School Me On... The Believers!

[Nakar Gabab]

I've searched and searched in vain for a thread on the Dreaded Orange, but short of an "I Hate Miriam!" trend, I haven't seen much more than a few little mentions of everyone's favorite fundy.

See, a PBEM will be starting up fairly soonish with some people I like to play with, and since I had to play on the UN team last game, I'm angling for a bit of a more... independent stance (you know, "go ahead, declare war on me, my impact rovers will enjoy the action"). So, I intend to play as the Believers.

I want to do this because, while I greatly enjoy playing a momentum game, I do have builder tendencies at heart, and so I tend to wind up a slightly more aggressive than normal hybrid player. And for that, Santiago just won't cut it. Yang isn't an option for me because (1) I'm not used to his style or cash flow issues, (2) someone will almost certainly be playing him already, and I don't want to get into a fight over a faction, which is NEVER a problem with Miriam. So, that leaves the orange, a faction I actually pretty well like, really. The research slowdown is bad, but I've never had it prove an issue once I was economically established, and Miriam has no DIRECT econ penalties as do Yang (-2 Econ) and Santi (-1 Ind). Heck, she's got that juicy +2 Supp that I enjoy, and that means more troops AND formers.

Anyway, my question is this: What is a good way to play Miriam in the EARLY part of a MP PBEM game, one where a lot of people enjoy playing builders or hybrids? I don't want to be too aggressive because our group tends to band together against "imperialists" ( ), but I want to be able to establish myself in a strong military stance while not falling too far behind economically.

What I've read so far is:

1) Don't waste time with research you can't do in the first 10 turns. Set Econ as high as it can be set profitably, pump pods, and make scouts if pods aren't available.

2) Later, when possible, try for AMA, Punishment Spheres, big armies, and lots and lots of cash, perhaps with Demo/Green and 100% econ or Fundy/FM for probe immunity and money with no police drawbacks (but worm issues). No science facilities, no drone facilities, just minerals, energy, and bleeding-edge economy. Using that, try to leverage massive probe incursions and lots of rush-building. Take what tech you need by swiping it, and crush crush crush!

However, I'm not sure these are both viable for MP. (1) is certainly not a problem, since there's not much else I CAN do that early in the game, but (2) seems like a bit of a long-shot. It's reachable, but if I don't research myself AMA will be some distance away the way most of our builder-types beeline, and setting up all those spheres and whatnot may take some time. But I can see the superb benefits this affords me. On the other hand, it might slow my approach to D:AP and MMI, which would seal the game for the Believers if I got to them while the others were dealing with the economic techs. But if I shot for my ideal economic situation first, I'd be beholden on everyone else for tech (though not necessarily in a reciprocal fashion, and I'd be able to do quite a bit with it). If I shot for the weaponry first, I'd be less-prepared to benefit from them, and more vulnerable to people trying to catch up with me.

I'm wondering, is it sensible to take a Momentum's beeline path (Impact, then Air Power and/or AMA) with the hope that I can steal or trade for the builder techs like IA that come rather early in the game? And if so, should I try not to focus on research in any way, shape, or form? Ideally, I'd like to be raking in the cash while pumping out the units and economic infrastructure, with little or no concern for my tech rate. Kill them with quantity (and the +25% bonus, and gas... ) and force their alliance-building to work in my favor, in short.

So, any general thoughts?

P.S. We will of course be playing on Transcend, 7 factions, no AIs, standard settings and I think Large map size. Pretty basic stuff, and rushing is neither impossible nor overly useful.

[MattyBoy]

Here's an extract from Vel's guide:

The Lord’s Believers:
At a Glance: +2 Support, +1 Probe, -2 Research, -1 Planet; 25% Attack Bonus

General Notes: A superb faction, helped greatly by the Support bonus. The Believers get off to a slow start, but this need not be a crippling disadvantage. One good thing about it is that your bases will be laid out better on your continent, as you will generally have more time to explore before you can start expanding. The planet negative puts you at a slight disadvantage when fighting the natives, unless you attack first, which more than negates your -10% penalty, and the Support boon lets you field more units per base in any event. Also, your attack bonus allows you to work your way to “Trans-elite” troopers, giving you an extra point of movement, and a 25% attack bonus above and beyond what everybody else gets too. Also, the ability to switch to Fundy and render your bases and units immune to subversion is a HUGE advantage! Oh, and remember, Miriam is the only faction in the game that can run Dem and still build a new base with free minerals! (The key advantage here being that you can have comparatively more bases before you start getting drone warnings due to size). A word of warning with this faction: If you are attacked by a psi-force, get as far away from Market as you can. In fact, it would be far and away in your best interest to run green when faced with such an attack, cos if you ARE caught by the worms while running Market, even with trance or empath-assisted troopers, there’s almost no way you can win, especially if those worms are being controlled by Cha’Dawn or Deirdre.

