Fungus/Worm Armageddeon

[RolandtheMad]

Occasionally a game will come to one last show down between myself and a roughly equal power. My answer is, of course, a massed Planet Buster first strike accompanied with Nerve Gas Jets. Planet doesn't seem to like this? Shortly following will be a flood of biblical proportions (not really a problem), and then an unending horde of worms and locust.

Last game I was pretty far down the tech tree and was playing SMACX, so I used the Resonance 9 shields for police/garrisons along with tachyon barriers and all the relevant secret projects (+50% psi defense, etc). The garrisons seemed to hold out real well, taking 5-10 demon boils to destroy a unit, but attrition held the day.

I found that by attacking the boil stacks with my garrisons I could take them all out in one fell swoop, but I could only kill one unit at a time with the air support (why?). The only problem with this is that there would usually be 2 or 3 stacks at a time and they would regenerate the next turn. I tried to build more garrisons after it started but the never ending tide of worms overtook my industrial capacity.

I have a feeling no matter how many garrisons I had prepared I would've eventually succumbed to the worms. Even if I kept the worms out of the city they and the fungal eruptions would destroy the tile improvements. I could put alot of money into orbital resources but I usually don't have alot of time to prepare except for a few planet busters which I like to keep handy anyway.

Any ideas on how to stem this demon boil tide?

[Lazerus]

use empath rovers rather then air units to eliminate whole stacks.

[RolandtheMad]

Does it ever end or do they just keep coming forever?

[Commy]

Once eco-damage, stuff like sea-levels rising and such, starts, it's permanent, and will only get worse. The best you can do is prevent it from getting worse, although this is very hard. Sometimes you just have to sacrifice a few bases so you can hurry a Transcendant victory, or other wise you will be erradicated.

Overall, you're screwed. About the only thing that is really effective is never getting there in the first place. There are, however, two strategies that appear to work, although I never use them, for they are highly unpractical...

One is using only artillery. Artillery kills mindworms, regardless of their lifecycle. Only problem is on SMAX, spore launchers tend to kill this idea...

Another strategy is filling every possible square on the map with a unit. By doing so, fungus pops may occur, but no midworms can possibly appear in the same square...

My personal strategy is to use a couple of artillery units, and a lot of missiles. Wipe out offshore worms with missiles, weaken other worms artillery, and use a couple of empath tanks to take out the now weakened worm mush. When it comes to worms, take like Civilization Strategy. Either you take them all out on the same turn, or you don't attack at all...

[Whoha]

You have to prepare for a planetbuster strike if you don't want this to happen. build and sell off 5 preserves for every planet buster you plan on launching.

[RolandtheMad]

Well I wasn't really expecting it. I keep two garrisons per city and a few planet busters as a matter of policy. Isn't it funny how you can be in Pact with somebody the whole game but they always seem to turn on you in the end?

How does that work with the building and scrapping of preserves though?

[Chaos Theory]

You can hold off worms only if you attack them and destroy them in stacks. Artillery and empath land units are good at this. With the insane amounts of energy you should be getting, you can rush Centauri Preserves all across your empire and stem the flow of mind worms, or you can keep refreshing lost units to continuously attack the new worms. If all the fungal pops ruin your terraforming, depend more on satellites, or later on, harvest fungus directly. Boreholes also will survive fungal pops.

[Whoha]

The game apparently doesn't just count the number of buildings that reduce the effect of ecology, it counts the total number of these that were ever built. so building and selling off preserves works for some reason.

[Nabvrimn]

I'd use air superiority* empath choppers in water or coastal cities and empath rovers or tanks in land cities. Have a positive planet rating so you can capture mindworms and have those captured mindworms sit around your bases. I don't think they get penalties for being attacked in fungus, but in any case they were free so it doesn't matter so much if they get killed outside your bases.


* so you can attack locusts. Psi combat doesn't have the ground attack penalty for air superiority units.

[Zeiter]

Have a positive planet rating so you can capture mindworms and have those captured mindworms sit around your bases.

Usually you'll find that you won't be able to do this, you'll get a message saying "our psi talents think that these mind worms are being controlled by a higher sentience" or something like that, and even though you have a positive planet rating, you won't capture any. But the positive planet rating certainly helps with the combat, adding 10% for each point. If you can, switch to green and cybernetic while you're under assault, and that will help.

An easy way to combat the worm armageddon is just to have oodles and oodles of trance and empath units - at least 5, preferably 10+ per base. Combine that with 3 cheap infantry arty units per base, the neural amplifier, the dream twister, and a planet rating of +4, and you should be able to withstand at least 20 worms/base/turn.

I'd actually be curious to see what the absolute limit is for how many mind worms could pop up. Thousands? Millions? For instance, what would happen if you launched 100 planet busters on the same turn? How many defenders would you need? You'd have to have pre-built pressure domes in all bases, that's for sure. You'd have a complete worm infested water world on your hands. Could be a fun scenario...

And yes, like Navbrimn said, in order to attack locusts with ground units or artillery (or is it just artillery?) you must have the SAM ability on the unit.

