On creating synergy....

[Velociryx]

On creating synergy:

Synergy is the mathematical proof that the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts. It is the act of creating an empire where all parts work cooperatively to create an interlocking system of defense such that the would-be attacker has no other option but to look elsewhere for a fight. This is vital, because once you have secured the defenses of your own empire, then is the time to begin developing assets to launch an attack against a rival’s. Most of all, it is about controlling the flavor of the game (metagame) in such a way that even if the attacker believes he is playing “his game,” you’re actually forcing him to play yours.

The aggressor may argue that it is he who chooses the base to target, but the attacker is taking a short sighted view, for if your empire is operating as a synergistic whole, then an attack to any part of your empire can be dealt with easily, and with immediate, overwhelming force.

And how does one go about doing all this? ::shrug:: Beats me, but while we’re all hanging out here waiting for someone to come up with the answer to that question, here are a few thoughts on the subject:

Map Settings:
Keep in mind that almost all of my games are played out on huge maps, 50-70% water, arid conditions with high erosion. Not to say that these ideas will not be applicable to games played on other maps…the core principles remain the same, subject to modification by map size. Also, bear in mind that I never use pod scattering, which, when coupled with the conditions mentioned above makes the early mobility techs (flex and mobility) relatively less important to me than they might otherwise be.

Base Spacing:
I invariably space my bases three apart. Have for a long time. When coupled with the fact that my formers spend a good deal of time building roads in the early game, it gives me rapid expansion and creates turn advantage by giving me the ability to get pods in place and new bases established 1-2 turns after the pod is built. Contrast that with the image of a colony pod moving 4-5 spaces along territory which few roads have been built, and the advantages become clear. When comparing the two approaches, I can move my pod, build the base, rush the former, and sometimes have that former finish building a road AND tree planting on the tile in question before the other method even gets its base built! Do that every time you build a base, and you rack up quite a large resource advantage. Also, this tight base spacing sets the stage for very early game defense. With bases spaced in this fashion, it enables my infantry garrisons to travel from base to base, never ending their turn outside. Further, it enables my rovers (see below) to move between two bases, also ending their movement inside the relative safety of a base.

Sensors:
Whenever possible, sensors are built on base sites, even if this costs me a turn’s worth of turn advantage. Long term, the benefits outweigh 1-2 turns of speedier base building. I cannot tell you how many times that “unsnipable 25% bonus has saved my hide!

Prototyping:
All prototyping is done as soon as I get the tech for the latest weapon or armor. All prototyping is done on a rover chassis—except, obviously, for prototyping new chassis types. This gives me a core group of higher-than-normal-for-my-empire morale attack capable troops to deal with incoming threats to the empire before the rest of the defense network is in place. Also, EVERYTHING is prototyped separately, giving me a larger pool of higher morale troops. Prototyping everything separately may seem counter-intuative, in the sense that it ties up an increasingly large portion of a given base’s mineral suite. Here is where a nod to the military MUST be given though, as these prototypes will serve as the backbone of my army until the advent of air power. As such, having more high morale troops is better than completing prototyping faster, regardless of the slightly higher support costs—undone with the arrival of clean reactors, and countered even before that by adding a crawler or two when mineral counts drop below the desired threshold.

Garrisons:
All garrisons are simple scout patrols in the early game, Trance Scouts as soon as I get the requisite tech for it. (Exception – In my Morgan games, as soon as I make the switch to Market, the scouts are disbanded to help rush build whatever I’m currently working on, and infantry based probes are built with synth armor and trance (thanks Ogie!), nicely getting around Morgan’s –1 support problem.

Upgrades:
All prototyped rovers are upgraded to best/best configurations. At least two are given Empath ability when it becomes available. The Empath rovers are posted at opposite “ends” of the empire to watch for rogue worms, and the rest are dispersed as I get them to spots I regard as potential avenues of attack.

Morale:
A military unit that spends long periods of time at peace need not fear having low morale. For one thing, once you get clean reactors, there’s NO REASON you cannot have troops with decent morale in all your bases. This can be accomplished simply enough by training new clean troops at a Military-oriented base, and shipping them out to your other bases. The old troops can then be relegated to patrol duties, or sent on worm hunts to boost their morale. If they survive the hunt, you’re a few credits richer and have a morale boost too! Eventually, if the unit in question survives enough hunts, he can be added back into your “regular” force pool.

To that end, such units should be upgraded to Empath at the very least, and probably given resonance armor for the duration of their hunting career. True, this means that you’ll likely not even break even, comparing upgrade cost to worms killed, but you will end up with an ever-increasing number of good morale troops and that is always a good thing.

Alternate plan: Leave the troops as greenies, and use them as your first Field Operations Group. Assign them to a transport (or several, depending on how many green troops you’ve got), assign each transport an escort, and give the whole outfit 3-4 probe foils, and you’re in business! If you have superior tech, it will offset the low morale and turn them into a viable fighting force.

Expansion:
The first goal is to fill up the continent (if alone), or to block expansion of a rival faction (if not alone), so as to limit the amount of space they have available to work with on the continent, and to maximize my own territory. If needs be, in order to head off a rival faction’s expansion, I will break with my usual paradigm of expanding my bases 3-apart in order to place a base to choke expansion, back-filling as I am able.

As soon as I get six bases, three of them are selected for project work, and they begin immediately. Two of the six bases begin churning out crawlers to bulk up their mineral counts, and one base (referred to as the “Mother Base”) continues to build colony pods to further the expansion.

Project Work:
This, and the above note depend on whether the game is SP or MP. In SP, I generally try to get LOTS of projects, but in MP, I only shoot for the ones I feel are most vital to my plans. In MP then, I’d ignore everything but the VW, WP, and PTS for denial (if possible). Much as I like the Empath Guild, my beeline is such that I can seldom beat a determined player to it, so I live with the infiltration, figuring it’d have happened sooner or later.

Ignore projects that are not pivotal to your game!!! It doesn’t matter who gets them if you don’t need them or can work around them! Early game, the ones I value most are: Weather Paradigm (creates turn advantage by shaving terraforming time), HGP (fast completion allows for an early switch to Market, even if Rec. Commons are not in place, and besides, with so many bases, so close together, the extra talent in each really helps with control!)—exception: if I’m playing Lal, I skip this one--VW (especially if playing Zak), and PTS (again, with so many bases and terraforming work done in advance, the boost in pop is quite nice). A bit later comes the Empath Guild, and then I’m all done for a while. (And with the Empath Guild comes everyone’s comm frequencies, allowing me to pick up the mobility techs I intentionally skipped earlier). Once my “crawler bases” get their mineral counts up where I want them—14 for most, 20 for my designated polluter base—they begin sending their crawlers to the project bases to help wrap up the first three projects I’m working on. Once those bases finish their projects, they begin building crawlers, and the bases with crawlers begin building projects. Needless to say, they finish rather quickly.

The moment the projects I want are in hand, full attention turns once again to expansion, and all bases crank out pods until the continent has been filled to capacity. Note that this is done entirely without regard to b-drones, or anything else for that matter! If I get to the point where the base I’m founding begins with a drone in it, then that base gets a rush-built Rec. Commons as it’s initial build. Many of these problems will vanish when the expansion is done and I add Dem. To my SE mix, so I ignore them in the meantime. Also, snagging the PTS plays into this type of expansion as the smaller bases get additional drone control.

