posted 02-28-99 04:42 PM ET        

To start, has anyone figured out a way NOT to
be at war with 5 or 6 factions at once on Transcend? I'm having a difficult time fending off attacks right now, as I'm fighting a four front war (I'm getting invaded from every direction simutaneously in some turns) and my Needlejet patrols can't handle so many ships (I'm on an average sized island with several smaller island colonies nearby) To make matters worse, I'm the Gaians, so all my units get a morale penalty.

Has anyone found a diplomatic solution to this problem?

posted 03-01-99 11:58 AM ET            

I enjoy the Spartans at this level. Stay around the middle of the pack in Might. Pick one side of the global conflict, get tech from one, steal tech from the other. Quietly build your empire.
Find one of these simpering techno factions and invade with a few dozen elite Chaos Rovers, and a dozen Veteran Probes. After occupying someone elses empire (and collecting all their Secret Projects) you will be in a much better position to fight off the wolves.

What many don't understand is that, through most of the game, the UofP can crank out a tech every few turns. While my elite Probe Foils can steal every tech they have instantly.

posted 03-02-99 02:26 PM ET            

However, I did try the worm farm method, and it seemed to work very well. I built half-a dozen swarms of Demon Boil Locusts and wiped out two factions without breaking a sweat.
Combined w/my new Dream Twister, the bad guys
were dead before they knew what hit them.

The reason I used the worms, however, was because I was technologically inferrior, particularly to the University. They had the Hunter-seeker algorithim, so stealing techs were impossible. I had to use Psi units to fight their technologically superior weapons
(it worked), and I came out on top, finally.

posted 03-02-99 02:54 PM ET         

Anyway, I am on my second transcend ironman game, and both times it was key to get a native army. You don't need to be Gaian to get one, just go green as soon as possible.

My first game I actually lost, even though I made good progress. I was playing Hive and was sandwiched inbetween some nasty opponents--the Spartans base started 3 squares due north of me and the Believers started 4 squares south of me. To make it even more fun, the University was about another 6 squares south of that, the Gaians about 10 east of the UoP, and the Morganites about 8 south of there.

I was able to hang in with little progress against the CPs but I kept losing colony pods and formers to the native life. Quickly, the enemy factions passed me in tech. I temporarily made peace with Believers and Spartans until they met, declared war, and made me pick sides. I was nice with the Spartans and went after the Believers, when I discovered the UoP coming the other way to eliminate them. Next, the UoP got strong and I allied with the Gaians and Morganites to kill the UoP. Luckily, the Spartans ended up blocked by the ocean and only got two bases off, so they ended up an easy kill later. However, while the 6 of us duked it out, the PK sat alone on a sizeable island with the jungle right in the middle. A dozen and a half 12-14 size cities gave them an easy diplomatic victory just as the Spartans took a digger. However, the key to my rally was getting some native life, which did a good job of allowing me to finally make headway against the Believers and UoP, who were outteching me early on.

This time, I am PK, and landed in the bottom half of an hourglass-shaped continent. I shot for the narrow part, built about 3 military minded cities, and started building cities around the rest of my side later. Again, the native life made a difference, since the other side of the hourglass was held by the Spartans. When they finally broke the peace with me (because you know they will), I had a decent sized native army waiting in the open field for them to come.

Long winded, perhaps, but I think a native army early on evens the battlefield while some factions end up ahead in tech. Once you catch up in tech (gotta love the probe teams) then the native army means less, to me, but both times they bought me time to live to fight another day.

My next game, I intend to try an ocean based strategy (see strategy forum) in the hopes that this may buy me some time to develop while the nastiness rages landside. Don't know if it will work.

posted 03-02-99 04:04 PM ET            

Anyway, the keys I've found to keep from being diplomatically gang-raped are:

1) Spend your money! If you have huge reserves of energy, they CP's are just gonna ask for it, and when you understandably tell them no, they attack. I try to keep my reserves between 100-200. If it gets over that, I look for something to hurry or upgrade. That way when Miriam wants a 50% "tithe", I swallow my pride, give her $75, and she goes away.

Obviously, this strategy might not work for you market-cornering Morganites.

2) Don't strive to stay in 1st place. Actually, not having huge energy reserves will help in this regard too. As long as I am in a solid 2nd place, I'm happy until about 2350. The CP's tend to make less demands if you are not in 1st place. Eventually, I get a technologicaly advanced army & fleet built up and start going for the blitzkriegs, similar to the above post. Obviously, you then shoot up into 1st, but by that time you are powerful enough to stay there.

Of course, you can't fall too far behind...

3) Keep your reputation Noble. The peaceniks will deal with you much more readily, and if you can get a pact or two signed, Yang, Miriam, and Santiago do seem to think twice before getting nasty.

4) If you get some warning that you are about to meet a faction for the first time, and can afford it, switch over to their favored government to make a good first impression. Or at least switch out of the gov't they hate.

Obviously, this requires that you have warning, the required tech, the money, etc., and that the gov't choice isn't going to kill you. But if you can do it, it really does seem to help for a long time.

posted 03-02-99 07:28 PM ET            

Personally, I'm surprised the transcend AI didn't build enough trance garrisons to stop you.

As you noted, arty works well.

Sensors are always a good idea.

Break up "fungus roads" internal to your empire.

posted 03-03-99 01:10 AM ET            

Taterbill & DanS
As to a financial solution to trancend woes, I noticed that buying off the AI works well in the lower levels, but otherwise they'll declair war the first chance they get. Typically, I'm able to get two allies, and the rest end up at war with me. Being in first place is sometimes unavoidable, so that makes things harder as well.

One very important note on attacking: Don't send a constant stream of attacks (Mongol invasion style) to wear down your enemy; this only gives them an opportunity to adapt to your attack. I noticed that after several needlejet attacks, the AI began building AAA sentinels in their cities, making future attacks much more difficult. Later, I built a swarm of Demon Boil Locusts to attack, but this time waited until I had a force of 9-10 swarms, and attacked all at once. Within 3 turns, I took 13 cities. By the time the AI began building Trance sentries, it was too late. In short, make your attacks short and very brutal!

I'll post any other "discoveries" as I uncover them.

Quoting Thanatos; "Long live the Trancend Ironmen!"

posted 03-03-99 08:08 AM ET            

Here's an extremely effective form of bribe: build a sea colony pod; cruise it over to the target AI coast; found a base; dial up target and offer to give away the base. You get a huge improvement in relationship. The AI gets a lously little sea base that will take forever to develop into anything useful because the AI does a particularly lousy job developing sea bases.

