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Author Topic:   Can anyone win as Morgan?

dreadhead posted 09-27-99 06:18 AM ET
Has anyone ever won a game as Morgan at any level other than Citizen? Can it be done? I've been playing as Morgan at Talent level but can barely manage to stay in the game. I want to win as Morgan because I consider it a challenge. There must be some way to overcome his population restrictions and support penalties as well as the pollution issues. I won't stop until I win! Any suggestions, of course, would be greatly appreciated.
Ned posted 09-27-99 06:31 AM ET
Try using a large number of crawlers.
Schoop posted 09-27-99 08:53 AM ET
Yes, I win as Morgan--it's easy.
a)use a lot of crawlers
b)build Hab Complexes ASAP
c)Play pacifist-give in to the demands of other factions to keep peace if necessary.
If done right, Morgan can out-tech the University and still have the cash to pull off an economic victory.
laurens posted 09-27-99 10:16 AM ET
Get to Industrial Automation as soon as possible.
Before that stage you MUST be the peacekeeper, and I mean keeping your peace
Because of your economy you can hurry your production here and then.
You soon find yourself top in tech (from facilities), in military, in wealth....all in no time.
Endgame you might be unbeatable, especially if you are gunning for planetary conquest and got all the missiles and busters at your disposal.
And remember, your secret weapon lies in your probes, not the money - directly.
Hope this helps
Schoop posted 09-27-99 01:18 PM ET
oh yeah, and rabbit like crazy (as in build LOTS of bases.)
WhiteHowler posted 09-27-99 01:18 PM ET
I have spent a lot of time playing Morgan recently, and his game is all about creating treaties and pacts. You want to keep everyone happy, especially the factions with more cities -- commerce is god.
There are several things you MUST do if you want to be ultimately successful with Morgan:
1. Go after every economic tech advance you can. If it increases commerce or lets you build +econ facilities, you want it.
2. Democratic/Free Market/Wealth is the way to go. You'll be pulling in an ungodly amount of energy credits by mid-game. Your Police rating will be in the basement, but hopefully by this time you've made peace with everyone (and anyone else is going to be eating their own units when you subvert their entire army in one turn).
3. Speaking of subversion... You'll have a ton of credits, so use them! Probe teams do not cause unhappiness in their home base, so you should be subverting units and mind-controlling bases whenever possible. Note: You CAN get an AI opponent to surrender by subverting all but one of his bases and then showing up on his final doorstep with a military unit.
4. It's all about infrastructure. You want just about every facility in each of your bases, and you want a lot of bases because they will generate more commerce (remember to leave the computer some bases though -- if everyone else has the same number of bases you do, your commerce will be operating at peak efficiency). Formers are very important as well -- you'll probably want to go for the forests-everywhere approach and get tree farms and hybrid forests as early as possible. These are even better than solar collectors!
5. Establish an Uber-base that will crank out a ton of energy and labs. You want the Merchant Exchange, along with all of the tech boosters (Supercollider, Theory of Everything) in this city. Clinical Immortality should go here too, as it will greatly boost your energy output.
6. When your Formers are done planting forests, send them just outside your bases' "workable" zones and have them dig boreholes. The ecological impact will be much less than if you had put boreholes next to your bases, and you can use supply crawlers to suck out the energy (which is what you really want, anyway -- if you're rich you can buy the minerals you need to build things).
7. This is a BIG one that I haven't seen anyone mention yet: use Sea Formers like crazy! You should be building Kelp Farms and Tidal Harnesses in all of your city zones, and then start building more Tidal Harnesses anywhere there's ocean shelf. Send Supply Foils out to collect energy from these -- if they're from your Uber-base, they may be pulling in 5 or more energy per turn each!
8. The pollution issue is difficult, but can be overcome. All of your bases should be surrounded by forests (don't bother with farms or solar collectors), which will reduce the ecological damage. Once your forests are all planted, you shouldn't have too many problems with pollution until late in the game, by which time you can build Centauri Preserves. There's also a Secret Project that reduces ecological damage (the Pholus Mutagen), but I'm usually busy building other things.
