Great Green War Machine

[Ned]

I have argued here before that Wealth + GA is an ideal War Setting b/c it allows you to stay in +2 economy while sending troups forth to fight and/or to pop pods. The push back is that morale suffers horribly with this setting: -2.

However!

The morale penalty does NOT apply to native life forms. One can produce Demon Boils with Wealth + GA. If one also runs GREEN, Demon Boils are very effective on offense and typically can kill any non elite trance unit in a base without a sensor. (Adding

Also, and this is something I had never appreciated before, Sealurks, while slow, are simply the best naval power going due to their ability to kill units on land and in a base - power we have not seen since CIV's battleships.

The strategy takes a Green beeline to

- Nural Grafting for the Nural Amplifier
- Centauri Genetics for the Pholus Mutagen, Brood Pits and Locusts of Chiron
- Centauri Psi for Sealurks, Psi weapon and Dissacociative Wave (which leads to Sentient Resonance and 12r offense and 8r defense).

One can research all these techs before having to research Synthetic Fossil fuels.

Obviously, this strategy is best employed by Diedre, Fungboy or the Caretakers. It cannot be used by Morgan, Dee or the Drones because they cannot run Green.

Have any of you MP player run up against anyone playing this strategy in MP?

Ned

[Cybergod]

Correction: Morgan can STILL run Green (if he's not AI controlled). Also what do you mean Deidre can't run Green?!? It's her predisposition!

Hmm... A nice strategy! Maybe also add the Police State into the mix to have +2 SUPPORT, so you could sent more of your home-bred demons out to fight.

IF, and I say if since you would soon crush everyone, you get far into the tech ends of the game, you could also run Eudaimonic and get away with -4 MORALE!!! Not the mention the benefits of Eudaimonic!

[Avenoct]

-Of course Support and Natives are an interesting mix. On a largely fungified planet the support problem might never ever come up!

[The Commodore]

I always maintain that a green Morgan is the way to go. Demo/Green/Wealth gives a paradigm economy, with +2 econ settings, which makes for a ton of energy. The Mind Worm army will be a useful addtion.

[Blake]

A quite bizzare property of Children Creches is they also boost the morale of native units (in base only), the effect of CC's is dependent on morale rating, basically the lower your SE morale the more a boost the CC gives, normally this boost is cancelled by the low unit morale, so the net effect is hardened morale, or better.

The bizzare thing is that the lower your morale setting, the more native life gets a boost from CC's, so with -3 morale you get something like +4 morale, this means demon boils can attack/defend with +90% (or so) morale . (Makes worms excellent defense against X aircraft, especially if you use locusts rather than mindworms)

In short, the lower your SE morale, the better your worms are in bases with CC's.

This makes Wealth an especially nice choice for players who use native life a lot, a +40% (or so) boost to attack/defense of worms in bases can never be a bad thing. The factions in the best position to exploit this are Gaian, with the -1 morale, and possibly morgan, who can do quite well with a green+wealth approach.

[WhiteElephants]

The problem with such a restricted array of offensive and defensive weaponry is that it's so easily countered with the trance, and or, empath special abilities making the Nueral Amplifier essential to keeping any of your worms alive on defense, not to mention the resonance abilities.

Considering the cost of a trance scout (9 minerals) vs. a mindworm of any life cycle (35-45 minerals, I forget) you can see that your opponent would easily nullify any type of offense that solely depends on psi warfare by quicly stocking up on cheap trance and empath defenders. Throw in resonance armor, and a few sensors, and your looking at needing the Dream Twister AND the Neural Amplifier to mount any kind of sustained offense.

This isn't to say I don't use worms at all as more often than not I play Deidre. I just find the captured worms far more cost effective. The cost of a native army is just too steep especially after fusion power and Bio Engineering with the clean ability. For the price of one worm I can usually afford to build two, maybe three, "regular" units.

[Blake]

Mindworms are actually quite cheap once you have Broodpits, altough I agree that generally mindworm offenses are easily nullified by trance units. The exceptional psi units are the locusts and isles, both of these generally defend with 1:1 odds (rather than 2:3) which makes them quite usfull at defense, but probably only cost effective if you have Neural Amp. Locusts could provide a handy X defense, as when in a base they can defend with something like 2:1 odds against standard aircraft, and with fairly good odds vs empath aircraft. If your enemy is using X-empath aircraft then quite likely they are costing as much as your locusts (with broodpit ofcourse).

The main problem is that the enemy can concentrate air attacks against one base.

I find that locusts are still of limited use on offense, more suited to cover friendly units (they work better than standard aircraft due to high defense, and no need to refuel)

[Ned]

Guys, I think the advantage here is that the natives are "elite." I find that they can kill most average-morale, trance and -tr units in a base so long as you first remove sensors. Removing sensors is easy with Locusts. And as always, the trick is to swarm a base with enough firepower to clean out its defenders and take it in the same turn.

I just finished a SP game employing this strategy. I exclusively used locusts, lurks and worms and easily overwhelmed all defenders.

Regardless, for SP players, it provides an interesting alternative strategy.

Ned

[Ned]

Blake or anyone,

Do you have a list of all the facilities/SPs that enhance native lifecyles? From memory, I believe the follow do

- Bio Labs
- Centauri Preserves
- Temples of Planet
- Xenopathy Dome
- Pholus Mutagen

But what about

- Brood Pits?
- Bioenhancement Center?
- Naval Yard for Ilses and Sealurks?
- Aerospace for Locusts?

Ned

[death_head]

This is an excellent Cha Dawn strategy. He can easily attain +4 planet, and worry about other things while he destroys all...

[WhiteElephants]

I can't prove it, but I could almost swear that the children's creche added a life cycle bonus to worms or added a (+). I won't bet on it though.

[Cybergod]

Ned, I am dead certain that Bioenh. Centres give your worms extra morale (since I micromanage my bases and watch effects), well at least in SMAC. As I remember when I had SMAX, Brood pits give all your native units +1 lifecycle bonus but Naval yards and Aero. don't.

[death_head]

I haven't built Brood Pits in forever, so could somebody remind me if they give you a police bonus or not?

[Ned]

death_head, Brood Pits give +2 police, +1 lifecyle, and -25% cost to native units. Plus they cancel negative morale effects on natives.

[Horus]

I bump this thread as the dicussion were kindled in another thread.