The point: Always do whatever it takes--up to and including manufacturing bases to give away--to have at least one Pact with a strong faction. On a divide and conquer basis it's worth it, plus, after a certain point, it'll just start raining units on you.

On dealing with Planet and her worms: Yes, build lots of trance units and sensors early, but also build lots of forest early, whether you're going to cutivate it or not. Forest improves the base's Planet rating (reducing worm attacks), while driving out fungus (also reducing worm attacks). making sure all fungus is cleared from tiles adjoining bases also eliminates the ability of a worm to appear and attack a base in the same turn.

Miltarily, it's less important to be technologically superior than it is to be multidimensional. A bait and switch strategy is particularly effective against the "reactive" AI. Example: Conduct a few needlejet sorties and the AI will rush a ton of AAA and tactical air units into existence. When you hit it with a second wave of ground units and native life units, it will have all of the "wrong" (and expensively produced) units to deal with it.

Last point: I add Police special ability to all of my units on transcend level. That makes them slightly more expensive, but the drone control in both home bases and newly conquered bases gives me far more extra production than the extra unit cost uses up. It's a tradeoff well worth making.

posted 03-03-99 02:56 PM ET            

player1: I agree they will attack ASAP if you got a great starting position and have jumped out to an early substantial lead. But otherwise, I have been able to have diplomatic success (At least for 100-200 turns) by adjusting social agendas and being "agressively nice".

Also, IMHO, another key to winning TI is micro-management, especially early to mid-game. At TI level, every decision is crucial. I have not used auto-forming, governors, etc. since my last game at Librarian. Do you guys (or gals, any ladies out there?) agree?

By decisions, I mean more than just deciding what to build next. I include the little things like hitting the space bar to end a gun foil's turn when he is adjacent to a floating supply pod, but only has one MP left. I delay the gratification of opening the pod until next turn, to ensure I have MP's left to attack, run, etc. if required. In my experience, the little things like that make TI level winnable.

posted 03-03-99 06:20 PM ET            

The aim is to get enough psych development so that I can get a "Golden-age" in as many cities as possible. It's not unusual for more than half of my cities to be in a golden-age during any given turn. This means a loss in Labs or Economy on the social engineering scale, but I think the economy and growth bonuses are well worth it. And its nice to never have to worry about drone riots, either.

One neat thing I sometimes do is boost my psych a couple notches for one turn to push a couple cities into a golden age. When I relax the psych back to normal levels, the economy bonus for the golden age is sometimes enough to keep the new cities from falling back out of the golden-age.

I guess the moral of the story is that its worth the trouble to make your people happy.

posted 03-03-99 06:44 PM ET            

Regarding police units, they effectively double your POLICE rating. By mid- to end-game, most of my cities in the heart of my empire are garrisoned only by as many 1-1-1 police infantry units as my POLICE rating will allow. They are dirt cheap- a 1-1-1 police scout cost 10 minerals. Or 20 minerals for a clean version.

posted 03-04-99 12:21 PM ET            

Taterbill, my apologies for overlooking your contribution on AI reaction to social agendas.

posted 03-04-99 12:51 PM ET            

Analyst & Player1: I was at the point last night in my current game to try out Golden Ages: I'm UoP, and just built Planetary Transit System. I planted about 8-10 size 3 colonies (I had the colony pods waiting) and then cranked up the Psych. Also had Human Genome Project, so started with one talent each base. Predictably, my population skyrocketed, and I quickly overtook Yang as pop leader. Thanks for reminding me of this oldie but goodie strategy.

Regarding Police infantry: I made liberal use of them to keep the peace during this growth spurt. As I mentioned before, they are cheap. After starting a population 3 base, I usually get at least 4-5 minerals on day one.
(I seed a lot of forest early in the game and let it grow, so each new base usually has at least one forest square.) I can make a partial payment of 25-30 (sometimes less) and have a 1-1-1 police up the next turn. Very effective.

posted 03-04-99 01:03 PM ET            

On Golden-ages; I agree that they are very important. They're not as signifigant as they were in Civ (no immediate increase in pop under a democracy) but they really help.

Yesterday was another shining example of the AI inability to defend itself; I took 12 cities with a swarm of locusts in two turns. The AI began building AAA garrisons thereafter... too bad they only had 4 cities left

posted 03-04-99 02:10 PM ET            

The unlimited range PB is supposed to be fixed in v3.0. The funny thing is that, since that's the way nukes worked for the AI in CivII, I assumed it was intended. No one has ever hit me with a PB in this game yet, though I've seen them built. One question I have: does the AI PB you if you've never committed an atrocity yourself? I never do anything in the way of an atrocity because I value my trade income too much.

posted 03-05-99 11:49 AM ET         

I was playing the land rush scenario as the Spartans. The Hive had come in taken over several of my cities, but I had built up enough military might to retake them. In short order, Yang destroyed three of the bases I was about to take over rather than let me retake them.

posted 03-05-99 12:19 PM ET            

then i start to built up my cities and weapon tech, after i got copter chasis, my armies are unstoppable....using about 10 copters with some rovers to overtake the cities, the rest of the factions vanished in a fast pace...the copters are too pewerful, i hope firaxis can fix this...

finished the game by 2381, trancendance, with a gaian city left with population 3, the game is still easy even in trancend level

posted 03-05-99 02:59 PM ET            

Anyway, Dierdre cratered the crater. Talk about a "scorched Planet" policy! I regrouped the survivors of my assault forces and pressed on. (she has, of course, crash-built AAA troops now. Time to switch tactics.]

posted 03-05-99 05:51 PM ET            

Incidentally, to "optimize" the the challenge at TI level, I also recommend using the settings:
Tech Stagnation -- won't get those copters so fast, and cps will have some defenses
Spoils of War -- if you tend to get the hunter-seeker algorithm, this will make sure you can't keep your tech to yourself. Also, in large ocean worlds, cities trade much easier to sea units with air support
Blind Research -- I'm not sure how much of an inconvenience this is. After all, you can take the time to carefully check what techs you could, in theory, research, and choose a goal accordingly. In fact, I wish Blind Research would bring up a list of techs like regular Research to choose from, but it would be to help you choose your priority.
Intense Rivalry -- Not sure about this, really. After all, if you are forced to go to war, you tend to win. Thus, the game would be decided sooner, as you would gain a decisive advantage, but then you'd get bogged down in a forever war.
No Unity Survey -- Doesn't really make sense, considering you've just come down from space, but what the heck
No Pod Scatering -- Those pods tend to be too much of an advantage, especially since we sentients save those artifacts until way later, right?
Bell Curve -- random events tend to help player more
Time Warp -- 2 things: 1) with no pod scattering, eliminates pods! 2) Also, some factions have a great deal of trouble expanding at the start.

