Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Needlejets also automatically return to base after the first turn.

And when I need to wipe out a faction, I usually just drop-pod some string/stasis badasses and do the fighting on the ground.

Actually, for fighting Planet away from bases, Needlejets are pretty great. They move a bajillion tiles, most Planetlife can't attack them back, and they automatically return to safety after vaporizing that boil/fungal tower/whatever.

As for the aliens, they usually start shit long before I have 'copters, so instead, it's a long slog of war crimes and large land and sea deployments. I mean, I guess I can see a use if I wanted to annihilate bases with nerve gas, but I'd usually rather not. I'll usually capture and then either keep or destroy. In certain cases (Yang), there's a lot more destroy than keep.

edited 26th Apr '14 1:03:48 PM by Balmung

Yeah. So, needlejets do one attack per two turns. I can't really see that as useful compared to the power of a chopper.

And I suppose we have different styles on starting fights. I usually don't launch attacks on people until I'm well into the tech tree (unless I've encountered them early when I was in a position to rush a future problem off the map). Till then, I can usually keep my enemies from doing anything by maintaining a heavily-fortified position and a Pact or two with some of their enemies. If I'm sharing a small landmass with them, that's a different story, but of course I'm gonna rush impact rovers in that kind of situation.

Once I've got choppers and drop troops, then I go and slaughter aliens.

edited 26th Apr '14 6:45:27 PM by Ramidel

Oh, I try to do that, but the Progenitors (well, one of them) insist on starting shit early on, before I have an overwhelming technological advantage, so instead I wind up with a long ground war.

And for me, the needlejets make up for their suck with being really plentiful and not costing me any manufacturing time since the AI keeps giving them to me. Normally, I avoid building combat aircraft until I can make gravships.

I don't remember my choppers crashing because I use them primarily for defense. I always end a chopper's turn in a friendly base.

I usually use them to defend against huge stalks of mindworms when the planet is getting mad at every human, even the ones who have been trying to get along with it.

T_T Damn. Looks like I'll be replaying this game.

My main defense against Planet is Formers. By the time Planet's mad, there isn't a fungal stalk in five squares of my core bases and anything further out is still well protected and cleared.

Fungus might be absurdly profitable in the late game, but I'm highly risk-averse, so I replace it all with forest, which unlike fungus, doesn't fight back.

No matter how much fungus you clear, it can always return if you piss Planet off enough.

edited 27th Apr '14 3:57:15 AM by Ramidel

I know. I've cleared literally all of it before. Then started dredging up the entire ocean for more to remove.

It still makes expansion near your own stuff much less likely, since it has no nearby fungus to go off of.

I still see picking any other faction than Children of Planet as a self-imposed challenge along the lines of the one that ends with "FINAL DESTINATION" And as Balmung probably knows from the Fallout New Vegas thread, I tend not to do those. Oh yeah, I did Hardcore Mode in New Vegas precisely once - got to the end of Dead Money, where that mode is actively dangerous, and the game crashed. That's a message from on high so I took it.

I just won with Domai. Fairly easily. Despite Domai being unable to run Green. (I went Free Market for a stretch in the midgame before switching nigh-permanently to Planned.)

So there.

Actually, I find the Stepdaughters to be a weaker-than-average faction. Buddying up with Planet doesn't help you build up your tech base, Gaians' inability to run Market hurts them quite a bit in the early midgame, and Gaians are poor at fighting with anything but worms. And if Planet drops a fungal bloom on me...well, I can deal with Planet.

Last time I played the only faction left standing were the Pirates, mainly due to their sea bases. I exterminated the rest (including one of the alien factions) after out producing them in terms of colonists, troops, military forces and Planet points for transcendence. It's trickier, mid-game, maybe (debatable) but undeniably effective to roll on the side of Lady Deidre Skye.

I fail to see how not playing as the Gaians is any sort of self-imposed challenge. I mean, other than the Cult, everyone's a viable faction.

