posted 04-20-99 04:02 PM ET        

I've seen more bad press on the Believers on these forums than any other faction. With respect, they are a difficult faction to play, but they can definitely grant a rewarding experience.

For the record, the Believers have +2 Support, which is not mentioned in the manual.

PROBE THE PANTS OFF OF 'EM, and then some...
You have the best Probe teams on the Planet. Steal the tech that you're behind on. While I know this means you could be playing Catch-up, it lets you keep your military at least on a par with everyone else's. After all, if you don't do this, in the Long Run, you'll be so far behind in Tech that you're screwed. But, I quote John Maynard Keynes, father of Short Run Economics, when I say "In the Long Run, we're all dead." Play for the minute, don't wait it out...

DEFEND YOUR BASES
With lower research levels, your armor is NOT going to be the best. Compensate by having multiple defense units and always building Perimeter Defenses. What do you think that +2 Support is for?

WEAPONS TECHNOLOGY IS OVERRATED.
You've got +25% attack bonuses. Use them. As far as anyone else is concerned, that Impact Gun may as well be a Gatling Laser, and Tachyon Bolts even out to an Impressive 15 attack (+ morale bonuses) Clobber people with what you have. Take their stuff.

DEFINITELY BUILD
The Citizen's Defense Force.
Remember, your armor ain't gonna be up to snuff. The free Perimeter Defenses will help that.

The THEORY OF EVERYTHING and SUPERCOLLIDER
If you can get them. YOu need every research boost you can grab. And if someone else builds them, take it away.

the -1 PLANET
Really, this isn't that much to worry about. With the high Morale your troops should be building, you can clobber Mind Worms. Second, its easily circumvented using Green Economics.

The Believers should go for a Conquest Victory, or perhaps Diplomatic, after conquesting most of the Planet.

posted 04-21-99 12:03 PM ET         

Peacetime Goals:
Power Through Expansion
Research Through Energy

There are 3 mains ways to play Believers when you are in a time of peace, or in a faux war. One is to expand like mad, thus giving you more bases = more energy = more research. The Believers actually expand fairly well. Their +2 Support allows them to take Democracy and still be able to use multiple formers per base, and to have start-up captial at new bases, which is vital to rapid expansion. Combining Democracy with Planned is a natural, and all the more so for Believers... Democracy cancels out the effic bonus of Planned, inherent bonus vs. support penalty, and you have +4 growth and +1 industry... not a bad state of affairs for expansion. Once Wealth values are attained, you have +4 growth, +2 industry, and +1 econ... even better.

Once you get a little more established, however, work like mad to get the Human Genome Project (as well as Weather Paradigm... thats a given) and psych enhancing facilities, and pump some energy into psych expenditure. Your research penalty means that drawing energy away from research actually results in the loss of less points, so use that Believer penalty... and make sure you get a couple golden ages. That will increase your growth to +6, pop boom time, and econ to +2, +1 energy per square. You are then in prime speed expansion mode.

Once you have expanded sufficiently (wherever you draw that line in your mind), you will want to consider alternative economies.

Faction-Friendly Believers: With a large number of bases, the Believers may wish to jump into a Free Market with both feet. Golden Age + Wealth + Free Market gives a whopping +4 econ... a serious commerce bonus as well as an additional +4 energy per base. Not a very flexible mode for the Believers, but good for stockpiling energy when you have many treaties.

Planet Friendly Believers: On the other hand, Green economies allow the Believers to turn their Planet penalty into a bonus (nice if you are getting pounded by worms or would like to kick into heavy industrial mode) and bring the efficiency total to +4... giving you perfect efficiency and the ability to spend as much or as little as you wish on research vs. storage. Generally speaking, I burn energy like mad when I am using Believers in war... I like to convert bases and units as much as possible. Therefore, until I have a fairly substantial stash (2000+) I like to keep things fairly even. However, for stockpiling Free Market really is better, so when you are using Green you might want to focus on research. A generally phenomenal social choice, Green only costs -2 growth... not such a big deal after all the expansion you have done (and you can always switch back to expansion mode if needed), with democracy + golden age you still have +2, and if you manage to get clone vats (always a priority), then it becomes substantially better, even as an expansion choice.

Wartime Goals:
Domination Through Superior Troops
Acquisition of Technology Via Conquest and Espionage
Immunity of Bases to Subversion

There's only really one wartime combo for the Believers, and that is Fundamentalist -- Green -- Power. In the early game, before power is acquired, Police -- Green may be used to attain +4 support (actually wastes a point, but that's okay) for really large armies, and Planned helps offset Power's industry penalty, but generally speaking the efficiency penalties will hurt you more than the industry bonus could help.