9. The population limits are easy to overcome. Make a beeline for industrial automation, which will let you build Hab Complexes. The Ascetic Virtues can also help, but by the time you get this you'll probably have Hab Complexes in most of your bases anyway (the extra police will still help a bit).
I have a savegame that shows the true power of Morgan -- I won an Economic Victory on a huge map (only Librarian level though, I believe). It demonstrates the uses of Supply Foils, as well as the Uber-base (which is cranking out 500 credits or 1700 labs without any future SE choices). If you'd like me to send it to you, please E-mail me at [email protected].
WhiteHowler posted 09-27-99 01:30 PM ET
A few more things I forgot...
10. Morgan has terrible support problems. If you do have to take the war to someone else, Clean troops are worth the extra cost. Every extra mineral your base isn't spending on remote soldiers is a LOT less you don't have to pay for when rush-building.
11. Also, for that late game energy boost, build the Space Elevator in your "supercity". It's also nice for dealing with those AI betrayals when you're about to win the game (drop a bunch of attack units outside the enemy capital, take it over, then use this new base to drop in some probe teams (of COURSE you can build probe teams with drop pods!) By this point in the game, you should be able to buy out your neighbor in a matter of a few turns.
12. This really should go without saying, but STOP AT NOTHING TO GET THE HUNTER-SEEKER ALGORITHM. If an opponent gets this first and then decides he doesn't like you, you're in some serious trouble. If someone DOES get it, attack that city relentlessly. Destroy it if you must -- I have played Morgan against a cheesed-off Yang with the Hunter-Seeker, and it was NOT fun.
Hope this helps!
RedFred posted 09-27-99 01:47 PM ET
Good tips, WhiteHowler. I rarely play Morgan but I am in the middle of my second game playing him right now so your comments are especially welcome.
I think the economic victory is achieved less often by the typical player than any other victory condition. Kind of fun to try something different.
Right now I am getting hammered by energy crashes. Other than turning off the random events is there any good way of dealing with this?
Has anybody else noticed that the AI seems less aggressive when you play Morgan?
dreadhead posted 09-27-99 04:06 PM ET
Thanks, WhiteHowler! Actually, thanks to all of you, but thanks to WhiteHowler for putting it out in such fine detail. There are several of your concepts that I already use in my games, though apparently, not in any effective manner.
I use the Uber-base method all the time, building all the tech enhancing Secret Projects as well as the Merchant Exchange there. I try to have this Uber-base near large energy reserves or barring that, in the Uranium Flats. I try to build this base as soon as possible.
Schoop, I do expand a lot. So much in fact, that I added about 200 more bases to the Morgan.txt file. Its much more difficult at the higher levels. Also, I don't like my base's production radii overlapping. I don't mind if they touch, but it dosen't make sense to me to build bases within another base's production area as I have seen the AI do often.
I do make some use of crawlers, but I see from what WhiteHowler and others are saying, I need to use them extensively.
I do use sea formers a lot, but have never built a supply foil. Since I only recently figured out the Design Workshop, I will definately have to try this.
I terraform a lot and do plant forests, but see that I really need to do this extensively. I try to build every ecology enhancing facility and Secret Project that I can.
A major problem that I face is when I even try to go for Free Market economics, the AI gets really mad! Zakharov even declared vendetta against me because I used Free Market economics!
I am also confused about probes. I thought that when you use them, your reputation is damaged. Because there will be at least one faction that is itching to go to war with me, I thought I needed to keep my reputation spotless to decrease the chance of that happening. As for RedFred's observation that the AI tend to be less aggressive when you're playing as Morgan, well, I haven't had that kind of luck. I do try, however, to keep one probe team in all my bases to keep others from stealing techs from me. I actually tried once to subvert a unit belonging to Santiago and when I did, she declared vendetta.
What do you think about loaning out money? I usually don't but I think I may have to rethink this tactic. I think that the main reason I don't do this is my resentment at others demanding tithes, stipends, etc. If its small, and I have lots of energy reserves, I'll give it to them and hope they choke on it if it will avert war. Here lately, they want almost all of my reserves and when I refuse, then its war. A war that usually, I'm not ready for. Occasionally, I have loaned out money to those who were especially nice to me. I don't recall that they ever paid it back; maybe thats something the game takes care of.
