Neat little trick..?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Drop 1-1-1 police units are IMO the best means to get conquered bases under control in short order.

re: the Nerve staple issue. Aside from moral/ethical issues if you role play and actually have heartburn about committing atrocities, the use of Nerve Stapling in the early game coupled with a FM switch helps sgnificantly.

Say for example you are running an ICS expansion routine (no military garrisons for police effects) and continue to have you bases waffle between size 1-2. At the point you are intending an early switch to FM (say for grins and giggles MY 2110 - 20 ish), it often suits you to pre-emptively staple all bases that are likely to clock over to size 2 the turn prior to making the SE change. Reason being say you have 3 or so bases affected that entails about 30 yrs of sanctions without trade. Boo friggin hoo, the amount of commerce you have is nonexistant anyway. In the meantime you have 3 or so bases that are stapled for 10 turns of drone free productions allowing mins fromthe second otherwise drone citizen.

I know people will say what about the effect on ecodamage. You want your first fungal pop ASAP any help to force the pop is actually a help not a hindrance.

[Commy]

A friend of mine (who won't post on Apolyton because he thinks we are scary) plays University and does police state and green...I don't really understand why, -2 growth is just really bad in my opinion, I'd rather do free market and have -5 police than -2 growth....

Anyway, me and him played multiplayer a few times (mostly hotseat), and somehow he consistently killed me early on...eventually I would come back, and win most of the time, but still, it was scary, because I knew I was much better than him (reason why he always lost in the end)...I guess any player would be screwed when when 5 particle impactors attack one of your bases...and you only have 2 bases total, each with only one unit...

[Chaos Theory]

To start with, there's no reason you should have just 2 bases by the time any opponent has 5 impact units. If you want to figure out what he's doing, save the game during early years, and once the game is over, open them from his side.

[Commy]

No, no, no...usually I'd have more than 2 bases, and he'd have about 3 or 4 impact rovers...but then he'd take half of my bases or so, bringing me down to 2 or 3 bases, sometimes even 1...by then he'd have 5 or more impact rovers...

It's also important to note two things...first, we played solely on tiny maps, because the game was usually shorter and turns took less time...second, he played as university, so if he chose applied physics as his free tech, he'd only have to research two techs to get impact rovers...and being the University, on a tiny map, that would take 10 turns at the most, especially with two bases...

Generally, IIRC, he'd use the extra colony pod (transcend) and found a base like one or two squares from his HQ, and then start building only military units...he sometimes only attacked with recon rovers, or with scout rovers (although rarely)...

Obviously, without early infastructure, he could easily be defeated early on if you could resist his intial attack...

I don't think his strategy would work on a standard or even a small map, as people would be far enough (usually) to have time to build more bases...

In short, I'm mostly a builder, and will only start building actual military units (offense) after I get some infastructure up...in fact, the first offense units I build are usually 6e-1-2...