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**belanca** · May 26, 2008, 14:45

Anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong on following:

Good ideas:

1. Turn some bases in safe areas to AI. AI on transcend must get some bonuses at least in efficiency.
2. Build early for defensive warfare.
3. Prototype early with the idea that You MUST counter enemy troops even before they are built. (Yang's getting Air Power. Be quick on Advanced Military Algorithms).
4. Do not overexpand.
5. Build sensor arrays "under" the city (btw that might be considered an exploit, right?). In my case Yang never got around the chokepoint so it would be working if I put the sensor behind the city).

Lucky parts:

1. I was lucky to get narrow border with Yang so I was able to create fortified chokepoint.
2. I was lucky to get xenoemathy dome.
3. I was lucky to get favourable diplomacy condition (Yang vs Miriam vs Spartans).

Bad ideas:
1. Trying to lower the ground from the sea to create more perfect chokepoint. It's too expensive. I was asked for 1000 credits at one time.
2. Not moving stacked.
3. Moving more than two/three units in stack.

Overall idea:

No one will just let You build. If You get too much up the power scale everyone will fight You. If You are too weak, everyone will bully You. So use satellite nations (factions). This seems to confuse AI about how high on power are You.

**Petek** · May 26, 2008, 17:06

Hopefully, CEO Aaron, who specializes in playing Morgan, will visit shortly and have detailed suggestions. I've read on this board the following ideas:

* Start building the Merchant Exchange in your first two bases. Research Biogenetics first. When complete, switch production to Recycling Tanks and rush them with your extra starting energy credits. You'll then have two strong bases. (From your above narrative, it seems that you use blind research. You'd probably have to use directed research for this tactic to work.)

* To counter Morgan's support penalty, don't build infantry garrisons in your bases. Instead, research Planetary Networks and build armored Probe Teams (with Trance, when available). Same comment as above regarding blind vs. directed research.

Petek

**vyeh** · May 26, 2008, 17:07

Don't overlook the obvious (at least to me) points. Morgan has different factional characteristics from Deidre.

Since Morgan has a low population limit, you should have a greater density of bases than you would for the Gaians. Overlap isn't as much of a drawback (with a lower population, there are only fewer squares that can be worked per base) and you need more bases to keep up with total population (which early on is directly correlated to mineral production).

Another faction specific point is that Morgan gets a commerce bonus. It was a smart move getting Lal to pact with you and then turning over 10 bases to him. The way commerce works, bases are matched with your pactmates. If Lal has 11 bases (10 plus the one you left him with), then 11 of your bases are receiving commerce income.

I think you realized that Deidre is more efficient than Morgan (which I believe affects the number of bases you can build before you hit the bureaucracy limit).

Since Morgan has an economy bonus, energy banks mean more to him than to other factions. Because it increases energy credits by 50%, it has more effect on Morgan while its cost is the same.

Note how Green fits in with Morgan. Its disadvantage is -2 Growth. Since Morgan has a population cap, the -2 Growth is less of a disadvantage versus another faction (Morgan hits the cap sooner; after that -2 Growth has no effect).

Wealth also fits Morgan. Since Wealth has +1 Economy and Morgan starts with +1 Economy, that brings you to +2 which gives you an extra energy unit per square!

The downside of Wealth (-2 Morale), you took care of with the accent of defense. The =2 Morale reduces your attack/defense factor by 25%. The sensor array by itself gives you the 25% back.

Obviously, hab complex is more important earlier to Morgan.

Finally, forrest may be better for Morgan because the minerals from the forrest help make up for Morgan's support penalty.

I hope that looking at the successful elements of your strategy from the factional differences between Morgan and Deidre is helpful.

Building a sensor array before you build a base is not an exploit! It is better on the base square because on any other square it interferes with potential improvements.

**CEO Aaron** · May 27, 2008, 14:43

Originally posted by belanca
1. Turn some bases in safe areas to AI. AI on transcend must get some bonuses at least in efficiency.

