Exit the base screen.
You will now move the scout patrol. Before you ever move a unit make sure that the unit you want to move is the one that is active. It (or the marker to the above left of it) will be blinking. Right click on the base square and click move “curser to here”. Right click on the scout patrol and click “activate unit.” You have now made sure that the scout patrol is active.
You can move the scout patrol by using the numeric keypad on your keyboard (the unit will attempt to move in that direction, you can’t move a land unit into water without a transport and some terrain may not work) or they arrow keys (but then you can only move in 4 directions and not
. You can also right click on an adjacent square and select “move unit to here”. If you want to move the scout patrol long distances, you can right click on a distant square and select “move unit to here.” Don’t do this now as when exploring you want to move one space at a time.
The symbol at the top right of your unit is in the color of your faction (helping you determine which unit is whose) and the symbols represent the unit’s experience. The experience ranges from very green to elite and you will quickly learn what symbol means what but the more nodes are attached to the square, the more experienced the unit is. The more combat a unit survives, the more experienced it will be and the better it will be in combat.
The scout patrol as an attack value of 1, a defense value of 1, and a movement value of one and is thus labeled 1-1-1. A unit with and tack value of 3, a defense value of 2, and a movement value of 1 will be labeled 3-2-1. There can be modifiers to these values, for example: 8e-<4>-6^2 sea, that this guide won’t address. Most non-experience information about a unit can be derived from this label but the name can also tell about the unit.
To move from one square to any of the eight surrounding squares generally takes one point of movement. A land unit cannot usually move to sea and a sea unit cannot usually move to land. It takes two points of movement to move into rocky square (you can check by its image and until your recognize it by right clicking on the square). Your 1-1-1 scout patrol can move into a rocky square but a 1-1-2 scout rover would spend both of its movement points to move there. Generally the 1-1-2 rover could move two squares but not if the
first square is a rocky square. The 1-1-2 rover (as well as the 1-1-1 scout patrol) can always move into a rocky square. Later when there are forests, they operate the same way for movement.
Rivers and later on also roads cost 1/3 a movement point. This means that a 1-1-1 scout patrol can move three squares if they are all along a river or road. An important thing to remember about rivers is the 1/3 cost only maters when moving along the course of a river. If a river makes a turn and your fallow the turn by moving sideways twice you spend 2/3 of a movement point versus the 1 movement point if you traveled to the same square diagonally. This movement cost supersedes the terrain movement cost (i.e. it takes 1/3 of a movement point to move along a road into a rocky square). In order for this bonus to have an effect the unit has to start and end its movement (moving from one square to another and not from the beginning or end of its turn) on a road or river. Moving from a road to a river doesn’t give this benefit unless the river already has a road.
If there are any pink squares in view, these squares are covered by xenofungus. Xenofungus is a form of “plant” life that makes its habitat all over planet and in every biome. It creates neural pathways which means that planet itself can think though not very sophisticatedly. Entering xenofungus costs 3 movement points. A 1-1-1 scout patrol or 1-1-2 scout rover with one movement point left has a one in three chance to enter a fungus square if it tries. If it succeeds, the movement happens at the unit has moved for this turn. If it fails, the movement does not happen and the unit has moved for this turn. A 1-1-2 scout rover with both moves lest has a 2/3 chance to enter a fungus square. The road or river movement overrides this and entering a rocky xenofungus square costs 3. It is always possible at one movement point or more to enter one of your bases or a square containing any other of your units.
There is also a chance that when trying to enter a fungus square, a mind worm boil or spore launcher (if playing Alien Crossfire) will be generated instead. The unit can make another move with the same number of movement points left that it had when it made the attempt to enter the square and can retreat, attack, or hold ground.
