Various tips

[Fazdaar]

You know Mead, if you wanted to play another game to test this, you could try a combination of the standard roads-everywhere approach and a no-road approach. In the early years, when quick expansion is most critical, you could build roads normally to expand more quickly. Then, after you'r past the critical expansion stage, you could expand outward, away from your road network without building any more roads. In this way you benefit from some quickened expansion, but by the time attackers reach you to try and conquer you your roads are all in the center of your empire, while the outlying bases are defended by a lack of roads.

[Urban Legend]

Just play Civ 3, you can build all the roads and railways you want but the enemy can't use them.

A habit I have is to build a road first even if there are no other formers if I am planting forest as roads cost less then. Unless I really need that forest.

[Mr. Harley]

Actually, build the road on any flat terrain square first, the road is easier to build. For rolling terrain it's moot which you do first, so I typically plant the forest first for the resources and the fact it immediately gets a chance to spread. Then again, I seldom plant forests on rolling terrain anymore.

[Urban Legend]

I didn't notice rolling costs more than flat.

But I have only won the game twice. I didn't get much chance to learn anything as the AS is too pathetic. On talent, the best they can do is have plasma defenders against my maxed pod drop infantry, they don't even have AAA.

I'm going up the difficulty level one by one. The game balance is weird, I'm getting a new tech every turn with the believers and have stop building energy infrastucture. Now I play with tech stag. Its like drunk or something, it'll be more fun if the AS doesn't rely on a bonus to be a challenge.

[Mr. Harley]

Urban Legend, you're discovering the perennial gripe that SMAC/X players have: the AI stinks. That's why many people go to PBEM. Maybe they'll open source it like Civ2 and we'll get to rewrite the blasted thing.

[Jamski]

Most people only play on Trancend once they have rules mastered, and a few tricks learnt. Even the the AI only challenges through quantity, not quality.

-Jam

[Pandemoniak]

Build roads only if you go for industrious terraforming : ie farm/solar/road or mine/road.
If you go for a natural terraforming (planting forests then fungus all around the place), then just connect your bases and some tactical rocky/mines rocky/bunker tiles.

As for the tech advantage, not necessarly. ZAk with -4 in probe is a mine of knowlege that can spare the Hive/Believers/Drones (or Angels, for different reasons) any effort of building research facilities. You can them mine Zak, spend all energy on credits, rushbuild units and finance large probe/SP campaigns.

For Thimotheus, have u ever tried a One City Challenge ? It can be very difficult with Zak, and its really challenging anyways.

[CEO Aaron]

If you ask me, the no-road strategy never makes sense. The lack of roads will inhibit your development, and make it much harder to reinforce against a coming invasion. Worse still, if you're not building roads to make an invader's life difficult, you're pretty much assuming you'll be invaded and be unable to trounce his army. A much better strategy is to be the guy invading HIM.

[Minute Mirage]

Originally posted by Pandemoniak
Build roads only if you go for industrious terraforming : ie farm/solar/road or mine/road.
If you go for a natural terraforming (planting forests then fungus all around the place), then just connect your bases and some tactical rocky/mines rocky/bunker tiles.

I've found that it's useful to build roads even when I'm planting forests in the early game. The formers work in pairs so that one goes first and builds the road, and then both of them plant the forest. This way only the other former loses a turn when moving into position. However, the real advantage comes later when I can get my crawlers a lot faster on those forests, and I can get them fast back into my bases so that I can cash them into SPs.

The advantage is even bigger when I re-terraform the tiles later. My industrious terraforming consists of condensor/farms (+soil enricher later) and boreholes. At this point I terraform with groups of at least four formers, and it's very useful to get the formers immediately into place. Of course, the crawlers can once again relocate fast from the forests to the newly built condensor/farms.

Originally posted by Pandemoniak
As for the tech advantage, not necessarly. ZAk with -4 in probe is a mine of knowlege that can spare the Hive/Believers/Drones (or Angels, for different reasons) any effort of building research facilities. You can them mine Zak, spend all energy on credits, rushbuild units and finance large probe/SP campaigns.

I assume you're talking about single player here? Even if you can probe all the techs from a human player, you're very likely to find that he has already built all the SPs. And I very much doubt that any human player will allow you to consistently steal all their techs.

[Mead]

Originally posted by CEO Aaron
If you ask me, the no-road strategy never makes sense. The lack of roads will inhibit your development, and make it much harder to reinforce against a coming invasion. Worse still, if you're not building roads to make an invader's life difficult, you're pretty much assuming you'll be invaded and be unable to trounce his army. A much better strategy is to be the guy invading HIM.

I agree that roads are essential for development.

However, the lack of roads is a definite tactical defensive plus. With roads your bases might be only two or three turns from you enemy's empire whereas without the roads they might be six to nine turns away. The more turns away from your empire the longer it takes for their forces to get and mass at your doorstep.

If you are invading your opponent you will be using their road network much more than yours.

Because I am a builder/sprawler I will make a number of roads, but recognize that these roads make it much easier for an opponent to use them against me.

Although I have not recently had the AI launch an effective invasion against me, I remember the AI using my own roads to more quickly attack me in the past.

I guess a good approach would be to build and use a well developed road network but be ready to scorched-earth destroy them if you are threatened by an invasion you need more time to deal with (or when you get that tingling at the back of you neck that a current 'friend' will soon turn on you).

Having roads is good. Willingness to destroy them, when necessary, is better.

