Tales from the Front

[Velociryx]

I just finished another game (yep, with Morgan again), and am convinced that I've got the nuances of his faction worked out....on to another one then, for closer study, but this last game was such a rumble that I felt compelled to at least put the high spots down on virtual paper, so here goes....
Setup: Large Planet with 70-90% Water and everything else set to average.

I started my fledgling empire on a tiny patch of ground only big enough to support four cities (and there was some overlap even then), but, so be it, I was off and running. I DID start the game with a unity foil, so I took it pod popping.....did pretty well in the early game, and set one of my cities up to work the Merchant Exchange while I was pod-popping (and hoping for Biogenetics)....several turns (and many close calls with mind worms) later, I did indeed get biogenetics (as well as a unity rover, safely tucked away in my transport foil), so I switched over to the Genome project, dropped off my little rover on another island to check it out and went about my business....something like fifty turns have gone by, and there's dead silence on the comm bands.....nobody's talking....nobody's even working on any projects. I'm not getting word about anybody's activities, and on the status charts, I've noticed that I'm falling WAYYYYYY behind (I'm listed as wanting, and as time passes, that will drop to anemic). That tells me: WAR. Lots of war. Everybody else must have landed pretty close together and be fighting tooth and nail (and extorting techs from each other). Now I'm worried, because if either the Gains or the Believers come out on top, I'm in trouble. The probe teams I don't have yet, but rely so heavily on won't do anything against either of them.
Cringing slightly, I continue my exploration and pod popping....more carefully now.

A few turns later there's a flurry of activity on the comm bands. The Believers start about half a dozen projects all at once. ::Groan:: No doubting who won that war. A short time later, Lal, Santiago, and Dierdre are wiped off the map (all three managed to escape, however, to fight another day). By now, I've uncovered a goodish portion of the map and I STILL haven't seen the first sign of any other faction. Very odd.

But, on the home front, my Genome project is progressing nicely....in fact, it's almost done....that's when disaster strikes.
Mind worm activity increases dramatically.

"No problem," I say with a shrug. "Nobody seems to want to play with me anyway....I might as well head home." So my roving forces start back (actually, they had nearly circumvented the globe, so they weren't far off anyway). Before they get very far, however, SIX boils attack my capital city (where the genome project was under construction). My pair of hardened Sentenals held off four, but the last two made it through.....and it was a size two city....GONE....along with all the accumulated research.

::GULP:: I don't know if you've ever played Morgan, but without the Genome project, and until you get your infrastructure in place, you're in for a bad time.....GAWD...and I lost my best city, to boot....AND, Miriam was working on the project, and now had a lead on me.

Everybody came home, three colony pods were dispatched to the site of the former Capital City (which had two monoliths AND a mineral resource in it's production radius) and set up shop there, with ALL of my unity stuff guarding it, plus a garrison of three Impact Infantry....they were green, 'cause I hadn't gotten around to the command center yet, but I was hoping it would be enough.

Next thing was, even though I wasn't quite ready, I unleashed free market....wincing at the thought of what the worms were gonna do to me (this being their extremely active cycle, and me with a planet rating of -3, but I had to do it to boost energy output....it was the only way to catch Miriam on the Genome project)....so, Morgan powered up....and here come the worms.....

I had every city cranking out speeders and sending them out to help with defense. For a while, it was touch and go....I was losing units just as quickly as I was cranking them out, and my infrastructure development was STALLED. I don't think a size class three city has EVERY been so brutally worm raped as that one....it was unreal.

Finally, the worm levels returned to normal and I breathed a sigh of relief....until I got the message that Miriam's Genome project was nearing a major breakthrough....OHHHHHH no.....now I was really ticked. I didn't wreck my little empire for nothing. No way was I gonna let her snake it away from me. So I dumped all my money into it. Not enough. Ditched my recycling commons. Still not enough. Disbanded all the troops on loan from other cities. Close, but no cigar.

It cost me the unity foil, but I got the Genome project....my little empire was in tatters, all my cities were horribly underdeveloped (and I only had nine anyway), but I had the Genome.....now it was time to get back to work and try to catch Miram.

I don't think she was real happy with me for snaking the Genome project from her, 'cause she called me a Godless Dog or somesuch when she called me the very next turn. I bribed her to leave me alone and set about my work.

