How do you use Mindworms?

[Commy]

I'm just curious, when and how do you use mindworms, if at all? I've played a good number of games with them, sometimes solely with worms, othertimes combining them with conventional forces of varying degrees...

I have had good success with them, as they are a lot cheaper than mid-game units, especially those with missiles, chaos guns, or better...at least until quantum or singularity reactors...however, they have many problems...no special abilities, bad against missiles, expensive in early game, require many facilities to actually become useful, etc...

[Kinjiru]

If your social engineering combines to give a positive planet rating, you can easily achieve a total conquest victory with nothing but mind worms.

And expensive? They are the cheapest units you can find! In fact, this army will pay YOU!!

Just build about five 1-1-1 units, send them out to the nearest fungal patch and start worm farming. Once you have captured two worms, game over. You just keep using your worms as farmers until

a) you have generated more cash than a free marketer could ever hope to produce,
b) most of your worms have grown as large as possible, and
c) you have a huge army.

Then you start attacking, mindful to never stack your worms (lest a whole stack get wiped).

[Commy]

Mindworms are cheap, indeed, but cost 50 minerals...on the other hand, a 1-3-1 unit only costs 20...

True, if you are the Gaians, you can go worm hunting, or wait until you can do green economy...in this case, you probably won't need to build any units...

[Chaos Theory]

Mind worms are most useful when you're behind on tech, either overall or in a tactical situation. They're adequate defense against needlejets/choppers if you don't have SAM or AAA. They can take out probe teams at handy times by moving through fungus. Their sighting can induce your opponent to build trance units, costing them minerals or the opportunity to add other abilities (such as ECM). They're great for popping pods. Overall, they spice up a military and, in small numbers, make it much stronger and more threatening.

[cal_01]

Originally posted by Kinjiru
If your social engineering combines to give a positive planet rating, you can easily achieve a total conquest victory with nothing but mind worms.

And expensive? They are the cheapest units you can find! In fact, this army will pay YOU!!

Just build about five 1-1-1 units, send them out to the nearest fungal patch and start worm farming. Once you have captured two worms, game over. You just keep using your worms as farmers until

a) you have generated more cash than a free marketer could ever hope to produce,
b) most of your worms have grown as large as possible, and
c) you have a huge army.

Then you start attacking, mindful to never stack your worms (lest a whole stack get wiped).

This strategy is so awesome. I once set the planet to random conditions and random faction, and got a planet with lots of xenofungus and... Cha Dawn! In short, I basically rolled over everyone.

[Ghidorah]

I've never been a worm user, but I just gave the Cult a first try the other day, and the worms were great. Miriam was right next door, and she had the biggest army in the world until I started with her. Don't think I lost a single worm on offense, and the fast movement without hasty penalties was very tasty for making overwhelming mass out-of the-blue attacks on bases. The ability to hide in fungus and heal up nice and fast was great for keeping up a rolling offensive too. Deirdre fell pathetically easily too, and her planet bonus and fancy perimeters did nothing to save her. Nice.

But it was painfully obvious the whole time how pathetically easily my (very mineral-intensive) offensive could have been brought to a screeching halt.
If they'd only made a bunch of 10 mineral trance scouts, I would've been stopped in my tracks for a fraction of the cost of my very pricey worms. And most people (even the AI!) are going to have a whole bunch of trance and/or 3r units around anyway. Especially if they're right next to Cha Dawn.
Or if they'd done some terraforming and cleared away the fungus, forcing my expensive wormies to stop dead next to their bases, ripe for the mass plucking off (btw, if a normal defender stacked with a worm loses, does the worm die too?). Even hand-weaponed garrisons seem to have a very good chance of winning on the attack. Worms don't seem to get the planet bonus on defense either, is that right? In any case, whenever my worms were forced to defend, even in fungus, they performed pretty damn poorly. Add a few empath rovers into the mix and I reckon a worm-only horde is gonna get soundly massacred.
But I have no doubt that this is because no idea how to use the things properly. I'd really like to hear some native offensive strategies for those times your enemy hasn't just left you a nice fungus bridge straight to their tranceless capital.

