GameSpot's Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Game Guide

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part 2

Chapter 5: Controlling Your Empire
    City Government
    City Harmony
    Social Engineering
    The Big Picture
    Gateway Technologies
Chapter 6: Terraforming
Chapter 7: The Art of War
Chapter 8: Diplomacy
Chapter 9: Situational Awareness

Chapter 5: Controlling Your Empire

Drone Control
As populations grow, drones become more and more of an issue. Left unchecked, drones can bring any city, no matter how big and powerful, to its knees. While there are remedies to quell a drone riot when one occurs, the wise leader will prevent such an outbreak before it can take root.

WARNING
When a drone riot occurs, all production will cease, and your workers will only produce enough food to sustain themselves without generating a surplus.

Just as you monitor the workers of your city, you should also examine the amount of drones in all your cities, especially if a city has just gained a population level, as this is the typical time a drone problem will rear its ugly head. Before you learn how to clamp down on a drone riot, you should be aware of the several factors that cause this problem in the first place.

	"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln

The difficulty level of the game you're playing effects how drone's behave. At the lowest setting, every citizen after six will become a drone automatically. For each increase in difficulty, an additional drone is added; that is, the highest difficulty level means every citizen after one will automatically be a drone. A negative efficiency rating for your city will cause an increase in drones, an effect heightened by each step up the difficulty curve. Fifty turns after conquering an enemy city, you will receive drones while you subdue the citizens. The basic rate is five drones minus one for each ten turns that have elapsed. The university faction receives an extra drone for every four citizens.

WARNING!
Nerve stapling should be used as a last resort when attempting to subdue your people. While it effectively makes everyone more peaceful, all other factions will be outraged at the atrocity, putting you at risk of economic sanctions and a possible military response!

Drone riots can be prevented or stopped by any one of the following activities:
1. Build psych-related facilities; that is, recreations commons.
2. Place military units in the troubled city. You must have a high enough police rating in social engineering for this to be possible. (See social engineering later in this chapter.)
3. Convert some of your workers into psych-related talents, like doctors and empaths.
4. Divert some of your energy output and direct it into psych.

By far, the easiest way to quell a riot is to take a worker off the job and convert it into a talent. Remember, when you do this, you lose one worker, but you also reduce the drones in your city. This is usually a painless endeavor, as long as you pay attention to how it effects your surplus. You may have to move a few workers around to compensate for the decrease in manpower. At the minimum, you should retain a +1 nutrient surplus.

TIP
Though a brutal tactic, one sure way to end a recurring riot problem is to take enough workers off the field so your nutrient surplus is -1 or lower. This will effectively kill off a portion of your population while decreasing the amount of drones.