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Author Topic:   Psychological Warfare in MultiP

StargazerBC posted 04-23-99 11:26 AM ET
Didn't see any topics for this so here goes:
I usually play with other people and this seems relavent. I use to do certain annoying stuff (of course, I do not use strategies I've talked about)

1. Crank out rovers and just move'em near your enemy back and forth. Hide in fungus to heal.
2. Use mindworms early on if you're playing Gaia. They're cheap and morally strong infantry (including the 3-2 attack bonus) in the early game.
3. My personal favorite. If I have the Mass Transit SP (one that let's you start at 3 pop) I send about 6-9 colony pods to build'em right smack, as close as possible, to enemy bases. This'll steal their resource space. Don't bother defending them. Works especially well if Arocity is on.
4. 1-1-crusier (radar). Flood the seas with it and use sea war attrition. Best used as roaming sensors.
5. Build some sea formers and start knocking down land or raising land to mountain heights. Works well if the enemy sees you, they'll most definitely get freaked or start wondering. . .What you do is up to you.
6. Have A SP you want but you don't own? Take it over, send in a weak garrison to protect your new city. If it's a good or okay SP your enemy will most definitely send good units to take it back and garrison (to make sure no one else has it). Nuke or Missle once they do. Destroy the city with the SP. Why? That's for your enemy to ponder.
I have more, but they're ones I'm currently using right now. I particular like psychological strategies that get the enemy freaked out, hesitant, or impatient--that way they attack prematurely.
Anyone else wanna add to it?
JT 3 posted 04-23-99 04:32 PM ET
7. Sink one or more of your bases.
8. PB yourself.
9. Leave your bases when mindworms are attacking.
These usually make your enemy think you're crazy and they'll leave you alone(noone knows what a crazy man will do when threatened).
Knight_Errant posted 04-24-99 04:24 AM ET
What benefit is there to planet busting yourself? If you wish to crater your own continent then so be it. So long as it does not harm my faction.

Now to add my psych warfare to the list.

Do not openly war with numerically superior forces. Watch what other factions are against them, form alliances or at least friendships with them and share with them key technologies to weaken your true opponent.

Also, never give away your best technology. You never know when an ally may turn against you. Keep them hungry, but not starving. Some human players even unknowingly come to depend on their technology advances to come from me. Occasionally, miscommunication do start wars with human allies. Then we both realize what happened to start it. It makes the game interesting.

