posted 04-05-99 02:51 PM ET        

I�m playing a small map, toughest difficulty, University. For much of the game I've been wealth or knowledge, green then free market, and frontier then democracy.

ASAP, I went democracy, free market and wealth. I've been happily that for most of the beginning and mid game.

I started out on the largest (but not by much) continent with Morgan on a peninsula to my north and Spartan on the other half to the northeast. I met the Spartan�s first, and quickly realized I had to eliminate them. Fortunately, the Morgans and the Spartans were at war. Thus, the Spartans were nice enough to offer me, whenever I asked, truce after truce. I �broke� (right click Spartan on diplomacy, click �Get off my land,� and Voila! End of truce on my turn) several truces with them and made them �flee� with 4-1-2 rovers.

Fortunately, the Spartans gave me two bases far away from mine on the other corner of the continent, enabling me to quickly colonize. Also, they were nice enough to leave a base next to the borehole cluster. With a few supply rovers, I�m happily minting SP after SP within 10-20 turns apiece. My original colonies are also pumping out SPs.

To make all this peaceful expansion possible, the Gaians and the Believers were sharing another continent. The believers gradually took colony by colony from the Gaians (my pact brothers). While they were busy doing that, I was growing. The Hive was busy attacking Lal (I assume, don�t know where Lal is) and Morgan.

Now, its midgame, and I�ve got 8 attack vs Hive and Miriam�s 5 attack. But luckily I don�t need to use any troops. The Hive is at peace with me, and even though Miriam declared vendetta, her troops never get to me because she�s also in a major naval war with the Hive. Every turn, they�re destroying one another�s 5-3-4 sea units.

That leaves happy ole me to create the mother of all infrastructures.

posted 04-19-99 03:56 PM ET            

Playing PKs, I land inland next to a river (which I later find out is REALLY long). Sort of like Planet's Amazon or something. Anyway, I start pod popping, and out of 3 supply pods in my starting base's radius, all 3 of them are monoliths.

Later I expanded and got more good sites. The Garland Crater was in the southwest part (condenser in the bottom kicks ass) and the Borehole Cluster was in the northwest. The Monsoon Jungle was on an island due south of me. Still haven't finished that game yet. Last thing I did was drop a fission PB on The Hive.

posted 04-19-99 03:56 PM ET            

Playing PKs, I land inland next to a river (which I later find out is REALLY long). Sort of like Planet's Amazon or something. Anyway, I start pod popping, and out of 3 supply pods in my starting base's radius, all 3 of them are monoliths.

Later I expanded and got more good sites. The Garland Crater was in the southwest part (condenser in the bottom kicks ass) and the Borehole Cluster was in the northwest. The Monsoon Jungle was on an island due south of me. Still haven't finished that game yet. Last thing I did was drop a fission PB on The Hive.

posted 04-19-99 05:58 PM ET            

Anyway, my perfect start has ended.

Right after my post, as I was cruising by peacfully, the Hive decided to declare vendetta on me and start letting some believer troop convoys on my shore.

Plus the Hive decided to send their air force over and destroy my formers.

I held them both off, and meanwhile the other factions were eliminated.

All that remained were me, the Spartans, the Believers and the Hive.
--And they decided to repeal the UN Charter.

And on a whim, I decided to try out nerve gas--and believe me, its great.

With no ground support, I was able to pummel the Hive and Believers far, far away. Just about 12 spaces away to be sure-the maximum effective distance my Copters could make suicide runs.

posted 04-19-99 06:54 PM ET         

The start was very unusual. Everybody seems to have been given their own continent except for the Gains and the Spartans. The Spartans wiped out the Gaians quicker than I have ever seen a faction wiped out before so we all had time to build up good civilizations.

I had absolutely no contact with any other faction until the Peace Keepers built the Empath Guild. Almost immediately I had pacts with the Peace Keepers and the Morganites as well as treaties with the Hive and the Spartans. My economic income was incredible.

Then things began to change. One of my western cities revolted and swore allegience to the Hive. I'm think this was because of drone activity and not because of probe teams as I think I already had the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm built. I'm not sure though. Not wanting to let the Hive have a foothold on my continent I quickly built a probe team, bought the city back and made a mental note to pay more attention to the drones. Then I noticed my world map. Having taken over a Hive city it now contained information on the whearabouts of the Hive. I was horrified to see that they occupied the other continent on the northern part of the map. In fact, our continents were both so large that we had borders on both the east and the west. To make matters worse, I did not have much military built up as I had been enjoying peace since planetfall.