Yang called a while later, under heavy attack from everybody's favorite Bible-Thumper. I politely declined his Pact offer and ended the conversation.

Then Dierdra, Lal, and Santiago all come calling. They're all eager to make friends, because, small as I am, I'm still lots bigger than they are, and they're apparently none too happy with Yang and Miriam. From them, I get the Good Doctor's comm-link, and we're all one big happy, allied family, content to let Yang and Miriam fight it out for as long as they care to. Suits me, and I've got a bevy of allies weaker than me....I like it. :-)

By and by, I discover that Yang is, despite being horribly out-gunned, fighting a two front war against both Miriam and Doc. I do some peace-mongering to get the fighting with my allies stopped, and besides, I want his attention focused on Miriam....she's the most powerful, and will keep him more than busy.

One perk: I gave Santiago ALL my research data, and she apparently put it to good use. Built some rovers and started skirmishing with Miriam....yeah, she bugged me to join her now and again, but I just loaned her some money and she was content.

Having made a few friends and actually gotten some kind of commerce rating, I turned my attention back to growing the empire. I had nine cities now....not bad, but nowhere close to what I wanted...and, three of them were in the great dunes....which, by now, was the great forest, but it had taken a lot of effort to get it to that point. Fortunately, I came across the Monsoon Jungle....lush and green, and.....completely empty.....

It didn't take long to discover why.....it was almost entirely grown over with fungus.....Cripes! The Planet seemed to be thwarting me at every turn here.....but, I was determined, and so a great many formers, colony pods, and guards were built (I shifted into Green at this point, hoping the Mind worms wouldn't munch my lunch), and the whole host started out for the new territory.

And wouldn't you know it, but we had another freakin increase in worm activity.

I guess the worms didn't care that I'd switched to green. They just didn't want me in the jungle, and so we started a pretty savage war....my formers were armoured, so they didn't do all that bad against the boils, but my colony pods took a beating. I lost two of the six I sent out, and the others wound up creating only two cities (one size three, and a size one). Not at all what I had originally envisioned, but it was an emergency, and my troops and formers needed a safe haven. So, we dug in for the battle at the edge of the jungle......

But alas, I must head home for the evening, so I shall end my tale here, and pick it up tomorrow..... :-)
-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

....to continue with the earlier narrative.... :-)

In looking back on it, I guess perhaps my mistake was in making such a point to get the Genome project. After seeing the consequenses of that action, I probably would not have done it again, but at the time, I was so fixated on seeing if I could do it, even after such a tremendous setback.....it just never even occured to me NOT to go for it.

At any rate, yesterday, we left off with the Morganites camped at the edge of a potentially lush and garden-like Monsoon Jungle, overgrown with Fungus, and brimming with Mind Worms, who had, it seemed, designated me as their personal whipping boy. The two cities I founded were admittedly not very well placed, having been founded in haste, in order to give me a place to crank new units from, and to repair my battered forces.

"What the Hell," I say to myself as I switch back to Free Market (mostly just to spite the damned worms), and besides that, I needed the money. "Let's Rock." And here they came.

They never took the little city (which was harder for them to get to), but the larger city was reduced to a size class one on three separate occassions.....still, when worm activity returned to normal, I had both cities intact, and the 2nd Worm War did wonders for my military. The units I had remaining were Elites (something Morgan RARELY sees, without the benefits of Command & Bioenhancement Centers), and it forced me to focus on my military (prototyping, etc), something which I generally let lag in favor or rapid infrastructure development.

And, thanks to the massive nutrient output of the jungle squares within my two cities' production radaii, my population grew rapidly, enabling me to mass-produce colony pods and formers. In no time, we had a veritable army of formers scrubbing fungus, and colonists....well, colonizing. Very quickly, my little empire grew from eleven cities to nineteen, and then again to twenty-four, as I expanded into the sea, and onto several neighboring, small islands.

