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This is the transcript of another thread from the now deleted Sparta Barracks:
Originally posted by Maniac:
Planet : A Survivalist Guide
Some weeks ago I read a strategy for the Cult on CGN. Since the Spartans have much in common with the Cult (bad industry, good police and easy pod popping) I thought we could try out this strategy as well for the Spartans:
<http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=4058>
Follow the above link to read the entire thread and comments from others.
***
Disclaimer: I'm not as good as you guys I've never played multiplayer and my skill level at economic management is rather pitiable. I am however a longtime lurker here and at Apolyton and am marginally decent at single player
Ever since I got the Planetary Pack a few years ago, the Planet Cult has been by far my favorite faction. I loved the ability to quickly mass a green army and go maruading. Slight problem: Objectively, they aren't very good. In fact, they seem to be the consensus weakest faction in the game, and rightly so.
Still, I tried many different times to come up with an opening strategy to overcome the significant difficulties in getting these guys to parity with the other factions. Fast momentum, quick to centauri empathy, quick naval, going for the progenitor resonance weapons fast - none of it worked satisfactorily.
Basically, I was always left, sometimes after conquering one or two other factions, with weak industry and a crippling, pathetic tech rate. I couldn't get crawlers fast enough, couldn't get restrictions off fast enough and was slower to all the important mid game SP's. Eventually, I gave up and switched to Morgan and the Drones, with much better success. Still, I wanted a way to make the Cult work.
About a week ago I came up with an idea that seems to give them an equal footing to most other factions 50 years in. Basically, an extremely rapid pop boom. The cult simply can not get to Ind Auto as quickly as other factions, or use it as effectively once they do (no wealth). They can't use FM to boost their tech rate, since it only gives them +1, missing out on the critical +1 energy a square. What they can do is pop boom. In classical SMAX builder strategy, it's Ind Auto first, then restrictions off and a pop boom. People don't pop boom first because their aren't enough nutrients, it requires 4 techs (only one fewer than Ind Auto), and drone control tends to be difficult.
The cult, for all their weaknesses, is uniquely well suited to dealing with these problems however. Firstly, as was previously mentioned, Ind Auto is both harder to get to and less rewarding once you are there, so the incentive for the counter strategy is not as great. Second, though it's often dismissed as a rather useless bonus, the worm police can be very handy for early drone control, almost as much as the PK and Drone bonuses. Third, no one pops pods as effectively as the Planet Cult. Pods give worms, energy credits, and most critically AA's. Fourth, their starting tech leans toward the pop boom while not helping the Ind Auto beeline at all. So using the AA's (almost always one, usually two, often three, sometimes four in my experience) and having dedicated a base rather early to starting it (preferably with a mineral bonus, with monoliths a decent second choice) build the WP very early. It's a nice project in any case, but here the critical idea is to quickly get condensor farm squares down, which bypass nutrient restrictions.
As far as tech goes, info nets, plan nets, then eth cal is all that is needed, though biogenetics can also be somewhat handy as a fill in if you aren't allowed to get everything directly. Switch to planned as soon as you hit plan nets. Get creches and rec commons up ASAP, rushing when possible with credits from pods and worms that won't joing your cause. Then boom. With a rec commons and a worm or spore launcher, you can hit pop 5 without drone problems. While booming, continue building condensors and borehole any energy or mineral specials. Use librarians extensively and engineers when there is urgent need of energy credits.
Originally posted by Zeiter:
A pre-IA popboom, eh? Sounds like this has potential.
This brings up a good question concerning general early game strategy. Are we pretty much agreed that if we meet Morgan or Deidre (or even the DataAngles) right on our border, we will be playing a conquest/extortion/bullying role? If we can settle that, then we need to decide:
What will we do if we are all by ourselves, and the others are too far away to conquer/bully in the early game? How are we going to build as Santiago?
Do we want to build vertically, trying this early pop-boom?
Do we want to build and expand horizontally, with many cities?
Generally, how many formers per base?
Drone control: How many garrisons? If we have a pesky drone to quell, do we build a rec commons or build a scout patrol for another police unit? Do we even want to bother with holo theaters until much later?
