Native life forms

[Kirov]

Do you use them?

They have nice advantage of neglecting even the best weapons and armours enemy can have, OTOH, they always cost support and never can have better "reactor". But there are many facilities and SPs boosting your worms, and, using them, you can always switch to green instead of power...

I must say I have never really used those new SMAX units, and have not a clue whether they are useful in combat. Did someone check it?

I'd like to hear your opinions.

BTW, I suspect that native life worms are almost useless in MP, because it's too easy to fight them (Scout patrol with either Empath Song or Hypnotic trance). Am I right?

[Mr. President]

Native life forms don't go too well with my preferred style (Democracy - Free Market). Even with the Gaians, I have little success with them. I prefer to wait for Chaos Guns.

[spartak]

The new lifeforms are quite crap but when you get 290/30 demon bould outside a city in teh endgame yoyu better kill them fasyt because otherwise your city is toast.

[Straybow]

eh? "290/30 demon [boil]" isn't making sense to me…

[ESpark]

Typically, if I'm playing a Pro-Planet faction I'll have some in, but other than that I stick with medium lifeforms - its somethin' to build unit's morale on.

[Clear Skies]

I don't use them exclusively, but they're nice to have - in the early game for fungal exploration, as a nice free source of military power when captured (need a decent planet rating though), and as a good way of combating enemy fleets. Native life seems to work better on sea than on land.

[Main_Brain]

I think he means 29/ 30
Worms make excellent Scouts at the Beginning as they arent attacked by Podpopped Worms.
Worms are your weapon of choice when your Morale is pretty good but your Combat Techs are uhmm not so good
The Reacotr doesnt matter so much as worms seem to kill 33% of strenght in each succesful combat round.
Also the treat Fungus as Roads which is pretty good if oyu missed the XDome :=)

[Mongoose]

As in most things SMAC, combined arms is the paradigm.

-Trance is expensive on units with weapons, Empath song is expensive, period.

-Basic Psi combat is 1:1 at sea, 3:2 on land.

-You can't use nervegas on native life.

-Best defender in the stack (generally) defends.

So, an IoD with escorting foils or cruisers (one each trance and best armor AAA) makes for an invasion that's tough to stop short of the beaches.

Even 3-res armor with the trance ability will generally lose to a decent sized worm if you can attack it in fungus.

Free Marketers, even with empath 6 res weapons, will have a hard time knocking out a native life unit one on one if the Neural Amplifier is in effect.

Locusts (if you have a decent Planet rating and the Dream Twister) will take down almost anything.

[Kirov]

Oh, I see that noone uses MW as a regular army, but rather as support units and for special cases. I recall I wondered some time whether it makes sense to build a decent native army, with Biology Labs instead of Command Centers, etc.

And have you used those new SMAX worms, i.e. Spore Launchers and Sealurks? Are Spore Launchers simple artillery, differing only in using psi in artillery duel? I know that Sealurks can directly attack a base, can they capture it? Can they carry troops?

[spartak]

Spore launchers are quite useful as artillary substitrutes but don't beat the real think. I never find sealurks worth the effort, especially given as a demon boil IoD is just as easy to get.

Overall I don't see native life as worth the ffeort - mind you I play as Zak most of the time and I'm normally far higher up the tech tree than the AI is.

and I actually meant 20/30.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Locusts are one of the few air units that can take a base. Something to bear in mind in the late game conquest.

[Main_Brain]

whoops I meant 20/30 too :=)

[Sarxis]

I think sealurks can attack coastal cities.

At least, I've been watching the AI do it. Don't know if they can capture a coastal cause I've never seen/tried it.

[Sikander]

There are a few reasons / situations where native units can really help out. Firstly, they are great for Dee and Fungboy. Their planet bonus helps you get a free worm recruitment policy going immediately. They explore, pop pods and capture or kill other worms to increase the army or make some money.

There is a wierd glitch with low morale and children's cretches, whereby native units get better the lower your morale rating is. Dee thus gets a second bonus, with her inherent -1 morale.

There are times when I somehow get a lot of good worm tech, but I don't have airpower or AAA. If I am getting harrassed by enemy airpower in such a situation, worms make a decent defense against that (with the Neural Amplifier). The no advantage from higher tech aspect of worms also means no disadvantage from lower tech.

Finally, the locusts are very expensive, but if you can afford them they do a decent job at taking out enemy sea bases etc. The IoDs are really good, a great pod popping unit for those far flung sea pods. Run Green and recruit and army of them to scoop up all of those goodies.

All that being said, the worst thing about the native life (aside from the early game) is that they don't improve over time. Thus when I am building all sorts of drop infantry etc to overrun the world, the native units are stuck with their fairly anemic movement limitations. Of course where there's a will, there's a way, and drop infantry transports can be used to spread your worms about the planet in the late game if necessary. So I think that they are a nice complement to the game, without being a game breaker by any stretch of the imagination.

[CEO Aaron]

Sikander outlined most of the uses I reserve for native life, but like most players here, I tend to add them to the mix, rather than exclusively rely on them, mostly due to their rather crippling support requirements. (I run Democracy). There is one use I have for native lifeforms that I didn't see mentioned, and that's for pruning treaty/pact protected bases. Nothing like releasing a horde of Worms or IOD's around that annoying seabase that Svensgaard put up just outside your harbor.