posted 05-28-99 09:05 AM ET     

This forum is dedicated to just how to play UOP well and only the UOP.

Here is my 2 cents worth. Really, really use and abuse the free network node you get. BUILD CITIES 2 SQUARES APART. Build tons of cities.

Try hard to get the Citizen defense force and Virtual world. With these 2 SP one defender/police unit can keep your city secure for a long while. Other free drone control SPs are nice also. Hunter Seeker Algorthim is helpful, but in some set ups not really that important.

Race to the technology toat gives you 3+ food, minerals and energy. Then to bettter weaopns if you have a annoying neighbor or to mind/machine if you have time to build a middle game army. Choppers and drop units make taking over the other 'primitive' faction's cities almost to easy.

Other comments?????

I will go start the Gaian's forum.

Pick your enemy's

posted 05-28-99 12:41 PM ET         

The object for UoP on Transcend is to keep bases small at first. Do like the Morgans, make a bunch of tighly placed bases and sit on 'em until they can afford to grow. Once you are able to, hit the Human Genome with all you've got, then put another base working on it, too.

You should get the genome, and later switch the other base to Virtual World. You should get these two, and in one game I also got the WP. There should be some down time(I've played on Huge water maps), but build Rec Commons and many formers.

One thing about them on higher difficulty levels is that their drone problems only hit at size four. At Transcend, drones hit before that on every faction. Basically, except for PKs, their drone problems are just as nasty as the other factions.

And you really have to look hard at that network node. The build time and expense usually makes it not worth it to build unless you've got VW in the early game. The ability to cash in on artifacts early also gives you a hidden advantage.

The Police State/Green combo works well in times of war, being as to the large armies you can support, the movement bonus/mindworm capture ability, and the fact that you can use police on newly captured cities can help you swarm the enemy.

I've recently found that free market is the way to go. You can overcome the police rating by laundering troops and Ascetic Virtues. And the cash and research you get, combined with knoweledge can be a big benefit.

As to probe teams, as long as you station a number in your bases, and kill any that land on your territory, you shouldn't have a problem until you get the HSA.

I've come to the conclusion that UoP is the best on the higher difficulty levels, rather than the easier ones.

posted 05-28-99 03:20 PM ET         

Very interesting. Give up the UOP research bonus to eliminate the drone problem with punishment spheres.

That would put them a little ahead of other factions in research (free Network Node) and better off than most in drone control.

posted 05-31-99 06:29 PM ET            

The strength of UP is research. Your path to victory must (imho) be achieved by superior tech, therefore my advice is as follows.

Use directed research.

Use supply crawlers to obtain resources instead of population � this will keep your drones in check (do this at least until you have TVW). Just make sure that you use real people for boreholes so that you get both resources as a supply crawler will only get you one of the available resources. Protect the crawlers. And of course, if you�re on a watery world, design a foil / cruiser supply unit to accompany your sea formers. Supply crawlers are a faster way to wealth than waiting for population growth, and it makes it easier to use the GREEN option useful for reducing inefficiency at bases. To make this work you must therfore build a lot of formers. Building formers and supply units may slow you down a little while you are doing it but as soon as this strategy starts to boost mineral output, your economic growth will accelerate.

Use formers intelligently � if you have an artifact a few squares away from a base and a big group of formers wating for work, use them to build a road from the artifact to the base and then move the artifact to the base and get the new tech immediately. Don�t forget to keep a log of which Network Nodes have been used.
Always pick any �Secrets� tech if it is available for research � this should be obvious, yes?

Hurry production just enough to leave 1 turn remaining. This appears to have the same effect as hurrying to zero turns but will save you a lot of energy credits over the course of the game. Divide credits required by the number of turns remaining, subtract this number from credits required, then ADD 1, and make a partial payment of this amount. The unit will be built and ready to use on your next turn.

Your first SPs, in order of preference should be The Virtual World, The Weather Paradigm and The Human Genome � If you get the first two, you probably won�t get THG, unless you�re playing an easy level (I prefer to play at Thinker � the number of drones UP gets at this level makes the game too irritating for me). Imho, The Merchant Exchange is a luxury item for UP and not worth the bother, unless you establish enough bases with SP-level mineral output and don�t need resources for building combat units.

Then you must set your research path to build HUNTER-SEEKER. All factions will attack you with probe teams � not building this is asking for too much trouble, especially as you really do want to choose KNOWLEDGE, which you must not do until you have H-S. Otherwise you will waste a lot of resource building probe teams for defense and they will always lose in 1-1 battles with enemy probe teams. If you attack probe teams with combat units you will have to break treaties to do so. I think FIRAXIS should fix this.

