First SMax victory and some questions

[cbn]

I played my first ever Smax game (had been playin SMac for a while)winning a cooperative conquest victory playing as Cha Dawn in 2301 (3rd highest level/standard random map/ abubdant native life). I started on a continent with the Usurpers and Roze. The conciousness and Caretakers shared another while Domai was all alone and Sven was ringing continents everywhere.

In the early stages I pacted with Roze and we knocked out the usurpers(who relocated) and then made Roze a submissive. Both Sven and Domai were early submissives too while the Conciousness joined in essentially a game-long pact. I could havge finished earlier but I wanted to see the effect of some of the new weapons. I took over all my submissives before turning on the aliens. I had never used nerve gas choppers before (always wanted to avoid atrocities) and was amazed to destroy entire alien civilizations in a turn or two.

Some questions that arise:

I found it much easier to get submissives in this game than in any previous SMAC game. Is this a function of the lower level I played, the fact that I got a lot of worms early or are the Human Smax factions more likely to submit tha the likes of Miriam, yang etc??

Some of the new techs allow 6r weapons that give a 25% boost against native life. I found that I was forgoing upgrades to higher attack-value weapons that would lose this boost. Was I right to retain these weapons since there seemed to be a lot of native life to kill?

I played Cha Dawn since I wanted a fun game and I felt that the worm rush strategy that I had read here was pretty easy to implement and similar to what I had done with Deidre in the past. I was thinking of playing one of the aliens next just to experience their apparent massive advantages and play around with their units (and see whatever different graphics/movies occurr. Other than that I would try the drones to understand why so many people on these boards consider them to be a super-strong faction
Any suggestions as to which faction would be a fun next try (on a higher level of course)??

[RedFred]

You sure did better than my first attempt last year. I confess that I started out at transcend level and promptly got wiped out in an alien sandwich.

cbn, I think you'll find that there is really no difference in ease of acquiring submissive pactmates in SMACX. Your comment about the lower difficulty level was the right one. Plus, Cha Dawn is remarkable, far better than Deirdre, at the early game worm rush.

My experience has been that if you get a submissive early on and treat them well, other factions will surrender more easily. Also if you take several bases in a turn the AI will be far more likely to throw in the towel than if you grind away at one base every turn or slower. There also seems to be some diplomatic randomness. I'll sometimes be noble, commit no atrocities, have the compatible SE settings, and the AI will refuse to capitulate. Other times, I won't even have any units in their territory and they will throw in the towel.

For your next game why not try a random faction game and play whomever comes up?

[RedFred]

Whoops! Forgot to say something about resonance armor.

As far as the "6r" attack and "3r" and "3p" defence addons, I was not highly impressed. More addons to the tech tree, making the game even longer and more ways of clogging up the queue in the design workshop. The workshop is a big problem for me because I tend to underupgrade particularly when playing a low cash faction like Yang.

I'd much rather attack a native unit than be attacked by it on account not only of the huge bonus you get by attacking, but also because of the chance of capture or planet pearls cash. I like to have a rover in most of my cities and some roads fairly early on so that I can nail any nearby worms with at least a full movement point left.

Playing a green faction your captured worms will quickly become strong enough to take on the big fungal towers - a better choice than a high morale conventional unit.

So playing blind research, I just prototype the first "3" armor and the first "6" weapon I get and ignore the others. Doesn't seem to hurt my game at all.

[Gregurabi]

The 3r armor becomes important when it's in H'Minee's hands (tentacles?).

I played a Cha Dawn game and had the most miserable time wiping out the Caretakers. The +25% alien defense, plus the +25% for 3r armor, plus the +25% for sensors, plus the morale, meant that my mind worms had a really tough time punching through the defenses. I couldn't make any headway at all until I got planes.

If you want to defend against mind worms (instead of attacking them) then a 3r trance garrison is definitely something to consider. 1-3rt-1*2 units are a staple for most of the midgame. Upgrading to 1-4t-1*2 isn't a very big jump -- I usually won't bother, but will instead make some AAA garrisons (1-<4>-1*2, or 1-<4>t-1*2 if I have neural grafting).

I don't normally make much use of the 6r weapon. If I'm attacking native life, the +50% bonus for land PSI combat is usually sufficient. I have no qualms at all about upgrading 6r weapons to 8.

It should also be noted that there's a 12r weapon and an 8r armor. The 8r armor is often available before even the photon wall (5 armor)! (This is especially true if you have strong alien factions in the game. Steal their tech.) I shouldn't have to tell anyone here how powerful a 1-<8r>t-1*2 unit is... let alone a 10~-<8r>-1*2 elite AAA marine.

[Kirnwaffen]

I have a habit of playing the Pirates, so it doesn't really matter for me most of the time whether I attack or defend against native life. Therefore, I find myself keeping 3r until I get 8r for a number of reasons:

1. It's readily available in early game (long before 6r attack)
2. I can put it on a garrison and not worry about a ship not being in the right place to attack.
3. It provides extra umph in defense against the most common attack that I come across (IOD's)
4. Even up to midgame, the chances of me being attacked (since I'm at sea), are pretty bad, and the chances of being hit w/anything worse than impact is almost laughable (AI never really seems to put much value on a navy, and even when it does, my navy is bigger)

I keep 3r until I get 8r, and I generally stop upgrading armor after 8r (used to, but started to lose to many valuable units to massed natives). I don't use 6r attacks because they are far to weak against other units by the time I get them. I only use r-bolts when I have no higher weapon values. Anyway, the thing to remember is that the bonuses are relative to morale, so in late game, res won't save a green unit from a demon boil. Also, I play at sea, and this srat is probably reversed on land, where there are bonuses for attacking with psi.

[Kirnwaffen]

BTW, I forgot to mention, I have never had the AI submit to me in any game that I can remember, SMAC or SMAX, so I imagine that it isn't any more likely that they are any easier in SMAX.