While my rapid expansion was taking place, both Yang and Miriam came calling on numerous occassions, asking for my help, which I declined every time. I was in full "builder" mode, and was not interested in their war. Besides that, I felt pretty safe behind my wall of Elite SAM Infantry, backed by liberal numbers of probe teams (including a number of probe foils I'd built in between key projects). I felt pretty confident that I was ready for anything that the game could throw at me.....boy was that a mistake. ::sigh::

But, the game was going along at a good clip now.....I had a good portion of my infrastructure in place, I was out-teching everybody, and making HORDES of money every turn. Now my mind turned toward expansion.....I guess I decided to go to war because I'd never actually won the game via conquest. I'd won via Transcendence three times, and cornered the world energy market once....now I wanted that taste of conquest.....and my first target wasn't too hard to find. I apparently said the wrong thing to Santiago and our relationship seemed to deteriorate, so I told her I'd "squash her like a bug," (chuckling to myself as I clicked that option), and suddenly both Yang AND Miriam declared war on me.

I quickly switched over to a Green/Power configuration and started cranking out more units to get ready. In the meantime, I sent out my probe ships (sometimes alone, and sometimes under the cover of AAA Cruisers and Destroyers) to go trolling. Wound up capturing a number of enemy units, and buying off three of Yang's cities in short order, and, as a bonus, capturing three more using his own bought-off units. He decided a break was in order and sued for peace, which I was happy to give. One war at a time....that's my motto....:-)

I wanted to deal with Santiago next, but Miriam was having none of that. She had been gearing up and moving her forces around from Yang's front to mine during the time I was pasting Yang, and before I could even start to prepare for her, here she came. WOW! That Lady can FIGHT! She was doing all sorts of funky things, and of course, my probe teams were useless against her. Actually, that DID give me an inspiration of sorts, but I'll get to that in a moment. Suffice it to say, that ALL the early rounds went to Miriam. She attacked my cities with massed needlejets, and then paradroped troops into town when all my guards were dead. I lost an entire island (three cities) and one of my Jungle cities to that while I was building for my counterstrike.

Since my probe teams were not going to do me much good against Miriam, and I still had two opponents to fight, I decided to make my war with Santiago an entirely covert operation. ALL my remaining probe teams were dispatched to the lands of Santiago, and let me tell you, the attrition rate was VERY high, but, several of them did make it through, and I was able to subvert nearly half the Lady's cities, and buy off enough of her own units to make a good show of holding them. She also wanted to talk (presumably peace), but I was having none of it. Her cities were in GREAT locations, and I was looking at them in terms of their strategic value against Miriam, so as far as I was concerned, the lady was doomed.

The worms helped, actually. Both against Miriam and Santiago. The next time they came calling, I didn't even get a second glance, but Miriam got HAMMERED by them, and it was nearly as bad for Santiago. (I cackled like a madman when THREE of Miriam's transports went down, compliments of the worms....)

And of course, I made good use of the time. My tech research had been going along pretty well, and I had never used missiles before, so I figured "what the hell....let's try this...." And, I was not disappointed. In fact, I liked the results so much that I filled up the production queues in ALL my cities with missiles, and when they were ready (with my cash supply, it took about eighteen turns, all told), I unleashed a missile attack, the likes of which simply could not be recovered from. I didn't even get to use them all (and actually, I was getting rather tired of moving the damnable things around the map), but I did succeed in emptying out ALL of Miriam's sea-based and costal cities, and keeping them empty until my ships could ride over and dock.....

That was pretty much the game after that. I was tempted to let everyone sue for peace, 'cause I'm more of a builder type than a conquerer, but, I wanted to win by conquest, so I pretty much ignored my Communications Officer.....that was probably a mistake....::another sigh::

Now I know why they call him "Crazy Ivan." Next thing I know, I've been the subject of THREE planet buster attacks....keep in mind, we're playing on a world with 70-90% water, so these didn't just nuke a city or two, they pretty much sank three of my islands entirely, taking all the cities on each with it. OUCH! And, they were some of my best cities, to boot. :-( (but, at least he didn't flame my capital....still had that freakin' Genome project by God!) :-)

Grrrr......and I'd been leaving him alone the whole game. I also had the ability to build Planet Busters, of course (having the highest tech level in the game), but I had not....I didn't want to commit any attrocities if I could help it, and I didn't think I'd need to....so I took a page out of the book of Miriam and sent masses of planes over to the Good Doctor's cities and emptied them out, and then orbitally inserted my troops into his newly vacated real estate.

He changed his tune pretty quickly, but I didn't much care....he nuked me man, and it ticked me off....so, I removed him from the gene pool.

