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Author Topic:   Basic Strategies for Builders

Series II posted 07-27-99 02:46 PM ET
How about a discussion about basic Builder strategies. One of you conquest people start a thread for that style.
I am a builder. I avoid wars after the first 30 years like the plague. If I can take out a faction real early that is great.
Obviously, I like a huge planet. I play on a 120 * 160 planet with 50% - 70% ocean usually. Sometimes I will play with less ocean. Weak erasion, dense clouds and abduant life (I love the wild mind worm bank account).
I usually alternate playing Hive, Gaians and PK. I don't really like the hive because they tend to be poor in the early game.
Secret Projects: Well I want them all, but Weather paradigm is critical. For my strategy. Also, I store all my alien artifacts in 1-2 cities during the early game. Each provides 50 minerals toward a secret project. This really helps build a SP some other faction is trying to steal from me. I actually end up building most all the SPs by saving my alien artifacts. I almost always get the early ones
That strategy is to expand very quickly. I build a colony pod as the first thing in every new city and a scout second. The 10 extra minerals makes that first colony pod come fairly quickly and the scout gets hurried and send out with the colony pod.
The reason that weatehr paradigm is critical is because I connect surrounding land islands to create an inland sea that will hold 10-40 cities. Sea cities are very good energy producers. Once I have my inland sea I usually move my HQ near them to raise their effiency.
My inland sea cities are wonderful. I just need 1-2 units in them for police force. They are about immuned to attack. Any faction must take one ov my internal costal cities to even start attacking my inland sea cities. Basically I only have 1/2 - 1/3 of my cities that are capable of being easily attacked.
I defend my front cities with a line of forest to stop imcoming troops. All the front cities are connected bu roads and I have 2-3 speeders/rovers located in a few central locations for reinforcements.
I can generally out research the other factions. I will send off a transport of probes to steal tech or other 'fun' things with factions I am at war with, but I usually will not do any real offfense until I get air units. It is fairly easy to be a complete isolationize with this strategy.
That is all for now. Your thoughts.............
RedFred posted 07-27-99 04:09 PM ET
I too, am a builder but I go about it a bit differently.

I use TI, blind research, standard size, randomly-generated map. I figure agressive AI just makes my game easier, so I don't use that option. No spoils. I go for the trancendance victory but enable all other victory conditions. Pretty much default settings the rest of the way, I guess. I try to give equal time to playing each faction, but the Spartans and the Believers are the hardest for me.
I am not good enough at TI that I can start a early game SP and be assured of completing it first. The blind research also messes me up. Basically I just take whatever SP I can and generally have a city or three working on SPs. No SP is truely critical for me, but I usually find Hunter-Seeker the most useful.
As with most builders I expand quickly. I treat the auto guv and auto formers with the uttermost disdain. I don't have a set strat for what gets built first in a new city. It could be several colony pods in succession or none at all depending on scouted surrounding location and within-the-city-radius resources.
I explore and pop pods aggressively. I will hurry the early SPs but prefer to cash the artifacts in for tech.
Your terraforming for an inland sea idea is a good one, but I am not able to consistantly get the Weather SP so can't use it as an early game strat.
If I do blunder into a aready made inland sea, I'll fill it with sea crawlers. I am a big fan of crawlers in general after Googlie showed me Vel's one city challenge game. They are such a huge advantage that supply crawlers are almost a cheat.
I don't start wars but will fight if I need to. I basically use what Plato90s calls an elastic defence but I will naturally bulk up on the hot spots. I always connect cities by the minimum of roads required and eventually by tubes for greater mobility of defence. I'll build multiply redundant sensors around each city. Each city will have a minimum of one offensive and one defensive units and a perimeter defence. Most cities will eventually have at least one air unit and a naval unit if appropriate.
I try not to get carried away with the design workshop, but I still build "Stumpy" (a cheap one movement defensive probe), "Slimy" (a naval probe) and "Sparky" (a sea crawler usually used for transporting energy).
I'll need to trade tech and maybe probe just to keep current for the first 50 - 150 years, then I can start to build up a tech lead.