The same goes with techs. Why, pray tell, does Zakharov not do his own research? Everything he gets, he gets from bullying me or whining to me. I can take that(in a way) from the others, but from him, it is especially galling.
Also, how can I get my might from feeble or anemic to unsurpassed or at least at some parity with the others? I think that this is why I'm so constantly bullied. At lower levels, its easy to be unsurpassed in might, but almost impossible now. Tell me, is it sheer numbers of military units, the strength of them, or a combination of both? Though I'm strictly a pacifist, I'm not a wimp though it seems like it because I'm constantly giving in to everyone's demands trying to avert war.
Well, enough moaning. I sound like Lal. I will keep you all abreast of my progress. Thanks for all the help.
Velociryx posted 09-27-99 04:50 PM ET
Dreadhead:
As an economist, Morgan is one of my all-time favorite factions, and kudos to White-Howler for his well thought out post on the faction!
The key points I would zero in on are this:
o Morgan is the only faction in the early game who can get to the holy grail of +1 energy per square using "Wealth" alone.
o Once clean reactors are discovered, your army can be infinately large
o Until clean reactors are discovered, your army can be as big as you need it to be by subeverting anybody who causes you trouble.
o Waiting to take the offensive with Morgan is almost always a good thing (wait for clean reactors, spend 50 years building troops, then crush everybody....or, build up more slowly and make an unassailable fortress).
A lot of people don't like the faction because of the support hit and the smaller bases, but across the board, a well-developed size four or five Morgan base can keep pace with a size 8-9 base of anybody else's.....
Also, with Morgan especially, crowd your bases!! You won't see ANY overlap problems at all until the very last part of the game, and by stacking them more thickly, you net yourself more bases on the continent....more bases = more production centers!
::sigh:: I could write so much more on the subject, but it's almost time for me to head home for the day....lol
-=Vel=-
WhiteHowler posted 09-27-99 06:27 PM ET
Dreadhead: Supply crawlers are important for everyone (see Velociryx's strategy guide over at Apolyton), but moreso for Morgan. You want to become a money machine, as this is Morgan's only real advantage -- but it's a huge one. A borehole with a supply crawler on it will give you at least 6 energy, probably closer to 9 or 10 if the crawler came from your Uber-base. Take this energy and multiply it by your econ and lab facilities in the base; you're getting this EVERY turn, for no cost other than some former time (which is why the Weather Paradigm and Super Formers are nice), and a couple of turns building the supply crawler.
As for overlapping bases... Next to Yang, Morgan is the best-suited for this. Remember that each base has 20 "workable" squares around the base; you won't use all of these until your bases are size 20! It takes forever to get to this point (especially with Morgan), and if you have bases that large, you probably have the game locked up anyway. I usually don't space my Morganite bases as closely together as Yang does, but don't lose any sleep over a few overlapping squares. Also remember that you should be planting forests almost everywhere -- so every square of the city will be quite productive once you get Tree Farms/Hybrid Forests up. (The one exception to this "rule" is your Uber-base... I usually try to keep it from overlapping, especially natural resource squares).
I'm not sure what to tell you about Free Market. Most likely Zak is getting upset with you because of the Wealth SE choice, rather than Free Market (at least this has been my experience). Deirdre will positively hate you, but everyone else should get along with "Uncle Moneybags". Try to keep a decently powerful garrison at each base (two or three units, newer tech). If a computer faction sees you as being militarily weak, it will try to bully things out of you. If anyone goes to war with you, this is where you use your Free Market energy to probe his butt off.
Vel is right about Wealth though -- it's much more important than Free Market. You can go Green and still pull in a decent amount of money, especially later in the game. Government doesn't really matter much; I usually go with Democracy since my support stinks anyway (more growth and more efficiency means I have more money to rush-build, which makes the support penalties not hurt as much).
