******* ***** ** ** ** *** ** * *** ****** ***** ***** ***** ***** **** * * ** ** * * ***** ***** * *** * *** ****** ** * * * * * ** * ** *** *** * ** *** * * * * * ** *** * ** *** ** ** * * * ** **** *** *** ** ** * * * ** *** *** *** ** ** * * * ** **** *** *** ** ** * * * ** * *** ** *** ** ** * ** ********* * *** ** ** * ** * ** * ** * *** * * * * ** * ** * *** *** * **** * ** ***** ** * *** * * ********* * ***** ** * **** ** * * ***** * ***** * ** * ** ** * *** * * * ** ** ** =========================================================================== Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire (SMAX) System: Windows (PC) Authors: Jim Chamberlin and Chris Hartpence (aka Velociryx) Contact: Jim Chamberlin - red_phoenix_1@hotmail.com Chris (Vel) - quazimojo1@aol.com Version: Final (12/30/04) Note: Chris Hartpence has recently had an updated and more detailed version of a Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire Guide actually published in both paperback and e-book form. If you're interested in purchasing this book, check it out at: http://www.gubookstore.com/shopgu/author.php3?accountID=GRTU00118 =========================================================================== << Disclaimer >> This Document is Copyright 2001 Jim Chamberlin. All Rights Reserved. This guide can be FREELY distributed as long as you agree to a few things: - You do not alter this guide, leaving it in the original .txt file format - You do not charge for viewing this guide. This includes, but is not limited to websites, cds, dvds, magazines, etc. - You give me credit. - Visit GameFAQs (http://www.gamefaqs.com) on a regular basis and download any updates to the guide. Authors hate responding to questions that were answered in newer versions of the guide. =========================================================================== =========================================================================== Vers. - 1.0 - Released. 1.1 - Added some strategies. Actually, I added a whole new section. 1.2 - Added Cheat City to the list of sites. 1.3 - Minor changes. =========================================================================== Table of Contents =========================================================================== Introduction Changes in Alien Crossfire Key Terms The Factions Early Game - Expansion and Growth - Terraforming - Supply Crawlers - Defining your Style - Defining your Focus - Early Game Secret Projects - Comparative Turn Advantage - Getting Ready for the Bad Guys - Single Player Diplomacy - Multi- player Diplomacy - A Primer on Combat - Basic Combat (Single Player and Multi- Player notes included) Middle Game - Expansion in the Middle Game - Terraforming in the Middle Game - Supply Crawlers - Developing your Style - Developing your Focus - Creating Economy of Scale - More on Combat - Studying the Meta- Game - More Single Player and Multi- Player Notes Late Game - Locking Things Down General Tips Message Board Posts Final Notes and Odd Musings Credits ================================================================================ Introduction ================================================================================ ALIEN PLANETFALL The early human exploration of Planet found many mysterious signs pointing to a long- vanished alien race. The questions raised by these discoveries were soon answered when two alien factions arrived on Planet a few years after the crash-landing of the "Unity." Their true motives were vague, but it appeared they had returned to Planet to settle the fate of Manifold Six (their name for Planet) and the grand experiment in which they were involved. The Usurper faction has been pushing for the Progenitor race to exploit the powers of the Manifold, and essentially set themselves up as gods. The Caretakers see Planet as a sentient being, whose death would result from Usurper policies. Two scout ships arrived in the space above Manifold Six to settle the issue. Unfortunately for both sides (but perhaps fortunately for the humans on Planet), the two ships were evenly matched, and nearly destroyed each other. Survivors of the two factions managed to jettison in escape pods down to Planet's surface, where they prepare for battle, and for the day on which they can contact their respective factions and send in reinforcements. If that day ever comes, human existence on Planet will be in grave jeopardy. The human factions must choose whether to band together to fight the off-worlders, or side with the aliens as a means to ultimate victory. The picture is further complicated by the rise of new human factions preaching radical philosophies, from the Drones who seek liberation of the working masses, to the strange Cybernetic faction unleashed by amoral University researchers. [Taken from Alien Crossfire Game Manual] [A full story about Alien Crossfire may be found in my Alien Crossfire Story FAQ.] ================================================================================ Changes in Alien Crossfire ================================================================================ So, what's changed since Alpha Centauri? A lot! We've got new everything, or so it seems. New kinds of worms: Yep....three of them, to be specific. First, Sealurks. Watch out for these guys....they're rather similar to IoD's, except they don't act as transports and tend to be "lone wolf" units. I've not had much luck in catching them (none, actually), so I can't say either way whether they're any good as an addition to your naval forces. Next, Fungal Towers: I've never captured these guys either, and frankly, I doubt it's possible. They get morale upgrades depending on how much fungus they're surrounded by, and tend to spawn worms fairly regularly. Finally, spore launchers: Artillery for worms, and they are annoying! Oftentimes, when and IoD comes to pay you a visit, the Spore Launcher will not land on the shore, but remain on the Isle, and snipe at your terrain enhancements, forcing you to build an empath foil to deal with the IoD in order to get rid of the sniper. UGH! (Alternate plan: Build an artillery unit of your own and duel with the sniper). Seven new factions: Five human, two alien. You'll find details on the new bunch a bit later in this guide! New techs, weapons, facilities, and secret projects: 'bout half a dozen new techs, spawning a variety of new weapons and abilities. I'll not go into specifics here, as all of this is covered elsewhere in the guide, but suffice it to say for the time being that there are a LOT of new capabilities you can give your troopers, opening up whole new vistas as far as exotic and special purpose troopers go! The new facilities are great as well, giving you base-specific probe modifiers, missile defense systems, additional defensive bonuses and ways of getting better still production out of sea squares! Project-wise, it's a mixed bag, with far and away the most useful (overpowered!) project being the Cloudbase academy. One thing further, the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm has been weakened so that it's not quite the final word protection against probes that it once was. Nonetheless, it's still a crucial project to snag, but again, more on that later. Bug Fixes....LOTS of Bug Fixes: Most significantly, artillery now actually does something in the game, and on Transcend level, the maintenance cost bug has been fixed, meaning that Transcend level bases are only one third as profitable as they used to be, but that is as it should be. ================================================================================ Key Terms ================================================================================ Before we get down into the guts of the guide, let me outline a few terms you'll see cropping up repeatedly, and before I do that, let me say this: There are probably as many different approaches to the game as there are players who love the game, but these (often wildly varying) approaches can, in at least a general sense, be grouped into three basic categories or "styles" of play. Understanding what is meant by each play-style is essential to understanding the viewpoint from which the rest of the guide is written. Builder-Style: Builders don't care much for fighting, preferring to cloister themselves off on some small to mid-sized continent, terraform, build infrastructure, and research new technologies. The hallmarks of Builder style play are: 1) Long delays in prototyping new weapons and defensive systems, in favor of constructing infrastructure, 2) The preservation of as close to 100% of industrial capacity as possible in order to speed the completion of the abovementioned infrastructure (in short, this means minimizing support costs), 3) very aesthetically pleasing empires in general (let's face it, Builder-Empires just look cool!), and 4) Strict adherence to industrial caps, with regards to ecological damages (i.e. - Builders spend a LOT of time terraforming, and they don't like to see their efforts undone by sudden fungal blooms, so you will seldom find any, and certainly no significant eco-damage in a Builder Empire). For the reason of preservation of Industrial Capacity alone, "Biogenetics" is probably a Builder-Players most treasured tech, and many a Builder player will micro-manage his/her bases down to the unit level, upgrading ANY unit which is tying up support costs. Hybrid-Style: The Hybrid's main watch-word is Flexibility. He's the guy who wants to be ready for anything that might come up, and while he greatly admires the Builder's stunning efficiency and sterling industry, he also knows that somewhere out there on the map, and maybe closer than he thinks, are people who would like nothing better than to take it all away from him. To that end, the Hybrid player makes some "strategic sacrifices," developing a stout standing army as early as techs permit it, and upgrading and honing them constantly. Often, the Hybrid Player has half (or more) of his army on the prowl, looking for pods, and looking for potential enemies of the state. Yes, he's interested in developing an economy to rival his Builder counterparts, but not at the risk of being blind-sided by some fast-moving attacker. Momentum-Style: Fast and loose! The Momentum player's main goal is to expand with lightening speed, get a horde of small bases (production centers) up and running, and then use them to build a war machine that is second to none, and while he's getting his production centers geared up, his scouts are on the prowl, a sharp eye open for signs of anybody else. The moment he finds someone else, the real show begins, and the Momentum player is banking on the fact that, because he's so active, even if you have a technology edge, he'll be able to probe his way to technological parity and smash you with his relatively large standing force. Bases are seen as little more than barracks, and not much attention is given to infrastructural builds, beyond that which absolutely essential (i.e. - network nodes, to cash in artifacts found or stolen). Early Game: Generally describes the game up until the time all those annoying restrictions are lifted, and before you get the chance to start playing with the more interesting unit types. Specifically then, the techs that provide the boundary to the early game are: Resource-Wise: Gene Splicing, Ecological Engineering, and Environmental Economics. Weapon wise: Lasers (Applied Physics) and Impact (Non-linear Mathematics) will be most prevalent (with Missiles falling at the outer edge of the early game, much as Enviro. Ec, developmentally). Defensively, you've got Synthmetal (Industrial Base), and Plasma (High Energy Chemistry) with some interesting variance provided by 3-res and 3-pulse armor, and of course, all units will be powered with the old-style Fission generators (weakest, and most expensive). Implications of the early game: 1) Stuff is expensive to build. The old generators are not cheap, to put it mildly, and that's bad news for you, because you're mineral production is wretched, and while there are ways to improve that, none of them will happen quickly, or without a fair amount of planning on your part. 2) Terrain squares are not very productive. Pre-restriction lifting, you're faced with a limit of 2r (r being whatever resource you're harvesting) in each category, for an absolute maximum of six resources per square (i.e. - Monolith, 2r for each of the three resource-types). Taken together, that's a pretty punishing two-edged sword. Not only are you having to pay more for your early game units in terms of time to build, but you're also faced with terrain squares that have limited value. There is some good news though, in the form of special resource squares. These squares are not limited by the early game restrictions, and as such, they should receive your immediate attention. If you find one that's located in an unattractive base-building spot, that's no problem....the moment you get industrial automation, send a supply crawler out that direction and start taking advantage of the resource! (and more about this in particular on the section on Terraforming!) The Middle Game: The Middle Game is bounded on one side by the lifting of energy restrictions, the acquisition of Missile techs (with Air Power coming soon thereafter), and the discovery of Fusion Power and runs all the way to the acquisition of Hab-Domes and is where the bulk of your game will be played out. Terrain squares get more productive as more terraforming options become available, your formers get a ton of new things to do, and your units (both offensively and defensively) become vastly more dangerous. The Late Game: From Hab-Domes on. Generally, single player games don't last very long once you get here, and few multi-player games ever make it this far, so don't expect to see much of the late game, unless you really enjoy playing single player mode, and really like to take your time. Notes on stylistic approaches: So, you've thought it over a while and settled on a style that's "you." Good, because you'll need a well-organized, well-considered plan to proceed from, and that's the first step. Whatever your style, your next step will be to select specific technologies from the Tech-Tree that "play into" whatever style you're going for. For Builders, this means a straight shot to Industrial Automation for the acquisition of Supply Crawlers, and from there, moving right on into the liftin of those previously mentioned restrictions. Builders then, live and die by the following five techs: Centauri Ecology, Industrial Automation, Gene Splicing, Ecological Engineering, and Environmental Economics. The goal of the Builder Game is to reach Environmental Economics as quickly as possible and create such a vast economy in terms of total outputs, relative to the opposition, that when the combat techs arrive (and wise Builders will begin pursuing them the moment they get Environmental Economics), their superior economic sub-structure will enable them to out-produce and out-tech everyone else in the game. For Hybrids, again, with flexibility being the watch-word, the key technologies in the early game are: Centauri Ecology, Industrial Automation, Doctrine Flexibility, Gene Splicing, and Ecological Engineering. This gives you several of the key advantages of the Builder Player, but also gives you more options in terms of exploration and response to incoming threats. Momentum players will want the biggest bang for their buck, and they'll want that as quickly as possible, so for them, the key technologies are: Centauri Ecology, Industrial Automation, Doctrine Flexibility, Non-linear Math, and Ecological Engineering.. They're willing to work around the mineral restrictions to get a decent army in the field, and many of the factions this group favors come with support bonuses, giving them a relatively large number of "free" troops anyway. A perfect example of this would be Miriam Goodwinson's "Believing" faction. With their +2 Support rating, each of their bases gets four free units. Figure one former and one garrison, that still leaves her two attackers per base that can go out hunting. Multiplied out over ten or twelve bases, and it's no wonder she's so feared by the Builder crowd! As you can see, while there are key differences between the various styles of play, there are also some similarities between the three styles, and two techs in particular popped up all three times. These are quite possible the most critical techs in the entire game. Centauri Ecology, and Industrial Automation. If you have them, and your opponent does not, you are in a VASTLY superior position. One final stylistic note to point out is this: Do not make the mistake of believing that Builders never fight and Momentum players never build infrastructure! All players of note will shift and change their strategies based on prevailing game conditions, and because of that, these "styles" mentioned are more archetypes than anything. They point to the tendencies and pre-dispositions of players toward one end of the spectrum or the other. The implication is not that Builders can only build, and Momentum players can only crank out an endless supply of troops. I don't know of anyone who plays that way, and even against an average player, such a strategy would come apart rather quickly. Essentially then, the stylistic approaches speak more to the timing than anything else. For Builders, the key to the game is the rapid development of infrastructure. They figure that the faster they can develop vast efficiencies, the better off they will be, and those greater efficiencies will enable them to quickly catch up militarily in the midgame. At the other end of the spectrum, the Momentum gamers recognize how much damage a few early game attackers can do, and seek to maximize that damage against their opponents, forcing their rivals to divert resources to deal with threats to hearth and home, while the Momentum player is free to build infrastructure without such threats. In the center are the Hybrids, who will strike opportunistically (and divert some portion of their early game resources to be ready to do that), but are unwilling to go full bore in that direction, lest they fall behind in infrastructural development. ================================================================================ The Factions ================================================================================ It is possible to play any of the 14 factions in any of the three broad styles outlined (Builder, Hybrid, Momentum), but some are clearly more ideally suited to one style than another. Below, you will find an outline of each of the factions (strengths and weaknesses in game terms), along with play notes and tested, workable strategy tips for playing each faction in any of the styles mentioned above: The Original Seven: Morganites: At a Glance: Extra Commerce income, +1 Economy, -1 Support, smaller bases, more cash at start General Notes: Probably the most underrated faction of the original seven, Morgan is terrific if played correctly, but a novice will probably have to work a bit to get the faction humming. This is mainly due to the fact that Morgan's playstyle is somewhat different from the others. If you're playing Morgan, then you've got to make the most of your one big advantage, and that's money. Morgan is the only faction in the early game that can go to war and still rake in the big bucks. Just run wealth, live with the Morale hit, and you make +1 energy per square, and get an industry bonus to boot! Many people regard Morgan is incredibly weak because of the smaller base size thing, but nothing could be further from the truth. Wealth is an integral part of almost any Morganite strategy, and Wealth comes with Industrial Automation, which also gives you Supply Crawlers, a terrific Morganite Secret Project, and Hab-complexes, which allows Morgan's bases to grow to size 11 without stopping. More pervasive a problem for the faction is the support hit, which tends to reduce the total size of the army you can raise (at least until clean reactors), but again, this is largely offset by the acquisition of supply crawlers via Industrial Automation. Need more troops? Just build a new base and some more crawlers! Viola! Support issue rendered moot. Now I grant you, most Morganite players will tend to keep expanding a bit longer than the other factions to keep pace with overall population numbers, but in truth, another 1-2 bases will generally put you at parity, population wise. It's just not that big a deal, and remember, if you get the Ascetic Virtues, you're small base problem all but disappears anyway, and the Living Refinery undoes your support problem once and for all (though at the point you get it, you've usually had clean reactors for quite some time). Morgan, the Builder: This approach to the Morgan game takes his mercantile nature to heart. You don't profit by killing off your customers, and Morganite- Builders can make utterly obscene amounts of cash. The commerce bonus gives you the kind of windfall normally reserved for the Planetary Governor (magnified further still if you ARE the Planetary Governor), and by running Free-Market, Wealth, and "doping" your citizens into a golden age, you not only achieve pop- boom status (if you're running Dem too), but also get +5 Econ, which does amazing things to the energy you get from your base squares! A Builder game, Morgan style revolves around defending all your bases with trance scouts until you get clean reactors, and catching up on all your prototyping/building a defense force at that point. In the meantime, all the money you're making each turn, combined with the industry bonus from wealth, enables you to rush-build your infrastructure with a speed that will make the other factions green with envy. It's all too easy to beat out even Domai's vaunted industrial capacity with Morgan's cash. As much as possible, the Morganite Builder will want to run Dem/Market/and either Wealth (while building and enjoying the benefits of many pacts or treaties) or Knowledge if an extra bit of research boost and efficienc is needed. If you need to go on the offensive, your SE settings of choice will be Wealth/Green, with or without Democracy (mostly depending on if you have clean reactors or not yet), and if you want to push your labs up to 100%, run Dem, Green, Wealth (+4 efficiency), make your +1 energy per square, and dump it all into your labs. In this manner, you can out-tech even Zak, despite his research bonus! Even if you've got your heart set on playing the Builder game, you need to be prepared for war, but the good news is that you start with Synthmetal armor, and will find yourself only a few steps from Silksteel once all the early game resource restrictions are lifted (though in most case, getting to Biogenetics first, for clean reactors, will serve you better). Still, Morganite defenses revolve first and foremost around covert ops. If an opponent builds a base too close to you for comfort, either buy it and burn it down, or stack so many clean defenders in it that, regardless of your almost guaranteed lower morale, your enemies will have a hard time taking it back, and when fighting a defensive campaign, the presence of Children's Creche's everywhere will offset Wealth's only minus, putting you in reasonably good shape. Morgan, the Hybrid: Industrial Automation is all the more crucial for this style of play, as some portion of your industrial capacity will be tied up in the maintenance of a standing force, and if you have to make use of that force to launch an attack, simply drop out of Market in preference for Green, keep wealth unless you just really need the extra morale percentages, and use Wealth's industry bonus and your inherent cash to replace lost troops at a faster clip than your opponents can kill them. Morgan excels at the art of attrition warfare. It does not matter if your first unit makes a kill, because one of the four of five coming right behind surely will, and you'll wind up with a core force of elites (survivors of the many battles) in the end! Remember, it applies to all the factions to a degree, but even moreso with Morgan: You should never actually build the kind of unit you want! Build laser scouts or rovers, and selectively upgrade your way to the kind of force you need, and don't worry about ignoring the weapons techs in the early game. If you're behind, militarily, just make it a point to capture an enemy unit with whatever weapon you're looking for, and you can start building them as well, even if you don't yet have the tech for it! All the basic fighting strategies for the Morgan-Momentum game work just as well for the Hybrid game, and unlike most other factions playing a Hybrid scheme, you're cash position will be so good, that you can almost always make offensive use of your probes. Do so! Morgan, the Conqueror: Again, put your eyes, mind and heart firmly on the goal of acquiring Industrial Automation. Crawlers, coupled with the building of new bases, will quickly put you in a position where you will be able to crank out as many, if not more troops than your opponents! Two basic ways you can go about this are: Beeline for the Command Nexus to offset Wealth's Morale hit, and rake in the cash while beating your opponents with average to slightly above average troops, or, forget the money, run Green (still beelining for the Doctrine: Loyalty) and beat on them with better than average troops. Either way works, but running Wealth opens up more options for you with Morgan, enabling you to offset your average troops with regular and very active offensive probe teams, subverting a base or two to establish a foothold, and then pouring your troops into it (and, if you really want to get mean, run Fundy Wealth, to make it harder for your opponents to run probe actions against you). The Support problem is offset by an early emphasis on crawler production at all bases to spike up mineral outputs, and troops can be easily reinforced by rushing selective defensive structures in captured bases and by upgrading scouts produced to best/best configurations. Remember, as Morgan, you have a far easier time at paying for a war effort as you go, because you can get that magical +1 energy per square and still fight before Punishment Spheres. Everybody else has to either wait till higher up on the tech tree, or save for the invasion in advance. Use that to your advantage and attack earlier, rather than later. Also, make active use of your probe teams to subvert enemy troops, adding them to your available force pool. Best of all, you can compare morale levels, and make suicide attacks with the worst of the lot, keeping the best for "sure kills" and consistently raise the morale of an elite core of you army, which will soon have you fighting on "Morale Parity" with whatever enemy you are attacking, even if they began with an advantage in that department. About the only person you'll be hampered against in the early game is Miriam running Fundy, as that will shut down your probe actions, but even then, with your better research rates, you should be at a higher tech level when you begin your attacks, and a series of swift, hard, unexpected blows (and who the heck expects Morgan to come out fighting?!) will give you all the edge you need. University of Planet: At a Glance: More Drones, +2 Research, -2 Probe, Extra Starting Tech General Notes: Zak is plagued by drone problems, making the acquisition of either the HGP or the Virtual World of Paramount importance. Fortunately, since you start with the pre-requisite to Planetary Networks, it is often quite easy to grab the Virtual World. Probe actions are expensive for you, and it's relatively cheap for your enemies to launch probe actions your way, so guard against that, and make the Hunter-Seeker project a high priority, but in the meantime, bulk up on defensive probes. You'll need them. Your main advantage is your labs, and whichever way you decide to run your game, your inherent research advantages will put you ahead of the pack quickly. Persistence and good planning will keep you there. Remember, you're getting the benefits of a no-maintenance- cost Network Node from the first turn you found a base. Everybody else has to build their Net-Nodes, and pay maintenance costs for them, so build bases like crazy! Not only does this keep your bases smaller (to a point, offsetting the drone issue), but it also makes your colony pods VERY good investments for the minerals spent! Zak, the Builder: This approach plays to your native facility. You're already a step ahead of the game, and if you get the Virtual World, then you're two big steps ahead of the game, as it totally negates your factional drone problems for bases size 4-7 and gives you two free facilities at each base you build. That's two less items on your infrastructural list, which makes building the rest that much easier for you. If you're playing the builder game, your main goal after restriction lifting should be to secure the Planetary Energy Grid to get yet another free, and maintenance free facility. Then, each time you build a base, about all you need to do is toss up a Tree Farm and a Creche, and you're ready to boom! (Building the Research Hospital as the base grows each turn). Nobody can build peacetime infrastructure faster than Zak, because the others don't start with a free peacetime facility. Morgan comes close, but even his vaunted money can't touch that. If you speed-build selected bases, you can turn those over to the production of battle-capable prototypes far more quickly than other builder factions, and be in a more classically "Hybrid" stance than most running this type of game. The two things you need to be ever-watchful for though, are covert attacks made to attempt to catch up to you, technologically, and, if you do plan an invasion, you will need to save cash for it in advance, because when you drop out of Market, most of your money dries up too (if you want to keep a decent research rate while warring). Zak, the Hybrid: This approach plays to your ability to rip through the early game tech tree much more quickly than anybody else. You can be running Planned/Wealth by the early twenties if you set your mind to it, and specialize your bases out, with the fringe ones doing early war-tech prototyping, and your inner core working on infrastructure. Best of all, you can get to Industrial Automation that quickly, and still go back and pick up Mobility and Flexibility, generally ahead of those who beeline straight for them (exception: The Spartans, who are only one tech from Flex at game start). This means that you can get probe foils in the water plenty early enough to send them out exploring, and infiltrate most of your opponents' datalinks before they can even mount a good probe defense, which a crucial play. Combat wise, again, thanks to your free facility, you can pay comparatively less attention to your infrastructure and focus more on the warring techs, again thanks to your free facility. You can also let current game circumstances dictate exactly how your research edge is used, magnifying your advantage depending on the prevailing climate of the game. If you're isolated, fine. Drop to peace-time expansion till something develops, but if you've got neighbors close at hand, you can carry the fight to them rather quickly. Zak, the Conqueror: Simply put, while everybody else is spending time and energy to get where you start from (i.e. - the building of Network Nodes), you can be building fast attackers to take their bases! About the only group that can do this as or more quickly than you are the Spartans, and that's only because of where they begin on the tech tree. Theirs is a short term advantage in the sense that, research-wise, there's no way they can keep up with you. Even a heavy builder focus won't do it. This is a huge advantage, and if you put your mind to researching nothing but combat techs, you can have enough impact rovers for a good early game rush by the early to mid 30's! Except for the previously mentioned exception, nobody can top that, and that kind of raw speed plays well for a momentum game. If you find somebody on the continent with you, this is the kind of speed that will win you the game, and, once you make a couple of early kills to put you in a position of dominance, your faction is better suited than most to rapidly shifting gears. Spartan Federation: At a Glance: +2 Morale, +1 Police, Free Prototyping, -1 Industry General Notes: You've got the all around best, most balanced fighting force in the game. True, Miriam has an edge when attacking, but your bonus helps both attack and defense, and the free rover at game start really helps you if pod scattering is on, enabling you to pick up a larger than normal share of Unity Pods, and more intangibly, enabling you to build your bases with a better understanding of the map you're playing on (meaning simply that your bases will tend to be better arranged on the map, thanks to a more complete understanding of the continent as a whole....most people have to build their first few new bases somewhat blindly if they want to expand quickly, but this is not the case for you). Also, the Police bonus mitigates the effect of running Market, and enables you to forestall (or, depending on SE choices) do away almost entirely with drone control facilities, saving you time on infrastructure. The free prototyping is not a huge advantage until later on in the game, as all early protos can be completed with a single cashed in supply crawler anyway, but it's still a marginal advantage, and should be exploited whenever the opportunity presents itself. The industry hit hurts, but no more so than Morgan's support drain, and you can get back to "normal" Industrial capacity by simply switching to Planned. True, you take an efficiency hit, but that in turn can be undone by building Children's Creche's, rendering your negatives easily dealt with and gotten around. The Command Nexus is a very attractive project for you, and you're pretty well suited to getting it, as it is only one tech away from you, and grabbing it will give you hands down, the best troops in the game until the advent of bio-enhancement centers, which will bring the rest up reasonably close to your troopers. The Spartan's main strength though, lies in the fact that they need not necessarily make use of their army to instill fear. Just the simple knowledge that the Spartans are out there is oftentimes enough to give others pause. Santiago, the Builder: It takes you slightly longer to get your infrastructure in place than the rest, but the police rating helps in that, again, you can delay the building of drone control facilities, and once you DO get the infrastructure built, it serves you just as well. In the meantime, you have seasoned troops to defend your holdings with, a thing that cannot often be said of other Builder factions. Because of this, and because it's common knowledge that the Spartans can more than hold their own in a fight, you are uniquely positioned to build in relative safety. Think of it as classic isolationism, and most Momentum folk are looking for soft targets, something the Spartans have never been accused of. Add to that the fact that most of your opponents will not be expecting you to play the Builder's game, and that alone can often buy you the time you need to get the bulk of your infrastructure in place. Once it is, it's a simple enough proposition to take a look around the map and reassess your current situation, and again, if somebody decides to play rough and tumble with you, then they're just asking to get pasted. Santiago, the Hybrid: Your starting tech makes you a natural at this. You're only a single tech away from Doctrine: Flex, and only two away from running Planned and getting probes. Taken together, that alone puts you in a strong Hybrid stance (and if you get the Virtual World project, you will almost never have a drone problem). Others need to build command centers just to get to where your troops start, and because of that, most factions will think twice about attacking you, and with even a single Monolith someplace in your territory, and building a Command Center of your own, it's easy for you to put together a core force of elite whatevers to attack or defend with. You have normal cash and research rates, which means, thanks to a slightly lagging industry, that you might be a bit behind the curve, tech wise, but a bit of luck with pods (which, as mentioned, you have an advantage in getting) will easily balance that out, and oftentimes, those pods render your industrial lag moot, as they "autofinish" whatever you were building at the closest base to the pod you just popped. All in all then, a Hybrid approach is very easy to play with Santiago. Santiago, the Conqueror: This is probably the easiest way to run the Spartans, and it is a no-brainer. You've already got rovers. It's a short hop to Impact weapons, and a short hop from there to global conquest. All of the speed work I have ever done on early transcendent victories has been with the Spartans, and with good reason. Quite simply, nobody can put together a crack attack force of high-morale impact rovers faster than Santiago. Zak might be able to get them about as quickly, but they still won't be as well trained, and in battle, that will be the telling difference, and in the early game, four rovers is about all you need to utterly lay waste to an enemy empire (Yang not withstanding.... thanks to his perimeter defense network, but even then, a probe action against the base in question can render his key defensive advantage useless). If you want a fast and furious game, build four Impact rovers and send them hunting while you build up your Empire. When they find someone, you'll be amazed at how much damage and terror they can spread, and at nominal cost to you. An important footnote here is that with Santiago, you can do reasonably well at fighting sans Punishment Spheres under Market conditions, thanks to your police rating. Gaians: At a Glance: +1 Planet, +2 Efficiency, -1 Police, -1 Morale, auto-capture first worm, +1 Nutrient (fungus) General Notes: The efficiency boon is terrific, and if you had a good way to rake in the energy (Free Market), your faction would be almost unbeatable. As it stands, about the only way you can do it is via Golden Ages, which, while workable, is far from being as good, since the money invested in Psych detracts from the total cash earned. Still, you've other important advantages that make up for your lack of raw energy. Specifically, you are good at "channeling" what energy you do get. Run either Dem or Green and you have a paradigm economy, allowing you to run either 100% cash or labs and rake in a respectable amount. Again, the drawback is that you can either have good income or good labs, but only average both if you keep your allocation at 50/50. The trick then, is knowing when to do which, and the approaches will vary (see below). Regardless of your playstyle though, you have two other important advantages which will serve you well. The first is the ability to draw resources from fungus squares. This helps your early game immensely, and means you have to spend comparatively less time terraforming (and you get Centauri Ecology at game start), to get your bases productive. The second is the ability to catch mind worms, with the added bonus that your first worm capture attempt is always successful. Goal number one then, is to send your scout patrol out trolling for worms! When you find one and catch it, you have the perfect pod-popping unit (assuming pod scattering is on), because even if the pod in question unleashes more worms, they will ignore your native life form, leaving it to you to either try to catch them and add them to your force, or move on to the next pod. Repeat this process when you get Doctrine: Flex and gun skimships, and you're pretty much set for the whole game, as IoD's (Isles of the Deep) make tremendously good pod-poppers, scouts, and transports....very versatile units! Deirdre, the Builder: Forget the money. Beeline for Dem, and make the switch as soon as you can, netting you a paradigm economy, and +4 growth (when you build creches). At this point, you can slam your labs to 100% and keep pace with the best researchers in the game. True, your income suffers, but you can ease back from 100% periodically to save up more cash, and once you arrive at restriction lifting techs, you can reverse that for a time, effectively turning labs off to help you rush through infrastructure builds. Also, when you're ready to boom, you merely add Planned to what you've already got and giant bases are yours! Again, your research efforts are helped, if pod-scattering is on, by the presence of your mindworms, and, since you cannot run Market, you will be spending the whole game actively exploring, so if you find others who are running Builder or Hybrid styles (and making regular use of Market), a few probes into their territory with your mindworm force just might be sufficient to scare them away for Market (to avoid fighting a losing battle with your worms). Of course, this is an early game advantage, rendered much less effective once Secrets of the Human Brain are discovered, but the implications are that, if you spend a bit of time focused on catching 3-4 worms, you can keep your builder stance and put together enough of a force to effectively worm rush someone. Your troops aren't great, but Children's Creches are an excellent build for you, as it helps with both troop morale and further enhances your Empire's efficiency. Deirdre, the Hybrid: As with the Builder Game, capturing worms is important, and even moreso for the Hybrid game. You will definitely want to make early use of the worm rush if at all possible. Essentially, this is a denial strategy, added to the usual Hybrid mix. The goal is not so much to succeed in taking out an empire (though by all means, do so if you can), but to force them away from a Market Stance and slow them down, enabling your 100% lab focus to blow past them, tech wise (Note: The reason it is important to force your opponents away from Market is simply that, Dem/Market at 70%, despite the inefficiency, can out-tech Dem/Green at 100%). You'll probably be stuck using your probes defensively, unless you pull back from your lab focus in advance to horde cash, and again, with the Gaians, it is almost always more productive to run either 100% labs or 100% economy. To keep a 50/50 stance with this faction undoes one of your chief advantages. The real trick to playing this faction is in knowing when to run which setting, and that is determined by prevailing game conditions. Hybrids will probably want to run both Dem and Green unless game conditions turn nasty, in which case, the Hybrid player will likely drop Dem to go on more of a war footing, again, relying heavily on Native life forms to offset your otherwise less-than-remarkable troops. Deirdre, the Conqueror: Go Native! Forget Dem. Beeline for Flex and Planetary networks (Probes and boats), then to Green, catch as many worms as you can, run Econ. at 100% and build lots of probes. The probes will make up for your lack of research, infiltrate enemy datalinks, and augment your native attack force with captured enemy troops caught alone and in the open. Plus, the worms don't care what techs your opponents have and you're the best Psi-fighter in the game, especially if you zero in on Market-loving Builders (who probably also have a lot of nice techs you want). Again, the worm rush is vital to your success, so do not delay in building up your native attack force and constantly be scouting for opponents! And, once your attack force is on its way, focus on spreading your empire, growing lots of small bases to offset Green's growth penalty (you hardly feel it from size 1-2 bases) The Lord's Believers: At a Glance: +2 Support, +1 Probe, -2 Research, -1 Planet; 25% Attack Bonus General Notes: A superb faction, helped greatly by the Support bonus. The Believers get off to a slow start, but this need not be a crippling disadvantage. One good thing about it is that your bases will be laid out bette on your continent, as you will generally have more time to explore before you can start expanding. The planet negative puts you at a slight disadvantage when fighting the natives, unless you attack first, which more than negates your -10% penalty, and the Support boon lets you field more units per base in any event. Also, your attack bonus allows you to work your way to "Trans-elite" troopers, giving you an extra point of movement, and a 25% attack bonus above and beyond what everybody else gets too. Also, the ability to switch to Fundy and render your bases and units immune to subversion is a HUGE advantage! Oh, and remember, Miriam is the only faction in the game that can run Dem and still build a new base with free minerals! (The key advantage here being that you can have comparatively more bases before you start getting drone warnings due to size). A word of warning with this faction: If you are attacked by a psi-force, get as far away from Market as you can. In fact, it would be far and away in your best interest to run green when faced with such an attack, cos if you ARE caught by the worms while running Market, even with trance or empath-assisted troopers, there's almost no way you can win, especially if those worms are being controlled by Cha'Dawn or Deirdre. Miriam, the Builder: This might seem like a contradiction in terms, considering the slow start with research and the twenty percent higher tech costs, but in truth, you can offset both of these things with relative ease. Once you get Centauri Ecology, the boost in support enables you to crank out an obscene number of formers, very quickly moving to terraform the entire continent, and making all your bases that much more productive. Not to mention the fact that, as with the Spartans, most people will be content to leave you be if you play a Builder game, and odds are, they're just breathing a sigh of relief that you're not attacking them! If you ARE attacked however, your best chance at defending is with an active stance, using pre-emptive strikes to take advantage of your native 25% attack bonus and running Fundy to prevent subversion. Research wise, even when you're running Fundy, Network Nodes everywhere gives you a net gain of +10% to your research rates. Not nearly the boost it gives others, but then, you'll only be running Fundy if there's trouble brewing, otherwise, you're better served by some other SE choice (Dem springs immediately to mind here). You're cash is good (ability to run Market), your troops are good, and you can offset the research hit by a program of steady builds and active probe teams to keep up until your infrastructure is in place. The Miriam Builder game is by far the most active of the lot, as she must make early and regular use of probes to keep pace until the infrastructure is in place, but it's quite easily pulled off. Also note here, that when you play the Builder's game with Miriam, you will want to be very careful and specific about when you run Fundy. True, it gives you almost total immunity to enemy probe actions, but it utterly kills your research, regardless of your infrastructure, so use it only when pressed, or when pressing an attack against someone else. Miriam, the Hybrid: Miriam's Builder game is so active that there really aren't many differences between it and the Hybrid game, except that, where the Builder will focus mostly on early game formers, the Hybrid Player will take a few of those "free unit" slots and use them for the building of Prototypes, sending them out hunting in much the same way that the Deirdre Hybrid player uses her native life forms. Miriam, the Conqueror: Again, like the Spartans, this one's a no-brainer. Race for Flex and Planetary Networks, switch to Fundy, save your money, find an opponent, infiltrate, probe them to death to get their tech, steal a base and upgrade all the garrisons to best/best, using pre-emptive strikes to defeat the forces sent against you (and continue to subvert them all the while). Build cheap scouts or recon rovers every turn, upgrading them to whatever is needed (remembering that the newly captured base will get a larger than normal share of "free" units), and keep punching your opponent. In the field, with even tech, your forces are VERY hard to beat, especially if you're running fundy, as they cannot use probe trickery against you, and you get a morale boost too! The Human Hive: At a Glance: Immune to inefficiency, +1 Growth, +1 Industry, -2 Economy, Perim. Defenses everywhere General Notes: If not for the lack of energy, this faction would be all but unstoppable, and as it is, they are far and away the most powerful AI faction, coming out on top of the AI heap in almost every simulation I have ever run. Their Growth and Industry bonuses make for rapid expansion, and their inefficiency immunity makes a massive empire with few to no drawbacks a real possibility. This, combined with their inherent "Citizen's Defense Force" makes them a tough faction to match, and if they happen to also get the Command Nexus (not difficult to imagine, since they start with its requisite tech) and Planetary Transit System (also not too much of a stretch, with active probe teams), then the rest of the world stands a good chance of being doomed. An important note about Yang: The immunity to inefficiency ability allows you to run SE settings which would utterly ruin any other faction in the game. Quite simply, you may freely ignore negative modifiers to efficiency! Yang, the Builder: First, absolutely no one will be expecting you to play Yang as a Builder, so this will work very much to your advantage, but consider: You can switch over to Police State with impunity, enabling you to control your drones without the need to build any drone control facilities at all, and the addition of a Children's Creche at each base goes a long way in capturing what energy you do generate. Add to that the ability to run Planned (again, without penalty), and you get a faction with a huge industry bonus and no drone problems whatsoever. If you work heavily with forests, your income won't be bad, although you will never even begin to approach the energy levels of the real "Research Factions" in the game, forcing you to look for other alternatives. Fortunately, there are some very good ones, and you get them at the same time you get the ability to run Planned, namely: Librarians. While you're waiting for Industrial Automation, you can be whipping out Network Nodes and expanding like mad, and once you have the ability to create crawlers, it's easy (again, with your prodigious Industry bonus) to crank out enough crawlers to give each base some minerals to work with, and feed the entire population, and once you do that, every citizen you have can be converted to a Librarian, giving you perfectly efficient research capabilities, magnified by your already built network nodes. Now consider that if you take the time to build the Command Nexus, you essentially wipe out the penalties for also running Wealth (adding a bit more to your energy reserves, and giving you yet another boost in Industry). The only person in the game who can out-build you is Domai, and he has to contend with less-well defended bases, efficiency problems, AND a research penalty, which more than offsets his additional +1 bonus to Industry. In short, although it might not appear so at first glance, the good Chairman makes an astonishing builder, and that capability, coupled with an active stance with probes will quickly see you on par with every other Builder in the game, should you choose to run the game this way. Yang, the Hybrid: Again, this approach utilizes Yang's Industrial Might, and is not terribly different from Yang, the Builder, actually, except that a certain set of bases will be geared up specifically for the purpose of providing an offensive punch to the empire, whereas the pure Builder approach will not do so until and unless threats begin appearing on the horizon. The Yang-Hybrid model enables you to maintain an active attack/trolling force while keeping a fairly brisk research rate, and the ability to drop into full "Builder Mode" if you determine that your potential enemies are very far away. On the other hand, it's easy (gotta love that Industry) to kick into high gear and get ready to fight, and very quickly, you can find yourself with an army numbering so many units that you can simply sweep the opposition off the map. Yang, the Conqueror: Once more, your Industry and Police are the key factors to the Conquest game. The goal here is to simply skip over any real Infrastructural builds and focus on rapid colonization, followed by a buildup of troops that no one else in the game can match prior to the arrival of clean reactors. Even Miriam, with her support bonus simply cannot keep up with a fully geared-for-war Yang. So what if she's got better troops, you can replace your losses almost half again as quickly as she can replace hers, and her Probe Immunity is nearly meaningless to you. You likely won't have the cash to do much subversion anyway, and you can simply keep building units until you overwhelm her. Same with the only other truly good fighters in the game, the Spartans, except in their case, it's even easier to overwhelm them, because they have Industrial problems of their own, and the moment you achieve your first conquest on an enemy's soil, that is the kiss of death, as that faction must now deal with your enhanced Industrial output right there on their turf. Simply put, if they do not or cannot re-capture the base immediately, they're doomed. Peacekeepers: At a Glance: -1 Efficiency, Extra Votes, Extra Talents, Hab limit restrictions eased (bigger bases) General Notes: You might not look so hot on the SE table compared to the others, but that doesn't mean you're a pushover. Not by any stretch. Your advantages make you a force to be reckoned with in any game. Consider a fairly normal expansion paradigm. Even if you only do an "average" expansion, you're virtually guaranteed the Govornorship, giving you a healthy Commerce bonus (extra energy to help offset the -1 Efficiency), and Infiltration of all factions (as good as the Empath Guild, for free). Add to that the fact that your extra talents and larger bases (giving Lal the ability to execute a Pop-Boom with little control infrastructure in place), and what you end up with is a faction that is quite far from being average. Lal, the Builder: Democracy completely negates your singular negative, and is two thirds of what you need for a population boom. Add Planned and Wealth to that mix, and snag either of the early game drone control projects (Genome or Virtual World), and you can boom to size 9 with ease. The ability to do this earlier than almost any faction will give you a huge advantage in population, at which time, you can switch to Market, and out-tech even drone-plagued Zak. And once you get crawlers and Hab-complexes, you can boom all the way to size 16 with near-impunity, giving you such an edge in population that you'll be hard- pressed to lose the game. Yes, your troops are only average, but your greater population enables you to have more of everything: More research (despite the efficiency hit), more minerals, and more troops, and with the right facilities, your bases can quickly become very tough nuts to crack. Lal, the Hybrid: One of Lal's main strengths is his sheer "averageness." True, you lack the Industrial Might of Domai or Yang, the Morale and Prototype bonuses of Santiago, the cash of Morgan, and the Research boon of Zak, but you're also not saddled with their liabilities, and your one disadvantage is easily offset by the simplest of base facilities. All of this puts you in the position of great flexibility, enabling you to shift gears much more readily than any of the other problem-plagued factions. Your one "banned" SE choice (Police State) would be something you would never need to run in any event, thanks to your extra talents (which, by the way, is like the Genome Project on steroids, as its impact on your bases is relative to the size of your bases....not static, as is the case with the Genome, and you get it for free!). All in all, you couldn't ask for a better Hybrid faction than this! Beware, however: That sheer flexibility can be both a blessing and a curse, and in a Lal-Hybrid game, you need to become adept at reading the ebb and flow of the game, and make the right choices at the right times (knowing WHEN to shift into a war footing and when to pursue relentless research is vital to you.....if the other factions make a mistake, they can play to their inherent advantages....cash, morale, or whathaveyou, but all of your advantages are contingent on you making the right decisions at the right time, and a misstep can set you back very badly, as you have nothing really to fall back on). --Still, with practice at reading the game, Lal can be one of the very best, most well-rounded factions in the game. Lal, the Conqueror: At first glance, with your efficiency problems and average troops, you might think Lal ill-suited to conducting a conquest war, but again, his sheer flexibility (and, assuming you got the Governorship, his auto-infiltration of all factions) serves him will in this capacity too. Even fairly large, newly captured bases seldom have drone problems, as your "Talent" bonus kicks in as soon as you occupy the base, often completely negating the drones created via conquest. That, combined with a lack of any pronounced weakness which can be exploited by your enemies, makes you a wily and tenacious faction on the battlefield. To that end, however, you will only be as wily and tenacious as your own personal skill in battle allows, again, because your faction has no native combat advantages, meaning that you will have to engineer any and all advantages yourself (through a steady program of militaristic builds, and smart use of your standing army). Learn to do that well, and you will find Lal to be a doggedly determined fighter. New Kids on the Block: The SMAX Seven: Cybernetic Consciousness: At a Glance: +2 Efficiency, +2 Research, -1 Growth, Spoils of War, no penalties for Cybernetic SE choice. Game Notes: -1 Growth is a pretty huge penalty for a landward faction, but it does not even compare with the benefits this faction has. The efficiency (and ability to run Market), combined with the research bonus makes this group a powerhouse by any definition, but when you add in the tech-steal ability, what you get is a faction that can stand up to any of the original seven, and then some! Their aversion is one you'd not run anyway (Fundy), so essentially what you get is Deirdre's efficiency, Zak's research, and none of their crippling disabilities (Dee's lack of cash via market, and Zak's drones). That puts the faction in a position to do amazing things. So what if you have to build your own network nodes….with techsteal, active probes, and your inherent research bonus, getting and keeping the tech lead will not be difficult for this faction, growth penalty or no. The "no penalties for Cybernetic" thing is of little consequence, as by the time you are able to make that switch, the game is pretty well won or lost. Still, it's an interesting footnote that you don't need the Network Backbone to get around Cybernetic's negatives when playing this faction. Aki-Zeta, the Builder: Played this way, you take advantage of your Techsteal ability by NOT taking advantage of it. Nobody will WANT to attack you for fear of your being able to rip down a base and steal their proprietary research, so if you're content to play nice, they'll probably be content to let you, and you can make good on your threat anytime you like….just go for Non-linear math pretty early on (that being about the only deviation from the more builder-oriented techs), and you can make good on the implied threat….since you start with Applied Physics, you're only one step away, which is great for you…. As the consciousness, of course, you want to get those lab-enhancing facilities built as quickly as possible to further enhance your native +2 research bonus, but that will mean building at least some energy banks and the like to help pay maintenance, so if you pursue the Builder path, then do it with a vengeance. One thing that will help your Builder game is the growth penalty. Bases won't be springing up to size in an uncontrolled fashion, and in general, you will have plenty of time to get your Rec. Commons' in place before it becomes an issue. Aki-Zeta, the Hybrid: Impact weapons, Mobility, and Flex, and you're armed and doubly dangerous, as each one of your troopers is as good as a probe team too, if he's the one who moves into an enemy base. That, combined with your ability to do something other than fight (+2 Research) and do it efficiently, makes you a terrific choice for Hybrid style. Since you'll probably keep a standing army at the ready as soon as you get the techs to put something decent together (and you'll get those techs at a pretty good clip, thanks to your inherent strengths), you'll be in a much better position than your Builder cousins to make good on the threat of ripping down their defenses and stealing their techs (an ability which, by the way, lets you selectively ignore certain tech paths, knowing full-well that when you get in a war, you'll be netting those techs anyway). Simply put, you will be hard pressed to find a better Hybrid faction in the game. Aki-Zeta, the Conqueror: Again, your techsteal ability is pivotal to your entire game. In this case, ignore the juicy Builder techs entirely….you'll get them anyway when you tear down their bases. Just get a core group of mobile, heavily gunned attackers and make everybody else pay. Even without focusing on Net Nodes right away, you will still out tech everybody but Zak in the game, which means you can have your prototype Impact Rover rolling off the assembly lines before most folks have their prototype Synth-garrisons in place, and the math is very much on your side. Nautilus Pirates: At a Glance: -1 Efficiency, -1 Growth, terraform deep sea squares (w/tech), marine detachment (w/tech), +1 mineral/square (shelf only), sea pod and former already prototyped, free naval yard (w/tech). Game Notes: Your advantages grow over time as more techs are discovered, but even with what you have at the outset, the faction is a powerhouse by any definition. First consider that you begin the game in total isolation. No one can attack you at all until they get Doctrine: Flex, and build a fleet. Even then, all of the important advantages are yours in terms of sea-battling, and that only becomes more true as the game wears on. Next, is your inefficiency. Just as with Lal, this is easily overcome via the simplest of base facilities, and is not much to lose sleep over, and the Growth penalty….I feel certain that was put in place to prevent the faction from simply running away with the game. Sea bases are notoriously good at cranking out food, and when you get a few kelpfarms in place, you will be able to grow like a proverbial weed in spite of the –1 growth. In fact, you'll have such surpluses that you will barely notice it. The only thing that hurts a bit is the inability to execute an "easy" pop-boom, but again, if the Pirates could do that too, they'd simply run away with the game every time. +1 Mineral per square means that your early game mining platforms can keep you on-par and then some with your landlocked cousins, and again, you've got an easy 75 years of pretty much competition-free expansion….probably a hundred or more before someone mounts a serious offensive. Marine Detachment ability is huge too, enabling you to capture enemy ships and upgrade accordingly (you'll want to cover the newly captured and weakened ships with interceptors to protect them from sniping while vulnerable, but remember, once you get them back to base, they'll be recovered in a single turn, thanks to your naval yards everywhere). You can also capture transports loaded with troops (effectively making the Marine Detachment like a probe team that can avoid stacking limits). It's true, before the advent of fusion power, you will pay a premium for your formers and colony pods, but on the plus side, each base you build comes with a built in pressure dome, so even with fission reactors, they're a bargain for what you're getting. Svensgaard, the Builder: Make use of your early game privacy to establish a ring of bases around an uninhabited large island or small continent, then send colony pods and formers to the mainland with a vengeance. This mixed approach will give you such a strong core empire, protected by equally strong coastal bases, who gain the benefits of all the coastal boreholes you built. After that, strike off the beaten path and start building deep sea bases that are worthless if taken from you. Thanks to mid-game techs, deep sea bases are good for you, and if you focus on kelp and tidal harnesses (using your highly developed core bases as cash cows), you can easily rush whatever infrastructure you need at the relatively mineral poor deep sea bases—it's important to set realistic goals here: Ten minerals at a deep sea base isn't too bad, and certainly sets you up well for rushing….not to mention the fact that in the late-mid game and beyond, you start to get Orbital Mining Stations, Robotic Assembly Plants and the like, which can turn even your modest sea bases into industrial powerhouses, enabling you to strike from unexpected directions if pressed. Svensgaard, the Hybrid: This faction is a Hybrid player's dream, and there's absolutely no reason why you should not be in the driver's seat, diplomacy wise. You can find and infiltrate all the other factions before they make contact with each other, and with a steadily growing global naval presence, you can oftentimes dictate when or IF your various rivals will meet each other at all, simply sinking their fledgling navies as they come out of port. This kind of control over the ebb and flow of the game is key to influencing the Metagame (more on that concept later) for all the players, and for this reason alone, I'd say that if any faction came close to being unbalanced, this is it. Svensgaard, the Conqueror: Conquesting is easy for Svensgaard, since you start with two of the key techs you need to go hunting. Get a good weapon (Impact), and you don't even need the rovers…in fact, if you wait till you get Doctrine: Initiative (an early-mid game tech, at best), your infantry units actually become more effective than rovers, given that a transport full of assault marines can sweep in on any coastal base from five squares out and taking the base with complete surprise, and remaining entirely out of sensor range till the moment of the attack….this, combined with your inherent ability to capture transports filled with enemy troopers (at times, effectively doubling the size of your attack force), makes you deadly indeed. Pay close attention to the section on Naval Power….you'll be making heavy use of it. Yes, air power may well be at the top of the food chain battle-wise, but 99 times in a hundred, initial contact with a faction not on your starting continent will be made in the water. Never forget that, and never underestimate the power inherent in being the first faction in the water to pop sea pods! Free Drones: At a Glance: +2 Industry, -2 Research, fewer drones, % chance that rioting bases will join you, Aversion Green Game Notes: "The Mouse that Roared," would be an excellent descriptor for this faction….their puny research capabilities and punishingly slow start might seem to make them not worth playing, but that sweet industry bonus will more than make up for it in the end. Simply put, while you may have a lagging research capability, there's nothing whatsoever to prevent you from making hordes of cash (Market), and that influx of energy, coupled with an Industrial capacity that no one else in the game can touch (Yang can come close, but still can't match you, and he has no money anyway), will quickly see you ratcheting up the power chart, and the speed with which you can crank out lab-enhancers and such will quickly undo your measly 20% penalty to research. Miriam is drawn to Fundy…it plays well with her other abilities and makes her a wretched researcher, but that is not the case with you, and in the absence of choosing Fundy to render your bases and units immune to covert actions, the efficiencies of Democracy become much more attractive in peacetime, with Police State in times of crisis (coupled with your inherently fewer drones to begin with). Minerals drive the early game, and he who can build the most stuff the fastest will win. Nobody builds stuff faster than the Drones. Nobody. Domai, the Builder: Building stuff quickly is what you guys do! All you need is Planetary Networks, and Doctrine Flex if you start by yourself, and you're off and running. Infiltrate, steal tech in the early game to give you the tools you need, and then use that amazing infrastructure to build everything with lightening speed. By the time you get your Treefarms in place, you'll have to remind yourself that you have a research penalty, things will be rolling along so well for you, and if you're pressed by an attack, it's easy to build a stout army very quickly with cash + your native industry. Domai must be fairly active (at least in the early game) as a Builder though, much in the same vein as Miriam's Builder game. Probes are about the only way you can reach those much needed early game techs in reasonable time, so use them! Domai, the Hybrid: Essentially, you make use of some of that incredible industrial advantage by "blunting" it slightly. In the early game, a high industry rating is nearly the same as a high support rating, enabling you to carry more units per base, cutting down your minerals available, but still building things reasonably quickly. What this means is that you'll be able to keep pace, build-wise, and support a big enough army/exploration force that no one will want to press you. The Research penalty truly IS a penalty in the early game, and you won't have a lot to do for the first ten years, but after that, and once you've found someone to trade with or steal techs from, you'll soon find yourself with a lot of new capabilities. One of the coolest features of the Drones is the ability to snag rioting bases from other factions, and this opens up whole new vistas for you and your probes, enabling you to get a toehold on continents by enciting drone riots and simply moving in, without firing a shot. Domai, the Conqueror: Big Industry = Big Army. Probe. Techsteal. Build more stuff, more quickly. Drones win. Game. (And with the Drones, it really is that simple!) Data Angels: At a Glance: +2 Probe, -1 Police, 25% cheaper probe actions, free covert ops center (with tech), Techshare3, Aversion Power Game Notes: A faction not given much consideration, in general, because unlike the others, they lack a well-founded ideological base, however, a closer look reveals that this group plays borrows heavily from Lal's Peacekeepers, Morgan, and the Nautilus Pirates in terms of playstyle….admittedly without any of their advantages, but that's okay, as they've got numerous advantages of their own. Roze's singular negative is practically meaningless, while her other abilities are quite useful. +2 Probe effectively gives every unit you have the "Polymorphic Encryption" enhancement (for free!), further enhanced by actually giving that ability to your units