Also, when choosing your custom planet, max out the water area, as that will slow YOU down, which in turn gives the po' little CPs a chance to grow.

Finally, don't play the Morganites. The AI can't play them, so they'll get eaten quickly by the others, and whoever does it will get a pretty god advantage which even a tech meister will have difficulty catching up to.

posted 03-06-99 10:03 AM ET            

The other suggestion I take issue with is your suggestion to use water worlds. I've noticed that the AI will build lots of sea bases, but develop them exceedingly poorly--taking forever to build formers and develop sea tiles. I think the AI is even poorer at sea base development than land base development. The AI also builds lots of conventional infantry units in sea bases that don't have any chance to actually participate in warfare, further wasting resources. Creating waterworlds is a net advantage for humans, in my view.

posted 03-06-99 06:48 PM ET            

I finished my Transcend Ironman game w/the Gaians today: 881% score in year 2339. There seemed to be a problem w/the scoring, however. None of the factions that I had forced to surrender or destroyed showed up on the score board. I also won by Ascention to Transcendence, but instead of receiving the standard 2000 points, I only got 1304 or some weird number like that. It labeled these points as 0 objectives achieved, instead of Transcend victory, yet I was not playing a scenario. I figured it may be because the points were distributed among my pact brothers, but when I reloaded the game and broke the pacts before the ascention, the transcend score actually DROPPED to about a 1000 or so. Anyway, there's some sort of bug there that Firaxis missed. I've got to say I'm a little disappointed, but I'll keep playing (going to try the Spartans, next)

posted 03-09-99 12:52 PM ET            

First, like player1, I had a constant problem with the hostility of other factions. This included attitudes rarely more friendly than Obstinant and a profound unwillingness to trade techs (a real problem on Transcend level, even with Morgan) or enter into any Treaties (a severe problem, if you're Morgan), let alone Pacts. With these social engineering choices as Morgan, only Lal likes you, and of the remaining five, two will be strongly inclined to dislike you (Prokhar and Miriam) and three will declare Vendetta (Deirdre, Santiago and Yang) virtually at the drop of a hat. As a result of zero cooperation and constant border conflicts, I found myself falling behind, even though I had as many bases as any of the AI factions.

At a certain point, out of frustration, I returned to my strategy of buttering up factions by adopting their social engineering choices. My two immediate neighbors were the UofP and the Hive, and the most powerful faction was the Gaians. I changed my social engineering to Police State/Green/Knowledge (death penalty for littering or truancy ). What a difference! In a very few turns, I had a Pact with each of these factions and the energy credits from Pact trade were resulting in more income than the Democracy/Free Market/Wealth combination was previously affording me, with swifter research into the bargain. But the best was even yet to come. Lal very quickly became angry over my Police State and my Pacts with his enemies and declared Vendetta. Shortly after that, the Hive, who also had Vendetta against the UN, began sending me units. In 4-5 turns, it started raining units in my cities as Yang turned over to my control: 14 bombers, 3 artillery, 2 infantry, one rover, a conventional missile and a partirdge in a pear tree I used my Instant Air Force (courtesy of Yang) to carry out a crushing assault against the UN and vault myself from fourth place to first in the game in just a few turns.

That's where I broke off play last night. The Hive and the Gaians are larger and more powerful than I usually let factions get in my games, but the result of this game is not in doubt. There's also no doubt in my mind that I would have been continuing to struggle in the middle of the pack in this game, had I not used my social engineering choices to manipulate other factions' attitudes toward me.

posted 03-09-99 11:23 PM ET            

In my current game, I am playing the Spartans
on a very large map. In effect, this negates their offensive military capabilities due to vast distances between players.

Diplomacy wise, I seem to be getting along much better with the other factions, which I found rather strange. As analyst noted, Morgan has a bit of a PR problem due to his sociological preferences. The Spartans, however (Democracy/Free Market/Knowledge) are seemingly liked by all except the Hive. I found this a bit odd since they are supposed to be the most military aggressive of all the factions (next to the Believers), but its true. To conclude the Transcend Diplomacy mystery, sociology choices have the biggest weight on relations with the AI. Manipulating these can signifigantly increase your favor with the AI players, as Analyst noted.

However, I still could not bring myself to be an agressive warmonger I once again adopted my lazzies-faire(sp?) approach to building my empire; I built up a small but extremely functional defense network (I will go into detail as to how I go about this in another post; I'm too tired ) and concentrate on expansion and infrastructure.
In short, I build, build, build!!

The result was very unexpected indeed! After realizing that the supposidly militaristic Spartans had no Creative sociological deficiencies (ie: no negatives on efficiency, economy, or knowledge) I found them to perform as well as the peaceful factions at energy and knowledge production! The result? An economic/technological powerhouse with a highly effective military to boot! Energy income is very generous, and discoveries are being made more frequently than even the University(AI) is capable of! This quickly catapulted me into first place, and I have not fought a single battle to date (2233) save a few disagreements with the native life. The only notible deficiency is the negative industry, but this is miniscule next to the economic boom (minerals can be bought, after all).

Analyst, as to your observation regarding trade income, you are correct. As noted in the manual, any economy bonus past +2 only nets a bonus to commerce. But if there is no one to trade with, that bonus is worthless. The end result is that any economy > 2 is highly dependent on pact relations with the other factions. If you're at war with everyone, don't bother going for that extra economy rating. Its worth switching social prefs. to cozy up to the AI players in these cases.

I also tried using police, but this created too many problems (efficiency and growth was too low) and I went back to my old ways of building Rec facilities and Hologram theatres and switching to a Democratic/Free market economy.

posted 03-10-99 12:15 AM ET            

Yes, the factions definitely tend to get pissed off very quickly at your social enginneering choices if they are out of line. Playing as Santiago, I had a pact of sisterhood with the Gaians, and Deidre was magnamious to a fault. As soon as I switched on to planned economy, her attitude changed markedly. Approx. 10 turns later (after I had contacted her 2 or 3 times, mind), she broke off the pact. We're now at war (which is good, cos I needed her land anyway. And she was #1 by a mile).