I'm glad you found my tips useful. I'm still learning the game myself, but then again, who isn't? Happy banking. =)
Biddles posted 10-01-99 09:12 AM ET
Everyone seems to think that +1 commerce is next to nothing. I take it that this means +1 energy for every 'trade' (I don't know what to call them). If that's true (someone correct me if i'm wrong) than this can mean a staggering amount of energy. If you have roughly 4 pact/treaties and around 20 cities that have 'trade' than that can mean an extra 80 energy a turn, something not to be laughed at. (You have to remember that the AI usually doesn't have heaps of cities so 20 is an average geuss).
If you built a lot of small cities (size 1 with an energy bank) and then gave them to submitted pact bro/sis, than you could probably make even more. Just cram the cities together as closely as possible on some unwanted island then fork them all over.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong here
- Biddles
Schoop posted 10-01-99 03:18 PM ET
Close, but not quite right, Biddles. It works like this.
All your bases and your trade partner's bases are ranked in order of Economic output, and paired up. Leftovers on either side get nothing.
Your base gets energy according to this formula: (m+y)/8 * d * c/6 + g
m = My base's econ. output
y = Your base's econ output
d = 1 if pact, 0.5 if treaty
c = my commerce rating
g = 1 if you are governor, 0 otherwise.
Increased Commerce changes one variable, which, depending on where you are in the game, can result in a LOT or next to nothing.
Biddles posted 10-01-99 09:52 PM ET
Thanks Scoop that makes sense now, and so does the reason why so many people think it ain't that great.
Still I do agree that if you play it right you could make a descent amount of cash here, but you would have to gear your whole game to commerce, probably not the best thing to do.
- Biddles
Koshko posted 10-02-99 12:35 AM ET
Morgan was my favorite faction. I enjoyed playing him on Huge Map of Planet on Transcend Level. Since Planet is a major factor, Wealth is awesome. With Democracy/Wealth/Green, you get an EcoFriendly +1 energy per square. Morgan was made for Transcendance. Grow fast, bulid up your bases, play pacifist (but wipe out everyone on the same landmass as quick as you can), and pump all the energy you can into Research, and you'll see what I mean.
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Author	Topic: Can anyone win as Morgan?
dreadhead	posted 09-27-99 06:18 AM ET Has anyone ever won a game as Morgan at any level other than Citizen? Can it be done? I've been playing as Morgan at Talent level but can barely manage to stay in the game. I want to win as Morgan because I consider it a challenge. There must be some way to overcome his population restrictions and support penalties as well as the pollution issues. I won't stop until I win! Any suggestions, of course, would be greatly appreciated.
Ned	posted 09-27-99 06:31 AM ET Try using a large number of crawlers.
Schoop	posted 09-27-99 08:53 AM ET Yes, I win as Morgan--it's easy. a)use a lot of crawlers b)build Hab Complexes ASAP c)Play pacifist-give in to the demands of other factions to keep peace if necessary. If done right, Morgan can out-tech the University and still have the cash to pull off an economic victory.
laurens	posted 09-27-99 10:16 AM ET Get to Industrial Automation as soon as possible. Before that stage you MUST be the peacekeeper, and I mean keeping your peace Because of your economy you can hurry your production here and then. You soon find yourself top in tech (from facilities), in military, in wealth....all in no time. Endgame you might be unbeatable, especially if you are gunning for planetary conquest and got all the missiles and busters at your disposal. And remember, your secret weapon lies in your probes, not the money - directly. Hope this helps
Schoop	posted 09-27-99 01:18 PM ET oh yeah, and rabbit like crazy (as in build LOTS of bases.)