Combat is initiated by trying to move a unit into a square with a hostile unit. Between conventional human units combat works as fallows. Each unit has a number of hit points (for most early game units this is capped at 10). The attacker compares its attack value against a defender’s defense value. For example a 6-1-1 attacking a 1-4-1 has a ratio of 6 to 4. Each unit receives modifiers due to its experience, due to terrain, due to unit abilities, or due to game difficulty. For example if the 1-4-1 was in a forest the ratio would be 6-6. One of the two units wins each round of combat with the chances given by the ratio (at a 6-4 ratio the attacker has a 60% of winning a round and the defender a 40% chance). If a unit loses a round it loses a hit point. Once it reaches zero it dies. If two stacks of units (a stack is when there is more than one unit on a single square), fight the attacker choses which unit will fight and the computer choses the defending unit with the greatest chance of winning the fight. If the defender loses and is not in a base, all units in the stack lose hit points. Not moving a unit heals 10% (of its maximum possible hit points) per turn or 20% if in a base. It can only heal to 80% when healing outside of a base.
Mind worm boils (and most alien life other than the fungus) attack and defend using what is called “psi combat.” Psi combat works the same except that on land the attacker has unmodified strength of 3 and the defender unmodified strength of 2 (it is 1-1 on sea or in the air). In psi combat the experience modifiers play a huge role but until later on in the game it is always advantageous to attack when compared with defending. The Gains, when attacking native life with either a conventional unit or a mind worm boil, have a 25% chance of capturing it. If captured the Gains, without damage to the capturing unit, gain control of the boil which is supported by the same base that supported to unit doing the capturing. Other factions can gain this ability (and change the chances of success) later on in the game. Mind worm boils treat xenofungus like its roads.
Sometimes native life will be generated without trying to enter xenofungus. In the sea, there are isles of the deep and (if playing Alien Crossfire) lurkers. Isles of the deep are like mind worm boils except they also act as transports (a land unit moves onto a transport and stays on it while the transport moves along water) and when generated by the environment usually carries one or two boils of the same experience. It will launch its boils onto land. Lurkers do not carry boils but can attack coastal bases. In the air there are locusts of chiron that are flying mind worm boils. They don’t generally appear in the early game. There are also fungal towers (in Alien Crossfire) but they don’t move and they don’t attack you so don’t worry about them for now. Just don’t try to enter a fungal tower square.
If you attack and kill a native life form, generally all native life forms on the same square are killed and you receive a number of energy credits depending on the number of lifeforms killed and their experience. It can actually make you a not insignificant amount of money to deliberately try and generate mindworm boils and killing them (by moving a high experience unit through the fungus for example).
If a mindworm boil enters an unguarded base, it reduces its population by one and destroys a base facility (not a secret project). That means that if a base was at one population, it is destroyed. This can destroy secret projects.
At the beginning xenofungus is annoying because it is hard to travel through and it can spawn hostile creatures. The exception is for the Gains who should try and capture a mind worm boil to vastly speed up their exploration. Xenofungus in the sea appears blue (but with a rough texture as opposed to the smooth texture of clear water), costs three to enter but sea units can always enter a sea fungus square, and is called sea fungus.
Scattered around planet are saucer shaped “unity pods.” By entering a square with a unity pod the pod will be opened and can contain something good like energy credits or a 1-1-2 unity rover, nothing (the pod is empty), or something bad like spawning one or more mind worm boils. On average unity pods are worth the risk and even going out of ones way to open it. I would not open a unity pod with a colony pod if I can help it.
Sometimes a unity pod reveals a monolith. These are terrain features that produce a nice (for the early game) 2 nutrients, 2 minerals, and 2 energy while benefit combat units that investigate a monolith. To investigate a monolith move a combat unit (your scout patrols count) to the monolith. You will be given the option to investigate. If you chose not to then you can continue your turn like normal. If you investigate the unit will gain one level of experience (usable only once per unit) and all damage will be immediately healed. Investigating a monolith ends a turn. A particular monolith can only be investigated a certain number of times before disappearing.
Sometimes a unity pod reveals an artifact. Artifacts are valuable units but completely vulnerable. Any unit that attacks it will capture or destroy it. If an artifact is brought to a base with a network node you will receive a free technology. Each network node can only use one artifact this way. If you’re playing the University bring it to the nearest base and it will work. Otherwise bring an artifact to a base with a network node, or bring it to a base and wait until you build a network node at one of your bases.