Sure enough, the Hive landed and took one of the cities on my eastern shore. I still had a unit near the city when it was taken so I could see what was going on. I couldn't believe it. Yang had at least 40 needlejets fly into the city. This was the most impressive air force I have ever seen this early in the game. There was no way I could match its shear numbers. I had aquired the tech from Yang earlier that allowed me to make my own planes and had some in production but had not yet completed any.

Fortunately for me Yang did not press the attack immediately. I believe that he was in a war with the PK's and possibly the Spartan's as well so he shifted a bunch of planes away. I managed to kill some while they were on the ground but was sustaining heavy losses. Even with the reduced air force I wasn't able to keep pace. Worse, my scouts were reporting that more Hive planes were arriving each year to replace their losses. I did everything I could on the diplomatic front to encourage others to attack the Hive but had very limited success.

Then came the turning point. A probe team managed to slip into the Hive occupied city and engage mind control. Not only did I get the city back but I assumed control over approximately 18 of the Hive's planes! Suddenly I became a major power. I had to spend a couple of turns assigning new home cities to these planes as there were wayyyy too many for that one city to support. I also had to change from Democratic to Planned in order to get the support bonus. This concerned me because my best ally and trading partner, Brother Lal of the Peace Keepers gets ticked when you do that but I really had little choice if I was going to support my army and hit back at the Hive.

Then my second piece of luck kicked in. Brother Lal had informed me once that he was unhappy with my new social engineering choices and I had given him some tech to mollify him. However I was expecting him to cancel our pact at any time. Before he could do that however sunspot activity increased and communications were shut down. Suddenly I could count on 20 years more of the pact with my neighbors to the south.

The Hive war began to swing in my favor. Yang still had far more units than I but he couldn't get them to me without them being destroyed. Our continents are far enough from each other that his planes had to land at a sea base midway between the two. Using the planes I stole from him I was able to destroy what seemed like hundreds of his planes while they were on the runway of the sea base as well as to sink any ships that approached. All the while I was grinding his units away I was building my own invasion force.

Due to the incredible number of Yang's forces I was unable to get a foothold on his continent before the sunspot activity ceased. I wound up loosing my pact with the Peace Keepers and somehow or other Yang managed to convince the Morganites to declare vendetta on me as well. Fortunately the Morganites were way at the southern end of the map and posed little threat.

Finally I managed to get a toehold on Yangs continent. I had taken over two seabases as well as a small landbase and seemed to have cut Yang's existing forces down to a manageble size. He still has a production base rivaling my own though. During this time I improved my infrastructure and built enough secret projects that I was able to switch back to Democracy which allowed me to renew my pact with Brother Lal and the gift of some credits got Morgan to call off the vendetta.

Cut to present day. I have taken two of Yang's major cities and am poised to make an assault on his capital. Losses are expected to be high since he has perimeter defense, scanners, aerospace complexes and well trained troops. I have already lost a couple of hovertanks testing his defenses with little appreciable results. In addition Yang's forces are still making assaults trying to recapture the cities I have taken from him.

When the time comes I must make sure that I take the city as spies have reported the existence of a planet buster. I would not like to leave him in a situation so desperate that he is willing to use it in defiance of UN sanctions. I plan on hitting him hard and fast with a varied attack. I am importing several captured mind worms and some more hovertanks and needlejets from from my continent. I am also building conventinal missiles at the large bases I have captured. The smaller captured bases a producing probe teams. I will lead with the probe teams and have them destroy what defenses they can. Then I will fire my missiles to further soften his troops. I will end the battle with a swarm of hovertanks, mind worms and needlejets. While preparing for this assault I am racing (blindly) up the tech tree to find the method of creating orbital defense pods in case Yang has other planet busters.

Fortunately my pact-brother Lal is between me and the other factions who would aid Yang. He has proven most useful as a shield and I have done my best to support him against his enemies. My occupation of the Hive's attention has allowed Lal to concentrate on the threats posed by Miriam and Santiago. I may need to move troops in to support him later but diplomacy has been succesful in keeping the southern factions fighting among themselves so far. This should give me time to crush Yang before having to actively support Lal.

posted 04-23-99 04:49 PM ET            

Miriam was also a pain for many years, until I booted her from the continent. She made a Sea Colony Pod which escaped just before I took out her last base, a tactic she repeated while that Sea Base was under attack about 50-75 years later.

Santiago started on the other major continent, and quickly took out Deirdre, to my surprise, since I have never played a game without the Gaians being either the primary rival, or a faction which had to be subdued early. Playing against Santiago is a new experience, and I find them very strong on defense. Even though my tech is more advanced, it is necessary to take out the nearby sensors before attacking to be effective. It took many tries to get a foothold on "her" continent, which essentially was done by attacking on both ends, a tactic she could not effectively counter. Santiago's original territory is now mostly taken, and my forces are moving into the territory she took from Deirdre.