WhiteHowler	posted 09-27-99 01:18 PM ET I have spent a lot of time playing Morgan recently, and his game is all about creating treaties and pacts. You want to keep everyone happy, especially the factions with more cities -- commerce is god. There are several things you MUST do if you want to be ultimately successful with Morgan: 1. Go after every economic tech advance you can. If it increases commerce or lets you build +econ facilities, you want it. 2. Democratic/Free Market/Wealth is the way to go. You'll be pulling in an ungodly amount of energy credits by mid-game. Your Police rating will be in the basement, but hopefully by this time you've made peace with everyone (and anyone else is going to be eating their own units when you subvert their entire army in one turn). 3. Speaking of subversion... You'll have a ton of credits, so use them! Probe teams do not cause unhappiness in their home base, so you should be subverting units and mind-controlling bases whenever possible. Note: You CAN get an AI opponent to surrender by subverting all but one of his bases and then showing up on his final doorstep with a military unit. 4. It's all about infrastructure. You want just about every facility in each of your bases, and you want a lot of bases because they will generate more commerce (remember to leave the computer some bases though -- if everyone else has the same number of bases you do, your commerce will be operating at peak efficiency). Formers are very important as well -- you'll probably want to go for the forests-everywhere approach and get tree farms and hybrid forests as early as possible. These are even better than solar collectors! 5. Establish an Uber-base that will crank out a ton of energy and labs. You want the Merchant Exchange, along with all of the tech boosters (Supercollider, Theory of Everything) in this city. Clinical Immortality should go here too, as it will greatly boost your energy output. 6. When your Formers are done planting forests, send them just outside your bases' "workable" zones and have them dig boreholes. The ecological impact will be much less than if you had put boreholes next to your bases, and you can use supply crawlers to suck out the energy (which is what you really want, anyway -- if you're rich you can buy the minerals you need to build things). 7. This is a BIG one that I haven't seen anyone mention yet: use Sea Formers like crazy! You should be building Kelp Farms and Tidal Harnesses in all of your city zones, and then start building more Tidal Harnesses anywhere there's ocean shelf. Send Supply Foils out to collect energy from these -- if they're from your Uber-base, they may be pulling in 5 or more energy per turn each! 8. The pollution issue is difficult, but can be overcome. All of your bases should be surrounded by forests (don't bother with farms or solar collectors), which will reduce the ecological damage. Once your forests are all planted, you shouldn't have too many problems with pollution until late in the game, by which time you can build Centauri Preserves. There's also a Secret Project that reduces ecological damage (the Pholus Mutagen), but I'm usually busy building other things. 9. The population limits are easy to overcome. Make a beeline for industrial automation, which will let you build Hab Complexes. The Ascetic Virtues can also help, but by the time you get this you'll probably have Hab Complexes in most of your bases anyway (the extra police will still help a bit). I have a savegame that shows the true power of Morgan -- I won an Economic Victory on a huge map (only Librarian level though, I believe). It demonstrates the uses of Supply Foils, as well as the Uber-base (which is cranking out 500 credits or 1700 labs without any future SE choices). If you'd like me to send it to you, please E-mail me at [email protected].
WhiteHowler	posted 09-27-99 01:30 PM ET A few more things I forgot... 10. Morgan has terrible support problems. If you do have to take the war to someone else, Clean troops are worth the extra cost. Every extra mineral your base isn't spending on remote soldiers is a LOT less you don't have to pay for when rush-building. 11. Also, for that late game energy boost, build the Space Elevator in your "supercity". It's also nice for dealing with those AI betrayals when you're about to win the game (drop a bunch of attack units outside the enemy capital, take it over, then use this new base to drop in some probe teams (of COURSE you can build probe teams with drop pods!) By this point in the game, you should be able to buy out your neighbor in a matter of a few turns. 12. This really should go without saying, but STOP AT NOTHING TO GET THE HUNTER-SEEKER ALGORITHM. If an opponent gets this first and then decides he doesn't like you, you're in some serious trouble. If someone DOES get it, attack that city relentlessly. Destroy it if you must -- I have played Morgan against a cheesed-off Yang with the Hunter-Seeker, and it was NOT fun. Hope this helps!
