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**Main_Brain** · February 11, 2003, 16:20

With his Growth and Industry Yang is a Fine builder.
A lil' harder as he lacks Energy but well.
an EnergyPark takes care of that :=)

**sevencubed** · February 11, 2003, 17:23

Apart from pumping out as many crawlers as you can, which you say you have done already, the only thing u have to do if you want to fight people is to use the industry rating in your favour. Usually the other factions should not be able to keep up with you when it comes to replenishing troops, so keep them coming...

And it should be amazingly easy since : you should choose Police state and get +2 support (more free troops) and no negative efficiency. Add Planned as you say and here is a total of +2 Industry and +3 growth. The real boost will come if you build the Cloning Vats which will eliminate the negatives of Power and Thought Control. Can you see the pattern? you have a total of +3 Industry, Infinite growth, +4 police, +4 morale, +2 probe, and +4 support! who cares about energy reserves and the rest of tech, i guess that with such ratings Yangs army should be HUGE so what is holding you from fighting others?

The only strategy you should look after is that which will get you to the Cloning Vats before the others do.

**Xian** · February 11, 2003, 17:36

Have one decent sized and industrial capacity base pump out nothing but colony pods and ship them everywhere. Youd be surprised how well this works on big maps, but you need doctrine flexibility to really work well

Gain control of the monsoon Jungle, or kill whoevers occupying it.

If you havent already, gain control of the Weather Paradigm and Cloning Vats

This is the only faction where you can build a military and have it sitting there doing nothing, in every other faction support and lack of Industry would kill you.

... You can use this standing army to your advantage and bully people for techs

Dont be afraid of choosing Green

**Datajack Franit** · February 11, 2003, 18:03

Playing as the Hive is too easy.. dull.. boooring

**CEO Aaron** · February 11, 2003, 18:30

Without Democracy or a big economy, pop booming is pretty much out of the question for you, so securing the planetary transit network is fairly critical for you, to be able to keep pace growth wise with other factions, as is, obviously, the Cloning Vats. Truth be told, however, you can't expect to beat the builders to this technology, so your best bet is to beeline for Planned, Police, grabbing doctrine Flexibility on the way, then beelining for Doctrine: Air Power. Get your foil probes out early, and find your enemies (all other factions are your enemy, btw), rape them for tech, then use your high industry and support to flood them with X-missile rovers.

Meanwhile, back at home, take all your stolen tech and build any and all morale improving improvements and wonders you can grab, but don't go nuts with psych facilities, you'll be building punishment spheres in all your cities.

As for beelining IA, stop thinking like a builder, start thinking like a virus. Each new base you build is 4 more units with free support, another pus-infested boil on the face of Planet.

**Flubber** · February 11, 2003, 18:34

I find that the ICS (infinite city sprawl) works quite well for Yang-- I find the Cloning Vats to be a quite distant target and if Yang has a tech lead to get to it first, he likely is winning in any event. I aim for the Weather Paradigm and the PTS. The idea is to use better support to have a veritable HORDE of formers while police take care of unhappiness. I find I terraform mainly boreholes and condensor/farms with some forests ( I do this even before restrictions are lifted if the base has a forest of two to work .. The idea is to work 2-3 boreholes per base while you crawl the nutrients to keep the base fed. Base spacing is tight. A typical base may have a population of 4 with 3 citizens working boreholes and the 4th working or a doctor as necessary (If a doctor I will usually crawl more nutrients to grow to size 5 and use better specialists). Two crawled condensor farms keeps the population stable. Once this base is set up, you produce crawlers and formers to be used to improve a few super bases. About every 3rd or 4th one of the "regular" bases can be set up with morale enhancing facilities and will work at producing military units or probes.

About 3 or 4 main bases are chosen to be "super" bases in which you first crawl a lot of nutrients to grow , terraform forests to work, fill them with facilities for research and cash and then crawl and trawl energy like crazy. As cash and formers/crawlers become available, other bases get the "treatment". A creche and 12 excess crawled nuts can make for pretty fast growth.

Note on forests-- I generally love them but use them less as Yang. Usually I terraform forests until more advanced terraforming becomes available and work them only until restrictions start to lift.

IF I can accomplish this, Yang is a juggernaught . The main problems

1. getting to crawlers and the PTS as fast as good human opposition with better researching factions
2. Land and terrain issues-- If cramped on an island, it can take a while to get the necessary techs to get off that island and then it is that much longer to crawlers
3. Close neighbors and early fighting-- despite the possibilities for numerical advantage, Yang can be in trouble early due to a tech disadvantage

In a word, the problem is RESEARCH--The ECON rating hurts and the usual way to combat this is with the growth advantage so that size compensates for less enegy per base. I generally find that if Yang can find a way, any way to get the key techs, they can be pretty tough to beat.
BUt if Yang cannot get the WP or the PTS, it can be a long time to even get the ability to terraform well and the lack of the PTS ,means that the difficulty/impossibility of pop booming really really hurts

Just my 2 cents

**CEO Aaron** · February 11, 2003, 20:59

Further Meditations on Yang as a Builder

I've been thinking over my comments re: Yang's game, and I have some more thoughts to impart:

Specialists are your friend: Unaffected by economy or efficiency, you can pile these guys on to artifically crank your labs to pretty high levels, provided you can trawl nutrients to feed them. You still won't have that much cash to rush facilities, but your industry and support can make up for that somewhat.