No support cost in fungus seems a REAL gem to me, though. Has anyone had success using them as support-cheap backup defenders? I was thinking it could maybe be defensively worthwhile to have a biolab city and leave a bit of fungus in your empire and near the borders, and just leave these guys around as a bit of a counterpunching defensive force, as well as cashcows. Even for a non-green faction. I'm thinking Domai in particular, with his good production, lagging tech and ordinary support. He'd also certainly gain the element of surprise with a sudden worm force turning up in defense!

[Mart]

I use few of them. I rarely play Gaians or Cult.
However, I have seen some interesting strategy of a friend of mine. He played Spartans and created mindworm army threatening quite efficiently all other human players.

[Lazerus]

Even as the Gaians i'll rarely use them in the later stages of the game, early though they are very useful for generating cash and exploring. Also perhaps taking some weakly defended outer bases, but against a player who's got sensor arrays and a few bases packed tight enough together to easily produce half a dozen 1-1t-1 units i've found them to be of very limited effectiveness especially since most players will not have fungus anywhere near their bases.
They do make decent defenders against FM players especially if you've got the neural amp, nothing like seeing him waste a few of his better trained units just to torch a bug.

[spartak]

worm free zone - except for attacking me.

[Nabvrimn]

I don't use worms for real offense much, but If I capture a IotD with worms onboard (usually from popping a pod) I'll leave them on some worthless uninhabited island full of fungus and farm them for cash. Eventually when I've got a bunch of demon boils I'll load them into IotDs and have them raid somebody, but not with the intent of serious conquest, just to force them to spend resources. I also use IotDs to defend sea cities since they can easily be moved around like ships, but don't recieve the "in port" penalty. I also keep a small reserve of independant worms on my home continent to deal with enemy incursions (or worm incursions). I very rarely actually build any native life.

[molly bloom]

In an emergency as a draught excluder, but usually as explorers and sentries.

[Commy]

Every game I play, I beeline for Secrets of the Human Brain...not for the free tech (although its nice), but for hypnotic trance...

Immediately after getting hypnotic trance, I obsolete the scout patrol and give it the trance ability...

Every time I found a new base, I use the free ten minerals to build a 1-1t-1 unit...

Essentially, my bases are immune to any stray mindworms...my next 3 techs I will go for are centauri empathy, ecological engineering, and synthetic fossil fuels...

With these techs and are their prerequisites, each base can have a 1-3t-1 defense, and a few 6e-1-1 rovers will be floating around...

While if I'm playing the Gaians, I might not do this, as I'll have plenty of mindworms, most boil, mature boil, or better, but I have found this strategy very effective for almost any faction and any SE...it works especially well for Morgan with -3 planet and -3 support...

[Mead]

I'll use worms if I capture them, but I seldom actually make them.

They are useful for fast travel through the fungus with all the benifits that gives.

They can be more useful for defense if you have the NA.


Nowadays, I tend to avoid making native lifeforms (except for locusts, man are they expensive to build).

I will sometime still make locusts because they are very useful for occupying bases after the choppers empty it out, particularly those sea bases that you can't drop into.


I don't think I have ever captured a locust, I don't know how. Can you capture a locust? It seems you can capture every other form of native life form.


Even though I may make locust from time to time, once I get the ability to make grav ships (if the game lasts that long) I won't make them anymore.


Mead

[Commy]

What ends up happening is that once you get singularity reactors, decent units can be made that are cheaper than locusts of chiron...

Another problem with locusts is that they don't get the 3 to 2 attack advantage in psi combat, only worms on land get that...

[Darsnan]

Re: How do you use Mindworms?

Originally posted by Commy
I'm just curious, when and how do you use mindworms, if at all?

I'm a Gaian player by nature and have always used the Gaian mindworm capture capability to then start popping pods. Some pods produce rovers. Because these rovers possess the Gaian +10% Planet rating, why they then often survive battles against NL's. These units, once upgraded at a monolith and upgraded to Best Weapon/1/2 capability (usually a 4/1/2 unit) accompanied by a worm army can definately inflict some significant damage on an adversary (or at the very least intimidate an adversary into seeking a lucrative peace offering).
Later, after discovery of Doc:AP why worms serve as the first line of defense in that they are usually chosen first in battle against a/c, thus saving my AA Rovers for a counterattack against the a/c!
Finally, in a couple of games, I've created moving walls of LoC's to impede an enemies ability to penetrate my airspace, whether with a/c, missiles, or PB's.


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