if you feel the need to. Essentially this makes it almost ruinously expensive to steal bases or units away from you, enabling you to leave your units single stacked far more often than your opposition (which is great from a combat perspective). That, combined with your own, correspondingly cheaper probe actions puts you firmly in the driver's seat where Covert Ops are concerned. Add that to your sharetech3 ability (gives you the same effect as the Planetary Datalinks for free!), and what you have is a faction that is quite capable of defending itself from a variety of attacks, and able to zero in on specific areas of the tech tree, relying on the fact that your sharetech3 will enable you to pick up new technological advances from areas outside of what you are pursuing as those techs are traded and passed around the other factions. In fact, to make the most of your sharetech ability, you should play this group as a synthesis of Morgan, Lal, and Svensgaard. Seeing that the other factions are in contact with each other is very important to you, as it increases the likelihood of techs being traded around, which gives you direct benefits (and, if no one seems willing to trade tech with you in the game, you've got your probe teams to get them anyway!). Your only SE aversion is power, and that's one that doesn't really work well with this group in any case, so even if you could pick it, odds are good that you wouldn't. You're not hampered by a lack of energy, or any research or drone penalties, and that, combined with your probes, will very quickly put you in a position of dominance. Morgan must rely on his additional cash windfall to subvert enemy troops that land, but you (with your cheaper cover ops rates) can accomplish the same ends with less money, putting you in the same or better position as Morgan, probe-wise. Combatively, your troops are only average, but with your probe teams, it is entirely possible to stay in Free Market for the entire game and simply steal your opponents' bases one at a time, buying them out from under him, and stealing enemy troops as they drive up to try and get the base back. Later in the game, the presence of a Covert Ops Center in each base, you've effectively got a +4 Probe rating, rendering you immune to probe actions a la Miriam, without any of her disadvantages! (Effectively giving you your own private "Hunter-Seeker Algorithm!") Roze, the Builder: Regardless of your style of play, Probe Teams will play heavily into your overall strategy, and the Builder's game is no exception. As you've read before though, anybody who relies heavily on Probe Teams (Domai, Miriam, Yang, Cha'Dawn, and You especially), must play a fairly active Builder's game. Thus, your goal in the DataAngel Builder game is to mind your own business, building probes anytime you get a few free turns in a base's build queue, sending out the probe foils to go find the others, and keeping the rover and infantry based ones milling about your empire (or sneaking across a rival's border, if you've got company on your continent). If the badguys come calling, a little bit of cash will net you with a bigger army, a weaker opponent, and fewer worries. Also, if one of your neighbors decides to continue to raise a fuss, drive a few probe foils over to his infrastructure poor (and thus, relatively inexpensive) bases and simply buy his empire away from him one piece at a time. Roze, the Hybrid: Played this way, it's all about getting out and meeting people. Your favored SE settings will tend to put you in good standing with both Lal and Morgan (and sometimes, with fickle Sven), and these are the more commerce-oriented factions, generally eager to trade and make treaties, so go out, meet interesting people from exotic, far-off lands, and infiltrate them, relying on your Builderesque approach to warfare. With Roze, you can run your entire exploration effort via probe teams and transport foils, which means you can stick to Market in all but the more dire circumstances. Roze, the Conqueror: Run a brief, early period of Market to get yourself built up to a position of power, making use of Market's energy boon to give you the important early game mobility and combat techs relatively quickly, then, construct a medium-sized force, augmented with money and probes and go hunting! If you come across a base that looks like it might be a tough fight, fine. Buy it, add the garrison to your strike force, and keep moving. It is entirely possible for you to buy even a base with a number of secret projects in it on the cheap, something even Morgan is hard-pressed to do at times! Cult of Planet: At a Glance: +2 Planet, -1 Industry, -1 Economy, Brood Pit at each base (with tech), Worms are counted twice for police duty, Aversion Wealth Game Notes: Widely considered to be the weakest faction in the game, the Cult is still quite fun to play! Their planet bonus and lack of industrial might and cash makes it imperative that you play to this group's natural strengths, and that means going native with a vengeance! The Cult "Out-Greens" even Deirdre, able to catch more worms, more quickly. This in turn (if you have pod-scattering on) enables you to go pod-popping early on, which increases your chance of catching still more worms and that can very rapidly put you in a position to launch an early-game worm rush. The vast majority of the factions in the game have no trouble with getting to +1 Energy per square, which means they'll have no trouble out-teching you. Because of this, and because of your native strengths, you must play to the metagame and become the spoiler. Specifically, this means doing everything you can to enhance the power of your native life, attacking rivals who are running Market in order to deny them access to their much-cherished money. Simply put, you can win the battle and the war by taking the fight to a Marketeer. If they drop out of Market to fight you, you win by forcing them away from their principle source of money and tech (exception: Morgan!), and if not, you will run over them, given their –3 Planet Rating! Cha'Dawn, the Builder: It's not that you don't build well….you do okay at that, at least as well as the Spartans, but the trouble is, without some serious crawlers to augment your lagging energy production, lab-enhancers just aren't going to benefit you as much as some of the other factions. This is not to say that you should avoid them, only to point out that you will need to augment your infrastructure with a bit of an energy kick in order to get yourself up to something near parity with your Market-loving rivals (and, set up this way, when you succeed in driving your rivals away from Market, you will actually be out-producing them!) Nonetheless, pure Builder Style is a difficult game for Cha'Dawn, as you MUST be active if you hope to exploit your position relative to Marketeers. Also, as with the other technologically lagging factions, you must take an active stance with your Probe Teams, though, like Yang, you will seldom be in a cash-rich enough of a position to make use of many of the covert ops requiring you to spend credits. Still, as a means of keeping tech parity, Probe Teams should play an integral part of your strategy. Cha'Dawn, the Hybrid: Much more natural a style with this faction. In times of peace, you can devote yourself to the creating of fungal barriers and fungal farms, and building up your mineral and energy position via crawlers (both of which will help you offset your starting negatives), all the while, searching out your rival factions. Once you find someone, infiltrate, and as soon as you see them making a switch to Market, hammer them hard with your captured worm force! Cha'Dawn, the Conqueror: Sleek and fast, and….pure native! This is actually one of the simplest ways of playing the game, and I find it personally very satisfying. It is a vastly different game than I normally play, and as a change of pace, it is wonderfully refreshing. The first thing you need to do is catch a worm. Just send your scout out to play in the fungus, and before long, you'll be all set. Next goal, send your worm out to pop some serious pods, and try to catch another worm. Essentially, this means more playing in the fungus for you (and all the while, your bases are slowly but steadily working on colony pods to continue your expansion). Once you've got two worms, you're really rolling, because now the first can continue the pod-popping crusade (which will go far in keeping you in the ball-park, tech-wise), and the other can begin some serious worm farming (getting three chances per turn, unlike your scout's one) to stir up some native life. At this point, you're in prime position to get ready to do a big worm rush (and it generally only takes 4-6 worms in the early game). If you're alone on your continent, then your next two overriding goals ought to be Planetary Networks (for probes) and Doctrine Flex (for transports) so you can go make some greedy Marketeer pay! Manifold Caretakers: At a Glance: Recycling Center at each base, +1 Planet, +25% Defensive bonus, "Space Survey," Directed Research, Deep Radar for all units Game Notes: Overpowered in human hands, almost to the point of making the game tedious. It's a cakewalk. Nobody will have much luck in attacking, you begin with a recycling tanks at every base, which means that you don't have to worry as much about terraforming, and farms are not really needed much at all until the midgame. All in all, you have a vastly simplified game, with more techs at game start, and an almost unbelievably strong defensive position. H'minee, the Builder: This group was designed for the Builder game. You can play the part of the turtle, and do quite well. A program of rapid expansion will see you filling up the continent quickly (possibly switching to battle mode if you see that you're not alone, and sweeping them off the map before they can build to any significance), then, just become a hermit. Terraform to your heart's content and use your impressive tech lead (and it will be impressive) to hammer the daylights out of anybody who wants to spoil your fun! H'minee, the Hybrid: Also easy to do. With your tech lead in the beginning, augmented by automatic Recycling tanks at all bases, your research will be top notch. That alone will make the Hybrid game easy, because you will be able to field better troops than most, if not all of your opponents. That, coupled with the fact that your 25% defensive bonus kicks in from the moment you take over a base makes it unlikely that the opposition will be able to root you out, once you get a foothold. H'minee, the Conqueror: Again, fairly easy to do, but, with H'minee, you're probably better off simply subverting human bases to avoid population flight, and again, captured garrisons will gain that additional 25% defensive bonus from the moment you take control of the base. Manifold Usurpers: At a Glance: Recycling Center at each base, +1 Growth, +1 Morale, +25% Offensive bonus, "Space Survey," Directed Research, Deep Radar for all units, aversions – Dem. Game Notes: Again, an almost impossibly easy game, no matter what level of play you select. You get all the advantages of Miriam's attackers, with none of her disadvantages, a morale boost besides that, a free recycling tanks at each base (which, as per the Caretakers, dramatically speeds up your game), and three techs at game start. You would have to try hard NOT to win the game with these guys! With normal research rates, your tech will be as good, if not better than everybody around you (especially since you are guaranteed of one extra energy per base – Tanks – and three techs at game start), and with your attack bonuses you are, simply put, a terror. Marr, the Builder: Sure, you can do this well, but why? Of course, if you're just looking to play the Builder's game with the ultimate "big stick," then this faction will do the job for you. No one will WANT to attack you, figuring that if you're content to Build, in most cases, they'll be content to let you (at least you're not attacking them!) Marr, the Hybrid: A cakewalk. Again, in times of peace, nobody will even breathe hard in your direction for fear of provoking you, and you can focus on infrastructure, and, if the time comes to attack….well, your faction was born and bred for it! Marr, the Conqueror: You could do this with your eyes closed! Just follow the human-faction momentum paradigms with a vengeance and you will beat them at their own game every time. Probe teams and foils first, then sweep in for the kill, and you have a leg up again, thanks to the free Rec. Tanks at the outset! ================================================================================ Early Game ================================================================================ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Expansion and Growth -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Early Game: Expansion and Growth - A Primer: With all of two colony pods and a scout patrol, it's a little early yet to be thinking in stylistic terms. Right now, survival is the priority, and ensuring your survival means having a good number of bases to work with. Regardless of what kind of game you're playing, you're not going to get very far without a solid foundation. Having said that, getting your empire up to a "critical mass" with regards to overall number of bases is vitally important. Opinions vary about what exact number this "critical mass" is, but you could almost universally ballpark it in the 10-15 range. So, what's the best way to get to that number of bases in a hurry? Well, there is no one "best way," but there are a number of pretty interesting approaches, each with their own set of advantages and disadvantages. (Again: Remember that during this phase of the game, your Empire is embryonic....it is not really large enough to have a set "playing style." That is to say that any of these early game strategies can be pursued by equally well, regardless of the play style you eventually wish to fall into (Builder, Momentum, or Hybrid). Early Game Paradigm #1: Monster Terraforming Advantage: Unless you're running democracy, each new base you found gets 10 free minerals. This means you can get your token scout patrol guard for that base for free the turn after you build the base in question. It also means you can add 25 energy credits to it (before considering industry bonuses or penalties), and get a former the turn after the base build, and THEN start work on your scout patrol. Depending on what you do with your former at that point (and to that end, if you're going to uses this approach, pay very close attention to the Basic Terraforming section on the pages that follow), you can net yourself a powerful advantage indeed. The simple fact is this: you are competing in time with one or more opposing factions. The faster you can get your formers out and improving things relative to your opponents, the better off you will be, as it will give you the opportunity to make use of those improved production squares while your opponent is not, netting you a mineral, energy, and/or nutrient advantage over your opponent for each and every turn you are able to maintain that advantage. Keep doing that with every base you found, and over the course of the game this will net you a HUGE advantage, as each base's former will gain somewhere between 6-10 turns of terraforming activity over and above what your opponent is getting. That's six to ten turns per former you have out terraforming. To give that advantage some kind of tangible reference point, make the blanket assumption that an improved (terraformed) piece of real estate will net you 2 FOP's (factors of production – energy, nutrient, or mineral) over and above what a non-improved land square will net you. Multiply that by 6-10 (from above – the number of "free" terraforming turns you can expect to get over and above your opponent, and we will assume ten, for simplicity's sake), and further multiply that by the number of bases (formers, specifically) you've got. Whatever number you get is a fairly good estimate of the total advantage you've netted yourself (i.e.., If you have ten bases, each with a rushed former, your estimated advantage using the formula above would be (2*10) * 10 = 200 FOP's. If you consider that a Trance Scout Patrol costs you 10 FOP's (10 minerals, specifically), you begin to put the advantage in perspective. Of course, not all 200 of your FOP's will be in the form of minerals. Likely, they will be a mixed bag of all three, but that's okay too, because what it really means is that, relative to your opponent, your bases will produce more minerals more quickly, give you more money, and grow faster (which will enable you to make even MORE bases!). Keep this theory in mind for later, when we get to the economy section….we will build on it significantly. For the moment, simply understand that taking this approach will help you grow your empire more quickly than the norm, and it will also give you a viable intra-base infrastructure more quickly than your opposition can put together. Intra-base infrastructures consists of things like roads, bunkers, airfields, and sensor arrays. The beauty of this approach is that if you want to get a veritable HORDE of bases up and running quickly (sans infrastructure, but that will come later), then this is bar none, the best way to go about it. Build your formers first, and while your base is working on it's token scout patrol, you can be terraforming as mentioned above, and finish your first square at about the same time your scout is done....then get to work on those colony pods! The only infrastructure you will want to focus on with this style is Rec. Commons (and only then if it looks like your base will grow to size three before you could complete another colony pod at that base). The rest of your infrastructure will come after you've reached critical mass, or covered your entire continent in bases, whichever you choose. The number of your bases will grow exponentially, and you'll fill up the continent VERY quickly! (And, even though they will all be small, this will give you an ENORMOUS pool of resources to work with. You can visually divide up your empire in regions, and pick a certain base in each region for rapid development via rush building, to give each region a strong point). The exponential growth can be seen thusly: You begin with two bases, build two pods to get four.... everybody builds pods (after the former/scout thing), and you've got eight before you know it.....16....32.....repeat as needed. Main weakness of this style: If you get unlucky, and the worms come calling in the few turns it takes to build the scout patrol after your former is out and working, you lose the base. It's an exceedingly fast style, but not without risk. Early Game paradigm #2: Security Over Speed: The basic assumption here is that, the world is a dangerous place, and you'd better be prepared for that. To that end, the build order is similar, but the timing is fundamentally different. 1) Build your two bases. Keep your freebie scout patrol in one of them. 2) The base containing the freebie scout starts working on a former first (and then builds a scout of its own). The empty base builds a scout first and then a former ((Stylistic Note!!: If you compare these two styles in play, you will see that the first style nets you about 8-10 turns of additional former operation, but does so at the expense of leaving the bases vulnerable for approximately 4 turns)). Terraform as mentioned in the next few pages, and the next build your bases will do will be another scout (which will eventually perform escort duty). In the meantime, your freebie scout is now available for exploration, and the bases are secure. After the second scout is built, they can accompany the formers if they want to do some exploring, or hang around in the bases until the colony pods are done. When the pod is done, the "extra" scout moves to the new site with the pod, so that from the get-go, the new base is protected (and you can change ownership of the scout to the new base by using Ctrl-H, when the scout is in the base square). The new base then builds a former/scout/pod and repeats the process. Main weaknesses: Overall, this is a good deal slower than the first method, both in terms of how quickly you get the pods cranked out, and in terms of how much terraforming you get done, but the trade-off is safety. If you're on a landmass with company, or are worried about worms, this is probably your best bet. Expansion Paradigm #3: Specialized Base Expansion This is great for people on small landmasses and for Marketeers. It's also great for multiplayer games at it increases your overall flexibility (at the expense of speed of colonization). The initial scheme runs pretty similar to #2 (above), keeping your freebie scout at home for a few turns until you build base guards, then, the focus turns immediately to Rec. Tanks (for the additional +1/+1/+1 kick per turn. Then build a pod, then a rec. common, and then back over to any one of the following: more pods, guards, prototypes, or secret projects (depending on your needs at the moment). The big strength of this paradigm is the fact that your bases will be exceedingly stable. You will only rarely experience riots, because your infrastructural development will be kept pretty well in time with your base's growth cycles. This style also facilitates an early switch to Market, and that's a HUGE boon! However, it is not without its drawbacks. The main drawback here is a lack of speed. All that focus on base facilities means a slower rate of expansion. Yes, you will have stable, profitable bases, but you will also have fewer production centers. Depending on how your game develops, (and on local geography)that could be anything from a minor irritation to a crippling disability. Expansion Paradigm #4: A Focus on factors of Efficiency: This focuses on the specific points in the game when extra drones are created by the growth of your empire. Here's the formula from the datalinks to determine what the threshold would be, depending on your map size and level of play: BaseLimit = (8 - Difficulty) * (4 + Efficiency) * MapRoot / 2 Where: Difficulty = Player's difficulty level (0 - 5) Efficiency = Social Engineering Efficiency rating. MapRoot = Sq. Root of # Map Squares / Sq. Root of 3200. Go above whatever number you get when you turn the crank on this formula, and you get drones. Therefore, the idea here is to grow your empire in "spurts." Let's assume you're on a standard planet, and running a "Planned" economy (good early game choice). Your first goal then, is to get yourself to six bases as quickly as you can. Use the methodologies in Paradigm #1 to do this. Once you set up your Nth base (6 in this example, and just under your first expansion warning) build a Rec. Tanks & a Rec. Commons (not necessarily in that order.... you might want to reverse it if you are an early-game Marketeer), and then start cranking out pods again….you next goal being some number of bases equal to 1-expansion warning #2 (under Market, given the example above, your new target would be 16 bases). Once you get there, stop again, and build the Rec. Tanks and Rec. Commons at your newest bases, while your original bases go to work on more advanced facilities, then move to the next "tier," of bases. Repeat until you have filled up the continent. The advantage here is that you solve the extra drone problem due to size, you blend speedy expansion with infrastructure builds, and you do it in relative safety. The drawback though, once again, is raw speed. This is still not as fast an approach as paradigm 1, but it is probably the most balanced of the lot. A note about SE choices in the Early game: You will find both Planned and Wealth hard to beat in the early game, and both of them together are powerful indeed! Both Planned and Wealth confer a +1 Industry, with Wealth adding an Economy kick, and Planned giving you a Growth bonus, and the good news is that a single facility (the Children's Creche) can almost entirely negate the negatives of running both of these SE choices! Summary of Planned/Wealth with Children's Creches in all bases: (Faction-Specific bonuses notwithstanding): +2 Industry (20% discount on all builds) +1 Economy (+1 Energy per base) +4 Growth (40% faster growth in all your bases, half coming from Planned, and half coming from the Children's Creches themselves) -1 Efficiency A quick note on Base-Placement: I know that many people love coastal bases, but in MP games, I'd recommend not having terribly many of them, and the ones you DO have had better be guarded heavily! In SP games, it's not that big a deal, because the AI won't launch many truly cunning attacks against you, but every coastal base you have is an invitation for the Marines, so limit your exposure! Best of all would be to build 1-3 coastal bases in a relatively protected bay area (if you get one) so you can more easily control the access to your bases on the coast (by maintaining an active naval presence in the bay), or if you land by the poles, build your coastal bases on the most remote "side" of your starting content. All other bases should be at least one, and preferably two spaces back from the coast to prevent probe foil infiltration attempts, naval bombards of your bases, and surprise Marine attacks! With all the spiffy sea-square enhancements available in SMAX, it's very tempting to build as many of your bases coastally as you can, but this is a lure you should resist! If you want to build coastal bases, wait until your formers can create a land bridge and block off a sizable chunk of ocean (creating your own private inland sea), and build them there! Specialize your coastal bases out to the nearly exclusive production of naval units and early game probe foils, supporting and defending them via your inland, and less vulnerable bases. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terraforming -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terraforming is an artform, and the more efficient you become at making use of your formers, the better your game will be. In the early game, your terraforming activities should revolve around three central themes: 1) Aiding Growth 2) Optomizing special resource squares 3) Terraforming to boost mineral outputs And I'll spell out some particulars about them each below to get your mind wrapped around the subject. Aiding growth falls into two categories, and both are important. First and most important is to see that you have a square inside your newly founded base's production radius that produces at least two nutrients (note that a nutrient special resource square might give you more than two). The reasoning behind this is simple: If your goal is to continue your expansion from this base, then you'll want to build a colony pod relatively quickly, which means you'll need a good base of food to grow from, and, given the early game restrictions, two is about as good as it gets. And even if you're not planning to use the base as a springboard for future expansion, it's still not a bad idea to have your former build a farm for at least long enough to speed that base from size one to two. To that end, if you have a nutrient resource on a rolling or rocky terrain square, or a rainy square of any variety, then you don't need to do anything at all, and that will speed things up for you (something to keep in mind when you're looking around the map trying to decide where to colonize next). The second thing your formers can do to aid growth, not quite as important as the first, but certainly helpful, is to "prep" the future base site by building a sensor array on the base square (giving you a permanent 25% defensive bonus that cannot be stripped away via artillery or other sniping), and constructing a network of roads to the base site, enabling your colony pod to arrive at the site more quickly, and giving you a few extra turns of production. The essence of the game is one of pitting your economic system against that of your opponents (be they human or AI), and one of the keys to winning that kind of game is raw speed. Tiny advantages (a quicker base-build here, an extra turn or two of Former activity there), can, over the course of the game, combine to create a huge advantage over your opponent (but more on that later!) The next thing your Formers should be paying attention to are your special resource squares. Whatever they are, they represent your chance to get around those cursed resource restrictions in the early game, and if you don't take advantage of them as quickly as possible, then you're not getting as much as you should be out of your territory, and it shouldn't come as a great shock when somebody blows past you on the power chart. Special Resource squares are so important to the early game that they often dictate where you build your bases, but they need not define your base layout completely. The moment you get crawlers (Industrial Automation) the exact location of the resource becomes of lesser importance in the sense that now that resource is available to any base you have. Not all resource squares were created equally though, and some will hold more value than others. Examples of this include: Nutrients on rainy tiles (netting you up to five nutrients!), Energy resources on rivers (great place to found your HQ base), and Mineral resources on rocky terrain (7 minerals with a mine and road!) are all things to be watchful of, and will greatly impact your game. The main thing though, is to flow with the game in whatever direction in takes you. Did you get a nutrient bonus on a rainy square? If so, that one base can be used to drive much of your expansion because it will grow so fast, freeing up your other bases to develop their crawler suites earlier than anticipated. Did you wind up with a mineral resource on rocky terrain? If so, try to arrange two or three bases around it so they can share it. They can take turns making use of the heightened production to rapidly develop, and, the base(s) in question will be able to support a larger than normal number of formers, which will greatly speed your continental terraforming. Or, rarest of all, did you stumble across that holy grail of research, an energy resource on a river? Build or move your HQ there and rip through the early-game tech tree like nobody's business! (How-To Notes: Terraforming Wizardry: Two important tricks here that, if used frequently, will put you far ahead of the pack: First, whenever possible, operate your formers in teams. While it is true that you won't save any time terraforming the continent as a whole in this manner, it is also true that you will finish terraforming specific squares much more quickly, and from the perspective of any particular base you look at, that's what is most important. To that end, when moving your formers as a group, use leapfrog techniques to get them working as quickly as possible (having the leading element(s) of the former team create roads so that the laggards can move into position and terraform (plus, you can always selectively delete roads later). Second, never let the computer automatically move your units! It sacrifices speed and efficiency. A perfect example of this is as follows: Let's say you've got a colony pod en route to a new base site. Your formers have pre-worked the area, and you've got a sensor and a road built on the base site. Your pod is two squares from the build site, but no roads have been constructed. As luck (or cunning planning) would have it, both squares that the pod will be passing through are flat, and both have a former on them. If the computer moves for you, you can be all but assured that the pod will move first, and you'll lose at least one turn getting your next base built, but if you have your two formers move first, and set them to build roads, the roads will be finished just prior to the colony pod's moves, enabling netting you an extra turn or two of production from your new base. Done consistently over the course of an entire game, the effects are vast and far-reaching.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Supply Crawlers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Supply crawlers are one of two keys to unlocking the explosive productive powers of your early-game bases (the other key being formers). You see, your formers can terraform terrain squares at a significantly faster clip than your bases can grow, and in not terribly many turns, you will find your starting bases at size 2-3, with 6-7 terraformed squares surrounding them. Unless you do something with those terrain squares, the efforts of your formers will be wasted until the base nearest the terraforming you've been doing grows again! This need not be the case once you get supply crawlers. Simply put, supply crawlers enable you to "harvest" one type of resource from whatever square they're on. Consider the implications of that for a moment, and tie it in with some other things you know about the game already. Nutrients: More food = faster base growth, and if that's your goal, then harvesting food from some rainy squares will see your pool of surplus food growing rapidly, causing your population to spike! (Note, however, that with the ability of most factions to execute a Population Boom with relative ease--and more on that later--focusing on nutrient crawling in the early game is considered by many to be a relatively weak approach to crawlers, but again, it depends on your game...there are specific times when it is necessary or desirable). Minerals: A size one base can support a mineral suite far higher than the 3-4 it starts with before you start getting eco damage, and since you are beginning with nothing at all....having to build the infrastructure in your fledgling bases piece at a time, it can fairly be said that minerals "drive" the early game. With this being the case, one very good use of your early game crawlers would be to enhance each base's mineral outputs up to the point where you start seeing eco-damage (and when you do see eco damage, unless you want to provoke the worms, stop harvesting with one crawler and re-check for eco-damages. When you get it back to zero, you're in the "optimal zone" for mineral production at that base. Energy: Early game techs are cheap in terms of the raw number of research points it takes to reach the next tech. Your HQ base never loses energy to inefficiency, therefore, if you can get crawlers from your HQ base to go out and grab some energy for you, that means more cash and faster research, both of which are good things for you. Exactly what percentage of your crawlers you allocate to the harvesting of which of the various factors of production is a matter of personal preference. There really is no one "right" answer....only that if you're not using crawlers to enhance the outputs of your bases, and your opponent is, don't be surprised if he winds up far ahead of you by the mid game. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Defining your Style -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the early game, survival is the only issue at hand, and there is little to no difference in overall playing style. All factions, regardless of how they will eventually develop have the same basic starting needs, and so initial styles ar quite similar, though expansion paradigms used may bring about some variation, but as the game grinds on, the stylistic differences begin to make themselves apparent, both in terms of technologies pursued, and in terms of build order choices. Whatever style you chose to pursue, the sooner you can begin to play into the strengths of your chosen style, the stronger your game will be. Please do not take the information below as the "final word" on early game beelines. Your style is whatever you wish it to be, and is defined on whatever tech-beeline you happen to prefer. These are mentioned only as a starting place, and because they have been tested repeatedly by me, and I know them to be both powerful and reliable. Nonetheless, they only represent a starting point. Something to get you thinking on the subject, adding, deleting, and changing as you see fit until you come up with an approach that is perfect for your own unique style of play. But as to techs, and my views on the various styles of play: Momentum folks will want to get the "top-end" early game warfare techs as soon as possible. Specifically, the most important things in this type of game are Planetary Networks (probe teams), Doctrine: Mobility (rovers), and Nonlinear Math (Impact). With these three techs, you can put together a fearsome early game force and send it out hunting. Your goal here is to attempt to find one or more enemies to smash before someone discovers Intellectual Integrity, or you'll have a significantly harder time making the attacks work (a perim defense will really mess up your day). For Hybrids, you need at least Applied Physics (banking on the fact that most momentum rover rushes consist of 4-1-2's, giving you a 2:1 advantage with lasers on the counter attack) & High Energy Chemistry for some good early prototypes, paired with Doctrine Flexibility to increase your options, and then toward more infrastructurally-minded techs. Builders, run straight for Industrial Automation, switch to Market as soon as possible, and then move straight for the restriction lifting techs. Nothing else matters but getting to no restrictions with all possible speed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Defining your Focus -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are three factors of production in SMAC/X, and collectively, they produce a total of six economic outputs: The inputs are: Nutrients, Minerals, and Energy, and their corresponding outputs are: Population, Infrastructure, Units, Cash, Research, and Psych. All Empires will have all of these things, of course, but by focusing your empire like a lens down on one of them selectively, and shifting that focus around when appropriate, you can create a situation of unmatched power. How do you go about defining your focus then? Some examples are below: Vel's standard early game focus: Minerals (my personal thanks to the honorable Jimmytrick for showing me the light): The Path to Power: Minerals drive the early game, much as energy drives the late game, and he who can produce the most stuff the fastest will be in the stronger position. To that end, supply crawlers should be a vital component to your strategy, regardless of your style. Consider: Each of your early game, size two and three bases (with an average production of 6-8) can have far greater mineral outputs (upwards of 20) than their population normally would allow and not suffer any eco damage for it. And in the absence of any drawbacks, it makes sense to bulk up each base's mineral production to as high a level as it will support and still not give you any eco-damage. This is very efficient in that, regardless of your playing style, it enables you to do more things more quickly than you would otherwise be able to. In my mind, the early focus on minerals gives me the tools needed to grow into a more advanced focus later (energy), by enabling me to develop an infrastructure with amazing speed. Other focuses: Pravin's Pride: Explosive Growth: So named for the leader of the PK's, cos nobody can "Boom" like Lal. The goal here is to build the minimum infrastructure needed for the execution of a Population Boom, and then blasting your population up to pre-habcomplex limits, building infrastructure with ever-increasing speed as you grow. In this case, crawlers are used for minerals when they are produced, and switched to food crawling on an "as-needed" basis to keep the base growing. This leaves you with a burgeoning population, but lagging infrastructurally, which makes your bases more prone to riots until infrastructure can catch up with the sudden flood of new people. (How-To Note: Executing a Pop-Boom: Pop-Booming is such a powerful tool that if you're not using it and you're opponent is, you have almost no hope of winning against him. In a nutshell, what you're doing is setting up conditions where your base will grow every turn until you either run out of food or reach whatever hab-limit you have, and doing it across your empire is not hard at all. The only thing you really need is some extra food and a +6 Growth rate. The simplest way to get extra food is with a few extra supply crawlers out harvesting. The easiest way to get to +6 Growth is to run Planned/Democracy, and build a Children's Creche at each base, however, the SE restrictions faced by some factions make this an impossibility, and in that case, there's another way to go about it, but it takes a little more work. Golden Ages (bases size 4 or greater) produce both +2 Economy and +2 Growth, and all it takes is Psych Investment. You can do it empire-wide by building Children's Creche's everywhere and running whatever SE settings you can to boost growth, and then allocating enough into your Psych percentage (SE table) to throw all your bases into golden ages, or, you can do it individually by crawling energy to the bases you want or need to grow rapidly, "doping" them into a golden age. Regardless of how you go about it, it's something you should practice till you can do it in your sleep, 'cos nothing's better than 6-10 turns of Booming, followed by a switch back to Market for more cash and tech more quickly than you would have ever thought possible.) Cash Cows: Again, this approach calls for an initial mineral approach, and then an eye toward building cash-enhancing facilities first (Energy Bank, Tree Farm, and Creche), and using your ever-increasing supply of cash to help rush build with greater and greater speed, quickly leaving you in a position of power. Crawlers can be switched out from minerals to energy harvesting in key bases (i.e. – the one you Built the ME in would be a terrific choice for this), which will only further strengthen your cash position, and, when the time is right, you can switch over to some efficient SE setting, slam your labs to 100% and rake in the techs. Perpetual Golden Ages: This approach relies on a balanced mineral/nutrient crawler scheme to create specialists to throw a base into a golden age, and gain the benefits of +1 energy per square, regardless of SE choices, effectively giving you the benefits of Market, with none of the restrictions. It's amazingly powerful, but takes some serious micro-management. Specialist Approach (my humble thanks to Ogie, Daniel, and all the folk at Apolyton who have worked diligently on this approach….it is astonishingly effective!): Actually, this can be an outgrowth of any of the above approaches, as it is impossible to do in the early game. The essence of the strategy involves growing a base to at least size five and using crawlers to feed the populace such that the entire base can be converted to specialists of the best variety available, netting you lab points or cash that are not subject to efficiency drains. I'm quite sure there are a few others, but that covers the major categories. Remember too, that it is quite possible, and in fact, often desirable to have your bases be somewhat specialized. This manifests itself most obviously by local geography. It just makes a certain amount of intuitive sense to use that base you just built beside the borehole cluster to be the one to do the bulk of your prototyping, former and crawler building, cos it can do it so quickly. Likewise, a base surrounded by Nutrient Resource Squares (or in the jungle) would be a fantastic choice for an early game, "All Librarian" base, netting you a huge amount of research, regardless of how far it was from home. Again, the phrase "work with the game, not against it," comes to my mind. Work with and make the most of whatever the map gives you. Build on and improve that relentlessly and you will do well. So, how does one go about deciding on and "defining" a focus? Exactly one supply crawler at a time, and make no mistake about it, it will take time. Time and resources to optimize each base to suit the needs of the style you've selected for yourself. Take that time, get your bases humming like well-oiled parts in the machine that is your empire, and they will not disappoint you. Your goal though, should be to practice honing your game skills to accomplish the flowering of your particular style in the shortest possible timeframe (and more on this in the section on "Creating Comparative Turn Advantage"). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Early Game Secret Projects -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A number of truly powerful Secret Projects become available amazingly early on in the game, and we'll take a brief look at each of them in turn. Evaluate them against your favored strategy and see which of them fit best with your game. When you have a list of projects that are "essential" to your strategy, pursue them with a vengeance in your games! Understand though (especially in MP games) that you might not get all of the projects you'd like, so the important thing here is not to overcommit. That is to say, if there are currently 6 Secret Projects available to you, don't start working on all six at once! If you do, and someone beats you to a project, you are stuck with two options, neither of them very good. You can either opt to change the production in your base, losing half of the accumulated minerals you had built up toward that project, or you can have that base continue to build, with plans to switch over to a new project as soon as you get a tech that grants you one. The problem here though, is if you do that, you effectively tie that base up for a number of turns where no further developmental work can be accomplished at that base....not a good thing at all. So, take your project work in small slices, and try to only start a project when you are reasonably sure you can finish it ahead of everyone else. And now, the projects themselves: The Weather Paradigm (Centauri Ecology): Cuts terraforming times in half, and gives you access to all of the advanced terraforming techniques immediately upon completion. This project will help you enormously no matter what faction you play! The ability to begin construction of Condensers and Boreholes inside the first hundred turns of play is....simply too huge to pass on! No matter what your style or faction of choice, this project should be very high on your list, and in MP games, whomever gets it will be far ahead of every other player in that game from the moment resource restrictions begin to come off. The Human Genome Project (Biogenetics): Another fantastic early game project! Talents are so vital to drone control, and this puts an extra talent at each base. If you favor Domai or Lal, with their fewer drones or higher number of talents, this project alone will enable you to forego the building of drone control facilities almost to the middle game, and if you're playing a drone-sensitive faction like Zak's researchers, the project will go a long way in undoing your chronic drone problems. Other factions will benefit greatly from it as well, though some may want it purely as part of a denial strategy (I'm specifically thinking Yang and Santiago here, who can easily control all their drones via police), still, no matter what the reasonings behind it, the fact is, this is a project that will be quite high on a number of people's lists! The Virtual World (Planetary Networks): Any project that gives you a free facility which would normally require an upkeep cost if you had to actually build the facility it gives is automatically an important project, and even if drone control is not high on your list of concerns, building network nodes probably is, so why not have those net nodes serve two purposes, rather than just one? All in all, this is one of the most powerful early game projects around, both in terms of money saved by not having to build infrastructure, and in terms of control all the way through to the mid-game. The Command Nexus (Doctrine: Loyalty) : Another project that provides free facilities, this too, will be highly sought after by a number of players, regardless of style. Builders will likely spend long periods of time running Wealth, and the presence of this project will enable them to perfectly counter Wealth's singular negative. Also, Builders will want this project badly as part of a denial strategy against Momentum players, forcing the Momentum gang to take the time to build Command Centers if they want those morale upgrades. Momentum and Hybrid folk will also count this as a high priority, for obvious reasons. Their standing forces become 25% more lethal with its completion. More bang for your buck! The Maritime Control Center (Doctrine: Initiative) Comes a bit later in the early game, and is another project that provides free facilities. It's importance is directly tied to two things: What other factions are in the game (if the Pirates are playing, then you need this!), and how important a strong Naval presence is to your game. If Naval power is relatively unimportant to you, then skip this project, but note that whoever builds it will have ships with two (2) extra movement points, making Marine strikes of coastal bases that much harder to spot! The Empath Guild (Centauri Empathy): From a defensive perspective, the most important element of the game is to take what steps you can to ensure that your datalinks are not infiltrated, and this project grants infiltration access to whomever completes it, making it easily one of the most despised projects in the game. I have seen coalitions formed solely on the bases of eliminating the player who builds this project, which speaks volumes about the scope of its power. Build it if at all possible, just to deny anyone else access to it, and, if it appears later that someone will take it from you, don't hesitate to burn the base to the ground to prevent it from falling into enemy hands! It really is that important! The Merchant Exchange (Industrial Base): A good project, but not a great project. For certain factions, it can be a godsend (Yang, Deirdre, and Cha'Dawn especially) but for others, it's almost a waste of time until energy restrictions come off (Example: Morgan: Running wealth gives him +1 energy per square anyway, and with a maximum of 2r pre-restriction lifting, a good portion of the power of the ME will be lost in the early game). Combine that with the fact that its impact is limited to one base, and you have a project which is useful in the early game, extremely useful in the middle game, but non-critical at any point. Planetary Energy Grid (Adaptave Economic Systems): Even if you never plan to stockpile energy at any of your bases, the fact that it gives you a cash enhancing facility for free (no maintenance cost) at every base is an enormous boon. This project is everything that the Merchant Exchange is not, and is much more valuable because of it. The Neural Amplifier (Neural Grafting): Another project that comes later on in the early game, and one of the best defensive projects in the entire game. Essentially, this gives every unit you ever build the equivalent of "Trance" ability, and can be further enhanced by actually building "Trance" units. For Marketeers, this one is highly prized, and for players pursuing a heavy Native strategy, it's equally highly prized as part of a denial strategy. Non-native based Momentum players (and some Hybrids) will generally consider this project of only secondary importance and will seldom pursue it with much vigor. Citizen's Defense Force (Intellectual Integrity): If Perimeter Defenses had an upkeep cost, this project would rank right up there with the others that provided free facilities, but since Perim. Defense works are free (no maintenance cost), the value of this project is somewhat reduced. Still, it does save you time, especially if you have a large number of exposed bases, and so is fairly important, but non-critical, though you might expect a Momentum player to run for it as part of a denial strategy. Planetary Transit System (Industrial Automation): Even if you have no immediate plans to expand, this project is a must have from a denial standpoint! If you don't snag it, someone could quite easily "Borg" their way to dominance! Xenoempathy Dome (Centauri Meditation): Anyone who plans on pursuing a "Native" strategy, or anyone who is completely hemmed in by fungus in the early game really, really, REALLY needs this project, otherwise, skip it for something more essential. Planetary Datalinks (Cyberethics): Seldom even built in MP games, unless it's a free-for all with six players. Good one to deny the AI though. (How-To Note: Rapidly Building Secret Projects: The very best way to rapidly complete a secret project is to have all the bases in the immediate vicinity of the "Project Base" build crawlers and have them start harvesting minerals. In all likelihood, you will begin to run some eco-damage, but don't worry, it won't be for long! Remember that each crawler you have costs you a base of 30 minerals. Remember too, that most of the early game project cost between 200-300 minerals, which means that for a paltry ten crawlers (less than that, in practice), you can complete any of the early game projects! Your goal here is to keep building crawlers at an ever increasing rate until you have enough to send them all to the "Project Base" and finish the project. Alternately, you could simply set your nearby bases to building crawlers and shuffle them into the Project base upon completion, but this is slightly less efficient, although the upshot is that you don't have to worry with eco-damage creating fungal blooms and the potential for worm-rape. Also note that, if you have the cash, you can get significantly more "bang for your buck" by spending some cash to upgrade the crawler to a more expensive variant, because when you cash the crawler in toward the Secret Project, you will get its full mineral value....note however that crawler-upgrading is regarded as a cheat in many circles, so check beforehand t make sure that's acceptable, and if not, just use "regular" crawlers as described above). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Comparative Turn Advantage -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Having already said that you can play the game without paying much attention at all to your economy, the question above is a fair one, and to answer it, I would say this: At the very heart and soul of Empire is the Economy. It supersedes the army, and even technological research and innovation. Do not misunderstand me on this. The production of war materials and research are vitally important to your survival and eventual dominance, but an Empire's ability to produce quantities of either is driven by the force and stability of that Empire's Economy. You must understand that players who use a strictly militaristic focus are playing the game from the previously discussed "Momentum" standpoint. Their key hope is that their program of relentless assault can end the game before some Builder or Hybrid player can build up a strong enough economy to stand against them. Never forget these three facts: 1) Your Economy is the most versatile tool you have. In times of crisis, you can configure it to crank out massive amounts of cash to fund your war effort (or whatever), and in times of peace you can ratchet your research up through the roof. 2) Contrast that to military units, which are actually only useful in three very specific situations: If you are attacked, if you launch an attack, or if you can make your opponent believe you are about to launch an attack (i.e. feint) (see below on creating turn advantage). Otherwise, they simply take up space on the board. They represent a certain amount of "potential energy." That is to say, the potential to cause harm to another Empire or to defend your holdings. 3) Technological advances are likewise "potential energy." By themselves they do nothing for you. You have to actually build something to get anything useful out of them (a new prototype, base facility, secret project....something). Factors of Production on Chiron: You've already been introduced to them, and here they are again, this time, with a slightly different treatment: Nutrients: Enables your population to expand. Minerals: Allows you to build stuff. Energy: Drives your research efforts and puts cash in your pocket. In order to build a healthy economy, attention must be paid to all three. Your economy is driven by the function of the passage of Time acting against the three factors of production listed above. It's like plate tectonics, with time on one side and your productive factors on the other. You can vary your economy's effectiveness versus Time (bigger or smaller "quakes" = speeding up or slowing down) by adjusting your three factors of production. Basic Economic Theory: The basics of Economic Theory are intuitive, but are outlined below: Makin' Big Cities: Maximize Nutrient output over time. Note that without controls on growth (i.e., sufficient mineral production to produce anti-drone facilities), your base will suffer chronic rioting. Makin' Productive Cities: Maximize Mineral output over time. Lets you build stuff very quickly. Too much mineral production leads to eco-damage, which in turn, leads to worm rape....something you don't want to see. ;-) Makin' Bill Gates Cities (Lots of Tech and Cash): Maximize energy output over time. Generates money and research points very quickly, but comes with the ill- effect that it takes a long time to build all the base facilities you need to get to this point (i.e., it will take even longer if you don't balance this with mineral production). Intermediate Economic theory: As I said above, basic management of the factors of productive is intuitive (if you want the base to grow, give them lots of food....how hard is that?), but since it is clear that taking any of the factors of production to their extreme is probably detrimental in some way (to say nothing of the inefficiency it creates), it becomes obvious that some balance needs to be struck. He who has a clearer understanding of when to focus on which of the factors of production will almost always be able to create a stronger economy than he who is content to let the computer make production decisions. Early game Economics: Energy production is basically unimportant in the early game. You are starting from scratch. You have nothing. No infrastructure at all. What you need is a good balance of Nutrients (to grow your population pretty rapidly), and minerals (to build your first, most basic facilities fairly quickly). Only when that has been accomplished should you begin to worry much over energy production or enhancement. For this reason, planting forests is probably the most important early-game terrain enhancing you can do. Due to mineral and energy restrictions, early forests will produce as much as early mines (and mines take 6-8 turns to build). Two forests (which tend to expand on their own), or one mine? You don't have to be a student of economics to see which is more efficient, and efficiency is the name of the game (and this provides something in the way of a specific explanation of the terraforming choices mentioned earlier in this guide). Of course, in the same breath, do not discount the value of mines and boreholes. Your spare formers should be working on both of these terrain enhancements as soon as you are able, planning for the day when the mineral restrictions come off, and enabling you to instantly shift your supply crawlers around to take advantage of new efficiencies brought about by your increasing tech-level. Once you get your most essential base facilities constructed you should probably shift into a more balanced mineral/nutrient mix (still not paying terribly much attention to energy) in order to facilitate population growth, while using your selected "focus" to heighten each base's per turn output of one of the factors of production in particular. Here though, certain base facilities can make this more efficient (don't kick up your nutrient harvesting until you finish your children's creche, otherwise you're just spinning your wheels). Also, monitor your growth constantly as your bases creep up on their maximum size, and adjust your nutrient output accordingly. You don't want any wasted effort if you can help it. Wasted effort and resource is an opportunity for your opponent to close the gap on you and possibly overtake you. Early Game - Facility by Facility: This is to simply give you a different perspective on the infrastructure theme. This list focuses more on which style you have adopted, rather than which faction you are playing, as every faction in the game can be adopted to any of the principle styles of play: Recycling Tanks: High importance for any style, as the Recycling Tanks represents one of only three options for enhancing the productivity of the base square (the other options being: tweaking your SE settings to increase your Economy rating, or increasing your Psych allocation to throw your base into a Golden Age, again, increasing your Economy rating). Note!: The Morganites do very well indeed, with their superior cash position, to rush these first, and if you are a big fan of the faction, you would be well served in trading out your initial former build for the tanks! (Thanks and kudos to Enigma for eloquently making the point!) Energy Bank: High Priority for Builders, Medium for Hybrids, Low for Momentum players. Builders will want this one as it will help with rush building all the other facilities. If I am at peace, my crawlers are in place, and I am not yet able to build Treefarms, this is what I build next. Children's Creche: If you're running Wealth (which hurts Morale), or any SE choice which hurts efficiency, this should be High on your list, otherwise, make it Medium. Any and all Research-Enhancing facility should be high on your list!!! (Believers can get away with making these facilities Medium in priority). Perim Defense: Medium Importance in fringe bases, Low importance in interior bases, but you'll wish you had one if a base without one gets attacked. Command Centers: Hybrid & Momentum Players: The first Command Center is of High Importance. After that, Medium. Builders: Low importance. Naval Yards: Dependent on how large a factor naval superiority plays in your overall plan. If it's not a big part of your game, Low importance. Otherwise, Medium to High, again, depending on how strong a presence your strategy requires you to have. Anti-Drone facilities: Only important if you're having drone problems. And that's about it for the early/midgame (pre treefarm) facilities Mid Game Economics (a look ahead): Energy begins to become important and nutrients become secondary. Even with a purely nutrient focus, your bases will still take a long time to grow, and by the mid-game, you've got other things to worry about (like jacking your tech advances down to four turns or less), so you might as well just accept that it'll be a while before your bases grow, and focus on more immediate and pressing concerns. Pick a strategy, stick with it, and give it time to bear itself out, building what facilities are needed to enhance your overall strategy. (Gaians will probably want Bio-Labs to build better mind worms, Hive will definitely want Robotic Assembly plants, everybody will probably be gunning for Tree Farms). The key to mid-game development is to build on your successes in the early game and enhance them with builds in the mid-game, and increase your energy output as you can. At this point too, facilities which reduce eco-damage are very important, because the last thing you want to run into is a massive worm-rape when you've got your forces pressing hard into enemy territory someplace. One ill-timed attack like that can really set you back. Late Game Economics (a look further ahead): By the late game, it's generally too late to make radical changes to your strategy (which is why the "Future Society" entries on the SE table really cannot be considered when formulating your factional strategy--they come too late in the game for that, and by the time you get them, you already have a pretty good idea what your standing in the game will be....they are more designed to enhance and build on what you've already done). Like the mid-game, your purpose here is to build on your previous successes, but in the late game you get a bigger suite of tools to do this (Future society choices, more exotic facilities, etc.) This brings to light a good point: More often than not, you will win or lose the game based on the choices you make over the first hundred turns or so. You are almost always more effective by focusing on your successes in the early game and building them, using them to launch you toward whichever victory condition is closest at hand....just run like hell for it! (keeping your eye on a second victory condition, just in case somebody bloodies your nose). Advanced Economic Theory: Advanced Economic Theory is all about creating Turn and Resource Advantage. What you will learn below will help you understand how to use your Empire's economy as a weapon against your opponents, and as an incredibly flexible tool for you and your allies, boosting your cash and research abilities to nearly unbelievable heights. Turn Advantage: Building stuff more quickly than your opponents (rush-building). Because your bases can only work on one thing at a time, the quicker you can finish each thing, relative to your opponents, the greater advantage you will gain over them. Resource Advantage: Having more nutrients, minerals, and energy than your opponents. This is primarily done by making intelligent terraforming choices, and optimizing the outputs of the various factors of production for each of your bases, dependent on your current needs and goals. Winning with your Economy: If you want to use your economy as a weapon, then you must do more than intuitively understand the three factors of production, you must master and control them. You must make them sing, and if you do, your economy will hum like you have never seen, and might have never thought possible. The key to using your economy as a weapon is to create a turn (or Time) advantage. The bigger the turn advantage you can create over your opponent, the easier it will be to defeat him. As you begin to take the steps necessary in creating Turn Advantage, you may find yourself wondering if what you are doing is having any impact on the game at large, but trust me, your doubts will be washed away when your Shard Garrisons are defending against his Missile Marines. Then you will understand and fully appreciate what turn advantage has done for you. As previously stated, Time is the engine that powers all the economies of Chiron. It is the catalyst, and the ultimate "limited resource," and he who makes the most efficient use of time will almost always win the game. There are several very specific things you can do to create turn advantage for yourself, and they are outlined below: The essential element of creating Turn Advantage is energy, for it is energy which allows for rush-building, which is the chief way you create turn advantage. The second way you create Turn Advantage is to build new bases. If you have more bases than your opponent, you can accomplish more things more quickly than he. Even if you only have one or two more bases, over time, the difference can be devastating. Expansion and Rush-building. Those are your tools. The first, best thing you can do for yourself is to always, always, always rush- build your formers and Recycling Tanks (unless you're already cranking them out in one turn, of course). The reason for this is as simple as it is elegant: The game is about resource management. Because of that, Formers are the most important units in the game. They can turn a completely average land square into an amazingly productive piece of property, which in turn gives you more resources to work with. In the case of Recycling Tanks, consider what you are doing: Essentially you are turning your base into a "Former" for the duration of the build time of the Tanks, and the end result in a +1/+1/+1 enhancement to the base terrain square. Let us say, for sake of comparison that you and a computer opponent have both just founded a base with exactly the same amount of productive capacity (built on the same kind of land, and working the same kind of land). The square your citizens are working is currently generating 1-1(food/mineral). It will take you both 5 turns (about the average for a size 1 base) to build the former you're working on, but you have the cash to rush-build it, so you do. Watch what happens: (How-To Note: Creating Turn Advantage: Turn 1- You issue the rush-build order. Opponent starts building his former. Turn 2 - You move your former into position, and start working on your Recycling Tanks (20 turns to build). Opponent gets his former in four turns. Turn 3- Former begins to cultivate a forest (3 to go). Rec. Tanks in 19. Opponent gets former in three turns. Turn 4 - Former continues forestry mission (2 to go). Rec Tanks in 18. Opponent former in 2. Turn 5 - Former continues forming (1 to go). Rec Tanks in 17. Opponent former next turn. Turn 6 - Former is done! You get +1 Mineral and +1 energy from that square. Rec. Tanks is now to be completed in 12 turns! Opponent moves former into position and begins constructing Rec. Tanks (in 20 turns) Turn 7 - Your former moves again - RT in 11 - Opponent forest in 3 turns. RT in 19 Turn 8 - Forest #2 in 3 turns - RT in 10 - Opponent forest in 2. RT in 19 Turn 9 - Forest #2 in 2 turns - RT in 9 - Opponent forest in 1. RT in 18 Turn 10 - Forest #2 in 1 turn - RT in 8 - Opponent forest done! RT in 12 Turn 11 - Forest #2 done! - RT in 6 (rush build for 60) - Opponent moves former - RT in 11 Turn 12 - You get +1/+1/+1 for the tanks. Your former moves again - Begin work on Rec. Commons. - Opponent starts work on 2nd forest square (RT in 10) ) Okay, let's take a look at what just happened here: You spent 25 energy credits (the average cost of rush building a former from a new base), and later spent another 60 to finish your recycling tanks early. Effectively, you used cash (85 energy credits, in this example) to speed up your economy relative to your opponent's, and here's what you got for your money: You created a four turn former advantage over your opponent (you got four free turns of former activity that your opponent did not get, which translates into +4 minerals and +4 Energy) You created a total of 10 turns of base turn advantage, netting you +10 Nutrients/+10 Minerals/+10 Energy over your opponent. For a grand total of +14 energy/+10 Nutrients/+14 Energy. That's only a total of 38 (valuing them all at the same rate for simplicity), and you spent 85, so you may be wondering where the advantage is in that, but if you are looking at it in that way, you are missing the point. It's called Turn Advantage because it give you extra turns of production at the base in question. Turns that your opponent's base does not get. This is a good thing for you (assuming you are able to leverage that turn advantage to do something to further the ends of your own empire or something nasty to the detriment of your opponent) and correspondingly bad for your foe. The mineral, nutrient, and energy savings are only a bonus, the primary advantage is that your base is now freed up to begin work on other things, and his base is and will be tied up for next ten turns cranking out the stuff you're already done with. And how much did this wind up costing you? Again, valuing all the factors of production equally: You spent 85 credits, got 38 back, which means that your net cost for the turn advantage was 46, or 4.6 (round to 5) energy credits per turn's worth of advantage you got. If 5 bucks a turn isn't a bargain, I don't know what is. Now that you have a ten turn base advantage, the question is: What are you going to do with it? There are a number of directions you could take your advantage, in order to magnify it: 1) Research - Begin working on a network node or somesuch, and rush-build when it gets cheap enough for your liking. Every turn you have a network node and your opponent, that's x number of research points you get over and above your opponent. 