When traveling back to a base from where it is found, you’ll want to be careful. You either want to escort it with the unit that found it or try and avoid native life as much as possible including xenofungus. To escort the artifact, move one unit first and then move the other unit to the same square. If the first unit fails to enter a xenofungus square then don’t attempt the move with the other. Once you can reach a base while staying clear of xenofungus squares (for maximum security don’t even stop next to one) you can send the artifact back to its base by right clicking on the base and selecting “move to here,” or by pressing “g” on your keyboard and selecting the base you want from the menu that appears.
Start exploring with your scout patrol keeping all of this in mind. Try to go for unity pods and try to reveal the black area. Make sure to move square by square when exploring. Only set to travel more than one turn when crossing territory that you have already explored (for example you’ve reached a coast and want to explore in the other direction). You can either explore to reveal area close to your base (on a uniform featureless landmass, exploring in concentric circles) or explore in one direction. The former will let you chose the best sites to set up new bases while the later will speed up the time for you to find the other factions.
If you want a unit not to move a turn and stay in the same place (for example to heal), you have three options. You can press “SPACEBAR”: the unit will stay in place and consider itself moved for the turn and it will request orders next turn. You can press “H”: the unit will stay in place until you order it to do something else or it is attacked. You can press “L”: the unit will stay in place until you order it to do something else, it heals as much as it can in that square (for example up to 80% outside of base), or a unit belonging not to you moves next to it. Any unit holding (“H”) or sentry (“L”) can be activated at any time and use its remaining movement points (or all of them if holding or guarding from the beginning of the turn).
When all units set to move or have no orders have moved then the turn is over and the computer will tell you this audibly and by flashing the “end turn” button in the lower right of the main interface. You can still change orders for units, move some units that had orders to stay still, or change things in your bases. When you’re satisfied you can click on “end turn” or press “ENTER” and then all the other factions and the native life will now move in order.
At the start of your turn the computer will run through each base and calculate population growth, mineral production, and energy usage. If something important happens (you can change preferences for what you consider important) then it will pause the game and notify you with a pop-up. You have the option of zooming to base control (the base screen) to make changes or proceeding to the next base. If nothing important happens, the computer doesn’t inform you. Examples of important things are the completion of its production and a drone riot.
The first time you are likely to receive this message is for your base finishing its colony pod (or scout patrol). It might be if a mind worm boil is spotted near your base. Once you’ve finished your first unit, you now have two units to move each turn. In order to make use of a colony pod, you move it to the square you want to build your new base and press “B.” You have the option of naming your base or using the default name given (from a list). You have a new base that can be controlled similarly to the first one.
If you don’t feel like you can chose the best spot for a new base, you can have the computer do it for you. When the colony pod is finished, press “SHIFT+A” and set the unit to automate. This can be done with any unit and the computer will move the unit based on what it thinks is best. Keep in mind that, with colony pods and formers, the computer doesn’t take good enough precautions with respect to native life which usually destroys such units. When learning it is okay to have colony pods and formers set to automate so you can see what the computer does with them until you learn enough to pick out base sites and terraforming for yourself.
If you built a scout patrol first you can either have it explore or guard the base. Guarding a base is good because at some point it will probably come under mindworm attack and in the early game, one unit in a base is usually enough to defeat the mindworms that attack. Press “L” to have the unit guard the base and when a mindwrom boil gets next to the base the unit will “wake” and ask you for an order. In the early game it is usually better to attack the mindworm rather than have it attack you so attack it. The computer could use units set to automate as garrison units but won’t use them to attack these mindworms so just set “L.”
You will eventually want a garrison unit in each of your bases (remember armor doesn’t matter to Planet’s defenses but it does matter to other factions) and at-least three units exploring. If you built a scout patrol you have a choice to make. That said the second thing you should build would be the thing you didn’t build. If you built a colony pod first, now build a scout patrol and if you built a scout patrol, now build a colony pod. Continue exploring with your one or two scout patrols.
At this point, you now have decisions to make about what to build. Since you have the governor active (new bases take the governor settings from the base that supported the colony pod that built it), it will make suggestions. It can be okay to watch what the governor does and go along with it to see a particular strategy but don’t be afraid to overrule the governor. Just change production or use the build queue.
