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**cal_01** · October 27, 2005, 21:58

Here's a quick and dirty one:

1. Get up to 6-8 bases, maybe HGP if you have time/want to increase the number of cities you have.
2. Terraform moderately by giving Forests on any non-rolling tile and plant roads connecting the cities.
3. Give every city a Recycling Bin or Rec Common. (Rec Commons aren't really needed, but it's up to you) Every city should have a decent mineral output by now.
4. Hoard up, and smash your neighbours.

**Blake** · October 27, 2005, 22:45

You also try running FM+Police State for variety. You can pretty much go on offensive wars with impunity. If you can get the AV too it's total gravy as you can use 1 police unit under FM =).

**Ogie Oglethorpe** · October 27, 2005, 23:10

Some thoughts with respect to the warriors in black.

As far as building infrastructure goes and builderish games, face it theindustry hit sucks and sucks hard. It will forever plague your game especially considering other factions have the double beneit of running wealth sometime in the future.

So what do you do.

Explore. Get your free rover out and find monoliths and pop pods. Pods are you friend and canbe an fearsome equalizer. When you have the opporutnity to go green do so. Free units mean mucho be they captured worms which you can cash in for mins, artifacts, unity rovers or cloned units.

Find where the opposition lies and prepare accordingly. Get probe teams in place for infiltration and then a massive probe rape of as many techs as you can pull off post haste.

An early war pre air power is often times something to be considered, as Santi despite her terrible industry can churn out elites by having a command center, a monolith (or trained special ability) and running fundy. Churn out best weapon -1-1's and start flooding the field with these typically 2 mineral row wonders.

While other factions typically need to go with rover rushes Santi churns out these babies with higher attack values considering morale bonuses but also +25% attack against base bonuses.

I like to play with infantry transports as well to get a bit more mobility. Its kind of cool to have a road up to an enemy base, load up an infantry transport with a 6-1-1 elite transport it one square, unload it. Have it attack twice per turn resulting ultimately in it being wounded down to 30%, reloading it onto the transport and then retreating it out of harms way two squares on that same road.

Just some minor ramblings. I'll comment a bit later as more folk post.

**Blake** · October 28, 2005, 00:33

One of the things that rules about Sparta is the ease of getting elite non-combat units. This is nearly impossible for any other faction employing a builder strategy, as Fundy is only really good combined with Wealth (from a builders perspective), and Power is never good unless you have the Cloning Vats.

**Senethro** · October 28, 2005, 03:25

Any suggestions on how to get Industrial Automation AND a little way up the social psych branch AND war techs under your own power?

I also look on Doc: Flex as a builder tech for all the money/instabuild pods you can get at sea.

Is Green really important for Sparta?

**binTravkin** · October 28, 2005, 03:56

Is Green really important for Sparta?

No it is not AFAIK. It is an excellent second hand choice if you can't run Demo-Planned and need some more effic.
It is also excellent choice if you manage to get it early on a fungus covered not very big planet - then you can troll the fungus and aid your army. A combined rover-MW force can do wonders because:

1.MWs = immune to probes
2.MWs = best way to kill defender with high armor or behind per def if you can't probe the perdef away.
3.Rovers = come in after MWs and seize the base.

A spartan rover has slightly less chance in dying in worm attack than any other, thus slightly more chance he'd be killing the MW or capturing it - both good options.

**Littiz** · October 28, 2005, 04:38

Quit bobbin' about skull or I'll mount ye on a pike!

Hey, a Torment (Annah) fan we have here!

off topic sorry

**smacksim** · October 28, 2005, 06:55

I find that the Spartans, of all the factions, are most tempting to go to war with. The lack of industry makes them Green with envy over the nice base facilities of their neighbors. With other 'momentum' factions you have other options because of high growth/industry/support strategies available. But still, the Spartans are quite flexible in the traditional sense of being able to grow/research/build or make war in a traditional strategy. Thus I'd say that they are a good faction for a newer player or one so advanced they are willing to take some handicapps to their builder game for the fun of being Santiago the Merciless later on.

The Spartans can make a cleaner cut as war surgeons. Their units are irresistable to the unprepared. A handful of Spartans does the work of the hordes of Hive or Bible-thumping minions of the Believers. Generally its more predictable to make war en masse with those factions early than to make war with more-elite, but fewer units as the Spartans. So in a sense they are not-for-newbies who want to make early game wars until they really understand the mechanics. More than other warmakers, early rushing Spartans are not so expendable. Thus the aphorism to 'make only lopsided warfare' is especially true for them. If you rush, you want to win cleanly, whereas with Hive/Believers you can casually toss more units if things don't go well initially.

Its fun to have elite terraformers in the mid-game. They can even be brought on the offensive because of this.