[Dis]

Re: Fungus/Worm Armageddeon

Originally posted by RolandtheMad
Occasionally a game will come to one last show down between myself and a roughly equal power. My answer is, of course, a massed Planet Buster first strike accompanied with Nerve Gas Jets. Planet doesn't seem to like this? Shortly following will be a flood of biblical proportions (not really a problem), and then an unending horde of worms and locust.

Last game I was pretty far down the tech tree and was playing SMACX, so I used the Resonance 9 shields for police/garrisons along with tachyon barriers and all the relevant secret projects (+50% psi defense, etc). The garrisons seemed to hold out real well, taking 5-10 demon boils to destroy a unit, but attrition held the day.

I found that by attacking the boil stacks with my garrisons I could take them all out in one fell swoop, but I could only kill one unit at a time with the air support (why?). The only problem with this is that there would usually be 2 or 3 stacks at a time and they would regenerate the next turn. I tried to build more garrisons after it started but the never ending tide of worms overtook my industrial capacity.

I have a feeling no matter how many garrisons I had prepared I would've eventually succumbed to the worms. Even if I kept the worms out of the city they and the fungal eruptions would destroy the tile improvements. I could put alot of money into orbital resources but I usually don't have alot of time to prepare except for a few planet busters which I like to keep handy anyway.

Any ideas on how to stem this demon boil tide?

at least I feel like I'm not the only one now . See my thread about how I felt like nerve gas should not cause eco damage. I didn't like being raped by planet like that. I lost every single city (I hadn't prepared for the assault- I had never had that much ecodamage before) except one. And that was later taken by the believers. A loss for me.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Zeiter


Usually you'll find that you won't be able to do this, you'll get a message saying "our psi talents think that these mind worms are being controlled by a higher sentience" or something like that, and even though you have a positive planet rating, you won't capture any. But the positive planet rating certainly helps with the combat, adding 10% for each point. If you can, switch to green and cybernetic while you're under assault, and that will help.

An easy way to combat the worm armageddon is just to have oodles and oodles of trance and empath units - at least 5, preferably 10+ per base. Combine that with 3 cheap infantry arty units per base, the neural amplifier, the dream twister, and a planet rating of +4, and you should be able to withstand at least 20 worms/base/turn.

I'd actually be curious to see what the absolute limit is for how many mind worms could pop up. Thousands? Millions? For instance, what would happen if you launched 100 planet busters on the same turn? How many defenders would you need? You'd have to have pre-built pressure domes in all bases, that's for sure. You'd have a complete worm infested water world on your hands. Could be a fun scenario...

And yes, like Navbrimn said, in order to attack locusts with ground units or artillery (or is it just artillery?) you must have the SAM ability on the unit.

I think I remember launching about 6 or 8 fusion PB's and not getting hurt by planet that much. I was probably running green at the time.

But not like the scenario I described above. I used enough gas to accumulate 2000 years of sanctions. Planet did not like this. I had never seen such a relentless assault.

[Chaos Theory]

Originally posted by Zeiter

I'd actually be curious to see what the absolute limit is for how many mind worms could pop up. Thousands? Millions? For instance, what would happen if you launched 100 planet busters on the same turn? How many defenders would you need? You'd have to have pre-built pressure domes in all bases, that's for sure. You'd have a complete worm infested water world on your hands. Could be a fun scenario...

Sounds like a Starship Troopers scenario.

[Mead]

Defense Against Native Life Forms in a High Eco Damage World

Before I learned about clean minerals I developed the following tactics to deal with the mind worms/locusts.

Make a lot of drop artillery.
These are useful as a 'fire brigade' to deal with any worm pops that appear near your land bases. If you have orbital insertion, then they can drop into any threatened land base and fire at the worms on the same turn. Follow up with land assault.

Concentrate on the big stack.
When there is a pop there will usually be worms in three squares per each pop. Two of these squares will often have only one worm in it. The third will have a large stack (sometimes 16 or more). Concentrate your offensive efforts on the large stack. Kill that stack first before you go after the other squares.

Remember that once you kill the native life in a square all the nearby ones seem to grow a life-cycle (as if they were not demon boil already).

Consider SAM artillery for the locusts.
I have not used this before, but have heard of its use by others. The SAM artillery softens up the locusts just as easily as the regular artilleary softens up the worms. I have been reminded that, because you can only have two special abilities per unit, you cannot make 'drop' SAM artillery. Deal with this by basing a couple of SAM artilleary in every base you want to protect, or give the units a high mobilty chassis to cover more ground.

I have not had to deal with the rampant worm attacks since I discovered clean minerals, but I am tempted to try a game where I am a complete eco-damaging, planet busting, and gassing demon to see just how badly I can tick planet off, and survive.



Mead

[Mead]

Defense Against Native Life Forms in a Watery World

If, as a result of your eco-damage, you get repeated warnings of sea level rising 1000+ meters over the next 10 or so years, you'll need to modify the above post to rely more upon fast ships to provide your artillery support instead of the 'drop artillery'.

If you use ships instead, I guess you could add empath as a special ability.


Oh, and like others said, having Neural Amp, Dream Twister, good planet rating, and those other good SPs (Phonos Mutagen (spelling?)) help out too. I usually like having the DT and a good planet rating. NA only helps with the defense and you don't want to be on the defense. NA is good to have, but only as a backup.


Mead