What should we build first in newly-founded cities? formers? rec tanks? a scout?
What SP's should we concentrate on getting? We'll need HGP and/or PTS for horizontal expansion. Virtual World and/or WP for vertical expansion? Or just forget the builder SP's and go for the Command Nexus?
Tech beelines: IA? or the techs needed for this early popboom?
If we go with this early pop-boom thing...hmmm...with 2 police units and a rec commons, we can get up to size 5 without any drones. I guess you could build hologram theaters to get rid of 2 more drones and get to size 7, but ouch! Those holotheaters are not cheap, production-wise or upkeep wise. Creches take time to build too. We'd need a way to get the necessary nutrients. The WP would be essential. How much is this going to divert us from other things? What are the potential rewards from going with this strategy? I really need to playtest this, since I've never tried anything like this as Santiago before.
"There are things I must see to. Questions, questions that need answering..."
I think the reason that the Spartans are considered one of the most difficult factions to play is not because they are the weakest. Quite to the contrary - the Spartans simply have too many options, too many things that they are good at. They can do it all: popbooming, +2 energy, +4 efficiency, conquest, horizontal expansion, vertical expansion, you name it!
Originally posted by Maniac:
"This brings up a good question concerning general early game strategy. Are we pretty much agreed that if we meet Morgan or Deidre (or even the DataAngles) right on our border, we will be playing a conquest/extortion/bullying role? "
Personally I have two reservations about an early rover rush.
One is that the earlier one starts a military build-up, the more it will damage our other general economic development.
Second is that the earlier we attack, the less useful techs and bases we'd gain from the conquered faction. Perhaps it would be better to let our preys first fatten a bit before we hunt them down.
<--- evil maniacal laughter 
Or even if we go hostile, only steal all their techs but not invade them, so we can later probe rape them again when they've researched a couple of new techs again. 
So IMHO a lot would depend on how the faction we first meet behaves to us. If they're cooperative and willing to trade technology, we'd probably gain more out of peaceful relations with them. Who knows the ever present (but unspoken) threat that we'd go after them if they don't cooperate with us, would make them more willing to give us better trade deals than we'd normally get.
Also there is the thingie that IIRC Vel mentions in the extract Googlie posted: the mere threat that we possibly might attack someone could be more to our advantage than in fact attacking someone. That way all factions would probably spend more than usual on military production, thus hampering their economic development, while we don't have to fear anything or anyone and can continue business as usual.
So perhaps in our roleplay in the general ACDG forum we should let it appear that we have our eyes set on someone, though of course not mention someone specific.
"Drone control: How many garrisons? If we have a pesky drone to quell, do we build a rec commons or build a scout patrol for another police unit? Do we even want to bother with holo theaters until much later?"
Considering that a rec commons costs 4 mineral rows, and a scout patrol only one row, personally I'd opt for relying on police control as long as we can. Especially if we can build a command center somewhere and build veteran units right away. Those could later easy be upgraded to crack troops should we need some.
On the other side, the drawback is that the more we depend on police, the more difficult it will become to switch to free market at a later date.
"What SP's should we concentrate on getting? We'll need HGP and/or PTS for horizontal expansion. Virtual World and/or WP for vertical expansion? Or just forget the builder SP's and go for the Command Nexus?"
As you can probably guess from this thread, personally I'd prefer to have a try at the WP. IMHO, though they're of course still useful, the HGP & PTS are less necessary for the Spartans than for any other faction. After all, if any other faction, after they've crossed their first bureaucracy limit, wants to continue expanding and also wants to have two workers in a base and no doctor, they need to either build an expensive rec commons, or have the HGP or PTS. The Spartans on the other hand can just build an extra cheap scout patrol to make the second worker content. So those two SPs will be much less useful for us as far as I can see.
"Tech beelines: IA? or the techs needed for this early popboom?"
Personally I'd prefer to trade IndAut with someone. If no one is willing to sell, I'd go steal it from whoever is closest to us. That should be easy if we already have researched DocFlex and can send a trannie full of probes to somewhere. After all we're the Spartans: We're not supposed to be nice to everybody the whole time.