New bases will generally build the “best” available garrison unit which isn’t always the best for a given situation. If other factions are far away a scout patrol does just as well against native life as a more expensive and better armored garrison and you best garrison unit right now will likely be obsolete by the time an enemy army is at your base. If other factions are already bordering you, you will probably want to build a garrison unit that has the best armor available.
When deciding what the build you can build a combat unit, a colony pod, a former, or a base facility. Right now combat units are good for exploring and for garrisons. Quick units are good for exploration while infantry are good for garrisons. Colony pods are good for expansion and formers are good for terraforming.
When you discover “Cenauri ecology,” you can build formers and it should be a priority. Formers construct things like roads, farms, solar panels, forests, and sensors in the squares of your territory. Each terrain improvement has an effect and most of them increase the amount of nutrients, minerals, and/or energy a worker working a square produces. If you don’t know how to use them then just set them to automate (“shift+a”) and watch what the computer does. At some point you can read about terraforming strategy and manage them yourself. One important thing to remember is that forests proliferate on their own. Each turn, each forest has a chance of spreading to a nearby unimproved square (farms block the spread of forests for example) even replacing xenofungus. You will want at-least one former for each base you poses.
Base facilities are expensive. They generally take more minerals to build then units and they usually have annual energy costs to operate. The energy bank, for example, increases economy by 50% at the base it’s built and has a maintenance cost of 1. If you are running 50% economy in social preferences (which you are by default) and your base collects 4 energy, it’s contributing a base of 2 towards economy which the energy bank increases to 3 for a +1 advantage which is the same as its maintenance. The energy bank is just breaking even. Building an energy bank before your base is contributing more then 2 (at base level) to economy doesn’t make sense and that production could be spent building another colony pod or former.
The exception to the above rule is the recycling tanks. Recycling tanks have no maintenance and contribute 1 each of nutrients, minerals, and energy. You will eventually need to build other facilities at a base in order to advance in the game but the recycling tanks makes sense at every base no matter how poor, low populated, desolate, or unsophisticated it is. Generally, recycling tanks will be the first base facility you build factionwide and the first base facility you build and every single one of your land bases (sea bases get a free pressure dome which is essential for them and doubles as recycling tanks.).
Another exception is for recreation commons. Remember the drone problem talked about above? There are facilities that can turn drones into workers. One of these is the rec. commons. This is an early game facility. The Believers start out being able to build it and all factions will have the ability to build it before too long. Once built two drones (if present) will be turned into workers. If any base is at size 6 (on citizen, earlier for other difficulties) and you are not the Peacekeepers, build a rec. commons as soon as is convenient. If a base grows to size 7 (smaller on difficulties harder then citizen) and you haven’t it will experience a drone riot if there is no police unit in the base. If you’re building a lot of basses, these can start earlier. Once a base is at size 7, look at the Psych view in the base view. At the top you will see a line of workers labeled “unmodified” with a drone at the end and bellow that you will see a line of workers labeled “facilities” without that drone signifying that that base has a facility that is turning that drone into a worker.
Another way to deal with drone riots is to use police. Combat units count as police and garrisoning one in a base might work as police. If a unit works as police it changes one or two drones into workers similarly to the recreation commons. The number of units a faction can use as police and their effectiveness varies in ways not discussed in this guide. Another way to deal with drones is through psych spending. For every two psych spending a bass does, it changes a worker to a talent (or a drone into a worker if there are no workers left in a base) and as long as the number of talents is greater than the number of drones the base does not riot.
The factions that do well in the early game, for the most part, build a lot of basses and do a lot of terraforming. In general, factions that don’t expand
OR don’t terraform fall hopelessly behind. Until you have a large faction you want to always have colony pods (multiple) active and building new bases. Large is dependent on planet size, the landmass available to you, and the proximity to other factions. It isn’t unwise to build more colony pods if basses can still fit on your home continent.