This CAN be a good idea, but bear in mind that by gifting bases to a pactmate, you're giving up mineral production and more or less breaking even in terms of energy production. It's something to consider when you're at the second bureaucracy alert, but not before then.

2. Build early for defensive warfare.

I'm unclear by what you mean by build. We'll discuss this below in my comments.

3. Prototype early with the idea that You MUST counter enemy troops even before they are built. (Yang's getting Air Power. Be quick on Advanced Military Algorithms).

If Yang beats you to Air Power, you've done something terribly, horribly wrong. Morgan properly played has tech rates rivaling the University. Also, cagey and aggressive use of probes will let you grab weapon and armor techs without prototyping them, with the use of Reverse Engineering.

4. Do not overexpand.

YES. One of the most critical gameplay concepts to understand in order to excel with Morgan is the maproot based calculations for base efficiency, in other words, how many bases can you have before you strike the efficiency thresholds. You'll have to dig through search to find the actual math, but on Large maps, the number is 6 at 0 efficiency, +1 for each additional efficiency SE effect. For the huge map, it's 9.

5. Build sensor arrays "under" the city (btw that might be considered an exploit, right?). In my case Yang never got around the chokepoint so it would be working if I put the sensor behind the city).

It's not an exploit at all. Any player can do it, it's not your fault the AI can't terraform worth crap. Since Morgan's early terraforming is not strong, I tend to skip that precaution on my interior bases, but I try get them planted in later bases.

1. Trying to lower the ground from the sea to create more perfect chokepoint. It's too expensive. I was asked for 1000 credits at one time.

Yes. Not worth it at all. But you're missing the bigger picture, imo. If youre sharing a continent with an aggressive AI, you need to start planning his demise immediately. You may not want to declare vendetta instantly, but you should do so soon, and with a fistful of rovers on his doorstep. SMAX rewards aggression highly.

No one will just let You build. If You get too much up the power scale everyone will fight You. If You are too weak, everyone will bully You. So use satellite nations (factions). This seems to confuse AI about how high on power are You.

The longer the game goes on, the more the AI hates you. I don't think it really matters in the long game where you are on the powergraph. The bottom line is that the game is a wargame, and thus you had better be prepared for war.

Okay, enough in-line comments.

At day's end, Morgan strategy is little different from other factions, they only have different strengths and weaknesses to exploit/bolster. Morgan's strengths merely are the at the extreme end of the builder/momentum spectrum. Morgan is the strongest builder but (arguably) the weakest fighter.

What makes Morgan weak? Well, two things: 1) the support penalty. 2) Capped population. The support penalty is easily overriden by the assiduous use of supply crawlers. The hab limit is harder to get around, but is necessary to rein in Morgan's greatest strength: Energy.

In order to leverage Morgan's energy advantage, you need to make good use of this advantage. This makes him easily the weakest faction in the hands of an inexperienced player, and among the strongest in the hands of a skilled player. Simply by applying your huge credit income to the right investments, you can leap ahead of the competition in terms of production and research. On the other hand, squandering your resources on poor investments will find you languishing.

As Petek points out, grabbing Biogenics early and dumping your 100 starting credits into recycling tanks for your founding bases is a great starting investment. It jumpstarts your growth, production and energy income, and immediately puts your credit reserve providing you with recurring revenue.

However, it sounds like you're playing with blind research, so you can't rely on getting any particular tech in any particular order. In that case, you're better off prioritizing Explore to start off, until you get Centauri Ecology, then switching to Discover and Build. Use your starting credits to rush build colony pods and formers.

Stay on Discover/Build priority until you reach Industrial Automation. Switch to wealth, crank out crawlers, rushing them when you can afford to. Use the crawlers to crashbuild secret projects and bolster your nutrient and mineral income. The Human Genome Project is of huge utility to Morgan, as is the Virtual World, but solid picks like Weather Paradigm and Command Nexus are also good. With a good tech lead and a decent number of bases, you should be able to snap up all but a couple SPs.