My SE choices depend on my neighbours. Sometimes I'll stick with the defaults for much longer than I'd like to avoid upsetting anyone. I like Green the best and generally go Knowledge or Power. I tend not to flip around a lot and almost never play Wealth or Fundy.
Since I like to be green, this means no boreholes or echelon mirrors. If a borehole is already there I have no qualms about using it though. I'll build a couple of farms on wet country early if I have a food crunch but primarily plant lots of forest and the occasional mine. I plant a lot of rivers once I get that terraforming option.
My sea cities tend to get built for strategic military reasons. Anything extra that they bring me is just a bonus.
It seems like everyone has their own style. I hope to see some more posts on how everyone else plays.
-R
Zorak Zoran posted 07-28-99 08:46 AM ET
Well, being a card-carrying Spartan, I tend to play the Builder factions very aggressively, going so far as to wage war while using the Wealth SE option.
I believe the most critical early builder strategy is defining your borders, and securing the survival of your nation. This is most difficult when your neighbors are aggressive Conquest factions like the Spartans or Believers. Early scouting will reveal all the sweet terrain in your vacinity so it is important to extend your borders to cover it. Don't let a chunk of the Monsoon Jungle go unused just because you were too lazy to scout.
I don't use Unity Pod Scattering (too easy) so I generally don't see a lot of artifacts to help with SPs. At Transcend the Genome Project is critical. After that I'll take what I can get.
A handful of Impact Rovers is generally enough to defend your bases (use roads on the frontier) from aggressive neighbors, but you may have to step up military unit production if war cannot be stopped.
Only after I am set in my position do I go heavy builder, crank up the research and trade, and wait for Shard weapons. After that the game is generally over.
I've played enough games that the extra management of many cities or massive terraforming is not worth my time. I'm generally just looking for one faction by turn 200 that can give me a run for my money. The most fun I ever had was (as Gaians) trying to maintain a long and vulnerable salient against the Spartans to the north and Believers to the south. You definitely learn new and unusual ways of defending your empire when you are in that kind of dreadful position.

It seems that most "builder" style players are the type to create 100 colonies, go Dem/FM/Knowledge, and generally abuse the poor AI by out growing/teching them. On the other hand, your typical "conqust" style player abuses the AI by either attacking early with Impact Rovers wiping all other factions off their continent, or waits for Shard weapons and invades the biggest nation with two dozen Shard Rovers/Copters.
Johnny V posted 07-28-99 10:16 AM ET
I try to play extreme builder, but this game I found myself (Gaians) right next to the believers (on the level right below transcend), I had managed to scare up a few mind worms that joined me so I figured I would declare vendetta on the believers, I had no idea Mariam had so many units already. My big mind worms are dead and while I was busy worrying about Mariam I forgot to build lots of colony pods so I am behind. Looks like it is going to be a long game, I think I picked the wrong fight at the wrong time. I do have a piece of monsoon jungle with a coupl of colonies, but no hab complex yet so one city maxed out already.
Schoop posted 07-28-99 10:26 AM ET
I love builder. Conquest victories always leave me feeling empty inside, plus I tend not to score as high.
Each of my new cities generally builds a defensive unit first, then a Colony Pod, a former, some city improvement (Rec Tanks, Energy bank, or Net Node, depending on the situation). If I have room still, another Colony pod is in order.
I don't go ape with my new city expansion, though. I have never built bases that end up with names like "Morganites 14." I don't find it necessary. By the time I get into the "Alpha Sector" list, I know I've got enough. Then I focus on supergrowing them into pits of Wealth and Decadence.
I find that the Merchant exchange is very helpful in one of your early cities, especially if it grows big. Space elevator is great too, now that it's been fixed. The teep matrix is a must, too.
Free Market RULES!
gruedragon posted 07-28-99 10:51 AM ET
My builder strategy is very similar to Series II (I like your inland sea idea...), except when it comes to waging war. A builder will eventually be dragged into a war, so I prefer to be prepared for the eventuality. That's why I prefer to play either the Gaians or the Hive, the two builder factions that are also good militarily.
I don't start wars, but if I get dragged into a war I fight to win. I don't stop until they surrender or are wiped out.