2) Cash - Do the above with an energy bank to magnify your cash advantage over your opponent. 3) Control - If your base is verging on growing to a point where Drones will be a problem, you can head that off by rush-building an anti-drone facility thus keeping your base more productive relative to your opponent's base. 4) Turn - If you want to magnify your raw turn advantage, rather than focus in on some specific factor in your economy, you can do that by forcing your opponent to change his mind about what he is doing (and by forcing him to change his mind, he may lose minerals, and in any case will be slowed down) Going back to our previous example: You finished your Recycling Tanks a full ten turns earlier than your opponent, and after taking a look at your options, you decide that it's in your best interest to build a couple of those spiffy impact rovers you finished prototyping not long ago. Each will take you four turns to crank out, so you set about doing it. By the time your first one is done, your opponent is six turns from finishing his rec. Tanks and you decide to see if you can spook him, so your rover drives over toward his base. Now the ball is in your opponent's court: If his base is lightly defended, he just might switch his production to a Plasma Rover or Infantry garrison of his own. If he does, then you've just magnified your turn advantage over him, because he probably lost a few minerals to make the switch, and besides that, when he does get back to building his Recycling Tanks, he'll be starting from scratch, and in the meantime your base is getting +1/+1/+1 over his base every turn. That is how you use your economy as a weapon. You never attacked him. Your troops never drew or fired. There was no loss of life. No battle. But you just won an important victory. The lesson learned here: A given base can only work on one thing at a time. The primary way to create turn advantage over your opponent is to rush-build things, especially formers (so they can start improving your land more quickly) and base facilities which will provide you with a calculable benefit (i.e., you can say to yourself: If I finish this quickly, it will allow my base to begin working on something else, and net me +4 energy (or whatever) per turn). Once you have a turn advantage, the you can magnify it by either running through another rushed facility (furthering your control, energy, or research edge relative to your opponent), or to throw your opponent off balance via feint (if you actually attack then it becomes a skirmish, a separate issue from the Economic Turn Advantage). You can do this by creating a military unit and sending it toward one of his bases or otherwise "bluffing" him into thinking that you are doing something he will not like. Depending on his situation, he may abandon his current project in order to respond to your perceived threat. You might not yet be convinced that turn advantage is all that big a deal. After all, the gain in energy, minerals, and nutrients is relatively small, and if you don't have anything in particular you need to work on next, you may not believe turn advantage is all that important, and if that's the case, I'll volunteer to play you absolutely anytime you want! Seriously, if you multiply your turn advantage energy/mineral/nutrient gain out over the total number of bases you have, the numbers begin to look more impressive, and if you multiply the number of "free" turns you gain in this way out over the number of bases you're doing this in, you'll quickly realize that you now have a large "window" of opportunity you can exploit in any number of ways, with your opponent being unable to respond (or, as mentioned above, if he does respond, then it will be at the expense of the projects he is currently working on, which will further enhance your turn advantage), and suddenly the benefits of turn advantage begin to crystallize. Practice, practice, practice: The fastest way to get better at the whole "Turn Advantage" concept is to put this article down and go play a Hotseat game against yourself. Study the time differences in various approaches. You will very quickly get better at determining exactly when to execute the rush order, and how to customize the general principles to your particular style of play. The whole really is greater than the sum of its parts, and your personal style, no matter what it is, has its own unique set of strengths and weaknesses, and when properly meshed with the principles you've read about in here, it will create for you a stronger, better playing style. Resource Advantage: Terraforming is essentially a game within a game, and can be as simple or as complex as you'd care to make it. I will not devote much time to this subject, because there are too many variables and too many differing opinions on what to do and how to do it when it comes to terraforming, so I will simply say this: Find a set of "rules of thumb" that work for you, and stick with them until such time as someone comes along who is capable of proving to you that they have a better way. Rules of thumb that I use in my games: Rocky terrain: If not on a slope, and inside a base's production radius, make a borehole, if anything else, make it a mine and send a crawler to the site as soon as feasible. Forests are a good source of minerals, and a good terraforming option in general: True, they don't net you as much as a mine once restrictions come off, but on the other hand, they give you both nutrients and energy, making forest squares very well balanced. Add to that the fact that they are eco-friendly and expand on their own, and they're almost always a good choice in my book. Sea bases = Rapid growth and lots of energy. If you're looking to boost your research, expand into the sea and build LOTS of tidal harnesses. You will be pleasantly surprised at how much your energy production spikes up. Minimize your use of mining stations for sea colonies. A better choice is to supply crawl your minerals from a mainland borehole, and focus your sea squares on energy and food production. At elevations of 3000 meters or so, solar panels become VERY good energy producers. If you don't have any land like that, and if you've got some spare formers and cash, raise your land! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Getting Ready for the Bad Guys -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As mentioned previously, the early game era is defined at the upper end by missile techs, with the bulk of these turns being played out with Laser and Impact weapons dominating the stage. Defensively, we see a great many scout patrols, and some distribution (fairly even, actually) of Synthmetal and Plasma troopers. About the only "other" factors to consider with regards to early game combat are: Morale differences, the presence or absence of sensors and monoliths in the area local to the battlefield, perimeter defenses, altitude, and terrain. All of these things will be discussed in turn, and in time. For the moment, however, consider the implications of the military. Your military represents a significant mineral investment which amounts to potential energy. By itself, the military does nothing at all, except soak up resources, in the form of ever-spiraling support costs (or, if you're playing a faction with a support bonus, the cost is expressed in terms of the number of turns NOT spend building additional bases of infrastructure). Keep building up units, and eventually, you will paralyze your empire. This is not to say that a military presence is unimportant, merely to point out that the army's usefulness is limited to three specific circumstances: 1) To cause harm to an enemy and his infrastructure. 2) To prevent an enemy from doing the same to you and yours. 3) To disrupt an enemy's plans. Beyond the ability to do those three things, combat units are just taking up space on the board, and until you have occasion to use them, they are costing you a premium in both resources and time. The fastest way to ensure that your troops pay for themselves is to go beat up on somebody. Oftentimes, your attack forces will pay for themselves with the very first unit they destroy, but this alone is not sufficient reason to go to war. After all, SMAC is a relatively poor war game, lacking in some of the most fundamental elements that have been mainstays of wargame in the past (things like increasing support costs due to distance, unit facing and varying levels of fatigue and fortification, an unrealistic maintenance and support scheme, and the absence of a whole host of other elements make SMAC an average war game, at best). It is, however, an excellent Empire Building game, and war is a part of that process, so if you're at all serious about the game, then you had better spend some time thinking about war and the eventuality that you will be involved in one (and probably more than one). To that end, the sections that follow will get you ready to deal diplomatically where possible, and if not, to fight offensively or defensively, AI or Human, depending on what you find yourself up against in a game. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Single Player Diplomacy -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Builders desire peace. I focus specifically on Builders here (and to a lesser extent, on Hybrids), because for Momentum players, the only real diplomatic option that matters is a submissive pact, and while useful, there's not much to be said about that, so, suffice it to say that Builders (and Hybrids) desire peace. The AI desires war. In almost every single player game you play, you will find yourself at odds with every faction at least once. The reason for this is simple: The factions were designed around a set of strong and conflicting ideologies. The number seven was not chosen at random, I do not believe. Five is regarded as optimal group size, but seven is optimal for game theory purposes, and the factions (their ideologies defined by a total of three major variables - Politics, Values, Economy) interact with each other to set up a matrix, where you cannot help but be diametric to at least two other factions at any point in the game. To illustrate that point, let's take a quick look under the hood at each of the factions to see what makes them tick. Of course, you WILL run games where you see behavior that runs counter to this (I assume there is a measure of variability built into the parameters which govern the actions of the various computer controlled groups), but this is an excellent overview of the norm: The Believers: Are pre-disposed to run Fundy. Any faction they meet who does not run Fundy will get the old "Your (insert government type here) is Godless and wretched..." message, and she'll be belligerent toward you more often than not. Also, the group is not allowed to take Knowledge as a value, so any group running knowledge will be automatically viewed with suspicion. In fact, the only way to truly get on her good side is to run Fundy yourself, which will, by the way, put you at odds with every other faction in the game. The Hive: Pre-disposed to run Police State (Go figure), and only has one diametric, but it's a kicker....Democracy.....probably the most popular choice among the builder crowd. Run Democracy, and there's simply no avoiding making this faction mad. The only real way to get on this faction's good side is to put yourself in a Police State, and even then, I'd not trust Yang any farther than I could throw the Unity Core..... The Spartans: Pre-disposed toward Power. Aversion to Wealth and Knowledge. If you run either of these, she won't get along well with you. Wealth, and she'll regard you as weak, Knowledge and she'll say you're "cooking up" some dark and evil secret in your labs. If you run Power as a social choice, this lady will respect you almost as a matter of course. Morgan: Run Green or Planned, he's a jerk. Run Market (which he's pre-disposed to in the game), he's a happy camper. Frankly, he could care less if you're a Police state or a Democracy....and of all the faction leaders, he's least upset by Fundy (other than Miriam of course). Lal: He'll be VERY uncooperative if you're a police state or Fundy, and tend to get along with you if you're running Democracy (and that is, unsurprisingly, what he is pre-disposed to). Zak: Run Knowledge, you get brownie points, run wealth, you lose them with this character. Deirdre: Predisposed toward Green. Run Green as well, and she'll play nice. Run Market or Planned, and she will despise you. Cha'Dawn: Not surprisingly, he's(?) pre-disposed to Green, per Deirdre. Be nice to planet, he'll love you, but run Wealth (and to a lesser extent Market or Planned), and he'll go ape. Aki-Zeta: Generally a pretty easy AI to get along with. Avoid Fundy, and she seems more-or-less okay. Run knowledge, and you get extra points! Roze: As an anarchist, she's not much into police or power. Run either of those and she'll have a fit! Run a Democracy and you'll soothe her feathers. Domai: Doesn't care for Knowledge or Green, but he seems okay with about anything else. Svensgaard: Much like Santiago. He'll love you for power, get ticked at Wealth and Knowledge. H'minee: No particular aversions, but if you're human or Marr, she'll get in your face....oh wait, that amounts to everybody! Marr: Aversion is Democracy, but if you're human or H'minee, he'll...oh, I already used that line....::chuckle:: So, when the game begins, those factors (everyone's SE settings in relation to everyone else's) make up one of the key components in determining how everybody gets along with everybody else. Another key component is strength of arms, relative to the other factions. The gist of the game is this. In general, the #2 guy and #1 guy are designed NOT to get along. #3 guy plays 1 & 2 against each other, and 4-7 go on a hunt for allies of convenience, essentially forming "blocks" of nations around the two strongest. Of course, alliances will not be made (or at least not kept for very long) with factions who are at odds with the faction's core ideology, which complicates this picture somewhat. And then there is the factor of past treatment. If you have dealt fairly and non-threateningly with the faction in question in the past, even if you are at odds with them ideologically, you can eek out at least a few brownie points. So.....if all of that has you COMPLETELY bewildered, let me summarize briefly. The AI's "Diplomacy engine" seems to be built around three main factors: First, a set of tensions created by the interactions of social choices on the SE table. Second, a comparison of strength, relative to the faction(s) they are contacting, and third, small consideration for how they have been treated in the past (also, there is a random element tossed into the mix, representing their "mood") In the early game, when you are encountering a faction for the first time, likely they will be pretty friendly because you don't have the techs to make any SE choices they would object to. Take advantage of this, and make treaties early with people you know you will eventually have SE conflicts with! At least you can buy yourself some time with them and get some commerce income from them. Note too, that every contact you make with a faction adds to this "web" which is spun out as the game develops....every interaction colors all future interactions....I don't have a specific formula on this, but it's undoubtedly "point-based" (i.e.., if your "rating" with a given faction falls below X number of points, then the group will declare war....running an SE choice they're in favor of nets you so many points, running one they're opposed to causes you to lose a certain number, violating their borders probably has an impact, etc..) At any rate, those are the basics of the AI's Diplomacy Engine as I understand it. Precisely how you use the information will depend on your playing style and the situation of the moment, but here are a handful of things to get you thinking in terms the AI's Diplo-Engine: 1) Before you talk to a given faction (assuming you are initiating contact), take a look at your SE settings and then consider then in relation to the other faction's defaults, and do a mental comparison of your overall power in relation to theirs. These two items will give you a pretty good image of what the conversation will be like before you even accept the call. 2) Certain factions respond better to certain inducements. An outline of this is below, but note that you might be called out to back up a threat you make, so use this list as a guide only….if Yang is a gazillion times bigger than you, don't threaten to crush him like a bug! Yang – Threats Santiago – Threats Lal – Good will and friendship Morgan - "Name your price" Gaians – Good will and friendship Miriam – Technology (surprisingly?) Zak – Technology (not surprisingly) Cha'Dawn - Threats Aki-Zeta - Technology Roze - Technology or "Name your price" Domai - Technology or Threats Svensgaard - "Name your price" Aliens - Technology 3) Take care not to contact factions too often. Even if you're pacted, this seems to strain the relationship. In game terms, this mostly means navigating around AI units you see in the field. Unless you're at war with a faction, if you see a unit of theirs coming, steer well clear. 4) Don't ignore a faction when the call you unless you are MUCH more powerful than they are….this seems to reeeeeeally tick them off. 5) If a faction you have something in common with offers you a pact against a faction you know you are at odds with presently, or will be in the future, think very carefully about accepting it. That is an attractive offer, and difficult to pass on, especially if you play Builder style. Consider: If you're playing Builder, you're most natural allies in the game will be Morgan, Zak, or Lal….all three pretty good builders themselves. An early-game pact with them against, say, Yang, could be the start of a relationship that will last you for a good long while….perhaps not the entire game, but certainly long enough to be profitable. When the Heathens Come Calling: Generally, they'll want to trade technology, and so long as they tech they're asking for is not one of the key ones (air power, fusion, enviro econ) go for it….that's one less tech you have to mess with researching, and chances are good that you can make better use of the technology than your computer opponents. Whether you give in to any other demands they make will depend mostly on your situation at the moment, but, in general, until I am secure in my defense, I will give in to any reasonable demand. Violating Borders: A VERY common complaint where the AI factions are concerned is the fact that they love to send units trolling around in your territory. Sadly, there is no good way to deal with this, unless the faction owning the units is an ally. In that case, demanding a withdrawal will work about 85% of the time. If the faction in question has a truce with you and you demand a withdrawal, unless you are overwhelmingly more powerful, you will wind up in a Vendetta with that faction. About the only other alternative is to use probe teams to secretly buy the units off (waiting til a period of sunspot activity will ensure that you won't get caught!), but, depending on the point in the game, and the effectiveness of your probe teams, that is not even close to being a perfect solution. The Diplomatic Meta-Game: Much more development needs to be done in this area, because, at present it is too easy to take undue advantage of the AI, and I suspect that this is the reason not much work has been done in this area from a strategic standpoint, but, if there is one area that would add an entirely new dimension to the game, then this is it. As it stands now, you can have quite a bit of fun playing the Meta-Game without doing anything that would be considered a "cheat," and it is certainly well worth practicing, as there will come a day when the AI will be good enough to make this aspect a true challenge….might as well practice while you can…. To play the Meta-Game, essentially you set yourself up as a "bridge faction," sharing a thing in common with two other factions, and brokering a long lasting peace or three-way pact between you and these other two. It takes a bit of practice, but consider this: Let's say you're playing Lal and you want to practice your metagame. Your natural allies are Morgan and Zak, so you switch to Dem/Market/Knowledge……which ticks Santiago and Deirdre off at you, and both eventually wind up declaring war. You've traded with Morgan in the past, so when you come calling again with a pact offer after the war starts, offering some cash as an inducement, he will more than likely agree to your proposal. Jointly, you and Morgan start pounding on Santiago and Deirdre, and eventually fight them to a truce. Using this newfound strength as leverage, and offering some particularly juicy tech trades should put you in good shape to wrangle a pact out of Zak…..now the trick is to play the instrument of diplomacy long enough to KEEP your pact brothers to the end of the game….. Unethical Stuff: Here are a couple things that many, if not most people regard as taking unfair advantage of the AI or of the game mechanics in general. Fun stuff to play around with, but don't be surprised if you get called on the carpet for doing it in a Multiplayer game: Trading a cheese-ball size one base of yours to your pact sister's size 14 base with nine secret projects…..and the AI falls for this every time. You can pact/trade your way to the best bases in the game in VERY short order if you do this…..of course, it's not a terribly challenging way to play, but it's amusing enough to sit through once or twice…. Switching your SE settings just before you talk to the AI (to gain a few extra "brownie points,") and then getting a refund on your money by switching back the same turn. Has the advantage of making it pretty easy to net good treaties for yourself, but again, in Multiplayer, don't be surprised if people cry foul. Ethical (?) Stuff (at least from a game standpoint!): Here's a couple of interesting ways to make use of the Metagame that you might not have thought of…..just a teaser to get your brain churning on the subject….and besides, I don't wanna give away ALL my secrets! Instigating controlled wars: The setup works like this: Let's say your target is Yang. Make a pact with….whomever….somebody Yang would likely have a beef with (Lal's a good choice, thanks to his democracy), and then, in your contacts with Lal, urge him to begin attacking Yang….offering money, some limited techs, or whathaveyou. The idea is to get Yang's forces off balance fighting Lal, and give yourself an umbrella of time in which to build your own army up in, and then strike him from some new and unexpected direction when you are ready. Doom to the trusting: This is a fun way to play, and it gets exponentially harder after your first betrayal. Basically, it is the controlled war theory in reverse. You WANT a wicked reputation by game end. Make friends with whomever you wish to destroy. Pact with them (even if it means running SE settings you don't like for a while), lead them into dangerous waters (i.e.., get them to start a fight with one of your supposed enemies), and when they begin the attack in earnest, play the role of the turncoat, switch your SE settings to mirror the faction your former ally is fighting and offer to help…..now you've got him wedged…..doom. Worm Rape/Rescue: Make a ton of worms and turn them loose in a rival's territory, and contact him after he loses a base or three to the relentless assault. If you've got a truce with the faction (and esp. if they are fighting somebody else), you'll be amazed at how much nicer they are! Worm Rape/Attack: A good pre-cursor to a war effort (and a strategy drawn directly from one of the SP movies, by the way!). You want to fight somebody, but you don't want to make the first move. Build your army and have it waiting in the wings for the opportunity, and once your force is ready, amuse yourself by raising, sending in, and freeing wave after wave of wild worms……a good way to fight an attrition battle while preserving your "standing" force….and an especially good delaying tactic/holding pattern. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Multi- player Diplomacy -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The sky is, quite literally the limit here, and there is no way that one single document can tell you what to expect, so I'll not even make the attempt. What I will say is this: The two primary types of games you'll see in an MP game are "Pre-Selected Teams" and "Free-For-Alls." In pre-selected teams, there's not as much truly intriguing diplomacy, because the pacts are set at game start, and it's an "us-against- them" game from turn one. In Free-For-All games though, there's no telling what you'll find. You may get an early alliance with a faction that, in a single player game, would NEVER ally with you, and that alliance might be fruitful for the entire course of the game, however, human opponents are wily, and you must always be on your guard against treachery. If you display weakness (or even perceived weakness) in the face of a human opponent in an MP game, you're just asking for trouble. Diplomatic actions tend to be just as fluid in MP games as they are in SP, but they are not bounded by anything other than the skills and wants of the participants in a game. I've played games where I was given techs as an incentive simply NOT to get involved in a conflict. Sometimes, I kept my word....sometimes not. I've made force total agreements, settlement direction pacts (agreeing NOT to colonize in a certain direction or on a certain area of map coordinates in exchange for the same consideration). Literally, anything you can imagine can be put on the table and an agreement crafted around it, but again, always remember that your ability to make such agreements "stick" is directly proportional to the number of guns your opponent believes you can bring to bear on the situation if the agreement is not kept. Essentially then, the art of MP diplomacy is the art of illusion. It does not matter what the true state of affairs is, and that is a commonly held viewpoint of people new to the MP environment (myself included). The only thing that matters is what the players in the game BELIEVE the situation to be. If you are weak, but project strength (and, in the absence of infiltration, no one calls you on it), then you will be treated as though you are strong. On the other hand, if you are strong, but the perception is that you are ineffective at projecting your power, that strength may not hold much water. To that end, it falls to you to practice exuding an aura of strength at all times (unless--and there are cases when this is desirable!--it plays into your plans to feign weakness toward some specific purpose). The essence of diplomatic relations in MP are simply these elements: 1) Make your opponents believe you are dealing from a position of strength (even if it's not true) 2) Find out what your rivals want, and find ways of giving it to them....for a price, of course. 3) Determine how important your rivals hold their desires. The more important they consider them to their overall plans, the higher premium you can charge to meet those desires. 4) Goodwill goes far. On occasion (but not so often that it begins to degrade your position), it is desirable to simply give some small boon to a potential ally. They will not forget. 5) Diplomacy is about human interaction. If you've got a reputation as a backstabber, like it or not, memories last longer than a single game, and you may find yourself stacking the deck against you in later games by running roughshod over allies in the game you're currently involved in. Metagame notes for MP Games: MP Diplomacy is dynamic, and much of the wheeling and dealing will likely take place outside the gaming environment, generally in e-mail exchanges between parties that have met on the map, and are therefore allowed to communicate freely under game rules. Often, if three or more parties are involved in negotiations, you may find yourself being invited to a chat room (or ICQ-ing) someplace to hammer out some type of collaborative plan or agreement. If and when this occurs, it is always a good idea to agree beforehand to log the meeting, so that everyone has a record of what was said and what was agreed to....saves arguments later. Plus, if you see someone violating some part of the agreement, you can take action against them! There is no way anyone can "teach you" the Metagame....it's more a feeling. You can talk around the subject, but it never seems to cut to the core. The best way to learn it is to simply immerse yourself in the stream and feel the currents of the game flowing over you. Instead of merely listening to what is being said at such meetings, try to read between the lines. See what's not being said. Determine WHY certain things are being said. Discern the reasons that certain parties want certain things. Do that, and you will be in a much stronger position in the game, able to predict what your rivals may do when suddenly denied that which they have worked hard for, or how much they might be willing to give you in exchange for meeting their desires. Good luck, and I'll see you in the truce tent! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Primer on Combat -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Mechanics of Battle: Before we move into more advanced combat discussion, it is important that you have an intimate understanding of the forces and factors involved in determining your success or failure in battle. A quick look at the tech tree quickly reveals a 2:1 ratio of attack to defense favors, favoring the attacker across the board, making the prospect of fighting a defensive based war appear daunting indeed, but those numbers by themselves do not tell the whole story, and there are any number of ways you can help even things out. Read this section closely and consider how to tie these concepts into your overall game, and then pour over the notes on the various early game military units. Even if you're the most pacifistic of Builders, the fact of the matter is that you need to spend some serious time in the Design Workshop to get familiar with your options, and with what you'll likely be facing. The two principles you need to be focusing on here are: Know Thyself, And Know Thine Enemy Two phrases you've undoubtedly heard before, but here's what is meant and implied by them: Know Thyself: What is it that you wish to accomplish, either offensively or defensively? What are your real goals? If you can't answer the question, don't even attempt an attack or a defense, because your efforts will lack direction and focus, and you will be easily defeated. Make a list of specific goals, and plan your attack/defense strategies to meet them. (Example: I know my opponent is using a Rover-Heavy force, so I want all of my frontier bases to have no less than 3 ECM garrisons, and I'd like to have blocking units set up to stall his advance for at least two turns, until I can assess the size of the force and respond accordingly). You see how much more informative that answer is than a generic: "I want to defend all bases."? That's the kind of thinking you need to be doing. (Attack Example: My opponent has built a string of three coastal bases on the eastern side of his continent, giving me easy approach to them. Infiltration reports reveal that each base has three best/best garrisons and two probes. I have four cruiser transports at the ready, and now must focus on building Missile Marines to launch an assault, with an eye toward capturing all three on the same turn). Know Thine Enemy: What does he want? Why does he think you are a good target to attack? If you can answer those questions, you may be able to change his mind. What kind of force is he using? Can I design a defensive counter to that? If so, what will it take in terms of mineral investment? Again, those are the kinds of questions that win games. The Multiplicative Value of Bases: While it's true that weapon strengths (given comparable tech levels) are twice as good as armor strengths, the existence of the base itself, and enhancements built at the base go a long way in evening the score. The most fearsome weapon of the early game is the Impact Rover. Armed with nerve gas pods, this little attacker packs a major punch for minimal investment (baseline value = 6, as much as 8 if the Rover in question is an Elite....that's impressive indeed). Defensively, you have High Energy Chemistry, giving you Plasma Armor, with a defense factor of 3 (baseline). Your base itself provides you an inherent 25% defensive bonus, and if you've built your base on a sensor array, that gives you an additional 25% bonus that your opponent can't do anything about. The presence of an ECM garrison in your bases will give you another 50% bonus vs. his elite attack rover, and a perimeter defense will grant you yet another 100% bonus, for a total of 250% (before the morale of your defender is taken into account), turning your 3-defense plasma garrison into a 7.5. Figuring at least disciplined troops, and you are at par with a nerve gas, elite attack rover (something your opponent likely will not have an abundant supply of). Thus, if your opponent attacks you with anything less than an elite X-Impact rover in a properly defended base, he has little chance of trading blows with you, 1:1 (it will take at least two attack rovers to kill one of your garrisons). Now, if you arrange to have advance warning that your opponent is approaching, you can upgrade your 3-4 probe teams to Plasma (and possibly ECM) variants to augment your garrison at the base threatened, and be sitting in a very strong defensive position. Note here, that outside the base, your Plasma garrisons don't stand much of a chance, as even optimal placement will still not provide them with sufficient defense to survive an attack from such a unit. Even if you force your opponent to attack from a lower altitude (+12.5% for you), sit on rocky or forested terrain (+50%), within three spaces of your sensor (+25%), and again, arm the garrison with ECM (+50%), and assume at least hardened (+12.5%) morale, giving you a total of 150% in bonuses) the defending unit won't really stand a chance against an X-Impact rover, as his attack factor will remain unchanged at 8, while the best you can hope for is a total modifier of 150% (giving you 4.5) In that case, the rover will be at about half strength, and unable to move again, which, best case, will at least enable you to subvert the unit, and it will stall the enemy's advance toward your base itself. The lesson here: Do not expect that you will win many defensive engagements with your opponent if he catches your units outside their base. You won't. What you will do though, is stall your opponent's advance and weaken his forces before they can even reach your base, buying you time to ready further defenses, and remember, time is very much on your side. An early game "large" attack force will usually not contain more than ten or twelve units, counting artillery support and probes, and if, by sacrificing a few well-placed field units, you can stall the advance of his attack group, you buy yourself time to move spare garrisons to the embattled base, armor unarmored defenders (canaries with teeth), and ready additional probe teams. Another thing to keep in mind is that your opponent is not the only one who can take advantage of attack strengths, and in almost all cases, your opponent's attack force will be lightly armored or totally unarmored, meaning that if you can but hold the base for a single turn against his attack, you will have a chance to counter-punch, knocking out his weakened defenders, (except for the last one, which, if you have the energy, you can subvert), and in that way, very quickly be rid of the attacker's army. Note too, that you have one very important advantage on defense, and that is, if your opponent kills a garrison, the other garrisons in the base take no collateral damage. Most often, your opponent's attack force will be in a single square and stacked (usually on a road), so when you start hitting back, every unit you kill will damage all the others in the stack, and, since your opponent is on your turf, about the only advantages he will have will be terrain ones, which won't help much if his attack force has no armor. In later sections, you will find more information on stalling your enemy's advance through your empire, buying time, and counter-punching for maximum effect. For now, it is enough to get your mind turning on the principles of battle itself. The mathematics that drive it, and to know that, as a defender, your lot is not as hopeless as it might initially seem. Just remember that the more turns you can stall the attacker's advance and hold onto your embattled base, the less likely your opponent will be to take it at all. Each turn tips the scales further in your favor, so if you're fighting defensively, it behooves you to become a master at delaying tactics. If your opponent uses Infantry to assault your base, he'll get an additional 25% bonus on the attack, but such attacks are harder to set up. Unless the units are elites, he'll have to either park just outside your base for a turn (giving you the opportunity to strike first), or begin the attack from one square away (meaning that he'll be at a 33% disadvantage, which more than compensates for the 25% bonus he got by using infantry in the first place). Either way, infantry attackers are easier to deal with than rovers (which can begin from three squares out, and still hit for full strength), though you do lose your ECM bonus if fighting an infantry based force. If you have probes in your bases (and you'd better), then you will also want to have at least one unit of Artillery at each base (preferably on a rover chassis, to enable you to move them around easily), since one of the most common ways of weakening enemy probe teams is via shelling in advance of the probe attack. With an artillery unit standing by, the shelling never occurs, and the two "field guns" simply duel each other, which again, buys you time. When planning your defense, serious thought needs to be given to your standard base layout. If your bases are five squares apart (optimally spaced), then you will want to utilize a "Rover-Defense" model, enabling your spare garrisons to move from base to base in a single turn. Infantry Defense is impractical with your bases so far apart, as your forces will be vulnerable for the turn they spend between the bases, and, you will not be able to reinforce an embattled base in a single turn. With bases spaced three (or less) apart, your defensive options increase (in addition to becoming easier), and you will be able to use a mix of Infantry and Rover garrisons, which in turn, will enable you to get anywhere from 4-6 additional defenders at a battle site in a single turn. This, combined with the presence of the previously mentioned "canaries with teeth" will most often more than match your opponent's attack force, making it difficult, if not impossible for the attack to succeed. Turning the Tables: Looking at things from the attacker's point of view: Before you launched the attack, it is assumed that you successfully infiltrated the enemy's datalinks, and therefore, know what you are getting into, and since that is the case, it makes sense to assume that you have designed your attack force accordingly (taking into account the possibility of additional defenders being built during the time it takes for your attack force to arrive at the base you have targeted for capture or destruction, and before you commit your troops to battle, it is always wise to take another look to see what your opponent has waiting for you. As the attacker, your very best friend though, is the element of surprise. Knowing that your troops have no ready way to receive reinforcements, and knowing too, that your initial attack force will likely be dead long before said reinforcements could arrive anyway, your goal is to establish a stronghold quickly (i.e. - in a single turn) and to hit your opponent totally unaware, therefore, it is paramount that you keep a close eye on the base you have selected as your target, and watch for changes. If you don't think you can take the base with your current force, hole them up somewhere and build additional troops to add to the attack force before starting the attack run and giving away your intent. Better still, send a smaller, secondary attack force to make a demonstration against some other part of the empire, or subvert a small base on the opposite side of the empire in an attempt to divert your enemy's attention away from your true objective, and when his attention is diverted, drive in fast and hard, and take the base before the defender has time to do any of that fancy defensive footwork. If you have a few units with left over moves, and if your goal is to hold the base, then send one or more of them out in the direction that the expected counterstrike will come from to stall the advance of the counter-strike force and give you time to rest your units and build more. If it doesn't look like you can hold the base, then sell off the most expensive facility your opponent has there, and burn the base to the ground, then withdraw your force to a less accessible part of the continent. You're still a threat, in the sense that you're on your opponent's soil with significant force, and that alone will likely throw him off balance (in addition to the fact that you've already "won" in the sense that you have denied him one of his production centers). Over time, such attacks will give your opponent a "death by a thousand cuts." No single victory is decisive, but over time, you will steadily whittle him down, and ruin his carefully constructed infrastructure. Ground Pounders N Garrisons: Infantry units form the core of most of the armies on Chiron. They are relatively inexpensive to build, capable defenders, they can be configured to make good counter-punchers, and in some cases (specifically in the cases of Elites and Marines), they are superb units for making base assaults. Because of that, it's important to take a look at your various early game options. Defensive Possibilities for early game infantry: Depending on how you climb up the tech-tree, it is entirely possible to get Neural Grafting in the early game, and if you do, this will greatly expand your options where garrisons are concerned, because it will enable you to creatively mix and match defensive options, which will allow each of the garrisons you have to fill a number of roles, but before you can focus on what types of garrisons you want to build, it's important to know what your options are. Of course, that is largely driven by just how many techs you have, so not all of these options may be available to you right away, but all the ones listed below are easily obtainable in the early game: Synthmetal Armor: Better than nothing, but not great by any reckoning. Unless you are under early fire from a rival faction, you're best bet is to prototype a single combat unit with this (to get the Morale upgrade), and then spend some cash to upgrade that higher-morale unit to some more useful configuration. Synthmetal is normally relegated to units which normally do not come with armor (probes, formers, and crawlers), to enable them to gain combatant bonuses--and to negate the 50% non-combatant penalty--and Morale upgrades for surviving battles. Plasma Armor: The best defense money and minerals can buy in the early game, and the technology which the vast majority of your defensive strategy will be based. With a baseline defense of three (3), further impacted by the presence of defensive builds (Perim. Defenses, and Sensors, primarily), a Plasma-Garrison will serve you well. Also considering that Laser weapons are the same price as none at all, and considering that most attackers prefer lightly or unarmored units (relying more on speed than the ability to hang in a fight), a 2-1-3 Garrison will give you the ability to survive a hard hit, and then hit back when it's your turn (giving you a 2:1 advantage against that unarmored Impact Rover). Pulse Armor: More expensive, but also providing an additional 25% bonus against Rovers, which are the favored attack unit in the early game (they don't call it a "Rover Rush" for nothing!). Good to keep a few of these guys around if you're expecting trouble, but better still to keep a sharp eye out, and selectively upgrade your "regular" Plasma Boys on an "as-needed" basis. Resonance Armor: Like Pulse Armor, above, it's also more expensive than "regular" Plasma Armor, but provides an added 25% defensive bonus against Psi- Attackers. If you're under fire from a "Planet Heavy" faction (Caretakers, Gaians, or Cult), or if the native worms are paying you repeated visits, Resonance Armored garrisons (especially when combined with Trance ability), will enable you to stand well against them, even if you're running a Free Market Economy. ECM: A wonderful defensive ability to give your garrisons, as it grants you a 50% defensive bonus against those cursed Rovers! Of course, the key here is that the ECM bonus gets stronger as your armor factor increases (An ECM Synthmetal Garrison would defend with a baseline of 3 against a Rover of any type, while an ECM Plasma garrison would defend at 4.5). Also a wonderful offensive tool, as a Rover under fire from an Infantry unit armed with ECM will not be able to withdraw from the battle! Trained: Two free Morale upgrades, amounting to a 25% increase in capability! Non-Lethal Methods: Depends on what kinds of Social Choices you're running. Under Market, this won't do anything for you, but under Planned, each garrison with this ability counts double for purposes of Drone Control. Deep Radar: The ability to "see" out to two spaces is primarily useful for units serving in a scouting role. In base squares (especially in bass built on top of a sensor array), it's a redundant ability. Polymorphic Encryption: Doubles the cost to subvert the unit. By extension, if the unit is inside a base, it increases the costs of subverting the base. Something to keep in mind if your last probe team just died..... Nerve Gas: Adds a big 50% to your attack value! No defensive bonuses here, but if you are attacking a base with an X-unit, and you kill the defender, the base loses population quickly, making this a menace indeed! Trance: Gives you an additional 50% bonus against Psi-Attackers Empath: Good for counter-punching units which will be fighting worms. Empath ability has no effect whatsoever in a purely defensive role, however. If you make these guys, you need to be attacking with them! Amphibious Pods (Marines): Enables Infantry units to attack from sea squares. Essentially, this enables troops ferried in via a transport to attack from the ship to the base. Under these conditions, Infantry attackers are actually superior to Rovers for base-assaults, as Infantry get an additional 25% bonus when assaulting a base, and the Infantry's ability to attack is in no way affected by the movement of the Transport that brought him to the battle. This means that your Transport Foil (movement of three), can begin his Attack Run from three squares out (outside the sight range of even a coastal sensor array), and strike at the base, effectively giving Marines a greater range than Rovers, except where the Rover is moving along a totally uncontested road. Head to the "Naval Superiority" section to learn more about setting up Marine-Based attacks!). Amphibious pods also provide a defensive capability in the sense that infantry units with pods stationed in coastal or sea bases can actually launch attacks against enemy ships which are adjacent to them, making them good counter-punchers. Bombardment: In a word: Artillery. This enables you to "snipe" at enemy troops before they actually get near your base. If you can stall your opponent's army two squares out (with a sacrificial unit), you can attack and weaken those lightly or unarmored units, inflicting light to significant damage, depending on what type of terrain you catch the units in. As you can see, these various options can be combined to create garrisons which are either fairly generic (and capable of being upgraded to a specific configuration when you know what you will be facing), or, money permitting (and especially if you get Neural Grafting in the early game), you can create 2-3 defenders in your fringe bases which will almost entirely shut down specific types of attacks. Just imagine the difficult time your opponent would have assaulting your base if it contained three garrisons, each configured with Resonance Armor, High Morale, and ECM capabilities. That, combined with the presence of a Command Center, Children's Creche, Sensor, and Perimeter defense (and a few probe teams to prevent the base from simply being stolen, or your defenses ripped out), would make the base nigh invulnerable to all but the most overwhelming of attacks. Furthermore, Neural Grafting enables you to begin work on the "Neural Amplifier" Secret Project, and, when completed, that will give all your units a 50% defensive bonus against Psi-attackers, rendering your bases nearly immune to attacks by native life. (How-To Note: Designing cost effective garrisons: The goal here is to avoid having to actually build these high powered garrisons. Far and away a better choice is to build an inexpensive unit and use cash to upgrade him to something more useful the following turn. To that end, it is important to note that a Trance-Scout patrol costs you exactly the same amount as a "regular" scout, and gives you significantly more defensive capability for your ten minerals (before industrial bonuses or penalties are considered). For that matter, since Laser weapons are the same price as none at all, you can cheaply build a 2-1t-1 scout for cheap, and upgrade him from there to whatever configuration suits your needs of the moment). Attack Troopers: Of course, Infantry need not be relegated to defensive or counter-punching roles, and (especially in the case of Marines), your Infantry can be configured into a potent attacker in his own right. From a purely "Mineral" standpoint, it is often cheaper to build one defensive unit and one offensive unit, and this is frequently the route taken by those on the attack (and why the bulk of their attack force has little or no armor. Sure, they will bring along a few stout defenders, but by and large, their attackers will be all guns and no shields). For Builders and Hybrids though, more interested in defending hearth and home, the equation is a bit more complex than that. Support costs are also an issue, and because of the presence of support costs, if you're looking to defend your bases and be able to hit back hard, it is quite often in your best interest to make each one of your units able to fill any number of roles. Thus, if you've got the resources to pull it off, try to arrange at least one unit in each of your frontier bases to have a "best/best" configuration. That is to say, the best armor and the best weapon that money can buy. This will enable that single unit (and that single mineral's worth of support cost) to fulfill a variety of roles. Plus, when you find yourself on the attack, your well-rounded troopers will serve you well, enabling the unit that takes an enemy base to sit back and absorb the next turn's counter assault, if one is forthcoming. Play in the Design workshop, and, as you get more tech, design a variety of units that you think you may someday need. Better to do all that when you're at peace than have to rush through it when a mixed force of Rovers, Infantry and MindWorms show up on your doorstep demanding attention! Native Life: As you progress your way up the tech-tree, you will find yourself able to grow your own mindworms (beginning with the standard variety, later adding spore launchers and IoDs, and finally Locusts. All the native life forms are more expensive to build than their non-native counterparts, and you're generally better off improving your Planet rating and trying to catch a few, as opposed to paying the build cost. Nonetheless, there are times (especially depending on your faction of choice and where you are in the tech-race) when building worms is the way to go! (How-to Notes: Deciding when to use worms: A very simple rule of thumb to plan by: If you're ahead in tech, use it, if not, go native! Add to that basic consideration the SE choices of your opponent. If your opponent is running Market, worms will be a boon to your attack force!) Rovers: Rovers make up the backbone of most strike forces. They are fast and maneuverable, and anything that can be done with infantry, can be done with their more expensive cousins, rovers. Where Infantry excel at striking at bases (with their 25% additional bonus), Rovers excel at striking hapless units out in the open, getting a whopping 50% bonus on the attack there, so long as they're not in rocky or forested terrain. The Attack Rover's main strength though, lies in its ability to begin an attack run on a road, relatively far from the target base, and still strike for full power, thus, when launching an attack, taking the enemy by surprise (before he can selectively take out roads and impede your progress) is of paramount importance, and if you do, you can often strike the base before the defender has a chance to do anything tricky. Rovers enable you to exert a measure of influence and control over the enemy's own infrastructure, denying him selected squares, controlling choke points, and having sufficient moves to go around attempted blocks (if those blocks have not yet been fully established...if they have, well, read the section on Zones of Control for ways around that!) All in all, if you're planning to launch an attack, you will find the added speed of Rovers will serve you well in a variety of circumstances. Naval Power in the Early Game: Early game Naval Power falls into two distinct categories: Pre-Doctrine Initiative, and Post-Doctrine Initiative. Both are important, if Naval Superiority plays a role in your game strategy, but Navies in the Post- Initiative world are vastly more dangerous! Still, both eras of Naval Power will be given a close examination. Ships of the Line: One of my favorite "Pen and Paper games" is Starfleet Battles, and I have found that much of the knowledge I picked up from years spent playing that game, transferred nicely to SMAC and SMAX, thus, I have adopted the ship designators from that game to here, and you will find them below. I mention this simply to provide a frame of reference, and provide some common definitions and shorthand for terms you'll run across later in this document. Frigate (FF): Defensive craft, built on a foil chassis. Good for scouting and providing cover for probe foils in the pre-air power world. Usually has max armor and gun or laser as a weapon, and whatever defensive special abilities are available. Commonly seen in an escort role (as per probe foil cover, above). Destroyer (DD): All guns, minimal shields (go with whatever shielding level will not raise your cost). Also built on a foil hull, these craft are the ones that do the bulk of the sea battling in the early game. Heavy Destroyer (HDD): The best money can buy. Max armor, best weapon, a menacing ship, frequently found as the flagship of early game fleets. Later replace by Battleships (see below) or other "capitol ships." Light Cruiser (CL): Built on a cruiser chassis, this craft fills many of the same functions of a frigate, but with more speed and maneuverability. Generally, Light Cruisers will be outfitted with middle of the road armor and weapons, so they can be mass-produced cheaply, and upgraded to other configurations as needed (in the early game, this will almost universally be Synthmetal/Laser cruisers). Cruiser (CA): The mainstay of fleets in the post-initiative worlds. Taking advantage of relatively low armor costs for ships, these fellows generally have the best shielding and weapons that money can buy, but skimp on special abilities. They're the workhorses of the post-initiative fleet. Battleships (and specialty cruisers): (BB – Battleship Designation) (CC – Command Cruiser Designation) (HCA – Heavy Cruiser Designation) Utilizing best/best configurations, and mixing in a variety of special abilities, these ships are top of the line, and before the advent of airpower, they are the fastest, most maneuverable, most powerful units on Planet (arguably even besting the greatly feared IoD!). Light Transport (TL): Designed on the old-style foil hull, these boats are slow and don't hold much in the way of cargo, but are useful for exploration, recovery of unity pods, commercial shipping concerns (transporting colonists and terraformers), and, en masse, useful for launching assaults (although they are limited to two (2) cargo spaces. Heavy Transport (TH): Pretty much as above, except the units are outfitted with best/trance, to give them a greater chance of surviving to reach their objective if their escort ships come to a bad end. Destroyer Transport (TDD): A transport based around the cruiser hull, and generally running unarmored, or lightly armored at best (standard Destroyer doctrine), the TDD is faster and able to haul more cargo, making it much better suited for the launching of assaults against coastal bases. Also, this configuration is ideal for the mass-transit of large amounts of civilian equipment from island to island, enabling you to ferry across a colony pod, former, base guard, and supply crawler all at once. Cruiser Transport (TCA): Again, based on the cruiser hull, but outfitted with the best defensive measures money and tech can give them, this is the classic "heavy assault" cruiser, taken into the hottest of hot spots (with support), and fully capable of performing independent, clandestine, small-scale operations with a detachment of Marines. Isles of the Deep (IoD): The hands-down most versatile, attack-capable unit in the game, IoD's are extraordinary! They can attack well, defend well, and serve as a transport! They're more maneuverable than the foil-based ships (especially considering their ability to move freely through fungus), and can heal "in the field" (again, fungus), rather than being tied to trying to limp back to a base to effect repairs. If you don't have at least one in your early game navy, then you need to switch to Green and send one of your FF's to go play in the fungus till you catch one! Navies in the "Pre-Initiative" world: During this time-frame, the principle purpose of your navy to expand your knowledge of the world around you. Exploration and defense is significantly more important than the ability to launch an attack, so your most common foil based ships will be probe teams and trance frigates (enabling them to stand a reasonably good chance of surviving an IoD attack). If you've started on a small landmass, or have pod-scattering turned on, you'll likely see a number of heavy transports in the water as people race to pop those sea pods! Because of the versatility and usefulness of IoD's, one of your primary early- navy missions should be to arrange for the capture of one. Generally, this means switching to Green and sending one of your FF's to go play in the fungus until you find one, then go for a capture, and when you do capture one, he'll likely serve for quite some time as the flagship of your fleet, being the best all- around unit you've got. Naval engagements during this point of the game will be mostly confined to light skirmishes as people unroll more and more of the map. Assault-wise, with foil- based transports and no marines, your best bet will be to make use of rovers, as they will be able to unload and still attack on the same turn, though you will likely need at least two transports worth of Rovers to mount a significant threat, and more than that, depending on your objectives (but see the section on combat to learn more about setting up attacks and such). Navies in the "Post-Initiative" world: Once you get to Doctrine: Initiative, things begin to get a lot more interesting, navy-wise. First and most importantly, you get the new Cruiser Hull, which gives you ships with more movement (and in the case of transports, more cargo space). Second, and nearly as important, you get a wonderful Secret Project, which, when built will give you Naval Yards in every base (effectively adding 25% to the attack strength of your units), and giving them two additional points of movement. If navy plays even a modest role in your overall strategy, then this is a project you don't want to miss out on! Finally, and nearly as important as the first two, you get Marines, and the ability to launch infantry strikes at coastal bases from distances well outside of sensor range. This is important because, unless your opponent is actively searching for you, you will oftentimes be able to slip up to the base and overwhelm it with your Marines before he even knows the attack is coming (which of course, hearkens back to the earlier mentioning that the element of surprise is the key advantage of the attacker). (How-To Note: Taking an enemy base with a Marine Strike!: Pretty simple really, but here's how to set it up: Infiltrate, and determine the number of defenders at the target base. Bring a number of Marines along equal to the number of defenders +2 (in case things get dicey). Position your TCA in such a location that is off the beaten path, shipping wise (so your opponent likely won't stumble into your task force during his turn), and a number of spaces distant from the base so that you can move the transport into the base once you capture it--note however, that sometimes, this is impossible to set up, and if it is, then plan to leave the transport just outside the base until the next turn (if it lives that long). On your next turn, move the escort ships up to the base and fire an initial volley to soften up the defenders, then move in with any probe teams you might have brought along to strip out any Multiplicative enhancements that will make taking the base more difficult--note here, if you think you can win without doing this, then by all means, leave them in place, as it will make your own defense an easier proposition--finally, move the transport up and start hammering the garrisons. With luck, you will have planned correctly, and have 1- 2 Marines to take the base with, and with a bit further luck, you'll have one final transport move to get the ship inside to relative safety!) Marine assaults are very difficult to defend against, and once one player has Doctrine: Initiative, only constant and diligent patrolling will keep the coastal bases safe, as there is no way that a defender can build enough garrisons in all his coastal bases to prevent you from sweeping in and overwhelming one (or more) of them. Your opponent is, of course, welcome to try, but it's a battle he simply cannot win, so long as you have infiltrated his datalinks. Fleet-wise, things get a lot more interesting as well, because by this point in the game, a good portion of the world has been explored, and people are beginning to consolidate their positions. Mostly, this means bigger fleets, more ships, and more versatility. Once again, spend some serious time in the Design workshop, putting together units as described above in different configurations. A flexible, well-balanced fleet plying the waters off your coast will give you the ability to protect your coastal bases, while posing a synergistic collection of ships operating as a fleet will From now until the advent of air power, your navy will give you power and flexibility unmatched by any other military unit in the game, and even when needlejets and choppers establish their dominance, naval units can combine their flexibility with these new tools to create a power unmatched by air dominance alone. (How-To Note: Rapid Prototyping: Again, the trusty supply crawler is your best friend. When you have a new weapon or armor to prototype, I almost always recommend doing the prototype on a Rover Chassis, as this will give you a well- trained, mobile attacker/defender when you upgrade him to best/best, and again, when the Prototyping base starts work on the new weapon or defensive system, have a crawler standing by from a nearby base to "cash in" at full mineral value to speed the completion of the prototype. That way, you can begin upgrading your forces the very next turn!) Covert-Ops (or: Fun with Probe Teams): Probe Teams are terrific little units. Almost as versatile and useful as Formers and Crawlers, actually, and, as the first "clean" units you get in the game, learning to use them well and wisely is of prime importance. Flavors of Probes: Outlined below, you'll find a laundry list of some of the various types of Probe Teams I use in my own games, with notes on how to implement their use, and why they're used in the first place. Read, absorb, and then figure a way to mesh the thoughts here with your existing game style. I promise you it will strengthen it! The "Data-Guardian:" This is a probe built on an Infantry chassis, whose role is entirely defensive in nature. His sole purpose for existing is to prevent an enemy faction from coming over and making off with your state secrets (techs). For adequate defense, you need two probes, good defense is three, and outstanding defense is four or more, as this will enable you to stand against all but the most determined covert assaults, and, compared with the Probe Foils or Rover-Based Probes your opponent will likely be using, he's cheap too! The most common use of defensive probes is to simply leave them in the base. That way, before any techs (or bases) can be stolen, your opponent must wade through your probe teams. There are times, however, when you will find it desirable to (at least temporarily) move your defensive probes from their bases, the most common of these being any time your enemy leaves a single, unstacked troop in range of the probe. If you've got the money for it, go out and subvert the trooper, adding it to your force total. Remember that the attacker only brought so many units with him, and the more units you can steal away, the more quickly his attack loses steam. Data-Guardians should also receive a full range of upgrade options to make them more multi-functional. Is your opponent approaching with 0-0-2 (speeder-based) probes? If so, why not upgrade all your defensive probes in the area to ECM variants, giving you a 50% bonus in the upcoming fight? Is your opponent hitting your base with artillery (either land or sea-based) to weaken your unarmored defenders, and make successful probing more likely? Then give your Data-Guardians light armor to mitigate the damage. Did he approach with an overwhelming number of attackers? If so, give your probes both ECM and Max Armor (as he's likely got at least some Rovers in the mix), and bulk up your garrisons in the short term that way! (Two important Game notes!: An armored probe team does NOT count as a garrison unit for purposes of drone control! Also, other probe teams ignore any armor value your probe teams have, making the usefulness of armor on probes somewhat limited, but in a pinch, they'll serve you well! Imagine losing an impact rover to a silksteel probe! How embarrassing....). The "Vagabond-Class" Probe: Is the standard, rover-based, offensive Probe. Good for use as a "clean" explorer for those running Market and wishing to maintain full use of their industrial capacity, and an essential addition to any attack force. The three keys to making a successful probe foray are: Objective, Mass, and Support, and each of these are explained below: Objective: Before you set out to probe, know your objective! If this is your first visit to the enemy base, then it is of paramount importance to infiltrate his datalinks! Nothing is more important than this, even if you are far behind in techs! And, now that you know where your opponent IS, it's fairly easy to send more probes to that location. Once you have infiltrated, the specific objective of your probe action will be determined by the type of raid being made. If it is a purely covert operation, then most likely the next most important mission will be to grab techs and the enemy world map. After that, it will be on a case-by-case basis, but such things as draining energy reserves and disrupting production queues (especially at a base where your opponent is working on a Secret Project or expensive new prototype) are attractive options. If your probe teams are part of an invasion force, then you will want to take stock of the enemy's Multiplicative defense factors (Aerospace Complexes, Perimeter Defenses, and so forth), and knock out as many of them as you can, to give your attack units an edge in combat against the base. Mass: Once you find an opponent, don't make a "casual" probe raid. Hit him fast and furious. You now know (thanks to infiltration), exactly which bases have probes, and how many (and of what type). Thus, it is easy to design a probe force of sufficient size for each base you plan to hit, and be virtually guaranteed of success. And, again thanks to infiltration, you know precisely how many techs ahead of you your opponent is (if any), so don't just hit him for one tech! Plan to hit him in numerous bases on the same turn, with an eye toward getting ALL his tech that you are lacking and his complete world map to boot! Yes, this could conceivably take a fair number of probes, but the time spent building them will be more than made up by the tech and information windfall you receive! (How-To Notes: Executing a stellar Probe-Action: Mass numbers of probes can support each other, by simply hitting the base one after another until all the enemy probes have been eliminated, and, if you've counted correctly, you'll still have one probe left to get into that base and grab some techs or what- have-you, but probes-supporting-probes is not always the most efficient way to go. If your probes are part of a land attack group, bring along a few units of artillery to snipe the base in advance of your probes going in. If your opponent has not armored his probes, then the artillery will damage his units, making your probe teams' job easier. If he has, and if you have enough arty with you, some damage will still be sustained, and by sending your probes in first, to eliminate his extra "armored" defenders, it will make the job of your regular attack force easier. If attacking from the sea, bring along one of your FF's to bombard the base (and provide a measure of protection for your probe-foils) to soften up the enemy probe teams before sending yours in!) The "Hunter-Class" Probe: Built on a Foil chassis, this is a "swing" unit, often found serving in both offensive and defensive capacities (defensively, this is a great way to subvert rogue attack ships intent on shelling your terrain enhancements and roads out of existence, while offensively, it enables you to reach out and touch an enemy faction on another continent with relative ease. Note, however, that mass-probe operations with foil-based probes will be much more mineral intensive investments for the aggressor than for the defender (who is likely building Infantry-based probes at a much cheaper rate than your foil probes), but in this kind of warfare, it's the information that is the prize, not the mineral cost. All of the attack options available to the Vagabond probe team apply equally well to the offensively used Hunter probe. The "Seeker-Class" Probe: Built on the Cruiser chassis, this provides you with greater mobility, enabling you to strike from further off the coast, thus increasing your chances for avoiding detection. Most often, these are found in offensive roles and are quite expensive to build until fusion reactors, so in general, their use is limited to operations against far-off bases with no probe defenses, though occasionally variants (and sometimes armored variants) will accompany Cruiser task forces (able to keep up with them) to provide support and to weaken enemy fleets via subversion. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Basic Combat (Single Player and Multi- player notes Included) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First understand that there are only two types of warfare you can possibly enter into: An offensive action, or a defensive action. Beneath those two types of warfare are a number of "tools" you can make use of, and I'll cover the basics below: The Basics: So, you went and picked a fight with somebody? Or, someone decided to pick a fight with you? That's okay, and it's all part of the game, but like anything else in SMAC, if you're going to fight, you're better off having a plan of action, and it is my hope that this section will give you just that. Attack and Defense in the early game: Prior to clean reactors, the size of your army is directly related to two key factors: First, your support rating. The bigger it is, the bigger your army. And second, your total mineral outputs. Because of these factors, attack forces (and base garrisons) tend to be relatively fewer in number during this stage of the game (which is why early game attack forces seldom number above 10-12). Now, the exact number of attackers or garrisons you will have at your disposal will vary depending on your situation, but here are some general guidelines to use. Builders: Preservation of a large portion of your industrial capacity is vital to the rapid completion of your infrastructure. To that end, you will want relatively few garrisons, relying instead on "token forces" (usually one at each base), prototypes, and early game "clean" units such as crawlers and probe teams which can be armored if needed to help bolster defense at beleaguered bases. This is also why armoring your formers is important as soon as you have the money and time to do so. You need the formers to perform terrain enhancing builds for you, so why not have them pull a bit of double duty? By armoring them up, you create a backbone of units which can serve several purposes at once. Terraforming in times of peace, and helping with base defense if you are attacked, which will buy you time to build "proper" defenders. Also note that for Builders, since money is generally no object, most, if not all of the garrisons in your frontier bases can easily be outfitted with best/best configurations (making your garrisons able counter-punchers), but in general, unless you've just got cash coming out of your ears, it is wise to leave your spare troops in the interior as common trance scouts and empath rovers until you see the badguys approaching, and then, after analyzing the force, you can upgrade to whatever will provide the best defense against that attack force, and move them into position. Of course, to make that work, it means you will have to rely on a network of "clean units" (usually probe foils) to constantly patrol the various approaches to your holdings. If you don't feel like doing that, then upgrade everybody you can to best/best, and simply bulk up your exposed bases, but this is generally viewed as too static a posture, and opens the door for attack. Hybrids: With flexibility again creeping into the conversation, you probably want to preserve a healthy chunk of your industrial output, but not at the expense of the Builders, who sometimes flagrantly ignore defensive concerns for the sake of rapidly developing that all-important infrastructure. Commit no more than one third of your total mineral outputs to the construction of attack and defense forces. For most mineral heavy bases (figure 15 minerals as a baseline), this means you can support five units after you eat through your "free" slots, and still have ten minerals per turn for building. That's not bad, and even if you're running Democracy, you will still be able to field a significant number of troops. Unlike the Builder stance, you will probably want your entire force ready to go at a moment's notice, which means that, rather than having a group of Trance Scouts sitting in the safe zone, you'll upgrade your troops as you get them, and assign them where you suspect attacks are likely. The forces not relegated to passive defense will be out trolling for the enemy, or perhaps carrying the fight to him via small scale task forces (escorted transports, loaded with rovers). Momentum: Jack up your support rating to as high as you can get it, and build troops until you eat up all your free slots. Then, designate about a quarter to a third of your "paid" slots for transports, formers and the like. This will give you, hands down, the largest armies on Chiron in the early game, and should enable you to dictate terms to your rivals whomever and wherever they are. Delegate some minimal portion of this to provide for your own defense, and send the balance of them out hunting. Remember that, at this point in the game, minimal defense is about all that will be needed against a Hybrid attacker, and Builders won't be predisposed to hit you unless you make trouble for them first, so at this point in the game, your biggest concern is finding other Momentum players and hitting them before they can hit you. Knock another Momentum player out of the game, and absorb his empire into your own, and you create Economies of scale simply by having more bases than anybody else. The first and most important thing to discern when preparing for war is: Who is my enemy? In most cases, that's a pretty obvious thing, but sometimes it can be trickier than you might first realize. True, your immediate enemy is the guy who just dropped half a dozen missile rovers in your territory, but you have to ask yourself: Did he do it because I made him mad, or did somebody else put him up to it? Before you can coordinate a worthy defense, you need to know the answer to that question. If you got framed for someone else's probe team action, you might be able to end the fight with a bribe and get back to doing whatever you were doing before you got interrupted. Then again, maybe not. The second most important thing you need to determine is: How many enemies am I fighting? Nothing is worse than being forced to fight a war on multiple fronts, or take on several different opponents at the same time, so if you are suddenly confronted by a new and powerful adversary and you're neck deep in another war which is taking up large amounts of your Empire's resources, then sue for peace somewhere, or see to it you bring the war you're already in to a very rapid conclusion, so you can focus on the new problem that just got tossed in your lap. Specifics: Fighting a Defensive War: The overriding purpose of fighting a defensive action is to preserve your bases and make sure they do not fall into enemy hands. Builders, you'll want to read this. The best way to fight a defensive war is to be ready for it at any moment. This means prototyping regularly and often. It means making sure that all your bases have garrisons with the best available armor (and AAA capability, as soon as you get it). It means making sure that your frontier bases have at least twice the garrison strength of the bases in your interior, and it means making damned sure you've got a core of attack-capable troops (probably the guys you still have hanging around from weapons prototyping). It would also be helpful if you had some artillery units handy, so as to shell damaged units until your attackers can get in to finish them off. To fight a defensive war, about all you need is up to date garrisons, a small standing army, and some probe teams. If you have those things, your opponent will need a truly large force to successfully invade. When faced with an attacking army, here's what you do: Look at how your enemy is approaching. Try to figure out which bases are most threatened, and consolidate your defenses there. Move probe teams up to take advantage of any misstep by your opponent. If you can find a single unit in a square and subvert it, you've just made yourself stronger and your opponent weaker, and time is on your side. Your opponent has to bring reinforcements in from some distance, while yours are arriving right at the scene of the battle. Upgrade any formers you have in the area to armored variants and use them to mess up his Zones of Control. This will stall his advance, and armored formers in the forest or on rocky terrain are very hard to take out. Fight from your bases as much as possible, or, barring that, make sure your best attack-troops can end their turns back inside a base so as to decrease their exposure. Defend any Monoliths close to the battleground with the best garrison forces you can get there, to deny your opponent that resource to heal damaged troops. Use armored formers and crawlers to envelope or cut off a part of the enemy's army. Once it's isolated, you can deal with the smaller elements of the force one at a time, smashing one while the other tries to get through and rescue it. This will take pressure off of your bases and give them more time to crank out units. Attrition is your friend, when you are fighting a defensive action. Your reinforcements are close at hand, and it's likely that his are not. Grind your opponent down slowly. Make every square he advances into a very expensive proposition. If you make the advance expensive enough, he'll either give up and go home, or you'll wipe out the entire army. Either way, he'll likely find someone less-prepared to pick on, which is exactly what you want. If it appears likely that you cannot hold a base, then burn it down. Adopt a scorched earth policy and retreat back to the next line of your bases. Leave your opponent nothing to work with. You can rebuild later, once the threat is gone. Take note of the composition of your enemy's army: Is he using lots of artillery? If so, crank out the best attack rovers (no armor) you can get to the field quickly, and wipe them out. Is he using lots of rovers? Great! Upgrade your garrisons to Comm-Jammers and laugh at him as he tries in vain to take your bases. Is he infantry-heavy? Again, build fast-attack rovers and meet him in the field. (This is the main reason that Momentum Players get beaten. They tend to focus on very narrow army construction....most often, they make LOTS of rovers with little to no armor and the best weapons they can afford. That's okay, but the first time they take their all-rover force into a prepared opponent's territory will be the last they see of their much cherished army.) Destroy anything that might be of value if it seems likely that your opponent will take a given position. Deny him access to your bunkers, sensor arrays, and even forests. Again, once he is gone, you can rebuild all that. If your enemy brings a colony pod with him, do everything you can to take it out before he builds a base. If it's too late to prevent that, try and slip an armored probe team in to subvert it, or, use a foil probe team, as the base will often be coastal, and therefore vulnerable to that. Build one or two transports and drop off some sturdy defenders (and one or two decent attackers) behind your enemy. This will give him something else to focus on besides the bases you're trying to defend, and, if he doesn't focus on them, it will give you a new direction from which to strike. Either way, it will help your cause. Put probe teams in all your bases, and more than one in your exposed bases. Count on your opponent trying to infiltrate you, and if he does, he'll have to contend with one or more probe teams first. Do not make that an easy thing for him, and if you have technological superiority, you will want to preserve that at all costs. Probe teams can do that for you. One final note about fighting a defensive war is this: Best of all is if you can stop your opponent before he even lands his troops. To that end, when you get missile techs, build a few and put them on your borders in "patrol mode." Any unfriendly ships come toward your territory, the missiles will take them out, saving you a whole lot of time and trouble. Fighting an Offensive War: If you want to take the fight to your opponent, there are several things you can do to make your life easier. First, and by far most important, is to infiltrate his datalinks (assuming you're not planetary governor). You need to know what kind of defenses your opponent has at the ready, and what's in his production queues. Information is the most powerful weapon you have. When preparing to fight, you need to make sure you don't bite off more than you can chew. Start small. Select one, maybe two objectives and bring sufficient force to secure those objectives. The most important thing you will need in order to fight an extended action on someone else's soil (outside of an army, of course) is a base of operation. That could be a coastal monolith, or perhaps an isolated base. Either way, before you proceed with a general invasion, you will want to make sure you have a place to bring your battered forces to get them combat ready again. Your best bet is to subvert one of your opponent's small border outposts and use that as your staging point. You take the base without fighting, you preserve that base's garrison, and you give yourself a staging ground. Second best is to bring a colony pod with you when you land the attack force. Just be sure your army contains some covert operatives, so your newly founded base does not get subverted out from under you! Last, would be to make use of a Monolith in the area as your staging ground. If you can take one easily, it gives you a place to repair your units quickly, but it still does not solve the reinforcement problem if things get dicey. Still, it's better than nothing, and if it's what you have to work with, then it's what you have to work with. Construct a well-balanced attack force. Mix it up to confuse your opponent. Don't rely exclusively on infantry or rovers, because there's an easy counter to that. A mixed force is significantly harder to defend against. Make sure you have enough cash to support the war. Nothing is worse than going off to fight only to find out you can't support your army with covert ops because you're strapped for cash. You must balance your rush building program with saving cash if you know you will be going to war soon, because it's an expensive proposition. You need funds to rush build garrison troops in conquered bases, and rebuild infrastructure (especially anti-drone facilities). You'll also need funds for troop subversions and such, so make sure you have the bankroll to support your war effort (I'd recommend at least 1500 energy credits per base on your "hit list.") Create a diversion. If your plan is to take two coastal bases on the eastern side of your enemy's empire, then start your war by subverting a base on the western side to get his army off balance (or, land some troops on the western side to start making trouble). If you're really devious, create a number of diversions so that your opponent will pull himself apart trying to deal with the various threats you've created (additionally, the more diversions you set up, the more difficult it will be for your opponent to discern your true objective). Make use of artillery to take out sensor arrays and to hammer beleaguered defenders in the base you're after. Never give your enemy the chance to rest his troops. If your goal is conquest, do as little damage to the infrastructure as you can get away with. If your goal is to simply hurt your opponent for some larger purpose (i.e., an ally of yours is on the way with the real invasion force), then do as much damage as you can before your forces get whacked. If you're not at technological parity, use your probe teams to get you there. If you already are, use them (your probe teams) to stall his production or destroy infrastructure. Anything to give you an edge. The quicker you can secure your objectives, the better off you will be. You don't have a ready supply of reinforcements (unless you've planned very far ahead), and even if you do, your opponent can get reinforcements more quickly than you can, so win your initial battles quickly, then drop to a defensive stance to protect your newly acquired holdings. Once you are entrenched on your opponent's land, you are MUCH harder to deal with than if you're simply a marauding force. Never miss an opportunity to subvert enemy troops, formers, crawlers, or whathaveyou. Every unit you subvert can be put to some kind of use (even if all you do is upgrade the former to an armored variant and use it to make sure your units are at least double-stacked). Additional Combat Notes specific to the MP Environment: The essential elements of warring in SP work for MP, with a few key differences: First and most importantly, your opponent will not have perfect knowledge of where all your units are. Likewise, you won't know where all your opponent's units are, so you need to be MUCH more on your guard for surprise attacks, or attacks from unexpected directions. It's standard practice for human opponents to relieve pressure on a given area by opening up a new theater of action on a new front. You either respond to it or get flanked. AI's will never do this. When they attack, they attack clumsily, and in linear fashion. Your human opponents generally will not, unless they are very new to the game, and even then, they'll learn quickly. Be ready for that. Expect your opponent to do strange things to try to throw you off balance. Sometimes, those strange things are colossal failures, and they actually wind up making your job easier, but sometimes not, and if not, write down the things that worked on you, and try using them yourself! It's one of the very best ways to learn. Remember too, that the amount of damage military units can cause in terms of lost production and infrastructure are all out of proportion to how many minerals they cost. Essentially then, you get a lot of bang for your buck. Never forget that, and do not take even a scout patrol wandering through your territory lightly. It can be upgraded in an instant and strike! (something else the AI will never do). ================================================================================ The Middle Game ================================================================================ This is the heart and soul of Alpha Centauri, and if you've run a good, strong opening gambit, you will be well prepared to reap the benefits of it in the mid- game, but don't dispair. If you suffered some unexpected setbacks in the early game, there is yet time to put things right and rescue the game. Just understand that if you have not built a solid foundation by now, the road ahead will be tougher for you, relatively speaking. By now, you will likely have made contact (and perhaps repeated contact) with most of the other factions, and your initial bases are all up and humming along quite nicely. Now you're probably itching to expand again, either by conquest, or by building more colony pods to finish filling up your continent. Either way, the stronger your early game was, the easier you will find things now. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Expansion in the Middle Game -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can certainly choose to go back to the section on expansion in the early game and simply use those ideas to continue expansion across the continent. The expansion paradigms listed there are all quite strong, and any of them would serve you well. Keep in mind though, at this point, you are likely to encounter a rising drone problem as your expansion efforts continue, and this will only worsen with each additional base you build. Not that it should stop you from doing so, but it is something to be mindful of as you continue to increase your Empire's holdings. One of the centerpieces to strategy in the Middle-Game is getting yourself ready to execute a population boom (mentioned earlier), and a bit more should be said about that, because it is such a powerful thing to do. It will, over the course of 7-10 turns of game play, take you from being an average power, to rocketing ahead of everyone else on the chart. Myth: Not everyone can Pop-Boom. Used to be true, but no longer in the SMAX universe, thanks to a timely bug fix! People point to Yang (who cannot use Democracy) and Morgan (who cannot use Planned) and declare them weaker factions because they cannot execute a pop-boom. They can, but it takes a bit more work to set up. By the Middle-Game, and sometimes before, you are ready to execute a population boom, and of course, the sooner you do it, the stronger you will be. The mechanics were spelled out in detail earlier, but if you're not sure you remember, I'll mention them again here: All you really need to "Boom" is at least +2 extra nutrients at each base and a +6 Growth. For most factions, +6 Growth is as easy to come by as building Children's Crèche's everywhere, and running Planned/Dem, but if you're playing one of the factions that cannot run one of those Social Choices, then you'll have to rely on Psych Allocation to throw your bases into Golden Ages and pick up your final +2 Growth that way.(click here to see the more detailed notes) Infrastructurally, there are two principle ways to get enough food to sustain the boom. The easiest way is to build Treefarms (and Hybrid Forests, as your bases get larger). They provide you with Psych, energy, and ecology bonuses anyway, so they're always good investments, and they make your forest squares more productive (each forest providing you an additional nutrient, post Tree- Farm). Another possibility though, would be to simply crawl enough food in to support the growth. There are also two primary ways you can structure your booms, Single Phase and Dual Stage. Both work well, and it mostly depends on what level of infrastructural development you've managed to get to before you're ready to execute the boom. In single stage booming, before you start, you want to have your Hab-Complexes already in place, spending the boom-turns building drone control and Psych- enhancing facilities to keep the exploding population well-mannered. With hab- complexes in place, you simply boom all your bases up to maximum size (14 baseline, bigger for Lal and the guy who gets the Ascetic Virtues project, smaller for Morgan) in one shot, then drop back into whatever SE configuration you want to take full advantage of the significantly larger population. Specifically, in a single stage boom, you want all essential infrastructure in place at the outset, save for Hybrids, which you will build as you spring up to size fourteen. For a two stage boom, you want to grow your bases to max. pre-hab complex size, then pause to build additional infrastructure, starting again when you get everything but Hybrids built, then proceeding on to maximum size. Note that a two stage boom does not work for Morgan, as most of his bases will BE at size for (his max, before hab-complexes) relatively quickly anyway. Personally, I prefer a two stage boom, because I can execute stage one of it fairly early in the game, to get a jump in population, going for the second stage as soon as I can rush sufficient infrastructure in place to support the growth. The main strength of the Population Boom is that it can triple, or quadruple your Empire's population in VERY short order, suddenly making you capable of doing things you never even dreamed of, and that is why it is mentioned here, as the very first point of the Middle-Game, as this will, in all likelihood, be when you can position yourself to be ready to do it. Powerful as it is, there are just too many other things that need doing in the early portions of the game (getting new bases set up, building enough of an infrastructure to support the larger population, etc.) to worry about growing a handful of bases to maximum size, and a boom too early, can actually work against you (example: If you boom while you're still in your initial stages of expansion--a thing which would be hard to set up in the first place--yes, your bases get big, but when you stop booming and continue to build colony pods, your bigger bases won't recover lost population points as quickly, eroding much of the advantage you gained via the early boom). One common strategy is to Boom all your initial bases to maximum size, then crank out another slew of bases, get them built up to the point that they can handle the influx, and then Boom again. Do that, and you will find yourself with an absolutely gigantic empire! Expansion in the Middle Game: More Expansion Paradigms: Many of these ideas share things in common with what you've read in the earlier section, but the presence of an established core of bases in your heartland enables you to do things you were simply unable to do earlier, so there are a few new ideas tossed in here to reflect that. Browse them over, select one that is to your liking, and that meshes well with your particular playing style, and run with it! You will soon find yourself with bases from coast to coast (if you're alone on your continent - if you're not, you might want to skip this section and read more on making war, as that will likely be what you are facing). Bear in mind that expansion is not necessary to win the game. You need but check out the results in the OCC Hall of Fame to discover that it is quite possible to Transcend on the hardest possible settings with a single, size seven base, but expansion DOES give you more flexibility and options, and it is the natural inclination of a thriving empire to expand, so most likely you will be doing just that. When you do, your expansion will work better for you if you go into it with a plan, rather than take a haphazard approach. There are a number of perfectly valid expansion strategies in the game, and the list below is by no means exhaustive. These are, however, the ones I've seen most commonly employed. I'll list them out, and make notes about each one. Here goes: Thin Expansion: This policy is very closely related to "Expansion Paradigm #1" listed in the early game section. It basically says: "Now that I am up and running good, I want as many bases as I can get, and I want them as quickly as possible." Likely, if you are going with a thin-expansion scheme, you are foregoing the building of scout patrols to escort your colony pods, and just focusing on the pods themselves. A sometimes risky move, true, but, the advantage to it is the fact that you can get a great number of bases established in relatively short order, and set them all about the task of building a viable infrastructure. A purely thin expansion program will have you building your newest bases four squares apart from each other. Yes, there will be some overlap, but how often is it that you actually make use of all 20 of a base's productive squares anyway? Thin expansion trades a little bit of late-game productivity for the speedy construction of new bases. Thin Expansion works best for Builders and Hybrid players. A momentum player will lose too much time in building mass numbers of colony pods. Besides, from the mindset of a momentum player, why build a new base when you can conquer one that's already up and running? A very good point, if you're playing the game that way. The Rover Defense Model: This plan (which may or may not be incorporated into a thin-expansion scheme) says that you want all your newer bases spaced exactly five squares apart, to facilitate their defense with Rovers serving as garrisons. This also works out quite nicely, as there will be no overlap between bases, meaning that eventually (sometime in the Late Game), each base will be able to make use of all 20 squares of production. Keep in mind, however, that rovers are significantly more expensive than Infantry, and pursuing this model will make your garrisons much more expensive. Still, if you are running a classic Builder Game, the added expense won't really be that noticeable. The Yang Model (Thin Expansion with a vengeance!): So named because the AI generally plays Yang in this very fashion. It runs similar to the Rover Defense Model, but the bases are stacked even more closely together: Specifically, three spaces apart. This has a number of Mid-Game advantages, and only one (relatively minor) Late-Game drawback. There is significant overlap in all your bases (as with the Thin Model, above), but again, how often is it that you actually make use of all your squares of production anyway? And, this model has the advantage of allowing you to make use of the "Rover Defense" thinking with much more cost- effective Infantry units. Under this approach, none of your units ever need end their turn outside the safety of a base, unless you are scouting, or moving to make a pre-emptive strike. One other very strong selling point to this style is that you get so many bases up and running on your starting continent that you become very hard to damage. When you're running the "Yang Model," it's simply not going to hurt you much if you happen to lose a single base, and if that base is taken over by an opponent, he will find keeping the base (which is undoubtedly surrounded by a good number of your other bases) a very difficult proposition. The Optimize First Model: This says that before you build any additional colony pods, you want to make all the improvements you can in the bases you already have. This is a classic builder scheme. Expand slowly, but make each base a wonder. It probably means that you won't be expanding until well into the Middle Game, so even builders tend only to use this approach if they find themselves alone on a relatively small landmass. Thick Expansion: The opposite of thin expansion (go figure), this approach says that the building of colony pods is important, but of equal importance is seeing that it gets to wherever it's going, and making sure that you can rapidly create an infrastructure for the new base when you get it there. Likely, this means building an escort for the pod (which becomes the garrison, once the base is set up, saving the new base time), a former (so terraforming can begin immediately, if not before the base is established), and perhaps one or two supply crawlers to enhance the output of the new base's production (generally mineral production, but I've seen nutrient production enhanced as well). This has the advantage of making use of your existing bases' strong infrastructure to build the stuff that a fledgling base would have to spend a number of turns working on before it could even start it's infrastructural development, saving the new bases time, but it is slower than a "Thin Expansion" plan, as it ties up your bigger bases building more units. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terraforming in the Middle Game -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Advanced Terraforming Techniques: Once your formers have tended to the basic needs of the bases you have up and running, there is yet more to do. As you advance up the technology tree, more and more terraforming options become available (and if you managed to beat everyone else to the Weather Paradigm, then a great number of advanced terraforming options become available to you quite early on). Now is the time to take advantage of those new capabilities, because again, you're in a race against time with the other players, and the quicker you get started on optimization of each terrain square on your continent, the quicker you'll pull impossibly ahead of your rivals, no matter who they are. To that end, it's time to revisit the terrain squares you've already done some work on. Got some nutrient specials? You probably forested them in the early goings, and, pre-restriction lifting, that was more than good enough, but now that you've come further up the tech tree, a condenser/farm would probably serve you better in a square like that, and it would certainly enable you to toss a crawler on that square an net yourself a LOT of food from that square alone! (easily enough to feed five units of population, between that an your base square). High elevation energy resources? Might want to consider a solar collector there, and another crawler. Rocky areas you've been ignoring? If they're on level terrain, and inside your base radius, that's a good candidate for a borehole. Otherwise, it's a fine choice for a mine. Note here: Boreholes are very efficient producers of resources, as they will net you a whopping 12 resources (mineral and energy), but only if you use workers on them! Half of a borehole's productivity is wasted if you use crawlers there! Not to say you'll never want or need to, but in general, boreholes are best left to the workers, and "single resource" squares (mines, solar panels, farm/condensers) left to the crawlers. In that way, you net yourself the most gain possible for each worker and crawler you have out harvesting. So, optomizing the squares you're already working should be high on the priority list for your busy formers. After that, look to defense. Find ways of protecting the time you've invested. This means building (and occupying!) bunkers in key areas, making airfields to consolidate your aircraft in key areas, where they are capable of supporting multiple bases, tidying up your road network, placing a few extra sensor arrays to act as early warning systems (allowing units near them to "see" two squares, and aiding them in defense), and sometimes planting fungal barriers to hide a few units in as a nasty surprise for a would-be adversary, to slow his advance down certain paths, or to "channel" enemy forces to a certain location. Once all that is done, your formers STILL aren't finished, as now it's time to unleash your formers on the rest of the continent! Every square of land on your continent is a potential production center, even if it lies outside the radius of any base you have. If your citizens cannot reach it directly, you can optimize the square with your formers and toss a supply crawler out on it to make it start working for you, and that task will keep your formers busy for years! Remember that only one supply crawler can work a given square, so take a look at the square you plan to develop and see what makes the most sense to go there. If it's a rainy square, it will serve you better to put a farm down to increase nutrient output. If rocky, build a mine, etc. and so forth. Fairly intuitive stuff, but when you're in the thick of the game, sometimes it's easy to lose sight of that. Take your time, and make sure you don't! At this point too (if you're not already doing so), you should really consider operating your formers in teams (go back to the first section on terraforming and re-read the notes on "Gang-Forming," it'll help you here. The main reason this is good for you now is that you increase the speed with which an individual terrain square becomes "ready" to be worked, and if your base is cranking out a crawler to come to that square and start harvesting, it's important that your formers be finished when the crawler arrives. By operating in teams, you can ensure that happens. Keep in mind that so long as even one square on your continent has not been optimized, you are not getting the most you can out of the productive capacity of your continent. A Former's Work is never Done.....: But, you say: I have terraformed my entire continent, and I've got supply crawlers everywhere that my bases can't reach! What more could I possibly do?! Formers can find ways to keep busy the entire game, actually, and here are some of the better uses you can make of them: Mag Tubes: Come late in the middle game, in general, and they greatly ease your ability to defend your holdings. You should have no less than two different mag tube routes which reach to all parts of your empire (in case one of them is severed by a marauding enemy). Tap to Aquifer: The ability to construct rivers inside the production radius of all your bases is enormous and will add another +1 energy per square to your coffers (in addition to adding another boost to your research times). This can be carried over to any squares outside the production radii of your bases upon which you have crawlers harvesting energy. Expand the continent: A very good idea, once you've done about all you can do with your starting landmass. You simply raise more land (preferably in the general direction of the faction that has been giving you the most trouble). As the new land appears, have your formers optimize it, find a base that isn't too busy, build another colony pod, and slowly grow your empire toward your enemy (migrating troops along that route if you feel the need to provide protection for your band of formers and colony pods. And remember, you don't have to actually finish the land bridge until you're good and ready! Flavors of Formers (Designing the right model for the job) Far and away the biggest terraforming bang for your buck comes from the standard, infantry-based, fission former, and in truth, the bulk of your terraforming will be done by these guys, but as the game grinds on, there are a number of alternate configurations I have found useful, and will outline some of the ones I use frequently here, along with some notes on why I consider them useful: Rover-Formers: Generally, I wait until I get Fusion reactors to build these guys, and having a few tossed into your mix can do wonders for you! First, they're fast, and able to scoot around your existing infrastructure like nobody's business. That's key, because by the midgame, your former teams are generally operating quite some distance from your core bases (which is where your newly made formers will likely be coming from). At this point, if you were to simply build another infantry based former, it might take him 8-10 turns simply to arrive at the site of the terraforming, and that's usually unacceptably long. The solution then, is to build a faster former, and get him out working for you! Vel's Peace Frogs (so named because, one evening while playing and sucking down tequila, I came to the conclusion that, given their greenish color and squat appearance, they kinda looked like....well....frogs....or it could have just been the tequila and my imagination): Give a former Synthmetal armor and trance and suddenly you've got a "combat unit" in game terms. Doing this (and giving them a fusion reactor upgrade while you're at it) gives you a unit that is at least 120% better in a fight--with a reactor upgrade--, and at least 170% better in a fight vs. psi-attackers. Add to that the fact that the former now gains Morale upgrades for surviving battles, and it's easy to see why this is a good upgrade! Not to mention, if you've got a beleaguered base, tossing a few of these "roving defenders" into the base just might be the thing that lets you hang on for that badly needed turn! Vel's "Super-Frogs": If they didn't get a Fusion upgrade before, they definitely do now, along with super-former ability, silksteel armor (or better if I can afford it!), and clean reactors! This enables my lowly formers to stand toe to toe with missile troopers and win, and it'll tear the heart out of a chaos trooper....the attacker will almost always win, but he won't be in any kind of fighting shape afterwards, especially if I place my unit right (high ground, terrain and sensor bonus, sometimes a bunker bonus too!), and sometimes I get lucky! How embarrassing for the bad guys, to get all torn up by a drunken former driver! Fungus Busters!: These guys (usually built on Rover Chassis) get Anti-Fungal Tanks and Superforming ability, meaning that they can clear fungus in 1-2 turns! (base of six, halved to three by the tanks, and halved again by the superforming ability to 1.5) Super Sea Drivers: Super formers (armored and clean) on a Cruiser Hull. Designed to work hotspots and sometimes accompany my fleets to do nasty things to the landmass of the enemy..... A note here about the use of sea crawlers: The sea is a vast resource for both nutrients and energy. Often largely untapped because of the vulnerability of sea formers and crawlers, and the vulnerability of coastal bases themselves. If you plan to make sea forming a part of your overall strategy (and it's so efficient that you really should), then you will probably want to begin as soon as you get your initial infrastructure I place in your core bases. Speed is of the essence here, however, because as soon as rival factions begin making contact (especially in MP games), your sea formers are at risk every turn they remain in the water. The best bet then, is to build one per coastal base (and if you have followed my earlier advice, then you'll not have terribly many of those), and have them terraform toward each other. When they meet, begin operating them in teams to more rapidly complete the terraforming of particular squares, and, at the first sign of trouble, haul them back into base, or run toward active fleet elements which are probably lurking nearby. A strong long-term goal where sea formers are concerned is to use your land- based formers to create an inland sea, moving the sea formers into it just prior to the completion of it. Once established, you will have a relatively safe area from which to harvest huge amounts of nutrients and energy, and it is quite possible to feed the entire empire from the foodstores of the inland sea alone! Or, if you have been blessed with rainy terrain and an abundance of resource specials, then focus on tidal harnesses in your inland sea and crawl in vast amounts of energy. If you do this from your HQ base, or from bases quite near it, you will quickly be in a position to get multiple techs per turn, based solely on the strength of your seaward "energy park," and from a time-to- terraform standpoint, it takes significantly less time to put into place than does a land-based energy park (less money too....it gets expensive raising land to 3000+ meters!) If rivals begin sniping at your sea formers before the inland sea is completed, and if you do not have clean reactors, you are generally better off moving the surviving formers back to bases and disbanding them to help speed whatever builds you are currently working on (saving support costs), with a plan to rebuild them later. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Supply Crawlers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By now, you've probably got quite a number of supply crawlers floating about in your empire, adding to your base's native ability to harvest nutrients, minerals, and/or energy. You have seen first hand the benefits of building them, and are probably quite a fan. It should not be difficult to convince you then, that Supply Crawlers are the second most useful unit in the entire game, but it has been my experience (from watching and playing against many of the members here in the War College), that supply crawlers don't get utilized nearly as much as they should. This section then, provides some additional notes to get your mind turning on the subject of the Supply Crawler, in hopes of demonstrating a few uses for the sturdy little units that you might not have already thought of. The number one best use of Supply Crawlers is obvious: To boost the nutrient, energy, or mineral production of a given base. Generally, I go for increasing energy output, and if you do so with a vengeance, multiplied out over several turns, you will find your energy reserves spiking up two or three hundred energy credits per turn.....multiplied out by your energy banks and such, they tend to pay for themselves VERY quickly. Some notes here: Keep in mind that if you have a base with the Merchant Exchange in it, and that base builds a supply crawler, the unit will get the +1 energy bonus in the square he is harvesting from, making the ME base a VERY attractive one to build crawlers from. And, if the ME base also happens to be your Headquarters, then that base will not suffer any inefficiency, which means that you get to keep 100% of the energy harvested. This can set you up quite nicely to turn your HQ base into your primary research place (build the supercollider and theory of everything there, and you've got a positively EVIL amount of research. Add the network backbone, and the base can probably net you a tech all by itself every turn). The second best use I have come up with (and this frustrates the HELL out of my opponents here at the college, though strangely, I have not seen them copying the idea) is to make an armored crawler, drop him down on a "choke point" (narrow strip of land leading to a rival's territory) to harvest energy from a forest (on a sensor array). Now you're getting 3 or more energy per turn, and keeping the bad guys at bay at the same time, and an armored crawler in the woods on a sensor array is a pretty tough cookie. Give him Trance ability to defend against worms, and he'll probably be there for a good long time. Third thing: Coastal Crawlers rock! It's entirely possible to ring my entire continent in crawlers harvesting minerals from coastal squares, forcing enemy landing parties to have to fight just to get a toehold! (Oh, and did I mention that as soon as I get clean reactors, there are most always two units there, one being a AAA Garrison, and a bunker!) Makes it almost not worth the effort, knowing that you'll likely lose at least one, and have two more damaged attackers, just to land, but then, that's what I'm shooting for! Of course, all that takes TIME to set up, but once it is, most attackers will simply look elsewhere. Of course, an alternative option would be to drop in, but with bases 3-apart, blanketing the continent, and Aero-Complexes at every one of them, there are no squares that drop troops are ABLE to drop into....the defense network is just too tight. If the bad guys DO get through though, crawlers are excellent units for messing up the invasion force's zones of control, because in addition to doing that, they're also harvesting resources for you. Another good idea would be to make the choice NOT to work the square in your base's production radius containing your sensor array, putting a cheap armored crawler on that square to draw resources for you. Protection from sniping..... Building Notes: I tend to play my games from a middle-game energy-focus standpoint, and find it very inefficient to ever have bases stockpiling energy, and once I've developed my bases as fully as I'd care to, rather than stockpile energy, I'll build crawlers. I maximize the use of the land I have to work with in that way, and, the former can be cashed in later to help build those expensive secret projects. Of course, with the energy focus I play, I tend to have enough cash on hand to simply buy whatever project I am working on, but the option to cash in an odd crawler or two is nice to have.... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Developing your Style -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's obviously too late in the game to change your faction, and you've already settled on a particular style of play for this venture, so shifting gears at this point would be a pretty expensive proposition, both in terms of money and time, so you're much better off taking a close look at what you've already got in place, and seeing where you can take it from here. Look closely at your empire. See where your strengths are and play to them. Magnify them. Do you have a big army, perhaps the biggest on Chiron? Take steps to increase it further still, but again, do not forget that having a big army does nothing for you in and of itself. You have to actually DO something with it in order to make it pay, so consider what you want to do with this big force you've got developed. Are you getting technological advances in record time? Great! But there is probably a way you can get your advances even faster than you are currently. Look things over and see where you can improve yourself. Also, at this point, you will want to pay close attention to your weaknesses. After all, your rivals are probably getting restless and actively probing all the other factions for weaknesses, so if you've got a few (and you will....you always will), take care to cover them, or minimize them as much as you can. Make yourself as uninviting a target as possible. Bend and flow with the playing style you have chosen for yourself. Work with it, not against it. I cannot offer you too much in the way of specifics here, because each game will be unique in it's ebbs and flows. All I can say is this: You have the framework and the foundation in place. If you work with your strengths and advantages, if you magnify them, while at least seeing to it that your weaknesses are not easily exploitable, you will find yourself in a strong position indeed, and that is the very essence of developing your style. Set yourself up in a position of dominance and security. Go back and re-read selected sections of this guide as applicable to your current game and situation and apply them to magnify your strengths and cover your weaknesses. Play carefully, yes, but more importantly than even that, play decisively. DO NOT second guess yourself. Make a decision and ram it down the throats of your collected opposition. (If it turns out to be wrong, I promise that you won't do it again!) Dictate terms to them with your play style as much as you can. Even if you are playing the most passive of Builders, you will find yourself in a position to do this by selectively strengthening certain of your rivals with technological advantages, while keeping other rivals down by refusing them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Developing your Focus -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To a degree, the lay of the land outside your bases production radii will determine how those squares are terraformed, but where the differences are minimal (i.e., an arid square isn't going to be terribly productive, no matter what you build on it), make the selection that will further the ends of whatever "focus" you have adopted for yourself. Every crawler you put out in the field harvesting will magnify your focus by that much more. It's an incremental thing, and spread over all of your bases, so you will likely not fully realize just how big an impact they are having, but once you have a few dozen crawlers out there collecting resources for you, stop for a moment and take stock of exactly what they are netting you every turn. You will find that they are paying for themselves very quickly indeed, and every turn after they pay for themselves is pure profit for you, in one form or another! Again, the trick to making the best use of your crawlers is to stick to your focus as much as possible. If you've opted for a mineral focus, then get busy making as many mines as you can (and boreholes harvested by your workers) and watch the mineral production at all your bases go through the roof! Same with energy, but that is a little easier to see as you can watch the total income of your empire climb steadily higher, rather than having to check the mineral output of each base. Either way, the trick is to not get complacent with it. Anytime one of your bases has a little free time, use it to crank out some more crawlers. Even if you don't have any squares ready for them to work yet, you can keep them around for when you DO have some more squares ready, and in the meantime, if an emergency arises, remember that your crawlers can be "cashed in" for their full mineral value to help rush build something you find yourself in need of. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Creating Economy of Scale -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Actually, if you've followed the advice in the Guide up to this point, then you've already created Economies of Scale, and this is just a little blurb to point that fact out to you. Economies of Scale is "the prize." It is your reward to yourself for all the hard work you've been neck deep in since the beginning of the game. Take a look back at the road you've been traveling, and see how far you've come. You began with two colony pods and a scout, and you've wrangled that into an Empire, in every sense of the word. You have been fast, efficient, and diligent, in both the building of your infrastructure, and in the maintenance and improvement of your defenses. You've taken an active stance in world affairs, getting out there in one way or another (even if it was just with probe foils), exploring the map, recovering Unity Pods, finding (and Infiltrating!!) rival factions, talking, wheeling, dealing, and otherwise flexing the steadily developing muscles of your Empire. Sure, there have been growing pains along the way. Skirmishes, and perhaps even HOT skirmishes or limited wars, but you've survived those, learned from them, and have all the essential elements in place. Your bases are hugely productive and efficient. Your army is top of the line. In short, you are ready to dictate terms to the rest of the Planet. If Diplomatic dealings are more in keeping with your personal style, you can now bargain with almost anyone from a position of solid, steady strength. If your main interest is warfare, you can now strike out fast and hard, and more importantly, you can keep the pressure up as long as you need to, something that those with lesser developed nations cannot do, nor can they stand long against those who can. It's been a long, oftentimes risky road to get to this point, but now it's time to reap the benefits of your efforts. Sometimes, you can play the statesman. Dealing from a position of vast strength and stability, it may be possible to bend others to your will simply by making prudent "suggestions." Often though, others will be envious of your position, and will have nothing to do with your diplomatic overtures, and if that is the case, so be it. At this point, the prospect of warfare should NOT be a thing that scares you, and to that end, you'll want to pay very close attention to the next section, because no matter how peace-loving you are at heart, there will be others who will not keep the peace. Now is the time to take the fight to them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- More on Combat -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New and Improved Ground Pounders and Garrisons One of the key differences between the early and middle game is the overall size of the battles that will occur. In the early game, a large attack force is, at best 10-12 units, but by the middle game, this will often be considered nothing more than a sharp skirmish. Especially with the advent of clean reactors, it will take an ever-increasing number of troops in the field to pose a significant threat to an enemy, and because of that, strike forces can often double or triple in size! Do not confine yourself to designing small or medium sized attack forces in the middle game! It will only get you into trouble, and you'll find yourself losing the strike force you so carefully put together! Also remember that, with the arrival of Magtubes, taking and HOLDING an enemy base becomes a daunting task indeed. Unless you sever all routes into and out of the base when you take it, your rival will be able to speed attacker from all parts of his empire to the site of the battle and take the base back with overwhelming force if he wishes. Therefore, in the middlegame, unless you over- staff your attack forces by a considerable margin, you might be better off to take the enemy base, sell the most expensive facility and then simply burn it to the ground. In the middle game, you get a staggering array of new offensive and defensive options available to you, and on the whole, your forces become much more specialized and deadly. I'll not attempt to cover all the various options, as there is no firm way to tell for certain when various options will become available. This is simply due to the fact that, by the middle game, the advances and capabilities you have available to you at any given point are directly related to the path up the tech tree you have chosen. Some players might get "Blink Displacement" in the middle game, while others won't see it until right near the end. However, the most commonly occurring, and most frequently used options will be covered here: AAA Tracking: The mainstay of the middle-game. This is the ability that keeps the nasty needlejets and choppers from running roughshod over your defenses. Put one or two of these guys in each base (and even more in border bases) and your enemies will think twice about risking their aircraft. Clean Reactors: The favorite ability of Builders everywhere (everybody, actually, but Builders especially), this is the holy grail....the ability which allows you to field a near-infinite sized army, and probably one of the most unbalanced abilities in the entire game. The ability to create military units which do not require support costs is HUGE. Sophorific Gas Pods: Reduces any troops hit with the gas by two morale levels (effectively reducing them by 25% in overall effectiveness). This is a great ability, and perfect for your first strikers and counterpunchers! Dissociative Wave: Eliminates special abilities! Absolutely awesome! Blink Displacement: Allows attacking units to ignore infrastructural enhancements and the Multiplicative effects that come with them! Armed with these abilities, and a stunning variety of new armor types (silksteel, photon wall, probability, and R8 being the most commonly seen armor types in the middle game) and weapons (gatling, missile, chaos, fusion, tachyon, and shard), plus the addition of at least two new reactor types in the middle- game (Fusion and Quantum), your troopers see a staggering array of power and potential, and in general, they get cheaper to build! The same basic principles that worked with early-game unit design work now, but with so many more options, you will likely spend an increasing amount of time in the Design Workshop pouring over options. The most important thing is to stay focused, and try to avoid designing too many different unit types! Just design what you need, or what you think you will need, based on studying the infiltrator data of your rival factions. Take a look at what forces they have in the field, and design your attackers and defenders accordingly, and remember, it's generally best to begin by building a cheap "shell unit" and upgrading to what you need! This will enable you to build large numbers of troops quickly and configure then on an as-needed basis! Also remember that, if you're going to do it that way, you'll want to keep your relatively defenseless scouts in protected areas of your Empire so some hotshot chopper pilot doesn't come along and toast a dozen of your cheaply built troops before you get the chance to upgrade them! Rovers and Hovertanks With the discovery of Hovertanks, Rovers become pretty much obsolete, but if you've done some early-game fighting, you've likely got a core group of Rovers with really good morale, and it's in your best interest to keep them up to date with the best in technology, but from an overall versatility standpoint, Hovertanks are far superior, as they get an extra point of movement, and can move across any type of terrain for a cost of only one movement point. In rugged terrain, this can triple the maneuverability of your fast attackers, which is crucial when making attack runs. Other than that key difference though, anything that works for your garrisons, will work for your Rovers and Tanks, so keep the same mindset when designing your mobile defenders and battle groups! Needlejets and Choppers Death From Above! Warfare in SMAC has four distinct phases, and air power represents the most deadly of the lot. Phase one is in the earliest stages in the game, when almost everybody is confined to infantry units. Skirmishes during this phase of the game will be slow, tedious affairs, as you probably won't even have much infrastructure in place yet. The advent of Rovers expands the field dramatically (and gives the Spartans an early leg-up in battling, since they begin the game with Rovers!), as mobility increases, with firepower increasing in tandem with that greater mobility. Phase three is the rise in supremacy of naval units and Marines, rendering Attack Rovers less useful, but certainly not obsolete, and finally, air power, the terror of Chiron. Against a technologically inferior opponent, the presence of needlejets and choppers can quickly reduce that rival Empire to nothing. Your jets get a 100% increase in attack advantage, and can simply sweep the enemy garrisons away, enabling you to send in a simple Recon Rover to take the now-empty bases. With MMI and Choppers, this is even easier to do, thanks to the Multiplicative attack value of choppers. The ability to fly up to a base, attack half a dozen times, and head home is enormous, and if you get this tech before you opponent gets the corresponding defensive techs (Air Power to build Aerospace Complexes, and Advanced Military Algorithms to build AAA garrisons), you can count the game won in 10-20 turns, tops. As per Rovers and Tanks, anything the Infantry units can do, Needlejets and Choppers can do with a vengeance. You don't have to get fancy with these units, and you don't generally have to worry about armor, since your aircraft will seldom be spending much time outside the base (and if they do, more often than not, they defend with their weapon value, not their armor value), so just put on the biggest gun you can afford and start blasting! (How-To Note: Designing good Aircraft: Most people naysay the idea of using armor on Needlejets, and in the SMAC world, it is true that armor costs were unusually high for jets and choppers, but in the SMACX world, that is no longer the case. Given that, and given the damage that unarmored units are prone to take via artillery strikes, I find it useful to put synth-armor on the majority of aircraft I plan to send into hot zones. In this way, I provide a measure of protection for them while they're in the base for nominal cost. I consider it cheap insurance, but, in the same breath I will say that human opponents tend to use less artillery than the AI, so use your own judgment here. You can win a great many games simply by tossing a big gun on a Needlejet or Chopper chassis!) Probe Teams The same basic probing principles work here, but a quick note with regards to your probe teams: It is vitally important that you upgrade the reactor types of your probes! If you don't, your defensive position is severely degraded in the face of enemy probes with better reactors! Don't make the mistake of overlooking your probes when you are doing force upgrades! More advanced Naval capabilities You get two important advances for your navy in the middle-game. Exactly when you get them will, of course, be determined by the path you choose when making your way up the tech-tree, but both are quite powerful, and will dramatically enhance your position in certain situations! Subs (UU): Worthless against the AI, because they know where your units are anyway, but against a Human opponent, nothing could be finer! A Submersible transport does not even need an escort to slip in and cause havoc, which opens up whole new realms of possibilities, and enables you to get sneakier than ever! Imagine sending off a large (and very visible) task force of ships covering a transport or two toward one end of an enemy's Empire, all the while, and completely unseen, the three submersible transports you built and loaded to the gills with Marines are steadily, stealthily making their way toward other key points of the Enemy's empire! The Aircraft Carrier:(CV) This is the game-ender. The perfect synthesis between air power and naval supremacy, and with a balanced task force led by a Carrier, you can conduct extended operations (especially if the carrier and transport(s) accompanying it have repair bays), and effortlessly project your power to any corner of the globe. (How-To Note: Designing an Advanced Attack Fleet: Fleet composition varies from game to game and purpose to purpose of course, but if you want to put together a fleet that can meet a variety of threats and provide you with enormous versatility, here's a composition that will serve you very well indeed: Begin with one capital ship (Battleship, Command Cruiser, or Aircraft Carrier), two "flank ships" in some or other cruiser configuration, two destroyer class vessels, and four frigates. Add to that 2-3 probe vessels of whatever configuration you desire, and a pair of transports, loaded with clean scout marines. If possible (and against human opponents) augment this with a few subs taking up flanking and slightly forward positions around your core fleet. With 14-17 ships in the fleet, yes, it's big, but with clean reactors, that's not a problem, and the sheer power of a fleet like this will put you in a position to dominate your opponents at sea, no matter who they are! And, if you can construct 2-3 such task forces, you can be virtually guaranteed of naval dominance! (Personally, I like having four such task forces....two to guard my holdings, and two more "detachable fleets" to send out to conduct training exercises near hotspots). Missiles and such: Many people consider missiles to be weapons of last resort. They're "one shot" weapons that can serve you well in certain situations, and net you very little in others. Specifically, the best use of missiles is against an incoming enemy transport, but transports will seldom be coming in alone (unless controlled by the AI), which means you'll need several missiles to knock out all the elements in the approaching fleet. Considering the cost of missiles, that is impractical. Generally you only want to use them when you know you will be knocking out more minerals' worth of production than it cost you to build the missile, and because of that, if you spot an enemy fleet approaching, covering a transport, your best bet is generally to send a chopper out to tear through the defensive elements of the fleet, interceptors to be rid of any and all air cover the fleet might have, and then use the missile to send all the Marines to Davy Jones' Worm-Locker. Generally, missiles are poorly used against well-defended bases, as it is entirely possible for a stout AAA defender to withstand six or more missile attacks before being destroyed. In this case, you lose an inordinate amount of minerals for only minimal gain. If you find a relatively new, underdeveloped base, certainly, let the missiles fly, but against most mid-game bases (especially with Flechette Defense Systems and the like), it is a waste of your productive capacity even to try it. The Planet Buster: Ahhhhh heaven! The ability to be rid of an enemy production center, lock, stock, and barrel. These are weapons of awesome power and even more awesome cost! Mostly, they're best used in a deterrent mode (just like real life), to prevent your opponent from being rid of your bases (since he knows you will simply do the same). Remember that Planet Busters are built on an "aircraft" chassis, which means you can build airfields at various points around your Empire and effectively create "Missile Silos" (heavily guarded, of course), to prevent an opponent from nuking a base just to be rid of your own Planet- Busting capabilities. (How-To Note: Getting and keeping a stockpile of PB's: Thanks to the extremely high cost of the Planet Buster, many players consider them impractical builds, even with an extremely high mineral count at your bases, but there is a way to quickly and fairly easily build up your arsenal. It takes a bit of timing, but is well worth the effort. Simply do this, when you are ready to build your nukes: Determine what number you want to have at the ready (as a rule of thumb, I go with six), and begin six prototypes of PB's, sending supply crawlers from nearby bases to speed the prototyping process along. As you near the halfway mark in the completion of your PB Prototypes, divert all crawlers to one single base and rapidly complete the prototype. When you do, the next turn, the price on your remaining PB's in production will drop (since they no longer carry the proto-penalty), and you will have all six of your PB's ready to move to silos). Note too, that your PB deterrent degrades considerably with the advent of Orbital Defense Pods (ODP's), so if you're going to use them, do it before your opponent can launch his defensive satellites, as they are FAR cheaper to build than your Planet Busters, making the weapons undoubtedly useful, but only for a specific window of time, unless you can keep him from building ODP's at all (by building more of them yourself). The Space Race: This brings us to a fascinating, but often overlooked element of the middle game. Controlling the orbital belt of Chiron. Satellites are wonderful ways of bringing in extra resources, made even more wonderful thanks to the Cloudbase Academy project, which enables all of your bases to take full advantage of the satellite you have in operation, and a great many players rely heavily on the nutrient production that Hydro Sats bring down to keep their populace fed, as this goes far in enabling them to set up most, if not all of their bases as "Specialist Bases." Knowing this, and knowing that ODP's can be used to knock out enemy satellites, in addition to protecting your bases from Planet Buster attacks, the war in space can be an exciting one indeed. The fact is, Satellites can be enormously beneficial to your empire, creating a huge windfall of resources for even the smallest of bases (and that windfall increases as the base grows!). However these new capabilities also leave you open to new risks, specifically in the form of ODP's which enable your opponent to trash your satellites and degrade your position, so if you plan to make use of satellites, then you'd better also plan to defend them! To that end though, the first person in space can generally dictate terms to those who come later, but only if you keep a constant watch on the number of satellites being launched by your rivals. Secret Projects in the Middle Game: There are a TON of these, and I'll give each a brief mention, just to be fair....: The Supercollider (Applied Relativity): If you're middle game is not energy based, then it should be. Research and technology are so vital to the middle game, and a project like this....one that doubles lab outputs at a given