This seems to show that using the simple engineering models is quite okay with the A.I leaders (I certainly never used green, I hadn't even discovered it).

posted 03-10-99 12:26 AM ET            

I think I know why the AI seems wonky when you take a lot of cities in a short time. The factions economy is imploding. As humans we predicate our attacks on worthwhile goals ie the enemies best cities, but when we do that the AI is generally left with a large number of cities that can't pay there own way and a large number of units that are unsupportable.
Is it possible that the units that are moveing oddly are trying to get to a base to disband? Whereas we would kamakaze so to at least get some use out of them before the were forcably disbanded.

I have found that a huge conventional missle plus 1-1-1 ampib, drop infantry strat seems to always work. Has anyone else tryed this? With the space elevator this is particularly effective. The AI cant seem to find the obvious defense, lots of real cheap defenders, cost effective me to death.

Any suggestions on how to play the game so as to make it more challageing? Not in the sense of tweaking the factions so they are unrecognisable but in restricting my own play? I have already done the must have noble rep for the win to mean anything. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.
gotag

posted 03-10-99 08:34 AM ET            

Another thing: It seems pretty clear to me that the AI regards your Pact brother's/sister's acts of hostility as your own. If two of your pact brothers/sisters are determined to war with each other, and you can't stop it by diplomacy, you need to quickly choose whose side you're going to be on or they're both going to wind up hating you by perceiving that you are an agressor (through your Pact partner's acts).

Both of these things happened to me last night in the Morganite game I was describing. I picked a fight with Dierdre that I really probably shouldn't have and I lost most of my air force to Gaian Tacticals. At roughly the same time, my Pact brothers, Yang and Prokhar, decided to go to war with each other and would not be persuaded to stop. After just a couple turns of this, Yang is "Seething" at me and declares Vendetta. When I mobilize to meet Yang, the UN breaks our blood truce with a surprise attack. My temporary deficit in offensive firepower seems to have set off a chain of events that has resulted in my fighting a three front war with only one Pact brother at my side.

I'm planning on two things to rectify this: a crash chopper building program and a focused effort to turn one of the hostile factions friendly with social engineering and a program of bribing them silly. We'll see how it goes, but past experience tells me that this combination of carrot and stick should be effective.

posted 03-10-99 10:59 AM ET         

But the very good issue that he has tried have others focus on here is whether SMAC's otherwise quite laudable faction-balancing design can be used as a royal road to a predictable diplomatic victory every time, using a divide-and-conquer strategy. From my experience with this game, I believe this to be the case _until_ you are clearly #1, at which point the AI will always pit the #2 faction against you regardless of social engineering choices, unless, as in Analyst's previous game, you don't already have a lock on victory, in which case it spares you the tedium by allowing for a Supreme Leader diplomatic victory.

This does not mean that the "faction-balancing" divide-and-conquer diplomatic game play comes to an end when you become #1, it simply becomes secondary. For example, in my present game as a unvaringly Democratic / Free Market / Knowedge / Cybernetic PK (80% Econ / 10% Psych / 10% Labs, hey, still discover something every 4 turns), the PK has been in a long struggle with the formerly #2 (now #4 but still kicking, see where it's got'em!) Morganites, with whom the PK has agreeably shared a continent in a past attempt at mutually profitable commerce (that worked for the first 200 years). In addition, the (now) #2 UofP and #3 Hive, expansive factions both, have always hated me. That's understandable for the Hive, given Democratic, but the UofP has never given a hoot about Pk's Knowledge / Cybernetic choices. The core bases of both these powerful factions are on the other side of the world and I've never posed a military threat to these.

Note also that the strategy I've experimented with is to get an unbreakable lock on the Guv'norship, with Empath Guild and that other endgame project that increases yor vote 50%, high pop (Cloning Vats, TeleTubbyMatrix, etc).

On the other hand, there has slowly been some diplomatic openings with the previously extremely hostile Spartans. Indeed, PK was in a two-front war with Sparta / Morgan for a bit, that was until Santiago decided to slam a Planet Buster into a base of hers I had just captured, taking a good-sized chunk out of the side of Sunny Mesa in the bargin. Of course, all my enemies now declared Vendetta against Sparta, whose large but structurally hollow empire began to collapse around the edges. The PK managed to disengage afterward and is now in Treaty with them, leaving the Hive and UofP to chew on the edges. I'm concerned that they don't chew off too much, so I'm working on getting a Pact with my former atrocity-commiting ememy - I'd love to use Santiago's far flung bases to get at my real enemies. The only irritant is jettisoning this Treaty with the miniscule Believer faction, who are in Vendetta with Sparta, without taking a diplomatic hit.

Finally, there are the Gaians, who I saved from certain extinction at the hands of the Hive early on, only to have Deirde grow from one to ~nine bases with needlejets flying back and forth across PKs northern continental edge. I made the mistake of not threatening the Gaians into surrender early on after saving them, just not that ruthless I guess. Now she's in a Pact with the Morgans - how's that for gratitude! I currently have a Treaty (I used to have a Pact) and here Free Market has had its effect. Gaia has a Vendetta with Sparta, and I bet if I get a Pact with the latter, she goes to war. I guarentee I'll crush the little ingrate...

posted 03-10-99 12:00 PM ET            

I am conviced that it IS possible to maintain diplomatic relations with two waring AI factions, as I am doing it now and have done it many times before.

My usual diplomatic strategy is as follows:

After the game gets running good, the AI will quickly fill up their continents and begin expanding into sea bases. At this point, if at all possible I will put one (or sometimes two, depending on MY current size) base working on nothing but cranking out cheap 1-1-4 foils.

I usually have at least one faction, and often two, in Vendetta against me, sometimes a faction I haven't even met face to face. I will send my wave of foils out and attempt to take over any size two bases that the enemy AI has recently placed in the water. Sometimes I have to support with an IotD, or a cruiser to knock off the base garrison.

These bases are small, and generally too far away for me to support effectively at this point in the game, but I can usually collar one every 2-3 turns if I am at war with two AI factions.

What I do with these bases is just give them away. I give one to each of three factions that I want alliance with, and when I get to the end of the list I start over at the top. This makes the AI swear pact and keeps it in a magnanimous mood to me throughout most of the game. It also puts the factions I gift in close proximity to each other, and war follows, usually off and on among all AI factions.

Now that my allies are at war with each other, they begin harrasing me to break pacts, but I always refuse, and as long as I keep giving away water bases I will see no rep hit.