I generally try appeasing the other factions, unless their demands are totally outrageous, or I can do orbital insertions, or they're close enough where my army can quickly get to them.
I do realize that this is at odds with the "pure" builder strategies, but given that there are military factions in the game a builder has to be prepared for the eventuality of war. This is why I prefer the builder factions that can also field a good army. Hopefully SMACX will have enough builder-style factions where us builders can build in peace.
Natguy posted 07-28-99 01:47 PM ET
I like the inland sea idea, Series II. I'm trying it out in my current game as the PKs. It does tend to get rather expensive, though. Fortunately, I have rich allies, am building a huge energy park on and around the Sunny Mesa, and I hope to have increased energy from the new seabases. (Sea Colony Pods take so much longer though, so it'll take a while)
A question about the map: You say you use 120*160. I am currently trying this as well (I'm going by the book here) and when I told it to go that size it told me it may mess up the map or possibly gameplay as well. And I noticed that all the land is diamond shaped! Except in a few places, it no longer has the varied coastlines and shapes! (Not that it matters, it's just odd) Does this happen to you as well?
Krushala posted 07-28-99 05:37 PM ET
The diamond shape land masses creep up on me when I generate random maps with the map editor. I'll use huge maps. I changed the dimensions in alpha.txt. Sometimes if I generete 2 or 3 I'll get a good map.
Series II posted 07-29-99 08:35 AM ET
Redfred,
Why no boreholes? That is one of the reasons I go green is to build 5-10 boreholes and still not cause no eco damage.
Natguy,
The diamond hap islands are, I believe, caused by using weak erosion. This causes a lot of mountains and they tend to be diamonds.
Yes, a big map can slow down the computer. I just upgraded to a 400MHz chip. If you disigned to big of a map I am sure the game would hang. The game recommends 64*128 or less and says that > 256*256 are problemitical at best. I have played a 250*250 map before with no problems and just a little slowness (and that was on a 233 MHz Pentium II)
Expensive to raise land???? I don't have that problem. The cost to raise land is related to how close the land you are raising is to one of your cities. I keep building cities on the new land. Rarely do I pay more than 24 energy to raise land. I will also put sea cities in the MIDDLE of an area that I plan on raising land in. This allows me to have a built up city in the middle of my new territory that can help out the brand new cities on both sides of it.
Plato90s posted 07-29-99 09:29 AM ET
Actually, distance is not an issue as long as you are inside the borders of your empire. When you try to raise/lower terrain outside your borders, then it's a major issue.
But on-land, the cost of raising/lowering land is proportional to the number of land squares which will be impacted. Doing a raise operation which will affect only 1-3 squares has a minimal cost of ~8 credits. If the result of the raise land means 8-9 squares will rise, then the cost increases to about 18 or so. If you are raising land out of the sea, that's also pretty expensive.
fsjjs1 posted 07-29-99 09:35 AM ET
I almost always play PK. I like the ease of expansion, the relatively quick tech advances and the council power. I try to avod wars until aircraft and Battleships come into play. I'll even give away my techs to the Spartans and Hive to avoid confrontation. The whole time I'm waiting for aircraft and ships I expand as much as possible, building atleast one city on every continent. I can avoid losing my bases by just playing the submissive faction and refusing to help in wars or give loans out.
I also try and grab as many SP's as possible
especially the empath guild and WP. My favorite it the Maritime. After drop pods come on the scene I send aircraft after the out of city soldiers and helicoptors after the cities, once thier cleared I drop in my soldiers and start mopping up.
The downside to this is that by the time I'm ready for war the Hive and the Spartans are all over the damn place and I end up haveing PB several tracts of land in order to reduce thier movements and to get rid of key cities.
I've noticed that while its easy to inflict a naval defeat on the Spartans, the Hive has a tremendous navy, and the Believers like to carpet the ocean with skim ships.
I always try for trancend but I usually get bored and end up nerve gassing and PBing every city on the planet but mine. MAybe not much of a stradgy but its been working for me since the game came out.
Zoetrope posted 07-30-99 06:19 AM ET
Johnny, Schoop and Grue: As you seem to dislike aggressive neighbors, have you tried the SNAC1.2 (sic) modifications by Shining1?