Filling up the continent with bases spaced three apart is another absolutely vital step in creating a synergistic defensive network, because by doing so you create an absolutely air tight network that will prevent any and all drop troop actions against your mainland when you build the Cloudbase academy (and you’d better build it!). Scratch one method of attack from the aggressor’s bag of tricks! Not one single tile of your continent is vulnerable to drop troops.

As soon as the continent has been filled, all coastal bases immediately set to work building the sea pods necessary to ring the continent with coastal bases. While they’re doing that, the bases in the interior are building infrastructure like mad rabbits, AFTER spending some more time on developing their mineral suites.

Notes about crawler placement:
Now that you’ve finished the “manifest destiny” portion of your interlocking defense, and set up the eventual “locking out” of drop troops from your continent, it’s time to deal with troops who will be arriving the old fashioned way. Let’s face it, a transport filled to the gills with bad guys can REALLY mess up your day. To that end, don’t just place your crawler’s “wherever it’s convenient.” Get in the habit of working with them and trying to figure out where they’ll do you the most good. Look at the map. Where are you on the globe? Have you seen anybody else yet? If so, what direction did they come from? Even if they’re friendly right now, it might be a good idea to begin by placing your crawlers along the coast, ESPECIALLY in the direction where you know or expect trouble in the future.

This too, seems counter-intuitive. Why would you intentionally want to put your crawlers in harm’s way?

To that I would answer: “Better your crawler than your base!”

So, don’t be shy about it, relentlessly blockade your coastline. Seal yourself in. With all of your bases spending time building crawlers, it won’t take long at all to do! And remember, building crawlers is itself on an acceleration curve, meaning that if the first crawler takes you six turns to build, it pops out and starts harvesting minerals for you, then maybe the second will only take five turns. And the third will be even faster, until you have all you need.

Congratulations, you’ve just finished another segment of your interlocking defense. Now, you have eliminated “non-marine” units from landing anywhere on your coast. They can’t even attack your units! Sure sure, you’ve got the problem that Marines can still cause trouble, but not for long! (and besides, at this point, even if they DO land, they’ll be stuck in that tile for at least another whole turn, ZOC’d in by units on both sides. But read on, you’re about to eliminate that as a threat to your mainland too!)

When the sea colonies are established, I’m invariably running Market, and have been for some time. Thus, a token garrison is not needed, so the first build is an Infantry-based probe, outfitted with best armor and trance. This provides the fringe base with both probe and worm defense for the price of a single “clean” unit. The base then begins work on a sea former, but is in no particular rush to finish it, and then will probably be set to build at least one more probe team. Remember here, the goal of the sea bases is not to become productive (though they will in time), but to serve as early warning stations in defense of the core of the empire. A bit later, they’ll also serve as bases for navy squadrons and the air force. For now, they’re just early warning posts.

And excellent early warning posts they are! At this point, with sea bases up and running, you’ll find yourself with a large swath of ocean all around your continent that’s closed in by your borders. From a Marketeer’s standpoint, that means you now have a theater of operations for your navy! You can move around in it anywhere you like, and not cause the first ripple of drone discontent! Plus, the ring of sea bases (optimally spaced four apart and 3-4 spaces from the coast) means that there’s NO WAY an enemy cruiser can slip up to your coast undetected—assuming you don’t get lazy about eliminating patches of fungus! No way. Nada. None. Zilch. Surprise at sea is no longer a possibility for your continent. And if you actively patrol the waters, or post a few sea crawlers or probes with deep radar, you can see them coming from even further out.

Sweet.

Vertical Investment:
All core bases set about maximizing the economy and building research centers as their first priority, interrupting this only when a new weapon or armor type becomes available, and then only long enough to complete the prototype (often accomplished in one turn, thanks to crawler production, which is on-going at any time I get a few spare turns where all current infrastructure builds have been completed. At this point, any bases on the coast will also get a perimeter defense built. No maintenance cost, and I generally don’t get the Citizen’s defense force.

The Perim. Defenses are probably not necessary, but it’s better to build them while you’re building than to wait and see. Consider it cheap insurance for your bases on the coast. Be glad if you never need it, but grin like the Cheshire Cat when you do, cos its already in place. In any case, That’s another piece of the interlocking network, and it sends out a strong visual signal as well. It says, “Don’t waste your time attacking here, cos we’re ready for that kinda noise.”

Clean Reactors:
The MOMENT you get them, select two of your newer bases, preferably on different parts of the continent, and build Command Centers here. These will serve as the training ground for your empire. Add more if you need them, but start with two and see what that gets you. Set those bases to the creation of an infinite supply of shell units. Infantry, Rovers, eventually Tanks, and spend some time in the Workshop dreaming up all manner of nasty configurations. To see what they look like and get a feel for upgrade costs, upgrade a few of your shells into these various configurations, and post them around your empire. Better still, transport them to a fringe base for added security.

And while you’re about it, set up two more bases for the exclusive production of probe teams. Make these bases coastal, so you can make foil and cruiser probes too. Just keep most of them home for the time being, but DO send a few out scouting. When you need them, they’ll be ready.

Two more bases get tapped for use as Naval Yards, and these crank out an endless supply of ships. Mostly foils, some cruisers, mostly warships, some transports. Create squadrons and get used to operating them as a cohesive unit. Send the squadrons to various fringe bases as they are created, and you’ll find yourself with an ever-increasing naval presence all around your continent.

When you get air power, set one base aside for the production of jets. You won’t need many, so one base is plenty. Make interceptors only if you’re running market and have not yet set up a punished base, or an all specialist base. When you DO get one of the two set up, start making Pens as well, homing them all to the base in question so there’s no discontent. Create “flights” of these (I make flights which consist of three pens and two interceptors, but do it however you want), and again, get used to operating the flight as a group. Send them out to your fringe bases as well and put them on regular patrol. This extends your “sight” further away from your continent still.

When you get MMI, set aside one base for the exclusive production of choppers, re-homing as needed to prevent discontent. Add one chopper to each flight of planes you’ve created, and put one chopper in every coastal base, and every fringe base that doesn’t have a flight of planes already in it.

Cost:
Sounds expensive, doesn’t it? Sounds like it’ll take a LONG time to set up, yes?

Not really.

Remember, you’re not actually building all these expensive units, you’re building shells. Build Impact Needlejets and upgrade them to what you need. So each plane costs you 170 credits? Big deal. Each plane only takes one turn to build, too, and that’s a good thing!

Set yourself up like that, and then just let your opponent TRY to figure a cost-effective way to attack you. Just let him try.

My money says he never even touches your coast.



-=Vel=-

PS:
Other Stuff:

When you fill up the continent, relocate your HQ to a centralized location.

When your sea formers have cleared out all the fungus patches you DON’T want, set up a few that you DO want. And when you make a fungal patch, STAFF IT!