This has the further advantage of allowing me to stage out of far away bases that my AI allies maintain. As the game goes on, factions will be eliminated and the AI pacts with each other will change, but you can use this strategy until there are only three factions left, and hopefully by that time alliances cease to matter.

posted 03-10-99 03:28 PM ET            

Esspecially Miriam is the victim of this behavior. After all, does any of you ever use fundamentalism? That means you antagonize Miriam as soon as democracy becomes available. And Miriam can't afford to be antagonized, because she needs your friendship. The same goes for Yang.

I can think of some things that could be used instead of SE:
Lal: going to war. having a bad rep. committing atrocities, not voting for him.
Deirdre: pollution.
Morgan: Nothing. He just wants pacts. After all, he benefits most.
UoP: Not sharing techs with him.
Yang: Having more pop. than him.
Santiago: Being military stronger than him.
Miriam: Being in an overall better position.

With these settings, you get a King of the Hill situation. You'll always get yang, santiago and miriam against you if you grow too strong. Morgan's always on your side, but that's mostly in his advantage, especially if he can get 6 pacts. Only deirdre's position is not quite perfect. I would like to see this more than what we've got now.

One last thing: Morgan and I (UoP) had a vendetta. I switched to free market, but he didn't want to see me. After 30 turns, finally he accepted to see me. He demanded 1 tech, which I gave to him. He offered truce, and then a treaty. I then gave him 25 credits, and offered a pact. He consented.

posted 03-10-99 04:37 PM ET            

Pique, that's an interesting variation in the theme of giving away sea bases that I posted earlier. Of course, it's a heckuva lot more efficient to just take other factions' bases and then magnanimously give them away Both you're idea and mine take advantage of the fact that the AI goes gaga when you give away a base to it--even a lousy one.

posted 03-10-99 05:57 PM ET         

Wentworth: That's not exactly true about the AI's SE choices - that is, if we only knew what they were... But we do know what their likes and dislikes are, that's why I went Free Market when I found myself on a large continent with Morgan, even though I had wanted to go Planned because my original strategy featured pop growth at all costs.

Now if I _knew_ their SE choices it would certainly affect my approach to them. If the Hive were Free Market / Wealth / Eudaimonic, I'd certainly perceive them as less of a military threat, at least until the endgame.

You're right about Fundamentalism, though, it's hard to imagine using it unless you _are_ Miriam. In that case, just zero out you Labs allocation and crank out the probes and assault units - a viable strategy, BTW, but best done with Miriam. Here's the case where the "suboptimal" is the best one (indeed, the only "best one"), but only for the Believers.

On initial colony pod seeding, I've noticed that 1) Morgan tends to land either near or right on the Monsoon Jungle (forest?) and 2) the Monsoon Jungle is a highly valued prize by all factions (gee, I wonder why), who make great efforts to intervene there if no one faction had a firm hold on it. Or even if a faction does, they attack it a lot. This might partly explain why Morgan seems to encounter so much hostility at the beginning. It's not Morgan they're after, its the Jungle!

Well, off to try out some of what I've picked up here on my current game. Goal: get a pact with Sparta and get Gaia to surrender.

posted 03-10-99 06:59 PM ET            

Analyst, if you want to read about my situation that I got into while playing the Gaians, read the "I'm the meat in a whoop-a*s sandwitch!" thread that I posted about a week ago. I was in the exact same situation, and got hit by a three way assault by three different factions IN THE SAME TURN! The coordination of the attack was brilliant, although Im sad to say that it was probably coincidential that the factions all struck at the same time, and was not premeditated. But I made it through okay, and squashed out the bad guys in a massive attack that was so successful that I was five times larger than the second place faction. So there is light at the end of the tunnel; you're just gonna get roughed up a bit before you get there

posted 03-11-99 10:34 AM ET            

Now, for the next thrilling chapter in my Morganite experiment My plan to turn another one of the AI factions into a Pact brother didn't quite work out. After I got what I deemed a sufficient amount of helicopters built, sunspots blacked out communications with other factions (forgot to turn off random events this game). Unfortunately, this happened before I began Stage II of my recovery plan, social engineering and bribery. so I got stuck for 20 years with three enemy factions.

Now, for the *real* bad news: the moment the communications blackout went into effect, Lal hit me with a PB. I hadn't been paying much attention to him because he'd been reduced to five bases and was no longer a military threat in my mind. While I wasn't paying attention, he built a PB and instantly launched it at the first suspot blackout opportunity. His targeting was interesting. He didn't take out my HQ or any base with a Special Project. Instead, he targeted the base I was using as a staging area for preparing my assault against Yang. That base had about 20 or so conventional military units stacked in it, massing for a wave attack to coordinate with my copters. Fortunately, my helicopters were based elsewhere (kind of spread out).

The good news is that with my copter force intact, I was able to convert some other units to drop units and proceed with a helicopter wave/drop unit assault that has left Yang, Dierdre and Lal all decimated. The University is still my Pact brother. The Spartans were wiped out long ago. That leaves Miriam as the number two faction, and her military, as usual, is badly out of date, so that's just a mop-up job. The PB thing was discouraging, but well short of a fatal event. I think I'll aim for orbital defense pod tech before taking on Miriam, though.

Player1, your copter observation is more evidence that my theory of the AI mimicing the human strategy is right (even if I did get PBed by Lal last night). The AI builds a lot of copters in my games. It doesn't use them well, but it builds them. In the game I'm playing now, UofP has built quite a few copters and given them to me to help me contain the agression of our mutual enemies.

Agoraphobe, I haven't noticed that any one faction gets seeded into Monsoon Jungle more than any other in my games, though it is the case that the only time I was ever seeded into the Jungle (played about 30 demo games) was when I was Morgan (not the game I've been talking about). I'll certainly second your observation that the AI values the Jungle territory extremely highly. With good reason I might add, since the faction controlling the Jungle always shoots out to an early lead in my games.

posted 03-11-99 11:06 AM ET            

When the AI decides to push the big red button, it seems to have a very specific criterion on what to attack. I remember a post where someone speculated that the AI chooses the lucky recipient of the PB to be whichever city has the largest total number of offensive attack points. By this, I mean that if you have a city with three 8-4-1 units,the total offensive attack points for that city is 24. So if you're getting ready to mount an invasion, and are storing a large number of offensive units in one city, this will be a primary target should the AI decide to launch a nuke.

Of course if you have a PB of your own in one of your cities, that city will be the AI's primary target (one PB has an offense of 99).
A good experiment would be to build a large number of offensive units whose points total up to more than 99, and store them all in one city when an AI planet bust is inevitable. Place a PB in another city, and see which one gets nuked. My money is on the city with the higher attack value.

