Defense

[Nabvrimn]

What are your alien life settings? If they're high and land mass is high or you're playing on the planet map the planet bonus can be golden. Diedre and Dawn can go on the warpath without researching centauri empathy or nonlinear math first. Nobody else can manage that. Dawn wars better in the pre NLM days, but Diedre can take advantage of the captured bases better.

[Natalinasmpf]

Plus worms are damned expensive, I can buy 5 scouts for each worm, and I'll make that trade.

You realise I wasn't talking about worms. I meant the PSI defense armour, the one you can build with Eudaimonia. Singularity disassociative wave string-disruptor shock troops with PSI defense with neural amp. Stuff like that.

Also, worms are good in the right situations. Naturally you use them to attack, defense is another thing. The funny thing is that defending on PSI can be a bad thing early game, but then it could be a good thing in the late game.

Yes cheap troops are good at taking psi stuff out, but you realise thats why they each have its place. Psi units are good against expensive units. Expensive units are good against cheap units, etc. Its the tactical situation. Therefore they are used in the right situations.

You can have both a soporific and disassociative PSI and Stasis Generator ECM AAA garrisons in the same stack, to fend off attacks. Use a cheap unit to take out the PSI garrison? Get whomped by the stasis garrison. Use an expensive unit to take out the stasis generator? Get whomped by the psi defense (with neural amp).

This is good especially vs. Morgan or low morale units...

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Natalinasmpf

Plus worms are damned expensive, I can buy 5 scouts for each worm, and I'll make that trade.

You realise I wasn't talking about worms. I meant the PSI defense armour, the one you can build with Eudaimonia. Singularity disassociative wave string-disruptor shock troops with PSI defense with neural amp. Stuff like that.

Also, worms are good in the right situations. Naturally you use them to attack, defense is another thing. The funny thing is that defending on PSI can be a bad thing early game, but then it could be a good thing in the late game.

Yes cheap troops are good at taking psi stuff out, but you realise thats why they each have its place. Psi units are good against expensive units. Expensive units are good against cheap units, etc. Its the tactical situation. Therefore they are used in the right situations.

You can have both a soporific and disassociative PSI and Stasis Generator ECM AAA garrisons in the same stack, to fend off attacks. Use a cheap unit to take out the PSI garrison? Get whomped by the stasis garrison. Use an expensive unit to take out the stasis generator? Get whomped by the psi defense (with neural amp).

This is good especially vs. Morgan or low morale units...

D-Wave works both ways, and that late in the game its fairly easy to spam out blink/D-wave choppers. I had thought about psi armor, but generally by that point the game is decided one way or another.

[Chaos Theory]

Worms are useful when used sparingly, if you're behind in technology, or your opponent likes expensive units. There's a huge difference between relying on worms for defense, and using them to constrain your opponent.

Psi armor is insignificant - why hasn't the game already been won by this point?

[Mead]

Originally posted by grobnok
But when I check the Dedire always beat me in tech by being the first. Is my copy of the game defective?

I don't think so.

I saw that Dedire seemed to well at tech.

I think it was a combination of her going for more of a builder versus conquer strategy, perhaps combined with more AA's from her green SE.

Most of all, I think that she benefited from good energy from her high efficency.


Mead

[grobnok]

Originally posted by Mead


I don't think so.

I saw that Dedire seemed to well at tech.

I think it was a combination of her going for more of a builder versus conquer strategy, perhaps combined with more AA's from her green SE.

Most of all, I think that she benefited from good energy from her high efficency.


Mead

Damn how can I beat her?

[Whoha]

Infinite city sprawl! Crawler abuse! Orbitals! Chop and drop! specialists!

Seriously we need more information from you:

What faction are you playing?
what social engineering settings are you running under(democracy,free market,etc)?
what is your overall terraforming plan(are you building farm/solar/road all over the place? forests all over the place? boreholes and condensors? how are you ordering your formers around?)
about how many units are you building per city, and how much are you paying in support per turn?
If the answer to that previous question was alot of units, are you using them or are they sitting on their butt most of the time?

You already answered your tech beeline I think, you need to go for industrial automation first. Its critical, no matter what you want to do, it gives you wealth, crawlers,hab complexes, and the planetary transit system.

[-SafaN-]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
Worms are useful when used sparingly, if you're behind in technology, or your opponent likes expensive units. There's a huge difference between relying on worms for defense, and using them to constrain your opponent.

Psi armor is insignificant - why hasn't the game already been won by this point?

A week ago i won my first conquest game with dierdre only using native units: it was huuuuuge. I play on trancend and had myself severely restriced:
-only native units
-no supply crawlers
-no peace treatys
it worked like a charm
won around 2295 but wasn't playing optimal.

