posted 04-04-99 10:35 AM ET        

Death by Gardening

From a naval base (Oceanic Platform I), I built ten Formers and a few Transport Foils and loaded the Formers onto them, shipping them to an island dominated by the Hive, with their ubershields firmly in place. I'd tried a direct assault, but they had a serious tech advantage and it was like throwing sponges at a castle wall (although in Civilisation it would probably have been enough to defeat a battalion of marines :-)). Time for sneakyness. All the formers were unloaded at the far end of the island, and began to plant fungus ALL over it. Some were blown up, and had to be replaced, but that was no problem. After a while, the island was a walking sea of redness. A brief wait until Perihelion, and about twenty mindworms scuttled out of the ooze and levelled Yang's entire faction apart from two bases, which were easily mopped up by by forces. The island became uninhabitable, but I didn't want it anyway, and Miriam was later seen getting beaten senseless as she tried to grab it and met the Wormy Army.

posted 04-04-99 11:15 PM ET            

If you have copters and drop units, send a copter to a base, trash the hell out of it, and drop a unit in to take it over... I got 5 highly guarded bases like this, and only using 1 chopper...

posted 04-05-99 10:56 AM ET            

Mid game, Miriam decided that she was a big girl and threatened me with a PB. I had defense pods, but right before I went on the offensive, a solar flare wiped ALL of them out, and she proceeded to wipe out most of my gathered army. Grrr.

So, I decided to teach her a lesson. I shipped 12 super drop formers over to her continent, and proceeded to make her walk on water, step by step (she was around the freshwater sea for the most part, so it took like 2 turns. The only bases she had left were the sea bases. Boy, did that feel good.

In general, if there is a hard to crack city, TFing it to death is a strat the comp just doesn't deal with.

posted 04-05-99 10:48 PM ET            

(However, if this were the sport of ``flannelled fools'', the worms wouldn't be allowed on the field during the match: the groundsman would see to that.)

posted 04-06-99 03:08 AM ET            

Hope that's cleared it up :-)

posted 04-12-99 12:11 PM ET            

Then you mention clashing rocks, which was Jason (or Iason for the pedants), the Argonauts and one very harassed dove, if I remember correctly...

So who braved Scylla and Charyb[i]dis? Was that Jason chasing his fleece or Odysseus trying to figure out how to get home? I think it was old Odysseus, but it's killing me here.

And for my bizarre strategy...

Miriam, in the jungle, had built her two largest cities next to each other, one of which was her capital and the other contained a PB she had just built.

Being Morgan I had more money than armour, so sailed (or should that be cruised?) a probe cruise into the PB city, bought it, and flew the PB into the capital, trashing both the capital and the other city in one. Very satisfying, if not too clever.

Atheistically,

posted 04-12-99 06:50 PM ET            

Anyway, I like the Scylla and Charyb(i)dis story so I use Charyb(i)dis as my alias on most boards and when I play Half-Life (my real name's Richard :-))

posted 04-13-99 05:56 AM ET            

As for the Odyssey, you all have given me an urge to read it, and I probably will after Les Miserables, which like many other French novels, contain annoying twists of fate which require you to remember characters who only appeared in the first part of the novel for only a couple of pages.

Anyways, the tactic I just informed you of is extremely cheap, and makes it extremely easy to win the game, especially through economic or diplomatic victory.

posted 04-13-99 01:59 PM ET            

"Valjean, at last, we see each other plain
Monsieur le Mayor, you'll wear a different chaiiiinn"

I always laugh when I think of another possible outcome to one of the songs

Valjean : "And so Javert, you see it's true. This man bears no more guilt than you. Who am I?????? I'm Jean Valjean........."

Javert : "We know. We found him innocent. Who did you say you were again?"

As for your base trick - I like that a lot :-)

posted 04-14-99 06:26 AM ET            

As for Les Miserables, I haven't seen the musical, I hope to someday, I'm only about halfway, a small bit after Marius peeps through the hole and sees his father's 'noble' benefactor Thenardier hold up Valjean.

Have any of you read Animal Farm? I've been debating to myself whether it's truly good literature, the idea and all are great, but it sounds like Orwell did a replace all search(though word dindn't exist), replacing instances of Lenin with Old Major, Trotsky with Snowball, etc. The idea is truly great though, and that's where Orwell shines in his books.

I've never actually played far enough to have that kind of technology, I've usually beaten the game soon after getting the fusion reactor. Trading bases really isn't a tactic though, and I've tried to avoid using it, albeit with difficulty.

posted 04-14-99 09:09 AM ET            

I've had some luck with sending choppers and missiles across the oceans and simply destroy every defending unit in range. The enemy then scrambles to get defenses for those bases. This also can help a Pact sibling by destroying all the defenses and letting them take the base.

posted 04-14-99 11:28 AM ET            

For all you Star Wars fans who haven't read the Odyssey, I urge you to read it since they are the same epic told in widely different settings. Each one begins with a young boy (Telemechus/Luke) sitting at home, dreaming of adventure, and wondering what happened to his father, a former war hero. Upon meeting a disguised hermit (Athena/ Kenobe)who promises to help him, the protagonist sets out on a series of adventures to save his father. His father (Odysseus/Anakin) lost his identity after fighting a great battle (Troy/Clone Wars). He is lost (Calypso's island/Dark side of Force) until he can undergo a rebirth, and so on and so forth. The book becomes that much more fascinating to read when you can make the comparisons. Ok, sorry to ramble, but I was thrilled that America's youth was demonstrating its appreciatioin for the classics. As an English teacher, I almost had a heart attack.

posted 04-14-99 11:46 AM ET            

Bit about Greek poetry
Oh, and my favourite SMAC tactic is....

