posted 08-20-99 12:00 AM ET        

Now all this was fine on the lower levels, but now that I play Transcend I find that my methods (or lack thereof) are simply not good. So I have decided to lay down the law on my strategies. I have already divised a base improvement list and technologies that go hand in hand with these. Both need a little more tweaking, but I'm on the right track.

I think one of my main problems is my military weakness. I have never built much of a defeense, actually mostly scout patrols as garrison (shocking, isn't it) This is the first military aspect to change. I must build high-armor defenders as soon as the technology is available (relatively high armor. Plasma is high at that point in the game) I must also work to built a standing army capable of attacking. Usually I have little or no offensive army until I decide to invade another faction, resulting in usually 40-50 years of preperation, a well as the journey and THEN I can invade (and prequently I don't think out my invasions too well, so my troops are often cut down at the landing site) So when I am defeated, this is a major loss, as this invasion represents years of work dedicated to this exact purpose. With a standing army I will be able to beat back attackers and launch counterattacks and invasions quickly in response to enemy trickery.

I also rarely build much of a navy. This is a low priority for me right now, but I hope to have a transport fleet capable of transporting my offensive forces standing by in case I wish to invade. That way I don't have to wait very long at all before my troops are en route to their enemy destination, instead of decades.

Can anybody think of anything more to help this poor incompetent (I understand SMAC well, it's just implementing everything together to make a strong faction I have trouble with) Let me know if you see a problem or think of anything new.

posted 08-21-99 12:36 AM ET            

Well, I'm halfway through a game as UoP with the new guidelines and I am doing much better. My military was not strong enough for the vast majority of the game, though, and that is something I need to work on (at the moment , though, it's not a problem, as evidenced by the 23 drop shard hovertanks raining down on a surprise attack on the Peacekeepers, my former allies. I had a big army, and the choice was them, the Morgans, and the Hive. The Hive was way to big, the Morganites had been good allies and had a little stronger defenses than I woud've liked, and teh PKs really had not been good allies. Ha ha ha! Death to the Peacekeepers! Then the Morganites, then Bleievers, then (with luck) the Hive! BWAH HA HA HA HA!!)

Er... Anyway, I've found a good list for improvements, but I think I need to bump Bio LAb up a little to try and eliminate that early game research trough. (Will post list after further tweaking)

I have few cities, mostly due to mindworms attacking all my new ones, but the ones I have are big.

I'm not too high in the hierarchy, as the Hive swallowed up the Gaians and Spartans, and I quote Civ2, "Stands astride the world like a Colossus" (One of the advisors, I think) So I'm not trifling him until I'm good and ready ("ready" implies several Plaetbusters with conventional troops to deal with what's left)

The Peacekeepers have got a sizable empire, with several cities on my island (grr...soon they will be mine) I've taken control of teh island with their HQ and a few other bases already, and hope to move to the next one next turn (Space Elevator is a wonderful thing)

The Morganites and Believers are usually embroiled in a war, which the Morganites are gradually winning, but Morgan terminated our alliance, so realations are a little frosty. Of course, I'm at war with Miriam.

posted 08-21-99 03:05 AM ET         

I am surprised you don't lose a lot of cities to worms with your lone defender. Do you go Green and stay easy on Planet?

Beefing up the 'D' will help out quite a bit. I HATE losing cities so early game I have both a defensive unit and an offensive (movement 2) unit in every city. If I miss out on HSA I add a defensive (movement 1) spy in every city. I have at least one air unit per city once they become available and I've taken to adding in perimeter defence ASAP and lately the tachyon field once the missiles start to fly.

Add in multiple sensors per city and connect each city by road/mag tube.

The sea bases get a ship each and ideally a second defender instead of the movement 2 offensive.

Naturally you will have to go even further in hot spots or anticipated hot spots like borders with dubious allies.

Lately I have been paying more attention to sea bases. It is [expletive deleted] irritating having some bozo faction encroaching on all the kelp/solar squares surrounding my land. Best to get there first.

