Advice, please

[D4everman]

Its all my fault if I lose the game I'm playing now...because I started it halfheartedly, and din't really put too much thought in any of my moves..but I'd like some advice from some of you experts out there. Let me bring you up to speed on the game thus far....

A huge planet map, I'm not exactly sure where I am...I normally play random maps so I thought I'd change it around. I'm the UoP. I begin spreading out on my landmass, building the HGP and the WP at the first opportunity. Then I come across the Unity wreckage. Too late to be of use since Miriam has been there already. Ok, its still relatively early in the game, so I know my expansion efforts on this side of the continent will have to go a bit faster as to deny her room to build. I also know that even though we signed a treaty and my SE settings haven't changed from the default that she's going to get nasty really soon.

My efforts to head her off fail initially. Miriam builds two new bases that give her access to unexplored terrority to my east. I don't know how many bases she has to my west, but she's effciently flanked me. Fine, methinks...soon I'll have better tech and I'll just take her damned bases. I concentrate on infrastructure in my core bases and terraforming, while building Laser Squads in the rest and upgrading the scouts as I can afford it. Foolishly I didn't choose some conquer techs as they came up, because I wanted to work on infrastructure. I was sure with the UoP's research capabilities I'd be able to out do Miriam quickly in tech. Then she finally does it. She declares vendetta when I won't give her Flex. (she does get it eventually since I did see a Believer skimship before I quit for the day) I take out her furthest base with a Laser Squad, since she only has the Unity chopper in it. It was size one so it vanished. I go after the other base she built to cut me off. (Interestingly Miriam used formers to try and block my path and slow me down, but I managed to take the base easily. Problem is, my base closest to her border is still size one and building a former there now would be useless. Miriam is sending swarms of recon rovers at it. I'm talking at least 6 a turn. I had to pull units from other bases to hold that one. At that time there was only one other Believer base I could see, "The Glory of God". Betting that it was lightly defended I decided to put the smack down on it. My intent was to force Miriam into a surrender early on. Her troops had 3-Res armor and were hard to beat...I did my best to engage her in every encounter to deny her the Believer attack bonus. Meanwhile some of my bases are going into drone riots....damn! I'm building the VW but its taking a ridiculous amount of time. Finally though the Empath guild gets built. Yang beats me to the Command Nexus, the bastard. I also discover High energy chem. I begin upgrading my troops and choose Ninlinear Mathematics next...I also build a few recon rovers and try to sweep into the dark unknown believer territory. I only manage to uncover one base and its fairly close, right next to a monolith. Miriam swarms my rovers with hers and almost destroys all of them. CRAP! I quickly design "Plasma Defensive" rovers, hoping the improved armor will help. Its then that I begin contacting the other factions...man, this went from bad to sucks...

Cha-Treaty at first, lasted about four turns and then he declares vendetta. Bombarded a coastal city with a skimship and left. Don't know where he's at.
Domai- Wanted me to pact with him against Yang. Nope. Too busy right now, besides I don't know where Yang is. For all I knew Yang could be right beyond my eastern border! I did trade cyberethics with him for his map...a stupid move...I don't what me do it. I guess i was hoping it would reveal Miriams layout.
Roze- We sign a treaty.
Yang-instantly declares vendetta. Well, at least I see now he's near Domai, a far piece away.
I've forgotten who the last faction was, but I know we're in a treaty right now.

I run against Cha for governor and win. I'm going to squish that little jerk later. Meanwhile Miriam is making mincemeat out of anything I send her way. I've got to get rid of her. Any advice?

The VW is still being built. I'll have to change my SE settings...i simply overlooked the opportunity to do so in the past hoping for an easy quick victory over Miriam. I know I screwed up in trading Cyberethics with Domai.He'll undoubtably go for the CDF soon and most likely beat me to it.

[zsozso]

My advice would be to build up a defense line at your border with Miriam: put forest at the edge with no road from her side just yours (slows down her rovers a lot), put a crawler on the forest to notice the attacker - you can even add some armor to it (while sitting there as an early defense unit, it can also collect some minerals from the forest). Place a sensor next to it (towards yourself) and put an attack unit on it (e.g. rover with best weapon you have, no armor). This will counter-attack the believer unit when it takes the crawler. Back it up with a spare crawler being built always to replace the lost one.

This way, you can hold her up for a while easier, your attack rover is out of her reach, so the crawler takes the hit, but you hit back with the rover.

Also use some zone-of-control prevention to bypass you, i.e. place crawlers in every other square on a north-south line.

When you have a considerably stronger weapon then her, then you can go to kill her, but reasearch first some good weapons (fusion reactor would be good too).

Hope it helps,
Zsozso

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

D4,

A good bit of news being named guv'nur. Immediately do a F4 city status look and hit on Miriam's Icon to see what she's building and what she is garrisoning. Also gives you names and number of bases. All necessary info. Repeat with all other factions. Repeat with respect to techs etc.

What is your SE choice at this time? How many probes do you have at the ready?

You've got HIC are you in position for a run toward missile tech i.e. do you have Demo allowing Gene Splice allowing Synth Fuels. This should probably be you next beeline as your next tech will then undoubtedly be DAP. As long as Yang has vendetta'd you should check out his tech status and if he has anything that aids your path to either synth fossil fuels or DAP probe the beejesus out of him. Similarly check out the tech status of the other factions and either decide to probe or trade with the other factions, Angels may be a good choice for this.

Depending on how hairy it gets you may need to upgrade your impact speeders to X configuration. Hopefully you get a sun spot event. I would consider this a last resort as once you've gone down that path your ability to reason with Miriam is non existant and your future relationships with other factions is adversely effected (assuming no sun spot).

Og

[Sindai]

The problem was that you didn't get impact weapons soon enough. I know it isn't enough help now, but any time I start next to an agressive faction I'll go for Impact weaponry even before crawlers.