Greetz

[Chaos Theory]

That's fine, but you were playing against the AI. You can take ridiculously suboptimal actions and still win against the AI. You can win without even founding a single base, as Dierdre or Cha Dawn, if you can reach all of your opponents.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
That's fine, but you were playing against the AI. You can take ridiculously suboptimal actions and still win against the AI. You can win without even founding a single base, as Dierdre or Cha Dawn, if you can reach all of your opponents.

True

I did this "nomad" challenge twice. Its actually pretty boring since either you can reach your opponents and you win or you find some are on unconnected landmasses and you can't ( well unless you get a boat to pop out from a land pod OR the AI will terraform a land link to you-- I don't have the patience to play it out to see if either of those unlikely events would occurr.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by -SafaN-


A week ago i won my first conquest game with dierdre only using native units: it was huuuuuge. I play on trancend and had myself severely restriced:
-only native units
-no supply crawlers
-no peace treatys
it worked like a charm
won around 2295 but wasn't playing optimal.

Greetz

Nice-- its always nice to win to find new challenges.

I can just tell you that a native only strategy is no good against a good human. trance and empath scouts are cheap to blunt your attack and artillery will just munch your worms.

Natives are good early and are always a decent addition to a mixed force. later, natives are more limited although locusts are a great limitd purpose unit.

[grobnok]

Originally posted by Whoha
Infinite city sprawl! Crawler abuse! Orbitals! Chop and drop! specialists!

Seriously we need more information from you:

What faction are you playing?
what social engineering settings are you running under(democracy,free market,etc)?
what is your overall terraforming plan(are you building farm/solar/road all over the place? forests all over the place? boreholes and condensors? how are you ordering your formers around?)
about how many units are you building per city, and how much are you paying in support per turn?
If the answer to that previous question was alot of units, are you using them or are they sitting on their butt most of the time?

You already answered your tech beeline I think, you need to go for industrial automation first. Its critical, no matter what you want to do, it gives you wealth, crawlers,hab complexes, and the planetary transit system.

University. I can't take the negative social effects of social engineering so I'm only running on knowledge which has none. And cybernetic in the future but I have never gotten that late into the game. I automate the formers. I build 2 units per city before there are aircrafts to prevent the aggressive factions from conquering me. And some bases have 1 former except university base which are building secret projects. So I'm paying 1 support for some bases.

[Chaos Theory]

Originally posted by grobnok

University. I can't take the negative social effects of social engineering so I'm only running on knowledge which has none. And cybernetic in the future but I have never gotten that late into the game.

Well, it's part of the game to take negative SE effects along with the positive. Even the AI does this, though poorly

I automate the formers.

Ack!!!

I build 2 units per city before there are aircrafts to prevent the aggressive factions from conquering me.

There are much more efficient ways of not being conquered than spending all these minerals

And some bases have 1 former except university base which are building secret projects. So I'm paying 1 support for some bases.

And 1 former/base is pretty light, especially later in the game. But if you just automate them, it might be for the better...

[Whoha]

Originally posted by grobnok

University. I can't take the negative social effects of social engineering so I'm only running on knowledge which has none. And cybernetic in the future but I have never gotten that late into the game. I automate the formers. I build 2 units per city before there are aircrafts to prevent the aggressive factions from conquering me. And some bases have 1 former except university base which are building secret projects. So I'm paying 1 support for some bases.

this explains much. First off on social engineering you have to look at costs and benefits of what you get(all of the choices are better then frontier if you play towards that strength).Try running democracy/Planned/Knowledge. Just try it out. the penalties will hurt, but the +'s are awesome. I'd suggest trying a game with FM to, but it takes some getting used to. the key with that setup is that demo cancels planned's efficiency penalty, and the industry bonus somewhat offsets the support hit. also, if you build a children's Crech in a base the base enters a permenant state of pop boom meaning that every turn if there is food there will be a new citizen there to work.

the AI is considered quite dumb by everyone here, you can't automate the formers to get the most out of them. Every base needs 1 +2 nutrient square, and the rest should probably be forests early on. Forests are great for several reasons, 1 being that they spread on their own saving you former time,2 being they give good resources(key:food/minerals/energy 1/2/1 initially, then 2/2/1 with a tree farm, then 3/2/2 with a hybrid forest, making them quite productive terrain),3 being that you can use supply crawlers with forests to get additional of whatever you need at each city easily with forests. There are some other strategies, energy parks,all specialists, but forest and forget is by far the easiest.

[Whoha]

also if you are running alien crossfire I can give you a truly horrifying Scenario :P the current game I'm playing I have 325 non combat units(formers,crawlers,probe teams,etc)