RedFred	posted 09-27-99 01:47 PM ET Good tips, WhiteHowler. I rarely play Morgan but I am in the middle of my second game playing him right now so your comments are especially welcome. I think the economic victory is achieved less often by the typical player than any other victory condition. Kind of fun to try something different. Right now I am getting hammered by energy crashes. Other than turning off the random events is there any good way of dealing with this? Has anybody else noticed that the AI seems less aggressive when you play Morgan?
dreadhead	posted 09-27-99 04:06 PM ET Thanks, WhiteHowler! Actually, thanks to all of you, but thanks to WhiteHowler for putting it out in such fine detail. There are several of your concepts that I already use in my games, though apparently, not in any effective manner. I use the Uber-base method all the time, building all the tech enhancing Secret Projects as well as the Merchant Exchange there. I try to have this Uber-base near large energy reserves or barring that, in the Uranium Flats. I try to build this base as soon as possible. Schoop, I do expand a lot. So much in fact, that I added about 200 more bases to the Morgan.txt file. Its much more difficult at the higher levels. Also, I don't like my base's production radii overlapping. I don't mind if they touch, but it dosen't make sense to me to build bases within another base's production area as I have seen the AI do often. I do make some use of crawlers, but I see from what WhiteHowler and others are saying, I need to use them extensively. I do use sea formers a lot, but have never built a supply foil. Since I only recently figured out the Design Workshop, I will definately have to try this. I terraform a lot and do plant forests, but see that I really need to do this extensively. I try to build every ecology enhancing facility and Secret Project that I can. A major problem that I face is when I even try to go for Free Market economics, the AI gets really mad! Zakharov even declared vendetta against me because I used Free Market economics! I am also confused about probes. I thought that when you use them, your reputation is damaged. Because there will be at least one faction that is itching to go to war with me, I thought I needed to keep my reputation spotless to decrease the chance of that happening. As for RedFred's observation that the AI tend to be less aggressive when you're playing as Morgan, well, I haven't had that kind of luck. I do try, however, to keep one probe team in all my bases to keep others from stealing techs from me. I actually tried once to subvert a unit belonging to Santiago and when I did, she declared vendetta. What do you think about loaning out money? I usually don't but I think I may have to rethink this tactic. I think that the main reason I don't do this is my resentment at others demanding tithes, stipends, etc. If its small, and I have lots of energy reserves, I'll give it to them and hope they choke on it if it will avert war. Here lately, they want almost all of my reserves and when I refuse, then its war. A war that usually, I'm not ready for. Occasionally, I have loaned out money to those who were especially nice to me. I don't recall that they ever paid it back; maybe thats something the game takes care of. The same goes with techs. Why, pray tell, does Zakharov not do his own research? Everything he gets, he gets from bullying me or whining to me. I can take that(in a way) from the others, but from him, it is especially galling. Also, how can I get my might from feeble or anemic to unsurpassed or at least at some parity with the others? I think that this is why I'm so constantly bullied. At lower levels, its easy to be unsurpassed in might, but almost impossible now. Tell me, is it sheer numbers of military units, the strength of them, or a combination of both? Though I'm strictly a pacifist, I'm not a wimp though it seems like it because I'm constantly giving in to everyone's demands trying to avert war. Well, enough moaning. I sound like Lal. I will keep you all abreast of my progress. Thanks for all the help.