He has increased the strength of densive armor, decreased the power of weapons, made armor earlier and weapons later in the tech tree, changed a lot of costs (eg, he made terraforming cheap), and adjusted many other aspects of the game in favor of Builders.
If any of you are hoping for a peaceful SMACX, then I fear you'll be hitching the wrong ride. SMACX is billed as a hideous firefest: after all, what does "Alien Crossfire" sound like to you?
Zoetrope posted 07-30-99 06:21 AM ET
Plato90s: Raising the deep sea is expensive, but coastal areas are cheap, often only 4 credits. I haven't been able to discern a consistent pattern to the cost however.
Series II posted 07-30-99 09:34 AM ET
OK, so what I was accomplishing by building cities near where I was raising land was actually extending my border. That is what lowered the cost of raising the land.
Thanks for the clairfication.
player2 posted 07-30-99 12:21 PM ET
Just a quick note for everyone; I strongly encourage everyone here to check out the TI threads in the games forum. I'm a strong defender of builder tactics in MP.
There's an ongoing debate between conquerors and builders about builder strategy in TI. I've also refined my origional "active defense" thesis I proposed months ago. Also, I will soon post a new thread that will discuss this tactic in great detail.
Hope to see you there!
-player2
gruedragon posted 07-30-99 05:18 PM ET
Zoetrope: I have the SNAC1.2 posting saved, and when I get the time I'm probably going to use it as a basis for my own modifications. Unfortunately, it doesn't do anything to tone down the aggressiveness of the AI, and so you will still get dragged into wars. And given the defensive bonuses and offensive penalties, Shining1's mod makes it that much harder to force a faction into submission.
RedFred posted 08-04-99 10:09 PM ET
Series II, sorry about taking so long to get back to you. Another trip with no PC.
In response to your question on boreholes, I agree that they would help me out. I think what is happening is that after months of playing, TI is becoming less of a challenge. Now I am looking to make it slightly more difficult.
So I play no boreholes, no condensers, no echelon mirrors, no actions that would damage my rep, less and less monkeying about in the design workshop...this game I am playing the Believers and so it goes. I haven't worked my way up to the one city challenge yet, though!
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Author	Topic: Basic Strategies for Builders
Series II	posted 07-27-99 02:46 PM ET How about a discussion about basic Builder strategies. One of you conquest people start a thread for that style. I am a builder. I avoid wars after the first 30 years like the plague. If I can take out a faction real early that is great. Obviously, I like a huge planet. I play on a 120 * 160 planet with 50% - 70% ocean usually. Sometimes I will play with less ocean. Weak erasion, dense clouds and abduant life (I love the wild mind worm bank account). I usually alternate playing Hive, Gaians and PK. I don't really like the hive because they tend to be poor in the early game. Secret Projects: Well I want them all, but Weather paradigm is critical. For my strategy. Also, I store all my alien artifacts in 1-2 cities during the early game. Each provides 50 minerals toward a secret project. This really helps build a SP some other faction is trying to steal from me. I actually end up building most all the SPs by saving my alien artifacts. I almost always get the early ones That strategy is to expand very quickly. I build a colony pod as the first thing in every new city and a scout second. The 10 extra minerals makes that first colony pod come fairly quickly and the scout gets hurried and send out with the colony pod. The reason that weatehr paradigm is critical is because I connect surrounding land islands to create an inland sea that will hold 10-40 cities. Sea cities are very good energy producers. Once I have my inland sea I usually move my HQ near them to raise their effiency. My inland sea cities are wonderful. I just need 1-2 units in them for police force. They are about immuned to attack. Any faction must take one ov my internal costal cities to even start attacking my inland sea cities. Basically I only have 1/2 - 1/3 of my cities that are capable of being easily attacked. I defend my front cities with a line of forest to stop imcoming troops. All the front cities are connected bu roads and I have 2-3 speeders/rovers located in a few central locations for reinforcements. I can generally out research the other factions. I will send off a transport of probes to steal tech or other 'fun' things with factions I am at war with, but I usually will not do any real offfense until I get air units. It is fairly easy to be a complete isolationize with this strategy. That is all for now. Your thoughts.............