Priorities when deciding what to build at a base at the beginning of a game (assuming some distance from the other factions) are garrison, recycling tanks, formers, colony pods, and explorers. This is not necessarily in that order and not necessarily at the same base. You don’t want a base ungarrisoned for long but you could move a unit built at an older base into a newer base, set the units home base to the base it will be guarding (optional but recommended), and set the unit to sentry “L”.
One way to manage is to just do what the governor recommends. An usually better way to manage it is always insure that you have 2 to 4 (or more) colony pods active or in production depending on the directions you have to colonize in, a garrison troop in every base, a recycling center at every base, at-least one former for every base, and 3 to 5 explorers and to prioritize it in this order. There are other strategies. Some players build colony pods up to almost one or more per every base without worrying about garrisons until they fill their home continent while others escort each of their colony pods with the future base’s garrison. Others build formers before recycling tanks or build two or more formers per base. Once you’ve achieved this then you can start thinking about what type of game you want to play and start producing for that.
At five turns in the computer will ask you for your research priority. If you have undirected research setting to explore is a good option. This focuses on technologies that promote population growth and faction expansion. The conquer priority promotes technologies aimed at offensive or defensive warfare, the build priority promotes technologies focused on infrastructure (base management and terraforming), economic (energy production), and industrial (mineral production) development, and the discover priority promotes technologies that promote further technological research. If you have directed research “Centauri ecology,” is a must. Also useful are biogenetics for the recycling tanks, social psych for the recreation commons, doctrine mobility for the speeders (land unit with two movement points) and doctrine flexibility (requires one knows doctrine mobility) for the ability to enter the water. Also of note is “secrets of the human brain,” which requires knowledge of both biogenetics and social psych and gives the first faction to discover it a free tech.
Scientific advancement in the game works like this. Each advancement costs a number of research points. Each base adds its lab energy output (modified by other factors not discussed in this guide) to the total number of research points accumulated. Once the cost is reached a faction gets that discovery (the surplus holds over) and a new research goal is chosen either by the player or the computer depending on that game’s rules. Each breakthrough allows a faction new unit weapons (or utilities), armor, chasies, reactor, or abilities, bass facilities, secret projects, terraforming actions, unit actions, or social preference choices (one technology, optical computers, is a stepping stone in that it doesn’t have any effects other than unlocking other advancements). In order for an advancement to pay off those benefits must be used (by building units with the new and better, weapon for example). Each advancement also completely or partially unlicks another advancement to be researched. The tech tree is found in the datalinks (press “F1” in game) or on multiple places online.
Once the basic technologies have been researched, what to research next depends on the situation and play style. A player expecting warfare (either as the aggressor or the defender) will want industrial base and high energy chemistry for defense as well as applied physics and nonlinear mathematics for offense. Those looking to build a wealthy or productive and isolated faction will want to research information networks, industrial base, industrial economics, and ethical calculus. If you’re unfamiliar with the game look at the tech tree and figure out what will help you have fun or use undirected research. Going for technologies that give you access to desired social engineering is also a good choice.
At some point you will run into another faction. As soon as one of your units or bases becomes adjacent to another factions units or basses you exchange com(munication) frequencies. Com frequencies can also be optioned through other factions, through unity pods, or through a secret project. Once in contact you can talk with the other faction leader.
If the other faction leader doesn’t like you then the initial contact may just be a warning to stay out of the way or they might threaten you. If they’re right next door you should probably give into the threat though you can usually take the option to negotiate down. If they’re far away they
usually won’t fallow through on their threat if you don’t give in.
If the other faction leader doesn’t care about you then they will likely offer to trade technologies. It is almost always a good idea to trade (as two players benefit while five do not) but you can try to choose the less advanced of the two options the computer gives you. If they like you, after you’ve exhausted all of the technology on one side or the other then they’ll offer a treaty. You should take the treaty. They might offer to sell you or to purchase a comm frequency for a faction that you or they haven’t met yet. It’s usually a good deal to sell and a good deal to buy if you think the other faction will trade techs (or maybe can get you to the council).