Specialist Bases:
Personally, I find the PIA factor to be too much to contend with in making all of my bases “Pure Specialist” bases, so that generally only happens about one base in three or four, with the rest making use of the forests I’ve got planted all over the place (note too, that with bases three apart, I’ve got more specialists than average in any case, thanks to the relatively limited number of workable tiles per base), giving me a nice mix of specialists and workers). Not to mention, filling up the WHOLE continent with crawlers isn’t that attractive to look at, and….what can I say, I’m an artist at heart! I make cool looking empires, if I do say so myself!

[death_head]

Wow. I assume this will be in v4 of you guide?

[Velociryx]

Nahhh....that's just a little something I scribbled down at work.... But, Hmm...now that you mention it, I might see if I can sneak it into the mix....might already be too late tho....::sigh::

-=Vel=-

[death_head]

"Just a little something."

Man, how will any of us ever compare?!

[Avenoct]

Ya know, Vel, when I first saw the Title for this thread I was a little annoyed. Call it a bad day on my part, but I was thinking: 'That's not just superior, that's haughty.' I couldn't resist a perusal though and was relieved to find myself engrosed a few minutes later, following familiar Vel thoughts across the familiar Vel empire once again. So I just wanted to say thanks for sharing your thoughts-image again. It is too bad this isn't going to be in the guide, but rereading it now it almost seems like a 'level two' narrative for the player looking to make the jump from experienced to masterly play.

-Smack

[Tokamak]

A useful technique for early game building that I've discoered while playing SMAC Down (shameless plug) is what I call "diagonal investment." The idea is that one base invests in its industry to the point that it can spit one crawler a turn. Then, instead of switching to something else, it continues to make even more, but donates one crawler a turn to an adjacent base. If you have the patience for the Crawler Crawl, you won't even lose harvesting opppurtunites while in transit. The result is an empire that is bursting with minerals in a very short time. Even your fringe bases can easily to crawler up to their terraforming limit.

This slows down your infrastructure builds a little in the short term, but it pays off in the end. By the time Tree Farms are available, I was able to build them in three turns on minerals alone, in almost every base! (and that was in the hyper-accelerated environmet of SMAC Down).

The idea is that every mineral you spend in the beginning is focused on netting you more minerals next turn. Efficiency kills in SMAC, and this is the single most efficient expenditure of mineral possible. Of course, once you're ruch enough to rush buy your facilites, this is no longer true, but in order in get an economy strong enough to do this, you need to build infrastructure, and that requires minerals, which means...

[NorthSwordsman]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Nahhh....that's just a little something I scribbled down at work.... But, Hmm...now that you mention it, I might see if I can sneak it into the mix....might already be too late tho....::sigh::

-=Vel=-

Any idea when the guide will come out and how much will it cost, assuming you are selling it?

[Solver]

Good little something, buddy. You're for sure one of the most amazing Apolytoners, the true face of Apolyton.

[Velociryx]

Yikes! I didn’t even think of that when I was writing….just one of those cases where I was jotting down notes for an essay here at work (slow day, yesterday! Gotta love that!) and didn’t really know what the heck to call it. My apologies to anyone who took it as either arrogant or haughty.

And Smack, I’m glad you looked past your initial impression of the title and enjoyed the read! That was my true intention, to write an essay that was (hopefully!) informative, at least somewhat entertaining/easy to read, and provided food for thought.

Solver, nahhh….just a redneck from SC who loves war gaming and hanging out at Apolyton!

Death_Head – I appreciate the compliment bud, but I’d have to disagree. It’s everyone here in the forums who keeps ME striving to be better. As time has passed, the discussions here have gotten much more technical in their nature, and I’m an artist (perhaps not a very good artist, but that remains to be seen…lol)…technical stuff is not in my blood, which means it becomes increasingly harder for me to grasp the “sofa-length” formulae discussed here. My answer to that is to keep coming up with fresh ideas, and try to figure a way to meld them with the advanced ideas talked about here – for instance, melding the clean mineral strategy with the interlocking defense, above. The defense paradigm is stronger for the melding! So…all that to say that it’s you guys who are keeping me hopping….always trying to improve.

Tokamak – Your crawler crawl is an excellent idea. In my latest “for the helluvit” game, I’ve given it a try and found it quite advantageous!

Northswordsman – I’m still holding my breath, waiting to hear back from the formatting team….per their last email to me, they’re in the guts of it, and trying to figure out a way to make all my internal links work for the electronic version. I think they’re not too happy with me….lol But more news on it as soon as I get news from them!

-=Vel=-

[Avenoct]

Just a quick question for Vel, or anyone else who uses the same world settings:

Does having a flat arid world slow you or the AI down more? If it's not really a slowdown, what is it? And finally, off-topic a bit..Does anyone else use Tech Stagnation? I love it.

I've tried out a couple games at these settings, inspired by Vel's description of his seabase ringed continent and I have to say it changes my playstyle immeasurably.

First of all, there's no food! So formers are leaping on nutrient bonuses like flies, and I've been lucky enough to get at least one nuts bonus in each game. Moreso, it makes the WP seem vastly more important. I can't slap a farm down and put a crawler on it and expect it to help my city grow.

Secondly, chance seems more important in your starting location. If you're on an arid island things could get really tough. Sure, cities can grow to size 2 with forests. It just seems that each starting point varies MUCH more dramatically than on a wetter rollier planet.

Third, exploring before (and/or with) sending out that second colony pod is more important than on a wet planet where you can go willy nilly in any direction and not starve!

Fourth, I find I'm dreaming of treefarms even moreso on this map.

Many other things....

As to tech stagnation, I started using it in my SP games to give me time to make energy parks for the sheer builder fun of it, and it works! In regular tech games I'm terraforming my city radii and immediate surroundings right till the end, even with 6-8 clean formers / base. This is because I expand like a madman to help provoke the AI into attacking me. So my outlying bases need lots of former help to keep them booming. In the tech stag games two things happen: One, I'm given LOTS of time to develop infrastructure and terraforms, which lets my formers head off to the surrounded (but not occupied) uranium flats, or to build a solar mountain for some energy-parking. Secondly, tech trading and stealing is even more valuable. Unfortunately, this makes it easier for the human player. Any ideas how to counter this second factor in SP games? Whoa, way off topic!

Thanks again Vel, and no, I wasn't offended, just taken aback, hehe, but what's important is the passion for the game which so many here at Apolyton share.

Happy Crawlering,

Smack

[Velociryx]

A Work-in-Progress?

I’ve got an almost silly game going right now…I sorta feel guilty about it actually, but I thought I’d see if there would be any interest in seeing the SP implementation of the very thing the essay above describes. I’ve saved the game off at the first century mark, and will do so from here, in 20 turn increments. If there’s any interest, I’d be happy to post the save files here.

About the current game:
SMAX, but with the original seven factions. I’m playing the University. Huge planet, high erosion, average everything else. Directed research, all win conditions enabled, random events ON, no pod scattering ‘cept at landing sites. Transcend, Ironman.

I began on what I would consider a perfectly sized continent if alone, and not bad at all, considering that I’m sharing it with Morgan. I met him pretty early on, and we signed a treaty (okay, it cost me two techs, one for the treaty and one for his map). I also used the “you have violated my territory” routine to send his colony pod instantly transported home, which doomed his expansion. Having accomplished that, I expanded toward him, sealing him up on the north western end of the continent, with “The Ruins” acting as a natural barrier between us. Last I checked, he has all of two bases, and has not called me since we signed the treaty. Since he has nothing I want, I haven’t bothered to call him either.