Velociryx	posted 09-27-99 04:50 PM ET Dreadhead: As an economist, Morgan is one of my all-time favorite factions, and kudos to White-Howler for his well thought out post on the faction! The key points I would zero in on are this: o Morgan is the only faction in the early game who can get to the holy grail of +1 energy per square using "Wealth" alone. o Once clean reactors are discovered, your army can be infinately large o Until clean reactors are discovered, your army can be as big as you need it to be by subeverting anybody who causes you trouble. o Waiting to take the offensive with Morgan is almost always a good thing (wait for clean reactors, spend 50 years building troops, then crush everybody....or, build up more slowly and make an unassailable fortress). A lot of people don't like the faction because of the support hit and the smaller bases, but across the board, a well-developed size four or five Morgan base can keep pace with a size 8-9 base of anybody else's..... Also, with Morgan especially, crowd your bases!! You won't see ANY overlap problems at all until the very last part of the game, and by stacking them more thickly, you net yourself more bases on the continent....more bases = more production centers! ::sigh:: I could write so much more on the subject, but it's almost time for me to head home for the day....lol -=Vel=-
WhiteHowler	posted 09-27-99 06:27 PM ET Dreadhead: Supply crawlers are important for everyone (see Velociryx's strategy guide over at Apolyton), but moreso for Morgan. You want to become a money machine, as this is Morgan's only real advantage -- but it's a huge one. A borehole with a supply crawler on it will give you at least 6 energy, probably closer to 9 or 10 if the crawler came from your Uber-base. Take this energy and multiply it by your econ and lab facilities in the base; you're getting this EVERY turn, for no cost other than some former time (which is why the Weather Paradigm and Super Formers are nice), and a couple of turns building the supply crawler. As for overlapping bases... Next to Yang, Morgan is the best-suited for this. Remember that each base has 20 "workable" squares around the base; you won't use all of these until your bases are size 20! It takes forever to get to this point (especially with Morgan), and if you have bases that large, you probably have the game locked up anyway. I usually don't space my Morganite bases as closely together as Yang does, but don't lose any sleep over a few overlapping squares. Also remember that you should be planting forests almost everywhere -- so every square of the city will be quite productive once you get Tree Farms/Hybrid Forests up. (The one exception to this "rule" is your Uber-base... I usually try to keep it from overlapping, especially natural resource squares). I'm not sure what to tell you about Free Market. Most likely Zak is getting upset with you because of the Wealth SE choice, rather than Free Market (at least this has been my experience). Deirdre will positively hate you, but everyone else should get along with "Uncle Moneybags". Try to keep a decently powerful garrison at each base (two or three units, newer tech). If a computer faction sees you as being militarily weak, it will try to bully things out of you. If anyone goes to war with you, this is where you use your Free Market energy to probe his butt off. Vel is right about Wealth though -- it's much more important than Free Market. You can go Green and still pull in a decent amount of money, especially later in the game. Government doesn't really matter much; I usually go with Democracy since my support stinks anyway (more growth and more efficiency means I have more money to rush-build, which makes the support penalties not hurt as much). I'm glad you found my tips useful. I'm still learning the game myself, but then again, who isn't? Happy banking. =)
Biddles	posted 10-01-99 09:12 AM ET Everyone seems to think that +1 commerce is next to nothing. I take it that this means +1 energy for every 'trade' (I don't know what to call them). If that's true (someone correct me if i'm wrong) than this can mean a staggering amount of energy. If you have roughly 4 pact/treaties and around 20 cities that have 'trade' than that can mean an extra 80 energy a turn, something not to be laughed at. (You have to remember that the AI usually doesn't have heaps of cities so 20 is an average geuss). If you built a lot of small cities (size 1 with an energy bank) and then gave them to submitted pact bro/sis, than you could probably make even more. Just cram the cities together as closely as possible on some unwanted island then fork them all over. Someone correct me if I'm wrong here - Biddles
Schoop	posted 10-01-99 03:18 PM ET Close, but not quite right, Biddles. It works like this. All your bases and your trade partner's bases are ranked in order of Economic output, and paired up. Leftovers on either side get nothing. Your base gets energy according to this formula: (m+y)/8 * d * c/6 + g m = My base's econ. output y = Your base's econ output d = 1 if pact, 0.5 if treaty c = my commerce rating g = 1 if you are governor, 0 otherwise. Increased Commerce changes one variable, which, depending on where you are in the game, can result in a LOT or next to nothing.
Biddles	posted 10-01-99 09:52 PM ET Thanks Scoop that makes sense now, and so does the reason why so many people think it ain't that great. Still I do agree that if you play it right you could make a descent amount of cash here, but you would have to gear your whole game to commerce, probably not the best thing to do. - Biddles
Koshko	posted 10-02-99 12:35 AM ET Morgan was my favorite faction. I enjoyed playing him on Huge Map of Planet on Transcend Level. Since Planet is a major factor, Wealth is awesome. With Democracy/Wealth/Green, you get an EcoFriendly +1 energy per square. Morgan was made for Transcendance. Grow fast, bulid up your bases, play pacifist (but wipe out everyone on the same landmass as quick as you can), and pump all the energy you can into Research, and you'll see what I mean.