On your way to H-S (esp. if you have nasty neighbours) you may have to do a quick detours for Non-Linear Math (Impact weapons) and Superstring Theory (Chaos weapons), i.e. jump right over the Missile level tech. Similarly you can jump over the Fusion weapon and go straight to Tachyon. You�re certain to be threatened by Hive, Believers, or Spartans so you�d better have good weapons, particularly the Believers, as you must attack them first to a avoid their 25% attack bonus.

Where to stand firm when being pushed by an aggressive neighbour: don�t give away Air Power OR Synthetic Fossil Fuels, (unless, I suppose, if you have or are just about to get at least Chaos weapon capability). IMHO it�s good strategy, up to this point, to do just about anything to avoid military conflict � this is a tremendous waste of resources. Once you do have military superiority it can be a lot of fun to take out a faction who had previously been walking all over you with threats.

If you have some spare capacity I like The Empath Guild. Being PG is worthwhile and I like to see what everyone else is up to, esp. when racing for SPs. I you let Lal get this you�ll likely never be PG unless he is really weak or gets eliminated.

Once you�ve got H-S you can then choose KNOWLEDGE which will boost your research speed. By making early preparations you can set up one particular base as your main research centre � build a mountain full of solar collectors and plenty of boreholes. It should not be hard to get > 400 research units / turn from this base.

Your next research path must be to yield the CYBERNETIC (Digital Sentience tech) option as soon as possible. Do not actually choose this until you have built THE NETWORK BACKBONE.

By this time you should be miles ahead in tech (it�s not hard to get techs every 2 turns, but sometimes you have to push labs to 60 or 70% to get this, OK if you�re already turning healthy profit). If you�re not the first one to get The Universal Translator, something has gone seriously wrong! Therefore, if you�ve followed all the good general strategies, victory should be certain. The easiest is diplomatic since you can bribe other factions to vote for you with tech as well as credits.

FIRAXIS � the base information screen could indicate whether its node has been used, say by putting a little icon next to it in the facilites list.

FIRAXIS � it should be possible to see the vote count before committing to bribes � this is how it works in real politics!

FIRAXIS � there should be a Rules option to SPEED RESEARCH ACROSS THE BOARD. Some games are effectively over by the time you have Tachyon tech. The game would be more enjoyable if one could use the �cool stuff� like grav ships and psi gates when it will actually do some good.

FIRAXIS � there should be the option to query datalinks before having to choose the research goal.

posted 06-01-99 07:17 AM ET         

I agree with the idea of using supply crawlers to obtain resources instead of population - since any supply crawlers that you build to convoy resources can be used later to build SPs, and you'll need to build SPs anyway, building supply crawlers don't necessarily slow you down any bit. Because of this, Industrial Automation should be an early goal for research. If you play blind research (the default setting, which makes the game significantly harder), you need a bit of luck to get this early, though you'll be generally ok if you manage to get it within the first 12 tech advancements or so.

Once you get Industrial Automation, switch to Wealth unless you're at war with someone. In the early game the difference between Knowledge and Wealth is not much in terms of research (since your bases are small, +1 energy per base is good in perspective), but Wealth reduces production costs and gives you more cash. Don't use Free Market until you get Environmental Economics - +2 economy isn't that much better than +1 when your bases are small and when energy production can't exceed 2 in most squares (you get 2 energy already in monoliths, river with forest, solar collectors on elevation >1000m, etc.), and the police penalty makes it not a worthy choice. Once you get Environmental Economics though, Democracy/Free Market/Knowledge is generally the logical choice, and when you're ready for population boom in your bases, switch to Planned for a few turns.

Your first SPs should be HGP, WP, and VW as others have suggested. When I play directed research (getting Industrial Automation early) I usually manage to get all three in Transcend, but if I can only get two of them I'll skip the HGP. I therefore usually build the WP first, then go for the HGP. If I'm way ahead I'll sometimes try to get the Command Nexus or the Empath Guild before I get VW. When building a SP, build supply crawlers only (instead of accumulating minerals for the SP). I don't use the "social engineering cheat" (which I mentioned in another thread).
I don't generally build bases 2 squares apart; I don't like bases placed within the radius of one another (though I agree that it could work). OTOH, I usually build bases 3 or 4 squares apart, though I do sometimes build bases 2 squares apart in diagonal (since they don't lie within the radius of one another).

