Long-term Plan of Action

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by smacksim
Come on Gaians. This is the best thread of all, and a chance to plan for more great adventures such as our SP building, which seems to be working out rather nicely.

Probes vs. Do-it-Yourself research

Flexibility vs. SocPsych to research next

Base sites and CP building

How to get around Yang and contact others....

It seems we can get through the landbridge - the landbridege is made from archipelago square (that really tiny connection through which ships can pass).

[smacksim]

Which landbridge?

[binTravkin]

Which landbridge?

Yeah, provide sattelite data with pointer on it, please!

[Illuminatus]

I have no safe place to upload it, but watch this post in five minutes.
The landbridge with Hive.

[binTravkin]

You should say at te very start!
You can delete the picture, there's no need of it

About other issues:

1. we should rate probes higher-it's our chance to be up to date with fresh techs!

2.Doc Mob., Flex we will get from Angels (if they refuse, we probe em as our treaty is of no use then), Soc Psy, Eth Calc and so on

3.That should be disussed a bit more..
After we finish our SP, I think we should go for more bases (CP build at MAX) as if our project is HGP, we can avoid b-drones.
After we reach second b-drone limit, we can stop producing CPs and install secondary anti-bdrone measure (say police units via nonlethal methods or even without them, Longevity vaccine, Democracy SE, Rec comms or somesuch..)

4. Getting around Yang - it should be impossible to do by land, so let's use our foil!

[Hydro]

A few ideas:

Probe are wonderfully flexible. Consider putting one on the foil, then sending it to explore. While on the way it can pop pods along a shoreline, and if there is a bad result then just hop back on the foil. The probe+foil combo can also infiltrate/steal tech from another empire, getting round inconvenient terrain and coming at them from an unlikely location. The only limiting factor is the slow pace of a foil.

So, I recommend we invest in at least one probe for our foil, to be completed when the foil comes home.

Worms also make good coast pod poppers, but if we are shy of worms then that may not be a good deal.

Hydro

[Illuminatus]

There is also probe on foil, and it should infiltrate Hive soon. We will also get flex in near future so we will be able to produce a gunship - which would be useful to use in combo with foil and pop sea pods.

[Hydro]

Very good!!

[livid imp]

Here is a hypothesis for you PBEM/ACDG vets to ponder:

Sparta goes to war and of course rolls over Yang like a casino drunk. Then they have the rather desirable monsoon jungle. This of course would put us (the other three teams) all at a defensive stance, given the land bridges that connect the MJ to all the other land masses. We could all be frozen preparing for a potential attack, while the Spartans grow in the MJ. Eventually they could grow large enough to win a election (with a bribe or two) and have universal infiltration.

Of course this is highly speculative, and I have no evidence of such. But with this potential strategy hanging over our heads, I thought I'd mention a potential counter play.

After probing Yang for all he is worth, we switch to a Green/Police state (with occasional switches for pop booms of course), and then make peace with Yang. The goal is to Pact with Yang. Once pacted with Yang we would have carte blanche to go after anyone that attacks him. Therefore preventing anyone from holding the center. Yet being in a Pact, we could use his bases as forward bases for attacking.

Of course we could just takeout Yang ourselves, but then we would be seen as the aggressive power and the others might make an alliance against us.

[Chaos Theory]

We already have carte blanche to attack an aggressive Sparta - they lied, negotiated in bad faith, and threaten us.

Police State gives poor benefits to the Gaians, due to their police penalty.

Yang will likely be very hard to pact with, even if we run Police State.

Rather than freeze if Sparta takes over the Monsoon Jungle, we can harass them. Their military isn't that much better than ours that they can ignore skirmishers.

[livid imp]

True they have set them selves up for war (I am sure not unintentionally), but nothing is more clear cut than an ally (or yourself) attacked.

But that is why I wanted to bounce it off you all. Figured you would have more practical insight into playing the game.

[Hydro]

I agree with CT. Yang is a tough nut to crack in the earlier part of the game since is PD are murder on impact, and he can survive against missile (if he has plasma).

On the flip side, even if we do run PS it is highly unlikely Yang will pact with us. We may be better off steeling tech, and framing Sparta.

We could try to take out Yang ourselves. This is not much fun w/o missile, but is do-able if we have a few good MWs for a psi first strike and a well coordinated follow up to consolidate our holdings. If we're lucky the PD will stay. But, this is very expensive for us, and we may be better off with a passive-agressive stance. After all, I'd rather build a base or a crawler than an impact rover that's going to get its brains dashed out against Yangs PD.

In my opinion, a passive-aggressive approach fits the Gaians better, both from a practical and philiosphical point of view. In the meantime, we explore and grab goodies - a classic hybrid approach.

In that context, if the Spartans go for a rover rush/aggressive approach and fail they are probably dead meat since, by then, the builders and hybrids will have passed them by.

Hydro

[binTravkin]

I've a proposal - as soon as we pick up our lone MW (that on the peninsula in Hive's territory, we make him pop pods - I see 3 unpopped pods in our territory and they could gives us some benefits.

[Chaos Theory]

It's certainly worthwhile to pop our pods, and our expeditionary mindworm is not serving an important purpose anymore.

[Illuminatus]

I certainly see longterm plans are important for us. What about a) possible SPs to grab b) using only naval base to produce as many foils/probe foils/transports it can support to pop pods/capture IoDs/infiltrate/probe enemy c) future research goals d) longterm strategy - try to form a block with Angels/try to ally with Morgan against Sparta/become vassal state to Sparta in order to help them defeat Morgan e) send expedition to discover Lal f) when to pop-boom