RedFred	posted 07-27-99 04:09 PM ET I too, am a builder but I go about it a bit differently. I use TI, blind research, standard size, randomly-generated map. I figure agressive AI just makes my game easier, so I don't use that option. No spoils. I go for the trancendance victory but enable all other victory conditions. Pretty much default settings the rest of the way, I guess. I try to give equal time to playing each faction, but the Spartans and the Believers are the hardest for me. I am not good enough at TI that I can start a early game SP and be assured of completing it first. The blind research also messes me up. Basically I just take whatever SP I can and generally have a city or three working on SPs. No SP is truely critical for me, but I usually find Hunter-Seeker the most useful. As with most builders I expand quickly. I treat the auto guv and auto formers with the uttermost disdain. I don't have a set strat for what gets built first in a new city. It could be several colony pods in succession or none at all depending on scouted surrounding location and within-the-city-radius resources. I explore and pop pods aggressively. I will hurry the early SPs but prefer to cash the artifacts in for tech. Your terraforming for an inland sea idea is a good one, but I am not able to consistantly get the Weather SP so can't use it as an early game strat. If I do blunder into a aready made inland sea, I'll fill it with sea crawlers. I am a big fan of crawlers in general after Googlie showed me Vel's one city challenge game. They are such a huge advantage that supply crawlers are almost a cheat. I don't start wars but will fight if I need to. I basically use what Plato90s calls an elastic defence but I will naturally bulk up on the hot spots. I always connect cities by the minimum of roads required and eventually by tubes for greater mobility of defence. I'll build multiply redundant sensors around each city. Each city will have a minimum of one offensive and one defensive units and a perimeter defence. Most cities will eventually have at least one air unit and a naval unit if appropriate. I try not to get carried away with the design workshop, but I still build "Stumpy" (a cheap one movement defensive probe), "Slimy" (a naval probe) and "Sparky" (a sea crawler usually used for transporting energy). I'll need to trade tech and maybe probe just to keep current for the first 50 - 150 years, then I can start to build up a tech lead. My SE choices depend on my neighbours. Sometimes I'll stick with the defaults for much longer than I'd like to avoid upsetting anyone. I like Green the best and generally go Knowledge or Power. I tend not to flip around a lot and almost never play Wealth or Fundy. Since I like to be green, this means no boreholes or echelon mirrors. If a borehole is already there I have no qualms about using it though. I'll build a couple of farms on wet country early if I have a food crunch but primarily plant lots of forest and the occasional mine. I plant a lot of rivers once I get that terraforming option. My sea cities tend to get built for strategic military reasons. Anything extra that they bring me is just a bonus. It seems like everyone has their own style. I hope to see some more posts on how everyone else plays. -R
Zorak Zoran	posted 07-28-99 08:46 AM ET Well, being a card-carrying Spartan, I tend to play the Builder factions very aggressively, going so far as to wage war while using the Wealth SE option. I believe the most critical early builder strategy is defining your borders, and securing the survival of your nation. This is most difficult when your neighbors are aggressive Conquest factions like the Spartans or Believers. Early scouting will reveal all the sweet terrain in your vacinity so it is important to extend your borders to cover it. Don't let a chunk of the Monsoon Jungle go unused just because you were too lazy to scout. I don't use Unity Pod Scattering (too easy) so I generally don't see a lot of artifacts to help with SPs. At Transcend the Genome Project is critical. After that I'll take what I can get. A handful of Impact Rovers is generally enough to defend your bases (use roads on the frontier) from aggressive neighbors, but you may have to step up military unit production if war cannot be stopped. Only after I am set in my position do I go heavy builder, crank up the research and trade, and wait for Shard weapons. After that the game is generally over. I've played enough games that the extra management of many cities or massive terraforming is not worth my time. I'm generally just looking for one faction by turn 200 that can give me a run for my money. The most fun I ever had was (as Gaians) trying to maintain a long and vulnerable salient against the Spartans to the north and Believers to the south. You definitely learn new and unusual ways of defending your empire when you are in that kind of dreadful position. It seems that most "builder" style players are the type to create 100 colonies, go Dem/FM/Knowledge, and generally abuse the poor AI by out growing/teching them. On the other hand, your typical "conqust" style player abuses the AI by either attacking early with Impact Rovers wiping all other factions off their continent, or waits for Shard weapons and invades the biggest nation with two dozen Shard Rovers/Copters.