Dee has been doing well, and stands in at a (very distant) second. She DID get Centauri Empathy well before I did, and built the Empath Guild, so I altered my usual beeline and researched the mobility techs myself, since no one was willing to trade for them.

Yang got a wretched start, and has been limited to three bases on a distant island. Santiago is reasonably powerful, and in one of those rare, shining moments of AI aptitude, the lady built a pair of bases just south of Yang to check his expansion and keep an eye on him.

When the Planetary Council was initially called, the University wasn’t even in the running, and the contest was between Lal and Dee. I didn’t care who won it, so I took Dee’s bribe of 50 credits, and got her elected.

As for base names, I simply numbered them in the order they were founded, which will give anyone interested in the map a very clear picture of exactly how my expansion proceeded. Once a base has been tapped for some type of specialized use, it’s name changes to reflect its specialty, and the number appears parenthetically next to that. In this way, you can get an “at a glance” feel for exactly what is going on with the empire, and how the synergistic approach is coming together.

Keep in mind here, that this is optomized for SP, and that because of two factions getting really lousy starts, I actually got two SP’s that I don’t normally even shoot for (ME and CN). What can I say, I couldn’t resist! In the case of the ME, I had pretty much mapped the continent, knew where I wanted to relocate my HQ, and nobody had even started the ME and my base could build it in 8 turns, so….

Same thing for the CN, except now I won’t have to waste time building Command Centers at my Military Bases, and no maintenance costs either….both good things.

Anyway, because of the two extra projects, my expansion on the continent wasn’t quite as fast as normal, and there are, at present, some holes in the coastal defensive matrix, but construction continues on units to plug those gaps, and it won’t take long.

Also, the network of fringe bases is still in its infancy, and the “University Fleet” consists of a single gun foil, but as you’ll be able to see from the map, the game is pretty much over already. All my mainland bases are ready to boom to max size (I intentionally held back from that in case there was someone who wanted the map, but didn’t necessarily want to boom).

My long term plans go something like this:
1) Surround the whole continent (including Morgan’s segment) with coastal bases.
2) Conduct probe actions against Morgan until I get caught, and let him declare war on me. Beat him to a bloody pulp until he submits, and then (using the PTS), build an empire for him. There’s a nice continent near by…near enough that if he leaves his capitol where it is, the inefficiency won’t kill him, and since I get lots of free facilities with each base build, and I don’t trust him to do a good job, I’ll create a viable empire on his behalf, and a good trading partner to boot.
3) Yang is weak, fairly close, and convenient. All he needs is a little help from me, and he’ll be off and running (the AI seems to have an easier time playing Yang than any of the other factions). Taking that into consideration, I think I’ll repeat the process with the Yangster…make him submit, and then have a second trading partner, and a good (well, for the AI anyway) attacker. I’ll build him enough bases to put him on par with the other factions, and turn him loose.
4) I’d like to see if I can engineer the complete destruction of one faction (yet to be selected), solely on the basis of my submissives. Kill them without firing a shot, just releasing my “hounds” on them to divide up the spoils.

Anyway, those are just my own plans in the current game. If there’s any interest in the map, or if you wanna take over the game and finish her on out, I’ll post it here for downloading. Lemme know how it goes for you! And, if there’s any interest in seeing the rest of the synergistic defense come together (the 20 turn incremental saves), let me know that too, and I’ll post them here as I get them!


Also, while I was writing this, Smack added a post to the thread, so I’ll reply to that too!

I LOVE tech stag, but don’t use it all the time. I think it DOES make the game more enjoyable, especially after you get used to playing and can regularly pull down multiple techs per turn in the late game. MUCH harder to do that with t-stag, and it pulls the game into a significantly longer “missile/plasma” era, which I like very much.

As to high erosion, I like that map setting better simply because it’s easier to keep track of who’s doing what, and on which tile. I just like flattened out maps…lol….not as visually interesting, and it carries with it the implication of making energy parks quite rare (not many high elevations), but I don’t think it helps or hurts either us or the AI to any great degree—though the argument could be made that, since the AI never makes energy parks, if there is harm done, it is to the human player, as it makes such parks a great deal more expensive, forcing you to raise the land yourself.

One thing I’ve found extremely helpful in the “Arakis” game is this: When you get the tech and cash position for it, start rushing a rec. tanks as your first build. In this way, you get the equivalent of a 2n terraformed tile, the base will grow to size three—and this facilitates good quick growth from size one to two, most importantly, freeing your formers up to just build roads, mines, and forest everything in sight.

I used to play with high concentrations of fungus, and while the Cult and Gaians thrive on it, it really punishes the other AI groups and winds up being an easier game for it, so I’ve stopped doing that—tho there were a number of really memorable games where my main rival “faction” was Planet itself!

I think my favorite thing about tech stag is it allows you to truly develop your empire. Sure, the techs are coming in at a dramatically slower pace, but the upshot is that you’ve got spare time to plan your next move, fencing yourself in with crawlers is easy, cos you’ve got nothing else to build anyway, and you can really optomize everything from top to bottom. Great stuff, that!

-=Vel=-

[Darius]

Originally posted by Velociryx

If there’s any interest in the map, or if you wanna take over the game and finish her on out, I’ll post it here for downloading. Lemme know how it goes for you! And, if there’s any interest in seeing the rest of the synergistic defense come together (the 20 turn incremental saves), let me know that too, and I’ll post them here as I get them!

Yes, I would love to see periodic game saves. Where can they be downloaded?

I have a couple of questions about your strategy:

1. You talk about specializing bases in terms of their production, i.e. one base always builds probes, another always builds jets, etc. But then you would have to move the units to where they are needed. Wouldn't it be more efficient to rotate the builds at each base? For example, say at a particular point in time your empire needs probes, jets, and garrisons. Set 1/3 of the bases building probes, 1/3 jets, and 1/3 garrisons. After each is complete, rotate that base into producing one of the other unit types. After a few turns, all of the units are complete and already on station.

2. You describe a pretty ironclad defense for a builder game. When you come across another faction (especially Yang ) don't you ever get the urge to just wipe them out?

[Velociryx]

Perhaps what is needed is….

Doctrine: Defense

Not so much a tech to be researched in SMAC/AC as a series of lessons learned. How much value is there to this article? I truly have no idea. As with anything, every move has a counter-move, and the stuff you’ll read below is no exception, BUT if you structure your games this way, I can promise you this: the vast majority of the time, you’ll find yourself more than capable of dealing with any threat to your homeland.

Genesis of Doctrine: Defense
We must begin with the assumption that your bases are of relatively high importance to your game. Without a base of operation, you have no game, and there is no window of safety here. If you lose your last base, you don’t have X-number of turns to go and take over someone else’s base to keep you in the game….lose your last base, and that’s it for you. Therefore, seeing to the safety and defense of the heartland is of paramount importance.