"If we go with this early pop-boom thing...hmmm...with 2 police units and a rec commons, we can get up to size 5 without any drones. I guess you could build hologram theaters to get rid of 2 more drones and get to size 7, but ouch! Those holotheaters are not cheap, production-wise or upkeep wise."
I agree we should avoid hologram theatres as long as possible.
Fortunately if we'd still want to continue popbooming beyond size 5, there's always the 'non-lethal methods' special ability for an extra two content workers. If we already have EthCalc, it's only two techs away from us (Doc:Loy & IntInt). And Doc:Loy we could perhaps trade or steal from our likely neighbour the Hive.
Another benefit of the Intellectual Integrity tech is the 'high morale' special ability. With that ability it would be VERY easy to get elite units:
+1 morale level from our +2 Morale SE, +2 from a command center/nexus, +1 from a monolith, and the final +1 from high morale. We wouldn't have to bother anymore with running Fundy, Power, no longer have to rely on battle morale upgrades, or the +1 morale of prototypes.
"We'd need a way to get the necessary nutrients. The WP would be essential."
Yeah, that's indeed the biggest question: would we have enough nutrients? To answer that question, I guess we can only wait until we see the map. If we can get the WP, success is practically assured. If not, it should still be easily possible if we're a bit lucky and get a couple of nutrient bonuses out of pods, or have rainy tiles in our neighbourhood. If we don't even have that, I guess we'd have to look for another strategy.
"What are the potential rewards from going with this strategy?"
I guess you could see it like this: With every pophead we can popboom, we save ourselves 30 minerals we don't have to spend on a crawler.
Originally posted by Zeiter:
Ah, so you're thinking that just the threat of military action should be our biggest tool, and probably not actually the rover rush conquest itself. I think you're definitely right. I guess we don't want to show our cards too early.
So, with all of this probe-raping going on, will anyone want to cooperate with us?
I mean, stealing useful stuff like IA would probably get us a bad rep among the humans. Of course, it would be nice if we could confine ourselves to stealing from the AI. Or will a bad rep even matter? Perhaps we can augment our probe actions with subtle reminders of who's the momentum faction in this game, like you said.
Of course, Sparta is no slouch when it comes to research. Certainly not as good as Morgan, but just as good as say, the Peacekeepers, or even the Gaians.
I pretty much agree with everything you said. We'll play it by ear when we see the terrain and starting position.
Originally posted by Maniac:
Reply to : Zeiter
That's indeed the biggest problem. One that would be even bigger if we actually full-scale invaded someone. 
I guess one solution could be to be hostile and exploitative towards the faction that is most close to us, but be extra friendly towards the factions that are on the other side of Planet and which we can't reach anyway, and make clear that our behaviour towards our immediate neighbours should be seen as completely seperate to our relations with all the other factions.
Originally posted by Zeiter:
could definitely see the Gaians and Morganites teaming up against us, because they'll probably just wanna be left alone and build, and if we start hassling them for tech or start bullying them, I could see them forming an alliance. Now the data angles on the other hand...they might not care if we probe-rape the Gaians and Morganites (they'll probably be doing it too) and they might be wary of letting the builders alone to build and getting too strong, so perhaps we could form an alliance with them, and have a Gaians/Morganites vs. Spartans/DataAngles war or something? This is just wild speculation of course. We'll just have to wait and see. But I do know one thing. If I was Morgan, I'd absolutely hate getting pushed out of FM by a couple of units on the border, and I'd do anything I could to get rid of the agressive and exploitative factions. That goes for the Gaians too, to a lesser extent.
Originally posted by Kassiopeia:
A Gaian-Morganite alliance would be an interesting sight, considering that the two ought to basically hate each other's guts. But then again, so did the national socialists and bolsheviks. The RP'ers in both factions would cry foul but cooler heads would probably prevail, so I do see it as a viable option.
I also agree that the threat of the mighty Spartan machine falling down on the hapless opponent is our greatest asset. That's why the strength of foreign affairs should not be belittled, as it can tremendously help us keep everyone else in check. We could give an air of hardened, honourable and honest warriors (think Klingons from Star Trek) who will seek open and straightforward conflict. If we can keep up that impression, when we let out signs that we have our eyes set on someone, the others will take it for real and keep on their toes.