Miriam, the Builder: This might seem like a contradiction in terms, considering the slow start with research and the twenty percent higher tech costs, but in truth, you can offset both of these things with relative ease. Once you get Centauri Ecology, the boost in support enables you to crank out an obscene number of formers, very quickly moving to terraform the entire continent, and making all your bases that much more productive. Not to mention the fact that, as with the Spartans, most people will be content to leave you be if you play a Builder game, and odds are, they’re just breathing a sigh of relief that you’re not attacking them! If you ARE attacked however, your best chance at defending is with an active stance, using pre-emptive strikes to take advantage of your native 25% attack bonus and running Fundy to prevent subversion. Research wise, even when you’re running Fundy, Network Nodes everywhere gives you a net gain of +10% to your research rates. Not nearly the boost it gives others, but then, you’ll only be running Fundy if there’s trouble brewing, otherwise, you’re better served by some other SE choice (Dem springs immediately to mind here). You’re cash is good (ability to run Market), your troops are good, and you can offset the research hit by a program of steady builds and active probe teams to keep up until your infrastructure is in place. The Miriam Builder game is by far the most active of the lot, as she must make early and regular use of probes to keep pace until the infrastructure is in place, but it’s quite easily pulled off.

Also note here, that when you play the Builder’s game with Miriam, you will want to be very careful and specific about when you run Fundy. True, it gives you almost total immunity to enemy probe actions, but it utterly kills your research, regardless of your infrastructure, so use it only when pressed, or when pressing an attack against someone else.

Miriam, the Hybrid: Miriam’s Builder game is so active that there really aren’t many differences between it and the Hybrid game, except that, where the Builder will focus mostly on early game formers, the Hybrid Player will take a few of those “free unit” slots and use them for the building of Prototypes, sending them out hunting in much the same way that the Deirdre Hybrid player uses her native life forms.

Miriam, the Conqueror: Again, like the Spartans, this one’s a no-brainer. Race for Flex and Planetary Networks, switch to Fundy, save your money, find an opponent, infiltrate, probe them to death to get their tech, steal a base and upgrade all the garrisons to best/best, using pre-emptive strikes to defeat the forces sent against you (and continue to subvert them all the while). Build cheap scouts or recon rovers every turn, upgrading them to whatever is needed (remembering that the newly captured base will get a larger than normal share of “free” units), and keep punching your opponent. In the field, with even tech, your forces are VERY hard to beat, especially if you’re running fundy, as they cannot use probe trickery against you, and you get a morale boost too!

[Jamski]

One word for playing Mim : PROBES

She really needs them, and she's pretty good at using them too. Miriam can buy out half a faction in no time if you've been stockpiling the cash, and the other half can be captured by your superior troops. Just try not to get into a long war againsit the Hive or Spartans early on.

-Jam

[Kody]

The planet negative puts you at a slight disadvantage when fighting the natives, unless you attack first, which more than negates your -10% penalty

I think Vel is wrong. He's right in that you should attack first, but I believe he's wrong in saying -10% planet penalty will affect a unit defensive against a natives. From my research the -10% planet penalty only affects you when you attack, and not when you're defend.

Can someone confirm this, because I vaguely remember reading a thread about mindworms not showing all the modifiers.

[Minute Mirage]

Originally posted by Kody


I think Vel is wrong. He's right in that you should attack first, but I believe he's wrong in saying -10% planet penalty will affect a unit defensive against a natives. From my research the -10% planet penalty only affects you when you attack, and not when you're defend.

Can someone confirm this, because I vaguely remember reading a thread about mindworms not showing all the modifiers.

I've always been under the impression that planet bonuses and negatives only matter when you attack. I also disagree with Vel that switching away from FM is necessary if someone attacks with worms, provided that you have artillery at that point.

[Jamski]

They DO only apply when you attack. FM is more likely to PRODUCE worms however.

-Jam

[Flubber]

You are all correct and vel is wrong on this point. Planet rating is irrelevant to DEFENSIVE strength of PSI combat.

