Sabotaging Farms?

He does not lose population immediately, he loses it when the next turn is processed. You need to plant the spy the turn before you invade.

In most cases, it is more efficient to plant your spies on morale structures. This does immediately affect the morale of the planet, no one turn preplanning required. (In earlier versions, it was necessary to select something else then reselect the planet for this to happen. No longer necessary as of TA 1.96) Then use information warfare. It's entirely possible your invasion will end with more population that your transport was carrying!

Note this plan allows you to reuse the same handful of spies to invade numerous planets in the same turn.

Thanks.  When you say the "next turn is processed" do you mean two presses of the turn button?  So I plant the agent on the farm, I press turn, his pop is 10B, I press turn, his pop is 8B.  Yes? 

Whereas, with the morale technique, I plant the agent on a morale improvement, I press turn, I invade with information warfare. 

What happens to agents in place when you conquer a planet? Do they get returned to the pool or are they destroyed in the planetary bombardment with all the other inhabitants?  Do you remove the agent from the morale resource before you invade?  In other words, is the order: plant agent, press turn, remove agent, invade; or plant agent press turn, invade, agent is returned?

if you don't feel right about leaving a troop in the line of fire move him out. Why take the risk if your unsure.

Ok, I think I understand Willy, upon reflecting on your comment.  You don't have to press the turn button.  You place the agent, and invade.  If it is with information warfare, the agent is unharmed (but with planetary bombardment, the agent is destroyed?).

Some additional noob thoughts: Information warfare costs 800 clams and doesn't seem like it will work against high loyalty races, like the Drengin and Yor.  What is weird to me is that both Drengin and Yor rely heavily on morale improvements, leading me to think that morale serves some other purpose for their races than it does for Terrans/Arceans/Altarians.

Another thought is that you don't need to sabotage a farm for the purpose of invasion, but for the purpose of cutting his income.  Suppose he has a cash-cow planet with five stock markets or equivalent improvement, two morale structures, and a farm built on a double leaf that keeps the population soaring.  If I want to kill his income from that planet, it seems like it would be better to sabotage the farm than one of the stock markets.  If his pop is 16B and he has Xeno Farm III keeping it propped from standard 8B, than if he can't generate the agents in time, after two turns his pop will drop to 8B and it will take many, many turns to recover.  For example, if his planet is doing very well, then he is generating population of 250M per turn, the it will take 4*8=32 turns to get back to 16B.  Now, according to this page, the equation for taxation is:

constant * sqrt(population_in_billions) * tax_rate * (1 + (sum from buildings on planet)) * (1 + (sum from racial bonuses/maluses) )

So his multiple just went from sqrt(16) = 4 to sqrt(8) = 2.8, that is, you just reduced the income from the planet by 1.2/4 = 30%. and it will take him many turns to get it back, whereas the stock exchange only provides a 25% bonus and if he has factories can nullify the agent in a few turns.

Of course, the income loss doesn't remain at 30%, but grows as his population rebounds, whereas hitting the stockmarket kills the 25% until he can nullify the agent which may be very soon.  You can buy agents, you can't buy population.  I'm curious how the math works out in the end and what experience people have with this.

For sabotaging a farm: plant spy on turn 1, hit turn button once. Population has dropped to new level at the beginning of turn 2

For sabotaging morale: plant spy on turn 1, morale drops instantly. Invade using information warfare on turn 1.

Agents survive all invasion tactics, including spore attacks which theoretically kill all life on the planet. The agents are returned to your ready supply.

Loyalty and morale are two different things. Morale is how happy the people on that planet are; loyalty (presumably) affects the probability of a threatened planet flips on a given turn. Information Warfare doesn't work very well if a civ has high base morale - if you can't get their morale below 50% or so, it may not be worth the 800 bc. Or go evil, get the No Mercy Invasion Center, and use invasion tactics with wreckless disregard for expense.

Certainly the economic value of sabotaging farms has great promise, especially on small maps. It's less effective if they have a few dozen other econ planets to pick up the slack. It can also be used to spike their influence at a critical time.

You'd think someone would know that something is up when you see the guy in the theater next to you suits up in a hazmat suit....

Not everyone is human. Aliens wouldn't know the difference between humans. same for humans, they wouldn't know the difference between aliens till their spread out all over and operating table. that's why war makes the world go round, in this case it's suit up and conquor the galaxy with sabotage and loading artillery.

To me if you can conquer a planet and save those farms then that's 1 less tile improvement you have to waste money on, better than striking the farm and taking out another 2 with mass drivers then having to build them again just to stabilize the planet. Let the enemy pay the money then take them over. sure you'll have to build 1 morale improvement but it's worth it compared to that farm, f and lab you destroyed in a bombardment.

Unless your the Krynn, which are a collection of all races, united under one philosophy.  Due to the multi-racialness, the Krynn have it easy to spy on someone as a Dregin won't suspect another Dregin of espionage....apparently.

... you actually have a point there. how in the world to you defend against an enemy that knows exactly what you do every hour of the day?

Thanks for the info folks.  I thought the excess population would slowly degrade.  I didn't realize that it would just vanish overnight - well, over a week actually.;)

I just used this tactic and it's great.  Easy way to take out enemy population if they have farms.