What are the most useful strategies you have picked up here?

[jacobsev]

Can someone out there explain this eco-trick to me?????
Jacob Sev

[Method]

explained in detail here and here

[CEO Aaron]

I did find the eco-damage forumula enlightening, but more and more I've been building trance rovers and choppers and deliberately pissing planet off, just to harvest pearls or get free units.

[Straybow]

Yeah, I usually have a few empath noodles and cruisers (with the best weapon that doesn't bump up the cost) for pearl harvesting. It can be fun to run green with rampant natives. Sometimes my newer frontier bases get bogged down supporting captured units.

[fluffy]

Originally posted by Straybow
Sometimes my newer frontier bases get bogged down supporting captured units.

The trick is to send your units far enough away that the captured units aren't assigned to the closest base - from memory I think this is about 10-15 squares.

It may even be worth sending some formers with them to deliberately plant fungus to 'farm' the native life. An isolated island with no other factions is ideal.

[Straybow]

It doesn't matter how far away from your base, only whether a base from another faction is closer. Try a 3 faction huge map.

[Flubber]

Bumped since there seem to be a number of new players and this thread touches on a number of non-obvious strategies

[Frankychan]

wow, this is old skool.

another one-Energy Park. Didn't even think that this was a possibility.

For those new players.

An energy park is raising a large bit of land up to the max and placing solar collectors and Echelon mirrors on the tiles, then use crawlers to collect the goodies. I was surprised at how good this works.

[Jac de Molay]

The energy park , I built the granddaddy of them all using the hive after building the Living refinery, and supporting as many units free as city size.

I must've had the entire top quarter of the map bumped up to 3000-3500m with collectors and ech mirrors.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Frankychan
wow, this is old skool.

another one-Energy Park. Didn't even think that this was a possibility.

For those new players.

An energy park is raising a large bit of land up to the max and placing solar collectors and Echelon mirrors on the tiles, then use crawlers to collect the goodies. I was surprised at how good this works.

so far ive used crawlers either within city radius, or for the natural resources found outside, rather than improving areas outside of city just for crawlers. That sounds very powerful - Im saving it for when i get in trouble on higher levels.

[Adalbertus]

I've started playing SMAC a bit late (2001) and so most of the discussions were already over, I just learned from them.

The single most important strategy I learned was Ned's(?) 2-on-diagonal base spacing. It made me roughly 50% more effective ...

Overall, I've got to hail

Vel's Strategy Guide
the source of all wisdom on EarthPlanet

Turn advantage is the most important concept, and everything else boils down to it.

Other things I prefer to do now and I learned here:
- Nearly all specialist base
- excessive use of shells (mostly for the +1 in morale!)
- Yeah, and ecodamage is good

[Frankychan]

L.O.M. You should move the crawlers outside of your base radius. Your workers will eventually get to that tile. With the crawler, if you have any "goody-tiles" untouched in your territory, you can have the crawler come up and scoop it into your base's resouces.

[Adalbertus]

Frankychan,
You're a nearly exclusive Hive player, am I right? Then you're right with your crawler spacing. You'll play with a high police rating and have lots of police, ok.
If you have normal or negative police rating, it's different. You'll have to invest loads of resources in appeasing drones, when you have a big empire. Or you go specialist. When you go specialist, you'll have enough unused tiles in the base radius. And if your base is far away from your HQ, all normal or crawled energy is lost to inefficiency. Not so specialist research and commerce. So you'll want to crawl nutrients to get a specialist more or two.

[Frankychan]

Originally posted by Adalbertus
Frankychan,
You're a nearly exclusive Hive player, am I right? Then you're right with your crawler spacing. You'll play with a high police rating and have lots of police, ok.
If you have normal or negative police rating, it's different. You'll have to invest loads of resources in appeasing drones, when you have a big empire. Or you go specialist. When you go specialist, you'll have enough unused tiles in the base radius. And if your base is far away from your HQ, all normal or crawled energy is lost to inefficiency. Not so specialist research and commerce. So you'll want to crawl nutrients to get a specialist more or two.

You got that right. I'm a Hive player. Ahhhh, I didn't know about that. That kind of sucks that you don't get a growth bonus. I usually fill out my base tiles around the middle of the game.

I figure you just build up your empire, get enough votes, then repeal the U.N. Charter. I usually do this and just nerve staple to my hearts content for those bases that I can't send my police to.

Wow, maybe I should try and experience the other factions. I don't think I've ever played the Peacekeepers yet, so I'll try them out.


But once you go Hive, you never go back.

[Flubber]

Ah frankychan

The beauty of this game is in the unique attributes of the different factions. I have been totally immersed at different times in about 7 of the 14 factions . What works for the Hive will be mediocre for the university and impossible for the Morganites. Finding the nuances is what keeps me so involved in this game