There will always be a couple more places I'll build sea bases for the strategic value alone. Nice to prevent other factions' ships from coming in certain areas and maybe have invasion push-off points besides.

Unlike many I don't have a set list of base improvements which I make in order. I like the idea of some specialization for my cities depending on the initial resources available.

The two biggest changes I made to my game to succeed at TI level were: massive deployment of crawlers and sea crawlers, & maintaining a lot of focus on the Research specialty cities.

Keep in mind that I tend to be more of a builder than a conquerer like you seem to be. Unless I play Miriam. Still can't seem to win at TI level with her unless I knock a few heads together.

posted 08-21-99 11:33 AM ET            

Your defense system sounds good. I built the Citizen's Defense Force, but no tachyon fields yet. I have neglected sensors, but fortunately the only battles fought on the Motherland's soil were a few skirmishes with the Believers.

I deployed lots of sea and land crawlers, as I noticed a sea of kelp right off my land, and built farms for the land crawlers. (Almost all my crawlers are gathering nutrients, thus allowing my bases to grow)

For much of teh game I was Free Market. This was why I did not build needlejets, as well as the fact that all the enemies (except a few PK cities) were too far away for needlejet attacks without building carriers. They would have been useful if somebody invaded, but no one has. I can't guarantee that, though, so I'll begin building them (after the War)

At present I'm Demo/Green/Knowledge/Cybernetic with the Network backbone (and a lot of other SPs) It's because I need more research that I go to war (and it's fun)

posted 08-21-99 01:23 PM ET         

My pattern of crawler deployment is different than yours. I'll go primarily minerals early on to overcome the AI's production bonus at the Transcend level.

Once my cities have decent production, I switch to producing crawlers for energy. I try to send them back to my main science city and "support from here" whenever possible. The science city is usually busy building infrastructure with the labs and the 2 city-specific SPs the main priority.

My benchmark is a discovery per turn by late game. Anything less and I am not having a good game. Better players than I will be getting more than one discovery per turn at that point.

I don't seem to have a big need for food crawlers. Other than a couple of early farms and high altitude solar/farms I go with forest as my terraform of choice. Tree farms are manditory and hybrid forests get built around the time I build the hab complexes. By that time my food production is being augmented by hydroponics labs. The Vats are a huge SP. Get them if you can.

Good that you got the network backbone. The two SPs that work off of network nodes are both good ones.

posted 08-21-99 01:48 PM ET            

Yeah, I need to build more Orbitals, especially now that I have Space Elevator. Whew! I have a busy building schedule coming up! I'll have each city finish building its hovertank, then pump out clean superformers and crawlers. I have pretty high energy flow, but it could be higher. I'll sprinkle Orbitals in amognst that, the Hab Domes.

posted 08-22-99 12:08 AM ET            

I'm putting up truckloads of Orbitals, and I can now go for a Transcendence victory.

posted 08-23-99 09:49 AM ET            

Instead, I threw up Orbitals by the truckload. (In a turn or two, I put up 51 Nessus Minig Stations, about 15 more than my largest base. Ooops) It really didn't matter about the unused enertgy park, as I had tons of Orbital Power Transmitters, and a good number of hydroponic gardens. I got into a space war with Yang (all we really did was shoot at each others' ODPs. Well, actually, I only fired once. I wasn't interested in destroying all of his, since I had no PBs anyway. So I just concentrated on building more)

After I built The Voice, I decided to get the maximum production from the cities I was building the Ascent io (I was building it in several different cities, so as to make it nearly impossible for enemies to stop me) SO I maximised production, and although fungus ran wild (it was productive now, so who cares?) I never saw a mindworm.

Wile it was building, I tinkered around with capturiong Yang's seabases and executing their citizens (I find that the most unusual things happen while I'm building the Ascent) I killed about 70,000 in all (sunspots) before I decided to just buy the Ascent.

Although I have won several Transcend games, this was the most satisfying out of, well, any game I have played on SMAC. I suspect this was because it all came together very well, and throughout teh game I knew what I was doing and what I wanted long-range wise.