base....how can you NOT start drooling over the prospect! No matter what your faction or pre-disposition, build it before someone else does! The Ascetic Virtues (Planetary Economics): Handy for everyone, of course, but Lal gets a real booster out of it, enabling him to get obscenely large bases well before Hab-Domes. For Morgan, it's a kicker too, all but eliminating his small base problem. The Spartans too, benefit greatly, as it enhances their existing police rating. Everybody else benefits, but not as much as these three. Longevity Vaccine (Bioengineering): The clean reactor tech also gives you a cash cow. If you have the Merchant Exchange someplace, toss this onto the pile as well, and you'll have a base that can single-handedly pay for the infrastructure at a lot of your bases. If not, it's fairly useful, but certainly not critical, though for Zak (when he's not running Market) the drone control is nice. Hunter-Seeker Algorithm (Pre-sentient Algorithms): Even in the SMAX world, where the power of this project has been weakened, it should still be considered critical to every player in the game. Even those factions who have probe- immunity will want it from a purely denial standpoint, making this one of the most sought after secret projects out there. The Pholus Mutagen (Centauri Genetics): Unless you're one of the "Native" factions (and to a lesser extent, Morgan), this one's only marginally useful, though the ecology bonus will help you jack your mineral counts up slightly higher, but once you hit somewhere around 40, you really don't need that. Still, if you're playing Gaian, Cult, or Morgan, I'd put it fairly high on the list, and if you're playing against one of them, you'll want to pick it up just so they can't. The Cyborg Factory (Mind-Machine Interface): In the SMAX world, MMI is probably the most desired tech in the game. Not only does it give you choppers and thinkers, but it also gives you TWO secret projects! Awesome ones at that! Bio- enhancement centers are expensive from an upkeep standpoint, and they improve morale of ALL your units, making this project a must have, no matter who you are! The Cloudbase Academy (Mind-Machine Interface): If you want to get and keep air- superiority, GET THIS PROJECT! If you plan to make use of satellites in your game, GET THIS PROJECT! If someone else gets this project, GET THAT BASE! If you can't do that, nuke it. It's that important. Note though, that if you get this project, people WILL gang up on you, and if they don't, you almost can't help but win. Not only do you get two extra points of movement for all your aircraft, but you get a morale boost, make it harder for people to use drop teams on you, and your satellites automatically have their maximum impact at all your bases. Simply too good to pass on. The Theory of Everything (Unified Field Theory): Another lab-doubler, and every bit as important as the one that comes before it. Get it. You need it. Trust me. The Dream-Twister (The Will To Power): Even if you have no intention of making use of Psi attackers, you need this project so that the Worm lovers don't come over and pay you an unwelcome visit. About the only time you don't need this one is if you have the Neural Amplifier, but even then, it might be good to pick it up for denial. Also, if you're into Navy at all, grab this one! Your IoD's (which are already awesome) will be all but unbeatable! The Universal Translator (Homo Superior): Did somebody say free techs?! If you don't go for this one, you erode your tech position, allowing others to catch up, and if you're behind in tech, and happen to get to Homo-Superior first (thanks to your path up the tech-tree), this may be just the thing that enables you to catch up! The Network Backbone (Digital Sentience): For the money, it's not as good as it should be, because its value is too much tied to world size, which in turn, helps determine overall number of bases. Nonetheless, because it helps research, it should be fairly high on your list. Cyborgs don't need it, because they're already immune to the negatives of Cybernetic society, but it's still nice for the research kick. The Nano-Factory (Industrial Nanorobotics): Anybody who has a standing army of any size at all (and you'd better, by this point in the game) will want this project! Not only does it dramatically lower your upgrade costs, but it also (and more importantly in my opinion) allows your forces to fully recover in the field. You just can't get any better than that! The Living Refinery (Advanced Spaceflight): At this point in the game, support is usually only an issue if you're running Thought Control, and even then, with Clean Reactors it's not that big a deal. Nonetheless, clean reactors are expensive, and if you're running SE choices that lend you support anyway, this is a good way to be able to build large numbers of "non-clean" troops (which means that the ability slot formerly occupied by "clean" can be filled in with something else. For that reason alone it's quite handy, and if you're playing Miriam, mark it down as a must-have! The Cloning Vats (Biomachinery): I can't think of a single reason not to build this project, except perhaps for the fact that it will make you the target of envy and, in all probability attack, but hey....enjoy it while you got it! The Self-Aware Colony (Self-Aware Machines): The influx of cash you get when your maintenance costs are halved makes this project one of the fastest to pay for itself. If you're going for the economic win, this is crucial, and it's pretty important in general, because by this stage of the game, you've got a LOT of maintenance every turn. A good investment, no matter how you slice it. Clinical Immortality (Matter Ediation): Talents = Drone control, and at this point in the game, you've probably got a sprawling empire and this is just the thing! It's certainly not crucial (not even for Zak, by this stage), but very nice to have if you can free up a base for it. The Space Elevator (Super Tensile Solids): If you're planning to make heavy use of Satellites to enhance your factors of production, or if you entered the space race late and want to play catch up, this project will be a huge boon! Otherwise, even as a denial project, it's only average. The Singularity Inductor (Controlled Singularity): Comes too late in the game to really be useful. By this point, you've got more mineral production than you need anyway. This is an average project, at best, and too expensive for the relatively short lifespan it has. The Bulk Matter Transmitter (Matter Transmission): Another pricey, average value project. Yes, it's handy, but it's usefulness is limited, both in the fact that it only provides 2 minerals for each base, and by the lateness of its arrival in the game. One thing though, if you've got a high number of bases, it'll pay for itself pretty fast. The Telepathic Matrix (Eudaimonia): Most people stopped having drone problems a long time ago, and this project comes too late to really be of outstanding benefit for the money, but it DOES cut down on the need to micromanage your bases. The probe bonus is an utterly useless feature of this project, as by this point, your probes are elite anyway. They can't GET any higher. Average, at best, but handy if you're tired of micromanagement. Manifold Harmonics (Secrets of the Manifolds): This project makes fungus the best terrain in the game. Unfortunately, if you're like most players, you've just spent the entire game minimizing the amount of fungus in your empire. It's a good project, don't get me wrong, but unless you're playing one of the Native- lovers, it's not a GREAT project. Net-Hack Terminus (Self-Aware Machines): Again, the probe bonus comes too late in the game to do you much good, as you really have to try hard NOT to have elite probes, but if you missed the HSA, this one's not bad to get. The Art of War: Organizing your offense/defense on Chiron: (A more in-depth look at attack and defense schemes) There are at least some would-be generals out there who are itching to get started causing trouble, but they're not quite sure how to make sure they've got their bases covered when it comes to defense, and they're not 100% comfortable with the notion of designing an adequate attack force. It is my hope that this section will help. This is by no means the only way to go about it, and I am quite sure that there will be some major disagreement in the particulars laid out here, but that's okay too, I have found that these principles work very well for me. Not to say they're the only way to run a war, but I have tested them exhaustively, and I know they will serve you well, so here goes: It cannot be stressed enough that the advent of Clean Reactors has a huge impact on battlefield mathematics. Simply put, there are going to be a LOT more guys in the field than there were previously, and you need to take that into account. In the early game, it might have been possible to catch 4-5 worms, or build a 4- pack of Impact rovers and pretty much demolish someone's empire. That is no longer the case, and if you think it is, you're in for a rude surprise, as even newly founded bases will generally have enough offensive/defensive punch in them to turn your attack force of 4 into just so much fertilizer. Having said that, let me also add that this will not magically, nor instantly happen, and this paragraph is specifically for Momentum gamers. By the middle- game, a Builder is almost finished with infrastructure at all his bases. Certainly he's got Creches and Treefarms everywhere, with the rest of it falling into place quickly. If you're going to hit him, do it now, because once he's finished with his infrastructure, he'll be raking in several hundred credit per turn, and able to crank out clean laser infantry and recon rovers in a single turn at almost every base, upgrading them from there. This then, represents the last window of opportunity you have to hit a Builder with a relatively small force and have any hope of succeeding. If you can't, or don't, then pull back and build up yourself. Remember that you have the edge in terms of size, but the moment the Builder player turns his attention to the building of his military, he'll almost always have you in terms of technology and overall quality. The point though is, the Builder is pretty much starting from scratch building his military apparatus, and none (or very few) of his troops will be battle-tested. An attack now, before the burgeoning military apparatus is in place could very easily net you a number of wonderfully well-developed bases, making the early stages of the middle game the most dangerous time of all for the Builder. He'll be working fast to improve his defenses, so don't delay! If infiltration was extremely important in the early game, it is vitally so at this stage. You definitely DON'T want to go around starting trouble until you have a clear idea of what you will be going up against, so if you have an opponent you have not yet infiltrated, stop! Don't do a single thing until you infiltrate those datalinks and see what he's got waiting for you. If you attack blind, you're just asking to get thrashed. Worse, your opponent will likely track you back to your homeland and give you a firsthand lesson on the proper way to do it! It's also interesting to note that by this point in the game, the various playstyles begin to blur and merge together, as Builders begin to focus on militaristic concerns, and Momentum players (if they are unable to launch that final attack into a Builder's heartland) begin to draw back in the face of the ever-increasing sizes of Builder and Hybrid armies. Essentially, everybody who survived to the middle game begins to play the same way, each relying on early game successes to propel them through to the end. Who will win? Will it be the Momentum guy who went out and doubled the size of his empire by running over a rival Momentum player, or found a Builder early and punished him for his lack of defense? The Hybrid who is a good deal ahead with regards to infrastructure, but still needs to play a bit of catch up where the army is concerned, or the Builder, who has a sterling infrastructure, but is probably still far behind in terms of military? Hard to tell, but it'll all get sorted out in the middle game. Defense in the Middle Game: When planning the defenses of your empire, there are really only four things you need to take into consideration. If you are attacked, you will either be attacked by: Infantry Rovers Worms Stuff from the sky (missiles, choppers, and needlejets, planet busters) Sea bases also need to worry about attacks by ship, but for purposes of examining sea bases, we'll treat ship assaults of them like infantry attacks. And of course, any base may come under fire by artillery (which cannot kill any of your units, except in the case of an artillery duel), but it CAN prevent your units from healing up. With clean reactors, it is both possible and easy to cover all of your defensive bets, but that alone is not enough. It is never a good idea to have only one unit protecting a base from a specific type of attack (at least not if the base is in an exposed area), and this is one area where early-game styles will continue to influence mid-game thinking (even though the various styles are beginning to blur together). The numbers below are just benchmarks, and certainly not set in stone, but they'll give you some reckoning of what you can expect, or the kinds of defenses you can shoot for. Builders will be primarily interested in protecting their investment. They've put a lot of time and effort into each base, and don't really have any interest in giving it all away, so even their innermost bases will sport stout defenses. Expect to see no less than 4 strong garrisons with overlapping defense functionalities at non-exposed bases (an example of this might well be: 6-<3r>- 1, 6<3p>-1, 4-<4t>-1, 4-4-1(ECM)), plus an artillery unit (6)-2-2, a counter- punching rover (6-<4>-2), and one or more aircraft (interceptor and/or chopper) (<6>-2-18) & (6-2-12). That, combined with sensors, inherent base defenses, possibly perim. defenses (for the later addition of tachyon fields), crèches, morale enhancers like command centers and aero-complexes, soon-to-be-added geosynchronous survey pods, and the like makes for a tough nut to crack indeed, and you can expect that exposed bases will have no less than double that in short order, if they don't already. The good news for everybody else is that the Builder will be so pre-occupied with perfecting his own defenses that he'll still be content to let everybody else alone unless you go start trouble with him, and with that kind of force sitting around (multiply those numbers out by 12-15 bases and hold onto your jaw), he's probably NOT the guy you want to start trouble with unless you can take out a large percentage of his force in a single shot. Hybrids will cut a few defensive corners to put more attackers in the field more readily, and a good rule of thumb here would be 2-3 garrisons in non-exposed bases (similarly configured to the above), a counter-punching rover, and 1-2 aircraft, again, as mentioned above. Artillery at non-exposed bases would probably be considered not worth the investment, and either skipped, or built and moved to fringe bases, and once that was set up, the Hybrid would likely set about building a comparably sized force to send on the prowl. Momentum players would keep true to their "attack-to-defend" doctrine, knowing that most Builders won't attack them anyway, and few Hybrids either, so long as they maintain initiative and keep a threatening force in the field, so Momentum base defenses will be a token garrison, whatever police units are on-scene to help control drones, and any newly built troops that have not yet been assigned to attack groups and are still lurking on the homefront. Defenses for a Momentum player are very much measured by the size and character of the force they are currently fielding. If it is strong, then few opponents will be capable of defending against it and launching a strike against the Momentum player's homeland anyway. In essence then, Momentum gamers drive the defensive needs of everyone else in the game, a fact you should never forget! The mid-game and beyond may well belong to the Builder in terms of economies of scale and overall efficiency, but the it is the Momentum player who's in the driver's seat when it comes to determining how much of that sterling industry must be set aside for the continual production of military units! Vertical Investment: Drone problems created by continual expansion, and the logistics of defending an utterly huge Empire both work together to somewhat limit the sheer size of your holdings. At some point, it's just not worth the added investment to build yet another base, and this is truly the essence of the Builder's game....focusing on getting the most that you can out of the bases you have, maximizing their outputs with cunning terraforming, good crawler use, and the minimization of drones, however all of this investment needs protecting if you mean to keep it, and, once the needs of the bases themselves have been met, this becomes the cornerstone of defensive doctrine. Protecting vertical investments (or, from the attacker's point of view, sniping at vertical investment). The goal of every defender is, simply put, to make yourself as uninviting a target as possible. Do not leave crawlers or formers unescorted. In the post- clean-reactor world, there is simply no excuse for it, and it will only make you appear sloppy or weak before the enemy, which may well invite attack. Project strength at all times, even when you think no one is watching. Very likely, someone is, and you just don't know it yet! To that end, if you are content to stay on the defensive, or if you have a high degree of vertical investment (especially true of Builders, and to a lesser extent, Hybrids), then the bulk of your efforts in the middle-game should be a focus on building your army. You want troops everywhere, and I mean everywhere! Supply crawlers need to be covered (and double stacked with) AAA garrisons, and when your formers get around to it, build bunkers and sensors nearby too! Put guys in bunkers along the coast to give your opponent few, if any landing options, and where you DO leave landing options, plant "fungal funnels" and hide a few hard hitters inside (along with the occasional probe team). If you're a diehard Marketeer, set up a single punished base, and build tons of Penetrators and Choppers (mentioned above), make them all clean (of course) and re-home them to the Punished Base....no more discontentment due to drones! Same with the navy if you're a Marketeer. Set up a punished coastal or sea base and re-home your entire navy to there. Keep an active stance and maintain vigilant patrols. There is no one "right way" to go about setting up the defense of vertical investment, however. That will vary from game to game, and oftentimes, from moment to moment. About the only thing you can do here is study the map, look at possible approach routes to your empire, and plan from there, keep in mind too, that the wider you can cast your defensive net, the harder it will be for an enemy to land on your shores at all, so if there are some small, as yet unused islands surrounding your homeland, send formers over (with cover, of course) to build airstrips, bunkers, and sensors, and build yet more troops to hold those positions. This is especially valuable when you have a smallish island containing a monolith, as it will enable you to repair damaged troops after a fight, although, if you aren't that fortunate, then a rover with a repair bay works in a pinch (though you'll only be able to repair one unit at a time). Finally, once you think you've got all of your defensive bets covered, take another look around your holdings and see if there are places you may be able to set up Zoc-Blocks to stall a potential enemy advance (and more on the particulars of that in the Zoc section later!) Attacking in the Middle Game: Stout as the defenses can get, the fact is, defenders often overlook something, and it is the job of the attacker to show them in decidedly less-than-subtle ways what it is that they overlooked. To that end, after you infiltrate, study your opponents. See who's doing what. Is someone lagging? Not paying enough attention to defense? If so, that represents a potential opening for you. Keep in mind though, that at this point, it will probably be quite difficult to take and hold a base, so your real objective here will be to simply hurt the enemy by denying him one of his production centers. Especially in MP games, outright conquesting comes early on. The survivors in the middle game are generally pretty evenly matched, and actually conquering another faction is a hard thing to do unless you are significantly larger, or have help, so diplomatic concerns become crucial. If you are determined to attack someone, the first thing you need to do is to isolate that player diplomatically if at all possible. Limit the amount of help he can expect to get from other players in the game. You might be able to do this by cutting a deal, and/or offering to divide up your target's Empire with another player in exchange for assistance or at least non-interference, but beware! Once the attack begins, your opponent will likely be doing the same thing! The second thing is decide exactly what your objectives will be, and stick to those objectives. Do not get so caught up in the battle that you wind up overextending yourself and losing your attack force, but in the same breath, don't let a golden opportunity slip through your fingers. As the attacker, you have the initiative, and frequently, you have the element of surprise. Use both of those things to overwhelm you opponent at key points in his Empire, hold onto that territory if you can, and make further strikes from there. If at any time it appears that you cannot keep what you have taken, simply burn the base down and kill him slowly. Better that than letting him retake the base. Also, as mentioned in the "Defensive" segment of this portion of the document, since "occupation attacks" are increasingly difficult to arrange, you might want to satisfy yourself with degradation attacks, i.e., attacks on that aforementioned vertical investment. Builders leave themselves open by virtue of having a TON of units outside of bases (crawlers and the units they have covering them), and regardless of built in special abilities, those units simply do not have as many Multiplicative factors as units in bases, making them easier targets. By sniping continually at a rival's vertical investment, you create a constant drain on his resource pool as he struggles to maintain it via replacement. This is good for you, as it keep him too busy to launch a counter- offensive. As to the exact size, composition, and nature of your attack force, there's no way to give a "blanket" answer to that, as it will be entirely driven by what defenses you have set against you. The best way to ensure your success though, is to attack with more troops than you think you will need. As a rule of thumb, always take in at least one more Needlejet or Chopper and two more ground pounders than you think you'll need to accomplish your objectives. If you have an easier time than expected, then you've got a significant force on the enemy's turf for further operations, and if you run into trouble, you'll be glad you brought along the extra troops! (How-To Note: Giving a Builder a Hearttack!: One really amusing thing you can do to your friendly neighborhood Builder (and this actually works on anybody, but Builders tend to be REALLY anal about their terraforming) is to lob tectonic and fungal payload missiles at him to muck up his much-cherished terraforming. It's expensive, and it most likely won't net you any long-term gain, but it will keep the Builder hopping--kinda like in those old Westerns where the villain rides into town, heads for the bar, and invariably draws his six-shooter and fires at some poor guy's feet, forcing him to dance--, and therefore too busy to even think about you. It also might provide the opening for an attack, especially if you see that he stops building troops to get more formers in the field....) Advanced Combat Tips and Strategies: Combat is the epitome of chaos and unpredictability. When armies clash, even if differences in technology make it clear from the outset who the eventual victor will be, there is absolutely no accounting or predicting what will occur between here and there. If you think you can predict the subtle nuances, ebbs and flows of a combat situation with any degree of certainty at all, my recommendation would be to open up your own psychic hotline. Having said that, let me stress from the beginning that this article will not even attempt to cover every conceivable combat situation you might find yourself in. Simply put, I'm not that good. Not even close. What I **DO** hope to accomplish with the writing of this article is to stretch your mind a bit. To perhaps change the way you look at both tactical and strategic situations and provide some tools for judging the overall effects of choices made by both you and your opponent. If these tools are applied correctly, then you need not worry if you encounter an unexpected situation in combat, as you will feel more than comfortable improvising your way out of it. Early on in the Strategy Guide, we touched on the first two principles of battle: Know Thyself, And Know Thine Enemy That is the foundation for what lies ahead, and you can rely on those principles with absolute certainty. If you do not know yourself, you have no way of assessing your own capabilities, and if you do not know your enemy, you have no way of understanding what you are up against. If you have neither of these, how can you hope to fight a war? If you're fairly new to the game of warfare, you might ask: "How exactly, do you "know yourself?"" Specifically, you should know things such as: *How big is your army, including garrison forces? *If you were to launch an attack right now, this turn, how many units would you have available, and what would they be? *Do you have a means of getting your forces to an enemy's homeland (transports, landbridge, psi-gates, drops, or some combination of all of the above) *How many bases can you afford to commit to the war effort to replace lost troops? *How long can you afford to fight a war? *What is my level of technology, relative to my opponent? *How many total bases do I have, relative to my opponent? *What are you hoping to accomplish by entering into this war? If you cannot answer at least these questions, then you're probably not yet ready to fight, and if you DO fight, you will likely be fighting an uphill battle. Likewise, initiates to the arts of war might ask "How exactly, do you know your enemy?" And I would say, specifically, you should know or do these things at a minimum: *INFILTRATE YOUR OPPONENT!!! (Nothing is more important than this!) *How many bases does my enemy have? Is it more bases than I have? *How large of an army can my opponent bring to bear on me? If he is attacking, how will they be arriving (drop, psi-gate, transport, as above), if he is defending, how good is his infrastructure? *How long can my opponent afford to fight a war? *What is my opponent hoping to accomplish by going to war with me, or, how will my opponent likely react to my attack? (is he likely to hit back hard, or does he have a tendency to shrivel up and surrender quickly) Again, if you can't answer all of these questions at a minimum (and there are plenty of others), then you're not ready yet. Let's take a quick look at the fourteen factions in the game and see where their battle strengths and weaknesses lie. This is fairly generic of course, but it is enough to get your mind turning on the subject: The Hive Strengths: LOTS of troops & quick replacement times (+1 growth and industry) Weaknesses: Possible lagging research (lack of energy), and limited probe team actions (again, lack of energy) The Morganites Strengths: LOTS of probe actions (good money), likely to have technological superiority (good research) Weaknesses: Small army (support problems), likely to have lower morale (probably running wealth) The University Strengths: Likely to have the best tech-level in the game (GREAT research) Weaknesses: Probe vulnerability The Gaians Strengths: Tied for the best Psi-force on Chiron (with The Cult of Planet) Weaknesses: likely to lag in techs (can't run Market, can't get +1 energy per square until late game) The Believers Strengths: Strongest attackers on Chiron & Superb Probe Teams. If running Fundy, immune to subversion. Weaknesses: Lousy Tech means initial skirmishes (pre-probe ops) will likely be lost, regardless of fanatic bonus The PeaceKeepers Strengths: Baseline. Peacekeeper troops have no notable strengths or weaknesses. I suspect they were the baseline faction Weaknesses: (see above) The Spartans Strengths: Magnificent fighters, either offensively or defensively. The best, most well-rounded fighting force in the whole game Weaknesses: Harder to train replacements (industry penalty) The Cult of Planet Strengths: Tied with the Gaians for the best Psi-force on Chiron Weaknesses: Lag in tech and replacement times (industry and econ penalty) - this will also limit probe actions Cybernetic Consciousness Strengths: Good research will likely mean better firepower, techsteal ability when capturing a base. Weaknesses: Lower than average growth rate and difficulty booming may mean smaller industrial base. Data Angels Strengths: Units are expensive to subvert (and invulnerable with the right tech). Thanks to sharetech ability, weapons tech will be at least par, if not better. Weaknesses: Over-reliance on probe teams may lead to a smaller than average standing force. Drones Strengths: Mammoth industrial capacity equals lighting quick troop replacement times Weaknesses: Lagging tech means inferior firepower, at least in the opening stages of battle. Pirates Strengths: Kings of the sea! Unmatched naval power thanks to faction-specific bonuses Weaknesses: Sea bases are more difficult to defend, able to be taken by a larger variety of craft and chassis types. Caretakers Strengths: Inherent defensive bonus and probable tech edge. Bases are largely useless if captured. Weaknesses: None notable. Usurpers Strengths: Inherent attack advantage (per Believers), and probable tech edge. Bases are largely useless if captured. Weaknesses: None notable. Building on those basic concepts, we find the first principle of victory: Use your native strengths in battle Thinking along those lines, it is easy to look down the list, and come up with some basic strategies with each faction, and they'd probably look a lot like this: The Hive: Use superior numbers to overwhelm your opponent. Don't give him time to do anything cute or subtle with his greater energy reserves. The Morganites: Buy his empire out from under him, one piece at a time. Use your ease of getting to +1 Energy per square (Wealth) to your advantage and adopt Native strategies to force your rivals away from Market economies, giving you a significant energy lead. The University: Strength through superior firepower. The Gaians: Strength through little squggily worms - use a prevalence of Native attackers to force your opponents away from Market economies to equalize energy flows. The Believers: Attack relentlessly. Never let your opponent breathe, and allow any enemy base to escape the wrath of your hungry probe teams. The Peacekeepers: Chuckle while your opponent tries to figure out how the hell to attack you, and chip away at him all the while, looking for the opening to drive the stake through his heart. The Spartans: Meet your opponent in the field with care and cunning. Kill him and dance away before he can return the favor. Nobody can do that particular dance better than you. The Cult of Planet: The same basic strategies that work for the Gaians work for you. Use them! Guerrilla tactics are your best friend, and your ace in the hole! Cybernetic Consciousness: Use your techsteal ability to rip through the tech- tree and terrorize all neighboring factions. Of all the factions, you are the least probe-dependent. Data Angels: The underrun is your best friend. Arguably, you are even better at this than Morgan. Drones: Forget troop losses. You can overwhelm with sheer numbers even better than Yang. Do it. Pirates: Sea Power of any kind is magnified in your hands. If anybody is foolish enough to build coastal bases in your vicinity, take them from him. Keep everybody else's navies bottled up. Caretakers: Expand relentlessly, and "defend" your way to victory! Usurpers: Attack relentlessly, per the Believers, except that while they're wasting minerals building probes, your tech parity or supremacy will enable you to focus on building a bigger, better army. Of course, there is another way of looking at the same equation, and that brings us to the second principle of victory: Exploit the weaknesses of the enemy to defeat him. On the surface, that seems easy enough, but you will find that it is far easier to say it than to do it. Thinking in terms of the "second principle of victory," it's pretty easy to glance down the list, zero in on the weaknesses of the different factions, and devise a method of beating them. If you do that, you will likely wind up with a list that looks something like this (Keep in mind that, at this point, we're still talking in pretty generic terms, and that these particular strategies are drawn from the notion of using each faction's weaknesses against itself): The Hive: Wear him out with Probe Teams. Drain what energy he has to keep him utterly helpless in that regard and eliminate what rush-build capability he has. Defend your bases with multiple probes to prevent him from stealing techs. Subvert his troops to even out the numbers and fight him with his own forces. The Morganites: Use raw numbers to overrun the smaller Morganite army. Simply sweep them off the map. The University: Probe vulnerability and Chronic drone problems make University bases cheap to buy. Subvert their bases whenever possible to get a foothold. Steal techs with your probe teams to get technological parity, then blast them off the map. The Gaians: Probe-guard your bases to keep your techs safe and crush the Gaians with superior technology and money (something you will likely have in greater supply than they will) The Believers: Kill ANY Probe-team you see, even if you have to leave a unit exposed to attack to do it. In a fight with your probes, they'll win and grab tech, and if they do that, you lose. The Peacekeepers: See how they're being played. The troops themselves don't have any real weaknesses to exploit, so you will have to wait on their commander to make a mistake, if you're looking for something to take advantage of. In the absence of that, play to your own strengths, and hit him hard and often in the field. The Spartans: Use attrition. Likely, you will be replacing your troops a good bit faster than he'll be replacing his. The Cult of Planet: He's got no money, and he can't replace lost troops quickly. A drawn out fight is NOT something this faction wants to see. Crush him with that, and drain away what money he has with your probes! Cybernetic Consciousness: Lower growth rate and a tougher time booming may leave this faction with less industrial capacity (or capacity which is enhanced via crawlers). Hit their mineral-harvesting crawlers, and outproduce them, smothering them with numbers. Data Angels: Polymorphic Encrypt your troops to make them more expensive for her to buy. And in the same vein, give her some middle of the road targets to buy. Stuff that's maybe a generation old. Good enough to be a threat (making it likely she'll buy it out from under you), but also fairly easy to kill when she does. Keep her money tied up that way, and hit her relentlessly. Odds are good that she's got a smaller starting force than you. Drones: Another low-tech faction. Keep your bases probe-guarded, deny him access to your research, and keep the guns blazing. Industry or not, you can kill (and subvert) them faster than he can make them. Pirates: Thanks to the high vulnerability of sea bases (pre-Tachyon field), it should be no problem for you to achieve local air superiority, blow his navy out of the water, and waltz into his bases. Caretakers: Gas 'em! Usurpers: See above, coupled with subversion whenever possible. Good morale troops are always valuable, no matter how green and ugly they are! Taken together, these two lists should give you a pretty solid foundation upon which to build your attack and defense strategies. That's not to say that you won't ever encounter oddities, or things that won't fit into these generalizations. You might find a Hive player who's got money coming out of his ears, or a Morganite with a massive, clean, elite army, or….the list goes on and on. Keep in mind that the lists above are not, and were not meant to be ironclad, but I feel certain you will find that they hold true far more often than not, and they will serve you well as a beginning point to devising your battle strategies. If you study these lists diligently, and find ways of executing the ideas they contain, you will win a great many more games than you lose. You will, in short, be a very good, solid player. You will not, however, be a great player. In order to be a great player, you must strive to consistently achieve the third principle of victory: Best and hardest of all, is to use the enemy's own strengths as weapons against him. If you can learn to do this consistently, you will be all but unbeatable, and in time, I will attempt to teach you what I know about it. I am certainly not saying that I'm the most qualified person for the job. I don't even begin to know everything about strategy and tactics. In fact, the only thing I can point to on my "resume" that might make me even remotely qualified to talk about this particular subject is the fact that I win a good many more games than I lose. At any rate, it is my hope that you will be able to take what I know about the subject and incorporate it into your own unique playing style, and from that, come up with a solid, reliable set of battle principles that serve you well. But there are other things which must be discussed before we get to the specifics of the third principle of victory. It is enough for the moment that you are aware it is out there. Before we start discussing exactly how to execute a battle plan (and eventually, how to use your enemy's strengths against him), some common understanding of terminology seems in order. What follows is a list of specific, named tactics, and notes on how, when, and where to apply them. I have included a "Baker's Dozen" of these strategies for your enjoyment. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands more, but part of the fun of practicing to be a good general is uncovering new strategies for yourself, and learning to blend their execution in perfectly with your particular style of play. Note that there are no "bad" tactics or styles of battle listed here. All of these are exceedingly powerful and have been time-tested and proven. It falls to each of us, students of battle, to learn the best times and situations to use these different approaches in, and when we arrive at an intimate understanding of how to best use these attacks, we approach that previously mentioned level of greatness. Demonstration: A show of force against an enemy in the field. A demonstration can consist of any number of units, in any configuration. It is one of the mainstays of battle. The main uses of a demonstration are two-fold: First, to intercept an invading army before your infrastructure and bases come under fire, and second, to wear down enemy forces as a set-up for a future siege or another attack made by one of your allies. Siege: An attack on an enemy base. Like a demonstration, a siege can consist of any number of units (but the numbers tend to be larger for sieges than for demonstrations for strategic reasons), and the units might be made up of any number of chassis-types and capabilities Feint: A "fake" siege or demonstration. The point of a Feint is to make your opponent believe you are going to launch an attack someplace, draw a portion of his army toward the site of the perceived threat, and then hit him somewhere else, unexpectedly. Overrun: A specific type of attack, aimed at pushing deeply into enemy territory. Where a demonstration tends to be rather akin to a parry in a duel, an overrun is a stab toward the soft underbelly of the enemy. It's intention is to deny your enemy the use of specific terrain features that are inside his territory (a borehole, a valuable nutrient square, a monolith, or some landmark such as that, or, to isolate an enemy base and make it more vulnerable to a siege). Roverrun: An overrun attack composed of a "Rover-Only" force. Unlike the overrun, which tends to emphasize a well-balanced attack force to kill the enemy and hold off any possible counter-attack, the Rover-Run's goal is to wipe the enemy force out and use speed and maneuverability to avoid any possible counterstroke the enemy might have planned. Underrun: An overrun with a small number of ground troops, supported by large numbers of probe teams. The goal of the underrun is to slip a small number of troops into enemy territory to cover the vulnerable probe teams and steal your way to the biggest force you can, using the subverted enemy troops to occupy enemy territory and putting the enemy in an interesting predicament. Does he attempt to steal the troops back and drain his energy reserves? Or, does he attack his own men, effectively working against himself? Either way, it is one of the hardest attacks to pull off, and also one of the most potentially devastating. Rolling line: A subset of the siege or demonstration. The rolling-line technique involves relatively large numbers of units and implies an extended campaign. The idea of the rolling line is to have enough units to be able to attack enemy positions every turn, and at the same time, be able to pull your damaged units back to some safe zone to recover, then rotate them back to the front lines again. In this way, you could conceivably keep the attack running forever. It's most practical use is in sieges of Hive bases, where the good chairman is likely to have upwards of thirty units in his most forward positions. You can take a base like that, but you'd better use a rolling line to do it, or he'll attack you on his turn, and wipe you out completely. Scorched Earth Retreat: A desperate defensive gambit. When you know you cannot win the day, and you cannot hold your positions, destroy EVERYTHING that might be even remotely useful to your enemy and pull back to a stronger position. Scorched Earth Overrun: Similar in its execution to an overrun, but your objective here is not to occupy enemy territory. In this case, all you want to do is deny your enemy resources. Most often, this is used when your opponent is significantly larger than you are, and you are attempting to even things out (you know you are not strong enough to hold any bases that you might take, so you are not even going to try….you're just out to hurt your enemy's ability to produce war materials). Drop and Chop: So named by Korn469, who is a fine gamer by any definition. The basic strategy calls for breaking the enemy's empire up into zones, isolating those zones with drop troops, and attacking bases in each zone with a mixed force of choppers and your drop forces. It is a somewhat risky attack, in the sense that your drop troops take damage on landing, and you will generally use this to attack into the core of an enemy's empire, but when executed correctly, it can be every bit as dazzling as a well-played Underrun. Stonewall: A "Rolling-Line" in reverse. Your objective here is to hold the enemy at bay indefinitely by positioning your troops in such a way that troops on the front line can pull back to a safe zone to recover, and then come back to the front to continue the defense. Nettle\Skirmish: A sneaky, limited form of a demonstration. Your main goal here is to prompt the enemy to do something drastic and rash. Generally, you only need a few units with good movement rates (needlejets, hovertanks, and rovers) to nettle your opponent, and the goal is to prompt him into action before he is truly ready. Annoy him so bad that he'll come after you not fully prepared, and then you can smash him hard for his impatience. Flank: The oldest trick in the book, and still popular because it can be devastating when done correctly. The flank is another subset of a demonstration, or rather, it is two demonstrations occurring at the same place, at the same time. The goal is to make your first demonstration against enemy forces to tie them down while your second demonstration force moves up from a different direction to seal off all chance of retreat (see the upcoming discussion on zone of control) Flanks are not used to simply hurt your enemy, they are used to crush his field army entirely. You should not be using flanking maneuvers if you want to leave any survivors, because you'll be hard pressed to find any after a properly executed flank. So that's enough to get you started. I've kept the specifics of each attack intentionally vague, because there are so many variations on each one that you could literally write a book on each attack-type. And, as much as I enjoy writing, I think I'll steer clear of all that. (How-To Note: Executing a Battle Plan: Specifically, we'll discuss executing a battle plan against a base, a one-turn siege, actually, and I leave it to you to use the principles here to figure out the optimal ways to execute the other types of attacks mentioned above. Once you've selected your target, once you've infiltrated the datalinks, and once you've determined what your objectives are, the very next thing you should do is determine exactly how you plan to get your forces where they need to be. Will you make drop troops, or rely on transport tactics? Or, will you use tectonic missiles to create an instant land bridge and simply walk across? Whatever your answer to that question is, it will determine how you proceed. Once you have the "delivery method" worked out, you'll need to design your actual attack force. Odds are, conditions will change between the time you begin moving the force forward and the time they actually arrive at the scene, and since you have no way of knowing exactly how much conditions will change, you will need to estimate. A good rule of thumb is to bring 25% more troops than you think you will need, but troops are not the only consideration here. Does the base have a lot of Multiplicative effects? If so, you'll need probe teams to strip them out, and make besieging the base easier, which means you'll also need at least one unit of artillery (and at least two if the base you're planning to move against has artillery of its own). Are there any defenders at the base with really nasty special abilities? (and there probably are!). Are there any holes in the base's defensive structure that can be exploited (i.e. - did he fail to include Trance or Empath garrisons?) If so, plan at least some elements of your attack force around that, with an eye toward hitting with those elements first, to eliminate his best defenders. The next question you need to prepare an answer for is: What do I plan to do after the battle? If you plan to try and keep the base in question, then you'll need to have some cash handy to rapidly re-build the infrastructure your probe teams got rid of, and in fact, if you're planning to stay, you'd better bring along a few extra probe teams to move in and occupy the base with your troops, to prevent an easy buy-back). Also, you'll want to move a few units out side the base to sever roads and mag tubes, to make it harder for the enemy to respond to the attack. If you're not planning to stay, then it doesn't matter. Sell of the most expensive facility at the place and burn it down. When attacking, the order of the units is crucial! The first units in should be your artillery to soften up any unarmored defenders at the base. Second, send in your probes! Third, send in the attackers you designed around any weakspots in the defender's garrison force. You want to do this because, in all likelihood, you'll strip out his AAA defenders first, which opens the door for the Fourth element in the attack, sending in your choppers! Once the base has been stripped of it's Aero-complex, and after the last AAA defender is dead, the choppers will make short work of whatever's left. Just don't get carried away! Make sure you leave one move for the Chopper so he can join your forces in the base. Fifth, after the base is empty, move the rest of your forces inside, proceeding as planned above with regards to what your goals are for that base. And that's it! With luck, your planning has paid off, you took the defender by surprise, and walked in pretty-as-you-please!). Zones of Control: One final bit of discussion needs to occur at this point, and make no mistake: If you want to win and win consistently, if you want to do things with your army, and win battles that you really have no business winning, then you'd better learn how to do this, and learn well. I'm talking about Zones of Control. If you learn how to influence and control the battle by tinkering with Zones of Control, you will be able to fluster, frustrate, and frankly amaze your opponents. This is quite possibly the best way to unbalance a battle in your favor, and once you understand the concepts and what they can do for you, you'll wonder how the Hell you ever got along without it. Basic ZOC theory: Each unit "exerts" a field of influence over the battlefield, amounting on one hex, all around the unit in question. Enemy units can enter into or leave your ZOC, but they cannot move through it. Consider that for a moment: Enemy units can enter into or leave your ZOC, but they cannot move through it. The basic principles associated with using ZOC as a weapon against your opponent involves finding ways to cut off enemy troops, and make it impossible for them to get to safety. Once isolated, the troops can be killed or subverted with ease. That's really all there is to it, but it's a lot harder to implement than it is to talk about. Try it, and you'll see what I mean. Note too, that there is one unit in the game that can freely ignore the ZOC restrictions. The Probe Team. This means, whether you are planning to use ZOC as a weapon, or trying your best to defend against it, The Probe Team will figure prominently into your thinking. Intermediate ZOC Theory: By itself, a single unit exerting it's ZOC is rather interesting, but it can't really do a lot for you. Things get complicated rather quickly though, when you start adding other units to the mix, and you can suddenly find yourself exerting influence over a significant portion of the map. Intermediate ZOC theory focuses on a concept I call "Blocking" for lack of a better term, and Blocking comes in two flavors: Offensive Blocking, and Defensive Blocking. We'll go over an example of each. In the case of Offensive Blocking, you want to structure your attack thusly: Let's say that you have your eye on a certain base in hostile territory. Your opponent has a worthy infrastructure, and can easily bring reinforcements to the base in question, once he realizes what you're up to. You, of course, want to prevent this from happening, as it will be significantly harder to take the base if your enemy gets the chance to reinforce his position. To counter this threat, you structure your attack as you normally would for a base siege, but you include three extra units to serve as blockers. In this case, you include a trio of choppers to get in the way. The plan here is not to use the choppers to attack, but to overfly the base in a loose-wedge formation (that is to say, a wedge formation with the units spaced one square apart as opposed to being right next to each other--which would be a "Tight Wedge"), planting themselves squarely in path that the reinforcements will have to take if they want to relieve the base. You want choppers for this because they can stay out for a few turns (unlike interceptors) and keep the block in place, and presumably, that will buy you enough time to take the base, giving your choppers a place to land before things get terminal, and look at what you have accomplished with these three units: You have isolated a portion of your enemy's empire, and made it nearly impossible for him to hold the territory. With three units, you have cut a swath seven squares wide across his territory that he cannot get through....he'll have to go around, and of course, by that time, it will be too late. That is the essence of the offensive block. Of course, it would take twice as many interceptors, but you could do the same thing, and keep the block up indefinitely, rotating three in and three out every turn to maintain the block as long as you needed to. The Defensive Block is executed much the same way, but it's main purpose is to stall an enemy advance. Essentially, you don't want to attack any units unless you are certain of victory, but you DO want to throw units in the way to slow your opponent down. By blocking defensively, you give your opponent two very unattractive choices: He can either lose a turn's worth of momentum in his attack by staying put, or he can attempt to move around your block, and potentially into less favorable terrain, or toward some trap you have laid for him. Attackers are generally on a time-table, and time favors the defender (given the close proximity of reinforcements), and a well-placed Defensive Block can REALLY cause your enemy trouble. Not to mention, defensive blocks can quite often completely unravel a momentum player, especially those who are so unimaginative as to use an all rover force. It's unlikely that the rovers will have SAM capabilities, so rotating three interceptors in and out can create a completely immovable wall that the force is utterly helpless against, which buys the defender time. Blocking with odd-ball units: Chances are good though, that you won't just have half a dozen interceptors lying around with nothing to do when your local bad guy comes calling, so you'll have to do some improvising. Now obviously, there is no way I can sit here and rattle off every possible scenario you might find yourself in, so you will have to experiment with the concept on your own and find a few things that you can get comfortable with, but if you're a builder or hybrid player, you've got TONS of units lying about to practice with that can really surprise you with their sheer versatility. Namely, formers and crawlers (and momentum players can use obsolete garrison units). There is NOTHING more humiliating to an attacker than to be hemmed in and have to waste time killing a slew of well-armored formers and crawlers, especially when those formers and crawlers actually start to take a few of the bad guys with them! And if you are attacked, don't be the least bit shy about driving your formers and crawlers right up in his face. Of course, you want to be somewhat careful if he's got probe teams with him, because you don't want him to subvert your units, so you'll want to double stack them whenever possible, but the point is, Builder-Players have LOTS of formers, and it is not at all inconceivable that you could very nearly surround an entire attacking army, or move in behind them to cut off any chance of retreat or reinforcements. Blocking is a versatile tool in anybody's little black book of strategies, and you would do well to keep practicing with it until you can do it in your sleep, because you can rely on the fact that sooner or later, you're gonna have to face it, and if you're not used to seeing it, you'll die at the hands of a half-dozen crazed former teams....how embarrassing..... Advanced ZOC trickery: Where Intermediate ZOC theory focused on creating temporary blocks to allow you a specific strategic gain, Advanced ZOC theory falls into two distinct categories, and both are important. First, is the creation of permanent blocks, and second, is maneuvering AROUND blocks that have been set up in your way. This is where the Probe Team comes into play. Permanent Blocks: The most obvious to the eye here is a "choke point." A narrow strip of land that your opponent must use if he intends to come at you over land. If you have any terrain like this, you would be well advised to slap an armored crawler down that way to start harvesting some resource or another and get in the way. And, when you can get time to, drive an armored former down there to pay him a visit, and while he's there, he can build a sensor array, and maybe even a bunker.....Now you've got a wicked (and relatively cheap) stacked defense group that will be pretty tough to root out.....a permanent block. And, as the game progresses and your formers begin to finish up the continental terraform, don't be content to just haul them back to base and put them on garrison support duty! There are several better alternatives than that! (like creating more permanent blocks!) Take a look around your empire. Are there any really tasty terrain squares that you'd really hate to lose productivity from? If so, just park your armored former right on top of it, and....presto! Instant protection! Or, take 4-6 formers as you finish with them, give them the latest and greatest armor upgrade, and create a "necklace" which runs through your empire. A ready- made block which will serve to slow an enemy advance down, should anybody ever decide to (or be able to) land on your fair shores. The more defensive stuff you can take care of up front, the less attractive a target you become to a would-be invader, because you'd better believe the attacker will be doing some research, and if he finds two possible opponents, one with all his defenses bristling and laid out, and one who looks soft.....well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see which one he'll likely choose to hit. That is the real power behind permanent blocks. You want to advertise them loudly and proudly. It is a statement to your enemies, and it says very clearly: Yes, you might invade, but I am ready for you, and you will play hell advancing through my empire to hurt me, so be warned. More often than not, an attacker will heed that warning and leave you be. The second concept to consider is maneuvering through or around a block. They're stubborn things, but they're not unbeatable, and what can be done, can be undone one way or another. If you have the raw firepower at your disposal, simply blow the offending units out of your way and move on. Note that this still benefits your opponent slightly, as it took you at least some time (and probably damaged a few units) to do that. Better still though, would be to use probe teams to turn the block against the person who constructed it. Again, probe teams are unaffected by Zones of Control, which means they can freely move between enemy units. That's a tremendous ability, and you should learn to make the most of it. (How-To Note: Getting around a Zoc-Block:If you want to render a block useless, you're going to have to exert your own ZOC in the area, and this can be done as follows: Your army encounters a line of enemy troops intent on blocking. You duly stop for a moment, a few squares away and assess the situation (all the while, bringing up your cadre of Probe teams). The enemy's units are double stacked, so you can't use subversion to simply do away with the block, and you are reluctant to risk battle in the open because you want to preserve your firepower to take out the base you're after, so..... You move your leading elements up next to the blockers and wait. Then you bring a probe team up and move him one square further (moving through the enemy's ZOC), then pause and bring up another military unit to stand with the Probe team. Stop him there and move the probe team forward again. Now you are one square behind the enemy unit and out the outer edge of his ZOC. Move another of your units up, again to stack with the probe team. Stop him there. You have now created a "bridge" across the enemy's ZOC, and the rest of your army can move along this bridge unhindered. You have completely negated his attempt to slow you down, and you never fired a shot.) To the trained eye, this opens up all sorts of possibilities, both strategic and tactical. I leave it to each individual reader to study this section and draw your own conclusions as to the best uses of this information, but even with the simple examples given (and I'd need an active map to adequately explain more advanced concepts than these) you can see the power of using Zones of Control to influence the shape and direction of battle. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Studying the Meta- Game -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SMAC is a complex and multi-faceted game. You don't have to play it that way, of course. You can simply treat it as a conquest game, get your bases stable, crank out a gazillion units and march all over the globe. If that's your style, and that's what you enjoy, by all means, have at it! But there can be a lot more to the game....it can become an almost philosophic exercise, actually, and that is where the study of the metagame comes into play. The Meta-Game, and the study of it, is all about taking a subtle control of the gaming environment, and going back to the earlier discussion on becoming a great player, learning to use your opponent's own strengths against him, the Meta-Game is the foundation for how you do that. The crux of the matter is this: There is no single, absolutely unbeatable strategy you can pursue in the game. No one can say to you: If you do this, you will always win. It simply isn't so. Every strategy has weak spots which can be exploited. Every strategy is beatable by some other strategy. Certain broad- based ideas come into fashion for a while, and seem all but unbeatable, and then some wily warrior figures out a way to beat that style consistently and it falls out of favor in preference for something else, and the cycle repeats. The heart and soul of mastering the Meta-Game lies in your ability to read the ebb and flow of the game you are in. Determine who's winning and why they are. Then go to work finding a way to beat not them per se, but the reason they're winning. Beat the reason they're winning, and you beat them by default. Here's a fairly simplistic example: Let us say that you are playing a game in which Lal has become the T-Rex of the SMAC universe. It's mid-game, and already he's got a veritable horde of soldiers marching all over the globe. If something is not done to stop him soon, you will be hard pressed to stand against him. Fortunately, you had the good sense to infiltrate him early in the game (before he got the Hunter Seeker), so you can spy on him to your heart's content. Also fortunate, you've just launched your first satellite, enabling you to see all of his bases. You're at peace with him now (a truce), but periodically, he comes calling demanding money and the occasional tech. His mood is seething, and you know it is just a matter of time until relations break down and he comes hunting for you. Probably, he's just waiting until he finishes stomping on the other factions. After browsing through his empire, you stumble on the strength of his current position. He's playing Hybrid style (all of his bases having fairly good infrastructure), with a Mineral Focus. He does not yet have Clean Reactors, but will have them soon, and his coffers are full enough to upgrade a good chunk of his army to clean, which will free up a huge chunk of his Empire's productive capacity. If you're going to stop him, you must do so before this occurs. The key to his strength, you discover, is the sheer number of crawlers he's got out harvesting minerals for him, and the large number of boreholes his formers have been able to construct. In fact, if he lost the crawlers, and his bases suddenly had to support his entire army, his production would shrivel up to almost nothing (unless he wanted to disband a good portion of his standing force). This makes you smile, because it just so happens that you have a couple of sea bases near Lal's coast, and a quick count reveals that from those bases, a needlejet could reach the majority of his crawlers...... You've just won your first "Meta-Victory." Discovering the opponent's strength (heightened mineral production), and using it against him (when he suddenly finds himself without that which he has planned his entire game around, his Empire essentially grinds to a halt). That, my friends, is the power of studying the Meta-Game. If you were to take a linear approach to beating Lal in the scenario outlined above, you would simply meet his army in the field, and it would be a long, arduous fight which you may or may not win, but by studying the depths of the game and unlocking exactly how Lal was able to rise to such a position of power, you figured out a much easier way to best him than beating his formidable army. And that kind of analysis works in any situation you can imagine. Study the board, study your opponents, and unlock the secrets to why they are doing certain things well, then devise a plan to beat that element of their game. Beat that which they have all their hopes pinned on, and you force them to restructure their game. This will cost them both time and money, giving you leverage to proceed with your own plans. Learn to do this well, and you will rarely lose a game. More Notes on the Meta Game: Another aspect of the Meta-game is finding ways to take wisdom drawn from other areas and apply it to the game situation at hand, and with that in mind, here are some things designed to get your brain churning in that direction: The Stage Magician's Secret: Big Moves can be used to cover Small Moves: Keep your objectives incrementally small, and, when you set about achieving them, do so in a very quiet way. To enhance your chances of success in your endeavors, rely on diversion (Big Move). Send a large force out openly to threaten an area far-removed from your true objective. Force your opponent to spend time and resources to meet that perceived threat (and, if it is not responded to, it's easy enough to make the perceived threat a very real one). In the meantime, send a much smaller, tailor-made force out in secret toward that which is your true objective. In MP, this is one of the very best ways to take opponents by storm, and by complete surprise. Do it well and consistently, and they'll swear you are a but a ghost on the battlefield, there and gone before they knew what happened. Use Odd Bits of Philosophy or Misc. Phrases you've heard: This is a great way to help shape strategy, for example: "....and lo, the birds of the sky and beasts of the sky shall be as my army...." is the perfect summation for a classic Gaian or Cult strategy to catch worms and release them in some Marketeer's territory to cause trouble without "actually" attacking. And to that end, read everything! Everything you can get your hands on! Soak the whole Universe up like a big sponge and channel what you have learned down different avenues (a thing which works as well in SMAC/X as it does in life!). Borrow from other games you play: When I was in college, I used to play Axis & Allies (a game with quite a few similarities to SMAC/X, by the way) with an almost religious fervor. In fact, over the course of a summer, we held a tournament on campus. One hundred game spread. My record was 98-0-2. Both of the "draw" games were fought against the same person, and after three days of not getting anywhere against each other, we finally just threw in the towel. After that summer, I couldn't get anybody to play with me, even by offering them double their starting money.... As each game progressed, those watching would be in shock, and constantly I would hear phrases like: "But....how are you winning?! You've got a couple guys here....a couple more over there, but you're not DOING anything!" Which I took as the highest compliment I could be given, because the truth of the matter was, I was doing quite a lot, but that told me in no uncertain terms that my game was utterly without form, and that speaks directly back to Master Sun Tzu's words: "....if it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot discern it, nor the wise make plans against it." It was true two-thousand-odd years ago, and it remains true today. Wise words. I also used to play Magic: The Gathering all the time. Still have my cards, but haven't touched them much lately....too much other stuff to do I guess. But I DID play in one tournament, and had the good fortune of running through it undefeated. It was a sealed-deck thing, with a thirty minute trading period. I wandered around the room for about fifteen of my thirty minutes, just watching. Seeing what kinds of cards people were trading for, and then went the opposite direction from the herd. Everybody was ditching their reds and greens, so I picked up tons of them on the cheap, and put together a mean little red/green creature heavy (with direct damage in support), deck that sported a trio of Stormbinds as a final kicker. After the tourney, everybody was curious to see the deck, and they couldn't believe that the guy who went undefeated used a handful of common cards (the Stormbinds were the only rares in the deck) that nobody thought were very "good." That was a fine moment indeed, and it speaks to an important point in SMAC. If everybody else is moving off in more-or-less the same direction, find a new direction and see where it takes you. Don't be content to stick with tried and true strategies just because "everybody is doing it." Maybe everybody is wrong. Maybe you can prove it to them. Perhaps though, the game that taught me the most about doing freaky, unexpected things was Starfleet Battles. God how I love that game, and as my former opponents can tell you, if nothing else, it can be fairly said that our games were always colorful. I was the guy who would do oddball stuff like, begin an assault against a starbase with all my ships entering the map in reverse (with a plan to execute a snap-turn the moment we reached overload-range and blow the base off the map....which worked, by the way!), or, set up an entire PF flotilla as deathriders, remote control them for several turns, driving them all over the map and eventually luring several ships away from the primary objective (a civvi base station, in that case), and then flying in fast and hard to crash them into the base....BOOM! Crazy stuff like that. Things to catch the opponent off guard, or distract, or just plain make him scratch his head and wonder what the heck I'm up to. Best of all, it's not always necessary to have a "master plan" in mind when you do weird stuff like that. Just do it and see what happens. If your opponent ignores your bizarre move, so be it, but there may yet be a way to make it pay, and, if it draws his attention, then figure out a way (on the fly) of using it against him. I could ramble on for about ten more pages about the Metagame, and ways of bringing ideas from outside sources into your overall "bag of tricks" (and in fact, I did, and then, to save some space, edited much of it back out!), but I think that's enough examples from different viewpoints to get you thinking about things in your own life that might prove useful in game terms. Odd bits of wisdom you've picked up from here and there. It's useful stuff, I promise. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- More Single Player and Multi- Player Notes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have absorbed every word of this guide, then the AI should present no real challenge to you anymore, even on the hardest levels. You have achieve the pinnacle of your playing strength then, unless you move onto something else. Namely, mixing it up with wily human opponents. Not to say that SP games will no longer be enjoyable....I still find myself playing SP regularly, if only to test out some new idea or another, but the real enjoyment from here on, will come from testing your mettle against those crazy, illogical, hard-to-predict humans, and don't be afraid of that! It is my sincere hope that, armed with your own thinking about the game, and supplemented by what you have read here, you are more than ready to take to the field against even the very best human opponents out there. If and when you do find yourself in a game with a human opponent who has the reputation for being heads-and-shoulders-above-the-rest good, watch him. Pay attention to everything. Study and learn. See not only HOW he does certain things, but WHY. Once you make contact, ask questions. If you're not involved in a war, odds are good, you'll get answers. Real, practical, game-mechanics-driven answers that will improve your own game. And if you are at war with that player, do your best, and if you lose, study the save files later to figure out why. How did he beat you? Learn the answers to those questions, and apply them to your next game. If you do, you'll find yourself with a reputation of your own quite soon, and you'll notice that others are beginning to ask YOU questions! That's when you know you're getting somewhere.... ================================================================================ The Late Game ================================================================================ Long before you get here (and generally, the Late Game is defined by the arrival of Habitation Domes), you have either won or lost the game, so there is little you can do at this point to save yourself if you're losing ground. You get some attractive "Future Society" choices on the SE table, but these additional advantages will likely not be enough to turn the tide for you if you find yourself slipping. Chances are very good though, if you have followed the suggestions laid out in this guide, that it will be all over but the cleanup. If you are losing though, don't dispair. Take a look at your game and try to identify where you went wrong. A loss is but an opportunity for improvement. Simply locate the specific things you did to allow yourself to get beaten and change those behaviors in your next game. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Locking Things Down -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Assuming you have not encountered any bizarre or unexpected problems though, chances are quite good that all that remains in the late game is the mop-up. Even if there are some big Empires out there saber-rattling, the game is over and they don't yet realize it. If you're playing Momentum-Style, now is when you want to end whatever war you're involved in currently as fast as you can, and go pick a fight with the biggest Empire still in the game. Hammer him relentlessly until he's dead or submits, and then take out the next biggest. Your army is likely composed of nothing but Elite troopers at this point, and you can simply overwhelm your opponents with wave after wave of troops. Hybrid or Builder Players: If you can keep the peace, you will likely be well set up to run for a Transcendence victory, but if someone wants to pick a fight, now is the time to carry it to them. Do not be intimidated! The late game belongs to Builders (and Hybrids, to a lesser degree), so you will likely have all the important advantages on your side if you choose to fight, and these advantages, combined with the vast efficiency of your Empire, will be more than enough to end the fight very quickly indeed, and at this point too, your infrastructure will be sufficiently developed that you can literally fight the war with "one hand tied behind your back." That is to say, at this stage in the game, you need not scrap your plans to go for a Transcendent victory if someone wants a fight. You will, more often than not, be able to use less than half your bases for cranking out war materials, leaving the other half to focus on continuing the buildup and preparation for Transcendence. This is the true strength of Builder style. It is the moment you have been playing toward for the whole game. Make the most of it. ================================================================================ General Tips ================================================================================ The Early Game In the early game, don't waste industry on well-armed or armored military units; instead, keep about 100 energy credits on hand and garrison cities with cheap Rovers (hand weapons / no armor) or Scouts (before Doctrine: Mobility). Since worms are almost always your only concern for the first 40 turns or so, more-expensive units are useless anyway. When suddenly faced with a conventional force, you can upgrade 1 unit at the cost of its turn, or upgrade them all in the Workshop and they all still get to take their turns. The risk is in prototyping -- if you haven't prototyped, say, Impact weapons, and a conventional force suddenly lands next to your capital, you won't have time to build the prototype and upgrade. When and how often to prototype is your job to figure out. By G. Derrick Jones Air Defense There is a slight problem with using Needlejets as interceptors -they can then get shot down too. Besides they can only take down one enemy each turn and they are expensive. The best and cheapest method to defend your skies is to create rovers with a decent weapon (tachyon, chaos, even missiles - doesn't have to be the best), air superiority and no armour. By the time the air war heats up all of your cities should be connected with mag-tubes. Leaving a couple of anti-air rovers in your bases will not only keep them safe and hidden but enable them to zip out and defend any of your cities that gets attacked. When an anemy flies in, race out, shoot it down and nip back to safety in a far away city. If you have an elite then you can take down two in one go. The enemy will have a hard time getting rid of your little menaces. Needlejets are expensive and rovers are cheap. Although his (no offense to any girl players) bombers may do some damage, in the long run he will realise that it's a far to costly way to wage war and divert to some other strategy. Cruisers can be used at sea if necessary. And I am by no means saying don't build interceptors at all, they can still be useful. If you can use a rover then do so first. By Caleb War: Mobility Mobility is a key when launching an attack. To have some strong mobile units, stick a big gun, medium armor, drop pods and a blink displacer on a hovertank. With the space elevator, they are almost unbeatable. Land on sensor arrays and instead of moving, destroy it. Land all the others on forests or rocky squares, which grant a +50% defense bonus. Whe you attack next turn, the only bonuses the defenders can get are from tachyon fields, which the computer rarely builds. By Grigger Secret Projects and Science To gain huge lab outputs from a base, make sure you build the Merchant Exchange, Supercollider, Theory of Everything and the Network Backbone. Try and place this city near the Pholus Ridge or Uranium Flats, even the Geothermal Shallows and make it your capital to get rid of inefficiency. Surround it with Forests if you have a hybrid forest there and are on low terrain, or solar collectors. Gain additional energy from supply crawlers. Give it an Aerospace Complex to get maximum energy from orbital power transmitters. Make sure that you are stocked up on the lab enhancing improvements and build network nodes in all your other cities to help the network backbone. This super science city should be able to get a tech every other turn by itself if done properly. By Grigger This and That * Manipulate build queue -- often the game won't allow to build something until another structure has been built. For example the pleasure dome can't be built until you have the recreation commons. However, you can put the recreation commons in the build queue, add the pleasure dome after it, and then delete the recreation commons from the build queue. Then the pleasure dome can be built first (yeah I know, limited usefulness). * Free support off pact brother -- build up a little base in a corner near your own bases, and give the little base to a pact brother, then send all of your own units there, open the city screen and change the unit's ownership. Nobody ends up supporting the unit. Not only that, but those units can now be freely sent out of the city for battle duty, and they won't create unhappiness since they don't belong to any of your cities. * Free support + Ascend to transcendence -- build and save up heaps of military units, sending them to a pact brother city to get the free support as necessary. When the transcendence project becomes available, you can scrap your units in the base that's building the secret project, meaning that you effectively started to build the project as soon as you started building up the units. * Catching up in the race to transcend - if you're falling behind in industrial capability compared to a competitor building the transcendence secret project, it is better to catch up by building units and sending them to be scrapped, rather than stockpiling energy and then buying partial production. When you build and scrap, the industry input from other bases is basically halved (as well as a bit of wastage depending on the build schedule). However when you stockpile energy, you lose 3 quarters of it when you try to rush the secret project because it costs 4 credits to buy each unit f a secret project. Therefore it is twice as economical to build and scrap than it is to stockpile and buy. (Q: when you stockpile you get 1 production = 1 energy don't you? If it was 2 production = 1 energy then you'd lose 7 eighths of the input rather than 3 quarters). * Plasma Hoverboats (2-3-4) rule the water world -- On a world which is predominantly water, the plasma hoverboat rule because they are so cheap (same low price as a plasma sentinel) yet can bombard the enemy's terrain improvements every bit as well as a stronger ship. They are also great naval city defenders. * Inland sea - the best bases are usually ones next to water because of the excellent food and energy income from water tiles, while forests and occasional boreholes on just a couple of land tiles will make up for production. The only problem with this is that coastal cities can be attacked by enemy ships. So what do you do? build on an inland sea. None nearby? Then create one. Get a mid sized island, populate it, then get a bunch of formers and proceed to build a thin "ring" of land just a couple of tiles off the coast of the entire island. If the enemy tries to take a foothold on the outer land ring, you can send your entire navy from your core bases to wipe them out without worrying about being attacked from a different direction. I doubt the AI will ever figure out it needs to lower the land to turn your land ring into sea (but in that case you can just build it right back, or go out there and destroy their sea formers enmass). Most likely the AI will just build a small land bridge towards one part of your protective ring, which means you have them controlled at a chokepoint. If you build air defense units all around the protective ring you might even stop the enemy being able to scout you, so they'd not be able to find out what you have in the "core". By Marty Party War, Aliens, and Terraforming First thing you do before even making the game is crank the alien abundancy to abundant. This gives you more mind worms to try and control, if you fail to control them it will give more energy or increase the morale of your mind worms. This will also give you a bonus to your Alpha Centauri score. Another side effect to this is the act the aliens slow down and harrass the other computer/players. To keep your planet ecology in balance terraform the surrounding terrain into forests. Build Tree Farms and Hybird Forests as soon as posible if you do otherwise you might get your population stagnated. Once those improvements are built the bonuses will raise the nutrients and population fairly fast. Once the fungus starts growing and tearing up the forest let it, go build improvements on the fungus if able to. All the forests do two thing. It keeps your ecology in balance better and sometimes the aliens leave you alone. The second thing is it makes it harder for enemy units to get to your cities because most units can only move through one square of forest. To make the second part work you only want to make roads or mag tubes in a straight line to your other cities. The amount of roads and mag tubes you have affects your cities ecology rating. Also forget technology units until you are forced to use them. If you build the biology labs and secret projects that increase life cycles or morale this will allow you to pick the governments styles that have a morale penalty. Or if you want pick all the government styles that give a morale bonus. By Elvis Fett Diplomacy and War When you have a chance to force your opponent to surrender, do so. For example, if you're playing the Spartans, forcing the University faction to surrender and allowing them to expand and do their research will free up your own resources. You can then churn out a large invasion force and choose social patterns suited for invasion and still keep up with the technology race by bullying the surrendered University faction into giving you all their research knowledge. Surrendered factions and their benefits: 1) Hive - Keep them in check 2) Believers - Warmongers, use them against all your enemies 3) University - Knowledge, pure knowledge 4) Morganites - Cold hard cash 5) Gaians - Will provide you with necessary means to rear "pets" for invasion 6) Spartans - Use their large invasion force against your toughest foes 7) U.N. - Their votes count double. Useful when you need the extra votes in a council. Besides the above benefits, surrendered factions cannot take offence when you choose social patterns that contradict their own beliefs. For example, if the Hive have surrendered to you, you do not have to worry about them complaining when you choose a Fundamental or a Democratic political structure. Surrendered factions will, however, still declare vendetta on you if you commit a major atrocity like using the Planet Buster. Remember that you want to keep the factions alive. If they grow too big and powerful, either force them to fight against other factions or deceitfully set your pact brothers/sisters against each other. Surrendered factions count as a conquered factions towards a conquest victory. By Theophilus Combined Arms I usually play an Ascendence game, building as many bases as possible, getting as many techs and SP's as possible, and maintaining Pacts and Treaties with most of the other factions. I keep my reputation clean (Noble or Faithful) to keep from being back-stabbed by an ally. I usually wage a war of conquest in mid-game (Tachyon or Shard weapons) to take over a neighbor and keep expanding. And then I sit back. Once I have Graviton or Singularity weapons, I clean up and take over all but one other faction. And the key to doing this is COMBINED ARMS. I use Hovertanks with Grav pods (5 moves when Elite), Drop Squads with lots of armor, and souped-up Copters. Because Copters can attack once for each movement point, they can really do a lot of damage. Each Copter can take out all of a base's defenders, no problem. Once the Copters have done their work, send in Hovertanks or Drop Squads to secure the bases, and then land the Copters in your newly-acquired bases to refuel. And repeat. By using combined arms like this, you can sweep through your opponents quickly and efficiently. They won't have much time to either mount a counter-offensive or adapt to your troops. And once you control 95% of Planet, you can really crank that score up. Police Once I have the "Non-Lethal Methods" unit ability (x2 Police), I always design a "Police Sentinel" unit. You can keep a few of these ready for drone hotspots, as needed. Also, you can upgrade old garrison units to the Police version at any time. Score Keep in mind that Transcendent techs are worth MUCH more than regular techs when it comes to your final score. Even though you get a bonus for winning the game earlier, I think it's much better to take your time. By the end of the game, I usually have 100+ bases, with an average size of at least 20. Once you have the Cloning Vats, the Space Elevator, and plenty of Sky Hydroponics Labs, your population will skyrocket. High population equates to high Econ and high Lab output, so you'll have plenty of credits and plenty of techs rolling in. While you "lose" 2 points for every extra turn, you more than make up for it with more citizens and more transcendent tech. Copter Assault I've been refining my COMBINED ARMS strategy, with devastating results. When it's time to kick butt, I build a couple of Copters with the biggest guns available, and a bunch of hovertanks with the best armor available. The Copter is now officially my favorite unit. After they wipe out the opposition, I send in the hovertanks for defense. Never overlook the benefits of carriers. With a cruiser chassis and good power plant, they can carry 12 units. Equip the carrier deck on a transport, add in some armor for safety, and load it up with 12 Copters. Sail the carrier right next to an enemy city, and you have the potential for 144 separate attacks (12 Copters x 12 moves each, assuming fusion reactor). As the reactor improves in the Copter, so does its lethality--more attacks per turn. Airdrop in some defenders and reap the rewards. By Matt Use of Formers and Supply Crawlers for Defense In the event that you have opponents attacking you with needle jets, try this strategy: create formers or supply crawlers with armor either medium strength or strongest armor type you can produce and position them along your borders where they will most likely be attacked. The AI will most likely, and many human players will, attack the crawlers or formers. The Former often times will survive and the opposing needlejet will be destroyed. However, if you lose the former or crawler, well too bad, but you damage the needlejet some, and will make it easy to counter attack with a cheaply produced SAM unit. I suggest you make the cheapest units possible that have 2 moves and position them strategically for a counter attack. Do not bother to make SAM units with the highest attack values. An attack value of say 2, 3 or 4 is sufficient and very inexpensive toward the middle-end game because most of the attacking needlejets will have no armor at all. One other note: If you use the design workshop screen I often find that you can choose a medium attack weapon and it will cost the same as a weapon of the least strength. Finally don't forget that you can use the former or supply crawler as a defender in a base under attack. When opposing troops march toward your cities, reign in your armored units as extra defenders. By John Doe New Colonies, New Methods! I have found two units to be extremely usefully in expansion of terriotory: Drop Colony Pod: This is your basic colony pod with drop jets(See the uses) It really comes in handy if you get The Space Elevator Secret Project which allows for dropping units to any point on the map. Hover Terraformer: This is a combe of the terraform tool and the hover chassi (not the hover tank, though it might work havent tried it).. then the usaul terraform special abilities(double removal and terraform rates) and you highest engine and sheilding if you want. How is this useful, you ask. With those flying colony pods these can get to them fast, do to there ~16 square movement regardless of terran, and help the colony get going. By Anex Sleeping Demons This is my favorite strategy. It is a conquering strategy based around building up your defenses quickly (armor, perimeter defenses, etc,) and "sleeping" behind them. Then once your defenses are build up enough, (usually after Probability Mechanics, with level 6 armor and Tachyon Fields,) release an army of high-powered minions. Yang is best for this strategy by far. Morgan works well also. Miriam works well, but I hate wasting her faction's attack bonus. Santiago and Zakharov are fair at best, while Dierdre and Lal stink at this strategy. You'll want to avoid combat at first. Research Industrial Base, then go for High Energy Chemistry. Go for Doctrine: Loyalty next, followed by Intellectual Integrity, (for the Citizens' Defense Force.) Even if you are playing Yang, you'll need these later, so it's your choice whether to go for them or wait till later. Now for the big armor. Go for Silksteel , Photon/Wave Mechanics, and Probability Mechanics. Build a Tachyon Field, then start researching weaponry and attacking people, and winning. Since you aren't going to be researching things like Centauri Ecology and Biogenetics, it's manditory that you trade for these, just be careful what you trade. By K. Sharp Cuban Missile Crisis Make planet busters and quickly hand them over to your allies who are in war with other factions. They'll use them and your reputation will not suffer! By TOO Skiguy500's Favorite Units Empath Plasma Sentinels: 1e-3t-1 good at getting rid of those pesky mindworms and can take almost any other attack on (can be a scout rover) Trance Plasma Sentinels: 1p-3t-1 can take on those mindworms and can take on the drones (Trance,Police) AAA Recon Rover: 2aaa-1-2 being cheap to build makes it easy to "Mass-Produce" these Needlejet defenders Police Recon Rover: 2p-1-2 easy to make, it's a police car! Secure Recon Rover: 2-1-2 one of the best rovers or weapons that are cheap to make and can take out Miriam and her probe teams Tachyon Tank: 12-8-3 Any one of these can take out anything that gets in it's way. these are on my front lines against Yang or the Spartans. They may be a little expensive but if you can get these things out there and Elite, then you can seriously pound their teeth in. Destroyer Transport: 1-5-6 Carrier/Repair These thing you can send out to become moble air bases.(you can take out the repair bay and put in a clean reactor if you want a good air transport that can support itself, works best with singularity engine) Navy Seals: 10-6-1 Amphibious Can go from water base tio land with out need of transport, that is if it is a coastal base, and can take on allot of pressure from most of the other weapons Mindworms: these babies can take out a whole base and then take out a whole another. Works best as locusts of chiron Singularity Copter: 24-3-8 These things are great for base hopping. they can attack using their singularity lasers as much as 16 times per turn (Think 2x16=32, 32 attacks per turn, with singularity lasers!) Drop Supply: 1-1-1 Supply/Drop These things are cheap to bulid and can reach far off islands that are rich in resources and dont need support. Drop Colony Pod: 1-1-1 CPod/Drop This can reach those islands intent for those explorers tring to get key areas for airbases and naval bases Gravship Formers: 1-2-8 Super/Fungicidal These are the best formers that you can make, the can terraform both sea and land and have no range that is affected by fuel These are some units that I found either good or extraordinary none the less. My basic Unit for garrison is a Police Probability garrison. (1p-6t-1) they can take out any attack. i also build the special garrison with AAA or SAM or Secure, what ever is needed. I know that I couldn't get them all in but I will try to find more as I go so tell me if you find any good garrison units or any others and I will relay them to others so that they can get the picture. These uints are things that I tried to make different so that they would be used by many people. Feel free to try different types of weapons on each thing.(I know that the recon rover is so 2200s but they are really cheap, and I kinda like the name.)I will try to keep all the people who actually read this and think I am weird know that i am only trying to help their game out. By Skiguy500 WAR! Hiding fungus is the best way to win a war. If you find yourself struggling to survive constant attacks on your terratory hide your best and brightest infantry in the fungus. Your opponent will go straight for your outlying bases 'cos tey won't see you, and they'll avoid the fungus to reach your bases quicker, so your zone of control won't give the game away. When they've gone past come up behind and whoop their asses. However, make sure your infantry are elite, because those two squares in one turn will be a real boost. Also if you're the defender they'll need to be good to defeat the opponents. The xenoempathy dome is also quite essential, since you'll want to reach your enemy quick before they get to your base. The xenoempathy dome is also essential for quick sneak attacks on your enemy. They won't see your troops who are stealthily racing towards their vulnerable bases. This tactic is invaluable for eliminating sensor arrays and capturing strongpoints like barracks. The final winning strategy runs like this: - get the xenoempathy dome (very important) - Send one or two fast elite infantry units through the fungus between you and your target base - before they exit the fungus start bringing up the rest of your invasion force - while the bulk of your army is on its way get your fast elite infantry to reach that damned sensor and destroy it. - Quickly get to that nearby bunker. If there isn't one (there usually is though) return to the fungus - The rest of your forces should be leaving the fungus now. Here comes the easy bit- simply push all your forces forward to the base. Without the sensor the defenders will be easy prey to those elite infantry, and should they succumb you've got plenty more in reserve. The shear speed at which your army appears infront of the enemy base will mean that reinforcements will not arrive in time for you to have conquered the base. This tactic will defeat even the strongest bases. Thank you Sun Tzu. If you keep finding your units are not strong enough, even with superior weaponry then try this: be the spartans (+2 morale), build the command nexus project (+1) and the cyborg factory project (+1). Now go to the social engineering screen and use Fundamentalism with Knowledge. The two will cancel out but leave you +1 morale. Thats five morale-boosters!Now you will often find yourself producing commando or elite units straight off. With this you can produce a small yet cheap and well-trained army. A bit like the british army of the 19th century that conquered a good third of the world then... By Bobsy Now I'm a Believer! I used a strategy for AC awhile back that I thought was good. I couldn't beat the Believers with the limited units I had, so I terraformed a bunch of channels through their territory. It took awhile, but I was able to divide their forces and win. The computer is not very good at moving units across water to reinforce other areas (atleast it didn't seem to do that with me). So, you only have to deal with half of an empire instead of all of it. Also, if you sink their bases, you can use boats to conquer a city. By Chad R. Collins Always maintain a standing army...not necessarily a big one, just enough for defense. Don't automate every terraformer. Have at least one off auto at each base, and then two on auto. Auto formers don't always do what's needed. Extreme terraforming (raising and lowering terrain) can be VERY profitable. Rather than putting pods on a transport, build the Weather Paradigm and raise a bridge to the new continent. If you're extremely strong, you can influence the importance of naval power by restricting boat range with artificial ithmuses. When a single continent stretches around the globe, it cuts the oceans into two parts, which can be good if you want isolation. Don't build your cities too far apart; let them overlap a little. I know it looks ugly on the city layout, but you can deal with it. You don't need to make size 63 cities everywhere- they just take too long to get to that size even with the Cloning Vats. City population is counted different in SMAC than in CivII, where you wanted the city to be as big as possible. In SMAC, each number is 10,000 people and only goes up by 10,000 when population is added. The same land area will still support the same number of people. Rather than 12 size 31 cities than six size 62 cities in the same area. This is especially important in the very beginning of the game, more cities means more military units produced per turn. You're going to need the extra military to battle for a big enough chunk of land to grow on to make it into the middle and end game. So far I finished with four factions at Transcend level: Gaians, The Hive, Morgans, and the UoP. The strategy for each faction is quite straight forward. For Gaians, I used Police State/Green/Knowledge combo and built tons of mindworms. Starting in 2230, I pounded everyone into submission by 2303. Now I can persue any of the victory conditions. As The Hive, I just built base facilities and units en masse. By 2257, all major oppositions are defeated, leaving the tedious task of mopping up. Morgan is probably the easiest faction to play. Switch to Police/Free Market/Wealth early and you can conquer the world with probe teams. However, you need conventional units to overwhelm the Gaians because of their high efficiency rating and mindworms. If you play UoP, use the Police State/Free Market/Knowledge combo to outresearch everyone else. Then build up your military as soon as you discovered Air Power. You can achieve a quick conquest. Don't forget to build Hunter-Seeker Algorithm to protect you from probing. If you find someone blocking your expansion, destroy them as quickly as you can. But, don't eradicate them too soon, because they will get a chance to start somewhere else, and this is a long game. Infiltrate the datalinks of all factions. This will give you the individual base information. Always attack enemy bases with the most mobile offensive units (copters, needlejets, rovers...), this will take away the enemy's offensive capabilities, giving you time to recover your worn-out units and to build defenses. If you mount an attack against a more powerful enemy, raid them first. That means you will conduct wars on enemy teritory, wreck their infrastructure, pillaging energy reserves, and take away Secret Projects. Don't always go for conquest victories. A good way to achieve victory is to go for a diplomatic victory. The key to this is eradicating factions that you know won't vote. This includes: Believers, Hive, and maybe Peacekeepers (unless you have the Empath Guild Secret Project, which is strongly recommended for this type of victory). The best race to be is the University, because you will become the personal techno slave of every faction. Research as fast as you can. Colonize quickly. Eradicate the enemy factions when they only have a few cities (allowing Mirian to grow is NOT an option). Give everyone tech gifts to keep them placated (especially the Spartans; renew your pact with them every 25 years with a "give all tech" gift. When you've been assured that 3/4 of the vote are for Supreme Leader, chance it. Never underestimate the power of conventional missiles. A few may not seem to do much and may not even seem to be worth while building. I never thought they were. So, I tried lots of missiles just to be different. Man, was that nasty! Send 20-30 missiles at a time at an enemy, and it's amazing how fast the mighty can fall. Once the defenders are gone, just walk right in and take control of their city. No more slugging it out for years to take over a single base. For sea bases, kill the defenders with missiles and just fly in a graveship- easier than pie. I did this to Yang in my present game, and took out 95 of his military in one turn, (he still had a dozen and a half sea bases left scattered across Planet). Half of his cities are in revolt (big cities w/ no police)- so he can't create new units there until he stops the revolts, and the other half are too small to build a unit any time soon- by the time those cities do, I'll have another 20-30 cigars to jam down Yang's throat, and graveships knocking on the door. Actually, it seems a little unfair that there is nothing he can do about it anymore, so much for fighting fair. Starting- if you find the Monsoon Jungle while exploring, focus your colonization efforts there. Your bases can grow really fast and then you get techs faster. The Borehold Cluster is good to grab if you can find it. It is a good area to build Special Projects. I don't like to build many sea bases. They take more resources to build and are harder to get units in and out (unless you are only using drop pods). Unit design- make sure to design your own AAA garrison unit. The default choices don't include a cheap AAA unit. Another good unit to design is a probe team with drop pods, especially if you build the Space Elevator. It's great to drop in and disrupt/subvert a few key bases (like those with Secret Projects you want to capture). Land vs Sea- I find it easier to terraform a land bridge to a new continent than to build a fleet, if you keep up with your mag tube building you can redeploy your whole force in one turn. All Secret Projects are good, but I think that Weather Paradigm is the one you want to build first if you have a choice (try to build four first base next to a mineral resource and use it to build your first Secret Project). Tactics- use fungus to approach enemy bases if you are springing a surprise attack. Destroy sensory arrays with air units in advance of assaulting nearby bases (defenders get 25 from nearby sensors). Use the "V" command to switch to view mode and see if a unit in the open is ECM or AAA before deciding which units to attack first. Capture as many bases in one puch as possible (3-5) and then go for blood truce if you find yourself over-extended by the assault. If not, keep attacking in following turns. In a word: Infrastructure. This comes in two flavors: Infrastructure external to your base, in the form of a road network (and later Mag Tubes) that makes sense and facilitates troop movement within your borders, and terrain enhancements which increase the productivity of each square your people are working. In the case of terrain enhancements, the goal is to figure out what type of improvement will net you the greatest benefit, given your current level of technology, and let that determine how the squre is developed. I agree with the "Forests Everywhere" approach, but not for the early game. You simply don't have the technology or access to the base facilities to make full use of the forests, so there are often better choices available, but (and this will keep your formers busy), as new techs/facilities become available, you should begin to replace your other enhancements with forests. Enhancements internal to your bases are, well....facilities. Some of the most important basic facilities are those with no upkeep costs, such as the Recycling Tanks and Permieter Defenses, and these should be built at every base you have (but most people don't have to be convinced of that). After that, you should not just blindly build a facility because it is available, rather, you should look not at individual bases, but at the empire as a whole, and devise a system of specialization for certain regions (groups of bases) within your territory. An Empire with a solid, stable infrastructure can carry on a successful war effort for a far longer time, and with far fewer adverse effects than an empire which has let the development of its infrastructure lag, plus, your well-developed territory is quite easy to defend. Added to that, would be simply to Know Your Faction!! That seems obvious, but it's amazing to me to watch people's play styles develop, and discover that they're attempting to force a faction to do something they're just not natively very good at. Not that it's impossible to do (I've played The Bel ievers on "Thinker" level, and was getting Techs every four turns (have yet to try that on Transcend)....but....the effort involved in getting to that point was obscene. Play to your faction's natural strengths and devise your strategy around minimizing the impact of your negatives and you will almost always do well. Where units are concerned, if you're serious about winning the game, take the time to look at unit construction. Yes, you can roll over your enemy with a horde of Shard Rovers or what-have-you, but a well-prepared enemy will eat you alive if you try something so basic as that. Design and build a variety of units with overlapping functions and use them to create a force which can deal with any threat it encounters in a variety of ways. Then, if your opponent throws you a curve, chances are good you'll be able to cope with it. Finally: Always remember that it is your right and duty to blatantly ignore or ruthlessly violate any principle or strategy you read here or anyplace else, and take all accumulated wisdom with a grain of salt....in the end, the only real test is battle, and the only trials that produce a lasting impression are those by fire.... As always, the key to winning the game is early expansion. Use early transports to move your colony pods. If you find a unity transport, immediately upgrade it(you'll get 1 move & 1 cargo capacity at least). If you have mindworms, use them to escort your colony pod & former thru the fungus to their destination (wild worms won't attack your worms), and to escort artifacts back to your cities. Build toward your enemies to cut off their expansion. If you find the monsoon jungle, colonize it ASAP! Forest everything even if you don't have tree farms, you'll still get 1 food from the squares. Forest squares with nutrient bonuses from the beginning. When you do get tree farms, forest everything in those cities(with the possible exceptions of rolling/rainy & rocky minerals). Later (as mentioned by Imran) use air units as colony pods. Heliocopter pods have an even farther range than fighters. When building a city, 1st put down a sensor array on the spot you will settle. This will give you a +25% bonus to defense that cannot be destroyed unless the city is. Aerospace complexes add 100% defense vs. air attacks, so build them once the enemy has air units. Build 1e-1-1 x2 empathy police (a cop who feels for you as he clubs you?), a cheap unit that works great for unrest and to attack worms. They are cheapest with fission reactors, so don't plan on using them to defend against other factions. Build them in new cities & newly conquered cities. Another good combo is the AAA/ECM infantry. Learn what combinations of armor/weapons/specials are cheapest yet still effective. Terraforming is key to winning; therefore the Weather Paradigm is a must-have project. It will greatly increase your terraforming speed & allow you options normally unavailable until later. Use them! No matter what faction you play, you can create a powerful army early. Command centers & bioenhancement centers are not the only things capable of modifying the morale of your army. Monoliths obviously, but also children's creches IN THE CITY T HAT SUPPORTS THE UNIT will add 1 to the unit morale. Other structures have the same effect (ones that affect pysche, I believe. Research hospitals?). So a unit built in a city with a command center, sent to a monolith, and supported by a city with a children's creche will receive 4 morale upgrades. Even the Gaians can build veteran troops from the get-go. The Spartans could build elite infantry from the start. I play mainly as Zakharov, and act like the Mafia with a research grant. While pod-popping, the free nodes are invaluable. Of course, build early and often. Fortify your frontier towns and let your inner core of cities work on prototypes and Projects. Buddy up to Dierdre and Morgan. Your early goal should be to become Planetary Guv and you'll need their votes. Plus trading for Gaian tech gives a nice advantage. If Yang, Miriam or Santiago are nearby, crush them early. If they all are, get Yang first. His growth rate usually has him in the running for Guv, and Santiago can be relied on to attack anyone. Have a treaty with her, kill Yang and let her beat on her neighbors for you. Don't be afraid to beat up Lal, either. No one else can stand his namby-pamby UN. Don't be afraid of stabbing Miriam, Santiago or Yang in the back if needed. This is a Looooong game and your reputation can recuperate. Miriam can be taken anytime into mid-game. She defends lightly. Santiago overextends herself via conquest and her cities are easy to bribe. So are her units, so if she's driving on you, a few well placed shekels can gain you some cannon fodder. Once you're guv and the more belligerent neighbors are cowed, consolidate, research and expand. Now is a good time to build a sea colony or two while letting the others forget your past transgressions. It's now time to guage your strength and choose your mode of victory. Conquest: Don't worry about taking territory. Slash and burn. When you feel strong enough, whack Lal if he's within your reach. Assuming that all the totalitarians are no longer a threat, plan for a big showdown with Morgan. His resources are the only thing that challenge your eventual dominance. Kill Gaia last. Economic: Kill Morgan, Kill Morgan, Kill Morgan! (or start as Morgan). Make peace with everone else. Make money. Diplomatic: Kill Miriam, Santiago and Yang. Kiss up to two of the other three. Win with 3 of only 4 votes. Transcendence: Strike allian ces as necessary, whack anyone who gets too big. This may be when you want to take Dierdre and the Gaians for a ride. Remember...your goal is to Capo di Tutti Capi, not to be loved. Play accordingly! If you don't take care to expand quickly right from the start, you'll get yourself in trouble later. Having just a couple of big and well-developed bases won't cut it - you'll be outdone by anyone who's got more bases to work with in doing just about everything. Expand, expand, expand, therefore. Don't stop until you start getting the efficiency warnings; maybe not even then - go on until you're sure you're by far the biggest faction. At the start, use the scout to explore. Don't worry about leaving your home base undefended - you can gamble on the restart if something should happen. If you don't already have one, build a colony pod - but make sure that the build time is longer than the base's growth time. If it isn't, build another scout after all, to defend the base. Get formers as soon as you can - always one per base. Have them build roads first, then forests. Make sure every second item you build is a colony pod, though! Your first improvement should either be the tanks (if drones are not a problem yet) or the rec comm (if they are). After that, nodes - also for cashing in the artifacts as you find them while pod popping all the time. Keep pod popping! You may lose (a lot) of units to worms (less if you"re Gaian and can convert a few), but the free techs and the artifacts and the bonuses are vital. Never use artifacts to further wonders, if you can avoid it. Link them to your nodes, and get the tech. Conquer tactics - as Gaian, go for the mindworm rush. Collect as many worms as you can, gather them, and go for the nearest rival. Get them to go Corleone on you first by demanding withdrawal, or threatening to crush them if they don't surrender a nice fat base. If not Gaian, it pays to go for tech advance and get to air units before the others. Choppers can chew up a base or two per turn, ground forces or drop units can come in after. Accept total surrender when offered, but then demand they give up all their bases but one. If they won't, cancel the pact and go have war again. Don't strive for individual base expansion too much - keep it down by building pods, a lot of size-sevens can stay very effective for a long time with relatively little drone trouble. Special Projects: Human Genome is an early boon, for the extra talent in every base. Later, feed SPs in small bases with supply crawlers from big bases; that way you can spread your SPs around in case of Planet Buster trouble later on. Build all the science wonders in one base, though (cumulative effect). Try and keep a building rhythm of improvement / unit / improvement / unit / etc. Units can be pods, formers, crawlers, spies, orbitals, as well as combat units. Never stop terraforming, never forget new bases might be useful (if only as PB launch pads). I have seen too many people say that they are able to get 1 or 2 of the 200 cost secret projects, 1 or 2 of the 300 cost secret projects, etc. I play on Librarian because I am just not ready for the higher levels, I usually miss getting only 1 or 2 of the 200 cost secret projects and I get all but 1 or 2 of the entire list of the rest of the secret projects. The way I do this is to capitalize on the incredible strength of Supply Crawlers. I play UofP so I start with a free Tech. I always choose the tech that allows Terraformers. That way, I can set my build order to be scout, Former, colony pod, former, colony pod,... I then go for Secrets of Alpha Centauri (getting the required techs for that along the way, of course!) for the free tech and the required Trance special ability. I then go for the industrial techs so that I can switch to Free Market and Wealth. Since I am now raking in money and science hand over fist, I can concentrate on my industry. I don't improve my production by putting my workers on mines. Instead, I build supply crawlers and sit them on mines. With Supply crawlers, a city can be producing 15-20 minerals per turn and still only be size 3. This is important because large cities are less productive (you get a free worker for your base square) more unhappy (as UoP on Librarian, I get 0 drones at size 3 and 2 drones at size 4) and generally a pain to work with. Instead, grow like mad. You will have more territory and you will be much more productive. Using Supply Crawlers means that you can have high production cities that are still manageable. Now, go build those secret projects! For Social Engineering, the combo I use most often is democracy, green economics, knowledge, and then cybernetic. This gives you a remarkable advantage on planets with lots of fungus and life forms, giving you a mindworm capture rate of 75% if I remember correctly. This will also basically have the Gaians eating out of your hand due to your 'love for planet' although you probably terraform like mad. The Hive and Morgans will be mortal enemies under this social arrangement, and often stronger than you starting out. It is best you learn how to compromise, knowing when to say when, but also when to give in and submit. The University's strength is obvious: knowledge. When done right, you can have Tachyon bolts and photon armor when other factiions are still using particle impactors and plasma steel armor. Using your technological advantage is critical. You can also use knowledge brokering as leverage for diplomacy. As with all factions, you MUST expand and expand like crazy if you wish to survive. Your only hope of winning is to become as massive as possible, generating large cash flow and quick research. A large faction size is also good for supporting large numbers of units without causing rioting. You absolutely must grow if you hope to survive. If you stay small, you will easily be overwhelmed by factions like the Hive and Spartans, who can produce large quantities of units fairly cheaply. They will overwhelme you with shear numbers unless you can fight back with superior units. As far as secret projects go, all are good, but some are just better: Citizens Defense Force, Command Nexus, Maritime Control Center, among others are good choices. My personaly opinion is don't waste your time on the Ascetic Virtues because it just isn't worth wasting the production time on it. You will want to build any wonders that give you base improvements, for a couple of reasons:1. You don't have to build those improvements in your city. 2. Reduced maintenance costs. 3. And of course the benefits of the improvments. Not sure if he's off the scene now so here goes (some strategies may've been reported by other people already): * Manipulate build queue -- often the game won't allow to build something until another structure has been built. For example the pleasure dome can't be built until you have the recreation commons. However, you can put the recreation commons in the build queue, add the pleasure dome after it, and then delete the recreation commons from the build queue. Then the pleasure dome can be built first (yeah I know, limited usefulness). * Free support off pact brother -- build up a little base in a corner near your own bases, and give the little base to a pact brother, then send all of your own units there, open the city screen and change the unit's ownership. Nobody ends up supporting the unit. Not only that, but those units can now be freely sent out of the city for battle duty, and they won't create unhappiness since they don't belong to any of your cities. * Free support + Ascend to transcendence -- build and save up heaps of military units, sending them to a pact brother city to get the free support as necessary. When the transcendence project becomes available, you can scrap your units in the base that's building the secret project, meaning that you effectively started to build the project as soon as you started building up the units. * Catching up in the race to transcend - if you're falling behind in industrial capability compared to a competitor building the transcendence secret project, it is better to catch up by building units and sending them to be scrapped, rather than stockpiling energy and then buying partial production. When you build and scrap, the industry input from other bases is basically halved (as well as a bit of wastage depending on the build schedule). However when you stockpile energy, you lose 3 quarters of it when you try to rush the secret project because it costs 4 credits to buy each unit of a secret project. Therefore it is twice as economical to build and scrap than it is to stockpile and buy. (Q: when you stockpile you get 1 production = 1 energy don't you? If it was 2 production = 1 energy then you'd lose 7 eighths of the input rather than 3 quarters). * Plasma Hoverboats (2-3-4) rule the water world -- On a world which is predominantly water, the plasma hoverboat rule because they are so cheap (same low price as a plasma sentinel) yet can bombard the enemy's terrain improvements every bit as well as a stronger ship. They are also great naval city defenders. * Inland sea - the best bases are usually ones next to water because of the excellent food and energy income from water tiles, while forests and occasional boreholes on just a couple of land tiles will make up for production. The only problem with this is that coastal cities can be attacked by enemy ships. So what do you do? build on an inland sea. None nearby? Then create one. Get a mid sized island, populate it, then get a bunch of formers and proceed to build a thin "ring" of land just a couple of tiles off the coast of the entire island. If the enemy tries to take a foothold on the outer land ring, you can send your entire navy from your core bases to wipe them out without worrying about being attacked from a different direction. I doubt the AI will ever figure out it needs to lower the land to turn your land ring into sea (but in that case you can just build it right back, or go out there and destroy their sea formers enmass). Most likely the AI will just build a small land bridge towards one part of your protective ring, which means you have them controlled at a chokepoint. If you build air defense units all around the protective ring you might even stop the enemy being able to scout you, so they'd not be able to find out what you have in the "core". I have here detailed some salient points of my Gain strategy. Gains have the best planet rating so use this to your advantage:pollute.But don't build mines or condensers or farms, they merely make squares where enemy units can move easily, build fungus and boreholes ONLY. This simplest if you get the weather paradigm and begin borehole production early in the game, not more than 1 former for 2 bases. Don't build your boreholes beside your base squares, only fungus, to give your worms the advantage.Always station a mind worm on a borehole.The first base facility you build should always be a biology lab: more research more lifecycle. Go straight for the Centauri-techs & Secret projects as they will allow your bases to produce more with fungus.Never trade these techs as a matter of forcing high-science players to research them, something often neglected till post Quantum. Be sure that no one gets the xenoempathy dome and nulliffies your fungus advantages.Be SURE no one gets the neural-amplifier as this is a major asset if gained and a major pain if lost.All research towards neural grafting is my top priority until I have the amp secured which effectivly defends against the spartan-elite-rush.Make sure you expand frequently and remain democratic/green/wealth. Always build preserves and things to give lifecycles. Once the Dream twister is secured send a plague of demon-boil locusts to any near bases/pesky rival.If you are still alive this far into the game your island should be a carpet of fungus and boreholes.I have found many players die simply to the plague but if it seems to be a long game Save up ALL your artifacts in a well protected inland base and build the Universal translator.Trade tech with the other factions until you have roughly all the tech up till discover level 10 then rocket ahead to acheive transcendance when the world is sitting at digital sentience! The Spartans are an interesting choice as a faction. Their morale starts at +2 in the society window and their prototypes cost the same as the regular unit. The only problem with the Spartans is their -1 industry. A little social engineering will take car of that. In the early came or when you're not at war your social choices should be Fundamentalist, Green or Planned, and Knowledge. Future society is not really that important until later in the game. By chosing both Fundamentalist and Knowledge you cancel out the major benifits of both along with your own -1 industry. Growth be high whenever you gain empty territory. But in this time of expansion planet should be high too. Hence you alternate between Planned and Green as needed. When you do go to war chosing power instead of knowledge is okay if you think you can wipe out your opponent with relative speed. Now, on to military developement. When you start the game research Applied Physics and then Centauri Ecology. Each of your bases hould build two scout patrols, one scout rover, and one former. As you gain technological advantages just upgrade the units that you have already built. (remember that with the Spartans you don't have to prototype.) Be as aggressive as you can in the early game. Laser and Impact rovers should be your staple military unit against your opposition. Rovers are better than infantry because early in the game you need their speed and flexibility. Armorless foils are not an uncommon choice on a water orinted map either. Infantry should serve no other purpose than to garrison your bases so upgrade both scout patrols as you reasearch new armor levels. Once you have established Sparta Command's garrison and terriforming units begin to build the Command Nexus. You should be the first faction to build a secret project unless another faction is feeling aggressive. Also build the Merchant Exchange if you have the time since you'll need lots of energy to upgrade your units. Other secret projects should include the Cyborg Factory and the Cloning Vats. If you encounter a faction with a greater number of military units and a well established defensive network (usually Yang) try to make friends and limit their expansion. When you have sufficient strength go in for the kill. The overall goal of this strategy is to produce a large number of well trained, fast, and technologically advanced units. Don't be affraid to give your rovers armor if your having trouble researching Nanometalurgy. One trouble area is the transition of your forces from primarily speeder to primarily tank. Don't do it while your at war. Wait until you're not fighting anybody and quietly begin to replace your rover's with tanks like this. Sent a rover home and disband it. Build an armorless tank with a decent weapon from the recycled rover. Upgrade it as soon as posible and circulate it into service. Do not do this with more than two rovers at a time or you'll find yourself with half the army you used to have and very little cash. Another thing to beware is enemy airpower. If you move quickly enough you won't need to worry. But if you start seeing needle jets come midgame: don't worry. Design a radar with AAA and SAM special abilities and go after them. Try not to over extend yourself though or you won't be able to support these anti-air units. Speaking of support, as soon as you develope the clean reactor, use it. Other special abilities to monopolize on should be deep radar and drop pods. The Space Elevator can be useful in that respect but you really don't need it. Tectonic missiles ensure that your continent remains above the sea level, making it obsolete to employ sea formers to raise your terrain, and are very useful in initiating global warming, since they are cheap and generate a huge amount pollution. Fungal payloads can help spread the fingus at your continent. The fungal towers should be easy to control. Furthermore, the Manifold Harmonics project can extend your fungus production to gigantic levels. Choppers are very versitile units. Not only can they travel long distances without refueling, but they can also attack multiple times within one turn. One good strategy for quickly taking over bases uses choppers. Build up a number of these aircraft and give them your best weaponry and offensive special abilities, and a few ground units as well. Attack the target base with your choppers, and if your choppers are superior in strength, they can keep attacking the defenders until there are none left. They simply move one of your ground units into the base. This sort of attack can come as a surprise and overwhelm your opponent when he can start producing defensive units that are effective against aircraft. Therefore, use this strategy when your opponent does not have a force of anti-air units and keep puching forwards once you have started the attack so as not to let your enemy rebuild and upgrade. Be sure to use the best terrain improvement for each square: farms in rainy squares, forests in arid or moist, and mines in rocky. I recommend to build at least two military units at each base to start off with. After your military units are built, build some formers. I recommend that you build recycling tanks and supply pods next. This will increase efficiency and expansion. If you want, build Mind Worms. However, you must build these nasty critters early in the game. They won't be as useful later in the game, because the factions will have sufficiently developed their Psi defenses. Don't forget to build things like the Children's Creche, Biology Lab, and Hab Complex. I recommend signing treaties or pacts with some or most of the other factions for a short time, at least. Don't forget that units can hide in the fungus. Boreholes are very important in the production of resources at your bases. I recommend having at least one borehole for every four bases. Remember to scout for the landmarks. They will provide extra resources. Build sensory arrays as you explore to watch for mind worms. Send Supply Crawlers to retrieve far away resource deposits. Naval Bases and Aerospace Complexes add to your faction's dominance and expandability. Remember to build kelp farms, tidal harnesses, and mining platforms for bases near an ocean. You can defend your borders by planting a line of fungus and hiding units in it. Remember to make some sensors near there as well. This will prevent the other factions from doing the same. If you're located on the western side of a long landmass that you share with other factions, you must define the eastern edge of your territory by raising a ridge line. You can settle the green exposure, while the barren, eastern exposure will create a no- man's land that the enemy will be reluctant to expand into. To invade a nearby landmass which isn't connected by land, consider raising a land bridge. You can also use transport boats. If your land is arid, build a condenser to make it more moist. Build solar collectors adjacent to Echelon Mirrors in high elevation locations. Forests are easy to produce and provide sufficient resources, so plant several forests near your bases. Upgrade your units in the field by pressing [Ctrl][U]. If possible, get the Weather Paradigm. You will be able to do the other types of terraforming that requires Ecological Engineering, without actually having that technology. You should upgrade to Mag Tubes when you get the Monopole Magnets Technology. You will be able to move a little quicker. Unfortunately, the other factions can still use them. To soften up a unit prior to final attack, complete a bombarding run. MaNiAc I have noticed that is another faction declares a vendetta upon you, and they're not on the same continent, they won't attack you. Because they swore a vendetta upon you, you do not have to attack them, if they don't attack you. Stavros I noticed that not many people use diplomacy in this game. It is one of your most useful tools. If you are playing single player, make your allies stop vendettas as soon as possible. If the factions don't fight, they grow slowly; on the other hand, if you allow one faction to assimilate two or three others, they will become those strong powerhouses that take ages to destroy. Even in Multiplayer, an inventive person can cause all sorts of havoc with the right moves, especially with probe teams. ItalianJedi007 This strategy is best used early in the game, but not too early - when you are the second or third most powerfu faction. It also helps to the the Spartans. Try to make a pact of brotherhood with the most powerful faction, or if you are the most powerful faction, your strongest rival. Them, somehow, get your pact brother (or sister) to attract your next biggest rival. When he has been eradicated, heal all of your damaged units in your pact brothers cities, and keep them all in near his cities. Then break your pact and crush him swiftly and mercilessly. After this, no one will probably trust you, but it doesn't matter because from your conquests, you are probably superior in tech and faction size. jan In Alien Crossfire, if you are the Cult (or Caretaker), it's a great idea to use GREEN CYBERNETIC and employ mind worms only, because of special bonus (PLANET * 10) in the attack. If you can get the Neural Amplifier and Dream Twister (you get 50 to attack and 50 to defense), your mind worms become almost unbeatable in attack. Mind worms are also easy to build, and you get them also free, when you capture wild mind worms. Walk with the Planet! MaNiAc If you are the Peacekeepers, and you have not acquired Eudamonia, the best social engineering is: Fundamentalist, Simple, and Knowledge. This will end up giving you all 0's and a single 1 in Economy. It pleases the UoP because of the Fundamentalist, and it pleases the Gaians because of the 0 in Planet. jan I think there are only two points that really matter: Growth and Research. It's absolutely necessary to have large growth and research. So, first obtain the democracy and planned economy (free market is terrible because of riots). It's necessary also to acquire the Virtual World, Citizen Defense Firce, and in the classic SMAC, the Hunter S. Algorithm. If you have a big country, large output and fast research, are "musts" to win! Urcode A small tip: Towards the beginning of the game, especialls as the Gaians, set your planet rating high and get the Centauri secret projects. Then, get rid of all of your sea improvements (I mean ALL), and plant sea fungus instead. If you have lots of tech, it wil give you tons of resources. This is especially good if you have SMACX, because the Manifold Harmonics makes fungus squares. If you are Gaian/Cult, and have green ec and/or cybern. society, it gives you even more resources. If you do this, you can spread fungus in your land as well, and it'll give you more than farms, sc's, mines, etc. Enemies can't invade you, because they get stuck in fingus. With sensors, pholus mutagen, and xenoempathy dome, you can sneak up on them and wipe them out easily. Also, if they capture a city w/o tech, it'll starve. SitusInversus Use chains of transport foils to create temporary bridges so that the bridge is one way with you holding the key. There is almost always a site where only two squares separate your continent from that of your nearest enemy. Put two foils in thse squares and let your armies march across. Then move one foild away to close the bridge until you need it again. I tend to build roads or mag tubes to my bridge site and let my armies flow across into enemy territory. Later in the game, clean reactors, maritime control centers, and carrier decks make these foils mobile bridge/airbases that are cheap to keep around and can move anywhere else on the sea map quickly. Even later in the game, submarine transports could be used to have a bdidge that can "disappear" without having to move. I have found this srategy to definitely bolster my war efforts on some maps. It obviously depends on the terrain and how the islands are spaced. On the map of planet, it works great if you have started on the L-shaped continent to the left and want to get to the central continent. Hans van Pelt The idea is to get your hands n as many alien artifacts as you possibly can and taget your research for this, and ultimately the Universal Translator. This will make you practically invincible, so you can teach those other pesky factions a lesson! Beginning Target your research at knowledge, at Secrets of the Human Brain, to be exact. This will speed up your research rate. Make your scout patrols check the terrain for unity pods (and mind worms). Remember: you're after the alien artifacts. Guard them back to one city carefully; don't let them wander the fungus alone! After you've discovered Secrets of the Human Brain, go for Doctrine: Flexability, which allows you to build boats, then for Doctrine: Initiative. Don't waste too much time on any other, especially weapons or shielding research. Use diplomacy to settle conflicts, even try to negotiate in conflicts between other factions. If you're not Gaian, build a lot of transports and offensive ships to escort them. Put some scout patrols and rovers on the transports, and go get those sea pods. Use the scouts and rovers to explore uninhabited islands. Move all the alien artifacts you come across to the city where you do your piling up. If you're Gaian, build only a few offensive ships (like gun foils), and have them move about through sea fungus. Do it for some time, and you'll end up with your own fleet of isles of the deep, some carrying mind worms. These are even better than transports because they can defend themselves. Don't link alien artifacts to network nodes unless you're desperate for new techs (powerful faction attacks), but pile them up. Mid Game After having discovered Doctrine: Initiative, have one of your bases (you should have size 10's or more by now) build the maritime control center project. Speed it up if you have the cash. This project enables you to move your ships yp to twice as fast. Continue to bring those artifacts in. Now focus your research on Homo Superior. It will take a series of different discoveries, and quite a long time before you get there, but when you have it, have one of your biggest bases, preferrably close to the city where you are collecting your artifacts, build the Universal Translator Project. Hurry it up if you can. The next neato project you can focus on is the Hunter-seeker Algorithm, which will protect your techs against theft. When you have the Universal Translator project and a nice collection of alien artifacts (normal numbers are 15 to 25, but 30 is possible), you are all set for hard times. Wait until you're in a pickle (vendetta with a multitude of other factions), or try to maneuver yourself into one by clumsy diplomacy, but DON'T do this when things are peaceful and quiet: Rush all collected alien artifacts to the Universal Translator at once, and hook 'em up. This will give you a surge in tech level. All of a sudden, you will have weapons, defenses, and unit technologies way ahead of the other guys and gals. End game Use your rediculous tech level to build many heavily armed choppers (about 20). Also build some drop troops (2 to 5) and some fast ships (maybe you have some left from your expedition forces?). Now target an enemy faction. Send your ships there if they have any sea bases, and most important of all: get the choppers there. Maybe you had planned for this, and you already have bases at flyable intervals towards the enemy faction, maybe you'll need to build an aircraft carrier (design workshop: if you design a transport vessel, one available special ability is "carrier deck". Check that, and you will have designed an aircraft carrier; Very hard to spot for the opposition). Le's hope your victim doesn't have aerospace complexes, they make this tactic pretty hard to carry out. Use the choppers to clear out big enemy cities. Choppers can attack and destroy multiple targets iside one turn. Beware of fuel limits, but if you're sure that a base is going to be captured within the same turn, fire away until you have only one movement point left, and select another chopper to pick up where the previous one left off. Use this tactic also if a chopper is too banged up to continue with a next target: simply select another chopper, you should have enough of 'em. When a base is empty, airdrop a drop unit into it. Now all wounded and amost-out-of-fuel choppers may rest there too. DON'T, however, skip the turn for the drop squad! Select another chopper and do another city, reactivating the drop squad for that decisive airdrop. It works the same on the sea. Clear those bases with choppers, take 'em with boats. This way, you can sweep the enemy off his'her feet. Wipe 'em out before they can say "planetbuster"! Yep, you can do 7, 8 bases in ONE turn EASY... Select one small base and attack it last. While the attack is still in progress, your opponent may come begging for mercy (the story about granting you all their energy credits (0) and all their new techs (0 too)). Accept that is you want to be known as "noble," otherwise KERSPLAT! Next faction, please!? When you have subdued all hostile factions, apply for the job of supreme leader. You will have achieved diplomatic victory. Sam Expansion is definitely key to a quicker and easier victory. But if you're like me, and you prefer small empires (9-12 cities) of well-developed cities, try this: Play as the Cult, the Gaians, or the University. Build 9-12 cities in fairly-close proximity. They can be VERY close together if at least half of them are coastal (and can therefore expand into ocean shelves). Terraform all the surrounding landscape as quickly as possible and build lots of facilities and secret projects. Your cities will soon be the envy of the planet, pumping out lots of energy reserves, psych and research points, and minerals. While you're doing this, however, the other factions will be plastering the map with their cities and building up arsenals. Your better-developed cities should be keeping you ahead in the technology race, but you won't be in a position to directly challenge these other large empires. And you WILL be attacked. Fortunately, you have a relatively-small area to defend. A few defensive units squatting on sensors (and maybe bunkers) can keep land units out, especially if you have an island (the computer isn't very good at amphibious assaults). Air units are more of a worry, but AAA seems to keep them away. Your biggest problem is probably missiles, but if you can survive those . . . Pick an enemy and take out all his terraforming. I mean ALL of it. If you're geared for conventional warfare, use well-armored ships to bombard coastlines and bombers to lay waste to the interior. Better yet, "go native" (be sure to have built biology labs, centauri preserves, and the "centauri" projects to boost life cycle bonuses). Once you get the Locusts of Chiron, you're on your way to victory. The locusts can go anywhere on the map and don't have to refuel, so even a few of them can decimate an enemy's continent. Don't bother attacking cities (or units, unless they're guarding improvements you want to destroy). Sit back and watch the enemy's empire starve. As his cities shrink, paralysis sets in, because what little mineral production he has left goes to supporting his bloated military. Soon those cities will be ripe for the picking. But you're a "small empire" player, so you want to take them over only long enough to destroy them (besides, your military isn't capable of holding onto lots of cities beyond your borders). Problem is, obliterating a base is an atrocity, which you may not want to commit. However, nothing stops you from doing this: (1) take all workers off production, and wait for the city to starve down to size 1; (2) build a colony pod, abandon the base, then disband the pod. Bye-bye city. If you have ample energy reserves (and you should), you can hasten this process by hurrying production of pods. This is advisable where you might not be able to hold onto the base long enough for it to die a slow death. Mike Alright, I'm probably the odd guy out here but... I never play as the hive. To tell the truth I always thought of them as the "badguys". Same with Santiago. Instead I usually go for the peaceful game ending. But if you're going for that there are strategies too! Each ending has a "best" faction you should go for it with. If you want to corner the Global Energy Market play as Morgan and get as many pacts as possible. Also build "energy farms" with long rows of echelon mirrors and solar collectors in the following fashion: EEEEEEEEEEEEEE ssssssssssssss EEEEEEEEEEEEEE Also be sure to build as many energy banks and secret projects as possible. And if there is huge energy deposit far away from you send out upply transports to go get it! If you are going for transcendance use the University. Also build as many bases as possible and turn the governor on in each of them and set it to: Discover. Trade techs as much as possible and make pacts not vendettas that way you won't waste time building your military instead of your knowledge. Set your social engineering screen to democracy and knowledge. (note: this usually gets more than a few people mad at you including: yang, lal, miriam, and santiago) Build as many secret projects as possible and also DON'T HURRY ANYTHING UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECCESSARY! If you do the above thewn by the time you start building "Ascent to Transcendance" you should be able to rush buy it. If you are going to try and get elected supreme leader use Lal because he gets x2 votes. Then build the "Empath Guild" secret project to get x2 votes again. That means you will have x4 votes. Then build as many bases as you can (the more voters you have the easier it will be) Then get elected planetary governor. Next, go for supreme leader. You should be able to vote yourself in but if you just want to be cautios you can bribe a few votes. ( n ote: I forgot to tell you to make pacts. Your pact brothers and sisters will almost ALWAYS vote for you.) Martin Eggers Play with the Gaians on a custom large/huge flat map with no cloud cover and lots of oceans so you'll have an island on your own. Build about 10 bases, protect them with a few defensive units and builc children's creche in every single one. Now switch to democracy and planned, and you will get a population boom everywhere, while using only forest(with tree farms) and fungus squares for food (yes, you should actually plant fungus). When your Bases have grown to a strong size, build a few Boreholes to get minerals and keep on researching until you have got fusion planet busters (yeah!). Fire about 10-15 Busters in all directions at your enemies (even in transcend they should not have orbital pods at this time) and ensure you are working the borehole squares and have a lot of trance and empath garrisons. The following ecological destruction will result in approximately 2000 metres of sea-level rising, which means that there should be only sea bases by this time. Keep the terrain around your bases ocean shelf so you can plant fungus squares everywhere, and it should be easy to destroy the remeining factions, as the AI is catastrophic in sea warfare and even in multiplayer you will have an advandtage since no one can cultivate sea squares comparable to your fungus. If you build Xenoempathy, it will even help to kee other ships out of your territory while allowing yours to pass for 1 MP. This strategy should work on all levels of difficulty, it has been tested under thiner but transcend should be possible, too. Tip: If you're going for an especially high score or if you want to train for multiplayer, go for IRON MAN Settings, it will give you a 100 bonus. Provost Mark My strategy works regardless of who I start as, though I prefer to start as Gaia, UoP, or Hive. My order of precedence at a base is: 1) Guard unit (high defense, trance (if avail), and police (if avail)). Updating these is your highest priority. Designate this unit as a primary defender (Ctrl-D), then Hold them (H). 