:-)

I quite liked Animal Farm, but personally I didn't find it deep enough to be THAT good, but I'm not a fan of Orwell generally (although I did enjoy 1984 more - it made a change to have a society with so few chinks for an opportunist hero to take advantage of). I do like Catch-22. As for the Star Wars link, I hadn't thought about that - mind you, I hated Star Wars and think the new Episode 1 looks atrocious (and I like sci-fi!). The Odysssey has been retold loads of times, and it's a good story. Hell, even Star Trek : Voyager - a story set in the far future - is just an update.

posted 04-15-99 08:58 AM ET            

Strangely enough, I'm enjoying the literary side of this thread a lot more than the bizarre strategies; I probably haven't even played the game much more than 10 hours. I'm not really all that good, my 'tactic' recently has been the base trading cheat, and I haven't played since I pledged never to do it again. I haven't had time to formulate many tactics, in fact the ones I do have are bad as I tend to attack with infantry/rovers with no defense upgrades and high attack ratings, but they get killed by defenders. Granted, I know what I should be doing, but I haven't seen a need to improve as of now.

One of my friends tried telling me that Fantine symoblized the people of France, Valjean and Marius the two revolutions, or something like that, and though it does make some sense, a couple loose ends exist. Right now, I'm just wondering about it, but not knowing much about French History, I can't say much.

Do any of you ever have the strange feeling that somewhere out there, there's a better form of government? Or is it just me?

Well, as I sit here wondering whether I will check out the Odyssey or the Tale of Two Cities tomorrow, I know that if I do the wondering offline, it will lead to a lower phone bill and a better quality of life.

oh, and if by the way, America's Youth was a reference to me, I happen to be Japan's youth , though culturally I'm practically everything but Japanese. Don't worry though, I know a great guy who lives a short distance away from San Francisco who spends his time reading the classics, and by that I mean the kind of stuff Hugo considered classic.

posted 04-15-99 11:56 AM ET            

As for Fantine, I hadn't heard that one. The literary thread is novel really given the nature of the topic :-)

My idea of a utopian society is not yet possible, and requires more technology - I'm not an optimist, but I have sketched it out.

posted 04-16-99 05:51 AM ET            

As it is friday night and I want plenty of time to get killed by the annoying AI who'll probably beat me even when I have 9 to 2 odds, I'll cut this one short.

posted 04-17-99 03:47 AM ET            

I'm also a bit partial to Clancy's book as well as the Bond movies, but I think of them more as a form of entertainement than anything else; Clancy novels aren't all that bad but I was comparing them with the classics, and the Clancy wannabes are what really annoy me. On a similar note, travel guides aren't bad either, I doubt they were ever meant to stand the test of time.

Dumas novels are good, I haven't been able to find the sequel to the Three Musketeers, not the Man in the Iron Mask, but there's a book in between, I believe the title is something like, Twenty Years After. The Count of Monte Cristo is great, and it happens to be that I just started A Tale of Two Cities, which I'm really enjoying.

I'm glad there's more of us out there, as every day there's probably less people you can chat with about good novels.

I hate to do this, but I'm going to have to disrupt the pattern of this thread by not saying a single thing about SMAC.

posted 04-17-99 03:49 AM ET            

so i will just change it

The Do It Yourself Guide to Taking Over the World

Step 1 > STart a cult. preferably extermist in order to justify your insanity

Step 2 > buy lost of guns and bombs and ****

Step 3 > send your minions out to KILL KILL KILL

Step 4 > bask in the glory of being HUMAN BEING NUMBER ONE

posted 04-17-99 08:30 PM ET            

Strangely enough, I just started a game on the Map of Planet, transcend mode, with time warp on, and I've found it extremley easy, I'm the second most dominant of the factions, and with luck i'll be able to conquer a couple using amphibious guys. Not an obscure tactic, but I just find the ease with which I'm playing transcend mode a bit surprising.

posted 04-18-99 04:30 AM ET            

I know Natguy responded, but I responded back to his post, but it doesn't sound like he'll be back antyime soon, same with our other learned friend, Genghis Sean.

It's true about the difficulty of SMAC, I'm basically good at strategy games, except that the time required to contemplate one's moves gets to my head, and thus I tend to lose in long games of anything, including Chess, even Gin at times. The beginning is hard, but to me the end is harder as I slowly lapse into a pattern of randomly building base improvements at all my bases and basically forgetting about conquest.

posted 04-18-99 05:00 AM ET            

PLEASE DONT DELETE MY POSTS (heavy sarcasm)

its all right boys and girls

just play nice now and ol' alphaman wont have to come hurt you

posted 04-18-99 02:51 PM ET         

Dune Messiah was bad, but Children of Dune is better.

The God Emperor of Dune is also interesting, but Frank Herbert gets to be really pretentious in that book.

posted 04-18-99 03:02 PM ET         

Dune Messiah was bad, but Children of Dune is better.

The God Emperor of Dune is also interesting, but Frank Herbert gets to be really pretentious in that book.

posted 04-19-99 03:37 AM ET            

Both of the "The Lord of..." books are really good, each in its own way...

posted 04-23-99 01:06 PM ET         

Like I have a ton of free time for that!