After that, it was pretty much a mop up job. No major crisis occurring anywhere, and it didn't take long to finish them off one by one. I let Miriam linger on until last though....something about that Lady just ticks me off.

A longish game, but I enjoyed it immensely....and I hope you've enjoyed reading the highspots....and thank you for humoring me! :-)
-=Vel=-

[cousLee]

To forest of not to forest.
I landed on a large continent with morgan to my south, and garland crater to the north. this is on a large map, medium setting land mass, low erosion, rare lifeforms, TI.

I tried the suggested methods and things went ok... for a while. I ran into Morgan early, which supprized me as I usually end up missing early contact (bad sense of direction). We did the treaty of a while, about 40 or so turns. He was able to expand in both directions along the coast, building 1 base to the north, and 1 to the east. He tried to encroach my terr, but I was able to beat him to the punch each time, moving my border closer to his, which made his colony pod have to back-track. Once, I was only able to beat him by 1 turn (he had his CP in the perfect position to build on his next turn, and I am sure he would have. it was just on his side of the border). To the west of Morgan Industries was a small Island, just the right size for 1 base, which he built. 2 spot islands also connected this (continuing west) to the uranium flats. that island has an elevated section on the west side, and the UF at 300-600 feet. both areas are the same size. (one fair size box island).

well, Morgan built the merchant exchange while I continued to claim the crater. Morgan was pacted with me by this time (treaty was about 6-8 turns), and my foot hold was established. he had managed to build 6 bases, whereas I had about 10 bases. I got Centauri tech from a pod, and my formers were getting started making the cordoury. I took my lone probe team, and stole tech from morgan, tried to frame UoP, which failed, but I did get some tech. (probe lost).(Morgan and I were at vendetta with UoP anyway). he had just completed the SP and i moved my impact rover onto one of his roads and waited 1 turn.
after getting him to declare vendetta on me (demanded a base), M.Ind. fell to the sole rover, he had 1 synth and a probe in the base, I got a lucky battle and used my 2/3 movement point to capture the base. Morgan buckeled at the loss, and offered me all but 10 credits in his bank (aprox 930 credits received for a blood truce). between the probe and the capture, no new techs were involved with the deal. I demanded the base to the east, or bug squash time, he gave it to me. I let the truce ride for about 6 turns so I could bring up some forces and see if i could piss him off again. with 2 impact rovers on the U Fields, and 2 near M.Ind, along with a 3-1-1, it was time. diplomatic base demanding worked again, he declared vendetta again. The choke point near M.I. was blocked, and both of us kept our units stationed there, but neither one advanced. meanwhile, I captured the west-most base (destroying it in the process), and moved on the base in the middle of U.Fields. I captured it within a few turns (love monoliths). moving my two 3-1-2s up the road was enough to get Morgan to open up the choke point. Moving both sets in a pinch fasion, I was able to put Morgan in the microwave.

By now, periphilon(sp?) is set to start in 2 turns, and my foresting former army has done thier job, and are working on other pressing matters (fungus). I have about 16 bases, with about half breaking the 15 mineral barrier. The UoP surrendered after losing 1 base. he was at war with everyone, and would have been crushed with me moving in from his only "peacefull" border. he gave me 4 or so techs, which abought me up to speed with the other factions tech wise.

The Uop was getting beaten on pretty bad by the other factions, I sent so units in to help, which delayed the Spartans and the Hive for a few turns and Zak was able to get some troops over to take over. With his forces fighting the Spartan/Hive front, Deirdre was able to come in from the north and capture 2 UoP bases, cutting the faction in two. things for Zak look bad.

During this time I had been battling worms and an occasional invasion by the PK,Gaians and Hive over near the crater. Keeping the supply transports stocked (was losing 1-2 per turn) and trying to squeeze in some buildings kept my core cities busy. I have adequate garrisons, but have to keep replacing them as the Hive was first with the jets and was doing regular runs. (him and his damn AAA transports keeping me busy). all the fighting on my continent had kept me from building an invasion force, and tech has really slowed down by now. i can't get any probe teams near the other factions, due to the distance involved, and the AI always destroying my probe teams before i can get near thier bases. Zak has been giving me some techs, but neither of us are able to stop the slow encroach of his lines, as the Spartans/Hive are advancing, and the Gaian transport full of chaos marines are begining to spread. they are still mostly in one area, but it is a huge force, since the Gaians/Hive/Spartans have met in the middle for repairs in the 2 captured UoP cities.