I guess a good internal road network is good. I would also say that you should ensure that you do not build a road (and tear up any road in your territory) connecting to a neighboring faction until it is either a submissive or you are ready and willing to invade it.

For the builders out there - I am currently finishing a Citizen, yes Citizen, level game to see what SMAX does (Is it me or are the new movies longer in SMAX - cloudbase OK but longer than the SMAC ones?). I have made a road/mag tube network through much of my homeland. Yes, it is fun to watch 8-15 formers travel on the tubes/roads and make farm, condensor, and soil enricher in one turn. No, that couldn't be done if I did not have the road/mag tube network in place. Roads/tubes really enhance the teraforming.


Mead

[Flubber]

mead

I think we are thinking more alike with respect to roads now but I NEVER see my roads as a tactical disadvantage. Worrying about the other guys invasion is defeatist thinking and you should build every road you need to effectively expand and terraform your empire.

Personally I don't usually go building roads far into the hinterland. If I build a road, I expect to control it and use it. If someone started using my road, I would cut it in strategic places to set up ambushes.

A typical ambush might be my units sitting on a roaded sensor with the road behind connecting them to my empire and the road extending one tile toward the enemy ideally over a flat or rolling tile and then facing an area of flat/rolling tiles where the road has been cut. Trust me, the AI will send unit after unit up the road and into the kill zone. The combination of poor defensive terrain and possible artillery barrages means their units are dead meat.

One caution-- a smart human will bring a couple of rover formers and instantly build a road to bridge these kill zones ( but a smart human can do this even if you NEVER built a road). So while a static ambush seem to work almost indefinitely against the AI, against a human you would have to keep changing things up or you might get the tables turned on you. Remember though that if they are coming into your territory, the sensor advantages are yours and the terrain should be better known to you. They are the ones trying to advance and assuming equal chassis and morale, they ALWAYS have to come into range of your weapons first. My defensive strategy has always been that you get them to come to where you can kill them.


* These comments are all designed for the pre-airpower era. Airpower changes everything.

[Flubber]

The best ambush site I ever had was on a front against the Hive in an SP game. I had a ridge of 3-or 4 mines on rocky squares all in a little line with two separate one tile roads north into a plain with mainly rolling squares in an area where the lands narrowed and were only about 5 tiles wide. The Hives empire was north where the land widened again.

The terrain was a dream -- it funnelled their units into my waiting meat grinder and even better, I had a monolith ONLY ONE TILE south of the ridge. I can't remember a better terrain setup. I don't recall exactly where I placed my sensors but it was easy to see them coming. The HIve units kept coming and coming and always ended up adjacent to my ridge or a tile further north . . . so my units either fired from where they were or swept down the road into the plain to fire once and then retreat back onto the ridge or even to the monolith to regroup. I even used my probes to steal a rover or two .

That game was fun and I confess I put off using planes for a long while to see how long the HIve would send units into a futile gesture. The answer was they didn't ever stop until they got planes .

[johndmuller]

There is one very significant drawback to roads - They Look Ugly - IMhO, there is nothing more hideous than a fully roaded landscape. And . . . As Everybody Knows . . . the faction with the Prettiest Landscape Always Wins!

For those of you who wish to enjoy the transportation advantages of roads, but do not wish to pollute their landscape with those monstrous (I think they would be about 250 miles wide) putrid brown swaths, may I suggest - - Rivers - - they provide the same movement advantage as roads, but with much less visual affront (they are still monstrously large hovever, maybe scaling up to as much as 500 miles wide in the real world). One usually starts out with some preexisting rivers, but even if you have to create them yourself, under some circumstances, they may be even cheaper to build than a comparable length road. Best of all, they add 1 unit of energy to the potential production of each and every tile along their length, a much better deal overall than the extra min you get out of a mine. "And how do you get them to go where you want?", you ask; as if one is not content to 'go with the flow', or one is not satisfied with 'downhill'; well it is very simple: Apply the business end of your stethescope to your monitor (children's model stethescope, with suction cup at business end, works best) while operating your divining rods with both hands - follow the advice given by the divining rods. A nice set of rivers will beautify your landscape, and . . . As Everybody Knows . . . the faction with the Prettiest Landscape Always Wins!

A relatively minor, but also previously unmentioned-in-this-thread, possible negative about roads is their contribution to ecodamage. I say 'possible' negative because in my PBEM experience, I notice that some players act as if they do not share my dislike for receding coastlines and so embrace ecodamage well beyond the 1st pop point, apparently going for the planetpearls, the potential recruits, or the small addition to clean mins. (I must also point out that fungal pops never destroy rivers, but I believe that they sometimes take out roads - even if the pop doesn't take out the road, the ensuing NL probably will take out the road, while they never take out the rivers).

There is one thing that puzzles me about rivers, though:
- Why do Rover based units go further on a river than Infantry based units? -

[CEO Aaron]

Drilling to aquifers can indeed reward you with new energy and travel opportunities, but tends to be incompatible with my high-density borehole pattern.

As for roads generating eco-damage, I was not under the impression that roads had any impact on eco-damage, only mines, boreholes, condensers and eschelon mirrors have measurable ecological impact.

[Petek]

Originally posted by CEO Aaron
As for roads generating eco-damage, I was not under the impression that roads had any impact on eco-damage, only mines, boreholes, condensers and eschelon mirrors have measurable ecological impact.

The Datalinks entries for Ecology (both Basic and Advanced) specifically list roads as a cause of Ecological Damage.