This also proves something else that's interesting. When I got nuked in my last game, the AI hit my city which held my single PB. I reloaded the game and moved the PB to a new city to see if anything changed. Sure enough, the AI struck the location of the PB again. When I reloaded a third time and moved the PB to an allied city which was at peace with the offending faction, they nuked the city which held the largest number of offensive units. This not only firms up my assumption about targeting, but also indicates that the AI has complete infiltrator data on all of your cities; even if they haven't infiltrated your datalinks!!
In this particular game, the offending faction (or any other) had NEVER hit me with a probe team; yet they knew where all my units were!

posted 03-11-99 12:39 PM ET            

As a rule, I also play with random events turned off, for the same reason Analyst has detailed here and in other threads...the AI just does not handle them as well as players do.

Player1, while you were getting busted, was the random events toggle on or off? Were sunspots in effect? I am very curious to find the AI's PB 'trigger.'

One other odd thing I've noticed, kind of unrelated. In my last game, Miriam had declared war on me as usual, even though we were across the globe from each other and had had no unit-to-unit contact. I happened to capture an IotD with a boil level worm on it while exploring the ocean, and dropped the worm off on the Believer continent when I passed by there.

Well the first couple of years, the worm sat in fungus and was attacked maybe twice by some weak Believer units, and then I started running it out of the fungus, killing maybe a former or destroying a mine, then going back to heal up.

The believers began to make 'runs' at the thing, then just passing by with their units. They would fly by it with needlejets once every two or three turns, things like that, but never made any serious effort to kill it.

In all, I kept that single unit doing terrorist activity on the Believers continent for well over 150(!) years, and they never killed it. When, towards the end of the game, I got to that corner of the world and began mopping up the continent, I found it was absolutely FULL of empath and trance units...it seems this is all Miriam built for the long decades my worm sat on the continent, but yet she never made a serious move against my single lone mindworm. Crazy. I am trying this out again in my current game, and so far my terrorist worm is ~50 years old...

posted 03-11-99 01:21 PM ET            

Analyst & Player1: I was under the impression that the AI had total visibility on both the map and your cities. Someone (might even have been you Analyst) stated that the AI build queues were constructed with input from what was in your build queues. If so this would readily explain how I and others can see the AI with masses of choppers, since I love them, and some few other people see no choppers in AI factions since they don't build them themselves. If the AI weights its build queues based on your build queues the lack of choppers would logically enough result in a low build priority for AI choppers, and thus the lack of them being built.

Finally, on the random events issue. I will agree that some of them seem to harm the AI but I have found that the bad events universally happen to the front runner, thus evening out the game to some extent. Also I firmly believe that a PB trigger is sunspots or the revocation of the UN Charter. Since I won't let the revocation through, I'll bribe to high heaven to prevent it in fact, the only real PB trigger seems to be the sunspots. Thus I tend to play with random events turned on.

Oh, Player1, interesting theory on the targeting of AI PBs. I'll bet 1000 energy that you are right. But I have this question.... "if you did all that reloading to determine AI PB targeting you're not really being very Ironman are you!" <sticks out tongue and makes loud raspberry at you>

posted 03-11-99 01:23 PM ET            

Speaking of probe teams, I got a minor jolt last night. I had a probe team in a base destroyed by an enemy probe team, even though I had the HSA project. It seems that the game moves directly to resolving probe v probe combat *before* checking to see if the HSA should destroy the enemy probe team. I don't know if that's a bug or a deliberate feature, but it sure doesn't seem right.

I'll tell you one thing. I'm getting sick of watching Prokhar march about a dozen state-of-the art offensive units back and forth between two of his cities instead of going out there and hitting Dierdre with them. The corrdinate battle plans feature doesn't change his behavior. He just keeps shuffling his units back and forth. The more I observe the repetitive and inane unit movements of my Pact Brothers/Sisters the harder it becomes to convince me that any progress has been made with this AI at all.

Pique, what a story! Dramatically demonstrates how easy it is to pimp the "reactive" AI into building expensive, specialized units. Also demonstrates how far this AI really is from being capable of any form of sensible defensive or counter-attack strategies. As long as you attack it, instead of waiting for it to attack you, it's helpless.

posted 03-11-99 05:29 PM ET            

One of the sharp distinctons between Player1's playing style and my own is his inclination to play for the build, while my own view is that building is simply something one pauses to do to prepare for the next war. I think I've discovered one basis for that difference in my current game, begun in the fashion of emulating Player1's style.

I've become hopelessly addicted to Free Market in this game. My early adoption of Free Market in this game necessitated the early build of Rec Domes and Holo Theaters in all of my core bases, which lead in turn to a much greater focus on brick and mortar infrastructure accross the board because I needed to get all of those psych improving buildings and, well, I could afford it. But this has lead to a viscious cycle. Now that I've got all of those expensive shiny buildings, I gotta pay for them. Free Market is the difference between scraping by and really living.

Of course, with Free Market and Democracy, Police power is useless, so I've been fitting out my base defenders as Clean Trance units instead of Police. So if I want to switch social agendas to my more accustomed Police oriented choices, I'll have to expensively upgrade all of my units first, which I need to keep Free Market to pay to do, but I always seem to spend the energy credits on something else first, etc. It's an unbreakable cycle.

Plus, with those air units and units out of base causing drone creation, I've had to really keep a tight reign on my air force and massive military operations, leading naturally to more focus on base building, etc.

You all can see the point here (I hope--I'm kind of rambling). Essentially, my faction isn't in a groove so much as a rut. Everything I've done has revolved around that Free Market social engineering choice and doing without it leaves me without an offsetting advantage for the loss of economy. My faction is addicted to Free Market. [It's how I picked that fight with the Gaians that I wasn't really ready for--I had to get off of Green and get back to Free Market and to hell with the Gaians and what they'd think of that!]

posted 03-11-99 06:44 PM ET            

But for good reason. Instead of building up a large military, I keep going back to building up the infrastructure of my cities. The result (about 150 turns later) is a whole continent full of cities gushing so much cash I can't spend it fast enough. The mentality is: whenever I'm presented the opportunity to build a military unit, I tell myself "Well, a new tree farm or energy bank wouldn't hurt. Aw hell, I'll just build my Chaos rover next turn!" And this goes on for the entire game. Sure, I've got a decent military, but its only big enough to guard what's mine and thats it. The other problem is, these built up cities are spitting out techs so fast that by the time I finish a new military unit, it's already obsolete!

