Social Engineering for spartans

[john26]

What do you recommend? I usually go democracy and planned economics, but than I have support troubles until Power. If I go police state and green, and still run power, I end up with -3 industry. A dilemma!

[Player99]

According to Vel's strategy guide, running planned and sometimes market is good.

[Maniac]

Demo/Planned/knowledge when popbooming. Police State/Green/Knowledge can be useful in non-popbooming period. Running Fundy can be good when you just need that one extra morale level to make all your units elite.

Problem with running free market as the Spartans is that you lose your biggest benefit: the +1 SE Police.

[Kataphraktoi]

here is a decent thread on spartan strategy. Its a starting point anyway

Elites and lots of pod popping are your strengths. bring your Random Number Disrupter for these guys...

A nice one...

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.

[Kataphraktoi]

Interestingly enough in a recent SMAaniC game with sparta, i had 8 AA at 2118 and all but one out of 9 rovers from pods
I think the pod outcomes are bugged in that mod

[CEO Aaron]

Sparta is ALL about the police state. Getting a huge police rating allows the double threat of +2 support and being able spam out infinite bases with modest use of police units. An aggressive ICS strategy will help overcome your industry and research problems. With your maximum devotion of police units, you can quell 9 drones, plus 2 more with a cheap rec commons, meaning a quick visit to Demo/Planned with creches will punt your entire empire to the population cap, as long as you have the nutrients and troops in place to do so.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Kataphraktoi
Interestingly enough in a recent SMAaniC game with sparta, i had 8 AA at 2118 and all but one out of 9 rovers from pods
I think the pod outcomes are bugged in that mod

That doesn't right at all.
Are you sure there's nothing clicked on at Scenario Rules?

[Kataphraktoi]

Im told a spartan ICS does miserably compared to its counterparts.

That doesn't right at all.
Are you sure there's nothing clicked on at Scenario Rules?

Its not a scenario.
And later when i pop lots and lots of pods, i have gotten MW\quakes\teleports. All the bad events are on-just at a massivly reduced rate, or so it seems. Played several games with loads of good pods now. AI often has AA scattered in their bases even.
If i play MP with pod results this good, im going to be banned for cheating...

I would estimate out of 20-30 pops in the course of 20ish turns, i got 8 free units, 8 AA, and maybe 1-2 worms and 1 fungal tower and a river(near my HQ!) and countless(ok i didnt count them) monoliths. Thats better than what sebed was pulling in. I would need to do testing to determine if there is a problem or not.

I recall when i first played your mod being surprised by very nice pod results. Dont some tech choices effect pod outcomes? This had a big effect in civ2.

[Illuminatus]

Interesting. So pod outcomes could be linked to technology?

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Kataphraktoi
Its not a scenario.

I know I was just thinking of this.

And later when i pop lots and lots of pods, i have gotten MW\quakes\teleports. All the bad events are on-just at a massivly reduced rate, or so it seems. Played several games with loads of good pods now. AI often has AA scattered in their bases even.
If i play MP with pod results this good, im going to be banned for cheating...

I would estimate out of 20-30 pops in the course of 20ish turns, i got 8 free units, 8 AA, and maybe 1-2 worms and 1 fungal tower and a river(near my HQ!) and countless(ok i didnt count them) monoliths. Thats better than what sebed was pulling in. I would need to do testing to determine if there is a problem or not.

Do you get pods with nut/min/ene resources?
In any case, I must say pod popping results seem perfectly normal in my games.

I recall when i first played your mod being surprised by very nice pod results. Dont some tech choices effect pod outcomes? This had a big effect in civ2.

AFAIK the only effect is that after you have Synthetic Fossil Fuels you can get Unity choppers. Don't know if there's anything else. Perhaps ask Googlie if anything is said in his Prima Guide?

[Kataphraktoi]

documented my pods this time

7 min
4 nut
1 energy
2 unity rover**
1 Unity boat*
EC pod (25+25+75+25+50+100*) influx of 300.
NL (1SL+3MW, all at very low morale)
5 AA
2 Cloning**
2 Monolith
1 Fungal Tower, very low morale so easily killed.
2 Tech (industrial base\whatever its called now and military know how)

Thats all by 2116 and very typical of my games. I would have more pod pops but i am on a peninsula and my rovers ran out of pods...5-6 of my pods were double(MW+cash or resource+MW)

* The same turn i got the unity boat, i instantly picked up 100 ec off a pod sitting next to it.
** Thats for a total of 4 freebie rovers all independant IIRC

Lets compare to sebed who reloaded for a living, 65 pods. See that i have zero instabuilds, compared with his.This is by 2129.

15 instabuilds
5 AAs*
2 Ogres MK1
1 cloning (at SEA !!!)
2 Unity rovers
1 Unity foil
9 nut bonuses
5 energy bonuses
1 mineral bonus
8 monoliths
4-6 energy pods (im not sure how much exactly, but the total influx
around 500Ecs)
1 river
1 MW (not sure on this though, the MW might be an incoming one)
1 techpod (IB)
1 sonar pod
4 or 5 fungal blooms** (more on them later)
2 dimensional pods***

[Maniac]

I just checked back my own research at the start of the ACDG and something Googlie said: Normally for land pods not on fungus, around 50% of your unity pods should be resources, and 50% of those resource pods (so 25% of total) should be double goodie pods.

[john26]

Thanks for the help. I'll give Democracy/Planned/Knowledge a shot.