Your faction’s borders emanate seven squares (as a circle would draw it, not a square) from your land bases and three from your sea bases. Land bases only extend to land that is connected by land to your base. If two faction’s territory would overlap, the boundry line goes down the middle of the base’s (equal distant) as the crow flies. A faction’s border is designated by a dashed line in that factions color and you see the borders of factions you have the comm frequency for. This can sometimes help you know where an undiscovered faction is if you think your border is close to your base without an opposing border.
Factions do not like it if your units are in their territory. The exception is if you are a “pact sibling” of another faction (which is an alliance). This can be say a former building forests within the other factions territory and they still won’t like it. They will demand that you withdraw and if your refuse enough times they will declare war on you. Some factions will give you the same curtesy and some will not. You can demand a faction withdraw from your borders but you risk having them declare war.
What do you do once your faction is off and running? You’re expanding and terraforming and you’re ready to devote your basses for something else now. This depends on the situation you’re in and what game you want to play. The further hostile factions are from you the more choices you have. The closer other factions are to you the more you have to be prepared for an invasion.
Building secret projects is usually a good choice in well defended (interior) bases. The bases with the largest mineral productions are the best as it is a race against the other factions. You can be building more than one at a time. It is also possible to switch from one project to another without penalty. This means that if you will research a technology that has a secret project you want you can start a duplicate of a project you are already building and switch one of these bases to the new project once discovered. The computer can switch as well and will usually switch to a new project if it loses the race for a particular project so be careful. You always know if a faction is building one or more projects and what it’s building. Getting secret projects is always good but not if it means that you cannot build the military units to repel an invasion. If you have a lot of bases this shouldn’t be a problem.
If you share a border with the Hive, Spartans, or Believers then it is very likely that you will go to war with them at some point. Try and have the technology, units, and infrastructure to go to war on your terms. This might mean giving into their demands until you are in good position to fight back. Most likely war will come at some point.
If you share a border with any of the other four then it is merely likely that you will go to war with them. The same as above applies but it might be possible to placate them enough to avoid war. It is also possible to choose their preferred social engineering preference and stay friends or maybe become allies.
If you don’t share a land border with anyone you might be able to exist without going to war. This is still not something to expect but even if you do go to war you might last a long time before you actually fight.
Keeping these in mind, if you want to go for a conquest victory, pick the enemy you have the biggest advantage over, develop your faction to exploit that advantage, and attack (there is no diplomatic way to merely declare war) when you think you can capture all of their bases with deliberate speed. Repeat.
If you’re going for any other type of victory you need to improve your economy and industry. If you’re going for the diplomatic or economic victory, it might be best to knock off (or have other, friendlier factions knock them off) large hostile factions anyways. If you’re going for the transcend victory you want to make sure your research is superior to other factions and have at-least one or two bases that are producing minerals out the wazoo.
If you’re going for survival and not for a victory, you just have to make sure that any faction that attacks you will pay dearly for each square taken. A compact faction, with good defensive structures (perimeter defenses then children’s crèches then aerospace complexes, then others like command centers), multiple high armor troops at every base, and enough mobile offensive units to at-least harass the enemy would work. (Keep in mind that according to the official story, when a faction reaches transcendence all factions this faction is hostile to, disappear). Also keep in mind that if you get two generations or more behind technologically it will become increasingly harder to survive.
Also remember that an unbalanced faction will have trouble. Even for a faction focused on military will find building a network node at a base already producing 6 energy to labs at base to be very valuable and unless the base
needs to produce something else
right now, worth the investment. A military that falls behind in technology or outgrows its industrial base loses much of its usefulness. A faction focused on the economy while neglecting its military risks finding itself under the boot of a more militant faction despite its technological and economic superiority. Also remember that doing research is nice but your faction won’t get many benefits without building the things the research helps to build.
There are numerous other strategies and playstyles for how to handle the game in any situation at any stage of the game. This is far from the only way to play from the starting gate. Plenty of players can beat even experienced players without building a second base at any point during the game for example. This guide isn’t designed to give you a good strategy but merely a competent one that will let you explore what they game has to offer… so explore! both by moving units into the black and figuring out what you can go with the game at this point.
