posted 05-09-99 04:27 PM ET         

The Police Spartans work pretty well in a limited sense. They are certainly valuable for harder levels. On the other hand, the PK's are, generally speaking, pretty good at drone suppression, as well as having a lot of other good stuff, so if that's the draw look elsewhere.

My major advice for any would-be Spartan dictator is to go for Clone Vats as soon as possible. Then you can run Power without it's negative effects and use a potent military force to its fullest effect. However, your unspectacular probe, research, and industry may prevent you from getting what you need.

Generally, I find that Santiago is weaker than the other 2 conquer factions... Believers have a +25% attack which is really nice (and can be supplmented by further morale bonuses, unlike Santiago's which caps out with the morale ceiling), the coolest looking bases, and also the best probe teams around, which go a long way to offsetting their tech screw (if you can force yourself to commit to them fully with Fundamentalist politics), while Yang has pretty much got everything in the early-mid game, although I find that he suffers in the later game. If you are playing as Yang, be sure to get the patch which makes him immune to negative efficiency, and he will easily be one of the best factions. Some people argue that his -2 Econ is crippling, but I don't generally find it so... Police-Planned-Wealth pretty much offsets the penalty, although it is still quite hard to get +2 Econ (you need FME, Wealth, and a Golden age... generally Knowledge is better in the later game, although Police-Planned-Kn wastes kn's effic with Yang's ineffic immunity)

I assume you want to crush people, and that is why you are playing as Spartans... you might want to try my personal favorites, the Gaians. They are able to use an incredibly effective Green conquer blitz strategy, whereby you recruit a mindworm or three and use them to defeat your opponents. You build up a large tech advantage by allocating your tech expenture to non-military techs, and then fill in your military tech through conquest. Eventually, your opponents will build anti-psi units to mess with you, but hopefully by that time you will have good enough military tech and incredibly productive bases.

Just some thoughts on the way I play conquer.

posted 05-09-99 08:41 PM ET         

Like I said... the Spartans do have a lot of good stuff going for them... but everyone else just has better stuff.

It seems like you are doing backflips to try to make the Spartans good, at least in your econ system. If you want +2 Econ, Morgan + Wealth is the obvious way to go... he also has +1 industry under this system. -1 support and -2 morale are annoying, but they can be dealt with in war time by changing values. You seem to be working hard to keep FME going during wartime, which it is just not good for. Wealth Morgan can do lots of other things, like take Green to grab up a large effic and planet bonus to include worms in his force. On the other hand, by the time you start to get Ascetic Virtues, FME becomes less and less attractive because the planet starts getting spunky, and the planet penalty starts to hurt.

Also, Efficiency DOES matter, and it matters more the more energy you are producing, and the more bases you have. I am a fan of producing huge numbers of bases, and thus producing more energy than anyone else in the game, rather than trying to produce more energy with less bases. The only faction I ever play at zero or neg effic is PKs (because they do so well with Planned-Demo-Golden) or Yang... because 0 effic is one of his plusses. Not that I would reject +2 econ out of hand... it's really pretty good. But it isn't everything, and police/FME/spartans tosses police (+3 police being the main advantage of the spartans on high difficultly levels... it is more important to have that than to have +2 econ, imo), efficiency, planet, and industry in favor of +2 econ and +2 support.

Generally, I find that the factions best able to use Police are Gaians and Hive. Green-Police-Gaian is a great versitile combo, with only morale and growth as negatives, and the latter is compensated for with my favorite SP, Clone Vats (which is also always a good SP). Spartans have the most to gain from Police, but they don't absorb the efficiency penalty anywhere near as well as other factions.

Also, Spartans cannot handle all government types well. Democracy, for example, is quite useful to Spartans, in letting them grow fast (to make up for industry penalty) and be more efficient (to offset Planned's penalty, which is useful for further growth and offseting the industry penalty in toto). However, the support penalty is pretty bad for someone trying to expand. Only the Believers are able to absorb that well, with their inherent +2. Nobody really plays Fundamentalist like the Believers, either, at least not until future societies come along, because no one else can get +3 probe (even later, you have to get +4, which wastes a point). Gaians play Green the best, for the same reasons. Yang is annoying because he can't use Democracy, so he can't get Demo-Planned-
Golden Age for a pop boom. And so on.

Believers can also get +37.5 from morale by using power + fundamentalist. That is in addition to the +25%, which was my original point... no matter what morale bonuses anyone can get, the Believers can also get them AND still have their 25% bonus (and morale is one of the easier SE choices to pick up outside of SE). If you want to confront Believers, the obvious place to do so is their crappy research, but they are the best at fielding large (support bonus) vicious (attack bonus) armies well supported with Probes (probe bonus + fundamentalist morale bonus). One can acquire techs by stealing them straight up, by taking bases and grabbing them as spoils of war, and by taking over an enemy unit and reverse engineering the unit's props from there (going to the unit creation screen and modifying the captured unit plan there to whatever you need). Believer's tech disads are nowhere near as bad as people (myself included) believe at the beginning... trade for toys at the beginning (particularly Ecology) and you will be okay.