Jamski is correct in that probes are Miriams best friend and you must get to probeships as soon as you can. You can't play overly nice and should try to steal your way to some of the better builder techs. Ican be equally sweet to just steal a single unit with advanced abilities and reverse engineer them

Emphasize cash and growth in the early game--

Other points--

1. you don't need a punishment sphere in EVERY base. . . you just need it in bases that will continue to support ground troops/interceptors outside your lands and any that are building other aircraft . It is relatively easy to rehome units to the PS bases.

2. as you say, a research minus is not that bad and if you can grow quickly, and steal some tech, you can catch up quickly.

[Nakar Gabab]

Would it be advisable to probe aggressively, but not to maintain an aggressive stance? That is to say, shamelessly send probes and probe foils into enemy lands, but leave the rovers behind the borders (until someone decides they're sick of it)? Most of my group tends to avoid fighting if they can help it, but they'll band together QUICKLY against an aggressor. Probing might be different, though...

[CEO Aaron]

The biggest and most painful drawback of Miriam is that you'll likely lose out on any and all early SP's, unless you get a deluge of AA's from pod-popping.

The key to winning with Mimi is beelining for Planetary Networks and Doctrine Flexibility, stealing tech until you reach parity, then using your superior support and attack bonuses to crush your enemies in a deluge of cheap units. Your early support bonus lets you build 2 formers per base and still have a couple of military units, which I definitely recommend.

Develop aggressively at home with a thin expansion and police, ICS is very much your friend. You're better off with a ton of 3 population bases than a handfull of big ones, you'll have more formers and more support.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Nakar Gabab
Would it be advisable to probe aggressively, but not to maintain an aggressive stance? That is to say, shamelessly send probes and probe foils into enemy lands, but leave the rovers behind the borders (until someone decides they're sick of it)? Most of my group tends to avoid fighting if they can help it, but they'll band together QUICKLY against an aggressor. Probing might be different, though...

You could always lie .. . If you find one of the best research factions and they can be proberaped, you can just hit that ONE faction hard-- sure you will be at vendetta with them but you can claim that the university or whoever is making it all up or that they sank your ship or killed your scout or something. Everyone will see that you are not attacking

Bottom line is that if you can catch up on research, the believers become a very versatile faction to play.

Based on the game dynamics and large number of human controlled factions, my playstyle would be to try to lurk in the weeds. Conquering may make you a target for too many enemies to handle so thats why I suggest probraping only one target. It may never be clear to the others who is doing what to whom. You may even garner a lot of good will if you are willing to trade a high-level tech widely that the high-tech faction was hording/ refusing to share.

IN a game with that many players, it seems to me that alliances would be key . .. Do you folks allow coop victories ??

[Nakar Gabab]

Originally posted by Flubber
IN a game with that many players, it seems to me that alliances would be key . .. Do you folks allow coop victories ??

I don't think so, but alliances are still made often (with the understanding that, eventually, we'll turn on each other). Hence why I said an alliance with some tech-factions might make playing nice an advantage. Like Aaron said, I'm definitely going to shoot for 2 formers per base, simply because there's really no disadvantage to doing so with such high support. It's like having clean formers right out of the gate.

In one of our current games, nobody has Impact yet, and it's already into the 2160s (we're not THAT good at this game). I think Synth Fossil Fuels are going to come along before Nonlinear Math at this point. Does anyone recommend making the shot for it early on? It's only one tech past App Physics, which you practically get for free if you pop enough pods (is it me, or does the game seem to love giving you that tech over any other level 1 techs you don't have?). It would certainly be good leverage, and wouldn't slow me down TOO much, particularly if I probe the heck out of somebody.

[CEO Aaron]

Sounds like everyone in your game is going straight for either Environmental Economics or Air Power. If you can grab Impact before someone else gets missiles, you can trade it around for some good tech concessions, but if you get trumped by some wiseass with synthetic fossil feuls, the value of impact drops significantly. Bear in mind, however, that impact IS on the way to Fusion, so it's not utterly useless.

By the way, you need Information Networks + Applied Physics to reserach Non-Linear Math, but since you need IN as a pre-requisite of Planetary Networks, this is hardly a problem.

[Nakar Gabab]

I'll grant you that, yes. I just want to make sure that I can at least once get a tech that nobody else has, and to do that, I'm considering unorthodox research paths. That way I can use my meager research to get things people don't have, and probe/trade for the techs I know people WILL have.

Then kill them all.