A word about defense. If you're cohabitating a continent, forget about building. Switch to discover/conquer and get impact weapons and probe team, and purge your neighborhood of neighbors. Just because you're a builder is no reason to put up with nasty neighbors. Kick them off your land and get back to building. It's cheaper in the long run.

If you ARE alone on your continent, or at least have no immediate neighbors, keep a few probe teams around to deal with unexpected visitors. Chances are they'll show up with some entertaining weapon or armor techs you can steal and use yourself. Any tech on a unit you probe away is automatically prototyped, and you can even use techs you don't understand by using the unit designer to change chassis, weapons or armor on stolen unit types. This expedient can save you the time you'd normally waste on researching and prototyping weapons. Of course, eventually you'll have the kind of tech lead where you're researching weapons and armor that no one else can field, but that's well into the midgame.

On drone control, don't overlook just using a doctor to keep drone problems in hand. It's a stopgap, but your high base square and credit income can make up for having fewer workers. Nevertheless, sooner or later you're going to have to build Rec Commons. At about the same time, you should be finishing the last touches of the HGP. This is an excellent time to switch to Free Market, drop some of your money into psych, and watch your income skyrocket. Running FM can easily double your credit income early on, thanks to huge increases in base square income (which ignores resource caps). The increase will easily overcome the cost of psych to keep a lid on your drones.

As you get better and better at the Morgan opening, you should keep pushing your transition to Free Market sooner. Free Market is what makes Morgan the monster it's capable of being.

**belanca** · May 28, 2008, 09:54

Great advice,

I've just won second transcend game. Technically it's not over, but it will be about 2400. Again Standard ruleset / large random map .
Started right between Miriam and Yang. I could have killed Yang early with his 2 bases. Instead I decided to wait, because his territory separated me from the Spartans which declared vendetta on me very early on.
Good and bad idea. I've pacted with him on his initiative (traded techs too) and in about 50 turns he singlehandedly took out the Spartans and started destroying Miriam. In that time I decided to beeline for Orbital spaceflight (beeline is not exact word given I play with blind research). Anyway started with Explore and then switched to build / discover and used probe teams to get units with armor / weapons (gatling laser only btw). Traded for the techs in Conquer tree and built cities not very far apart under the second efficiency warning as advised.
In that time Yang took over half of the map. And he constantly donated units to me which I used to disband and rushbuild secret projects.
I got orbital spaceflight, but missed Hunter Seeker algorithm which was built by University but ended in Yang's hands. Bad, bad, baaad.
Anyway, I rushed about 16 Orbital Hydroponics labs and Punishment spheres and used needlejet colony pods (!!!) to create colonies far away on a island that was missed out (later expanded into sea), thus finally violating the 9 city limit.
Then all of my pact brothers in succession started leaving the pacts. Yang left last in no more than 20 turns after Orbital spaceflight. But too late, by the time I just had the necessary labs, perimeter defs, command centers and energy banks infrastructure and I just rushbuilt everything.
Lucky moment then: 20 turn spotty communications. By the end Yang unleashed huge wave of troops on all of my cities. By that time he had 3/4 of the map and I had no more than 3-2 techs more than him.
Until then I run survival/green/wealth and realized that I will lose the tech race until I do something more desperate so I switched to free market / knowledge / democracy.
This does wonders, provided that either I have punishment spheres everywhere or I have "specialist" city. At least every second turn some worms pop up to "contribute" to my energy reserves.
In 20 turns I've captured all Yang's secret projects excluding Hunter seeker....
If I did it turn or two slower, I would have been overrun by Yang.

So again:

Good.
1. Early trading for maps is invaluable. One just has to get perspective of what's happening around him or he is toast.