One more thing, no matter how much you think you trust your human allies or even AI pact brothers, send a probe team to latch on to their databanks. When diplomatic relations go sour, you will still have their information to look at. Also keep probe teams in all your bases, keeping them from probing you. Lack of information about what another human player is doing goes a long way.
Schoop posted 04-24-99 11:04 AM ET
Um... knight? JT3 was joking about his psych warfare tactics. (I hope...) You can't PB yourself anyways. (or can you? I've never seen what happens if you let a missile run out of fuel...)
How about leaving chat messages saying things like "do it now!" or "just like we agreed on..." Watch other people go nuts trying to figure who your ally is.
Taika1 posted 04-29-99 08:31 PM ET
�If the other human players haven't infiltrated your data-links yet, you can make them think you have way more PBs than you really have by flying the same ones over their territory repeatedly.
StargazerBC posted 04-30-99 07:36 AM ET
Well. Those aren't *really* psychological warfare tactics Knight. . . They're more like general tactics, ableit good ones I hope everyone keeps in mind.
A new one that I was using last week (That I obviously stopped using b/c I'm posting it)
My land army is relatively small--4 squads of 4. Attack city. Sell. Give back. Retreat. Watch the player send more forces to that area. Go somewhere else. Attack. Sell. Give Back. Retreat ::grins:: All the while building a few fungus patches in their territory so I can move units there. They're my "reserve in enemy territory" units. Just 2 inside will eventually knock down all the terraformers when all hell/war breaks loose.
During a Truce period I moved half of my terraformers to help terraform boreholes, mirrors (other player couldn't do that yet), etc. After 6 or so turns, Mature Boil mindworms finally came. I destroyed most of the inprovements before my remaining formers left (rest lost due to worms and opponent) and also planted a few patches fungus.
The missle idea is kinda neat. Might try that
It's kinda fun when the other players are wondering what the heck you're doing. Hehehe
Long live unconventional Warfare!
Al Gore Rythm posted 04-30-99 09:41 AM ET
Ah yes, unconventional warfare...
Here are my favorites:
When in an alliance with a human player, give it to them straight that you know they want to kill you later, by placing a PB in all their large cities and their capital
I like to call it 'Peacekeeping' heh heh heh. Very effective to scare the unwary.
Send out a pack of speedy, armored formers into enemy territory and position them so that if they drill to an aquafier the river will flow in the correct direction so that your units may ride the waves into his/her territory. Most people don't think that creating rivers can be a highly offensive manuever, but it is. Primarily because, unlike roads and magtubes, a player can't destroy a river.
This is more of the regular tactics thing, but surrounding your borders with fungus is an excellent way to lock yourself in. Just build fungus all around those nice little territory marks, and then have boreholes drilled all around. (If you want, go ahead and harvest the boreholes with a crawler.) When the enemy tries to come in, WHAM!
Ravenloff posted 04-30-99 07:41 PM ET
Al Gore Rythm,
I'm sorta new, so bear with me. What do you mean by the fungus/borehole tactic. What WHAM?. What do you do? Am I missing some sort of self-distructing borehole-thing?
JT 3 posted 04-30-99 08:03 PM ET
Yes, some people can't realize sarcasm....
THINK ABOUT IT! AM I _REALLY_ GONNA PB MYSELF?!?!

Anyway, back to the topic....
Another good way to box yourself in with terraforming:
Step What to do
1. Make sure all land connections to any other continents are cut.
2. Send Sea Formers to open water to raise islands
3. Make an island circle around your whole island. That way, the enemy can't send trasports to your continent, as it's surrounded by land!
Hehheh.
Spig posted 05-01-99 08:28 AM ET
Psych warfare, hmm. I was playing a game of 'Campaign' - an old boardgame when I was on holiday. We had a four-way game, with two blocs. Two players, John (who I was allied with) and Andy (who was allied with Phil) had agreed before hand that they would wait until either Phil or I was dead, and then turn on the other one. However, Andy had told Phil right at the start that this was what John was planning. So Andy pretended to execute the plan. When John and I were attacking Phil, he told us that he knew about John's plan. John was so put off, he played badly and lost. The rest of us got bored playing and so gave up. I'm sure deception and double crossing would be fun in MP SMAC, although I don't have the time to play long games.
Al Gore Rythm posted 05-01-99 10:33 AM ET
Raven:
Boreholes are the singlemost enviromentally destructive terraform you can do. Planet does not like Boreholes at all, and Planet fights back with worms.
Worms come from fungus.
Worms generate themselves even faster when human units try to cross fungus.
Do the math
StargazerBC posted 05-01-99 03:41 PM ET

