posted 04-14-99 01:04 PM ET        

Using Locusts in a 'scorched earth/planet' campaign and as pickets. I have found that a swarm of locust units can pick an entire continent or faction clean in no time. This is only a good idea if you just wish to shut someone down and have no interest or offensive ability to take his territory at the moment. Because, when your through his real estate will be useless . In my last game Morgan had an amazing civilization going. He had tons of boreholes, supply rovers, and mag tubes. Out of the blue he pronounced vendetta on me and I couldn't go toe to toe with him as I was much weaker at the time. Well, I sent over about eight locust swarms and first hit farms/forests/soil enrichers and then mines and boreholes. If you have intelligence on him you can easily call up his base screen and target his most useful squares. In no time his empire collapsed. He couldn't produce anything and his 13+ bases all quickly starved down to 2 or 3 population. Locusts are great because they never need fuel and can hover over the target area forever. This also makes them great pickets for bases on shore squares. I always post a few locust out in the ocean to spy on avenues of approach. This is more useful than ship pickets because they have no terrian restrictions when they need to respond to an enemy unit.

2. Roads are good targets to hit. If you are fighting on an established frontline and are finding it hard to take bases, odds are the faction is making good use of their roadways to regarrison them. I have noticed the Hive is a master at this. If you have weak air units around that you haven't got the money to upgrade, have them hit supply routes. This makes bases fall much faster and also protects you from quick probe attacks when you finally take the base. I've been in situations where Probe teams, from a close enemy base, probe me like three times a turn because of road access from the base I just captured to a close one of theirs. If the roads are gone when you get their. they have to spend more than one turn to probe and are usually dead in the open.

posted 04-14-99 05:24 PM ET         

I've started doing this with powerful factions that are heavily entrenched.
Frankly I dont care if its something I might want later, the only ones I would let remain would be bases around certain terrain monuments.

posted 04-14-99 08:28 PM ET            

Note also that the swarms will "cover" the underlyinf terrain, which means that even if you don't destroy the enhancements the first time, the AI faction cannot use that tile to produce resources. I usually sweep islands and continents clean and then leave locusts standing over the resource "bonus" tiles so that the AI bases have to use the resource-poor tiles and slowly starve or see production grind to a halt [good for factions with huge armies].

The other benefit, of course, is to hit factions that are producing a lot of ecodamage *before* sea levels start to rise ... I always figure I can rebuild everything anew after I take the bases into my fold.