2. Choppers. The greatest unit in the game...

Unsure
1. I still have to figure how to incorporate crawlers in my gameplay. Judging by other posts, I'm missing something great here. But I've played several games with crawlers and every time I did space my cities far apart (provisioning for the potentially huge armies of crawlers), the game ended in disaster, because I just couldn't move my defensive troops too fast, or because I've spent too many turns building crawlers, or just because I could not create air defenses that cover crawlers fast enough (maybe if I try some airbases here and there, I could improve that by the way).

Bad
It seems that armored probe teams do not work exactly how I imagined them. I had several in one city and after the first was destroyed the city fell....

**CEO Aaron** · May 28, 2008, 13:45

It doesn't take many crawlers to pay for themselves effectively. Mostly what I do is build a farm/condenser and crawl one for each base. That's typically enough to allow me to get respectable population for a base while my base population works forest tiles.

Forest tiles are awesome for Morgan, pre resource caps coming off, since once you're running wealth, you'll get 1 less nut than a monolith from each one. Add in a few crawled nutrients, and you're at optimal income in that base. And in case you didn't know, any square with a condenser in it ignores the nutrient cap, so you can plant them after you get the Weather Paradigm.

In any case, the main advantage of IA for morgan isn't crawlers for crawling resources, it's for crash building SPs and, of course, wealth.

On a side note, you said you used Free Market in war footing to take on Yang. While that's certainly valid, with the use of Punishment Spheres and special resource sites to support your expeditionary force, I find that it's far more effective to run the following SE settings when you're on the attack:

Fundamentalism/Green/Wealth.

First off, you get a huge boost to probe rating. If you've got polymorphic encryption, you can defeat the Hunter-Seeker, and continue to wipe out Yang's ubiquitous perimeter defenses. Second, with the morale bonus from Fundy offsetting half the penalty of Wealth, you can effectively build troops as though you're at a net morale of zero. How? Creches.

The Children's Creche negates morale penalties for any troop built in the base it's in. Now at -2 morale and above, not only are you troops subjected to a morale penalty, but bonuses from facilities like command centers and bioenhancement centers are halved. That's why the +1 morale from Fundy is so huge.

Net effect: Fundy/Green/Wealth gives you a footing at which you can prosecute your attacks while retaining +2 economy rating and +1 industry.

**vyeh** · May 28, 2008, 14:21

Originally posted by belanca
1. Early trading for maps is invaluable. One just has to get perspective of what's happening around him or he is toast.

Knowing the lay of the land allows you to better plan bases and create bunkers, as well as identify where threats might come. Morgan's support penalty makes the use of a lot of scouting units early on a problem. I believe probe units do not require support.

Originally posted by belanca
2. Choppers. The greatest unit in the game...

Maybe the greatest offensive unit ...

Crawlers and formers properly played can overwhelm the AI developmentally.

Originally posted by belanca
1. I still have to figure how to incorporate crawlers in my gameplay. Judging by other posts, I'm missing something great here.

Did you play a variation of Civ before this. I came to SMAC from Civ II and it took me awhile to incorporate crawlers into my play. The SMAC AI doesn't use crawlers so learning to use crawlers gives you a great boost.

This is particularly true for Morgan early on. With Morgan's population limit of 4, you can use crawlers to increase the mineral and energy output of a base. A single crawler harvesting minerals cancels out the support penalty.

The following is an excerpt from Velocyrix

You can find it

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http://www.civ.org.pl/articles.php?action=ViewArticle&lang=Eng&type=SMAC&ArticleID=103

I took the HTML version 2 download -- you can also buy version 4 from Amazon.com

SMAX Guide: Hartpence, Christopher D.: 9781588984906: Amazon.com: Books

http://www.amazon.com/SMAX-Guide-Christopher-Hartpence/dp/1588984907/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211996078&sr=1-1

SMAX Guide [Hartpence, Christopher D.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. SMAX Guide

Vel's SMAC Guide version 2
An Essay on Supply Crawlers: An addition to the Strategy Guide
By: Chris Hartpence (Velociryx)
...