I realize I am talking a lot about Believers in specific and other factions in general on this post about the Spartans. But you need to talk about other groups to show where the Spartans are weak. In my opinion, there are three main (blue/orange/black) conquer factions and one alternative conquer faction (green). I think that the Spartans are easily the worst of all of them as a conquer faction. If you want to play a non-conquer faction, then Peacekeepers are clearly so far ahead of everyone else that there is really no point playing anyone else. Morgan is nowhere near as good, but as a non-conquer faction he's still a lot better than Santiago's Spartans. UoP kicks the crap out of everyone as a conquer faction on the easy levels, and is really weak on harder levels.

New Guy--
If you want to play on Transcend and expand fairly quick, play with Police Spartans. Being able to keep your people in line is key when nearly everyone is a drone. But if you want both excellence and versatility beyond this basic ability, look elsewhere.

posted 05-10-99 01:09 AM ET            

with there +2 morale you can wipe the floor with psi based units and once you can get green economics you can capture WORMS!!

I recommend the secret projects
command nexus
cdf
MUST HAVE the hunter seeker algorithm
living refinery
cloning vats

social factors:
ploice/green/knowledge/cybernetics
with these you are unstoppable and in good standing with gains, university, and hive
(if you haven't screwed them over before )

posted 05-10-99 02:10 AM ET         

+ 2 morale isn't much against Psi units... they go up in morale quick. And it's usually the attacker who wins, given their 50% bonus, so Spartans aren't that much better off there. I'll admit that Spartans have better Song/Empath troops than others (the bonuses add together well), but these troops can usually win anyway. Morale tops out pretty quick, and to imitate the Spartan bonus in the early game all you really need is the Command Nexus, a beginning SP (I fully realize the Spartan bonus also works at sea and in the air, but for the most part of the early game its all ground combat for me).
The Police bonus is nice, but is not as good as the PK bonus in the long run, and the PK's have other abilties to boot.

For those people who think Spartans are good, I would be curious to see how you would justify placing them above any other faction. The faction to beat would probably be the Hive... Atombomb and I had a long argument about this, and as usual never agreed... it was his opinion that the Spartans police bonus was worth everything on transcend, and he placed them right below PKs on his "most powerful faction chart." They go in the 5th place on mine for trans games, and lower on easier.

posted 05-10-99 07:40 AM ET            

right now i'm playing a multiplayer game as the spartans against the gaians...and so far it's been tough, and in fact the gaians are rated #1 on every category at this moment...shortly after the game beganmuch to my horror i found out that the map we were playing on had lots of fungus. just as i feared my gaian oppenent captured a large army of mindworms and turned them into a large advantage. using them to eliminate the belivers and to take over the hive. in our game the univversity of planet was the largest computer faction however my opponent has quickly overran the UoP and now (the game is at 2202) the UoP only has one city left that can't hold out for much longer. things are really getting dangerous for me because in a mere 8 years the gaians will have researched doctrine Air Power, even worse i haven't even researched synthetic fossil fuels. To compound matters the gaians have the CDF and the empath guild...i am really kicking myself for letting them get the empath guild. lack of information is key to winning, i was elected Planetary govenor and i have used the infiltration to my advantage in fact there was about 15 turns when i had infiltration via being govenor and the gaians didn't have any. during that time i used that to my advantage. now i have a few suprised that i haven't used yet, and there are a few bright sides i do have the command nexus, the merchant exchange and the human genome project. here is what i have learned so far in this game.

1. against the computer i love using rovers that have the best weapon and no armor, these usually make up all of my ground assualt force, i almost always get air power first and them decimate the computer. against people who know how to defend their bases and launch devistating counter attacks this strategy doesn't work, not even a modified send mostly rovers with a few infantry with high defense values. when waging war get infantry with the best attack and defense.then in times of war switch to power and if you have the CN your infantry is elite. Elite infantry with +25 percent attack bounus against ases and their +50 attack bounus for being elite is the best way of breaking into a fortified base. also their 2 move capablities give them the mobility they need to be leathal.

2. A spartan green police state is not as good as a gaian green police state. at least not on a map with alot of fungus. becuase the gaians will have the edge with planet. they will be able to capture more mindworms and they will have the psi combat edge. of course spartan police power wiil be better meaning i can use fewer police units to achieve the same effects but trying to beat the gaians at their own strategy isnt a good idea. the negative growth really hurts especially with a weak industry, that doesn't have the capablities to build childrens creches in everycity. differnt SE choices are a good idea. i am preparing to switch from police/green to free market, maybe even democratic free market. i'm not sure how bad the -2 efficeny will hurt me.

3. The spartans can't run power until you get the cloning vats as a full time SE choice. the negative three industry is a killer. in simple terms this means that a tree farm will go from being 132 (for the spartans) to being 156...the HSA will go from 330 to 390. and the extra support and morale isn't worth it...with the major exception when you are ready to launch a blitzkrieg swith to power on the turn before. then as soon as the blitzkrieg has stalled switch to knowledge.