My "City Atop a Hill Strategy"
If you're starting on a small continent, you'll probably have a lot of port cities and no one around. Here's what I do:
Port cities in a square like web. Raise Terrain as high as possible inside to build my Capitol. Use a 3 or 4 teir, web like, layering of cities. 1 in the center. Then, 3 or 4. 6-10 last. It's a fairly decent way of protecting your HQ. If you raise the land, the terrain will help your defensive units (not to mention the increase energy collection) and help for better aquafillers. It took me a little while to most efficiently build my continents like this but it works extremely well against successive waves of attackers later on. And, if you do it right it'll usually take under 15 turns.
PS. Use of the belittled Artillery unit (esp. in fungus square) is excellent here.
Psi Armor on air units:
With the onvent of horrendously priced air units, if you put armor on them, I opted to circumvent with PSI-armor (make sure you have high-2 to 4- morale though). It does not exponentiate the cost
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Author	Topic: Psychological Warfare in MultiP
StargazerBC	posted 04-23-99 11:26 AM ET Didn't see any topics for this so here goes: I usually play with other people and this seems relavent. I use to do certain annoying stuff (of course, I do not use strategies I've talked about) 1. Crank out rovers and just move'em near your enemy back and forth. Hide in fungus to heal. 2. Use mindworms early on if you're playing Gaia. They're cheap and morally strong infantry (including the 3-2 attack bonus) in the early game. 3. My personal favorite. If I have the Mass Transit SP (one that let's you start at 3 pop) I send about 6-9 colony pods to build'em right smack, as close as possible, to enemy bases. This'll steal their resource space. Don't bother defending them. Works especially well if Arocity is on. 4. 1-1-crusier (radar). Flood the seas with it and use sea war attrition. Best used as roaming sensors. 5. Build some sea formers and start knocking down land or raising land to mountain heights. Works well if the enemy sees you, they'll most definitely get freaked or start wondering. . .What you do is up to you. 6. Have A SP you want but you don't own? Take it over, send in a weak garrison to protect your new city. If it's a good or okay SP your enemy will most definitely send good units to take it back and garrison (to make sure no one else has it). Nuke or Missle once they do. Destroy the city with the SP. Why? That's for your enemy to ponder. I have more, but they're ones I'm currently using right now. I particular like psychological strategies that get the enemy freaked out, hesitant, or impatient--that way they attack prematurely. Anyone else wanna add to it?
JT 3	posted 04-23-99 04:32 PM ET 7. Sink one or more of your bases. 8. PB yourself. 9. Leave your bases when mindworms are attacking. These usually make your enemy think you're crazy and they'll leave you alone(noone knows what a crazy man will do when threatened).
Knight_Errant	posted 04-24-99 04:24 AM ET What benefit is there to planet busting yourself? If you wish to crater your own continent then so be it. So long as it does not harm my faction. Now to add my psych warfare to the list. Do not openly war with numerically superior forces. Watch what other factions are against them, form alliances or at least friendships with them and share with them key technologies to weaken your true opponent. Also, never give away your best technology. You never know when an ally may turn against you. Keep them hungry, but not starving. Some human players even unknowingly come to depend on their technology advances to come from me. Occasionally, miscommunication do start wars with human allies. Then we both realize what happened to start it. It makes the game interesting. One more thing, no matter how much you think you trust your human allies or even AI pact brothers, send a probe team to latch on to their databanks. When diplomatic relations go sour, you will still have their information to look at. Also keep probe teams in all your bases, keeping them from probing you. Lack of information about what another human player is doing goes a long way.
Schoop	posted 04-24-99 11:04 AM ET Um... knight? JT3 was joking about his psych warfare tactics. (I hope...) You can't PB yourself anyways. (or can you? I've never seen what happens if you let a missile run out of fuel...) How about leaving chat messages saying things like "do it now!" or "just like we agreed on..." Watch other people go nuts trying to figure who your ally is.
Taika1	posted 04-29-99 08:31 PM ET �If the other human players haven't infiltrated your data-links yet, you can make them think you have way more PBs than you really have by flying the same ones over their territory repeatedly.