But that's not to say that it's not possible to build up a massive invasion force. You see, energy credits are an incredible boon to industry as well. In all my games, everything I build only takes half as many resources (and turns) to build than normal because I always pay for the second half of production with my surplus energy credits. After all, when you're raking in 1500 credis a turn, you've got plenty to spare. Of course, you're still hopelessly addicted to making even MORE cash... until some fool decides to hit you with a PB. That's when the $hit really hits the fan. At this point, your income is so enormous that you can build the army of darkness in three turns. In fact, that's exactly what happened in my last game. After I siezed a modest 6 cities from my foe, he promptly nuked one of my peaceful cities. I responded with a swarm of locusts five turns later, and captured all 25 of his cities another 5 turns later.

So the moral of the story is, the free market factions are late-bloomers; their military performance early on is mediocre, but if left unmolested, they will grow so powerful that no army on planet can even dream of stopping them.

absimilard: Even Ironmen have their off days

posted 03-11-99 07:09 PM ET            

I have found that the low military problems of free market are easily solved for me. I typically devote one city to punishment sphere/all production-stuff construction. This city then builds hordes of clean air units, ground units, etc. If another city builds military I then send it off to the punishment-sphere city and 'home' it there. Voila, no drones!!!!! All the military you can build!!!!! (tactic stolen shamelessly from my betters on the SMAC dictionary thread See 'Army Laundering')

Even so I am far more peaceful than you Analyst. Not that I have grievances with your bloody style, it sounds incredibly effective. It is just that my play style has always (CIV, MOO, MOM, CIV II, MOO II, etc) been that of a builder. If I have to fight (Yang, Miriam, Bueller, anyone.... ) I'll pummel my opponent into submission pact or death, but if given the option I'd rather form a pact or treaty and build, Build, BUILD!!!!!!

BTW Player1, I was just kidding ya.

posted 03-11-99 09:01 PM ET            

Of course, you can also build up that beastly army by jacking up your psych level, but that means less energy and tech.

Now that I think about it, when I launched my Behemoth Blitzkrieg in my last game, I had no support problems, despite having several units outside of each city. Although, I did have golden-ages in nearly every city before hand, so drone-riots were a mute possibility anyway.

posted 03-11-99 10:41 PM ET            

I confess I'm with player1 and absimiliard when it comes to the build strategy vs. the warmonger approach...I just enjoy that style of game more, always have. This leads to some tough starts, I'll admit, but once you get rolling...

I also use the punishment sphere strategy, but typically I build it in two or three seperate cities around my empire, so I won't have to travel my units that far to reassign them. To pay for them, the sphere cities need large mineral income. Typically, what I will do is go to either the north or south edge of the map with a few formers and build first an airbase, then tons of boreholes. I will ferry supply crawlers out there from the support cities and send back massive mineral amounts without altering the temperature (food production) too much near my civilization, and station 'copters out there to protect the crawlers (before these advances are available I'll just protect with my navy). Later in the game, after you get all the multipliers for mineral production, the output in these cities becomes ENORMOUS! This of course leads to native life problems around the area, etc., but the game is usually close to over by that time.

BTW, I usually play with the slow tech advances option toggled on, so some of the multiplier facilities come relatively late in the game.

As far as you Ironmen, I probably shouldn't even dare to post on this thread, as while I play Trancend, I get SMAC shutting down on me about once every two hours (no error msg., game just closes for no apparent reason) so I really have to reload my last autosave turn or face MAJOR frustration from two hours of wasted game play. I AM mentally strong enough to just 'take it' when I lose a combat I thought I could win or open a pod and find myself surrounded by 8 great boils...

posted 03-12-99 12:32 AM ET            

Pique: Don't sweat it, in my book not restarting just to redo battles/pod-openings constitutes Ironman. I really was just razzing Player1 in fun. No malice intended. And frankly, if SMAC crashes on you that often (you have my most sincere condolences BTW) I would start from autosave constantly too.

Now, on more serious matters.....

Current general strategy for those who care:
Currently I am of this theory on playing SMAC, deep regards to CEO Bernard et al in the Morganic strategy thread. (BTW this will NOT work in multiplayer games, humans will spot and counter this strategy WAY TOO FAST) For now I am in favor of a three-pronged strategy regarding city development.
First: I have one city build my headquarters, thus reducing efficiency penalties to 0. This city builds solely supply crawlers and research/economy boosting projects/improvements. Combined with this I devote a HUGE number (min. 5) of my formers to creating a massive area of solar collectors and echelon mirrors. They also raise this area's altitude up to 3000+ metres. All other supply crawlers 'home' to this city. All of this cities supply crawlers go to the 'University Energy Fields' and convey energy to my city. This results in a massive inflow of cash and research in this city.
Second: One, sometimes two, of my cities build morale improvements/punishment spheres/and mineral-boosting improvements. These cities then produce the bulk of my military units. Any other military units I produce, or am gifted with, are 'homed' to these cities. This gives me a military I can support even in a Free Market.
Third: All other cities produce predominantly research-boosters/economy-boosters/drone-suppressors. I.E. all my other cities just produce and efficiently use energy. These 'third-tier' cities also produce special projects not suited to my first, or second, tier cities.

Pique(again): You bet my 'second-tier' cities just swarm with eco-damage. Just like yours. I just keep extra empath rovers around them. Heck, the extra energy from planet-pearls does me good!

Player1: "thousands of citizens will be zapped into submission by the sphere-o-pain" Bah, I typically play Zakharov. I'm not supposed to be a 'nice-guy'! I'm an immoral SOB devoted only to science . More pertinently, I believe your comments, from long ago, about the AI thinking in offense/defence terms on a 'base' level are correct. My experience would seem to validate the theory that the AI bases its decisions on 'base vs. base' conflict, generally ignoring armies in the field. On the other hand I wouldn't take that theory too far......

Lastly: Has anyone tested the effects of the Ocean Based Strategy' in the Strategy and Tactics forum on TI level play? Yes, Analyst, I know it is a strategy designed to exploit the AI's lack of competency at sea. But it is balanced by the early-game lack of minerals, I think. In any case I'm curious what TI players think of it.

posted 03-12-99 12:51 AM ET            

With "Clean Reactor" and a Punishment Sphere you can field Vast Armies and still keep the stock exchanges open past midnight ...

I play Morgan, usually on Green / Wealth, but I really hated the Morale penalty, so I went Free Market / Knowledge ... so that I could go to war. Ironic, eh?

I built The Ascetic Virtues (it might be out of character, but it brings some balance into the lives of the hab-hogs) and found it made Free Market warfare pretty comfortable. Laundering through a Punishment Sphere makes it even more so.