Really, in comparison to some of them, the Gaians are something of a self-imposed challenge.

It depends on playstyle. Yang, Morgan, Lal and Sakharov don't suit mine. I have tried with all or most of them but I just don't get on as well as I do with Deidre. Miriam is just flat out too fucknuts, the alien factions seem orbital dropped in to ruin a perfectly good original ending and none of the others in SMAX are interesting enough for me to give them a shot.

So yeah, all the others = self imposed challenge as far as how I would see it. Your mileage of course may vary.

So what about Santiago?

And that sounds less about the challenge factor than agreement than with the ideals of the faction.

And Miriam might be a bit bonkers (and her AI more so), but her bonuses make it much easier to have a free society than most other factions, thanks to her extra support. I wouldn't even think about running Democracy with pretty much any other faction.

Wow. I always run Dem unless I have a specific need for another ideology (like trying to run a war at Market or going on a Fundy worm crusade).

And now I'm playing the Cult for another game. Curse you, Balmung!

If you use the worm-loving factions, you can make up for the shortage in military power and energy revenue with worms and worm-harvesting.

You can also catch up on tech by using worms to farm pods for Alien Artifacts.

Maybe that's why this game gets to me so much. Not just a Sci-Fi Civ game but extremely pro-Green (actually pro-Pink). Get all the Centauri tech, and fungus squares are the most profitable plus they act like roads.

I never run Democracy because I need all the Support I can get for my vast army of Formers and -2 Support is completely unacceptable. However, with the Believers' bonus, I can run Power and use the Living Refinery to get to max Support, even with Democracy. This lets me run more powerful units (two directly useful special abilities) and lots of them, instead of wasting an ability on Clean Reactor.

-2 Support is...one mineral per base, plus the loss of the opening 10. Screw that, I can take it.

Of course, now's the perfect time to shill Domai again. Who needs support bonii when you've got Industry?

You forgot one: Only support one unit for free. That's not nearly enough for my terraforming projects. I like to have a defender and a Former (two after ~2350) for each base, and since I want both early on in the base's growth, I also don't want to be draining the relatively low initial minerals growth of the base. I'd much rather make my way to +3 Support for free units up to base population than throw away support for growth (food is easy to get and the Cloning Vats makes Growth meaningless) and a handful of efficiency that I can get from running Green, anyway.

And as Domai, I take both.

edited 27th Apr '14 10:20:49 PM by Balmung

That's what I meant. -1 mineral per base compared to support 0.

And I normally don't support formers off of fresh-built colonies (and in conquests, I have more important things to worry about than terraforming). I send a former to get cracking first and a colony pod second, and the former's based out of an established base that's forested up and probably already has a borehole. And for the early-to-midgame, with most factions I prefer Market to Green. As Morgan said, future generations can worry about the eco-damage

You're right about Cloning Vats reducing the relevance of Dem, but before then, Growth is immensely relevant. And of course, Dem+Planned+Creche allows for a boom well before said vats (though as you may guess, Planned is usually not the strongest SE choice around for longterm use).

edited 27th Apr '14 10:42:19 PM by Ramidel

It's -2 minerals for the Believers, -3 compared to Police State, and -(base population - 1) compared to anyone with at least 3 Support.

I regularly support them off of new colonies because the established ones are busy spending loads of minerals on big projects and already support as many formers as they can for free and my expansion is usually fast enough that the existing formers are already quite busy. And my order is colony pod, then former. If you build the colony pod while your population is still 1, the unit pulls the colonists out of thin air, so the population cost of the colony pod becomes zero. This also brings up part of why I like support so much: those upkeep free units are much more helpful to a new base (with little resource income) than an old base (with a great deal of resource exploitation).

With conquests, they build their formers as soon as the coast is clear, assuming I don't just torch the base for being horribly located.

