This greenish and unpleasant Morgan

[Horus]

In a SP game I currently plays - Spartan builder style - I have a Morgan who after getting an extensive bombing with fungus ICBM went Green, well almost. The thing was that I tried to play a peaceful Spartan, only lashing out some drop probes for the fun of it. I concentrated on the Cyborgs as they were the next biggest faction, bought away some bases, lost them (by that boosting the poor Cyborgs a bit in tech), bought some more bases etc. The Morganites were bombed on a regular basis with fungus, this in order to protect my ally Lal (at the same continent as the the Morganites). Everything went fine and the Morganite bases were shrinking at a good pace, from 13 to 3 in the extreme case with Morgans capital. Fine, fine, more picking on the Cyborgs, and I decided to start Transcend - dum de dum, not paying to much attention to the game. What?! Lal pops up and says that the Morganites are pressing him up the wall?! Impossible, they should be crippled by now!

A look at the map, at the infiltrated Morganite cities, and some overfligths over their continent shows an all alien army - a very, very big on too - with bases producing plenty of resources on the fungus. I had to buy a base from Lal (cost = +7500 cred, pop 4, no facil.) in order to rush build a Psi gate there for my Empath-Psi-choppers (Huge continent and the gardening and peaceful Spartans had no military presence there at all). Well I think the situation is under control at the moment and that Lal can prosper still some time.

This migth not be an unique experience, but AI Morgans tends to die asap in my SPs. Seeing this switch in playing style did suprise and deligth me (the AI was better than I thougth).

Anyone else with similar experiences?

[Ned]

No, I have never seen an AI Morgan run a Green strategy. However, I have seen him run a Simple econ. It is interesting though that the AI will apparently do what is necessary to maintain the highest growth. If that means Green, because of the fungus, so be it. Ned

[Avenoct]

I suspect Ned is correct, and that it's the Growth that's got him Greening. I'd add that in my own experience, late-game AI factions do sometimes switch to all-worm outputs, for reasons I can't explain. Anyone else ever see that switch? I mean, one turn producing choppers and facilities, the next (in response to war, but not always), whoops, all the bases are working on IOD's and worms.

-Smack

[SerapisIV]

Along with the idea of the AI pumping out worms, is there any strength to building worms or other native life-forms? I've never seen reason too, instead opting for heavy weapons. But maybe I'm missing out on a different strategy. Any ideas?

[Avenoct]

SerapisIV:

And we drift away from the topic....

If you've never tried 'Going Native' as a strategy, its time ya did!

Psi is pretty different than regular combat. Keep in mind a few things: Land Based attacks always give the attacker 3:2 advantage, plus any advantage you have in Planet-Rating, or the maturity of the native life. Someone will jump in and put up the numbers, but if you are say, The Gaians, running Green, and attack with a Great Boil, or Demon Boil, you will kill your target. It doesn't matter what the targets weapon and armor are like either (except Psi-enhancing special abilities or actual Psi-armor).

Your tactics have to change as a Green War machine though. Native life doesn't include a whole lot of variety in terms movement or abilities, so generally you need to mass a larger green army than you do a say, singularity army. But the units don't have support while they travel the fungus. All in all, I tend to prefer a mix of native with regular units, but there's many varieties to the strategy. Give it a try! It's helpful if you have a positive planet-rating, run Green, and/or have the Manifold Nexus, obviously. Being able to often capture native life can rapidly multiply your troops for free.

-Smack

[Ned]

If you can make Demon boils and have both the Nural Amplfier and the Dream Twister, then your native forces, from Sealurks to Locusts, are virtually invunerable and invincible.

Ned

[Sikander]

Another advantage to the worm army is that it is not tech dependent. If you are behind on tech, you can keep some sort of parity with native forces, even if your opponent is a reactor ahead of you (due to the ignore the reactor factor in psi-combat). The main drawback is that worms are expensive, especially as defenders (where they fight with a 2:3 disadvantage). Still, they can be useful at times.

[johndmuller]

Sadly, I agree with Sikander that the Native Life is a better fit with a faction that is behind in military tech; I say sadly, because I really like the idea of native life and its alternate combat form, but despite the various supplements, native life is simply not strong enough for a superpower. 3:2 or even 6:2 is just not overwhelming enough when one can readily get much better odds with conventional forces which can also move twice as far.

