Lalande Strategy

[Mr. President]

How do you like to play the science fiction game? I threw myself into it with little more than a cursory glance at the part of the manual that lists the differences between it and the regular game, and as a result, I'm completely lost. Some of the same principles would apply in general, I'm sure (such as what sort of terrain to put cities near, and such), but are there any important Lalande-specific tricks I should know about?

[FlameFlash]

Well, for starters... be the first one to build a shuttle... just try to be the first one to each of the planets with the appropriate carrier... otherwise you start missing events and have to go steal tech from somebody else.

[Gelvan]

When I play the Science Fiction Game, I'll allways play it as a novel. That mean's I read every Civilopedia entry available. When I found a city and there's a new terrain, I read not only how much food etc. it brings, but also, the "history" of this terrain type. There is a big story hidden in the Civilopedia, which - for me - is the biggest part of the fun playing on Lalande.

AND of course all the Civilopedia information supplied with technologies. This gives a good sense for your units and buildings, which is essential, because everything has new functions. If you know what's an E/M-Repeller, then you'll understand better why it has this or that abbility.

Even though I've never been to Nona I like this game. Everytime I play it, I recon something new. It's sad, the AI won't settle much in the other worlds, which means that it is a bit to easy for the human player. And you won't need all the units available.

Another negative point: It seems that you only need some key technologies to succed. If you in lead of Science, you're in lead in military automatically. Surely this is true for the original game also - but on Lalande it's more extreme.

[FlameFlash]

Next time I sit down and play it, I'll have to follow your advice and actually read the Civilopedia entries. That's always been a cool feature I've just overlooked for some reason.

[protean_being]

The one thing that you have to be prepared for is that you cannot have all three improvements that effect happiness. This makes the game more challenging. Gelvan, If you have not reached Nona then I can understand why you think the game is not challenging. The two "Barbarians" that appear after you are able to go to Nona both unlock advances needed to complete the Ship to go to Earth.

[Gelvan]

@Protean
True, I've never fought against them.

But I've read that the AI can't handle this massive barbarian attacks and therefore just dies. And to play against barbarians isn't as funny, as to play against AI.

[protean_being]

Get about 10 griffes together. Then clobber the Adamastor and Urdar. This will get you the Wormhole Genesis and Wormhole Control advances.