The Great Wall Defense

[WhiteElephants]

Hmmm... I guess I'm just wondering why you didn't attack the AI and dispense with this "Atlantic Wall" tomfoolery?

I guess that in my experience I tend to only be defensive for about the first 50 years or so. The time I tend to get more offensive is when I have the capacity to build impact rovers. At the discovery of Airpower and MMI my aggressiveness increases dramatically. If I have AI enemies within range of my core bases I move to expand my borders by taking those cities in range.

Just off the top of my head you could probably build 2-3 choppers for the price of one mindworm, the same would go for AAA infantry. Not only that, you could build a trained 1-1-1 scout infantry and upgrade just as you could with the choppers. I guess what I'm getting at is that it seems counter intuitive to put so many resources into being prepared to be attacked when you could be putting those resources into staging an attack of your own.

[Scipio Centaurus]

WE, Your last name wouldn't be Bush, by any chance, would it?

As a matter of principle, I make it a habit to not attempt to conquer my trading partners - no matter how imbecilically they may behave themselves. There are few excuses for a confirmed builder/free marketeer such as myself to ever get caught up in the emotional baggage that the all consuming, ever conquering mentality brings with it.

I usually find it quite sufficient to simply repel enemy attacks to the limits of my own territory and then return to building.

I suppose if a faction were to use atrocities against me, then I would probably attempt to remove them from the face of Planet, but I can't see wasting my FM/Wealth ECs fighting extended conventional wars. That strikes me as the last refuge of the builder who has run out of good ideas.

A matter of taste, I suppose...

- Scipio

[Avenoct]

Playing for the jugular I'd have to agree with WE, but, that's also a stylistic concern. Still, you'll see there are quite a few of us that aren't really discussing the strategy of how to beat the AI, and I think this thread fits in this amorphous second category of strategy. We are instead discussing the strategy of getting the most enjoyment out of a game by playing backwards, forwards, upside down or blindfolded.

Now, certainly there is a real argument between the building types and the conquering types on what is the 'best' strategy for achieving #1: Winning the Game. But once you've done this from variously difficult positions it's time to discuss #2: Making and playing the perfect game.

What's a perfect game? I think fondly of all those games where I just never quite got to the point where I knew I was going to win until the actual turn that I won (or lost!). I'm thinking of games where I was so far behind it all seemed futile, but then clawed my way back to surviving, or those games in which 20 PB's were tossed and it was a whole new ballgame, or those games....

-Smack

[Method]

Re: The Great Wall Defense

Originally posted by Scipio Centaurus
Has anybody tried anything similar to this? I am interested in hearing about any defensive strategies that anyone has tried in their games.

Can anybody think of ways to improve the Great Wall strategy?

well you are for sure not the first to do this. i thought it up back in the day of Civ II. i'd get about 5 size 50 base uh i mean city producing about 300 shields and surrounded the outside with Mech. Inf. of course i was running fundy at the time so only every unit after the 10th requires support IIRC. and to top it all off, i was like 10 years old at the time! ha ha ha! usually played on all land or mostly land maps though. works better that way. (of course when you're 10, you just play on chieftain with no spaceships and conquer everyone because you're on cheat mode)

never succesfully attempted something like this in smac though. i just guard my bases with 2 trance 3res or trance 3pulse and the AI just doesn't attack me. in fact, i have never lost an interior base, and the only time in recent history i can think of that i even lost any base was unguarded size 2 colony that i founded right next to santiago. BTW i play librarian.

[Scipio Centaurus]

[Irreverant]

- Scipio

[WhiteElephants]

As a matter of principle, I make it a habit to not attempt to conquer my trading partners - no matter how imbecilically they may behave themselves. There are few excuses for a confirmed builder/free marketeer such as myself to ever get caught up in the emotional baggage that the all consuming, ever conquering mentality brings with it.

Emotional baggae? Bah! Sounds to me like your caught up with the emotional baggage of worrying about the emotional baggage an all out assault on your enemy might bring. Believe me, it's relatively painless when executed correctly, otherwise, you're right. You get caught up in a long protracted war. And I used to think I was the builder type. How times change.

To answer your original question then I would have to say no, I've never built the "Great Wall" defense.

[Avenoct]

[Irrelevant]

-Smack

[Scipio Centaurus]

Re: Re: The Great Wall Defense

Originally posted by TKG
...never succesfully attempted something like this [the Great Wall defense] in smac though. i just guard my bases with 2 trance 3res or trance 3pulse and the AI just doesn't attack me. in fact, i have never lost an interior base, and the only time in recent history i can think of that i even lost any base was unguarded size 2 colony that i founded right next to santiago. BTW i play librarian.

