I just won, but...

[Drago Sinio]

I dont know what happened. Playing as Spartans on a standard planet map, I was pacted with UNI and LAL. Morgan was a submissive, and I had previously eliminated Hive and Gaians.

I was in the process of eliminating the Believer menace, when I was about to destroy the last Believer outpost, Miriam surrendered to me. Then a screen comes up saying "I had united the planet under the Spartan Banner" and had won the game.

But as I say, UNI and LAL were still active, though I was pacted with them. I had a huge lead in all categories but tech, and was playing at Transcend level.

I thought you had to call a council and have them vote you in as "Supreme Leader" for a game to end this way.

What happened?

I had attacked Miriam at the request of the UNI , in order to pact with them, and I had attacked Morgan at the request of LAL , again to obtain a pact. Could that be the reason?

[Qantaga]

You have won a Cooperative victory since Lal and Zakharov were in a Pact with you, Miriam and Morgan were submissive and Deirdre and Yang were eradicated.

Being elected Supreme Leader is a Diplomatic victory.

Congratulations!

[Sean]

Qantaga is correct.

My congratulations also

[Drago Sinio]

Thanks, I guess I should have known that. I dont recall a game ever ending that way before. I guess because the AI usually breaks pact with you when pass them on the power graph.

Of course I did have 16 Elite missile rovers loaded on transports within striking distance of University Base, maybe that is why they didnt backstab me.

[cbn]

16 elite missle rovers heh-- I guess that is what I should expect in our Spartan challenge series (shudder)

Congrats on the victory-- It was a cooperative conquest victory and I am wondering if I should start honing my anti-Spartan military skills

[The Commodore]

So far, my anti-Spartan military strats all deal with heavy Navy use, blockading them.

CBN...could you please send me those strats, once you get them? I'm with Garth Vader as Spartans in my BHM.

[Net Maverick]

You wrangled a pact out of Lal? Never in my experience have I been pacted with him, even when running Democracy...I wonder if Firaxis purposely designed the PKs to be annoying bastards when under the control of the AI. As for your elite units...my favorite faction, and the one I play best as, is the Spartans...and when running power, I get a nasty -30% industry. Do you have any suggestions for overcoming that crippling penalty, besides running Planned? Planned pretty much becomes useless once you've pop boomed all your bases to size 14.

[Misotu]

The industry penalty is one reason why I loathe the Spartans. Planned is useful for a while, as you say. I generally overcome the industry penalty late-early game to mid-game by crawlering mins. After that, well, if your bases are up to 14, it doesn't hurt quite as much. It's the early game when it really hurts, and the only way to overcome that is with the earliest pop boom you can muster, I think.

[Drago Sinio]

Net Maverick; My theory is that you run whatever SE you need to produce Elite troops. Fundy, Power, whatever, as long as you can produce Elite troops.

In this particular case I dont think I ran power, as I got the tech for Bio centers first, so I just built them in every base, after first building enough crawlers to get mineral production in the 15 per base range.

And if I do run power, it doesnt hurt me much , because of all the crawlers.

While waiting for the crawler tech I run whatever gives me the best research, and am very nice to everyone. After I have the military machine cranked up and running, I give everyone whatever they want, except for the current victim. I will gladly declare vendetta to get a pact with another strong faction, so I can steal tech from one and trade with the other.

And I prefer lots of small bases to big pop-boomed ones. That way I never need much infrastructure, and if some minor faction takes over a base or two of mine its no big deal. Their turn will come.

[Method]

whilst on the topic of anti-spartan tactics just don't use chaos tacticals especially when all their bases are equiped with aero complexs and about 50 AAA units. i prefer the mass amount of trained chaos rovers later upgraded to trained tachyon rovers(elite++ because of command nexus and cyborg factory) left over from the total destruction of miriam and the submission of lal combined with some tachyon shock troops which are all elite because there's a monolith outside one of my bases and most of them are just upgraded garrisons.

[Drago Sinio]

Yes, the Spartan morale advantage is their best "weapon". The ability to get the extra firepower and movement points of Elite troops, far outweighs their -1 industry penalty. Crawlers easily compensate for that , and once you have a large number of production centers pumping out Elite units every few turns, research becomes irrelevant.

Just build probe teams to allow you to steal techs and destroy defenses, and your 50% Elite bonus plus extra movement point will give you a huge advantage in any combat. A Spartan Elite Missile unit is actually stronger than most factions Chaos troops for example. An Elite Tachyon infantry unit will basically overpower any defensive armor in the game, except for the really late game stuff, and there is no way an opponent is gonna hold out that long anyway.

You really dont need to build SP's either, since you can just take them away from whoever does build them. In some situations that is better. For example if the University builds the Virtual World, and relies on that for drone control, their entire empire is instantly crippled if they lose that one base. While they are busy getting the drone riots in every base handled, you can just walk right over them as the Spartans, and steal all their tech in the process. Now you have the best weapons and armor in the game, and all your troops are Elite. Game over.


Gotta love them Spartans.

*Well, that was wierd, this post is appearing above The Commodores post that I was responding too.**




I

[The Commodore]

Ah, yes...I see you've found the Spartan's power over the other momentums, Drago. The fact is, well played Spartans can out-research the other momentum factions, and yet they still have morale advantages. They need the CM or CyFac., to give them Elite without hard SE choices.

[Misotu]

Well ... yeah. Don't get me wrong here, I've played the Spartans in MP (and won). But ... it simply isn't true that elite units are all you need, particularly when you're talking land forces and -1 industry. Consider this: Disciplined silksteel + ECM + creche + sensor + perimeter ... and then consider an opposition with 2+ units of this type per base. Then add air power while you, with your splendid elite units, are lagging behind rather on tech.

Bit of a problem, eh?

[Drago Sinio]

Misotu: Well, no, not really a problem. If the enemy has ecm garrisons, I would attack with artillery & infantry, after the probes have destroyed the perimeter defense, and the rovers have taken out the sensors.

Depending on the weapon level of course. If you have good weapons, you can just ignore the defenses and use brute force in large quantity.

Of course against the AI that is no great feat. Against a human opponent it would be much more difficult.