2) An attack unit. Make this unit a high movement rate unit. Give it AAA (if avail), and the BEST attack strength you've got, but keep the defense level at 1 (keeps the unit affordable). Station this unit with the L command. 3) Build a Former. Make this former the BASIC former. Upgrade it using funds to a better armored super-former after it has been built. 4) Build Recycling Tanks. 5) Build another former. Now at this point, I diverge depending on where the city is: If this city is on a front: *) Crank out Air, Sea, or Attack units. Make them CLEAN!! Crank them out endlessly and station them near the front-line in some fungus. As soon as you see an enemy, attack with the mongolian horde. If this is a city to the rear: 1) Children's Creche. 2) Recreation Facility. 3) Energy Bank. 4) Network Node. NEVER build the following unless someone has beaten you to the punch: Perimeter defense (use the Citizens' defense), Hologram Theatres (use Virtual), etc. Designate a few VERY well defended cities to be your SECRET PROJECT sites. Rapidly produce quick moving rovers in the neighboring cities to move to these project-building cities and sacrifice. This takes almost no time and rapidly advances the production of your secret projects. The basic projects that are a MUST are: 1) Weather Paradigm 2) Citizen's Defense I usually go for most of them, as they all seem to have serious advantages to having them. Wim Tavenier If you are only interested in getting the highest score, then play with the Gaians on the biggest possible map with abundant native life forms. It also has to have the biggest landmass. Then build a lot of mindworms and dito improvements (Biology Lab). Don't mind the secret projects, because the first time you will meet an opponent, you will have more mindworms then there are bricks in the Great Wall! For even more mindworms turn to green economics asap. Then you will have enough mindworms to conquer every opponent with ease. I once played like this and started with 2 recon speeders and that was all I build as an attack force, because the rest was only captured mindworms. My bases could only concentrate on building improvements and garrisons! Mark Davison This the most Revolutionary strategy that will ever hit the scene. Basically you start of by establishing 4 bases fairly close together linked by roads, obviously being sure to fully exploit the terrain.Build a single scout vehicle in each of your four cities. Then send a Seperate scout vehicle to find other factions. Make a treaty with them And then a brotherhood pact, trading as much technology as possible.All the while build up a huge military force on the sly. Move in your forces to surround the capital and other cities of military importance and then strike breaking all treaties and unleashing mass death and destruction to your opponents granted through the element of surprise.Once you have drained the putrid filth for what they have,feast on the soft goey substance in their brain.The result liquid will send you insane,allowing you to return all your troops to their home cities and destroy them all thus commiting suicide.Ingenious eh? BlueMikeSpecial I dunno who reads these but it's kinda cool that i can post something. These are only a few tricks that I use, and I know they work because I beat the shit out of the game on transcend. The Hive is invincible. If you don't realize this play some more. Conquer everyone as fast as you can. Go police state and planned immediately (no negative consequences). Expand as much as possible also Duh. Other little things - If everyone hates the aliens then nuke the aliens, no one will care. Build skimship and cruiser probe teams (use the workshop!!). Free market is almost always the best. Especially if you have the Ascetic Virtues (unless you're the Data Angels and then that won't help you) Always trade tech unless it's really gonna fuck you up. Finally, if you are playing correctly by 150 to 180 turns into the game everyone should vendetta you unless you've made them your bitch. I haven't tested this with the aliens in yet so that might change things. Normally I have almost every wonder and so much power the comp always hates me. Finally, if your morgan and you start next to the believers or aliens on any decent skill level your normally fucked. I play huge maps so the game doesn't end before anyone gets half way through the tech tree. Chris This strategy is for those of you who want to beat the game on as high a level as you can. i have ussed this strategy to beat the game on transcend. I played as the spartans, and they would be best, but in the situation I will describe, the hive, the believers, and even the gains could pull it off. Customize your world for large landmasses, small map, lots of native life (especially if your gaians) and no cloud cover. Don't panick when you se a map without any green on it. Start by expanding as fast as possible. kill anything that gets in your way (it actually helps to turn on the animosity option; that way they won't work together). Don't accept anything less than wiping them out; you need the realestate. take their bases and their tech, you need both. as soon as a base has cranked out a colony pod or two, start build formers to make forests. Go for only the basic improvements, you need tanks first, then creches and command centers. if you feel you have a city that's already developed and you have the resources to start a war without that city 9and that should be a neat trick on transcend) build the command nexus and citizen's defense force. the only other improvements you want will be naval yards and aerospace complexs, if you get that far. set out in all directions, find the enemy, and take a base as fast as possible. Consolidate quickly, buy units to defend those bases, keep moving with your attck units. the longer you take, the harder it will b to kill your enemies. kill yang and miriam asap, they are hard to wipe out the later it gets. sea bases aren't as important, it takes to many resources to transport units. The important thing is to get to your opponents quickly, if you haven't wiped out a faction within the first 10-25 turns, start over, you won't win. Tech, economy, population, and psych are all secondary to the war ef fort. every base must be defended, new bases must be held, and you must explore for new ways to reach your enemy. keep the pressure up, your population barely content (so keep those bases small!), your bases connected by roads, your weapons cutting edge (love the needlejet. good needlejet) and your wits about you, and you can have the game rapt up in under a hundred turns. and just look at your score! Dan My strategy centers around economic, technological, and military powers. Early in the game, I tend to make alliances with anyone who'll cooperate and gang up on Yang, the Believers, or, in some cases, the Spartans. I've played everyone, but the UN, the Gaians, and the Morganites are the best for this form of strategy. The University tends to be too weak for military actions, ao what's the point in advanced weapons? The UN is by far the best, as one can expand quickly and grab tons of land. I tend to have NO overlap early in the game; I fill in spaces later with tiny bases that stay tiny. My advantages come in early Tech advancement, so while the other factions are destroying one-another (my allies do the early fighting for me) I develope powerful weapons. I love naval power and tend to concentrate on sea bases. The basic strategy here is that the seas are all interconnected so one can go anywhere. I try to develope air power early so I can strike out from centraly located sea bases and then use drop-pod-equipped units (usually hovertanks) to take over with only a few units. It takes me a few hundred turns to really crank up the power; other civs grow and expand, ussually becoming the most powerful first. Meanwhile, I bide my time and get the others to fight useless wars. At the right time, I emerge from my isolation and conquer the most powerful faction first with lightning fast strikes that roll over the enemy in one or two turns. I kind of go overkill on the military at this point. I have hundreds of units all just tooling around. This is when I get really tough. If anyone left crosses me the wrong way, I invade mercilessly until they either sign a pact forever, or until they are dead. I don't like killing factions; I tend to leave one isolated city with no defenses surrounded by 20 or thirty units. More on this later!! Bye jones I like to build 10-15 "core" bases during the early expansion phase. Site selection isn't that big of a deal, but I do try to minimize overlap in order to leave some buffer squares for supply crawlers between the cities. Terrain can be a big factor in the early game so i find it's always a good idea to get 2-3 rocky mined per city, enough farms to ensure steady growth, and get forests started early enough that they'll be good size when i'm ready for them. I generally don't spend too much time on economy, but more on that later. The first thing to do is find your neighbor and take him out, expanding right into his territory in the process (if it's worthwhile). Once you have a few of their bases, use them to fuel your war/expansion machine while your core bases continue to grow/build SPs/research/etc. Some civs such as yang always seem to pose a serious threat unless dealt with early. Once I have the continent to myself, planetary governor is within reach. I use the intel this provides along with the state of my armies to determine whether conquest is an option. Meanwhile back at home, I'll have 2-4 bases always building SPs, with the other cites alternating between facitlies, the occasional prototype, and supply crawlers. Send the crawlers to your project bases and home them there (CTRL-H), then send them out to some mine your formers have prepared in the wilderness near a secure border to build even faster! Typically during this phase i'll have a number of border cities pop 3-5 that are building units and expanding while my core cities are pop 7-9. I like to stay democracy/planned/knowledge or wealth if at all possible. It may take a few games to get used to the tech tree (don't use blind research unless you like a challenging, looong game), but once you are good enough to survive the early catfights, do your fighting on the enemies' soil, and keep your core bases kranking out SPs and new techs, you will roll over Planet with little opposition. Alpha Transcend Using the University, I can research tech so fast that none of the fractions can catch up. Select the free tech as Formers. Find good starting location with at least 2 mineral resouces. Build formers and start terraforming the surrounding to increase your population. Build 1 colony pod and then start to enhance your city. Start to build mines. Research as follows : 1) Recycling centres 2) Secrets of the Human Brain 3) Fundamentalism (change society to Planned) 4) Democracy (change to democracy) With Democracy and Planned, you gain population explosion, so by this time, you should be closed to completing the Virtual World and the Huma Management Centre. Build armies to keep the people happy when necessary. Use money to buy facilities like recycling centre. The trick is to build the starting secret projects fast so that the other factions cannot catch up. ================================================================================ Message Board Posts ================================================================================ The title of the section says it all. This is just a section with several posts from message boards. They may contain tips, strategies, and general SMAC/SMAX thoughts. Enjoy! The Real Goods on the Progenitors OK, so you've read Vel's guide, and you decide you want an easy game, so you pick Marr and go in for the landing. You start with more colony pods than the human factions, resonance infantry, and five technologies. (I know the documentation says three, but it's actually five - compare the info in the faction file to the documentation, or better yet, start a game and check F2.) You've as good as won this game already, right? If you believe that, you should see the bargain price Morgan's offering you for that waterfront property on the scenic New Sargasso. Things that both Progenitor factions have in common I should say at this point that I don't understand the Progenitors very well - not 1/10th as well as Vel understands the human factions. I've yet play a full game as them on Transcend. But, there are several things I can add to his analysis of the Bugs. Vel has covered their most of their strengths. But both Progenitor factions have significant weaknesses, too. The main ones are diplomatic and commercial - the other factions don't like you, and you don't get trade from treaties and pacts. The Progenitors are odd in that they are quite differently balanced when controlled by a player than when controlled by the AI. The thing is, their "agenda" is Planned. Now a faction's "agenda" doesn't affect it when it's played by a human player, it only affects the way the AI plays it. Now most of the factions have agendas which are reasonably well-suited for them - Yang has Police State, and is immune to its negatives, Morgan has Free Market, etc. But the Progenitors' agenda is planned, which carries a -2 efficiency, and negative efficiency really hurts big factions, which the Progenitors tend to be. So the Progenitors' agendas pretty much take them out of the game in the mid-game when controlled by the AI, without disadvantaging human players at all. The Caretakers Vel assesses them pretty well - they are an awesome builder faction. One thing he doesn't highlight is that they start off with a +1 planet. So everything that applies to the Gaians about using worms and IoD's applies to them too. The other thing he misses is this: they have no aversion. They can run *any* SE choice. This is a very nice thing. One suggestion I've thought of is that people edit the faction file and give them an aversion to Free Market. It makes sense in three ways: first, because they are portrayed as being inclined to something analogous to Planned economies by their species' nature (as shown by both their agenda and the things they say in diplomatic contacts); second, because they are portrayed as attempting to preserve Planet and Market is portrayed as highly destructive of it; and third, because such a disadvantage would help balance the faction. But with or without that, the only problem that I see is that Marr is eventually going to come calling, whether he's controlled by the AI or by another player, and he'll have a lot of good troops, and it won't be a friendly visit. Oh, and that minor little matter that all the AI-controlled human factions are trading techs with each other and not with you. But other than these trivialities, think "Subspace Communicators" and start building. :) But then, I've never played a full game with these guys. The Usurpers Marr, the Builder: This isn't going to happen. First thing is, Marr can't run Democracy. This is bad on a year-to-year basis because he loses out on that +2 efficiency and that +2 growth, and what does he have to show for it? -2 research if he runs fundy, or -2 efficiency if he runs police state. No, Virginia, Marr the Builder is not going to have good tech. Second thing is, Marr can't run Democracy. This means he can't pop boom. But wait, he can pop boom with a Golden Age. Well, yes, sort of, except that to do that he has to run Planned without Democracy, and *that* means that his faction Efficiency is -2 (compared to Morgan at +2 and Yang at 0). Even a creche-equipped base 16 squares or more away from HQ will lose half its energy to inefficiency. This hurts when you're trying to run Golden Ages. Third thing is, you guessed it, he can't run a certain political choice. That means he can't get a high efficiency, which means that the number of bases he can build before getting drone warnings is relatively low. Between these things, if Marr tries to build, it's not going to be long before he's lost both his initial tech advantage and his initial population advantage. But the fourth reason he's not going to play Builder is the clincher. Remember that every other faction hates him? So when he meets those feeble little aliens, and they declare Vendetta on him, what's he going to do? Try to outBuild them, or go to the Momentum game at which he excels? Oh, and did I mention that Marr can't trade with other factions? No, Marr is not going to play Builder. Marr, the Conqueror. Well, this looks simple... you start off with all those extra units and techs, and who needs Democracy or friends for fighting? And for the first war of conquest, that's how it is. The only fly in the ointment is that the captured bases have populations of 1, but since some terraforming's already been done they'll grow soon enough. But after that, things begin to go astray. Once again, that inability to trade raises its ugly head. If you were playing a "normal" momentum faction, the Spartans say, or the Believers, your conquered foe would offer you a pact of submission, and you'd give them back many of their bases, for two reasons. One is positive: you get trade for every base your pactmate owns, so those returned bases actually give you a significant amount of energy. The other reason is negative: trying to control many bases yourself results in drone problems. A third reason is that the conquered faction may research techs and give them to you. Marr doesn't get that extra trade. Further, if he *doesn't* return the captured bases, he's subject to lots of drone problems, since he can't run that certain political option during peacetime like the Spartans or the Believers. If those conventional momentum factions can force submissive pacts on two or three other factions during the opening game, these captive alliances may enable them to compete with builders during the midgame. It's harder for Marr to do that - he's more set up to win by conquering or not to win at all. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- +1 Police is nice to have in any case and for any faction. If you run Free Market, it makes it much easier to wage war, and if you do not, it usually means you have two fewer drones to worry about. The only ones that do not particularly benefit from it are Deirdre and Roze, bpth of whom have an intrinsic -1 Police. I think some of the above might deserve a mention; at least Yang and Cha Dawn benefit more than Santiago, who is currently used as an example. On an unrelated note, on at least two occasions early in the document you write Biogenetics when you mean Bio-Engineering (talking about clean reactors and builders both times). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Coastal cities represent "latent" naval power the ability to both maintain a larger fleet than your rival. As you will have both more cities to spread out the cost of support for your navy than your land locked opponent and be able to crank out replacement units at a far faster pace by the simple fact that you have more yards to pump them out at. True you are accepting greater risk of invasion for this advantage, but if you build on the coastline with the idea to use it not for the energy and food that the ocean is great at pumping out for you, but instead use it to create the navies that would make a more land locked neighbor on another contintent cringe at the thought and expense of challenging. Another marginal note in the begining of your document where you were discussing the different settings for the game you mentioned that the pod lotto favors the momentumn player over the builder I would not disagree, but had it favors the mobile player over the static player as well. Those factions specificly the green planet factions who are capable of popping pods with natives relatively risk free and svengaurd with his high mobility simply tend to have early, strong and wide rangeing programs of exploration and in that exploration they are more likely than others to pop a relatively larger share of pods. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are a builder style player thus needing a certain amount of isolation from your neighbors especialy in a MP enviroment where an early contact with a momentumn or hybrid player may be the last person you will ever meet on planet. Thus your bases in some way seek to minimalize contact from others. You are more than capable of doing your own research after all and with a small army that has not yet the oppurtunity to gain a meaninful tech edge over your opponent yet you are relatively ill suited for an early war. Myself in most games I find myself in the role of the hybrid player and as you so eloquently pointed out flexibility is the key to the hybrid so I hedge my bets as much as possible as a matter of course. No gaurntee that I will actually be able to hold out on my orginal contintent so a large number of coastal cities might give the chance to make a mass move to the sea before being completely defeated on land. Coastal cities also serve my purposes as I cannot by myself maintain tech parity with builders so I will need to find someone else on planet to supplement my relative lack of tech. Naval projection allows me to meet other factions more quickly and to lay down the ground work for further cooperation in the future. As a Gaian player I can attest to the fact that it is amazing what a good diplomat an isle of the deep is with even one worm on board is early in the game. Or since I would as a gaian player most likely have a significant number of IODs often times with free worms on board anyway it is not outside of the realm of speculation that I would find someone vulnerable to a deep water worm rush. I don't know what a momentumn players view of the ocean would be and thus his placement of cities coastal vrs. noncoastal would be. As a hunch I would say his initial city placement would ignore the fact that it is coastal versus non coastal and instead concentrate on finding his opponent quickly on land and takeing over their cities as quickly as possible. So in large part his city placement will be a legacy of who he conqueors and not by his own design. It would be likely that momentumn players would lack the both the infrastructure and built up force structure to be serious contendors and simply utilize the sea to protect their invasion force of elite land/marine units long enough for them to cross the deep blue and then begin the task of subduing the defenders armies on land. On the other hand a momentumn player might from the begining of the game decide that his long term future will be found in the deep blue sea and begin early construction of naval raiders, Blue water probe teams, and naval transports to move his armies quickly and efficiently. After all foils do move faster than rovers especially since you will tend to lack a system of roads. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On the other hand you could be hoisted by your petard so to speak by placing your naval bases in such eminently defensible spots. A spot that is easy for you to defend would also in all likelyhood either be easy for attacker to iniate a successful naval blockade. And once a land power finds it's principle naval outlets blockaded by a superior number (and potentially quality) of naval power his overseas possessions (principly sea crawlers and forward though thus far lightly protected airbases and bunkers)are effectively forfeit. Let us make the simple assumption that over the course of the game that my coastline policy as led me into utilizing the sea far more than your more limited defense modal has. I have been able to average two naval warships per city while you have through specialization put 3 per city in the water with the principle goal of provideing for coast line defense of your principle naval ports. I would then be able to send half my active fleet to bottleneck yours in your bays though land based artillery and aviation may force me into positioning a foward naval yard in the area to allow me to keep my ships on station in good health. That would also still afford me a significant number of warships to both provide for a defense of the coastline, show the flag around the world as part of the metagames projection of strength and still be able to hunt down what military and economic units that have escaped the blockade. I would still in fact be able to exploit my naval power over you on your other cities as well by simply maintaining the capability of conducting an amphibious landing on your coastline at a point of my chossing as you would now lack the naval capability to prevent my landings. True I wouldn't take any cities in my inital landing and would have to fight my way inland from the coast it would keep the pressure on you and most likely throw you off your game. Finally we have to consider the psychological effect of being blockaded would have on both you and the other humans in the game. A successful blockade with the occassional landing on parts of your shore (even if they are beaten off quickly and cause only minimal harm in a physical sense)could be made to be seen as a sign of your relative weakness or my strength. An image if properly exploited would allow me a number of diplomatic victories elsewhere. Few people after all chosse as their next victim someone who is clearly in a dominant position, far easier and simpler to instead find someone more vulnerable (and someone less likely to show the agressors vulnerability as well) to take over and then consider the idea of playing with the big boys again. All in all I think Naval defense is best served by an early forward projection of naval power far away from your core bases being supported by an ocean filled by crawlers including naval miners whose additional mineral production is channeled partialy into the construction of new hulls for the fleet. A few ideas of additional units for your guide or your companion to it. We all know about canaries with teeth, what about though canaries with eyes? Granted on land deep radar is at best a questionable addition to a unit as sensors both provide the additional sighting capability and provide an additional 25% bonus to defense as well. But in the deep blue sea land based sensors are of only questionable value to you. Instead when you upgrade your canaries to armored versions use one of the two slots on deep radar. It would when multiplied by the number of your sea crawlers provide you with a significant early warning defense of your coastline (allowing more intelligent use of your naval assets) especially if you placed your sea crawlers into position with this in mind from the very begining. CVEs a carrier based on a foil hull most likely the result of upgrading your older foils. CVEs serve primarily in the role of commerce protection (supply crawlers), air ferrys (moving air units from one base to another that is currently out of range, or reinforcemnt of new aircraft to your cruiser carrier wing) They also tend to be quicker to pump out which can be also be an important factor when time is of the essence and money is in increasingly short supply. Aeigis cruisers best defense you have with triple AAA to provide fleet partial fleet defense, may also have a strong gun though usually not your best gun and be equiped with SAM capability as well. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In each play style their is clearly a time in the game where because of the nature of their style they are in an ascendant or dominant position. In the early game it is clearly the momementumn player who is running as hard as he can to take as much territory as he can before being forced to stop and develope the infrastructure that will be required of him in the mid and late games. The builder clearly in the middle game is on the verge of greatness his infrastructure is nearing completion and in the late game he shall be a powerhouse that few if any are willing to challenge. What about the hybrid though? Hybrid players are the dominant player in my rarely humble opinion :-) of the middle game. They have the combination of infrastructure in place and military units in the field to successfully launch an invasion of a momentumn players lightly defended garrisons (especially if they are at least locally dominant in the ocean) True the impact rover when they come home may be unpleasant to deal with but a hybrid player is likely to be able to rush build the defenses the base will need to protect it from assault as well as have some real nice garrison units imported from home for the same purpose. With the idea of turning midgame advantage to late game parity with the builder. A successful invasion of a momentumn player before others recognize his overextension or vulnerability would net you the twin benifits of going after a "bully" that other humans were frightened (lets face it few people regret it when a momentumn player who is still on the advance finds his cities falling left and right, even fewer people are likely to protect him either at least for the first 10-20 years) He could instead of course instead go after the builder instead and simply bull rush his way through the whatever defenses the builder has managed to put up and put his army in position to pillage and burn whatever terraforming projects the builder has painstakingly put in place over the years. The primary goal against the builder is two fold the capture of at least a few high high production well developed cities and the destruction of as much of the builders infrastructure as you can get away with before he can turn economic/industrial/technological power into meaningful military and political power. Simply put this is your last real chance to take him out while you still hold the high cards in your favour -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My power to maintain a blockade on your coastline is likely to erode over especially with the addition of clean reactored air units. Though I think it could be maintained for a longer period of time than you might think, and cause more direct and indirect damage to your position than you might think. in the mid game. While you are penned in I am free to use your rep in the past as a strong player to find some other humans who would love the bragging rights of takeing you out during the mid game (I provide a significant portion of the transport capability they get the joy of amphib landings against a prepared op force). I especilay imagine that their might be a few momentumn players by that point in the game who have such wonderful toys to play with but no one to play with :-) Definately not a nice thing to do to someone and it may prove to be impractical as well but as long as you are stuck without eyes in the water you don't know if I am capable of doing it or not. A hybrid imho has to make a play for the sea and use his willingness to build military power to build naval power as well. When I have you confinded to your coast I am free to begin another round of deep blue collony expansion as well. Building a seiries of naval bases towards you (though granted they probably are not going to be much to look at for a while without a little creative reassesment of supply crawlers) though if I have the Naval wonder I could utilize them for quick turn around on ship repairs and it would give me forward airbases as well to quickly to provide Defensive Air Support. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The middle-game very much belongs to the Hybrids, as their mix of infrastructural builds and flexible ascent up the tech- tree gives them enormous benefits! (Let's face it, if you're a builder, your first 12 techs are pretty much set in stone....you're gonna beeline for everything it takes to put your Empire together right, which means Biogen & social Psych, Industrial Auto, and all restrictions lifted. Easy enough to do, but it gives you precious little in the way of defense. You get Synthmetal, and that's it. No rovers, no boats....nada). For me though, that's what makes the game dynamics so amazing interesting! Early game, Momentum folks are regular T-Rexes....eventually eclipsed by Hybrids, who, exactly as you say, are in a position to "help" the Builder by smacking a Momentum player around, or smash a Builder or two, sweeping him off the map and relying on the fact that a relatively inact conquest of a Builder-Empire will put the Hybrid player in a position so far ahead of the Momentum player that he'll NEVER catch up. Of course, this has two chief implications: 1) Early game, Momentum players will be stronger than everyone anyway, so they won't particularly care about who they hit...mostly, it'll be whoever's closest, which sets up the dynamic for.... 2) By midgame, the Hybrids are at the peak of their powers. Now, if a Momentum player has bulled through a Builder's empire in the early game, then in all liklihood the builder has sent out an APB for assistance, and if you answered that early game call, then no doubt, this has set up some serious diplomatic weavings between the Builder and the Hybrid (Builder provides tech, Hybrid provides muscle....a very good arrangement for both parties), and at that point, the only logical choice is to attack the Momentum player hard and fast, because the alliance is probably raking you in a TON of commerce income....money that will be badly needed in a coming war effort, OR.... If the Momentum player's antics have not touched you (ie - the Builder got his assistance from elsewhere, or somehow fended the assault off, but is much less developed than he should be), then the choice is again clear....smash the builer before he becomes a dominating "third force" in the game. Of course, there are a gazillion other factors influencing it, and that was an admittedly GROSS oversimplification, but....cool stuff to ponder....:-) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 90% of the time me and the people I typically play against utilize blind research as oppossed to directed so tend to be still feeling my way around the directed path. Of course we also tend towards Huge maps that are 50-70% water so that probably factors in my planning as well since realistic cross contintental assaults in the mid game requires you to lay down the ground work and support for them years in advance. Of course most of MP games also tend to be hot seat affairs as well so the vulnerability of the coast line to suprise strikes is frequently rendered mute. My experience and faction that I utilize would make me bee line for Doctrine flexibility early in the game though I might wait on cruisers till later. The advantage to the metagame of getting your feet wet is simply to enourmous to a hybrid player to ignore. Early naval projection would allow me to find a target of oppurtunity on a foriegn shore, worm ranch far enough from my cities to provide me with clean worms, allow me to supplement my typically weaker energy deposits with commerce. Potentially become the center of the tech trading race. What does it matter if I am generating tech at a slower pace than an isolationist builder if I am instead maintaining tech parity and perhaps even dominance over him by picking a tech up from guy A and trading to B,C,D, and E. It also allows me to cut sections of the ocean off from people and thus sections of the map that will be marked on their map with the legend "hear their be dragons". If I can cut the map of my territory off from the op force then the need to protect my exposed coastline becomes in effect an academic or theoritical concern. It would also allow me to garrison by ships of the line that would allow me more offensive capability than by blackholing my cities instead. The simple appearance of an IOD (the supreme combat transport in the game inmho) off a momentumn players coast could throw him way off his game by forcing him to consider the very real and sudden need for garrisons. Like you said in your Axis And Allies games a unit does not in fact have to do anything to do something far in excess of its capability. Wars are not fought soley by armies but by getting inside the other sides Command loop. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Personally lately I have been finding myself playing something of a hybrid approach (not suprising I am sure to you considering my play style), I lay down the road networks fast and hard with early t-formers from every base I build to allow the collony pod that follows them in the que to make use of the new road network to plant the next city probably 3-6 squares away in the early game. Typical early game que would be scout, former, collony pod, then either a building that will be rush built when the timing for the colony pod after it will be right or what my bank account would allow. The roads allow me to create a large empire with a number of decently spaced cities by simply takeing advantage of the road network and my ability to cruise on it, of courese i would also be on the lookout for river locations for cities as well to save me some time on the road construction filling it in later when other t-forming projects have been completed. I lose out on some early game infrastructure but after a while my interior bases are to far away from the front for them to be continued to be used for new colonies. Later T formers that always find their way into the que or those formers no longer on road detail are frequently tasked with the job of planting forrests because of their capability to expand on their own. I leave the fungus alone except when it would interfere with my road network or needs to be cleared for a prime base site. Lately of course I have also been considering adding a strong naval component to my expansion system as well when local factors allow for it. Naval bases in key geographic positions (chossen more for their strategic value than base value) and a city on as many different nearby land masses as I can manage (with each base operating as the grandfather base to a whole new stream of bases). That aspect of my game is still more of a theoritical thing to continue to improve upon than a well polished aspect to my game though :-) The idea of expansion plan is to constantly expand my territory slice of the pie as much as possible early when a change in the border lines can be viewed as an act of war. With a particular eye to planting bases on natural choke points or denial of special land marks to other players, or more succintly bases are placed for three purposes abundant resources, strategic postion and speed of placement. It is not the most efficent use of resources on paper I imagine, but it grants a number Metagame edges. It allows for greater military/terraforming potential by having a larger stockpile of support points to draw from your empire without cutting against "real" industry. By maintaining a mobile constantly expanding approach I also pop more pods than a inner city core would likely do as well which typically results in a suprisingly quick amount of completed infrastructure for me despiste its initial thinness. As a gaian I can find some way to make use of whatever I find most of it can either be channeled back into my cities bringing them up to par or advancing my early game military axis. Bigger empires also have more interior room for supply crawlers (an occasionaly important consderation in MP games :-). They allow you to negotiate for peace agreements after limited war as well (of course neither you or your opponent would dream of building their militaries up in a time of peace and actually going at it a second time :-). Vast territories can also be intimidating as hell and force an invader to spend to much time takeing each one in the mid game as your defenses solidify and you have a solid army of 1-1-2 rovers ready for their upgrade cycle (many of them of course courtesy of those pods you popped in the early game and since they have been through their share battles so battle hardened as well, not to mention clean as well :-). Expand fast and hard early do not forgo verticle investment as a hybrid player but do it while maintining an agressive colonial expansion program.. You can't out build a builder or out research him either on a city by city basis but you can do it potentialy with a brute force approach especially if you manage to snag wonders like the energy nexus for your little empire. Maintain your efficiency ratings though kiddies to reduce as much as possible the loss from capital. Be ready for quick rush builds of either the rec commons or colony pod to solve your immediate problems. Keep on the lookout for nice natural places to build a park for yourself. Rover formers and crawlers especialy if armored are a wise investment for you when you are in the consolidation phase of your empire as the distances involved from core to fringe aint something to shake a stick at even with the road network. Back up your road lines in the interior to prevent an enemy from isolating a city from the relatively vast number of potential defenders coming to the rescue once "the sleeping giant wakens". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A) regarding use of shelling. I tried Scott J's approach to worm rush using arty to soften up bases and it works very nicely. For this reason I suggested a higher weapon (impact) arty/ship to allow worms an easier time at base capture. Granted other factions going non green have more utility than a green faction but the extra arty power is very useful even for the greenies. But worst comes to worst find someone that has impact and subvert it so as not to even worry about wasting time researching a tech in the early game. b) Manifold nexus - This little beauty is invaluable as it allows a whole host of options. Planned with worm capture while building pods until effieciency warnings. Count your lucky stars if you got this landmark. c) HIC - Not only plasma but unfortunately nerve gas. I know I have said in the past that nerve gas is completely unbalancing (and I still feel that way especially in the mid and late game) but in the early game maybe not. Consider this once used, you've resigned yourself to eliminate the gassed faction. No submissive for you as you are in permanent vendetta. This means by virtue of this fact you'll be obliged to waste time and resources taking this campaign to its ultimate conclusion thereby allowing every other faction to build and gather strength as you expend your own. In a spoils of war off game, you've won the battle but perhaps lost the war. I still stand by my original position though on N-gas that the good folks at Firaxis should have put a facility and or SP inplace that eliminates the effects of nerve gas (at least the 1/2 population loss). OTOH I guess you can call me a hypocrite as I had to resort to gas to finish the no former challenge...LOL... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) One thing that requires a word is the extra talent that Lal gets /from the start/. I thought at first that he would get his first extra talent at a base of size 4, but even at size 1, he has one talent. That means he can use FM freely without anti-drone facs with bases at size 2 on Transcend. Very important to note, since it's not immediatly obvious. 2) CyC: think PLANNED from the start, dammit! ;) They can beeline to Planetary networks fast and, in the beginning, planned economics gives them +2 research, +1 growth and +1 industry. Because they are so quickly there with their high research rate, they are very competative in the early expansion game. 3) Roze, the conquerer: Rely mainly on probes, even in a war. It is possible to keep demo/FM/wealth in a war, since the enemy can simply be bought out with enough cash. Probes are unaffected by all negatives of the three forms (no support, no extra drones, no morale penalty). Fundy is also a good choice, since, after the initial techs are researched, any tech can simply be stolen from the enemy, while making more cash to buy up more stuff. :-) Capture bases where there are units /near/, but not /inside/. Any units one square away from the city are turned around, but you don't have to pay for them. 4) Xenoempathy dome: GreatGreat project for aggressive momentum players. Invasion forces can run through the fungus in enemy territory, while hiding in it and be difficult to defeat (+50% defence bonus). Ability to use fungus as road adds a big versatility to any attack if there are great patches of fungus in enemy territory, but doesn't do much if it's all forested/terraformed. 5) children's creche: high on priority list, because of energy returns due to increased efficiency and requirement for pop booms. One of the three facs I try to build in every decent city (tanks, commons, creche) 6) SP diplomacy: Factions which have their aversion in another 'line' than their preference (like Miriam, Zak or Cha Dawn): Do they really get pissed off if one picks their aversion? Is this tested out? They never say anything bad. How do Zak and Miriam react if you run Fundy+Knowledge (ok, might not make much sense, but still...)? 7) MP diplomacy: This is a tacky one. However, I wonder if showing weakness can not be more effective than showing off strength. Let's take a look: If I see somebody who is pretending to be very strong and shows this strength, I grow wary. I arm myself against him. I prepare in case he ever puts his strength to the test. So by pretending strength, I lose all surprise effect I can have on my enemies. If I pretend to be weaker than I am, I may be able to convince somebody I am not really a threat and not really worth fighting, because there are other threats much bigger than me. That way, I may prepare for my invasion, while claiming all the time how peaceful and harmless I am. Being underrated can be an important key, because if your enemy underrates you and overrates himself, he grows lax, overconfident and makes mistakes. In other 3-player-games, where there could be only one winner, the strategy was usually 'always beat together on the strongest player, who could win most easily'. Because everybody knew this, it was important to make everybody believe how weak and helpless one was -- until one's victory was unavoidable. If it's possible to gang up together with some other factions on some scapegoats who pretend to be in power, one can use this freedom and lack of attention by your partners to build up both a bigger infrastructure and army. Weakness can mean: safety from invasion. If the other guy is a builder, but you think you can outbuild him later in the game, once you can manage to hold off another growth-momentum oriented player on the other side of your continent, pretending that weakness to the other builder can grant you the peace pact you need to shift your resources. On the other hand, a strong stance could be perceived as aggression from the other builder. 8) As far as I know, the defense bonuses get calculated in a different way. First off, as far as I know, a unit in a base with perimeter gets a defense bonus of 100%, not 125%, as it should be. The 25% base defense bonus get dropped with perimeter defense. I could be wrong, though...maybe make a check. Factors of defense bonuses get multiplied, not added. So the formula is: base defense * (1 + defense_bonus1/100) * (1 + defense_bonus2/100) * (1 + defense_bonus3/100)... Example: plasma ECM defender in base with sensor and with perimeter against rover: 3 * 1.50 (ECM) * 2 (base) * 1.25 (sensor) = 11.25 The 'bonus' to the base defense rate is calculated as follows, given in percent: 100 * (1-((1 + defense_bonus1/100) * (1 + defense_bonus2/100)...)) So that yields in this example: 100 * (1 - (1.5 * 2 * 1.25)) = 275% Nice multiplication factor, eh? It gets even sicker with morale bonuses and AAA tracking+aerospace complexes vs. choppers: Elite AAA photon unit in aerospace complex base with sensor: 5 * 2 (aerospace complex) * 2 (AAA tracking) * 1.25 (sensor) * 1.5 (Elite) = 37.5 Goodbye, X-shard-chopper. :) Anyways, this is how the formulas /should/ be. I could be wrong, I did not check in the scenario editor. If I am incorrect, let me know. 9) Do marines ignore perimeters? I am not sure. Something to make note of, if that's the case, since you go into such detail about sea-warfare. 10) More stuff on airpower and effects of early D:AP beelines for researching factions: How to build needlejets before cruisers (usually the case for me). How MMI is only two techs away from D:AP (with Neural Grafting in between). Aircover for your ground invasion and probes! Needlejets for scouts (especially useful with deep radar for free) and defensive units, striking at any hapless transports or rovers coming too close to you. Ignoring ZOCs with air units and providing a path to go for your ground units (simular to probes). Problems with using air units under FM, and solution of Punishment sphere city used for support of all air units. Bombing sensors and ignoring perimeters. Doing everything you can (scientists slaughter via probes!) to keep the enemy from getting either Adv. Militairy Algorithms or D:AP himself. Man, air power rules so much, it shouldn't be covered so late in the guide. You want to go for Ecotech and Ecological Economics to lift mineral and energy restrictions as soon as possible. Consider a more aggressive player who goes for Synth. Fossil fuels and D:AP instead, then uses crawlers to crank out 6-1-8 needlejets as soon as he gets there, building up an airpower within 3-4 turns. It could take 6-12 more turns for you until you get D:AP yourself, and by then, if he's close enough to you, there might not be much left of your empire. I am still convinced that beeline for D:AP is a serious alternative to Ecotech. Early airpower can provide you with the key weapon to conquer the planet early on, and probably has a much more powerful impact on the game than something like Doctrin: Initiative. Don't dismiss it so easily. Give it the space it needs! :) 11) SE settings are probably one of the most fascinating and complex issues of the game (hey, check out the improvement they made from Civ). I think they deserve more space than a sidenote in each of the factions. I believe a seperate explanation of each setting, with strengths, weaknesses, how to use the advantages and even out the disadvantages, at which stage of the game to use them, for which strategy, faction and in which combination is in order. I will give a few examples, to demonstrate what I mean: Democracy: Every builder needs to get there eventually, then run it for a long time. At the beginning, the extra mineral to support the second unit hurts too much, and you need the extra +10 minerals you get for each new base during your first expansion phase. In that stage, you cannot take advantage of the efficiency bonus. Once the first expansion is done, your bases need to grow fast and you need the cash revenues from bases further out. Not to mention that added efficiency allows you to keep on building more bases without additional drones. In midgame, the additional one mineral you have to pay for support matters very little, but the benefits of added efficiency really pay in FM and are essential in planned economics. Also, you require democracy for pop booms. An excellent builder government form during most of the midgame. During wartime, it might be important to switch back to more war-oriented governments for support. Once you have overcome growth problems (by having grown most of your bases to the limit) and gear towards future societies, it's an option to switch back to frontier. FM: The negatives of -3 planet and -5 police are easily outweighed by the fantastic +2 econ, something that gives +1 energy per square! -5 police means at the beginning that you cannot lead an aggressive war and that you typically get one drone more in each base, since you cannot use your token garrison as police. However, with a few percent spent into psych, that problem should be solved, and you can still make more money and have a better research rate than under any other economic form. The benefits of FM increase once your empire has reached a decent size, while letting you deal with drones easier. Otherwise, an excellent way to go early into FM is the Human Genome project (or the VW for Zak). The planet penalty means that ecodamage need to be watched. If you rely on crawlers for mineral production, shift the home of the crawler once its original home city produces eco-damage. It's simply a reallocation of resources, nothing more. Since attacking incoming worms is near-impossible with a -30% attack penalty, having Secrets of the Human Brain for trance garrisons is essential under FM. Airpower is hard to use, since needlejets and choppers produce additional drones even if they stay in your cities (exception: first interceptor, I think). The solution to this problem is having one base with a punishment sphere support all your air units. If they are clean, that base doesn't even need to pay support cost for the whole air army. Democracy makes it possible to bring all the energy you harvest back, due to the increased efficiency. Wealth increases your energy production even more to an insane level, but makes your units even more vulnerable to marauding worms. I thought about writing paragraphs about Planned and Wealth, but haven't gotten around to it. 12) A word about tech cost. How about: Remember that which each tech you gain, the cost of the next tech you research increases. Therefore, delay any research, trading or stealing of techs which you do not need right now until later. That way, you get to those techs which you do need much faster. 13) Blink displacers: Wayway endgame, not midgame. 14) Clean reactors: While Excellent, they should not always used 'just 'cos', without questioning if they serve their cause of saving resources. The cost of a clean reactor is: 1) 10-20 minerals more 2) often at learn turn more to build it 3) one special ability slot. So you have to ask yourself if paying that price is really worth saving one mineral per turn. Obviously, if you believe that unit will not survive 10-20 turns in the first place (such as throwaway attack units), or you need the unit extremely quickly (for defense or surprise attacks), you might be better off without it. 15) You don't allow yourself the comfort of sitting in a comfy chair, but you drink Tequila while playing? Wow. ;) That's the first list I made. There were other things I can think of (more detailed comments on special abilities, the new armor classes and facilities, how to use them in which situation, etc), but I wanted to get that out first, and see what the comment is. The list should serve mainly as giving new things to consider and think about, not something that needs to be copied word-by-word. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Of course there are lots of different aspects of MP psychology. A topic that wasn't even touched is how it is possible to project strength or weakness once other factions have datalink access to you, which is a requirement in pacts, and the first goal of your probe in MP. Typically, it should be easier to move one probe team into an enemy base than to guard all frontier bases with probes. Once you get DL access, you /know/ how strong a faction is. You just don't always know where there units are. I thought about making a comment about some trick to keep most of the big militairy units near the center outside the bases, so the enemy can not spot them, even with DL access, but I am just too fuzzy on that one. Back to the topic: The game is mostly about winning, not about eradicating smaller factions. You might win /something/ when attacking the smallest faction, but typically, that faction will suddenly ally with your worst rival and give him all the tech, money, or whatever. You win by becomming the biggest and best faction, which is usually done by eliminating your strongest rival. So my plan would most likely be (in a position of relative strength) to pact with weaker factions for real and prepare in secret a war against the stronger factions. An attack of my rival on my weaker pact partner can serve as an excellent excuse to declare war and strike back hard. What do I win with that strategy? Not only can I assure myself of the support of the weaker factions (since they can hope for a coop victory at my side), but I also gain the respect and acceptance of their players in the next game. I am playing the bigger faction, but I am not crushing them, and they know it. As such, they might repay me that favor later on, if only to make early negotiations easier or consider me more trustworthy than a stranger. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Methods of projecting strength when you have been infiltrated. 1) Keeping your armies mobile in the field outside of city radius screens armies simply are far more frightening if you don't know where it is than if you know it's precise location. 2) Be the one to iniatiate contact especially if it is a naval contact (it makes him feel a bit more vulnerable this way and delays his ability to follow you home. 3)Win your fights, two armies one has spent most of its time in garrisons the other has been hammering cities left and right with a similar army and has won the bulk of his engagements which one do you feel in your gut is the most dangerous of the two. 4) Mobility a key component to strength armies supported by a well developed road network combined with naval transports are infinately more dangerous in appearance than ones that lack such critical infrastructure (it is something I definately pay attention to when contemplating invasions). 5)Alliances and your position in the alliance is a way to project strength. 6) Geography plays an enourmous role in a factions power if you control the key invasion lines into your empire, or possess the key lines to invade someone elses territory you are stronger than you might appear to be on paper. 7) Exess mineral production/Energy production. Both are enourmous in projecting someones ability to withstand or iniate an invasion. 8) Your garrison units put a big bad unit in your garrisons it is the only units that an opponent is gaurunteed to know about after an infiltration and an opponent might believe that it is representive of your mobile forces as well. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is the best I can offer from my typical experience: If your middle game is energy based, then you have most likely a small number prime energy producer bases. They are typically close to mountain slopes, because the higher elevation yields more energy from solar collectors. Max out the energy production of those bases with all the facilities that aid in it (banks, nodes, research hospitals, fusion labs, nanohospitals, etc), and try to place the energy aiding SP's in those bases (ME, Supercollider, Theory of Everything). Due to the multiplication factor, the energy/lab production of those bases can grow huge. Try to focus most cities on either energy production (with engineers, banks and tree farms) or research (with thinkers, nodes, research hospitals, etc) -- the specialisation factor of the facilities will pay off. You can neglect the money/research facs at the outer fringe bases which serve mainly for crawler or militairy production. Build mirror parks on the slopes, crawl your energy to the high energy bases, crawl some additional food into them, so they have their population maxed out, then use the free citizens as specialists. If the energy city is near the ocean, trawler in your food. Remember that base square enhancing institutions (sea farms, MX, +2 econ, whatever) also affect crawlers supported from that city -- make use of it. Another thing that's important is to keep the HQ close to these bases. Otherwise, you lose too much of the energy due to inefficiency. Children's creche are a requirement for those bases, but they might not be enough. In order to really get those energy high bases going, you will need masses of crawlers, that build echolon mirrors everywhere, while raising the terrain to the maximum. Raising terrain usually alters the rainfall patterns. That means that bases on the southwestern side of the mountain benefit from the rainy squares, while bases on the northeastern side are suddenly stuck in an arid landscape. Remember that before you raise mountains, or your bases will soon lack food. Build forests on the northeastern side of any planned mountain, since forest is not dependant on moist terrain. Or, better yet, use this knowledge to hunger out your enemy at the eastern side of the continent. The 1 super-base: It's a great temptation to build one energy-superbase that has ALL facilities and energy enhancing SPs (ToE, SC, MX) and then support 1000 crawlers from it, so that it has 50%-80% of the total research/energy production of your whole empire. While such a base can really be great, there are a number of dangers inherent in it, and everybody giving in to that temptation should be aware of it. First, such a base has a big red cross painted on top of it. It says 'please take me!' to every other faction. The next sentence that goes with it is 'if you cannot take me, get rid of me!'. So in order to keep such a base, you should defend it against all possible attacks. Not only do you need the best garrisons and a few deep radar scouts around it, but also defenders against psi- attacks, a few probes and anything that can help you to keep it against a PB. Planet Busters are probably the biggest danger against such a base, so, in order to keep it, make sure that you either have defenses against it or that you can get rid of any PB appearing in the game. Last, but not least, remember random events: I heard of a number of cases where the game just decided to drop a commet on such a super-base. And if your enemy cannot hit such a base directly, keep in mind that he can still harm you by having one marauding X-chopper hack away your crawler support. Though such niceties are usually reserved mainly for MP. :) other bases: With a centered energy production, research/energy enhancing facs aren't of prime important at the rest of your empire. That's where you gain your minerals from -- bases with a lot of forest around them usually serve that purpose. They can produce your crawler-army or pump out the formers you need. It pays well to have a few cities concentrate on militairy production. Those will have a bioenhancement center, and either aerospace complex, naval yard or command center. More than one of the later fac is usually not required, since they can then concentrate on pumping out either land-, sea- or air-units. Strategic placement of such bases is important, so that you can get your units quickly to the place of action, and withdraw to that base when your units need repairing. Those are typically also the kind of bases where you can build Punishment Sphere's, when you want to rage a war in FM. If an SP affects the whole empire, not just one city, then by midgame, it shouldn't make much of a difference 'where' to build it. Just make sure that it's in a place that can't be taken all that easily (like coastal cities). If you really need it, and need it fast, the best way is to focus all your crawler attention on that one base that builds it -- either by enhancing its mineral production or by just using the crawler building cost to further that SP. I believe a base should never spend 20+ turns building an SP. It's usually much better to use those turns to first build crawlers, send those off to bring back more minerals so you can build the next crawler faster, and once you have enough crawlers to finish the SP, just drop them all into that city and complete it in 2-3 turns. That way typically saves quite a few minerals, in addition of having the chance to upgrade the crawlers (if allowed) to a higher mineral count, added flexibility (like dissolving any of the built crawlers for a desperately needed prototype) and has a good surprise factor in MP if you build the SP your enemy desperately needs in 1 round without any warning. Fringe bases should concentrate on facs that allow you to defend them: creches (excellent for morale bonuses), perimeters, command centers for unit regeneration. That's also where your formers should build the sensors. A good rule of thumb is one sensor in front of the base to spot any incoming attacks and one behind the lines, to get the defense bonus. Again, sensors on forests (+road, of coruse) make good use of flat terrain. If the base has little terrain to make an attack from, it might even pay if you forest it up, so any X-1-2 rovers cannot make rush attacks, but have to stop in front of the base. more notes on foresting: forests have often the tendency to dry land around them out, so they're a good investment in land which is already arid (I have heard that forests spread slower in arid terrain, but I cannot confirm these). That way, it's possible to surround certain bases TOTALLY with forests, maxing out the advantage of tree farms and hybrid forests, while putting only a little forest on the rainier parts of your empire. Forest cities can also take great advantage of boreholes, since forests and treefarms reduce the ecodamage caused by them. Another good mixture in the early game (pre-treefarm) is the use of coastal cities with forests. The forests produce a little food and energy, but yield a lot of nutrients, while kelp farms can produce very rapidly a lot of food. Both kelp and forests spread, so that approach can be pulled through with only little former investment (though you do need a sea former, which is a significant investment at the strat). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vel's Latest Thinking on Supply Crawlers: Crawlers in an MP World There's no doubt that the Supply Crawler is the second best unit in the entire game (second only to the Former), but, in MP, the window of opportunity to use them is significantly smaller than it is in SP games. Mostly, this is because of the fact that human opponents will not leave them unmolested, so unless you invest an enormous amount of resources in armoring and pairing them with staunch defenders (which ultimately works against you…the whole point of Supply Crawlers is to make an investment that pays you dividends, and at that point, the expense becomes such that your investment will not pay for itself before the game ends). Therefore, crawlers in the MP world are, at best, something of an intermediate step….a way to artificially inflate your mineral production in order to speed infrastructural builds. Industrial Automation is the key to the entire Builder game in an MP environment. It is the thing which will allow you to speed the building of the infrastructure you will need in order to stay alive against the Momentum Player's initial rush, and if you do that, you've hurt him, because (thanks to your greater overall efficiencies) you will be able to recover your losses more quickly than your opponent. Some things to consider: 1) Earlier is better: The quicker you GET crawlers, relative to your opponents, the better off you will be, and the more you can magnify the turn advantage they create. Keep in mind that it is generally VERY easy to get to crawlers by the mid thirties with directed research (and most MP games employ directed research), and, at that point, in an MP game, you would be well advised to stop your expansion and spend ten or twelve turns cranking out crawlers from every base you have. I've tried a TON of configurations, and I've found that (especially with a "three-apart" base spread) three crawlers per base works wonders for you. Consider your average "size three" base (before mineral restrictions have been lifted): About the best you can do, resource wise, is put all your workers in the woods, netting you a total of 8 minerals for that base (including the base square). Now, add six more to that, accounting for three supply crawlers duly automating the heavy industry of that base, and you get 14 minerals. Subtract one (garrison support) and you have a net of 13 minerals at each base (on average). That's not bad, and it will enable a size three base to RAPIDLY churn out infrastructure. An alternative here: Set a specific numbered goal (say, 20 minerals per turn, per base), and arrange your terraforming and your crawlers in such a way that, with some number of crawlers (and it will vary from base to base), your total mineral production will be 20 per turn. This will take longer initially, but will enable you to complete your infrastructural builds even MORE quickly than before. 2) Crawlers are cheap to rush build. Cheaper than military units, definitely, and if you have a choice between rushing a base facility or a crawler, you're almost always better off rushing the crawler, because of the sheer importance of mineral production in the early game (the only case I could see that might supercede this would be to rush a drone control facility to head off a riot). Thus, when your massive building campaign begins, spend your money regularly to shave time off of your crawler production. Optimally, wait til the crawler is two turns from completion and pay half the cost to finish it….in that way, you create one turn of "turn advantage" per crawler rushed, and you ensure that your build program will be properly spread throughout your empire (with the larger and more developed bases getting a larger overall share of the total money spent on rushing). Of course, as the program unfolds, you may find yourself with cash enough to do more than that, and if so, by all means do so! The faster you get each base's crawlers out in the field harvesting, the faster they will pay for themselves, and the faster you will begin to realize a profit from your efforts. 3) Basic costs: The basic cost of a fusion supply crawler (before considering industry bonuses and the like) is 30 minerals. Therefore, assuming that (again, pre-restriction lifting) the maximum number of resources a crawler will be harvesting is 2, you can say that the lion's share of your supply crawlers will take fifteen turns to pay for themselves, and thereafter, net you a "return" on your investment of about 6% per turn, per crawler….that's not bad (and of course, that figure will be even higher, and the payoff even sooner, if the crawlers are built under an SE choice which brings an Industry bonus to the table, or if the crawler harvests resources from a bonus square that the base workers cannot reach—there is no additional gain, besides a "paper gain" if you harvest resources that your workers COULD get to). 4) Timing: The goal is to keep your crawlers for as long as is feasible….meaning, for as long as their existance does not interfere with the ability of your workers to harvest terrain squares. This is important simply because a crawler is FAR less efficient at harvesting from terrain squares than a worker, unless the square in question produces ONLY ONE type of output (in which case, crawlers are superior, as the worker can be put to use on a more versitile terrain square, or converted to a specialist). Therefore, the usefulness of your formers as your bases continue to grow will become VERY dependent on how good a job you do of getting your formers back to your "core bases" and terraforming those squares as quickly as possible. The goal is to terraform the land around your bases in advance of future growth, so that your citizens have productive terrain squares to work as soon as you get them (ie – it does you little good to harvest 2 minerals from a crawler on a forest inside a base's production radius if it means that a worker gets assigned to a crappy little piece of terrain harvesting a single food or something….terraforming in advance of growth keeps this from happening. 5) Good "Store of Value": What I mean by that is this: Once a base begins to grow to the point that the crawlers are getting in the way, there are ALL SORTS of things you can do with them at that point, including: Pull one (or more of them off, and reassign it to a newly founded base to help jumpstart that base's industry), cash in the crawler (and the full mineral value of the minerals it harvested that turn) toward a prototype or a Secret Project you're working on, take the crawler to a base that's lacking in some critical area, or a base which has a tremendous edge over your other bases in one certain economic factor (ie – a base which has the ME, or any of the Lab Doubling enhancements would be a prime candidate), reassign the crawler to that base and begin harvesting energy (a la "Energy Park") in some relatively sheltered and secure part of the empire. The point is, with this setup, that by the time the crawlers are reassigned to the energy park, they have been "fully depreciated" and have MORE THAN paid for themselves already….thus, if you lose them, it's not a "real" loss, and you reap the benefits of them and their magnification of your existing infrastructure for whatever number of turns they stay in the field (not to mention the intangible benefit of buying your base defenders another turn or two if an opponent takes the time to plink at them) So, that's my latest thinking on the whole Supply Crawler thing….hopefully it has proven insightful, and at the very least, my wish is that it did not bore you to tears….::grin:: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fine thoughts and good points. However, I feel some stuff is missing from here. You are talking about all the peace-time applications, which is where a builder should concentrate no doubt. BUT, there is also good use for crawlers in wars: 1. Early-warning system for pre-flight times. It is good to know ahead of time if an enemy convoy is approaching. If you place some crawlers nicely along your borders you can get some very early warning about invasion at an expense of some crawlers. Now, if they have deep radar or sit on a sensor, it is even earlier. 2. First line of defense. OK, the enemy did come and blown away a crawler or two on your perimeter. What's the best next step? Run there with some military. You could, but you could also pluck an armor upgrade on some further crawlers sitting nearby. E.g. I love to add a bunker to a borehole and harvest it by an armored crawler along my key coastline points. It will cause a lot of damage to the enemy troops to eat through them and giving you more time to get there with some full-health response team taking out easily those tired and wounded attackers. 3. Even if you cannot afford the armor, you can slow down the enemy movement and side-track it by screwing up ZOC with some crawlers which will collect some goods in the meantime instead of costing support. 4. Many people asked how one can defend against planet busters before the discovery and launch of ODP. Crawlers come handy there too. Just for a thick circle of crawlers around your cities at a disance of 3-4 squares and the enemy has to hit the crawlers first before he could drive in a PB. A human player will get through at some extra cost, but it can completely block the Artificial Idiot. I did this in one of my Zero Facility One City games, when Miriam built a PB just 15 squares away from my single city. She never got around to use it even though she was attacking my crawlers constantly and furiously... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Early Game In the early game, don't waste industry on well-armed or armored military units; instead, keep about 100 energy credits on hand and garrison cities with cheap Rovers (hand weapons / no armor) or Scouts (before Doctrine: Mobility). Since worms are almost always your only concern for the first 40 turns or so, more- expensive units are useless anyway. When suddenly faced with a conventional force, you can upgrade 1 unit at the cost of its turn, or upgrade them all in the Workshop and they all still get to take their turns. The risk is in prototyping -- if you haven't prototyped, say, Impact weapons, and a conventional force suddenly lands next to your capital, you won't have time to build the prototype and upgrade. When and how often to prototype is your job to figure out. By G. Derrick Jones Air Defense There is a slight problem with using Needlejets as interceptors -they can then get shot down too. Besides they can only take down one enemy each turn and they are expensive. The best and cheapest method to defend your skies is to create rovers with a decent weapon (tachyon, chaos, even missiles - doesn't have to be the best), air superiority and no armour. By the time the air war heats up all of your cities should be connected with mag-tubes. Leaving a couple of anti-air rovers in your bases will not only keep them safe and hidden but enable them to zip out and defend any of your cities that gets attacked. When an anemy flies in, race out, shoot it down and nip back to safety in a far away city. If you have an elite then you can take down two in one go. The enemy will have a hard time getting rid of your little menaces. Needlejets are expensive and rovers are cheap. Although his (no offense to any girl players) bombers may do some damage, in the long run he will realise that it's a far to costly way to wage war and divert to some other strategy. Cruisers can be used at sea if necessary. And I am by no means saying don't build interceptors at all, they can still be useful. If you can use a rover then do so first. By Caleb War: Mobility Mobility is a key when launching an attack. To have some strong mobile units, stick a big gun, medium armor, drop pods and a blink displacer on a hovertank. With the space elevator, they are almost unbeatable. Land on sensor arrays and instead of moving, destroy it. Land all the others on forests or rocky squares, which grant a +50% defense bonus. Whe you attack next turn, the only bonuses the defenders can get are from tachyon fields, which the computer rarely builds. By Grigger Secret Projects and Science To gain huge lab outputs from a base, make sure you build the Merchant Exchange, Supercollider, Theory of Everything and the Network Backbone. Try and place this city near the Pholus Ridge or Uranium Flats, even the Geothermal Shallows and make it your capital to get rid of inefficiency. Surround it with Forests if you have a hybrid forest there and are on low terrain, or solar collectors. Gain additional energy from supply crawlers. Give it an Aerospace Complex to get maximum energy from orbital power transmitters. Make sure that you are stocked up on the lab enhancing improvements and build network nodes in all your other cities to help the network backbone. This super science city should be able to get a tech every other turn by itself if done properly. By Grigger This and That * Manipulate build queue -- often the game won't allow to build something until another structure has been built. For example the pleasure dome can't be built until you have the recreation commons. However, you can put the recreation commons in the build queue, add the pleasure dome after it, and then delete the recreation commons from the build queue. Then the pleasure dome can be built first (yeah I know, limited usefulness). * Free support off pact brother -- build up a little base in a corner near your own bases, and give the little base to a pact brother, then send all of your own units there, open the city screen and change the unit's ownership. Nobody ends up supporting the unit. Not only that, but those units can now be freely sent out of the city for battle duty, and they won't create unhappiness since they don't belong to any of your cities. * Free support + Ascend to transcendence -- build and save up heaps of military units, sending them to a pact brother city to get the free support as necessary. When the transcendence project becomes available, you can scrap your units in the base that's building the secret project, meaning that you effectively started to build the project as soon as you started building up the units. * Catching up in the race to transcend - if you're falling behind in industrial capability compared to a competitor building the transcendence secret project, it is better to catch up by building units and sending them to be scrapped, rather than stockpiling energy and then buying partial production. When you build and scrap, the industry input from other bases is basically halved (as well as a bit of wastage depending on the build schedule). However when you stockpile energy, you lose 3 quarters of it when you try to rush the secret project because it costs 4 credits to buy each unit f a secret project. Therefore it is twice as economical to build and scrap than it is to stockpile and buy. (Q: when you stockpile you get 1 production = 1 energy don't you? If it was 2 production = 1 energy then you'd lose 7 eighths of the input rather than 3 quarters). * Plasma Hoverboats (2-3-4) rule the water world -- On a world which is predominantly water, the plasma hoverboat rule because they are so cheap (same low price as a plasma sentinel) yet can bombard the enemy's terrain improvements every bit as well as a stronger ship. They are also great naval city defenders. * Inland sea - the best bases are usually ones next to water because of the excellent food and energy income from water tiles, while forests and occasional boreholes on just a couple of land tiles will make up for production. The only problem with this is that coastal cities can be attacked by enemy ships. So what do you do? build on an inland sea. None nearby? Then create one. Get a mid sized island, populate it, then get a bunch of formers and proceed to build a thin "ring" of land just a couple of tiles off the coast of the entire island. If the enemy tries to take a foothold on the outer land ring, you can send your entire navy from your core bases to wipe them out without worrying about being attacked from a different direction. I doubt the AI will ever figure out it needs to lower the land to turn your land ring into sea (but in that case you can just build it right back, or go out there and destroy their sea formers enmass). Most likely the AI will just build a small land bridge towards one part of your protective ring, which means you have them controlled at a chokepoint. If you build air defense units all around the protective ring you might even stop the enemy being able to scout you, so they'd not be able to find out what you have in the "core". By Marty Party War, Aliens, and Terraforming First thing you do before even making the game is crank the alien abundancy to abundant. This gives you more mind worms to try and control, if you fail to control them it will give more energy or increase the morale of your mind worms. This will also give you a bonus to your Alpha Centauri score. Another side effect to this is the act the aliens slow down and harrass the other computer/players. To keep your planet ecology in balance terraform the surrounding terrain into forests. Build Tree Farms and Hybird Forests as soon as posible if you do otherwise you might get your population stagnated. Once those improvements are built the bonuses will raise the nutrients and population fairly fast. Once the fungus starts growing and tearing up the forest let it, go build improvements on the fungus if able to. All the forests do two thing. It keeps your ecology in balance better and sometimes the aliens leave you alone. The second thing is it makes it harder for enemy units to get to your cities because most units can only move through one square of forest. To make the second part work you only want to make roads or mag tubes in a straight line to your other cities. The amount of roads and mag tubes you have affects your cities ecology rating. Also forget technology units until you are forced to use them. If you build the biology labs and secret projects that increase life cycles or morale this will allow you to pick the governments styles that have a morale penalty. Or if you want pick all the government styles that give a morale bonus. By Elvis Fett Diplomacy and War When you have a chance to force your opponent to surrender, do so. For example, if you're playing the Spartans, forcing the University faction to surrender and allowing them to expand and do their research will free up your own resources. You can then churn out a large invasion force and choose social patterns suited for invasion and still keep up with the technology race by bullying the surrendered University faction into giving you all their research knowledge. Surrendered factions and their benefits: 1) Hive - Keep them in check 2) Believers - Warmongers, use them against all your enemies 3) University - Knowledge, pure knowledge 4) Morganites - Cold hard cash 5) Gaians - Will provide you with necessary means to rear "pets" for invasion 6) Spartans - Use their large invasion force against your toughest foes 7) U.N. - Their votes count double. Useful when you need the extra votes in a council. Besides the above benefits, surrendered factions cannot take offence when you choose social patterns that contradict their own beliefs. For example, if the Hive have surrendered to you, you do not have to worry about them complaining when you choose a Fundamental or a Democratic political structure. Surrendered factions will, however, still declare vendetta on you if you commit a major atrocity like using the Planet Buster. Remember that you want to keep the factions alive. If they grow too big and powerful, either force them to fight against other factions or deceitfully set your pact brothers/sisters against each other. Surrendered factions count as a conquered factions towards a conquest victory. By Theophilus Combined Arms I usually play an Ascendence game, building as many bases as possible, getting as many techs and SP's as possible, and maintaining Pacts and Treaties with most of the other factions. I keep my reputation clean (Noble or Faithful) to keep from being back-stabbed by an ally. I usually wage a war of conquest in mid-game (Tachyon or Shard weapons) to take over a neighbor and keep expanding. And then I sit back. Once I have Graviton or Singularity weapons, I clean up and take over all but one other faction. And the key to doing this is COMBINED ARMS. I use Hovertanks with Grav pods (5 moves when Elite), Drop Squads with lots of armor, and souped- up Copters. Because Copters can attack once for each movement point, they can really do a lot of damage. Each Copter can take out all of a base's defenders, no problem. Once the Copters have done their work, send in Hovertanks or Drop Squads to secure the bases, and then land the Copters in your newly-acquired bases to refuel. And repeat. By using combined arms like this, you can sweep through your opponents quickly and efficiently. They won't have much time to either mount a counter-offensive or adapt to your troops. And once you control 95% of Planet, you can really crank that score up. Police Once I have the "Non-Lethal Methods" unit ability (x2 Police), I always design a "Police Sentinel" unit. You can keep a few of these ready for drone hotspots, as needed. Also, you can upgrade old garrison units to the Police version at any time. Score Keep in mind that Transcendent techs are worth MUCH more than regular techs when it comes to your final score. Even though you get a bonus for winning the game earlier, I think it's much better to take your time. By the end of the game, I usually have 100+ bases, with an average size of at least 20. Once you have the Cloning Vats, the Space Elevator, and plenty of Sky Hydroponics Labs, your population will skyrocket. High population equates to high Econ and high Lab output, so you'll have plenty of credits and plenty of techs rolling in. While you "lose" 2 points for every extra turn, you more than make up for it with more citizens and more transcendent tech. Copter Assault I've been refining my COMBINED ARMS strategy, with devastating results. When it's time to kick butt, I build a couple of Copters with the biggest guns available, and a bunch of hovertanks with the best armor available. The Copter is now officially my favorite unit. After they wipe out the opposition, I send in the hovertanks for defense. Never overlook the benefits of carriers. With a cruiser chassis and good power plant, they can carry 12 units. Equip the carrier deck on a transport, add in some armor for safety, and load it up with 12 Copters. Sail the carrier right next to an enemy city, and you have the potential for 144 separate attacks (12 Copters x 12 moves each, assuming fusion reactor). As the reactor improves in the Copter, so does its lethality--more attacks per turn. Airdrop in some defenders and reap the rewards. By Matt Use of Formers and Supply Crawlers for Defense In the event that you have opponents attacking you with needle jets, try this strategy: create formers or supply crawlers with armor either medium strength or strongest armor type you can produce and position them along your borders where they will most likely be attacked. The AI will most likely, and many human players will, attack the crawlers or formers. The Former often times will survive and the opposing needlejet will be destroyed. However, if you lose the former or crawler, well too bad, but you damage the needlejet some, and will make it easy to counter attack with a cheaply produced SAM unit. I suggest you make the cheapest units possible that have 2 moves and position them strategically for a counter attack. Do not bother to make SAM units with the highest attack values. An attack value of say 2, 3 or 4 is sufficient and very inexpensive toward the middle-end game because most of the attacking needlejets will have no armor at all. One other note: If you use the design workshop screen I often find that you can choose a medium attack weapon and it will cost the same as a weapon of the least strength. Finally don't forget that you can use the former or supply crawler as a defender in a base under attack. When opposing troops march toward your cities, reign in your armored units as extra defenders. By John Doe New Colonies, New Methods! I have found two units to be extremely usefully in expansion of terriotory: Drop Colony Pod: This is your basic colony pod with drop jets(See the uses) It really comes in handy if you get The Space Elevator Secret Project which allows for dropping units to any point on the map. Hover Terraformer: This is a combe of the terraform tool and the hover chassi (not the hover tank, though it might work havent tried it).. then the usaul terraform special abilities(double removal and terraform rates) and you highest engine and sheilding if you want. How is this useful, you ask. With those flying colony pods these can get to them fast, do to there ~16 square movement regardless of terran, and help the colony get going. By Anex Sleeping Demons This is my favorite strategy. It is a conquering strategy based around building up your defenses quickly (armor, perimeter defenses, etc,) and "sleeping" behind them. Then once your defenses are build up enough, (usually after Probability Mechanics, with level 6 armor and Tachyon Fields,) release an army of high- powered minions. Yang is best for this strategy by far. Morgan works well also. Miriam works well, but I hate wasting her faction's attack bonus. Santiago and Zakharov are fair at best, while Dierdre and Lal stink at this strategy. You'll want to avoid combat at first. Research Industrial Base, then go for High Energy Chemistry. Go for Doctrine: Loyalty next, followed by Intellectual Integrity, (for the Citizens' Defense Force.) Even if you are playing Yang, you'll need these later, so it's your choice whether to go for them or wait till later. Now for the big armor. Go for Silksteel , Photon/Wave Mechanics, and Probability Mechanics. Build a Tachyon Field, then start researching weaponry and attacking people, and winning. Since you aren't going to be researching things like Centauri Ecology and Biogenetics, it's manditory that you trade for these, just be careful what you trade. By K. Sharp Cuban Missile Crisis Make planet busters and quickly hand them over to your allies who are in war with other factions. They'll use them and your reputation will not suffer! By TOO Skiguy500's Favorite Units Empath Plasma Sentinels: 1e-3t-1 good at getting rid of those pesky mindworms and can take almost any other attack on (can be a scout rover) Trance Plasma Sentinels: 1p-3t-1 can take on those mindworms and can take on the drones (Trance,Police) AAA Recon Rover: 2aaa-1-2 being cheap to build makes it easy to "Mass-Produce" these Needlejet defenders Police Recon Rover: 2p-1-2 easy to make, it's a police car! Secure Recon Rover: 2-1-2 one of the best rovers or weapons that are cheap to make and can take out Miriam and her probe teams Tachyon Tank: 12-8-3 Any one of these can take out anything that gets in it's way. these are on my front lines against Yang or the Spartans. They may be a little expensive but if you can get these things out there and Elite, then you can seriously pound their teeth in. Destroyer Transport: 1-5-6 Carrier/Repair These thing you can send out to become moble air bases.(you can take out the repair bay and put in a clean reactor if you want a good air transport that can support itself, works best with singularity engine) Navy Seals: 10-6-1 Amphibious Can go from water base tio land with out need of transport, that is if it is a coastal base, and can take on allot of pressure from most of the other weapons Mindworms: these babies can take out a whole base and then take out a whole another. Works best as locusts of chiron Singularity Copter: 24-3-8 These things are great for base hopping. they can attack using their singularity lasers as much as 16 times per turn (Think 2x16=32, 32 attacks per turn, with singularity lasers!) Drop Supply: 1-1-1 Supply/Drop These things are cheap to bulid and can reach far off islands that are rich in resources and dont need support. Drop Colony Pod: 1-1-1 CPod/Drop This can reach those islands intent for those explorers tring to get key areas for airbases and naval bases Gravship Formers: 1-2-8 Super/Fungicidal These are the best formers that you can make, the can terraform both sea and land and have no range that is affected by fuel These are some units that I found either good or extraordinary none the less. My basic Unit for garrison is a Police Probability garrison. (1p-6t-1) they can take out any attack. i also build the special garrison with AAA or SAM or Secure, what ever is needed. I know that I couldn't get them all in but I will try to find more as I go so tell me if you find any good garrison units or any others and I will relay them to others so that they can get the picture. These uints are things that I tried to make different so that they would be used by many people. Feel free to try different types of weapons on each thing.(I know that the recon rover is so 2200s but they are really cheap, and I kinda like the name.)I will try to keep all the people who actually read this and think I am weird know that i am only trying to help their game out. By Skiguy500 WAR! Hiding fungus is the best way to win a war. If you find yourself struggling to survive constant attacks on your terratory hide your best and brightest infantry in the fungus. Your opponent will go straight for your outlying bases 'cos tey won't see you, and they'll avoid the fungus to reach your bases quicker, so your zone of control won't give the game away. When they've gone past come up behind and whoop their asses. However, make sure your infantry are elite, because those two squares in one turn will be a real boost. Also if you're the defender they'll need to be good to defeat the opponents. The xenoempathy dome is also quite essential, since you'll want to reach your enemy quick before they get to your base. The xenoempathy dome is also essential for quick sneak attacks on your enemy. They won't see your troops who are stealthily racing towards their vulnerable bases. This tactic is invaluable for eliminating sensor arrays and capturing strongpoints like barracks. The final winning strategy runs like this: - get the xenoempathy dome (very important) - Send one or two fast elite infantry units through the fungus between you and your target base - before they exit the fungus start bringing up the rest of your invasion force - while the bulk of your army is on its way get your fast elite infantry to reach that damned sensor and destroy it. - Quickly get to that nearby bunker. If there isn't one (there usually is though) return to the fungus - The rest of your forces should be leaving the fungus now. Here comes the easy bit- simply push all your forces forward to the base. Without the sensor the defenders will be easy prey to those elite infantry, and should they succumb you've got plenty more in reserve. The shear speed at which your army appears infront of the enemy base will mean that reinforcements will not arrive in time for you to have conquered the base. This tactic will defeat even the strongest bases. Thank you Sun Tzu. If you keep finding your units are not strong enough, even with superior weaponry then try this: be the spartans (+2 morale), build the command nexus project (+1) and the cyborg factory project (+1). Now go to the social engineering screen and use Fundamentalism with Knowledge. The two will cancel out but leave you +1 morale. Thats five morale-boosters!Now you will often find yourself producing commando or elite units straight off. With this you can produce a small yet cheap and well-trained army. A bit like the british army of the 19th century that conquered a good third of the world then... By Bobsy Now I'm a Believer! I used a strategy for AC awhile back that I thought was good. I couldn't beat the Believers with the limited units I had, so I terraformed a bunch of channels through their territory. It took awhile, but I was able to divide their forces and win. The computer is not very good at moving units across water to reinforce other areas (atleast it didn't seem to do that with me). So, you only have to deal with half of an empire instead of all of it. Also, if you sink their bases, you can use boats to conquer a city. By Chad R. Collins -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7/4/99 - By Jacob Lee Subject: Which faction should you use? The Univesity and the Gaians are good choices to use. As I've said before, tech is one of the most important ares of the game. With a +2 research bonus, the University of Planet is a good choice. Especially with the Gaians or Peacekeepers focusing on other non-military technologies (such as Centauri techs), you usually can have impact infantry while they still have synthmetal or even scout patrols. Another good reason to get the University is that they start out with information networks. This means that you can get impact squads right after you get laser infantry, which means that you don't have to re-prototype on the higher levels. The Stepdaughters of Gaia have the ability to capture mind worms, which is a good way to build a massive army. Find a large patch of fungus and move units around in it to find mind worms. If you try to attack a mind worm, you have a 1 in 4 chace of capturing it (The chance can be raised by researching certain techs). If you don't succeed, you just fight it normally. The Spartans are an interesting choice. They have +2 morale, which can be extremely useful. It is especially useful in the demo, where a military-oriented strategy is required to beat the game in 100 turns. If you do enough social engineering (or build the right secret projects), then you can have units that start out as commando. If you have a monolith on the path that your units take to get to the front lines, they can become elite (with a +1 movement bonus) before they even start fighting! Personally, I wouldn't even bother with the Hive, the Morganites, or the Peacekeepers. However, because the Peacekeepers have practically no bonuses or penalties at all, they are a good faction to try if you're a beginner and want to get a feel for the game. They are also useful in the explore or build strategy, as they get double votes in the planetary council. I heard a very interesting strategy on the Alpha Centauri bulletin board (at the official site) concerning the Morganites. The player found the University of Planet early and allied with them. He then traded money for tech, which turned out to be very profitable for both sides. The Morganites made the money, and the UoP did the research! The Morganites are also a very good choice for a "build" strategy. To see a complete list of the pros and cons of each faction, go to the factions page. 7/4/99 - By Jacob Lee Subject: Early-game Strategy You want to get as much technology as possible as early as possible. If I am the University, then I usually will go for Secrets of the Human Brain first thing. Especially on the higher levels, you have to get that very early to have a chance at picking up the free technology for discovering it first. If I'm another faction besides the University, then I generally focus on getting Lasers and Particle Impactors instead, as there is only a small chance of getting Secrets of the Human Brain first. Once I get Human Brain, I go straight for particle impactors then get mobility. By that time I should have mapped out most of my continent or island. If I'm on an island with nobody else there, I usually research flexibility, otherwise I start going for Superstring Theory (Chaos gun, attack 8) or Synthetic Fossil Fuels (Missle Turret, attack 6). I sometimes get Centauri Empathy (for mind worms), but I usually don't because I have very powerful weapons. If I'm playing as someone besides the University and I'm behind in tech, then I'll get Centauri Empathy, as mind worms are equally effective against any armor. Many of the strategies in Alpha Centauri are much the same as in Civilization II. In fact, players of Civilization II will feel right at home. It is important to expand quickly and to conquer your rivals before they become too powerful. If you play on a tiny map, then sometimes you can conquer factions before they even discover Industrial Base (Gives synthmetal armor, defense 2). Some factions, such as the Gaians, generally research less military tech and more Centauri technology (such as mind worms). On the other hand, the Spartans usually have high-energy chemistry (Plasma Steel armor, defense 3) if I don't find them early enough. 7/4/99 - By Jacob Lee Subject: Attack to Defend "The best defense is a good offense." This famous maxim applies even more to Alpha Centauri. The only sure way to prevent an attack on your cities is to attack the other person first. In addition, this is central to the conquer strategy described above. All of the computer's resources will be focused on defending its cities, and your huge army of impact rovers (or impact infantry) will prevent the computer from launching a counterassault. As a matter of fact, I usually leave only one unit in my city to defend it from mind worms. The only time that this strategy does not apply is when you are surrounded by other factions. In that case, I usually leave two defense units in my border cities, even the ones next to factions that I have a truce with. 7/4/99 - By Jacob Lee Subject: War Another important strategy that is often overlooked is to only fight one faction at a time. This may seem obvious, but it is amazing how often it is overlooked. It is best to concentrate all of your resources on one opponent, rather than to scatter your troops and risk a counterattack. Put it this way: Would you rather be fighting two battles at half strength or one battle at full strength? 7/4/99 - By Jacob Lee Subject: Expansion or military? (Laser squad or Colony pod?) One of the frequent decisions you will have to make is between expansion and military. Die-hard Civilization II players will say that expansion is the most important strategy in the whole game. In Alpha Centuari, however, the situation is different. The most critical factor in choosing between these two strategies is the size of the map. In the tiny map, I usually found one or two cities and conquer the rest. I usually have conquered three or four cities in the time it would normally take to found them using the expansion strategy. However, this military strategy quickly falls apart on the higher levels or on larger maps, though it works really well on the easier levels (I beat the game in 83 turns on Talent once). On a standard map, the largest size available in the demo, you usually need to found several cities to get a firm foothold. By the time you find another civilization, they will be large and hard to conquer. If you have several cities, you can mobilize your forces more quickly. 2/7/99 - By Richard Junack Subject: Expansion My main strategy, with all factions, is to expand. Keep more than 2 units to defend your base, and have bases on boarders build perimeter defenses, and keep maybe 3 units there if they can. 1/23/99 - By Chad R. Collins Subject: Death by Terraforming I used a strategy for AC awhile back that I thought was good. I couldn't beat the Believers with the limited units I had, so I terraformed a bunch of channels through their territory. It took awhile, but I was able to divide their forces and win. The computer is not very good at moving units across water to reinforce other areas (atleast it didn't seem to do that with me). So, you only have to deal with half of an empire instead of all of it. Also, if you sink their bases, you can use boats to conquer a city. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conquer You need to build as many colony pods and military units as possible. Get some scouts (preferaby rovers) out early and quickly. Your goal is to conquer as many people as possible while they are still starting out. You should use fast rovers instead of slow infantry units for this purpose. Technology becomes very important in a conquer game, and your research should focus mainly in the conquer area. For example, get applied physics (laser, attack 2) and nonlinear mathematics (particle impactor, attack 4) first thing, followed by doctrine: mobility (rover chassis). Your next choice should be whether to go for Synthetic Fossil Fuels (missle launcher, attack 6) or Superstring Theory (chaos gun, attack 8). Don't even bother with Superconductor (Gatling laser, attack 5), as the technologies it leads to are fairly useless until later on in the game. Synthetic fossil fuels is faster to discover, but sometimes it's better to go for superstring theory so you don't have to re- prototype. The one advantage to fossil fuels is that it leads to doctrine: air power (needlejet chassis). This technology can be practically useless on some maps, however, in which case superstring theory may be your best bet. Another critical method of the Conquer strategy, and indeed any strategy, is to build as many colony pods as possible. Bases are what produce your armies, so many bases are necessary to have a strong army. The extent of your territory determines your bases' susceptibility to enemy attacks, as well as being the benchmark of power. Many bases = Unsurpassed power = collecting tribute from all the other factions :-). The conquer strategy is even useful when you're not going for a conquer victory. If you eliminate all of the enemy bases except for one, then you can pursue transcendence unheeded. In addition, you need strong military power to achieve an economic victory, and you need a vast amount of territory and a powerful army to achieve diplomatic victory. Diplomatic victory is even easier when everyone has surrendered to you :-). One element that cannot be overstressed is the reactor. The reactor increases the number of hit points you have. With a fission reactor you have 10, with a fusion reactor you have 20, quantum gives you 30, and singularity gives you 40. This means that if you have a fusion reactor while they still have fission, you have a 2 to 1 advantage over them! Useful Secret Projects The command nexus gives every base a command center (+2 morale to land units). This is an incredibly important secret project, as when two units with equal technology fight, the one with the highest morale usually wins. The cyborg factory gives a bienhancement center (+2 morale to all at every base. When combined with the command nexus, this makes an unstoppable combination. Unit Designs Blink Singularity Gravship: Graviton gun, singularity reactor, stasis generator, blink displacer, gravship chassis. Costs a ton to build but runs right through everything. Cloaked Cruiser Transport: Transport, Cruiser chassis, cloaking device, best reactor, armor (if it can be added at no cost), AAA (if the enemy uses lots of aircraft). Really useful for shipping troops without getting sunk. Alternatively, you can use a deep pressure hull instead of a cloak. Cloaked Cruiser Transport: Same thing, but with a carrier deck. Again, you can use the submarine ability instead of a cloak. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Build In the build strategy, you try to maximize your bases' industrial capacity and the wealth, and therefore power, of your nation. War is one major element to be avoided. It puts a drain on your resources and forces your bases to build combat units instead of more useful facilities. While your bases should be well equipped for war, as they will be large and have many minerals, they are forced to build military units constantly instead of formers or other improvements. Sometimes, you may even want to give in if another faction demands tech or money to avoid conflict. If you are forced into conflict, your goal should be either to conquer as many bases as necessary to make your opponent sign a truce, or to force the computer player into submission. I prefer the first option, but if a computer player has been troubling you constantly, you may have to "crush him/her like a bug". In the build strategy, formers can be the most important unit in the game. They are how you get superior bases that can out-produce your oponent's bases. This is probably your only advantage in war, and in peace it can be a huge boon to your population and production. Good social engineering choices are a must. Green/Democratic or Planned/Democratic are the two best choices, as well as wealth or research values and Eudaimonic future society (when you get the tech). Secret Projects The Weather Paradigm can be extremely important, as your sole advantage is in having large, well-developed bases through the use of formers. The Empath Guild makes it easier to get elected as governer, giving you that much-needed commerce bonus. The Cloning Vats, which are only available late in the game, are the most important secret project for any strategy. In the build strategy, this project is vital to staying ahead of the other nations. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Discover The discover strategy is less of a strategy by itself and more of a technique in accomplishing the other strategies. The purpose of the discover strategy is to get as much technology as possible, and therefore have the upper hand both in conquest and in peace. To use discover during a conquest game, the goals is to get as much technology as possible and overwhelm your opponents with superior weapons. Technology can be one of the decisive factors in any battle. In particular, being the first to discover air power can have huge advantages on certain maps. On others, initiative might be the critical factor. Either way, you need a decisive lead in technology in order to gain military strength. Discovery during a peaceful "build" game has the same underlying principles, however you need to focus on a different area. You should focus on technologies offering important base facilities and terraforming advances. In particular, synthetic fossil fuels gives you fungicidal formers, which is important on games with heavy fungus or abundant mind worms. Ecological engineering lets you use advanced terraforming techniques, and all of the build techs are useful for this strategy. Secret Projects The supercollider and the Theory of Everything come fairly late in the game, but they are extremely important and should be placed with care. The Merchant Exchange should be placed in a city with a large science capability. The singularity inductor is one of the last secret projects in the game, but it can be critical in achieving transcendence. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Explore The object of explore is to expand as much as possible and use your territory as a source of power or wealth. Again, it is a subset of the build and conquer strategies. You can use the explore strategy to gain as much military strength as possible. You need to build as many colony pods as possible to snap up territory before someone else gets it. Ideally, you can isolate each faction by surrounding their territory with yours. This only works if they start near the ocean. This will limit the faction to one or two bases (until they get sea bases) and limit their early growth. You then want to conquer that faction as early as possible. You should be able to produce a large army because of all your bases. Even if you are behind in technology (which you shouldn't be because a large amount of bases can give you large amounts of technology), you can overwhelm your opponent by the sheer numbers of your army. The explore strategy also is important as part of the build strategy. With this method, your goal is the same: Have as many bases as possible. You want to isolate other factions by surrounding them with your territory. This will stunt their growth and limit their technology and might. You should be building a lot of formers and base facilities, and all of the normal build strategies apply. The only difference is that you have to focus on expansion as well as development. Secret Projects The cloning vats, as I have said before, are extremely important no matter what your strategy is. In the explore game, however, it is absolutely critical that you build this one before anybody else does. The planetary transit system will give your cities a boost in early development. The empath guild can help secure your vote in council. Even if you're not playing as the Peacekeepers, you should be able to get elected planetary governer with the empath guild and a lot of bases. ================================================================================ Final Notes and Odd Musings ================================================================================ One final thought as I sit here late at night and ponder. Scout-bombs. Most often, this is a desperation tactic, but it is a useful tool nonetheless. It's somewhat limited in its scope, but consider this: If your opponent approaches you stacked en masse to avoid subversion, try sending out a 1-1-1, cheapo scout patrol and "detonate" him next to the stack. A very cheap way to cause collateral damage to all the units in the stack, and if the units in that stack are already damaged, you might get lucky and score one or more kills with your sacrificial unit. In any case, it's a good reminder to your opponent that mass- stacking can be just as dangerous as leaving his units separate and subvertable..... Trickery and Guile: Here, at last, is the crux of the matter. The mechanics of battle are not a matter of debate. We KNOW, for example, that the base power of an Impact Weapon is 4. We KNOW that Synthsteel has a defense of 2. We can therefore conclude that if a 4-1-2 Rover meets a 1-2-1 Infantry out and about someplace, odds are very good that the rover will return home and the infantry unit will not. Most of the time, it happens that way, but sometimes not…..sometimes not…and that is where greatness lies. This section of the article will attempt to teach you everything I know about winning supposedly un-winnable battles. This is horribly unconventional stuff, and I'm sure a lot of people will howl and refute it. A lot of people will read this and say or think to themselves: "Well, that's cool, but **I'd** certainly never fall for it," or something like that. I'm expecting that kind of reaction. I love that kind of reaction. And who knows, maybe they're right. Maybe they really WOULDN'T fall for any of the stuff you're about to read, but again, I can only say this: I win more often than I lose, and I can tell you that when you're neck deep in a tense game, and if you are presented with an opportunity, and all your intelligence efforts tell you it's okay to pursue it, even if every nerve ending in your body is screaming at you that it's a trap, nine times in ten you'll do it anyway. I've seen it happen too many times. People allow themselves to be lulled and deluded. People get complacent. They get comfortable. And they get beatable. Here is a shopping list of specific things you will find me doing in my games to bewilder, confuse, confound, and generally irritate my opponents. I call it my "thing list" for lack of a better term. Enjoy, and may you constantly give your enemies the willies…. The First thing: Attitude is everything. Be confident, but don't get cocky. Be sure of yourself and what you are doing. Be efficient. If you're read every word in this guide up to this point, you should be getting pretty good at those things, and you have an excellent foundation to build upon. The Second thing: Use "Messenger Units" frequently. Think about how this looks from a multiplayer standpoint: Suddenly, from out of the blue, here's a morganite impact rover on my turf. How'd he get there without me noticing? Is he alone? And, even more unsettling than that, WHY is he there? Is he just passing through? Or does he represent the leading element of a massive invasion force? But wait! The Morganites are my allies! AND, last time I checked, he was running Market, so what the Hell…… You see how it goes. The unexpected arrival of forces (even a single unit) in a rival's territory can make him start to second guess himself, and that's all you need. Maybe that single unit trolling around and doing nothing in particular on the fringes of his territory will cause him to change the production in three or four of his bases. If so, what did that net you? Turn advantage! Also, you can force your opponent's hand in this way. Maybe he was planning to attack you anyway. You'll find out soon enough, because if so, he will not tolerate your units in his territory, and will move to do something about it. So be it. The Third Thing: Allow your opponent to do a lot of the grunt work for you. Want a secret project, but you're too busy building infrastructure and prototypes? Great! Keep an eye on exactly WHERE secret projects are being constructed. By mid-game, players will usually just start projects "wherever," as bases finish up the latest facility they were working on. And frequently, that means that a border base will assigned to do secret project work. Wait till it's finished, save your money, and subvert it! OUCH! The Fourth Thing: If your opponent can do something better than you, let him, and then make him regret it later! Specifically (from Tokek's game, not long ago): Yang captured one of Lady Dierdre's bases and started making use of his nice industry bonus to crank out a lot of garrison units. My recommendation was to let him build up a bit, and then subvert the base back, on the thinking that Yang could build the units a lot faster than Deirdre could, and subverting the base after it was well-garrisoned would be worth several turns of turn advantage. This also works well with any faction that gets "free" base facilities. Why bother building colony pods when you can subvert Zak's newly founded bases AND get a Network Node too! Not to mention, doing this will utterly terrify your opponents, as they wonder if this was just a "Nettle," or if you're up to something more ominous. This goes back to using your opponent's strengths against him, and here's a faction by faction outline of a few things you can do: Against The Hive: Let the good chairman build sea bases for you. He generally LOVES to surround factions with sea bases, and they're almost laughingly easy to subvert. So, let him use his industry and growth bonuses to your advantage! Against The Morganites: Bully them! They make a lot of money, but under computer guidance, they're wimps! Bully and badger them till you break the bank! If he get's rowdy with probe teams, send him a little present in the form of about three dozen mediocre troops with polymorphic encryption and LET him subvert them. He'll blow all his money grabbing your average troops, and then you can send in the real invasion force. Even the Morganites have their limits, and without any money, he's a pushover. Alternately, keep taking the same base with your units and LET him steal it back. Repeat till he's broke, and unable to cause you further grief. Morgan without money is like a tiger without teeth. Big cat, but not particularly threatening. Against the Gaians: Their main strength is Psi combat, and their ability to cozy up to planet. Most obviously, build lots of trance and empath guys to even yourself out with them, but also, send armored formers into their territory and strip out their worm-farms. Likely, they'll be relying heavily on those in the early game to augment their otherwise average troops, and that heavy reliance can easily be their undoing. Besides, in a lot of cases, a former in enemy territory is more threatening than a shard invader! Against the Believers: She wants to attack first....ok. Let the wench. Bulk up your garrisons in embattled bases, use lots of ECM troops mixed with AAA guys, keep TONS of probe teams handy to counter her attempts at getting decent tech, rush perim defenses and tachyon fields wherever she attacks and THEN see how her vaunted 25% attack bonus fares. But, more often than not, she'll attack anyway, and quickly be out of your hair. Against the University: Ahhhhh technology. The pride and joy of the good Professor. But they don't do him any good unless he can turn them into THINGS, so don't let him. Feint him to death, and bleed his energy reserves per Morgan to keep him broke and unable to rush build. Keep him so busy wondering what you're up to that, techs or no, he won't be able to react. It's very easy to paralyze this faction with an aggressive stance, and lots of nettles and feints. Even human players who favor the University tend to fall for this more often than you'd expect. It's strange, and rather amusing at times. Against the Spartans: Subversion. Their units are awesome! And wasn't it nice of Santiago to deliver a whole bunch of them right to your door! Against the Peacekeepers: Ahhhh, but here's the crux of it. Nothing in the game mechanics to exploit, so you'll have to study whoever is PLAYING the Peacekeeping forces and use the PLAYER'S strengths against him. Is he aggressive? Is he the consummate peace-keeper? You'll have to get a bit creative here, but you'll find the strengths and weaknesses of his style, and you'll be able to use both of them against him. Against the Cult: The same things that work against the Gaians work here as well. Do it with a vengeance. Declare war on Chiron itself, ripping out fungus everywhere you find it, and make their heavy reliance on psi-attackers work against them with your own empath and trance troopers. Then see how strong the worms are. Against the Cyborgs: Aki will be pre-disposed to first strike armies, on account of the techsteal ability. Be faster. Beat her to the punch, and teach her a sharp lesson about sending out troops with little or no armor. With luck, it'll be a lesson she'll learn too late. Against the Pirates: Let them build sea bases and naval units for you! Theirs are awesome, and if you subvert, you get the free marine detachment too! Against the Drones: With a few probe teams handy, you don't need to build an army at all. Let the Drones do it for you! Against the Data Angels: Like the Peacekeepers, there's little here to exploit, so watch the player and wait for him to make a mistake! Against the Aliens: Same as above: Subversion works to a degree on Marr, thanks to his Morale, but a subverted Caretaker loses it's 25% defensive bonus, leaving you in the position of having to watch for something you can use. The Fifth Thing: A small, but important thing. Don't sit in a comfortable chair! Don't allow yourself the luxury of comfort. It will relax your mind and take away from your focus. I play all my games in a straight-backed, wooden chair. Yes, I get stiff and sore, but it is an important reminder. The Sixth Thing: Every ten turns or so, pretend that you are seeing the map for the very first time. Scroll all around the globe and look at things from that perspective. You'll be amazed at how revealing that can be. The Seventh Thing: Anything you can do, your opponent can do to, so don't read too much into what you see. Look at it, acknowledge it, and don't let it distract you in the least. The Eight Thing: Huge, important thing. DO NOT THINK TOO MUCH ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING!!! If you start thinking too much, you start second guessing yourself and then you get all confused. **Feel** the game, don't think it. Every game has it's own unique pulse and rhythm, and that is why I love it so much. It's a completely different experience every time. Pour over the map and study everything. Feel the ebbs and flows in the undercurrents of the game. Very often, human players advertise their intentions LONG before they carry them out, and you can make people believe you are psychic when you are ready for their attack before they even put their army together! Paint the tapestry of your grand plan with a broad stroked brush, and let the details fill themselves in. The Ninth Thing: Be impassive. Be patient. Never allow yourself to be goaded into action. Likely, somebody who's read this or who has come to these conclusions independently is lurking out there, just beyond your field of vision waiting to pounce on your for being foolish.....disappoint him. The Tenth Thing: Never accept a setback as a setback. FIND a way to turn it into an opportunity! Did the worms come and rape your newly formed base? Okay, take the opportunity to see if maybe you could have located it in a slightly more advantageous position. Take the time to build the sensor where you want the base to go, so when you put it back, it's harder than ever to remove. Work with the flow of the game, not against it. The Eleventh Thing: Devise your battle plans under the thinking that your opponent will fight the perfect battle. Of course he'll make some mistakes, and when he does, it will make your conquest easier than you expected it would be. The Twelfth Thing: If you are at peace, plan for the day you must fight. If you are at war, plan for the day you will finally be able to put your sword over the mantle and get back to building. The Thirteenth and final Thing, that which brings us full circle, and brings this newest addition to the strategy guide to a close: Trust yourself, and at the same time, have nothing but the deepest respect for your opponents. A certain, healthy level of nervousness heightens the senses and makes you come alive. It is the thing which forces you to stretch yourself beyond what you might normally think you are capable of, but too much nervousness leads to fear, and fear/uncertainty leads to paralysis, which can only have one possible outcome: Defeat. Respect your opponent because only when you have a deep and abiding sense of respect for him and his abilities can you fully appreciate his position. And once you can fully understand and appreciate his position, you can walk in his shoes. See the world from his perspective. Do that, and you will very, very seldom lose. So what's next? I could keep writing and adding to this guide book forever, but that wouldn't do anybody much good, and eventually you'd get bored with it, so I'll stop here and wish you the best of luck. I intend to get a lot of feedback on this little guide from a number of friends I've made on the forums, and may, after talking to them, add one or more sections to this thing. Again, much luck to you, and I hope maybe I'll run into you in a live game at some point! :-) We have an informal wargaming group here in Columbia that we call the War College. We meet semi-regularly, and I'm the defacto president (I buy the chips & drinks) :-) Seriously, I've been playing War Games longer than the other members, so I generally wind up teaching them. Here are some of the lessons drawn from the War College. Not all of these are lessons drawn from SMAC, but all of them are applicable. Anyway, for my own amusement more than anything, I've put a list of strategies (both general and specific), and general principles that I enjoy making use of. Maybe you'll find this a completely useless section, but maybe it will help. :-) Velociryx's Goodie Bag & Guiding Principles: * Ruthlessly violate any strategy you have ever read. Never accept anything as inviolable law. Challenge it. Stress and stretch it. * Be noble, even in the face of terrible adversity. Purity of spirit and clarity of purpose are enormous advantages. * Be very, very good. Be quick and fast and smart. Practice and hone your skills constantly. Never accept that you are the best. Deny it. Convince yourself you are struggling to keep pace even if you consistently set the standard. The first time you rest on your laurels will be the time someone sneaks up to pull them out from under you. * Thin Expansion Rocks!!! (Thin Expansion = Makin' TONS of colony pods as quick as you can to get bases started, and worrying about building them up later).... helps create that badly needed Turn Advantage) * Think Probe Teams, Damnit! * Every turn, you need to be able to answer the following question: "How will I defend myself if I'm attacked right now?" If you can't, then you are asking for trouble. * Every turn, you need to be able to answer the following question: "What can I do this turn to help get me more technologies?" If you don't have a ready answer, you probably won't be in the lead, technologically. * Never, ever, EVER give up. If your opponent is beating you, he'll likely get careless, thinking he has nothing to worry about. Exploit that and steal the game from him. * Take your opponents by surprise. Try something weird and unexpected. Even if it's not the best idea in the world, the sheer strangeness of it might be the thing that catches your opponent off guard and disrupts his plan. Make a list of weird things that work and use them (sparingly) again. :-) * If you are weaker than your opponent, use Mind Worms. If you are stronger, use Technology. * Put 3-4 missiles "on alert" in your border bases. GREAT point defense! * The best way not to be defeated in the field is not to have a cohesive army. Your opponent should NEVER be able to look at the map and determine when and where you plan to strike. It should come as a complete surprise or you're not doing it right. Finis: The topic has come up more than once in the boards I frequent: Why do we love this game so much? It can be tedious, trying, nerve wracking, and it certainly is not without its flaws! But here we are just the same, the faithful, the diehards, staying up way too late at night, coming into work the next day with eyes red and puffy, itching to hurry up and get through the day just so we can sit back at our computers and repeat the whole process. Why? What is it about this game anyway? And when that topic comes up, you hear a lot of the same kind of answers. Cool storyline. Good look and feel. Great movies and blurbs. Eerie graphics. Good all around game. And I would completely agree with all of those things, but that still doesn't quite answer the question to my satisfaction, so I did a lot of thinking about that. Partly, I play this game to death because it draws on two things that I hold very dear in my daily life. Fiction (and especially Science-Fiction), and Economics. Both are woven into the very fabric of the game, to the point that becomes nearly impossible to tell where one stops and the other begins. As an author, as an economist, I really, really like that. In fact, I like it so much that I've actually used the scenario editor to creat training modules for work at my previous job. Lessons on team-building and cooperative effort. Lessons about matching skill sets with appropriate tasks, and the like. I've also used the (admittedly clunky) scenario editor to create economic modeling simulations to test various ideas out. Believe me, it's a lot more entertaining than your "typical" economic modeling routines. But that still doesn't quite answer the question. No, the truth of the matter is that I cut my teeth on Sci-fi. Weeknights at 5pm, channel 13 in a sleepy little town called Emporia Kansas. Star Trek. And those childhood memories still bring back a smile. How many summer afternoons did I spend lying on my back in a wheatfield, looking up at the sky and wondering what the heck was really up there? Wondering what it might be like to really GO there. To be a part of colonizing a whole new world? Too many to count. And later, as I grew older, those fantasies expanded to include wondering what it would be like if I were in charge of such a massive undertaking. What would I do? Would my ideas work at all, or (and I cringed at the subsequent thought), would they fail miserably, prompting everyone with me to think I was a moron? For me then, Alpha Centauri is more than "just a game." It is that, of course, and quite a good one. But it's also a way of rekindling those childhood fantasies of mine. A way of living the dream in some small way, and for that chance, I offer my humble thanks to Sid and everybody else who had a hand in the game's creation. Guys, you did well indeed. Oh, I have no illusions. Even if a ship like The Unity were to be built in my lifetime, what skills I have at this game would certainly help me none at all in landing a seat on such a grand adventure, much less put me in a position of authority, but it's a good dream....::grin:: I certainly hope you found the guide of value. And more than that, I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading it, and this last little ramble inside my head, and on that note, I just looked at the time. 4:44am. Too late to go to bed, so I think I'll sign off now, save this, and post it to the forums to give everybody a look at what I've been doing with my time. And then, I think I'm gonna start a new game..... -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Credits/ Links - Firaxis Games (especially for the story) - Electronic Arts - PC Gamer - http://clik.to/renaissance - http://renaissanceforums.community.everyone.net/commun_v3/scripts/thread.pl - Jeff "CJayC" Veasey and GameFAQs -- http://www.gamefaqs.com - Al Amaloo and Game Winners -- http://www.gamewinners.com - Dave and Cheat Code Central -- http://www.cheatcc.com - http://www.alphacentauri.com/ - http://alphazone.cjb.net/ - http://civilization.gamestats.com/smac =========================================================================== This FAQ was writen entirely using the GWD Text Editor: (shareware) http://www.gwdsoft.com/ - There are many, many text editors out there (even completely free), but this is certainly one of the absolute best editors out there. Also, be sure to support the software developer(s); they did a lot of hard work on this. =========================================================================== << Disclaimer >> This Document is Copyright 2001 Jim Chamberlin. All Rights Reserved. This guide can be FREELY distributed as long as you agree to a few things: - You do not alter this guide, leaving it in the original .txt file format - You do not charge for viewing this guide. This includes, but is not limited to websites, cds, dvds, magazines, etc. - You give me credit. - Visit GameFAQs (http://www.gamefaqs.com) on a regular basis and download any updates to the guide. Authors hate responding to questions that were answered in newer versions of the guide. ///, //// \ /, / >. \ /, _/ /. - (C)Jim Chamberlin \_ /_/ /. _____ _____ \__/_ < / __ \__________ / __ \___ _ _____ _________ _ ____ __ /<<< \_\_ / / / / ___/ __ \ / / / / // \/ __ \/ ___/ Y \/__/ \/ / /,)^>>_._ \ / /_/ / _/_/ /_/ // /_/ / _~ / /_/ / _/_/ \ / /> < (/ \\ /\\\ /__/ \ >____/_____// ____/__//__/\_____/_____/__//__/\_//__/\_\ // ```` ======\/============\_/========[red_phoenix_1@hotmail.com]============((`=======