Sorry I digressed in response to the note about your adolescent activities...

I actually contemplated that the wall defense was to protect crawlers left out in the open w/o sentry protection. Like you, I almost never lose interior bases to combat action. I did lose a couple to revolts when I was first learning how to manage drones under FM... and the AI will occaisionally snatch one of my outposts in sneak attacks.

But the wall is really only pertinent to the defense of crawlers and formers. Do you use a lot of crawlers when you play?

- Scipio

[Drago Sinio]

Another option for a protected energy park, is to use one borehole per base, inside the base radius, to crawl energy back to the science base. Then your base air defense will automatically scramble to protect any attack on your crawlers. Also you can armour the crawlers, which means the attacker needs to attack twice to kill your crawler, since the armoured crawler will survive the first attack, even if your interceptor loses the battle. And if your bases are close enough to gether that you can locate the borehole where it can be defended by two bases interceptors, that s even more protection.

This also gives you the flexibilty to take the crawler off the borehole for a few turns, and use the borehole to boost the base mineral count if you are building something important in that particular base at the time, also you have the option of boosting your science base's mineral production by switching the crawler from energy to mineral production if you need to rush something at the science base.

[Blake]

I never conquer my trading partners, war is much too uncivilised for a pacifist builder such as myself .

However I am a little partial to vaporising every faction which ever annoyed me just before AtT
mmmm singularity planetbusters.

Btw, my solution to the "soft chewy centre" problem is not using crawlers at all, this is a remarkably effective method to prevent the AI from sniping my crawlers.
Most of my terraforming is done before D:AP, and once fusion arrives I armour my remaining formers (plasma or silksteel), and escort them with AAA rovers when they are working close to enemy bases.

[NorthSwordsman]

Originally posted by Smack

Now if we could only funnel those noodles into an airborne tar-pit of sorts...cream filling heheh.

I think we can! What's to stop someone from building a "pocket" with crawlers and then sticking a couple of locusts or SAM troops in the pocket in bunkers? FLY TRAP! If you have them defended with some high armor AAA troops equipped with SAM ability or a combo thereof, wouldn't that do the job?

[Scipio Centaurus]

Heh! heh!

Thought I would give Morgan another go [SMAX/Transcend/original factions], but this time I took blind research. It was more than 100 years before the game gave up IndAuto to me! Worse... I only got 1 of the 3 resource restriction lifting techs in the meantime and Lal snatched the WP, so I fell way behind on boreholes and condensors, let alone raising land for an energy park. It's MY 2393 right now and I'm at Shard/Fusion, but I still don't have MMI?!

I've been running double blind since IndAuto. It wouldn't be so bad, but the AI factions don't seem to suffer the same lack of direction that my own researchers labor under. They all had DocAP long before I did, and of course would not trade it to me.

I did manage to get 1 secret project, but that went up in a radioactive cloud when Zakharov PBd my HQ for no reason whatsoever.

I was gonna get even, but it would have take me 45 years just to build my own PB... so I tossed up my patented mindworm wall instead. Worked like a charm again. All airborne attacks and invasions terminated upon completion.

Unfortunately I'm too far behind schedule on boreholes and condensors. The UoP is the only faction worth stealing techs from in this game, and Zak's got the HSA... I did manage to infiltrate him before he got it, though.

We'll have to see if Zak is foolish enough to actually build the Voice of Planet, because I think that and a steady diet of upgraded crawlers into my Ascent SP, is the only way I'm gonna win this one. No way I'm gonna accumulate 35,000 EC like last time.

- Scipio

[Ned]

Scipio, Welcome to the world of double-blind. It really makes the game a nail-biter, doesn't it? Ned

[Zakharov VII]

Speaking of double blind, what's a good trascendence time to shoot for playing double blind (tech stag, SMAC, transcend)? I think I'm doing pretty well but I'd like to know for sure ...I was University, so I could count on trading Morgan for the build techs (Industrial Automation much later than I would have liked from him, but better then than when the game decides to give it to me!). But I'm getting off topic, if anyone is REALLY interested in my double blind/tech stag experience, I can start a new thread.

About the Great Wall defense (back on topic ), since I usually build a lot of crawlers, I do a variation of the Great Wall with the crawlers. Since I have so many crawlers, in many places it's a double/triple thick Great Wall. The only problem is crawlers are so weak. However, since crawlers can take their turn and THEN crawl resources, you can upgrade the ones in danger to something nice (best armor, trance/ECM whatever depending on circumstance) on their turn, and then resume crawlering. Even if it doesn't kill the enemy, this usually gives me enough time (and weakens the enemy considerably) to bring in one of my rovers to deal with the threat.

Z