I tried the gas-and-drown-strategy

[Skanderbeg]

My last game yesterday, I tried the gas-and-drown-strategy.

Simply, the intent of this strategy is to cause so much ecodamage by using nerve gas, that the rising sea level
will drown the bases of your enemies. The problem, of course, are worm worm rapes caused by the ecodamage as well.

Okay, I didn't win, but I survived until 2500, and I think I can claim the world record (or Chiron record) of sea level rising (3066 m!)
for me. I was the man who melted the ice caps COMPLETELY!

I played transcendent leve, huge random map, random AI, faction, blind research, and I played the pirates, of which I thought were the best faction for this strategy (I was wrong with that, as You will see).

It was one of the funniest and most amazing games I haver ever done, and I want to tell you about that.


Until 2285, it was a pretty normal game, I build about 15 bases, got 3 Sp's (VW, ME and Supercollider), conquered three bases, and I was number 2 on power graph after Miriam. SE was demo/planned/green, because of green I had caught a lot of native lifeforms.
I was pacted with Domai and Deirdre and in vendetta with the rest, especially Miriam and Yang (rest was far away).
Playing conservative hybrid stile as I do most times, I would have estimated my chances to win as 60:40, I have won games with much worse starts. In 2285; I had build a lot of X-needlejets, most resonance laser, some chaos gun, every base hat at least to defenders (1-3tr-1 or native) and one offensive unit (empath skimship for sea bases, empath rover for land bases).
So I decided to let the fun begin:

2286: first nerve gas attacks on Yang and Miriam

2289: my pactmate Domai asked me to stop atrocities!

2293: first enemy base (one of Miriams) destroyed by use of nerve gas

2294: my pactmates Deirdre and Domai declared Vendetta to me because of my use of nerve gas!

2296: Deirdre was killed by Miriam in their conventional war. My bases begin to show ecodamage.

2297: first fungus spreadings around my bases

2298: first loss of units throug worm-rapes
first warning of sea level rising in 20 years: 66 m.

2299: sea level warning: 266 m
I was number 1 in power graph because of destroying of Miriams bases

2300: massive losses of units by worm rapes
sea level warning: 600 m

2301: lost my first base by worm rapes
sea level warning: 933 m

2302: Miriam is number 1 in power graph again
sea level warning: 1266 m

2303: from now on I got two sea level warnings and two rounds of worm rapes per turn! one before and one after I moved.
sea level warning: 1600 m
sea level warning: 1933 m

2304: sea level begins to rise. first enemy bases are drowned. positive surprise: some of the mindworms attacking my bases also drowned.
sea level warning: 2400 m
massive loss of my bases caused by locusts

2305: sea level rises
sea level warning: 2466 m

2306: I loose my bases fast than I can look.
sea level warning: 2733 m
sea level warning: 3066 m
all faction are rapidily decreasing on power graph

2308: only four of my bases have survived

2310: 3 of my bases have survived. eco-damages and native lifeforms decreasing (I have no more units to do any atrocity!)
sea level is still rising
I start rebuilding

2320: sea level still rising dramatically
a lot of enemy bases drowning
I am number 5 on power graph
other faction build and rush-build pressure domes as mad, but not everytime they are ready in time.

2330: sea level still rising
I got a problem I didn't have thought of: the ocean bottom beneath my sea bases is now so deep that I can't build any enhancements, an most of my former enhancements have been destroyd by native lifeforms

2334: lack of minerals for support by lowering ocean bottom causes loss of units.

2338: again enemy bases drown

2340: sea level still rising. 90% of the planet are ocean, only 7 bigger and some smaller island left.

2340: I begin to build trawlers to get minerals.

2355: sea level rising has stopped.

The rest was fighting for survival. I retired in 2500 with 5 bases, 31 population, 68 points, 6%, number 5 in power graph (Miriam leading far away).
Although I (and also Domai) used nerve gas after 2355, it was not possible to cause eco-damage or sea level rising again. So it seems not to be possible to make the whole planet ocean. Even some bigger island will
survive the sea level rising.

Analysis: Not bad for the first try of this strategy, but it could have been done much better. My damage through worms-rapes was bigger as my enemies damage through drowning, so the strategy was not succesful in this game. I don't know, if it is possible to win with this strategy, but I will give them another try some time.

