My current AC game...

[Velociryx]

I'd turtle, forget deploying the navy in the short term, and base your tech direction on the amount of terraforming you've done. If you've got the forming for it, go for wealth and crawl your way to greatness. Otherwise, restriction lifting and form in preparation for wealth afterwards.

In either case, market! To get there faster...

-=Vel=-

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Velociryx
I'd turtle, forget deploying the navy in the short term, and base your tech direction on the amount of terraforming you've done. If you've got the forming for it, go for wealth and crawl your way to greatness. Otherwise, restriction lifting and form in preparation for wealth afterwards.

In either case, market! To get there faster...

-=Vel=-

Good advice as long as the Yanger doesn't start building a navy. Good thing I infiltrated him. I'll try it and let you know what happens. The only big worry is that the base that the VW is being built in is being kept calm by a Battle Ogre at the moment. I guess I'll just cash that sucker in and hope to get it finished ASAP. Thanks for your response.

Most bases have 1-3 unexploited forest tiles right now, so there is some room for crawlers. Going wealth / crawlers will give me some time to get some kelp planted at the bases further afield for the restrictions lift / pop boom.

[Velociryx]

Meh...even if he does, you've only got two sea bases, and even if your military consists of nothing but a couple of prototypes, that's enough to handle anything he might land.

'sides, two sea bases gives you enough of a sea zone to serve as a general ops theater for the navy (I'm assuming they have connecting borders?), so you've got a bit of wiggle room there, and with your techs coming at a good clip, you won't have to do it for long....just enough to get the restrictions lifted, and maybe add wealth, then rock and roll...

-=Vel=-

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Meh...even if he does, you've only got two sea bases, and even if your military consists of nothing but a couple of prototypes, that's enough to handle anything he might land.

'sides, two sea bases gives you enough of a sea zone to serve as a general ops theater for the navy (I'm assuming they have connecting borders?), so you've got a bit of wiggle room there, and with your techs coming at a good clip, you won't have to do it for long....just enough to get the restrictions lifted, and maybe add wealth, then rock and roll...

-=Vel=-

Yea they do overlap a bit, and both are supportable by land based units as long as my transports survive. I should move the transports to nearby land bases if I see him coming, so that they don't go down with the last combat unit. I'm going to build a probe foil for home defense / patrolling as well. Perhaps I'll put a little armor on it so that it doesn't automatically get creamed by Yang's laser or impact ships. He's researching impact at the moment.

Hopefully he'll make the typical half-assed AI attack and I can bribe his ships for some weapons tech. All I have right now is synthmetal, and no weapons. Probes are going to have to do the job as has been the case so often in the past. I'll keep them close at hand so that they don't get picked off until I can get a few together and do a bounding overwatch approach to Yang's lands. Then I'm going to go all out for weapon tech parity via probe rape.

I'll be home in about an hour and give it a whirl. I can't wait! This is still a really fun game.

[Velociryx]

Looking forward to hearing how it goes!

-=Vel=-

[Straybow]

Which reminds me: MoNoLitH, if you're still watching, you should add ProbeFoil to the list of default units in alphax.txt. Greatly improves the AI's behavior. I've also rarely seen the AI make a rover Former without inserting it as a default unit.

#UNITS
[edit number of units listed]
…
MotorFormer,            Speeder,  Formers,      Scout,      9, 0, 0, EcoEng,  -1, 000000000000000000000000
ProbeFoil,              Foil,     Probe Team,   Scout,     11, 0, 0, IndAuto, -1, 000000000000000000000000

The enabling techs for these are chosen to be certain that both the chassis and the former/probe component are available before making the unit available. Feel free to experiment.

You can use Mobile instead of EcoEng for MotorFormer if you can refrain from building it should you have Doctrine: Mobility but not Centari Ecology (and don't care if the AI gets that exploit). Same with using DocFlex or PlaNets for ProbeFoil.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Looking forward to hearing how it goes!

-=Vel=-

Just as outlined here. I went Demo, then FM then Wealth and built crawlers, and everyone was about maxed on clean minerals with Commons and Nodes and Creches in place when I cruised through the restrictions and started on my tree farms. Yang was a pussycat, and "donated" several military techs once I got past restrictions (I timed it to keep a good pace on my beeline techs). I didn't get all of the SPs, but I did get all of the most important ones for me and a few others as well.