Regarding hurrying production, it takes 2 energy per mineral for hurrying facilities, >2.5 energy per mineral for units, and 4 energy per mineral for SPs (assuming you've accumulated at least 10 minerals already). So unless you have plenty of energy reserves in the early going, you should use them primarily to hurry facilities, and only hurry units if necessary. An exception to this is the supply crawler, since if you hurry a supply crawler you can get extra minerals from it each turn a few turns earlier. Never hurry SPs; hurry supply crawlers instead. Also, if you are to hurry production in a base, it is best to do this as soon as possible: not only that you get the benefits of the production earlier, but you also start the next production earlier (and in essense, by hurrying a production you start any future production earlier). For example, instead of building (not hurrying) a recycling tanks first and then hurrying a rec commons, with the same amount of cash it would be better to hurry the recycling tanks first and then build the rec commons, since you can get the benefits of the recycling tanks several turns earlier. For this reason, it is usually wise to hurry recycling tanks immediately after a new base is built. Also, hurrying production to zero turns allows minerals (up to 10) to be carried over to the next production, and could be useful if you also plan to hurry the next production. (Of course, if your base is producing more than 10 minerals a turn, you should make a partial payment so that no minerals are lost.)

Try to make Pact Brothers with other factions, and if possible threaten them to give you cash (if you manage to make Pact Brothers with the Morganites, they'll sometimes yield and give you BIG cash, and if that happens, the game usually becomes a cakewalk). Otherwise, don't be afraid to make loans, since early cash is important, for the reason I've stated above.

Do not cash in artifacts if you're one or two turns away from a tech breakthrough. The number of labs required for the next research depends on the number of techs you own when you begin the next research, so the next research will require fewer labs if you postpone cashing in artifacts until the current research is completed.

There is no reason for not choosing Knowledge until you get the HSA, since the UoP already has a -2 Probe and a -4 Probe doesn't give any further penalty. Moreover, a negative Probe rating doesn't decrease your probe teams' morale, so your probe teams shouldn't always lose in 1-1 battles against enemy probes. In fact, UoP probe teams should have an advantage in probe combat, since you're more advanced in tech and certain techs improve your probe team morale. Infantry probe teams are useful in the early going as counter-probes; each is 10 minerals cheaper than the default rover probe team. Try to build probe teams in a base with command center, and distribute from there (unless you have Command Nexus) - it gives your probe teams +2 morale like any other land units. With the cost you need to build the HSA, you can build 10-15 infantry and/or rover probe teams, and you'll need to build defensive probe teams before you can get the HSA anyway. The HSA is convenient, but hardly a must, and it should therefore be of relatively low priority. As I have said elsewhere, my suggestion would be to get the Xenoempathy Dome, the Maritime Control Center and the Ascetic Virtues first.

As regards to the comment that you can't kill probe teams with combat units without breaking treaties, you can interrogate them if they're in your territory (send them back to their headquarters base). I think this is clearly intended by Firaxis.

posted 06-01-99 09:20 AM ET         

I test played this a bit and it is a very nice strategy in some cases. I would not use this if you are in a tech tace with other opponents, but if you have a confortable lead in tech putting punishment spheres in your cities makes life a lot easier.

posted 06-01-99 11:07 AM ET         

Punishment spheres should not be used by UoP as a general drone control device.

posted 06-01-99 11:52 AM ET         

I used to agree, but punishment spheres are more useful than just a troop building punishment city. At a cost of 1/2 of your city's research you gain the ability to grow that city to an unlimited (by drones) size.

You do not want to have every city doing this, but cities futher than 16 squares from your capital loose most of a lot energy to inefficence and produce little science. Many of my cities really far from my capital loose ALL their energy to efficiency.

There are some good uses for the P Sphere. Monsoon Jungle would be a good place for these (if far from your capitol). If you are taking over another faction's cities 80 squares from your capitol that are in the Monsoon Jungle a punishment sphere may well be the most useful facility to build in that city.

More population or more science. That is the question. IF you are ahead in tech P Spheres can allow you to get ahead in population.

I will try and put some numbers to this, but I think that for UOP for cities more than 20-30 squares from your capital at population 8-10 with a reasonable growth rate a punishment sphere is in many cases the facility to build.

Now if I can find some way to battle the inefficiency. I think that the inefficience should go down as you advance in technology. If I have mag tubes efficience should be reasonable. Also, I should not get more energy by destroying my HQ than having my HQ far from most of my cities.

posted 07-08-99 03:38 AM ET            

On Social Engeneering table try to put some energy to PSYCH. (ECON 50%, PSYCH 10%, LABS 40% - or something like that) It helps, and lab capacity won't suffer (network nodes).

Do that later in the game, as late as possible.