4. garrison every base with probe units. if possible do not let your opponent infiltrate our datalinks...also try to keep them from getting the empath guild or being planetary govenor. make it a point to infiltrate your opponents datalinks as soon as you can. always keep track of exactly what they are doing.

5.NEVER! never eliminate any computer player. never sign a truce with a computer player, when at war with a computer player never accept anything other than their surrender. do not sign pacts with the computer try to make it surrender to you at all costs. here is why. it is good for the computer to have bases, you can extort the computer for energy to help feed your war machine. you get commerce. the computer players can (but never really count on this) attack and tie down some of your human foes forces. the larger the computer empire the greater the chance that their units might actually help you. on transcend with zero efficency after you build six bases you start to get extra drones. submissive pact brothers can manage bases for you without causeing you to have more drones. think of them as puppet states. always tell them to declare war on the human, and any of the humans allies (to if nothing else cut off commerce). and finally use the computer players for extra tech. even if they only discover a new tech every 50 turns that means they can discover a tech you don't have. never give tech to the computer until they are one turn from discovering a new tech then SELL them all the tech you have. each tech you sell them is 25 more energy, and next turn you will have a new tech. they always give you any techs they discover.

6. before going to war prepare for a blitzkrieg. it is possible to gradually wear another player down but sending in less than three units at a time usually means a human opponent can defeat them quite easily. build up a large force that ha a good chance of doing alot of harm to your human opponent then switch to power and attack. when your troops stop advancing swith to knowledge. and remember to bring probes along with your troops. if their is a chance you can buy a base do that. if you can subvert their troops do it. but don't let them infiltrate your data links. oblitorate the base if you have to.

7. Armies matter but you should never concentrate on destroying their armies. destroy their cities. either conquer them if you can hold them and if you can't oblitor them. use nerve gas. target the population in the cities. the fewer cities they have the less tech they get, the fewer troops they can build, they fewer troops they can support. hurt them where it counts.

well i'm supposed to play more today, i'll keep you posted.

posted 05-14-99 12:19 PM ET            

Easy:
The Hive
University of Planet

Medium:
Gaia's Stepdaughters
Peacekeeping Forces
The Spartan Federation

Hard:
THe Lord's Believers
Morgan Industries

posted 05-15-99 01:19 PM ET            

Police/Free Market gives you something akin to Republic from Civ2. Warfare is possible, but the army must be spread out. The key is to saturate your continent with cities. The more the better.

I space my cities out every 2 squares. Each base is auto-terraformed when built, with the equivalent of a farm/solar/road (mag tube with monopole). In 100 years you can easily have 20 cities, close enough that each city can be re-enforced by the defensive units from at least 2 others in one turn.

Free market is awesome in early game, since it IGNORES tech limits on energy.

The key to this strategy come with using the spartans unique advantage...NO prototyping cost. This makes upgrading almost instantaneous with new tech. In the middle game, i've never been able to upgrade my army as fast as I get techs with other factions. Spartans always have cutting edge units.

End game is great, since offworld facilities are virtually limitless. Every city may only have access to 4 squres, but can still pull in 30 + food, 40+ minerals and energy.

The problems of drones caused by a huge empire is easily solved with 20% psyche. This usually puts the better developed cities in We love the King, while holding the others in order.

posted 05-15-99 11:48 PM ET         

At any rate, I'm still experementing with UoP, and though Miriam's penalties scare me, I've heard a lot of good stuff about her, so I have yet to try her out. I've played the Spartans, and I've got to agree that they just don't match up with the others.

At any rate, I'm still convinced Hive is the best faction, especially for conquest, argueably for development.

Korn: your strategies are good, but they can be used by other factions for better results. (namely, Hive). And -2Efficiency is VERY bad, especially on Transcend. And surrendered factions will always give you cash(sometimes in small increments, though) so don't sell them techs, just give'em techs. To force a surrendered faction to give you stuff, just demand and threaten to break the pact.

posted 05-17-99 04:21 AM ET            

it was back and forth but i managed to build the cyborg factpry the aestetic virtue and then finally the cloning vats and the hunter seeker algorithm those Sp gave me enough of an advantage to win...but the kewl thing was PBs were actually needed and used by both sides. but what broke the game open was shard choppers armed with nerve gas. and i also learnt that a democratic free market knowledge setup is great for the spartans. lots of cash lots of reserch good efficency, and coupled with the aestetic virtue i only needed to build one punishment sphere the whole game (but that city got nuked!).

high priest: unless i have green i don't play a police state. also what i meant by seeling tech to conquered factions is this. wait until they are one turn from discovering a new tech. then demand all of their cash first. after they i have nothing left to give, say you are in urgent need of research and then sell them all your tech. if they are researching something you already have that means next turn they will disover something new. also everybody except for believers will buy technology off of you even if they don't have any money. they will have a negative amount of moneybut they will still pay you for the techs, and they will discover a new for you too.