Elite 4-3-1's = DOOM!!!

[Zeiter]

I think I've finally discovered the right setup for this mod that I've been tweaking for about a year now--indicated by the fact that the AI just gave me a run for my money. And it wasn't like I was the victim of some early rush for which I wasn't prepared. I landed with yang next door, although thankfully not too close and only connected by a thin landbridge. I set up a base on the landbridge and started preparing defenses while Yang and I were still treatied. Meanwhile I had helped my Pactmate Lal out with his troubles with Santiago. (I was Zakharov). So I already had a good size force left over (or so I thought.) I also had a few command centers built, and I even had a perimeter defense built in the landbridge city. And I had sensors. And I had roads extending one tile out. I guess I should mention now that my terrain was mostly forested, which turned out to have huge tactical disadvantages when hostilities began. I should mention that Yang and I were at tech parity at this point.

So then Yang declares war on me (big surprise), and he starts sending over a few 4-3-1's. No big deal. I mop them up rather easily. Then all of the sudden Yang sends against me something like 7 elite 4-3-1's against my chokepoint, later followed by lots more (I think he had the command nexus, and he was probably running fundy. He had also just finished smashing the Gaians, so I imagine those units got their morale upgrades from that and maybe monoliths? I don't know.)

Anyways, I'm here to tell you that elite 4-3-1's spell doom during the early game. Especially if you are at tech parity and you are running wealth (like I was), and especially when the terrain that you are fighting on is mostly forest. There's simply no way to take them out without sacrificing a lot of units. A green impact rover (strength 3.50) vs. an elite plasma in forest with a sensor (6.67)--there's simply no way! And then on the defensive side, at best you've got a disciplined plasma garrison with a perimeter defense and sensor (6.67) vs. elite impact (6.00). (Edit: actually, the elite 4-3-1's will get +25% when attacking a base, so it's actually 6.67 vs. 7.00 in their favor.) And in regular forested terrain with sensors nearby, you've got 5.33 for the plasma sentinel and 6.00 for the elite 4-3-1. And their mobility makes it hard to set up kill zones, making dealing with them a real nightmare. You are just left with no good tactical options whatsoever. It feels like all you can do is slow them down, as if they were some lumbering paving truck that slowly plows over your empire. I suppose if you can keep them behind a city with a perimeter defense, you can hold them off, but they came at me so quickly, I couldn't get reinforcements to my chokepoint city before the Hiverian hordes poured in.

So then I went scorched-earth. I cut roads and forests between the rest of my cities and the Hive, and that made it a little bit easier to deal with. I had to sell some facilities to raise money to rushbuild units. There was a point where I was ready to obliterate my capital city with the virtual world and the PTS in it. One turn I was literally down to a scout patrol and a former in that city, with a couple of Hive 4-3-1's knocking on the door (and sitting on a forest tile, no less). But I was able to get reinforcements in there and beat them back a bit. After I was attacked, I immediately changed off of wealth, and I set all of my production to war. Then there came a point where Yang discovered superstring theory, and I was like "Oh no, this is not good!" But I was able to probe it from him pretty quickly. After that I was able to turn the tide. About 40 turns after that chokepoint city had been taken (and after grinding down maybe a hundred Hive units in the meanwhile), I was finally able to liberate that city--and go on to "liberate" lots of other Hive cities.

[Flubber]

Sounds like you had a very fun and interesting game. How was the game modded ?

Often if the Hive can maintain any form of tech parity with the uni, the uni will be in BIG trouble. In the situation it seemed you had set up a great tactical situation with a land bridge chiokepoint and the perimeter defence. My most usualy way to kill defence 3 units is to ensure I have some missile weapons!!

Other possible tactics

1. Arty or naval bombardment-- Taking 20-40% off the health of an enemy radically changes the math
2. Self destruct tactics-- If an enemy builds stacks of 4-3-1s consider self destructing a couple of 4-1-1s next to the stack

Both tactics are great against larger stacks and if you can then kill a unit conventionally, the collateral damage issue debilitates most of the rest

[Flubber]

Oh and some of your math I'm bit sure about-- Your green impact rover should be able to get an in-the open bonus and I question why you are giving units that are attempting to invade you, the benefit of the sensor bonus.

Regardless the point is a good one in that 4 weapons often cannot kill 3 armour if the defender is on good defensive terrain. A morale issue merely makes the advantage greater

[Googlie]

If the sensor is outside the base (say for early warning purposes) and the enemy sits on it, they get the bonus

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Googlie
If the sensor is outside the base (say for early warning purposes) and the enemy sits on it, they get the bonus

Really?-- never noticed that-- but then again, on the frontier I try to put my sensors in the base tile

Googlie -- is it juts when they are physically on the sensor-- since if it is, thats a good reason to destroy the sensor if its on the enmies invasion route

[CEO Aaron]

Next time:

1) Build your chokepoint base on the sensor.

2) Build 4/1/1 artillery, and soften them up on the way in.

3) Skip impact. Missile weapons are ridiculously close to High Energy Chemistry, and as University, you should have a respectable research edge on Yang. If the AI beats you to impact, just swipe one of his units and clone it until you get Synthetic Fossil Fuels.

[Sandman25]

I see many players don't like equal wars with AI
I remember I edited rules.txt in Civilization 2 to stop any tech research after Elephants, Catapults and Phalanx, it was great to capture the whole map with 4-1-2, 6-1-1 and 1-2-1 units... But that setup favoured the attacker strongly, it was too difficult to defend with armor 2.
Since I started playing SMAC, I tried a similar setup with weapon 4 and armor 3. It was a great game again, though the AI built too many artillery units. Overall with SMAC it was a much more balanced game, especially since I never build bases on sensors (similar to building cities on mountains in Civ2) and never self-destruct (though it was fun to put a plane over Aegis-cruiser in Civ2).
Let the AI have a chance vs Natural Intelligence

[Zeiter]

Sounds like you had a very fun and interesting game. How was the game modded ?

It's basically the alpha.txt from my Cold War Mod, with a few small changes. Here, I'll attach the alpha.txt file. If you want the full "Modern Earth" flavor, you'd need a bunch of other files (like labels.txt and such), but if you just want the modified gameplay, this suffices.

In fact, I really do recommend playing with this mod at least once. There are no crawlers (although you do get genejack factories with Industrial Automation), no pop-booming without golden ages for any faction, tanks come with a level 5 tech (you actually get some pretty massive tank battles--it's quite awesome), you get the aircraft carrier ability with a level 5 tech, tech tree and SE table are all switched around, lots of other stuff. But even though there aren't crawlers or pop-booming, the game still goes quickly due to the tech rate being at 150% and the improvements giving +2 to a resource rather than +1. In fact, my last game was over by 2210 with a conquer victory, at level 9 techs.

If you do play with this mod, though, you may want to change the Spartan starting tech from doc: mobility to something like applied physics. Giving the spartans doc: mobility right away will allow them, after researching doc: flex to go straight to doc: airpower, with the way the tech tree is modified.

[Zeiter]

Here's a pre-air power tank battle from this game (I think Yang was just then researching air power). In this picture you see several elite 8-1-3 tanks moving through pactmate Lal's territory and outflanking Hommel's Citidel in order to capture Factory Maze and cut off Hommel's Citidel. Along the way these tanks met a few stray Hive units, which they easily mopped up. Oh, I love having 4 moves per turn.

This was after I had recovered a bit and was going on the offensive. And by the way, excellent advice, everyone! Yeah, I forgot about the self-destructing 4-1-1's option.