I also didn't manage to expand all the way to the second bureacracy warning before concentrating on vertical growth, something that was made abundantly clear to me when my genejacks caused a couple of largish native uprisings. I'm used to having enough clean minerals to handle 50+ , but with fewer Tree farms and Hybrid Forests Planet got pissed. Still, it's nothing a few blasts from my ships couldn't handle. I quit after I got the MMI and built the two projects associated with it, with Fusion coming in a couple of turns. At that point I'm unassailable, as long as I keep an eye open for PBs during the short period where they might be launched before my ODPs are in place.

All in all a fun game though. I'd like to play it again and improve on it. I was 20-30 years behind where I'd be in a University game under similarly good conditions. The one thing that hurt me in this game is the insane amount of fungus at sea that prevented me from making much of an early meet and greet effort. By the time I could spare the resources for that I was already running some SE choices that only Morgan or the Peacekeepers would love, and they were located on the other side of the world.

[Commy]

Actually I have seen the AI build rover formers quite a lot. Especially when you're at a pact with them, and they want to build a road network to connect them to you, assuming, of course, you're far away, but on the same continent...

[Enigma_Nova]

/me requests a screenshot

[Commy]

I bet you would like a screenshot of the AI crawling, too, wouldn't you? So would we all...

Unfortunately, I had to reinstall my game 4 times after screwing it up trying to get the no-cd crack thing to work. Used the wrong program. Four different wrong programs. Four times of reinstalling the game, crossfire, and all the updates...

Long story short, don't have the save files. Last time it happened was on the standard map of planet. Drones were on Mount Planet, I, being the Angels, were on the Eastern side of the Freshwater Sea, and the Cyborgs were on the west. I made a pact with Domai, who was at war with Aki-Zeta. He used his pact with me as a "right of passage" to take war parties of speeders and stuff straight to the Cyborgs. I saw him with two speeder formers creating a long road to me so he could get through faster...

What is an Enigma Nova anyway? Is it latin or something?

[smacksim]

Inspired by all this pirate talk I had to go give them a try. I'd never played them (just got Smax recently) and had passed them over for their weaknesses and lack of focus.

They are not at all weak. The does depend on Pods being on and having a decent starting location. I had to quit three pirate games around 2150 because I was dominating much too heavily.

Game 1: Find unoccupied Jungle with second colony foil. 9 bases at 3-4 population with Rec Commons running FM. 500 in the bank and all early SP's started or done, including the PTS. Yipes! Oh, and these are all on Huge-Tech Stagnation - Pods on maps.

Game 2: Find unguarded Manifold Nexus with first colony foil (don't settle right away unless you are sure is my opinion. This was MY2103). Proceeded to net about 5 larval IODs and 3 worms. These found the other factions popping pods along the way. Boxed in Chew-d-awn. Took the Jungle. Again.

Game 3: Again, find Nexus, again bag all early SPs, which is indicative of running away with the game.

Game 4: No nearby landmarks. Hey, I'm not ahead in research!

I'm impressed with the Pirates actually. The Manifold Nexus is probably the best landmark for them in the initial game, before running FM. In fact, it's hard not to want to forgo FM entirely for the early game with it. I've taken to b-lining for probes first of all, well, after Centauri Ecology. Ordinarily I'd study Social Psych or go for Industrial Economics if I can. However, by building transports early, early contact is probable. Factions are all warm and friendly in the early years. If not, there's a probe waiting in the wings.

-Smack

[Qwerty88]

Originally posted by Commy
I bet you would like a screenshot of the AI crawling, too, wouldn't you? So would we all...

Hmmm... It was supposed to show the picture.
Is there a better way to insert a picture you uploaded?

Well it works as a link now

[CEO Aaron]

Originally posted by smacksim
Inspired by all this pirate talk I had to go give them a try. I'd never played them (just got Smax recently) and had passed them over for their weaknesses and lack of focus.

They are not at all weak.

Play them against humans and tell me that. That is all.

[Commy]

Qwerty88, the link appears to be "lost"...

However, in a former thread, I do believe some pictures were shown of the peacekeepers crawling minerals, as well as the AI crawling fungus squares...

[Enigma_Nova]

Yeah, somehow the PKs were crawling 3 minerals.
I then went , then I as I realised how poor the comp was.