Hand in hand with this, is the notion of vertical investment. Even the most diehard of Momentum players have a keen interest in building Network Nodes to help their own research efforts, and those who play the Builder’s game obviously spend a good deal more minerals on improving their bases. It is therefore relatively safe to say that over the course of your game, you will pour literally hundreds of minerals into base improvements at each of your core bases. A fairly typical example: If you build a Network Node, Research Hospital, Recreation Commons, Recycling Tank, Tree Farm, and Energy Bank in your core bases, how many minerals have you invested in them, individually? I don’t have the cost chart in front of me, but I’d ballpark it at something close to 450? That’s a lot of minerals. Now, multiply that out over the number of well-developed bases you have and ponder that number a moment.

Would it hurt to lose one or more segments of that massive investment? Would it impact your game in a negative way? Of course it would! Therefore, spending extravagantly on defensive measures for your core bases is a completely justified expense. Take a look at the raw mineral cost of what you are protecting! Not to mention the “per turn” benefits that those investments in your future are bringing in!

Thus, the need for a comprehensive, overwhelming defense.

OoO

Key things to remember if you want to plan such a defense:

Defense is not about stacking tons of units in each and every one of your bases. That is a generic way to defend yourself, and in the end, not terribly effective. The fact is, by the middle game, you can have an outstanding, completely overwhelming defense with relatively few units on the board. Having said that, the more units you have, the stronger your position, if they’re the “right” units (covered below).

If defense is not “unit based” then it becomes a fair question to ask what it is based on, and the answer is, “Attack Type.” Your mission, your job as the protector of your homeland is to neutralize the various types of threats to your empire, and those threat-types are as follows:

Resource Siphoning
Non-Marine unit landings
Marine assaults
Naval Assaults (including attacks to sea bases and bombards that precede attempted (generally foil-based) probe actions against sea or coastal bases,
Air Strikes, either against a base proper, a field position, or your terraforming/crawlers.
Drop-actions

Six basic types of attacks that need to be dealt with in one way or another.

So, the first goal is to eliminate as many avenues of attack against your heartland as possible. Neutralize the avenue of attack and you don’t have a problem at all.

A specific example of this:
Let us say it’s the middle of the early game. You’ve got Industrial Automation, and have been churning out crawlers at a prodigious rate. You have read the synergistic defense article, and wish to try your hand at it, and to that end, your crawlers have been ringing ‘round your continent (which has been filled to capacity by your fleet of colony pods).

Yang pops up on the radar screen with not one, but four transports. A quick check of infiltration data tells you that he has Impact weapons to your Synthmetal armor, and a quick look at the contents of the boats indicates that you’re about to be on the receiving end of a Builder’s worst nightmare….yep, they’re all 4x attack rovers, but guess what? The poor boy doesn’t have marine ability yet, and your continent is ringed in, so just how much of a threat is the mighty attack force? Even if all your garrisons are trance scouts at this point, what’s he gonna do?! He can look, but he can’t touch.

OoO

Neutralizing the major types of attack was covered in the essay on creating synergy, but I’ll add those notes here as well, because it’s an important (vital, in truth) segment to the overall defense doctrine.

Step 1: Manifest Destiny. You want to expand out in all directions from your starting bases until you have filled up the continent, and you want to do so with your bases spaced three tiles apart. Exactly three tiles apart.

There are two reasons for this: First and foremost, it creates an interlocking infantry-based defense whereby garrisons from neighboring bases can be shifted to threatened bases in a single turn without leaving the garrisons outside the bases at any time. Rover based defenders and counter-punchers can travel the span of two bases, also ending their movement indoors. Crucial.

Second, and nearly important is the fact that air defenses extend outward by two tiles, and air defenses are what prevents air drops. With bases three apart, the air defenses at each base overlap, creating an umbrella of protection that covers every single tile on your continent. Simply put, there is no way on Chiron that your opponent can use drop troops against you when that shield is in place.

Notes about fulfilling your manifest destiny:
 Time is your enemy and speed is of the essence. In order to speed your colony pods to their destinations, you need to build roads, but you don’t want to spend too much time on that. Therefore, whenever possible, build roads on flat terrain tiles! It only takes a single turn, giving your former more time for other stuff.

 When possible, build your base on the sensor array. I used to advocate waiting until the sensor was built before plopping a new base down, but that truly isn’t necessary, given the interlocking nature of the defensive network (you’ll rarely have attackers in your core anyway, if ever), so if you can’t get the sensor up and running in time, then don’t bother with it and just build the base.

 Have an expansion plan! Don’t just blindly build colony pods till you run out of room, and then have to add a few pods back in various bases as population! Look at your empire. Take note of the shape and structure of your continent. If, for example, you have a peninsula to your south, and a wide expanse to your west, don’t spend a lot of road-building effort on the peninsula to fill it up quickly. You can send “incidental” pods there as you go, and they don’t even have to be travelling on roads if your formers are behind on things. A much better plan would be to send one former down the peninsula building what roads he can, and divide your other formers up into groups with an eye toward claiming the territory westward. Sending some to road build and pre-terraform to the north-west (to push back the shroud and find out just how big a landmass you’re on), and the others can follow the coast, also pressing westward.

 Have a “Rolling Line” of expansion-oriented bases: This is applicable only on a large continent, but if you find yourself on a big landmass, obviously you’ll reach a point where you’ve got bases that are kinda “boxed in” by other bases, and pretty far away from future base sites. So, as you push your borders further and further out, have the bases far from the expansion begin to work on projects, crawlers, and infrastructure, while bases nearer to your frontier continue to carry out the expansion for you. Thus, as you expand further, the line of bases you have building pods also advances, meaning that the pods have a fairly static distance to travel in order to set up new bases.

 Deal with specials immediately! This is just good gaming. If you have a special resource inside a base radius, then do something with it, especially if it’s a mineral or nutrient special (early game)! If it’s covered up with fungus, then take the time to uncover it! If you don’t, you’re letting a valuable early game (pre restriction lifting) resource just go to waste! A resource that can, in fact, help you achieve your goals that much faster! When your formers are out road building, you normally want to choose flat tiles, but if you’re going to pass right by a rolling tile with a nutrient resource in it (for example), then don’t just go around it….that’s a case where you want to take the extra turn to build the road on that tile, and then forest it before moving on!

Step 2: Circling the wagons: Very important to neutralizing the early game rover rush, and you need one thing to do it – Supply Crawlers. You can do it with probes, but this is a weaker choice (see below), but if it’s all you’ve got, then it’s all you’ve got.

The essence of the plan here is to render your core bases immune to attacks from non-marine based units. To do that, you’ll need to create a blockade running around the entire perimeter of your coast, and the Supply crawler is ideally suited to this job. It’s cheap to build, it’s “clean,” and it can harvest resources for you, essentially pulling “double duty” (protecting you from attack while harvesting valuable resources at the same time). Even though infantry based probes are cheaper from a raw mineral standpoint, since they can’t harvest resources for you, they are the weaker choice as the crawlers will pay for themselves in 15 turns or so, and then start paying you a handsome dividend! Still, depending on your game or your particular beeline, you may be in a position where you have to build something, and probes are the only clean unit you have for a few turns. If that’s the case, rather than stockpile energy, build a few “extra” probes, and start sealing yourself in with that, switching to crawlers as soon as you get the tech.