Explore like mad: Since you're not going to be in Planned Economy for the duration of the game, you're free to scour the seas for Unity Pods. Start out with a transport foil, with an armed foil escort, but once you get the technology, scrap these in favor of IODs. Always grab your Unity pods with transports to maximise your Alien Artifacts. Those seaborne pods are loaded with cash, tech and free units, just too good to pass up. Most builders will be running FM/Demo, so odds are they won't be sparing too many explorers to search Planet for the riches that await you. Make sure you beat them to it.

Shake them all down: Even if you have no intention of launching a full-scale offensive, you can bluff many a human opponent into a few tech bribes, just to leave them alone. Most builders want to be left in peace to build, and will gladly send you packing with a tech or some energy credits.

**Mongoose** · February 11, 2003, 21:08

Re: Further Meditations on Yang as a Builder

Originally posted by CEO Aaron
Shake them all down: Even if you have no intention of launching a full-scale offensive, you can bluff many a human opponent into a few tech bribes, just to leave them alone. Most builders want to be left in peace to build, and will gladly send you packing with a tech or some energy credits.

What MP crowd do you play in? Can I play, too?

I have NEVER seen any human player bribe a human controlled Hive to leave them alone. Prime reason being that you can't trust another human to take the bribe and leave. More likely, he takes the bribe and attacks you anyway, more vigorously than he might have done - thanks to the new tech and/or ec.

**Flubber** · February 11, 2003, 21:21

Shake me down

Never happen-- If I am in a hopeless position I would appeal to the other players for help which I might get if taking my bases would make you too strong-- we did this for mongoose when he came on in vets2 as a replacement in an awful position

If your assault is unstoppable, I would burn terraforming, bases, self destruct units etc all in an attempt to make your assault as unprofitable and costly as possible. If I burned my outer ring of bases you would have a delay in getting to the next ring in which I could at least attempt a defense. What you would NOT get is an extorted tech (you would have to steal them) and I might even give any advanced techs to your enemies just to spite you.

I feel this behaviour mimics real world in which one would do everything possible to hurt a conqueror.

AS to your other points

1. I agree that specialists are great but it is tough to get a lot of them when pop booming is either hard/unavailable

2. Explore-- yes yes yes -- explore like mad and I would add that you should send probeships everywhere and steal tech rather than extort it-- Yes a theft might peeve the victim but start with the AI and with humans the reality is that if they are not pacted with you forever, they are only a potential enemy anyway. I also like stealing energy from AI rich factions-- they sometimes have thousands stockpiled.

**Mongoose** · February 12, 2003, 01:23

Hmmm...speaking of Vets2...turn?

**Flubber** · February 12, 2003, 03:36

tomorrow for vets 2-- I post sometimes from work where playing is impossible-- and I cannot play any turns on Tuesaday the way my schedule is

**CEO Aaron** · February 12, 2003, 03:42

I don't see how giving away a non-weapon tech to a human controlled faction is necessarily suicide. Sure, if I gave you Non-Linear Math, sure I deserve the horrible violation you have in store for me, but there are plenty of techs whose use encourage an immediate investment into infrastructure, and if you're building facilities, you're not building units.

If you're the kind of sleazy backstabbing git who can't just take his free cookie and bother someone else, then I will certainly never give you tech to go away again. If going back on your word is commonplace in the multiplayer games you're in, no you certainly _CAN'T_ play in any games I'm in.

**Datajack Franit** · February 12, 2003, 05:18

This is a stupid question

but where are you playing multiplayer games?

**Lazerus** · February 12, 2003, 08:23

yeah i remember when i tried the no former game and had every square crawled and all my people working as specialists i acheived far better results then i expected to.
In most of my recent games where the map has been standard or smaller i've considered the PTS a second rate project really since with my growth rating most bases are size 3 already and instantly concentrate on crawlers. I remember playing huge maps against the comps where this project was a goldmine literally doubling my pop every few turns (finished the game with around 3700+).
About super bases normally i switch my third base to getting recycling tanks and formers earliest and when i've got ability to build crawlers that base shoots up then i make sure my capital gets up aswell since i do crawl energy to this later. Just played a game against the comp trying to make use of an energy park, it worked fairly well since i only had third of the bases i noramlly had. Prefer size though since mineral production is higher and i've got more perimeter defenses lying about.

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