I think that you need to get to Temples of Planet before you can get Demon (elite) morale and even then you might need a Monolith, the Manifold (that does give a morale upgrade, doesn't it?) or some other extra, depending on ones basic level of greenness morale. The full complement of techs necessary to have a balanced (and it really does need to be balanced to work) green army take a while to arrive, especially for the Locusts and Temples. Additionally, and I don't know if this is true or not, but I have the impression that native life, unprotected by its own spore launchers/arty, is more vulnerable to arty than unprotected conventional forces. Conventionally, one can build throwaway cheap elite units (trained + Command & Bioenhancement Centers) and match them up against the relatively expensive Natives and be at more or less at par, plus probably have the mobility advantage (not to mention the other special ability that could be added to the conventional unit without much extra cost).

Using psi as a weapon or armor on a conventional unit seems like it might have some possibilities. Psi armor on crawlers and formers would make them much less attractive targets assuming that you got the morale jacked up enough - say to commando or elite. Unfortunately, IIRC, the psi weapons and armor are too expensive to make this a reasonable approach; also it suffers from that same problem of being a strategy more suitable to an underdog than the ubercanine.

That said, the native life is one of my favorite aspects of SAMC/X and I often use it more than is probably justified; unfortunately, I am often disappointed at how wimpy it turns out to be when the enemy comes calling.

[Ned]

Johnd, A few weeks ago, I posted a thread here about a Great Green War Machine strategy. If one uses directed research, and I rarely do, one can beeline to the Green techs and get the Xenodome and/or the Pholus Mutagen. Either one of these, plus Bio Labs, Bio Enhancement Fac. and Brood Pits, are sufficent to produce Demon Boils. Add the Nural Amplifier and Dream Twister, and you are at +100% on both offense and defense. Then, add Green and Cyber and the Manifold Nexus, you are at +140% on offense. With Diedre it is 150%. With Fungboy 160%. This is before you further increase the odds for ground attacks by adding another 50% (3:2).

I have seen many attacks take place at 10:1 odds, given negative multipliers for the defender. This is almost like a WAVE String Copter attacking a scout patrol. The defender goes POP, even if it has resonance and trance and is in a base.

I in a recent game, I exlusively conquered with a native army, navy and airforce. It was easy. I received the highest SP score ever for me - more than 1000%.

The best thing about going native is that Wealth's (and perhaps, Eudaimonia's) negative morale does not seem to apply to native units. They come out Demon Boils and stay that way. Similar human units will come out hardened, or veteran at best. This allows one to stay Green and also enjoy a +2 econ by combining Wealth and GA, while still producing elite units.

Ned

[Avenoct]

Pods, if you use 'em --->worm
Support if you're on tech-stag or have difficult support --->worm

-Smack

[Earwicker]

One slight drawback about the Green Machine is that native life lacks the capability of multiple attacks. Where a single shard chopper can destroy the entire garrison of a base (or clear out a pile of needlejets), it would take waves of native life to do so. As terrifying it may be for an enemy to see waves of my mindworms approaching, it would be more terrifying still to see those waves come in support of a copper or hovertank assault.

[Ned]

Absolutely no question that the WAVE copter is the best unit in the game. However, the best defense against the WAVE copter is a demon locust. Ned

[jewlguy]

I' m with you, earwicker. You just have to pay attention to a hord of demon worms and locusts, sitting in your front gates fungus garden, especially with a couple of string hovertanks leading and following - I try to stay away from copters (unless the others are toying with them) I dont feel that they are realistic- but thats another thread. My favorite faction is a researching, green group I created in the editor - the draw back is low population growth due to unwillingness to overpopulate planet, again there's another thread

[Avenoct]

Just thought I'd post my findings here:

Largely in response to the posts here about 'not enough variety or power with natives' I set out to add some punch to the Planet and Psi forces.

So, for Aldebaran (a mod nearly finishished over on the Creation + Fiction Threads) I've created super-worms and super-locusts. I havn't yet seen the AI Native forces use them, but the AI factions use them. Of course, my original intent was to give Planet even tougher means of fighting back, but alas, I believe at this point that the game merely calls the units by number (in the units list in Alphatext). This left two options: modify the original natives, or add on units that AI or player factions can make, but planet can't muster herself. At this point I'm leaving the beasties as add-ons.

I won't go into details about what special abilities make them 'super', but the worm is hovertank based (3 movement anywhere..uses roads) and the locusts are chopper based.

The drawbacks? Well, for one, giving Trance or Empath Ability to a Psi based unit has no effect. That's too bad. But by using custom unit's abilities to have several special abilities (say 5 each), I was able to mask their somewhat average Psi abilities with other powers.

If you'd like to see better viability for Psi units, I highly reccomend tooling a few in Alphatext. By introducing these additional units gradually the psi-based army gathers strength in parallel to conventional weapons.

Nuff Said!

-Smack