Notes about sealing yourself in:

 Depending on how quickly you get to Industrial Automation, you may or may not have gotten a lot of terraforming work done yet. Considering what your goal is, the work you do have done is best done on your coastline, since that’s where your crawlers will be going—with at least a couple of tiles per base non-coastal, to give your workers something productive to do. Anyway, two basic approaches here. First, is to relentlessly build crawlers, regardless of terraforming done. Every tile produces something (exceptions: flat arid tiles produce nothing at all, and depending on your planet rating, the fungus might not be productive), so every crawler built will give you at least one more resource, and you’ll have your coast blocked in that much faster. On the other hand, you could opt for a more balance approach where you build crawlers until you occupy all the terraforming work accomplished so far, then switch to building another former to speed further work, then back to crawlers again. This has the advantage of giving you more terraformers in the field, paying support for them as your mineral suite grows, but the downside is that it “blunts” the total effect until clean reactors. Still, it’s the approach I use, and I highly recommend it.

 Even interior bases should send their crawlers to the coast! Interior bases will wind up being your real gems….probably the most productive bases you have, especially if you don’t crawl many (or any, at least in the early game) resources from tiles in their radius. Again, this speaks directly to your goal. Crawling resources from inland tiles is only half as productive as your crawler could be if he was on the coast, where he’s serving a double purpose! Get as much mileage as you can out of every unit you build!

 To road, or not to road? And that’s an interesting question. Either way, you should be fine because even if a crawler has used up all it’s movement points, you can still click on it and have it harvest resources, but this adds a PIA factor that I don’t really care for. Much easier to build the road in advance….that way, the crawler moves freely, and 2 out of 3 times, he won’t use all his moves getting to the coast, so you’ll have him sitting where you want him, blinking and ready for you to give the command. Much more convenient, especially later on when we “hollow out” (covered later). I like having a “coastal highway” that runs all around the continent, with branches leading from bases to the coast. That’s handy, and makes dealing with all those units much less of a PIA, but that’s just me. Roads then, are optional. If you don’t want them, don’t build them. Getting your units in position is the important thing.

 When you get to this stage in the game, knowing when to stop is pretty important too. When your target base has 14-20 minerals, it’s time to do something else besides build more crawlers, and there are two really good, important things you can do before you start building infrastructure. First, you can build crawlers not to harvest with, but to send to a project base. Very good use. Almost as good, would be to send your crawler to another, less developed base, re-home it there, and have it start harvesting for that base. In this way, your bases all reach their early game mineral potential quickly.

 The point above brings up another interesting idea: Let’s say we’ve got two bases. One is working on the WP, and the other has been building crawlers, and now has a mineral count of 20 per turn. He could build more crawlers and help crash build the WP, and if there’s another faction already working on it, that’s probably the way to go. But if no one else is working on it yet, then a better plan would be to have the crawler base build more, send them to the base working on the WP, and re-home them in order to increase that base’s “per turn” mineral output. Plus, if it looks like someone else might beat you to it, you can always cash the crawlers in then.

Okay, so in short order you should be able to accomplish steps one and two. Manifest Destiny, and Circling the wagons. Along the way, you’ve undoubtedly captured two or more projects (which will vary depending on your personal preferences and the game at hand), and you’re ready to move on to bigger and better things.

The first thing is to take stock of your tech position. Do you have flex? If not, you’ll need to get it soon, either by trading (you DID build the Empath Guild, yes?), or researching it yourself (if everybody’s having a bad day and no one wants to trade with you). Point is, before you can truly protect your growing investment from the dreaded Marine strike which will be rearing its ugly head soon, you NEED flex. Get it.

[Velociryx]

Step three: More expansion.

This time, you’re not expanding to build sterling showcases of research and industry, you’re building outposts. Forts. Frontier towns on the high seas, and it would be wise to get used to looking at them like that. These are not bases you want to put a lot of money into, these are patrol points for the navy and air force you don’t have yet. Mid-game, you can start to build them up, but right now, build them and forget about them (from an infrastructural POV anyway).

Notes about Fringe Base Expansion:

Fringe bases serve two (and sometimes three) purposes. First and most importantly, they are your eyes in the water, and let’s talk about that for a moment. Consider the attacker. He’s coming from….well, you don’t know for sure, but from somewhere, and he’s coming by ship. Foils have four moves. Cruisers have six. A base on the coast can “see” two tiles into the ocean, which means that if an enemy foil is three tiles off the coast, you won’t see him. You’ve got a blind spot that extends from 3-6 tiles out. That’s a lot of space, and a big window of vulnerability.

The fringe base solves that problem by pushing your blind spot back further. If you build a sea base four tiles from your coast, your coastal base can “see” two tiles out, and your sea base can “see” two tiles in both directions (toward your coast, and away from it), meaning that you now have a visual lock on every tile of ocean extending seven tiles from your coast. A foil based attack cannot succeed against your core bases at this point (nor can a cruiser based attack, unless it’s an elite cruiser or your attacking opponent has the MTC…but even then, read on to see how to counter those rare occurrences without having to add another “layer” of sea bases, because you’ll see it coming before it reaches your coast. True, it can still take your fringe base by surprise, but that’s why you built it….to let it take the fall (potentially) so your core bases remain safe. That’s also why you don’t want to invest in infrastructure here. If the base is captured, he victor will, in most cases, sell off the most expensive facility and burn the base down.

The second purpose of the sea base is to serve as a staging area for your navy and air force. By operating from the sea bases, rather than from the coast, your own patrol units have extended their own “reach,” and because of the presence of your fringe bases, they’ve got plenty of places they can go to rest and repair. This then, gives you a flexible platform from which to execute your defense or launch a strike of your own.

Also, if you’re a fan of Market then you already know that having ships out sailing beyond your borders causes drones. Fringe bases are handy for that too, cos they provide you with a wide patch of ocean to go sailing in, meaning that you can set up active patrols along the outer periphery of your ring of sea bases, always end your movement back inside your borders, and never have drone problems.

And finally, the construction of Fringe Bases prevents the “resource siphoning” form of attack, whereby a competing faction will send a sea pod just off your coast and plop a base down in your way. By beating him to the punch, you eliminate that form of “attack” as a concern.

So….all that to say, build sea bases, and ring yourself in with them!

Notes on setting up Fringe Bases:

 Optimal spacing for sea bases is four tiles from shore, and four spaces apart. This gives you the biggest sea zones possible and the widest interlocked line of sight.

 Once your sea bases are established, and once you’ve got patrolling naval squadrons, you need not fear for your sea based formers, normally juicy targets….now protected by your fringe bases and their patrols.

 To extend your “sight” further, and make it all the more difficult for an enemy to approach, consider building foil-based crawlers with deep radar. One placed in the outermost corner of each sea base’s border will increase your sight range to 9 hexes out, all around your empire, rendering you virtually impossible to sneak up on.

OoO

Okay, so I’ve got these bases….

Now what do I do with them?