Oh yeah, and borehole temperature changes aren't a problem if you grow forests, which you should on a base with a Punishment Sphere, which should be at low altitude anyway so you can launder ships through it. High production at this base is good because the more it produces the more flexibility you have on "Clean Reactor". (I don't put Clean Reactors on my ships, for instance.)

posted 03-12-99 07:19 AM ET         

yep, This was my 3th Transcend, Ironman, Tech Stag, blah blah blah game. I thought about using it because I was on a small island (the little patch of land all the way center-north of Planet. 6 land cities, about 13 sea colonies. I couldn't follow my usual strategy since sea coloy pods and sea formers cost much more to make (so I was vastly out colonized, Morgan had about the same amount of cities as I did!). Most of my colonies were near small patchs of land (usually about 6 square of land) and/or near a mineral patch so the production problem was solved. The only trouble I had was not being able to build all the early secret projects (missed out on Merchant Exchange, and a few others). WARNING THOUGH: Do not build near large continents unless you plan to have land cities near (esp. half surrounding) your sea colony real soon. If you do you're bound to be near 2 or 3 aggressors. I found my cities easier to defend too, except in the case of missles. Hard to support cities without magtubes. Expect to design a lot of specialist naval and air units.

A neat sea patrolling maneveur--I use generic crusiers 1-1-8 (sub, radar) as cheap mobile patrolling sensors (were I expect to lose a few). After that sea game, I use these excessively. Right now I'm putting Psi armor on them for obvious tactical defense reasons. Until I find reasons to hate'em, I just love'em right now! When I detect something I move in my carriers or crusiers and mow them down.

The strategy is mostly for specific areas. I doubt it'll be very effective if you're on a continent or want a lot of production. Wealth and Research come easy though. As for Nessus mining stations, survive to that point first. It's a long way to go. Especially, production wise to get a lot of satellites up.

posted 03-12-99 09:02 AM ET            

You all seem to be employing enormously more involved and complex terraforming strategies than I have ever done, myself. I'm big on trees. Plant 'em once. Watch 'em grow. Methinks, now, that I better understand the thin margin I'm operating on in my Morganite game and why it's been such a struggle (and why I'm addicted to Free Market). I'm clearly behind the curve in maximizing my terrain resources in a build game and can learn a lot from looking over your virtual shoulders.

Tell me though: what's going to happen to all of your pretty solar collectors, condensors and boreholes (and, therefore, your whole strategy) in a multiplayer game when I show up with my massive military and pilliage your lands down to the bare soil? mwuhahahahaha! Seriously, I've had a number of easy victories in multiplayer Civ II against people who spend the early part of the game building structures instead of units. In the great guns v butter development question, y'all better be prepared to shift your focus to guns in the multiplayer setting. I'm not going to be as passive as the AI in letting you build up peacefully. [Hollow threat, actually, as it's difficult for me to picture playing a lot of multiplayer SMAC for reasons I detailed in the Constructive Criticism thread.]

posted 03-12-99 10:14 AM ET            

Also, I believe I did mention that my terraforming strategy was innapropriate for MP play. Although since 'University Energy Fields' is always surrounded by my cities (I leave a 5X10 or so stretch unused in my midst for this special purpose) that area is reasonably difficult to blitz. Though a PB would do HORRIBLE things to it my main MP concern would not be for the terrain enhancements but for my enemies trashing my supply crawlers all just sitting around there. Very vulnerable to a suicide chopper strike.

posted 03-12-99 10:20 AM ET            

ViVicdi: As far as I know you did pioneer the PS strategy, and it is one of many I have stolen from the excellent people on this board. I have not ever used them for captured bases, as typically by the time I start my 'sweep the world' campaign, the game is almost over, and the bases are only important to me in that they are now mine and not the AI's. I usually have nutrient sats galore by this time, and I do not hesitate to put as much of a captured bases pop into specialization as is neccessary to maintain control of it. If I do get into a war of conquest early (not often) I will change my social choices to strengthen police ratings, and put as many 1-1-1 police units in my bases as neccessary to maintain order (another tactic garnered from this group).

Sea bases- I only build them if I need something to give away in an emergency and can't find one to capture (as per Analyst). I REALLY dislike them...

absimiliard: I've never built your 'solar city,' but I'm going to have to try it. I do usually try to build one super research facility with as many research facilities and SP's as I can put in it. I think I depend way too much on Probe Teams to stay on top in research for most of the game. This doesn't put me too far on top, mind, but usually the AI's have different advances, and if I can get them all plus whatever I manage to find on my own I'm a little ahead all the time.

My first priority on contact is always to infiltrate databanks, then I usually just start ferrying probe teams across constantly and stealing tech until they have nothing I do not. I usually do not engage in any probe activity besides these two options. I have tried massive credit diversion against the AI but it may take me 10 probe team insertions to steal 100 energy credits- just not worth the effort (not to mention the occasional dead probe team) IMHO.

posted 03-12-99 12:40 PM ET            

Analyst: You want to know what my incredibly complex algorithim for terraforming and construction consists of? Forests, lots of them! And that's pretty much it.
Surprised? There are several reasons for this:
1) Forests expand into nearby squares, which cuts down on terraforming times
2) Forests are easy to plant, and take about a QUARTER the time to terraform as opposed to a road/farm/solar square
3) A forest square can potentially yield the highest output of ANY terriformed square when coupled with a tree-farm and hybrid-forest (3/2/3) per square.

Basically, the only squares where I do NOT plant forests are in rainy rolling squares, in which case I will build farm/solar improvements. Exceptions are on mountains, where I will build the forementioned "Solar City" that someone here posted. And of course, you can't plant forests in rocky terrain; I build a mine/road, and then build a supply crawler to retrieve the minerals (since the square is only outputting one type of resource, its perfect for crawlers)

Forests have ANOTHER advantage (as if they weren't good enough). You can build boreholes in nearby squares without worrying about negative ecological consequences. Forests REDUCE eco-damage due to terriforming, and as someone already mentioned, the resulting rising temperatures have NO EFFECT on forest squares? And if you ever decide to replace your forests with another improvement, you get 5 free resources for "harvesting" the trees!

posted 03-13-99 02:19 AM ET         

My current favorite unit--Submarine repair deck carries with clean reactor radar heliocopters. I send these out to enemy unit rich areas and pick them off and for exp.

In reference to someone who said point of game is to win: Seriously, after so many different victories. . the point of the game ISN"T to win anymore. The point of the game is to play , winning is just something along the way. Anyone disagrees?