guess who gets missle tech (captured a Spartan base which allowed a tech switch to orbital with just a few turns to go). The Gaians get it right after me as well. well, I cashed in the old supplys I was using to build a Fusion PB, and took a turn to get in withing range of the battlefield. I get a rover over near a pod, and try for a hat-trick. I lost 2 minerals switching production to a PB, but it was worth it as it worked. got the "minerals to complete" message. So now I have 1PB in range, and 1 available on the next turn.

my core cities are still busy fighting the regular invasions from the PKs and Gaians, the Spartans have taken to former sniping, and the Hive to supply sniping with his jets. my damn sam missle needlejets keep losing, as does my AAA 1-3-1*2 garrisons, and 3-1*2 supplys that (use) to pepper the landscape. I am able to maintain my bases, but still not able to get the invasion force made.

This usually does not happen this way for me. buy this point in the game, It is usually over for the other factions with a conquest victory in site. I do not normally use the forest everywhere strat, but it sounded interesting and I wanted to try it.

So, to answer the question, I say NOT to forest.
Forest in flat terr, and arid terrain; Mine rocky areas; farm/solar the rest seems to work better. (for me anyway).

for I have tasted the fungus,

BTW, this is the same game I captured the missle bug on.
******copy of post from the SMAC forums*****

Seeing that in order to verify the missle bug, I had to activate the scenario editor. This has ruined the game for me. I did save the game prior to opening the editor.

I have since taken a few turns, dropped a couple (2)bombs (fusion PBs), but otherwise not too much has changed. I had PB'd the Gaian invasion, taking out 2 captured UoP cities, one containing the Command Nexus, which was the capitol.
the other PB was dropped on a Spartan sea base. That one took out one other sea base, and Sparta Command. Stopping the Spartan's harvesting of the Bore Hole Cluster.

Since the game is ruined for me, I will Zip it to whomever wants it. I would like to know how it turns out.

So, I'm creating this new set of SMAC factions. I decide to try the new gang of 7 out in the game. I played the Johnson Federation, (a faction I created based on me :-) ) and my first encounter with the another faction happened rather quickly. It was with the Fluent Union. Now the Fluent Union and I both share a single large continent. But the Fluent Empire was posistioned in such a way that I was only allowed a small sliver of the continent. I started on a small penninsula covered with fungus, while Fluent had alot of large open spaces. I was able to make peace with Fluent. And I went back to building up my empire. I had constructed colony pods to try to expand faster than Fluent, but Mind Worms showed up and destroyed many of my pods. By this time Fluent, came up to me and said something like "I am a strong invincible empire, and you are a small nation, you will pay me tribute or be destroyed. Now in all my time playing CIV games, I seldom give in to Tribute demands, so I said no. And Fluent immediately pronounced vendetta on me. Now, the Fluent faction was designed to be experts
at probe tactics, but even still I was not prepared for what would befall me next turn. Three Probe team units attacked my cities, and the next turn more Fluent probe teams attacked my cities. Eventually I was able to secure a cease fire with the Fluents, but by that time my faction was a speck compared to Fluent's, but I didn't realize it yet. I managed to find another faction, the SAC. The SAC faction is a super UN. They have command centers in every base, and they start with needlejets. I accquired needlejet tech from Nolan of the SAC, but the Fluents also did a little trading with the SAC as well. I was progressing fine, I was completing secret projects quickly. But my good mood suddenly collapsed when Fluent arrived with a list of demands. I refused them, and Fluent pronounced vendetta. This time it was a long grueling war. I only had about 8 or so cities and Fluent had more than 12. I was able to hold off Fluent attacks, and intercepting Fluent probe teams, and building some Probe Teams of my own. But my units were useless on the offensive against Fluent's. All of my units were nothing compared to Fluents. Fluent demanded tribute again, but I refused(stupidly). I just couldn't take the offensive against the Fluents. My production was plummeting, and every time I thought I had the upper hand, the Fluents would one up me. Finally the worst happenend. Hordes of Fluent troops and probe teams assaulted my cities, I lost thre quickly, and the Fluent probe teams were wiping out my base facilities almost instantaneously. The SAC and a couple other factions pronounced vendetta against the Fluents, but it didn't help. And while my growth had stopped thanks to the war, the Fluents had built several more bases, my faction was nothing. Very soon artillery bombardments against my cities became a common occurence. Fluent probe team squads were assalting me every turn. I had developed a contingency, evacuation. A needlejet colony pod would be sent to start on a new continent. But by then my production had dropped to zero. Then I just decided "to hell with it." And shut of the game and erased that file from my computer. I started again, this time with a continent to myself. When I encountered the Fluents this time, they were nothing, they didn't threaten me, and in fact, it was rateher easy to get a pact with them. And they seemed to produce far fewer probe teams.



