Worm Rush?

[RobN]

Can anyone tell me precisely what a "worm rush" is? It was my understanding that it involves seeking out and capturing worms in the earliest part of the game, and using those worms to capture more worms, and so on. Eventually there will be a critical mass, producing enough worms to overwhelm all enemy factions on the continent.
Well, I`ve tried this but can`t get it to work. After a while I can`t capture worms anymore - it just doesn`t seem to happen (I`m using the Cult here, +2 Planet). Is there a limit to how many worms a unit can capture?

[Earwicker]

There's a formula which governs the chance of worm capture (you can find it somewhere on these forums, but I haven't seen it lately). Anyway,the two principal factors in the equation are planet rating and worms already captured. So the more you've gotten, the harder it is to get more. But as far as I know, it never reaches zero (I currently am playing a game as the Cult, with very large numbers of worms, and I still occasionally capture some).

The main thing about worm rush is RUSH. A few worms will suffice if you catch your neighbor early enough. Don't worry so much about your numbers before starting. Run worms through a monolith if possible to toughen them up. Intimidate neighbor first, further weakening their resistance: demand a base, or their tech. They should give in to your demands for a while then get angry and declare vendetta. No problem - you've got the worms and they don't. Unless it's the Spartans, their early defenders will be low-morale and not much match for worms. Cluster and attack, and it is likely that the enemy faction will surrender to you.

If you lose some worms, don't sweat it too much - that will improve your chances of capturing some new ones.

[RedFred]

To state the obvious, the Cult is by far the best faction for the worm rush. You can often get the nearest faction to submit or wipe them out before they get beyond building 1-1-1 units. You get a starting worm and you seem to have 100% chance of a successful capture in the first encounter with a wild worm.

But you can keep rolling along without much in the way of conventional forces for quite a while. Going Green takes you to +4 planet, and +5 if you can capture the manifold. Then the worms really roll in.

To increase your chances of a wild worm capture: untracked fungus is better than recently tracked for finding worms, monoliths - especially a pile of them in fungus like the ruins - attract worms, and conventional units will capture more frequently than tame worms. Don't be afraid to crank up your industry past the point of eco damage for more free natives or for that matter don't be afraid of incursions into other factions' territory to kill or capture there. Your capture rate will jump right after you increase your Planet rating and it seems (unconfirmed)to be higher when the worm wanders right up beside your base.

Best of all the units are free and usually do not cause you any support worries. So if you lose a few, don't worry about it. And worms are the best unit for pod popping. Great for exploration too.

The mechanics of the attack are obvious. Don't camp where the AI can get to you because they cheat and can see you lying in the fungus. Attack a base from a fungus square instead of a rocky so that you can get your licks in first. Use your fungus "roads" for maximum speed. You have no penalty for attacking with most of your movement gone, so make the most of it with running attacks. The odds are against you if the other faction can attack you first. The more worms you can attack with at once, the better the outcome.

Reactor type is not supposed to affect native attacks, but the whole worm rush is less successful by the time R2 is being used anyhow. By that point you have empath and air units to worry about so you will need to shift to more conventional units by midgame.

[Diva]

Worm rush is great for us greenies

I have found that wild worms captured close to my bases are counted for support purposes. So I tend to send my own mindworms to the far reaches and just keep wandering about in the fungal squares. It will be very nice if I can capture an Isle early on. They are very good at popping pods and exploring the oceans. I can also use them to transport my own worms to an empty island which I use as a "training ground."

One thing you might not know is worms in fungal squares can heal completely. There's also a cheat in SMAC/X that you can use to turn a boil into a demon boil instantly, but I'm not going to tell you I don't like to use it anyway.

[RedFred]

Just to add a little to Diva's comments: your worms tagged to a city will have no support cost if they are in fungus. And they should be in fungus as much as possible anyhow.