My main mistakes:
1. I used the wrong faction. By fist look, the pirates seemed to be ideal for this, but this is wrong for two reasons. First: During the sea level rising they start on the ocean, which is the lowermost position for bases. After the sea level rising, all their bases tiles become ocean or deep sea, which will not allow terraformig enhancements. Starting on elevated land, which will become shelf after the sea level rising would be much better. Second: They lack on minerals, and that is bad because you need a lot of minerals for building defenders during the worm rape and for rebuilding after the sea level rising has stopped.
Now I think the best faction for this strategy could be Yang, because he has good industry and good defense
(free defense perimeter, and he should get the command nexus).
2. I neglected the building of command centres. That was a big mistake, because it is very necessery to heal damaged troops very fast during the worm rape, and the additional morale they provide is also essential. All my surviving bases had command centres.
3. I build not enough defenders. 2 or 3 are not enough.
4. I learned that there are two phases of the worm rape. The first lasted as long as I still had empath units for attack. In this period, I got a lot of energy by killing native lifeforms, and I did the mistake not immediately spending for rush-building defenders. In the second phase, when I had lost all empath-units, I was running out of money very fast.
5. It is not possible to drown the whole planet. Around 10% will stay land. Another reason to do this strategy with a land based faction.
6. It would be good to have some sea-colony-pods and probe ships hidden far away from your mainland to be better prepared for the "day after".
7. Only the faction which causes the eco-damage will be the victim of wormrapes. The other factions will get no wormrape (although an errant IoD could release its load at their shore).
8. Monolithes are the best ressource remaining after the sea level rise, so building bases next to them is still more important than in normal games. Also, monolithes will not be affected by the worm rape.


As I said, I am not sure if it is possible to win this strategy. But perhaps it is a new idea for those guys who always say the game is not challenging enough for them. I would call it the "gas and drown challenge":

settings:
huge random planet, blind research, AI factions random,
other options as standard.
all victories are allowed
You can use any human faction you like
(to play Aliens would make no sense in this challenge,
because the use of nerve gas is no atrocity for them)
most important condition: You have to cause so much eco-damage by the use of nerve gas, that You get a warning of sea level rising of at least 2500 m before 2250!

And a last remark: I have never played multiplayer, but I got the idea, that this could be a very evil, surprising and potentially successful strategy in multiplayer. You need two reliable pactmates, one should play Yang and the other another a warmonger. Get all your bases a nice pressure dome. Avoid to get infiltrated if possible, because the other players don't need to know that You are building pressure domes everywhere.
Okay, then let Yang use his X-needlejets. I would like to see the faces of the other players when they realize what is happening! And Yangs pactmate can do the clean-up after the sea level rising to get the team victory (very evil grin)!

[Wiglaf]

quote: 5.It is not possible to drown the whole planet. Around 10% will stay land. Another reason to do this strategy with a land based faction.

10% hardly seems comforting - you will lose quite a few bases (if not all). The Pirates, mineral loss or not, have an incredible advantage of resisting submersion by rising sea levels - they seem ideal, I'll go try this out.
Seems like a fun game, good work

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The Year 2000 - dawn of the Cheery O's

[Sikander]

I agree that the Pirates should do well here, for a couple of reasons.

1) They can build enhancements on deep sea squares once they get Advanced Ecological Engineering. This is of course a huge advantage, as the deep sea terrain becomes the most dominant type. While they do lose the free shelf mineral in deep sea areas, they are the only faction that can produce minerals with mining platforms over the entire map.

2) The Pirates get a free naval yard in every base once they discover doctrine: initiative. Combine this with empath and trance ships (rather than infantry) and these bases should be a good deal more resiliant to worm rapes, as their defence forces will have higher morale, and a place to heal quickly.

[Wiglaf]

Just finished playing, the Pirates worked perfectly. I lost about 10 cities to planet's troops, not planet itself. And I didn't really notice the industrial penalty, the domes and nav yards more than make up for it.

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The Year 2000 - dawn of the Cheery O's

[Muzta]

Why not be Gaians and sieze as many of the attacking nattive life as possible

[Skanderbeg]

Hi Muzta!
Gaians wouldn't do better than other factions.
I was running green in SE playing the Pirates, so
I had planet rating of +2. Before beginning the atrocities, I caught a lot of mindworms and IoD's,
but at once as I began the use of nerve gas, I didn't catch not only one of the uncountable native lifeforms.

It seems to me that it is impossible to catch native
lifeforms despite a positive planet rating, if You have high ecodamage.

[Skanderbeg]

Hi Muzta!
Gaians wouldn't do better than other factions.
I was running green in SE playing the Pirates, so
I had planet rating of +2. Before beginning the atrocities, I caught a lot of mindworms and IoD's,
but at once as I began the use of nerve gas, I didn't catch not only one of the uncountable native lifeforms.

