.

Transferring when minerals run out

There is no automatic way to have workers move to an expansion when minerals or gas run out. However, you can listen for the voice that says "mineral patch depleted" and start transferring them. You can also look for the idle worker icon that pops up on the lower left hand side of your screen, that will alert you to a worker who is not doing anything.

Race Specific Tidbits

Protoss can chronoboost workers to help get an economy up and running, or recover from an attack.

Terrans can get by with less SCVs if they have a lot of orbital commands to summon MULEs with.

Terrans can load SCV's into command centers, then fly them to a new base.

Zerg players need to remember to build more drones to replace drones used to build buildings.

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What happens when you can't pay your debts?

Question

I usually run a good fiscal policy, so my gold is always positive. I've read somewhere that if you get to 0 gold, units start to sell themselves. Are there any other repercussions?

What happens if you have a trade agreement with someone and you need to pay them X gold per turn, and you just don't have the money to give? Do they still get the money? If an AI civ runs out of money but still needs to pay you, do they still get the money?

I often see AI civs with 0 gold and a deficit, but they still seem to be able to field an army. How can that be? Is this behavior exclusive to AI civs?

Answer

As Shaun said, the difference is initially taken from your science generation. After that, your units will slowly begin disbanding.

Typically, it will take longer than 45 turns for your economy to completely fall apart, so by the time any trade agreements become an issue, they'll usually have ended anyway. If, however, you've tanked your economy fast enough then you will continue paying the AI any gold you owe them as a regular expense. I was able to test this by losing over 40 gold per turn without any science generation, and my trade agreements continued as per normal. If the AI is out of science, gold, and units they will still pay the player as well (I can vouch as this has happened with me and Gandhi a number of times).

To repeat Shaun's answer about the AI being able to field an army without any gold, it's because they're losing enough science generation that they do not have to suffer additional troop penalties.

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What's so bad about queuing units in Starcraft 2?

Question

I've read several times to make sure you never queue units, cause it's the devil. However, I find it very convenient that right before I start a battle, I hit my hotkey to barracks and fill each up with 2-3 marines/marauders each.

I find battles can be too frantic to remember to build from every building while battling. Is the answer simply going to be "get your mental checklist down even while frantically battling?"

Answer

Queuing is bad because you want to make the best use of your resources as possible, and having them sit there waiting for a unit to build is not good. Additionally, your production rate should generally match your income.

The problem in your case doesn't sound like it is necessarily the queuing so much as the fact that you have the money to queue the units to begin with. If you are starting a battle with enough money to have 2-3 units in every barracks, if you had spent down better you would have every barracks only making a single unit and you would have the extra 1-2 units per building in your army right now. The problem likely lies in one of the following areas:

• You are getting supply blocked at times and therefore building up money
• You don't have enough production buildings for your income
• You are forgetting to continuously build units out of your production buildings

All of these are things you should be trying to improve and are a large part of why queuing is bad. The act of queuing isn't too bad, but the problems it is indicative of are worse. The only time you should have the extra money is if you are already maxed.

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