First off, as mentioned above, you don’t want to build infrastructure, or at least, no more than you have to (you may want to consider a Rec. Commons if the base is growing like a weed, but remember that this increases your investment in the base and will mean a longer payback period). Defensively, build an infantry based probe and upgrade (70 credits, IIRC) to plasma armor and trance. Gives you a good, versatile defender for pretty cheap.

After that, start work on a sea former and remember, your base is only going to have a VERY few minerals, so don’t be surprised or worried if it takes upwards of 30 turns for it to crank out the (clean) sea former. The good news is….once you have it, you’ll be able to dramatically improve the mineral suite of the sea base.

And after that, start work on foils or cruisers to augment your navy! Clean reactors are very important to sea bases, given their fragile mineral counts and are an excellent option here. Just set them to build a halfway decent clean ship and forget about it. So what if it takes 15 turns to build. It’s doing something productive for you, and you can focus your attention on your core bases.

Oh, and one more thing….unless you’re really in a crunch and need the unit that a sea base is working on desperately, don’t rush anything from sea bases ever! (exception, the initial defensive unit). Your money is better spent on the infrastructure at your core bases!

OoO

Creating and using Naval Squadrons:

When you’re fighting a naval battle, you generally either win big or lose big, and because of that, morale is relatively less important at sea than with other unit types. Thus, the best way to get a decent navy up and running quickly is, as soon as you finish building your ring of sea bases, have every coastal base start to work on a sea former, and then a foil based attack ship! One from each base should see you with a decently sized navy, and if you’re worried about mineral counts, make them clean and recapture the minerals!

Make these initial ships purely along destroyer design lines….all guns and no shields. Break them into groups of three (3) and send them out to various sea bases. The idea is that every turn, one ship can patrol, and if it finds anything, the other two can respond (assuming here that the patrol ship uses all its moves and is unable to respond on its own).

Three ships operating in tandem gives you the firepower to stop almost any early game attack (considering that most attack forces in the early game consist of 1 attack ship for escort, 1 probe foil, and 1-2 transports)…or, in the case of a probe attempt, 1 escort ship and 2-3 probe foils. For added support, eventually you’ll want to give each of these groups a probe foil and a transport (which enables them to begin conducting offensive missions as well), but for the moment you’ve got a number of functional task forces scattered around your fringe, moving from base to base and constantly patrolling and probing the outermost reaches of the empire. This makes it vastly more difficult to land against you, or make any sort of effective attack on your core bases, especially if your task forces are arranged in such a way that they can support each other in very short order.

Adding to the navy:
Once you get your initial fleet established, you want to take care to constantly improve it. Of course, your fringe bases will give you new ships, but those are long-term investments, so if you’ve got enough core bases to do it, I’d strongly recommend setting one of those bases aside and earmarking it specifically as a naval base. Not to say that it won’t ever build infrastructure again, but I’d definitely put it on a slower developmental track. Say….build a Research Hospital, and then another complete task force (3 destroyers, a probe foil, and a transport), then build something else infrastructure wise….alternating between bulking up the navy and adding to that base’s infrastructure. In this way, you get a steadily growing fleet, and even if your initial navy has trouble covering all the space opened up by your ring of fringe bases, constant attention to expanding the navy will see those gaps filled in shortly, and enable you to simply overwhelm an opponent using cooperative task force strikes, wolf-pack style, long before they ever get close to your shores (where all the important stuff is!)

OoO

Adding some Omph!

Of course, things get a lot more interesting when air power comes into the game.

My advice would be: Forget the needle jet. Wait two more techs, and build nothing but choppers, and build only two kinds. The Heavy Assault Chopper and the Anti-Air Chopper.

The HAC has best weapon and no armor (note: normally I recommend putting light armor on choppers, but these will be stationed at sea bases which will very likely have ships docked as well, which serves as artillery protection for the choppers), and the AAC has the same, but with the “Air Superiority” special. That’s the only difference between them.

Send them out in pairs, and put them in alternating sea bases (every other). They’ve got good movement, and defending two fringe bases with a single chopper flight is not a problem. And when they’re in place, put the HAC on patrol. The AAC’s only job is to sit in the base until and unless you see an enemy squadron of planes or choppers….then, you go make mincemeat out of them. This combined, overlapping fleet and air presence means that your opponent would need a truly massive force to even attempt an attack aimed at keeping one of your fringe bases, and a force several times larger than that to attempt a drive toward your core bases (if he did that, then the chopper squadrons from the far side of the continent would likely find themselves with targets in range as the attack force moved closer to the coast). This is not what a Momentum player wants to content with. A Momentum player is looking for a soft Builder who hasn’t thought about getting his defenses in place, or one who plays like he’s got all the time in the world to set them up.

Don’t be that player. Don’t allow yourself to get overrun because you get so focused on infrastructure that you forget about the people out there who’d love the chance to take it away from you. Remember them….plan for them, cos make no mistake about it….they’re planning for you!

OoO

Hollowing out:
So….once you’ve got this great, huge defensive network set up….what’s next?

Well, the first step is to dismantle it….not completely of course, but the fact is….all those coastal crawlers you’ve got are now….kinda redundant. You’ve got a strong, active naval presence, as well as a blanket of overlapping chopper defense, and your choppers can deal with both incoming planes and ships….so the fact is, unless the attack is just completely overwhelming (exceedingly rare!) No one will ever even get to your coast, meaning that you no longer need them.

Your bases are prolly HUGE at this point, and being that they’re stacked three apart, even if you use a “forest and forget” strategy for the most part, you’ve still got LOTS of specialists per base, and that’s a good thing.

So here’s the next step:

1) Take a look at your bases, and pick 2-3 of them that are coastal. Plan on turning these bases into “all specialist” bases. Immediately set any crawlers from those bases to food harvesting, rather than mineral harvesting, and mark their locations. You’ll want to send your former crews back to those spots eventually. Right now, let them crawl food from the forest….you’ve prolly got at least tree farms and maybe hybrids, so you’re getting 2-3 food per tile, and the crawler paid for itself a long time ago anyway. That’s good for the moment. Your main goal is to get those specialists set up!

2) Once you’ve got your all-specialist bases set up, send the navy and air force to them to re-home. This allows you to get back to market if and when you want, without worrying about drones. It also allows you to start doing some offensive missions and stay in Market to do it.

3) Send formers around to any tile you’re crawling food from and optimize for food production. Working in gangs, that shouldn’t take long. Also, while you’re about it, make sure each core base has a borehole, and if not, give it one now.

4) Stop using most of the crawlers in bases not set up to be all specialists! Of course, if you’ve got a nutrient special in a non-spec. base, keep crawling it, and if you’ve got mines, keep crawling them, but for the most part, let your workers do their thing. Remember, with bases stacked close together, each base will still have a number of specialists, even if it’s working every tile it can and there’s not a crawler in sight!

5) Take all the spare crawlers you pulled off of your coast, and stack them in designated project bases. That way, when the next juicy project becomes available, you can almost instantly build it. (Alt: keep the crawlers harvesting until you actually start a project, but reposition them so you can get a huge number of them to the project base in 1-2 turns…more efficient, but a larger PIA factor).

6) Send the formers around to delete any roads that you no longer need.