Johnny V	posted 07-28-99 10:16 AM ET I try to play extreme builder, but this game I found myself (Gaians) right next to the believers (on the level right below transcend), I had managed to scare up a few mind worms that joined me so I figured I would declare vendetta on the believers, I had no idea Mariam had so many units already. My big mind worms are dead and while I was busy worrying about Mariam I forgot to build lots of colony pods so I am behind. Looks like it is going to be a long game, I think I picked the wrong fight at the wrong time. I do have a piece of monsoon jungle with a coupl of colonies, but no hab complex yet so one city maxed out already.
Schoop	posted 07-28-99 10:26 AM ET I love builder. Conquest victories always leave me feeling empty inside, plus I tend not to score as high. Each of my new cities generally builds a defensive unit first, then a Colony Pod, a former, some city improvement (Rec Tanks, Energy bank, or Net Node, depending on the situation). If I have room still, another Colony pod is in order. I don't go ape with my new city expansion, though. I have never built bases that end up with names like "Morganites 14." I don't find it necessary. By the time I get into the "Alpha Sector" list, I know I've got enough. Then I focus on supergrowing them into pits of Wealth and Decadence. I find that the Merchant exchange is very helpful in one of your early cities, especially if it grows big. Space elevator is great too, now that it's been fixed. The teep matrix is a must, too. Free Market RULES!
gruedragon	posted 07-28-99 10:51 AM ET My builder strategy is very similar to Series II (I like your inland sea idea...), except when it comes to waging war. A builder will eventually be dragged into a war, so I prefer to be prepared for the eventuality. That's why I prefer to play either the Gaians or the Hive, the two builder factions that are also good militarily. I don't start wars, but if I get dragged into a war I fight to win. I don't stop until they surrender or are wiped out. I generally try appeasing the other factions, unless their demands are totally outrageous, or I can do orbital insertions, or they're close enough where my army can quickly get to them. I do realize that this is at odds with the "pure" builder strategies, but given that there are military factions in the game a builder has to be prepared for the eventuality of war. This is why I prefer the builder factions that can also field a good army. Hopefully SMACX will have enough builder-style factions where us builders can build in peace.
Natguy	posted 07-28-99 01:47 PM ET I like the inland sea idea, Series II. I'm trying it out in my current game as the PKs. It does tend to get rather expensive, though. Fortunately, I have rich allies, am building a huge energy park on and around the Sunny Mesa, and I hope to have increased energy from the new seabases. (Sea Colony Pods take so much longer though, so it'll take a while) A question about the map: You say you use 120*160. I am currently trying this as well (I'm going by the book here) and when I told it to go that size it told me it may mess up the map or possibly gameplay as well. And I noticed that all the land is diamond shaped! Except in a few places, it no longer has the varied coastlines and shapes! (Not that it matters, it's just odd) Does this happen to you as well?
Krushala	posted 07-28-99 05:37 PM ET The diamond shape land masses creep up on me when I generate random maps with the map editor. I'll use huge maps. I changed the dimensions in alpha.txt. Sometimes if I generete 2 or 3 I'll get a good map.
Series II	posted 07-29-99 08:35 AM ET Redfred, Why no boreholes? That is one of the reasons I go green is to build 5-10 boreholes and still not cause no eco damage. Natguy, The diamond hap islands are, I believe, caused by using weak erosion. This causes a lot of mountains and they tend to be diamonds. Yes, a big map can slow down the computer. I just upgraded to a 400MHz chip. If you disigned to big of a map I am sure the game would hang. The game recommends 64128 or less and says that > 256256 are problemitical at best. I have played a 250*250 map before with no problems and just a little slowness (and that was on a 233 MHz Pentium II) Expensive to raise land???? I don't have that problem. The cost to raise land is related to how close the land you are raising is to one of your cities. I keep building cities on the new land. Rarely do I pay more than 24 energy to raise land. I will also put sea cities in the MIDDLE of an area that I plan on raising land in. This allows me to have a built up city in the middle of my new territory that can help out the brand new cities on both sides of it.