StargazerBC	posted 04-30-99 07:36 AM ET Well. Those aren't really psychological warfare tactics Knight. . . They're more like general tactics, ableit good ones I hope everyone keeps in mind. A new one that I was using last week (That I obviously stopped using b/c I'm posting it) My land army is relatively small--4 squads of 4. Attack city. Sell. Give back. Retreat. Watch the player send more forces to that area. Go somewhere else. Attack. Sell. Give Back. Retreat ::grins:: All the while building a few fungus patches in their territory so I can move units there. They're my "reserve in enemy territory" units. Just 2 inside will eventually knock down all the terraformers when all hell/war breaks loose. During a Truce period I moved half of my terraformers to help terraform boreholes, mirrors (other player couldn't do that yet), etc. After 6 or so turns, Mature Boil mindworms finally came. I destroyed most of the inprovements before my remaining formers left (rest lost due to worms and opponent) and also planted a few patches fungus. The missle idea is kinda neat. Might try that It's kinda fun when the other players are wondering what the heck you're doing. Hehehe Long live unconventional Warfare!
Al Gore Rythm	posted 04-30-99 09:41 AM ET Ah yes, unconventional warfare... Here are my favorites: When in an alliance with a human player, give it to them straight that you know they want to kill you later, by placing a PB in all their large cities and their capital I like to call it 'Peacekeeping' heh heh heh. Very effective to scare the unwary. Send out a pack of speedy, armored formers into enemy territory and position them so that if they drill to an aquafier the river will flow in the correct direction so that your units may ride the waves into his/her territory. Most people don't think that creating rivers can be a highly offensive manuever, but it is. Primarily because, unlike roads and magtubes, a player can't destroy a river. This is more of the regular tactics thing, but surrounding your borders with fungus is an excellent way to lock yourself in. Just build fungus all around those nice little territory marks, and then have boreholes drilled all around. (If you want, go ahead and harvest the boreholes with a crawler.) When the enemy tries to come in, WHAM!
Ravenloff	posted 04-30-99 07:41 PM ET Al Gore Rythm, I'm sorta new, so bear with me. What do you mean by the fungus/borehole tactic. What WHAM?. What do you do? Am I missing some sort of self-distructing borehole-thing?
JT 3	posted 04-30-99 08:03 PM ET Yes, some people can't realize sarcasm.... THINK ABOUT IT! AM I _REALLY_ GONNA PB MYSELF?!?! Anyway, back to the topic.... Another good way to box yourself in with terraforming: Step What to do 1. Make sure all land connections to any other continents are cut. 2. Send Sea Formers to open water to raise islands 3. Make an island circle around your whole island. That way, the enemy can't send trasports to your continent, as it's surrounded by land! Hehheh.
Spig	posted 05-01-99 08:28 AM ET Psych warfare, hmm. I was playing a game of 'Campaign' - an old boardgame when I was on holiday. We had a four-way game, with two blocs. Two players, John (who I was allied with) and Andy (who was allied with Phil) had agreed before hand that they would wait until either Phil or I was dead, and then turn on the other one. However, Andy had told Phil right at the start that this was what John was planning. So Andy pretended to execute the plan. When John and I were attacking Phil, he told us that he knew about John's plan. John was so put off, he played badly and lost. The rest of us got bored playing and so gave up. I'm sure deception and double crossing would be fun in MP SMAC, although I don't have the time to play long games.
Al Gore Rythm	posted 05-01-99 10:33 AM ET Raven: Boreholes are the singlemost enviromentally destructive terraform you can do. Planet does not like Boreholes at all, and Planet fights back with worms. Worms come from fungus. Worms generate themselves even faster when human units try to cross fungus. Do the math
StargazerBC	posted 05-01-99 03:41 PM ET My "City Atop a Hill Strategy" If you're starting on a small continent, you'll probably have a lot of port cities and no one around. Here's what I do: Port cities in a square like web. Raise Terrain as high as possible inside to build my Capitol. Use a 3 or 4 teir, web like, layering of cities. 1 in the center. Then, 3 or 4. 6-10 last. It's a fairly decent way of protecting your HQ. If you raise the land, the terrain will help your defensive units (not to mention the increase energy collection) and help for better aquafillers. It took me a little while to most efficiently build my continents like this but it works extremely well against successive waves of attackers later on. And, if you do it right it'll usually take under 15 turns. PS. Use of the belittled Artillery unit (esp. in fungus square) is excellent here. Psi Armor on air units: With the onvent of horrendously priced air units, if you put armor on them, I opted to circumvent with PSI-armor (make sure you have high-2 to 4- morale though). It does not exponentiate the cost