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===========================================================================
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
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Expansion and Growth
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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.
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Terraforming
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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.)
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Supply Crawlers
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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.
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Defining your Style
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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.
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Defining your Focus
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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").
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Early Game Secret Projects
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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 