Plato90s	posted 07-29-99 09:29 AM ET Actually, distance is not an issue as long as you are inside the borders of your empire. When you try to raise/lower terrain outside your borders, then it's a major issue. But on-land, the cost of raising/lowering land is proportional to the number of land squares which will be impacted. Doing a raise operation which will affect only 1-3 squares has a minimal cost of ~8 credits. If the result of the raise land means 8-9 squares will rise, then the cost increases to about 18 or so. If you are raising land out of the sea, that's also pretty expensive.
fsjjs1	posted 07-29-99 09:35 AM ET I almost always play PK. I like the ease of expansion, the relatively quick tech advances and the council power. I try to avod wars until aircraft and Battleships come into play. I'll even give away my techs to the Spartans and Hive to avoid confrontation. The whole time I'm waiting for aircraft and ships I expand as much as possible, building atleast one city on every continent. I can avoid losing my bases by just playing the submissive faction and refusing to help in wars or give loans out. I also try and grab as many SP's as possible especially the empath guild and WP. My favorite it the Maritime. After drop pods come on the scene I send aircraft after the out of city soldiers and helicoptors after the cities, once thier cleared I drop in my soldiers and start mopping up. The downside to this is that by the time I'm ready for war the Hive and the Spartans are all over the damn place and I end up haveing PB several tracts of land in order to reduce thier movements and to get rid of key cities. I've noticed that while its easy to inflict a naval defeat on the Spartans, the Hive has a tremendous navy, and the Believers like to carpet the ocean with skim ships. I always try for trancend but I usually get bored and end up nerve gassing and PBing every city on the planet but mine. MAybe not much of a stradgy but its been working for me since the game came out.
Zoetrope	posted 07-30-99 06:19 AM ET Johnny, Schoop and Grue: As you seem to dislike aggressive neighbors, have you tried the SNAC1.2 (sic) modifications by Shining1? He has increased the strength of densive armor, decreased the power of weapons, made armor earlier and weapons later in the tech tree, changed a lot of costs (eg, he made terraforming cheap), and adjusted many other aspects of the game in favor of Builders. If any of you are hoping for a peaceful SMACX, then I fear you'll be hitching the wrong ride. SMACX is billed as a hideous firefest: after all, what does "Alien Crossfire" sound like to you?
Zoetrope	posted 07-30-99 06:21 AM ET Plato90s: Raising the deep sea is expensive, but coastal areas are cheap, often only 4 credits. I haven't been able to discern a consistent pattern to the cost however.
Series II	posted 07-30-99 09:34 AM ET OK, so what I was accomplishing by building cities near where I was raising land was actually extending my border. That is what lowered the cost of raising the land. Thanks for the clairfication.
player2	posted 07-30-99 12:21 PM ET Just a quick note for everyone; I strongly encourage everyone here to check out the TI threads in the games forum. I'm a strong defender of builder tactics in MP. There's an ongoing debate between conquerors and builders about builder strategy in TI. I've also refined my origional "active defense" thesis I proposed months ago. Also, I will soon post a new thread that will discuss this tactic in great detail. Hope to see you there! -player2
gruedragon	posted 07-30-99 05:18 PM ET Zoetrope: I have the SNAC1.2 posting saved, and when I get the time I'm probably going to use it as a basis for my own modifications. Unfortunately, it doesn't do anything to tone down the aggressiveness of the AI, and so you will still get dragged into wars. And given the defensive bonuses and offensive penalties, Shining1's mod makes it that much harder to force a faction into submission.
RedFred	posted 08-04-99 10:09 PM ET Series II, sorry about taking so long to get back to you. Another trip with no PC. In response to your question on boreholes, I agree that they would help me out. I think what is happening is that after months of playing, TI is becoming less of a challenge. Now I am looking to make it slightly more difficult. So I play no boreholes, no condensers, no echelon mirrors, no actions that would damage my rep, less and less monkeying about in the design workshop...this game I am playing the Believers and so it goes. I haven't worked my way up to the one city challenge yet, though!