[This message has been edited by mikejohnson1 (edited May 05, 1999).]

[Velociryx]

Sounds like a pretty interesting game with your new factions! I'd be curious to hear more as your experimetns continue! (But I'm curious, what are the starting modifiers for the factions you mentioned?)
-=Vel=-

[Transcend]

My story begins in the middle of the game. My neighbor and ally, Brother Lal of the UN, has just snatched the Maritime Control Center from me, and that on a planet covered by 50%-70% of water. The political situation is quite clear: as the Gaians, I allied with UoP, Morgans, and the UN, while at same vendetta against the rest. Sister Miriam must have hated me especially since I forced her to escape as early as 2116. But now she has carved up a huge portion of the planet and threatens me with execution.
But the Hive causes the real problem. Its faction is even stronger than mine. It should be my priority to assemble an army of mindworms and Isle of Deep. But before I could do anything about the Hive, Lal betrayed me by allying with Miriam and Santiago. There is no reason to leave that traitor alive. In addition, I have long been jealous about his four wonders. First, I switched my social choice to Police State/Green/Knowledge. For several turns we fought a brutal probe team battle. By 2240, Lal has used up his probe teams, and I have enough mindworms to launch a full scaled invasion. After ten turns, Lal was no more.
Now my attention should again turn against the Hive. I assembled 2 Isle of Deep and 4 Chaos Foils to raid his naval outposts. At same time, I infiltrated his datalinks, allowing me to direct preemptive strikes against his offensive forces. I also noted that our Chairman was researching the Orbital Spaceflight. That meant I had to neutralize him before he got the Planetbuster. For several turns I stayed defensive and tried to hold newly conquered bases. My goal was to use up Hive's offensive force in a attack on my fortified bases, while at same to build massive reinforcements. By 2260, the Hive ran low on offensive units. However, it was still too strong for me to go on fullscaled attack. I expanded my raids to disrupt his production. Finally, when my strike force included 6 demon boil Isle of Deep, 2 AAAclean Chaos Destroyers, 3 Chaos Copters, 2 Chaos Penetrators, 5 Chaos Interceptors, and 13 land Mindworms, I launched my attack. Within 12 turns, 10 Hive bases have fallen. As it turned out, I neutralized the Hive just in time, since he needed only 20 more turns to finish the Planetbuster. The rest of the Hive would fall within 14 turns.
Meanwhile, Morgan also betrayed me and signed an alliance with the Spartans. As it turned out, Morgans were extremely weak, their most bases conquered by Miriam and Yang. I used only two Isle of Deep to exterminate the Morgans once for all.

By 2280, I was ready to commence attack against Spartans and Believers, and to stamp the Hive out of existence. My priority were to capture or destroy Spartans naval bases close to my core territory. I was afraid of Planetbuster attack against my bases that were loaded with secret projects. At about the same time, Miriam and Santiago declared vendetta each other, making my task a little easier. The attack against Spartans went very well, because it seemed that they had trouble supplying their faraway naval bases. My force included only 4 demon spoil Isle of Deep, 1 AAA Chaos Destroyer(8-3-6), 1 AAA Chaos Foil(8-3-4), 1 Chaos Copter, 3 Chaos Interceptors. Our colonel brought only token resistance(2 AAA Missle Destroyers). Within 20 turns I achieved my objective against the Spartans and forced her to sign a truce.
The attack against Rest Hive and Miriam went far worse. The AI adjusted well to my psi attack, and was now building trance units everywhere. Even my newly arrived Locusts of Chiron proved not to be effective. I eventually finished the Hive off with probe teams. The assault on Miriam was relatively short. When I succeeded in taking out four of her bases in a single turn, she surrendered.