Secret Projects. To role-play the Spartans as warmakers, I agree with your choices. Otherwise, to win the game, the same SPs apply as to everyone else: HGP/WP/VW/PTS are game-makers. But if you can take a handicap for yourself and let the AI/other players build these, certainly the CN is most valuable to the Spartans of all factions. Early elites can surprise anyone but the most veteran player.

**Spartan666** · October 28, 2005, 19:17

Sweet ty im going to try a game with some of these hints tommorrow.

As for the industry hit cant that be overcome with the use of crawlers? And whats a good mineral output usually i put mine at 15-20(((sorry im still new to the game...)))

And for city defence whats a good combo to use? and also usually i have each city for a purpose and id like to build a science city also can i get some tips for doing that?

**smacksim** · October 28, 2005, 19:26

15-20 is actually..............perfect!

That is exactly what you need to get your first ecodamage pops before treefarms. Some of the more radical strategies would have less minerals in the early game, or one city with 30 minerals or so, but those are unusual. 15-20 is the standard advice for buiders before treefarms.

Interesting that you have each city specialize. Not a bad idea if you're planning on going to war.

As to science cities there are many threads about that. Look up threads on SSCities, energy parks, and the 4 relevent secret projects. Or we could go into it here in this thread too I suppose. Spartans will tend to build along the lines of Gaia/Morgan/Uni, and not like Believer/Hive/Drone, but those are only trends.

As to overcoming the industry hit. The thing of it is to compare Sparta with another faction. If both faction play a mineral strategy Sparta will always be behind. So yes and no: You can overcome the industry hit compared to not doing anything at all, but on the other hand all decent players will be doing the same thing with better industry to start with. Make sense? In SP, of course you'll have 'made up' for the industry hit compared to the AI, but in MP there isn't any compensating really.

**smacksim** · October 28, 2005, 19:45

I should also ask: What size map are you playing?

This makes a whole lot of difference in your 'attack if no treaty' policy, for if the enemy is 50 square over water, even the AI will have a chance against you too early. But if you have close neighbors, by all means rush them!

This is partly why builder strategies are 'easier'. They can be done more consistently and reproducably. But each map brings its own advantages and disadvantages. I'll rush attack with any faction if the nearest neighbor is close enough, but will wait for better technologies if there is significant distance involved. Getting this balance right isn't critical in low-level games, but is imperative in difficult situations and settings. The general queries I think one might ask one's war council:

Will we certainly win, or is it quite a gamble to make war on this neighbor?
How many turns will it be before we have a good chance of taking our first city? How much of our production will be tied up with that, and what could we have done instead?

Generally the 'best' strategy is to make the fastest and most cost-effective wars, which means waiting for choppers. But chop and drop is just so effective that the AI has no chance at all against it. Still, even in MP games its unlikely to see an experienced player spending more than 10 years at early warfare.

The important thing is to enjoy it though. Early rushes are exciting....much more so than knowing you'll win with the discovery of MMI. So have fun!

**Maniac** · October 28, 2005, 20:16

My suggested tech b-line for Sparta:

Centauri Ecology (formers)
Doctrine: Flexibility (get those exploring ships out!)
Planetary Networks (planned + probes)
Nonlinear Mathematics IF you want to rush someone
Intellectual Integrity (nonlethal methods doubles the Spartan SE bonus, and makes popbooming very cheap and easy!)
Cyberethics (so that you can run a decent SE Value)

Just try to trade or if necessary steal Industrial Automation, Ecological Engineering and Environmental Economics from one of the factions you will no doubt meet early because of your early exploration. IMO it's possible to play a Spartan game very well without crawlers as long as you accept you won't have any of the early secret projects. Those three techs you don't have research towards IndAut this way are better spent rushing towards Intellectual Integrity and the ability to popboom.

**Mr. President** · October 28, 2005, 21:21

I like Police/FM with the Spartans. I really hate Police penalties.

If you wanna choose Power later, you really have to get the Cloning Vats.

**Blake** · October 28, 2005, 22:47

There is no good reason for Sparta to choose Power.

The problem is that Command Center and Bio both give +2 (Unit)Morale. Odd levels of (SE)Morale give +1 UMorale. In order to be elite a unit needs +5 UMorale...

+4 SEMorale (from power) and +3 SEMorale (from fundie) are identical, both allow for elite units with CC + Monolith.

However with just a cc+bioenhancement center and the spartans base +morale everything is going to come out elite anyway, meaning neither fundie nor power are useful. Power is of dubious value for spartans even with CV. (altough power with CV is GREAT for any other faction cept ursupers)

Running both Fundie and Power allows elite units with only a CC (or BioE) which is nice but excessive unless maybe you use combined arms a lot and can't be bothered with naval yards and stuff. But I think this combo could only be justified with the CV, otherwise the SE negatives are just a bit too much. But once you have CV you'll have bioE's everywhere anyway.

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