What this leaves you with is a beautifully terraformed continent, with not terribly many crawlers mucking up its appearance. Very nice indeed. (Alt: depending on the number of bases you have, you may find that Market is no longer as valuable to you as Green, and in this case, forget the all specialist base and cash in all your crawlers except those on mineral and nutrient specials….gives you less specialists, to be sure, but the visual effect is stunning, and hey….sometimes it’s all about the art!)

I find it fairly easy to forget where I put stuff, so at this point, I’ll generally break my formers into teams along regional lines, and if the formers in one particular region have nothing else I want or need to do at the moment, I’ll park them in a line along a road (looks kinna like traffic) until I need them for something. Also, to keep better track of my prototypes and such, I’ll station them at highly visible points around the now mostly empty landscape.

That’s the beauty of the defensive doctrine. Every unit, every action has a purpose that is interlocked with some other action or unit. You build crawlers and place them along the coast to both provide early protection and increase your industrial might. As the game wears on, naval and air units replace the crawler as a much more active defense, and population increases to the point where those tiles they once worked might be best utilized by workers in any case (unless you just really love micro managing!). Thus, the crawlers are retired, but they are retired in such a way as to provide one final service to the empire they once protected, in the form of several speed-built projects.

Everything linked together.

Symmetry.

Synergy.

That’s good stuff.

OoO

Odds and Ends:

HSA: When you get it, that’d be a good time to cash in all those probe teams you had set up in your core bases. Forget about upgrading them to fusion, just ditch them and make new ones (with elite morale at this point!) – This furthers the “hollowing out” mentioned above.

Check base-by-base and see if you’re losing any minerals anywhere. Then check to see how much it’d cost to upgrade that unit to clean. Depending on the answer, you might want to consider an upgrade, or, cash it in someplace and build a new “clean” version.

OoO

[Velociryx]

Projecting your power:

Okay, so you’ve done the defense thing. You’ve got navy squadrons out the wazoo, your sea bases are bristling with choppers, you’ve got money and industrial output coming out of your ears, even to the point where you’re starting to invest in infrastructure at your fringe bases just to give you something else to do!

Sounds like it might be time to flex those muscles a bit.

At this point of the game, you’ve won, even if your opponents don’t know it yet.

Oh, you can still lose….but if you do, it won’t be anything that your opponents do that makes you lose. No….if you lose now, it’s because you made a mistake…..got involved in too many things at once….bit off more than you could chew….something.

The point is….be careful. Despite having incredible economic strength at this point, you CAN still be brought down, so watch yourself.

Getting started:
First, for God’s sake, have a plan! Don’t just decide you want to get out and start trouble and make the rest up on the fly.

That’s a good way to squander your position.

No…if you want to do it, do it right. Set an objective, and see how it goes.

Example: Lets say that you’re in a four way hot seat game, and all this time, you’ve been quietly building up.

Some distance away, two of the other players are involved in a tooth and nail war, with one of them clearly gaining the upper hand.

Concerned that this may upset the balance of things (and in your position, you’re pretty darned happy with the balance just the way it is!), you make a pact with the weaker guy who’s getting trashed, who agrees to cede you a small base on his continent in exchange for your assistance).

See the difference there? You’ve got a detailed plan, and in fact, you’re playing the metagame now….getting yourself in the thick of the diplomatic underpinnings of the game.

In that particular example (based on an actual game, btw), I was actually treatied with both parties at the start, and wound up sending two task forces to assist. In that case, each task force was set up along the lines of (and it’s been a while, so this might not be exact, but it’s close):

2 Destroyers
1 Cruiser
1 Cruiser Transport with
2 Rover Shells
4 Infantry Shells
2 Probe Foils (the base I was given was coastal).

It was easy to speed build a couple of choppers at the new base, and I was pretty well entrenched.

My aggressive ally was unwilling to start a fight with me AND his weak opponent, so the war was stalled simply by pacting with the weaker player and stationing my units in bases near the front. Also, I got a new base out of the deal, giving me a permanent presence on another continent….always nice, and in fact, in that game, I traded tech to the aggressor for the two bases taken (which got him back off the continent and restored the game’s balance), and sold them back to the weak player later, so it was quite the profitable venture!

Could I have done that without having all my defenses secured at home? Of course, but there would have been risks involved.

As it was, I was able to do that without weakening my border defense at all….those were just “spare” units I had been building when time permitted! Most of the units had, in fact, been cranked out of my fringe bases, which means I orchestrated the entire thing from bases I really didn’t care anything about and that had little “investment value” to them.

The advantages of building an interlocking defense system are manifold, and some of them are listed below:

1) By denying your opponent the option of making specific types of attacks against you, you force him to play your game and not the other way around. A smart attacker will recognize this, and not even bother with you, more often than not….after all, he’s looking to make someone else play his game, not get sucked into yours, and that works in your favor.

2) You rely on fast moving attackers as counter-punchers and maintain vigilant patrols. This means that more often than not, you will see your attacker coming, and can ride out to meet him. This is, in all probability NOT what your opponent had in mind when he decided to come pay you a visit, and is one more way you can switch things around on the aggressor….suddenly and unexpectedly forcing him to play your game and not his.

3) You have preserved 100% of your industrial capacity by making use of clean units when appropriate. This puts you on an even footing with those factions who can easily achieve +4 Support, giving you access to just as many troops.

4) Unless your opponent is Morgan, you can get +1 Energy per square every turn, and in most cases, your aggressive opponent cannot (again, if you’re fighting Morgan, he can do it, and if it’s mid to late game, it’s possible your opponent has a P-Sphere or spec. base), but in most cases, Momentum Gamers are not fans of Market. That’s good for you, because it means you’re getting more money per turn, and more tech, too….so let him come. If he keeps it up for 20 years or so, you’ll have at least two techs on him, and if he keeps it up much longer than that, you’ll break his back with your tech lead.

OoO

Summary:

It is undeniable that attacking carries with it a number of advantages. Those advantages are often discussed and well known to all. Doctrine: Defensive seeks to nullify those advantages wherever possible, or make sure that they are only applicable where the defender dictates. (ie – yes, the attacker can still execute a marine strike against one of your bases, but you’ve got things set up such that the only viable option is to do so against a fringe base, and not an important coastal one). Doing so strengthens the defensive position at nominal cost, and dramatically weakens the offensive position.

Yes? No? Maybe?

-=Vel=-
PS: (and a note to Darius) – I saw your note on this thread, but when no one responded right away, I just finished the game out without doing my periodic saves. I have, however, started a new game with those periodic saves in place, and will be posting them here with notes on each segment, if you’d like to see precisely how it develops. (first segment is at MY 2200, and in 20 year increments after that).

And, to answer your questions: Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that you save time by doing as you propose, but no in terms of overall investment and quality. For instance, if you want to build garrisons with good morale at every base, then you’d need to build command centers everywhere as well (and pay the upkeep for them). By specializing your bases out, you save money on upkeep costs, and time in infrastructure builds. This is balanced by having to move units around to where you need them. Of course, if you need a unit, by all means build it wherever you can, but in general, the specialized approach will serve you well.

Hmmm….and as to the other question….the short answer is yes…lol…and I do….all in good time….

-V.