By now, the competitive phase of the Games was over. I can achieve any form of victory as I want. I ended with Diplomatic victory, earning 164% or "Sentient Econometrics Made Simple".

[Velociryx]

Sounds like a pretty brutal slugfest, Transcend! At first (as reflected in my earlier posts), I admitted to being more of a "builder type" player, but I guess after spending time on the Forums I'm getting more bloodthirsty, 'cause this latest game I've started I'm finding myself getting.....restless..... :-)

My usual setup is: Huge Planet, 50-70% water, average all around, and blind research.....on a whim, I decided to turn the blind research off and direct my own efforts, and I must say, it makes the game remarkably easier.....conquest should be no problem at all!

I am playing Morgan again (go figure), and started off as usual....rapid, thin expansion. Seventy-Nine years into the game, I had 14 bases up and running, with most of those cranking out yet more colony pods. I was fortunate to have landed on a pretty large landmass, but not quite so fortunate as the Spartans (who started in the Monsoon Jungle). My explorations revealed however, that I had access to both the Uranium Flats and the ultimate "Prayer City" location, the Monolith-Ring.....and a few turns later, I found the Borehole Cluster and duly made for it.

Unfortunately, I also found out that I was not alone on the continent, and that my next-door-neighbor was none other than the good Chairman Yang.

For a while, we played the "re-draw the borders" game, crowding bases in and around the Boreholes in an attempt to monopolize them. I won the prize, but I must admit that my long-term plans (Post Hive) call for the distruction of three of my bases to prevent stunted growth (when the time is right, I'll "Colony Pod" them out of existance).

Through a dint of tech-trading, I was able to secure copies of everyone but Yang's world maps, so I have a good idea of where everyone is and what's going on around the world. Yang, unfortunately, is something of a question mark. He's got forces milling around in my territory, which I don't care for, but I've got my probe teams ready to nab him if he starts acting too rowdy. In the meantime, I've got supply crawlers all over the boreholes making my mineral production in my primary base there just shy of obscene. That base has been set up as my "War-Center" and is currently prototyping a staggering array of troops (and doing it very quickly, as you might imagine), with an eye toward a quick blitz across Yang's border when I've finished scouting him.

I've got infiltration teams finding the edges of his empire and probing toward the center....finding out what he's got and where it is, and as soon as I'm all set, I've got an idea I'm going to try.....

I'll include a colony pod (a heavily armoured colony pod) in with my army.....it'll move right up to the border (and maybe even step across it) and base-build (expanding my borders)....the general idea is to put my speeders in 1-turn range of his landward bases, so I can smash them and take the city before any drones are created in my territory (I'm running FM). Then rush-build the pod back to dismantle the city and repeat....

I know it's probably not the most efficient plan, but I'm mostly curious to see how well it works....:-)

Anyway, that's tonight's game plan....I shall continue my post as things develop.....
-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

::sigh:: Well, I did exactly as I said I would yesterday....and GAWD what a tedious thing that was. Very quickly I came to the conclusion that the time I was spending doing all that hocus pocus and the money I was blowing in rush-building the colony pod made it totally not worth it.....so I switched over to Dem-Green-Power and blew Yang off my continent, claiming the whole thing for myself.

At that point, the game was pretty much over....the ability to select precise research goals just makes it entirely too easy. I got clean reactors MUCH earlier than I normally do, and for "Moneybags" Morgan, that's "Da Bomb." In a matter of twenty turns, with all my bases cranking out clean units, I had the largest military apparatus on the planet, and from there, it was just a matter of beating the factions to death one after another. Didn't matter that my units weren't quite as high quality as the Spartans or the Believers, I had a near-endless supply, and just ran over them.

I think (other than Transcend's One-City challenge, 'cause he didn't say I couldn't), I'll not be playing specific research very often.....I don't know if the computer just makes poor choices or what it is, exactly, but that was one of the easiest games I've ever played....
-=Vel=-

[Googlie]

Just bringing this to the top of the heap again - some good stuff here

[Velociryx]

::sigh:: Ah yes....I'd almost forgotten this thread....some of our earlier games....and weren't those the days....lol....looking back, it is clear to me that I did not realize that the increase in worm activity is on a predictable cycle...lol...ah well, chalk it up to inexperience at the time....:-)
-=Vel=-

[Googlie]

^