Funda - Green - Power is not "getting ready for war mode." It's industry penalty makes that less efficient. Only once you have a large standing force does the switch off Democracy and into Power (0 support and +1 or +2 industry to +4 support and -2 industry) make sense from a production standpoint. It is "finishing this war on my terms, now" mode. You have your +25% attack bonus, +3 to morale (which combines well with the attack bonus), +3 to probe, and +4 support. You have +1 Planet to help your bases not get attacked by worms while they are less defended, and to help you beat up or convert worms on the march into battle. You have +2 efficiency, which never hurts (I generally use it to transfer as much energy out of research and into storage as I can get without penalty... -40% research screws your research anyway, while storage energy goes in 1-to-1 and is great for probe use... although with a large stockpile and huge numbers of bases you may still be able to research fairly effectively with -40%, so don't give up on it out of principle... look at your specific situation). Your penalties are to growth (not a battle priority), industry (painful, but somewhat offset by high support), and research (generally not a pitched battle priority... sometimes the opponent will have enough energy to upgrade troops to a new design, but then those few units become probe team conversion priorities... not a perfect solution, but not a bad one, either). If you get clone vats (by hook or crook, and generally via the latter) then the only penalty with the setup is research.
This setup favors a total war scenario... you don't want to stay in it for long periods of time, because of the research penalties it inflicts on your already depressed abilities. So don't go into it just because some yaya on the other side of the globe declares war on you... wait until it matters. Once war is pitched, you bend all your resources to total conquest. Convert all enemy units you can that are equal or better than your own troops. Convert bases and use them as forward posts... you can defer support costs to the new bases = 4 or its size, and thus free up other bases back home to build more units (or, if its production is good enough, you may wish to use it as a forward production base)... and you don't lose population like you do to invasion. If a base is too tough to attack you can slash and burn its farms / energy and watch their base starve and lose defenses to unpaid maintenance costs. Generally, though, it is better to capture a base intact than it is to conquer it, it is better to conquer it than it is to lay siege to it and pulverize its infrastructure, and it is better to siege a base than to annihilate it. With +3 Probe, there will be no easy retaking of captured bases... once you get in the door you own them.
With +1 Planet, you might want to consider bringing along some mindworms. Mindworms sidestep the Believers general tech disadvantage (although with strong Probe use you should be roughly equal to your neighbors), and offer an alternative attack paradigm, a way to crack particularly tough nuts. Generally speaking, it is a rare base indeed which is well defended against Psi, Probe, AND conventional attacks. Bringing in Psi units either exploits a weaknesses in your opponents defenses, or it forces them to expend resources shoring up that weakness. If they reinforce themselves on all fronts, they will be weak on all of them (a little Sun Tzu action to get us through).

So thats my little rhapsody on Believer tactics. I like them because they force you to work hard for your victories, while remaining fairly consistent in ability from one difficulty level to the next (although the probe bonus and inclination helps a lot with the computer research bonuses on the hard levels).

posted 04-22-99 08:16 PM ET         

Don't get me wrong... if you get the chance, get transit, and if someone else gets it, it's usually best to take it or trade for it (trading bases is cheap, really cheap, but incredibly strong... you can trade a one pop base for a large base with multiple sps... it's pretty much cheating, but a good way to get high scores... trading is also fun because on fundamentalist, the new bases you have gotten will be immune to mind control, while you can get back your old bases for half cost... easy victory is to trade for as many of your unsuspecting victims bases as you can, making sure that the bases you lose are small and near other bases, and then going in and repossessing all the recently traded bases on the same turn... you'll have a strong toehold in enemy territory and he'll be down several bases). It will definitely help your expansion and also makes sure that whatever faction would have it does not. (morgan often grabs it, cause he can... and he's usually weak from being a hothead with a small army. he is most annoying as a probe guy, and believers can teach him a lot about the right way to use probes). You can settle a base and immediately commence building colony pods... each of which contains three more people. Where do they all come from?

posted 04-29-99 11:20 PM ET            

I found another post on here somewhere claiming that "If Miriam pulls even with you on Tech, it's all over." How true that is.

posted 04-30-99 07:28 AM ET            

We're now in the long-run and Keynes is dead!

posted 04-30-99 03:52 PM ET            

At the time, I had little choice, however. The game plopped me down right next to him. I stole tech after tech until he caught me and then I just had to enslave him.

posted 07-29-99 12:18 PM ET         

Alpha Sector, Beta Sector, Gamma Sector, etc.

What are your favorite BELIEVER STYLE basenames (especially ones you thought of yourself)?

posted 08-22-99 11:06 PM ET         

Also try buliding a Network Node at every base and build the Network Backbone.

posted 08-24-99 12:11 PM ET            

Along with their support bonus, the Believers are a great faction to play for a fast war. Their rapid growth and attacking bonus make up much of the speed element.

-PROBE THE PANTS OFF OF 'EM
I agree.

-DEFEND YOUR BASES
Not to mention human opponents, the AI has yet to touch one single Believer base of mine. So much for the multiple defense units

-WEAPONS TECHNOLOGY IS OVERRATED
Further add to the speed element. In fact, once you get the hang of the game winning the game on huge map (Conquest victory) seems mundane when most probably you can reach missile weapon technology.

-DEFINITELY BUILD
The Citizen's Defense Force
Well, most probably I get it for the +25points.

-The THEORY OF EVERYTHING and SUPERCOLLIDER
More points... +50.

the -1 PLANET
-Thanks for a ready source of energy credits