Originally posted by Maniac:
Planet : A Survivalist Guide
Some weeks ago I read a strategy for the Cult on CGN. Since the Spartans have much in common with the Cult (bad industry, good police and easy pod popping) I thought we could try out this strategy as well for the Spartans:
<http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=4058>
Follow the above link to read the entire thread and comments from others.
***
Disclaimer: I'm not as good as you guys I've never played multiplayer and my skill level at economic management is rather pitiable. I am however a longtime lurker here and at Apolyton and am marginally decent at single player
Ever since I got the Planetary Pack a few years ago, the Planet Cult has been by far my favorite faction. I loved the ability to quickly mass a green army and go maruading. Slight problem: Objectively, they aren't very good. In fact, they seem to be the consensus weakest faction in the game, and rightly so.
Still, I tried many different times to come up with an opening strategy to overcome the significant difficulties in getting these guys to parity with the other factions. Fast momentum, quick to centauri empathy, quick naval, going for the progenitor resonance weapons fast - none of it worked satisfactorily.
Basically, I was always left, sometimes after conquering one or two other factions, with weak industry and a crippling, pathetic tech rate. I couldn't get crawlers fast enough, couldn't get restrictions off fast enough and was slower to all the important mid game SP's. Eventually, I gave up and switched to Morgan and the Drones, with much better success. Still, I wanted a way to make the Cult work.
About a week ago I came up with an idea that seems to give them an equal footing to most other factions 50 years in. Basically, an extremely rapid pop boom. The cult simply can not get to Ind Auto as quickly as other factions, or use it as effectively once they do (no wealth). They can't use FM to boost their tech rate, since it only gives them +1, missing out on the critical +1 energy a square. What they can do is pop boom. In classical SMAX builder strategy, it's Ind Auto first, then restrictions off and a pop boom. People don't pop boom first because their aren't enough nutrients, it requires 4 techs (only one fewer than Ind Auto), and drone control tends to be difficult.
The cult, for all their weaknesses, is uniquely well suited to dealing with these problems however. Firstly, as was previously mentioned, Ind Auto is both harder to get to and less rewarding once you are there, so the incentive for the counter strategy is not as great. Second, though it's often dismissed as a rather useless bonus, the worm police can be very handy for early drone control, almost as much as the PK and Drone bonuses. Third, no one pops pods as effectively as the Planet Cult. Pods give worms, energy credits, and most critically AA's. Fourth, their starting tech leans toward the pop boom while not helping the Ind Auto beeline at all. So using the AA's (almost always one, usually two, often three, sometimes four in my experience) and having dedicated a base rather early to starting it (preferably with a mineral bonus, with monoliths a decent second choice) build the WP very early. It's a nice project in any case, but here the critical idea is to quickly get condensor farm squares down, which bypass nutrient restrictions.
As far as tech goes, info nets, plan nets, then eth cal is all that is needed, though biogenetics can also be somewhat handy as a fill in if you aren't allowed to get everything directly. Switch to planned as soon as you hit plan nets. Get creches and rec commons up ASAP, rushing when possible with credits from pods and worms that won't joing your cause. Then boom. With a rec commons and a worm or spore launcher, you can hit pop 5 without drone problems. While booming, continue building condensors and borehole any energy or mineral specials. Use librarians extensively and engineers when there is urgent need of energy credits.
Originally posted by Zeiter:
A pre-IA popboom, eh? Sounds like this has potential.
This brings up a good question concerning general early game strategy. Are we pretty much agreed that if we meet Morgan or Deidre (or even the DataAngles) right on our border, we will be playing a conquest/extortion/bullying role? If we can settle that, then we need to decide:
What will we do if we are all by ourselves, and the others are too far away to conquer/bully in the early game? How are we going to build as Santiago?
Do we want to build vertically, trying this early pop-boom?
Do we want to build and expand horizontally, with many cities?
Generally, how many formers per base?
Drone control: How many garrisons? If we have a pesky drone to quell, do we build a rec commons or build a scout patrol for another police unit? Do we even want to bother with holo theaters until much later?