As for the +6 growth population boom? I've never done that, in part because my two most played factions (Cyborgs and Pirates) are incapable of doing that, but also because that requires running not one, but two social engineerings that I normally avoid. Planned and Police State do not mesh well if you aren't Yang. I can see the appeal of Free Market, but the -3 Planet and -5 Police is quite unpleasant.

edited 27th Apr '14 11:52:38 PM by Balmung

Ah. I play a scattershot of factions, but Morgan, Lal, Zak and Domai are my faves (I like Pirates, but they're just too broken for more than occasional use; I actually think they're stronger than the alien factions). Morgan can't do an easy popboom (for damn good reason), but Zak can, and it comes almost effortlessly to Domai and especially Lal (who loves big bases and cannot lie).

I'm usually running Dem because I can soak the modestly lower support (though I don't think I'm quite as crazy with the formers as you are, and not as aggressive in general). Unless I'm Domai, though, Planned is something I switch to when it's time to boom and not before.

As for Market, I run it when I can. When I'm facing a wormy enemy, when I need a big air force, or Planet has decided to make an example of me, I switch away from it.

edited 28th Apr '14 9:35:16 AM by Ramidel

Doesn't pop booming as Zakharov lead to huge drone problems?

I swear, I'm not actually that aggressive, at least when it comes to declaring wars. I don't start wars, I just finish them.

For example, in my current game, the order was as follows:

1. Caretakers (#1 on faction dominance) keep extorting me (#2) for credits, presumably to fund their other wars. I get sick of this and say "no" and H'Minee issues a DOW. The Caretakers get wiped out in chemical warfare and Cybernetic technological advances.
2. Marr declares war, later peaces out with no concessions to him after I take one base.
3. Miriam gets mad and DOWs, I never fight her because she's a million miles away and Svengard and Yang wreck her.
4. Yang DOWs me for... some reason (seriously, I have no idea why he hated me, when he liked my Social Engineering and we had no borders), I peace out after no actual conflict.
5. About 50 years of peace.
6. Marr DOWs again, gets wiped out.
7. Yang DOWs again, gets wiped out by me and Svengard.
8. Roze DOWs, is getting conquered right now.

Note that I didn't start any of these wars, that was all the AI declaring war on me.

But yeah, I make very heavy use of Formers because a forest or borehole now is worth more than one in six turns, and a base that is well cleared of fungus is safer, as is one with decent sensor coverage. Also, I'm kind of OCD when it comes to clearing fungus and easing travel between bases. And then when the fungal bloom comes with The Voice of Planet, I just wipe all the new fungus in one or two turns because of my giant network of roads and magtubes, and huge Former Corps.

edited 28th Apr '14 7:01:27 PM by Balmung

...no?

Zak's drone problems are usually pretty manageable in my experience, though you're right that sometimes, pre-Orbital Spaceflight, they limit the size of the boom because I have to move some nutrient producers to Empath jobs. (Post-OS...you gotta be kidding me if you think a specialist economy is hard to run with the Cloudbase Academy.)

Zak doesn't get Golden Ages as often as other powers, but it's fairly easy to keep riots under control.

And maybe it's just my luck that I usually find myself alone on my starting landmass, so I have the luxury of being able to sit back and wait for them to find me, let alone attack me. I got sensors, I got thick walls of infantry in my base, and I got impact rovers to take out the guys who land. (Assuming they land at all. Impact foils are pretty good against transports early on.) I don't have to attack before I'm good and ready, and then it's X-Copter Apocalypse Now.

I usually start alone, too, but I normally play on 70-90% water and I made a 30-50% water Planet for kicks and 90% of the land is on one supercontinent (in part due to rings of land on poles). It was 85% until I accidentally triggered an earthquake that merged the ubercontinent with Yang's peninsula.

edited 28th Apr '14 8:14:32 PM by Balmung

I personally think CEO Morgan or The Scientologist guy is better for beginners, like other strategy games, Money and Science are utterly amazing for getting ahead in the game.