posted 04-08-99 12:52 PM ET     

I'm playing Hive on the second hardest level and now I've come to the point where I must soon decide how to deal with Spartans. I'm finishing off Believers with a little help from UoP (they've actually managed to take a few cities). In short the situation is this:

Map is large with lots of water.

I have pretty much all of the southern part of the planet with the exception of a streak of land that belongs to UoP. My main continent, where I begun (with PK, who found it necessary to pack their belongings to a Pod and move elsewhere looking for friendlier neighbors) is a bit to the east of the middle of the map. To the west is UoP. (They are there because I was a nice guy and gave them back all the cities Believers had conquered from UoP after I had conquered them. They were saved because Miriam had no marines and apparently no navy either and I got air power just in time to help by beating out every Believer unit in area, which bought me time to build a force and land it to the base that held Citizens Defence Force, simplifying the rest of it. It's somewhat strange to actually have a loyal ally for a change instead of everyone having a vendetta on me.) UoP continent is a narrow north-south one, unconveniently forcing my transports to take a detour when moving west. Connected to the south is a small island with two cities (mine, ex-Miriam, ex-Morgan) and that links to Miriam's heartlands. Or linked, since that's mine now. Anyways, that's a nice bunch of cities and all that remains of Miriam is about 5 cities, 3 of which I'll be able to take within few turns. Rest are seabases so they'll take some time to travel to, but that's not the problem.

The problem is Santiago, who has the north side of the map all to herself. There's half dozen ex-PK, currently Spartan cities near where Believers will soon cease to be and since my troops will be in that area the logical next step is to take them all. Lal has nearly been destroyed by Spartans, but that threat should vanish since I just start to get copters and I'm flying them over to the war-zone and I have a treaty with PK (they have just two cities and warned me of their practically invincible 1-2-1 synthmetal garrison, of all things). So after I take out the Spartan presence there I have two options (btw I took out Morgan earlier, Miriam disliked people running naked through the woods):

A. From where my troops are, divide them to two and move east and west taking out the small sea-bases, eventually reaching Spartan continent from two directions. At the same time build huge army (land, copters and planes) and when Spartans have been contained, march over them. I expect that it will be just a matter of marching over them by the time I'm finished with the sea-bases. A potential problem is stretching my troops too thin (I'm low on interceptors, for example, and for all practical purposes, my ships are just transports) and the attack grinds to a halt. Gain is that I get time to build a sizable army and undertake plan B without difficulty. I have maybe 20 troops, most with amphibious pods. Handful of planes, mostly interceptors.

B. Forget the marginal little seabases, amass my troops and strike directly to the Spartan continent. It is located directly north of where my heartlands and UoP are. Also because of two sea-bases UoP has north of my continent, it is within striking distance by needlejets, but too far for copters, before I can take a seabase at the south coast of the continent, after which I can really deploy them. There's six sea-bases and one that is in the coast by a bay that stretches inland. If I take that one, I have the middle of the continent at my fingertips, but on the other hand it means they can attack from every direction. A somewhat better variation is to take a city at the sw corner and expand from there. I still need at least one sea-base because copters lack range. This gives me less time to build up forces, but the gathering and cleanup of the half dozen Spartan cities will take enough time that I'll have considerable amount of copters, perhaps a couple more needlejets and some more troops, but...

Basically I feel I must keep pressure on Santiago. I'd like to avoid delays, since Santiago is harassing UoP and that means they're getting too close to me. I don't ususally play conquering game since this is really a bit too tedious for my taste, so I'd like some advice on how to proceed. My dozen or so well-developed cities can make new units on the average in maybe 5-7 years. So that's the army expansion rate.

posted 04-08-99 01:58 PM ET            

1) rushing their entire force to defend against the needlejet attacks and away from your invasion

2) turn production over to building AAA units that will prove useless against your infantry and speeder invasion.

posted 04-09-99 08:56 AM ET         

I have 20+ troops there, though only about half of them are marines, unfortunately (I thought the number was higher). Two troop transports and two destroyers plus growing number of copters and interceptors, though I expect them to be less useful now, since after the early success of Hive Air Force (which was the key element in the quick liberation of captured UoP territory and the push to the brink of Believer main territory), the opponents have learned their lesson and good AAA seems to be the trend in the military circles there. Also they have interceptors, which meant that I had to build them too to avoid having my penetrators being wiped out (when they weren't being wiped out by AAA defenders). Definitively the glory days of HAF are over and they are in practice reduced to weakening non-AAA defended bases and lone units and protecting the transports from harm. BTW, we both have shard weapons, but their armour seems to be level 3, while mine is 5 (just got 6 but I think the next stage will be over before I'll have new units using that). I'm building up another transportful of marines so that would mean about 30 ground units when I reach the shore of Spartan continent, provided that next stage (take over sea-bases between where my army is now and Spartan continent, starting from the one building PB) goes as painlessly as war has gone thus far. Add to that the copters and needlejets, or what will be left of them.

I realized from your post that I've been waging this war with pretty much "more is better and if I don't need it now I am not going to need it later" attitude. I noticed that I've completely forgotten artillery, but since one shard-armed ground unit can wipe out one defender without softening by artillery, it doesn't seem to matter. Likewise my navy is two ships (soon three) plus three or four transports (minimum necessary to haul units around with convenient speed). If Spartans weren't so far away, I wouldn't have a navy, just a few transports. I thought of telling in more detail how the war went to this point, but it appears to have been just an application of raw power. "I made lots of troops and walked over them" doesn't sound so good in retrospect.

So they are building AAA units, which in one sense makes life easier, and HAF less useful (though if I had that artillery I could soften a base with that before air attack, luckily I have those ships to do that with shore and sea bases).

As for the feint move. Nice idea, but I'd really need a navy to do that, since with the exception of the fathermost shore bases, the bases in continent are outside of needlejet range. And I thought navy would be a waste of resources. So it looks like I've managed to exclude all smart strategies. Thus far I've always won by transcendece, so I've never really needed good offensive tactics (in terms of units supporting each other, and it shows).