What should we build first in newly-founded cities? formers? rec tanks? a scout?
What SP's should we concentrate on getting? We'll need HGP and/or PTS for horizontal expansion. Virtual World and/or WP for vertical expansion? Or just forget the builder SP's and go for the Command Nexus?
Tech beelines: IA? or the techs needed for this early popboom?
If we go with this early pop-boom thing...hmmm...with 2 police units and a rec commons, we can get up to size 5 without any drones. I guess you could build hologram theaters to get rid of 2 more drones and get to size 7, but ouch! Those holotheaters are not cheap, production-wise or upkeep wise. Creches take time to build too. We'd need a way to get the necessary nutrients. The WP would be essential. How much is this going to divert us from other things? What are the potential rewards from going with this strategy? I really need to playtest this, since I've never tried anything like this as Santiago before.
"There are things I must see to. Questions, questions that need answering..."
I think the reason that the Spartans are considered one of the most difficult factions to play is not because they are the weakest. Quite to the contrary - the Spartans simply have too many options, too many things that they are good at. They can do it all: popbooming, +2 energy, +4 efficiency, conquest, horizontal expansion, vertical expansion, you name it!
Originally posted by Maniac:
"This brings up a good question concerning general early game strategy. Are we pretty much agreed that if we meet Morgan or Deidre (or even the DataAngles) right on our border, we will be playing a conquest/extortion/bullying role? "
Personally I have two reservations about an early rover rush.
One is that the earlier one starts a military build-up, the more it will damage our other general economic development.
Second is that the earlier we attack, the less useful techs and bases we'd gain from the conquered faction. Perhaps it would be better to let our preys first fatten a bit before we hunt them down.
<--- evil maniacal laughter Or even if we go hostile, only steal all their techs but not invade them, so we can later probe rape them again when they've researched a couple of new techs again. So IMHO a lot would depend on how the faction we first meet behaves to us. If they're cooperative and willing to trade technology, we'd probably gain more out of peaceful relations with them. Who knows the ever present (but unspoken) threat that we'd go after them if they don't cooperate with us, would make them more willing to give us better trade deals than we'd normally get.
Also there is the thingie that IIRC Vel mentions in the extract Googlie posted: the mere threat that we possibly might attack someone could be more to our advantage than in fact attacking someone. That way all factions would probably spend more than usual on military production, thus hampering their economic development, while we don't have to fear anything or anyone and can continue business as usual.
So perhaps in our roleplay in the general ACDG forum we should let it appear that we have our eyes set on someone, though of course not mention someone specific."Drone control: How many garrisons? If we have a pesky drone to quell, do we build a rec commons or build a scout patrol for another police unit? Do we even want to bother with holo theaters until much later?"
Considering that a rec commons costs 4 mineral rows, and a scout patrol only one row, personally I'd opt for relying on police control as long as we can. Especially if we can build a command center somewhere and build veteran units right away. Those could later easy be upgraded to crack troops should we need some.
On the other side, the drawback is that the more we depend on police, the more difficult it will become to switch to free market at a later date. "What SP's should we concentrate on getting? We'll need HGP and/or PTS for horizontal expansion. Virtual World and/or WP for vertical expansion? Or just forget the builder SP's and go for the Command Nexus?"
As you can probably guess from this thread, personally I'd prefer to have a try at the WP.
IMHO, though they're of course still useful, the HGP & PTS are less necessary for the Spartans than for any other faction. After all, if any other faction, after they've crossed their first bureaucracy limit, wants to continue expanding and also wants to have two workers in a base and no doctor, they need to either build an expensive rec commons, or have the HGP or PTS. The Spartans on the other hand can just build an extra cheap scout patrol to make the second worker content. So those two SPs will be much less useful for us as far as I can see."Tech beelines: IA? or the techs needed for this early popboom?"
Personally I'd prefer to trade IndAut with someone. If no one is willing to sell, I'd go steal it from whoever is closest to us. That should be easy if we already have researched DocFlex and can send a trannie full of probes to somewhere. After all we're the Spartans: We're not supposed to be nice to everybody the whole time.