It seems to me that it is impossible to catch native
lifeforms despite a positive planet rating, if You have high ecodamage.

SMACed: I would like to know more about your game.
When did You start to gas, how much sea level rising, and what sort of victory!

[Martin Schmidt]

Very funny idea !

[Wiglaf]

I began the nerve gas assaults (according to my save game) in 2295. I had a whole fleet of XnJets, too - Morgan supplied the funds. The sea levels rose quite a bit, I'll have to go check on how much exactly. All I remember is I had total and complete immunity as the pirates from submersion. I won by conquest, it took a while, though
[This message has been edited by SMACed (edited December 22, 2000).]

[Blake]

My second OCC game resulted in a gas-n-drown victory, I was using Lal and discovered the highly lucrative worm farming (I've gotta wonder what planetmind thought when I scraped my cent preserve and started devouring her hapless legions). I wasn't actually intending to gas and drown (because I had never heard of the strategy) I was making lots of money from worm farming and buying tech from the cyborgs (I also had the collidor+TOE, but wasn't researching that much due to the fact that I was using all of my crawlers to get minerals to boost my ecodamage and hence get more worms to eat). One thing I discovered about worm farming is that it the amount of money you make is almost impossible to expend, hence buying tech at 1000 a pop and upgrading all of my formers to res-8 super-rover varieties and all units to best gun, best armour. Anyway with the help of svens sea bases I started gassing other players, soon I had gassed everything within sven-range, except the cyborgs which altough I wasn't pacted to were always friendly to me. Then the water started rising, and fast, I didn't want to lose my boreholes so I gassed sven (sorry buddy, it was you or me) and raised my island safely out of the sea (ecodamage at about 500 in my city). At this stage I was researching faster than the cyborgs so I decided to planet bust them, this involved changing my formers to super-drop and building airbases on the few surviving patches of land, finally I PB'd the cyborg city with skybase acadamy and HSA (it was a couple of squares out of range from my airbases, very annoying). I was a bit late starting the gassing campaigns so the AI's had mostly built pressure domes, altough the data angels sunk. I eventually won by transcendence victory, the AI's were a miserable bunch by this stage, sven had been nerve gassed into oblivion, the data angels had been drowned, morgan and domani had got PB'd out of existence, and the cyborgs had only a few (empty, grrrr) cities left, final eco damage in the thousands I think. The only land left was my island with my one city. The peacekeepers had won

Blake

[Aredhran]

Very *peaceful* way to win indeed

[Wiglaf]

Blake? I think you got 'em...[holds pb number twenty back]

[VoodooChild]

Bravo Skanderbeg

Some observations to your game...
IMHO Pirates are still the best to play these types of games. First of all if your not running the Pirates then someone else may. If the pirates are in the game then concuring the remaining factions after the great floods become that much more difficult with the pirate dominance of sea warfare.

As I said in the post when you got this idea, getting the resources from fungus SP is essitial to this strat since the worm rape will destroy any terra forming you have done in the game. Also if your planet rating is high enough, you will find that (in the early stages of floods when you have shelves) the added minerals from the encroaching fungus will increase your mineral eco-damage compounding the crisis.

Now remember that defense perimeters will do nothing to improve your chances against worms since all PDs do is increase your armor by one... Command Centers are important if you go with a human army, but I find the flexibility of using a native army works better for me, so going with the native buildings is more important since the CC won't improve native moral (not sure about repairing though, will have to check)

Use XChoppers! When you start the process you can send one or two out on suiside missions and have one stationed at each base. The multipule hits from chopers will accomplish everything you want in one turn. Also since the fungus wont be at your doorstep, any early worm attacks will stall as they make their way twards your bases. Perfect time for pearl hunting. Save your energy so that you can rush defenders at over run bases.

Sikander: Unfortunatly while the great flood is going on, you will have very little use for naval forces and after the fungus is next to your bases, air power will become a distant memory since the worms will attack at the same time as they appear. Air and Sea units are the last thing you want in your bases since not only do they lose the base bonuses for defending, they suffer penelties for being caught in the harbor or on the ground.

SE choices:
Police State (need the extra support and police powers)
Green need the higher planet rating for attack bonuses vs natives and the resources from fungus (with the SP)
Power (while you have credits) Wealth when you don't. The negitive moral settings dont hurt your native forces since they use a different scale like probes do.

There is more that I can talk about, but I need to run. Keep updating us with your findings