"If we go with this early pop-boom thing...hmmm...with 2 police units and a rec commons, we can get up to size 5 without any drones. I guess you could build hologram theaters to get rid of 2 more drones and get to size 7, but ouch! Those holotheaters are not cheap, production-wise or upkeep wise."
I agree we should avoid hologram theatres as long as possible.
Fortunately if we'd still want to continue popbooming beyond size 5, there's always the 'non-lethal methods' special ability for an extra two content workers. If we already have EthCalc, it's only two techs away from us (Doc:Loy & IntInt). And Doc:Loy we could perhaps trade or steal from our likely neighbour the Hive.
Another benefit of the Intellectual Integrity tech is the 'high morale' special ability. With that ability it would be VERY easy to get elite units:
+1 morale level from our +2 Morale SE, +2 from a command center/nexus, +1 from a monolith, and the final +1 from high morale. We wouldn't have to bother anymore with running Fundy, Power, no longer have to rely on battle morale upgrades, or the +1 morale of prototypes.
"We'd need a way to get the necessary nutrients. The WP would be essential."
Yeah, that's indeed the biggest question: would we have enough nutrients? To answer that question, I guess we can only wait until we see the map. If we can get the WP, success is practically assured. If not, it should still be easily possible if we're a bit lucky and get a couple of nutrient bonuses out of pods, or have rainy tiles in our neighbourhood. If we don't even have that, I guess we'd have to look for another strategy.
"What are the potential rewards from going with this strategy?"
I guess you could see it like this: With every pophead we can popboom, we save ourselves 30 minerals we don't have to spend on a crawler.
Originally posted by Zeiter:
Ah, so you're thinking that just the threat of military action should be our biggest tool, and probably not actually the rover rush conquest itself. I think you're definitely right. I guess we don't want to show our cards too early.
So, with all of this probe-raping going on, will anyone want to cooperate with us?
I mean, stealing useful stuff like IA would probably get us a bad rep among the humans. Of course, it would be nice if we could confine ourselves to stealing from the AI. Or will a bad rep even matter? Perhaps we can augment our probe actions with subtle reminders of who's the momentum faction in this game, like you said.Of course, Sparta is no slouch when it comes to research. Certainly not as good as Morgan, but just as good as say, the Peacekeepers, or even the Gaians.
I pretty much agree with everything you said. We'll play it by ear when we see the terrain and starting position.
Originally posted by Maniac:
Reply to : Zeiter
So, with all of this probe-raping going on, will anyone want to cooperate with us?
I guess one solution could be to be hostile and exploitative towards the faction that is most close to us, but be extra friendly towards the factions that are on the other side of Planet and which we can't reach anyway, and make clear that our behaviour towards our immediate neighbours should be seen as completely seperate to our relations with all the other factions.
Originally posted by Zeiter:
could definitely see the Gaians and Morganites teaming up against us, because they'll probably just wanna be left alone and build, and if we start hassling them for tech or start bullying them, I could see them forming an alliance. Now the data angles on the other hand...they might not care if we probe-rape the Gaians and Morganites (they'll probably be doing it too) and they might be wary of letting the builders alone to build and getting too strong, so perhaps we could form an alliance with them, and have a Gaians/Morganites vs. Spartans/DataAngles war or something? This is just wild speculation of course. We'll just have to wait and see. But I do know one thing. If I was Morgan, I'd absolutely hate getting pushed out of FM by a couple of units on the border, and I'd do anything I could to get rid of the agressive and exploitative factions. That goes for the Gaians too, to a lesser extent.
Originally posted by Kassiopeia:
A Gaian-Morganite alliance would be an interesting sight, considering that the two ought to basically hate each other's guts. But then again, so did the national socialists and bolsheviks.
The RP'ers in both factions would cry foul but cooler heads would probably prevail, so I do see it as a viable option. I also agree that the threat of the mighty Spartan machine falling down on the hapless opponent is our greatest asset. That's why the strength of foreign affairs should not be belittled, as it can tremendously help us keep everyone else in check. We could give an air of hardened, honourable and honest warriors (think Klingons from Star Trek) who will seek open and straightforward conflict. If we can keep up that impression, when we let out signs that we have our eyes set on someone, the others will take it for real and keep on their toes.
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