Supply Crawlers are the second most useful unit in the entire game, ...

The reason that crawlers are "only" the second most useful unit in the game is that they require formers (to build forests or boreholes) to achieve their maximum potential, but even all by themselves, they are terriffic!

...

The number one best use of Supply Crawlers is obvious: To boost the nutrient, energy, or mineral production of a given base.

....

Keep in mind that if you have a base with the Merchant Exchange in it, and that base builds a supply crawler, the unit will get the +1 energy bonus in the square he is harvesting from, making the ME base a VERY attractive one to build crawlers from. And, if the ME base also happens to be your Headquarters, then that base will not suffer any inefficiency, which means that you get to keep 100% of the energy harvested. This can set you up quite nicely to turn your HQ base into your primary research place (build the supercollider and theory of everything there, and you've got a positively EVIL amout of research. Add the network backbone, and the base can probably net you a tech all by itself every turn).

The second best use I have come up with ... is to make an armored crawler, drop him down on a "choke point" (narrow strip of land leading to a rival's territory) to harvest energy from a forest (on a sensor array). Now you're getting 3 or more energy per turn, and keeping the bad guys at bay at the same time, and an armored crawler in the woods on a sensor array is a pretty tough cookie. Give him Trance ability to defend against worms, and he'll probably be there for a good long time.

Third thing: I generally build my initial boreholes coastally, and the reason for that is as follows: If I'm on a landmass by myself (and that's generally my favorite, being a builder at heart), then the only way that forces can even get to me easily is to land troops on my coast, which is impossible thanks to my ring of boreholes and crawlers. There's simply no way the invasion can even get started (unless they come at me early....it DOES take quite a while to crank that many crawlers out). True, the units could air drop in, but they take fifty percent damage on landing, and then be munched by my rover units, or subverted by my probe teams.

If the bad guys DO get through though, crawlers are excellent units for messing up the invasion force's zones of control, because in addition to doing that, they're also harvesting resources for you.

Another good idea would be to make the choice NOT to work the square in your base's production radius containing your sensor array, putting a cheap armored crawler on that square to draw resources for you. Protection from sniping.....

Building Notes:
I find it very inefficient to ever have bases stockpiling energy, and once I've developed my bases as fully as I'd care to, rather than stockpile energy, I'll build crawlers. I maximize the use of the land I have to work with in that way, and, the former can be cashed in later to help build those expensive secret projects. Of course, if you focus your crawlers on energy production, you can very quickly find yourself making so much money that you can rush build any and everything in one turn.....

I quoted Vel because I wanted you to see the military potential of crawlers. As you discovered below, stacking probes doesn't work. If a probe is destroyed in a conventional attack, all probes in the stack are destroyed, even in a base. This doesn't apply to bases. So one possibility is to use armor crawlers (with Morgan's energy you can upgrade unarmored crawlers when you need them) to defend a base. If the attack is repulsed, the armored crawlers can go back to crawling or they can be cashed in on special projects or prototypes at a higher value.

Originally posted by belanca
But I've played several games with crawlers and every time I did space my cities far apart (provisioning for the potentially huge armies of crawlers), the game ended in disaster, because I just couldn't move my defensive troops too fast, or because I've spent too many turns building crawlers, or just because I could not create air defenses that cover crawlers fast enough (maybe if I try some airbases here and there, I could improve that by the way).

Especially with Morgan, don't space your cities far apart. Even if you have so many crawlers that there are not enough uncrawled tiles for your population to work, you can turn your excess population into specialists (once you have hab complex). Specialists can really boost your research or your treasury.

Crawlers are so powerful you don't need a huge army to have a big impact on the game. One possible crawler strategy is this:

(1) Build crawlers and have each crawler initially set to crawl minerals for its original base. Each subsequent crawler will take less time to build because of the contribution made by the previous crawler. Once you get to the pollution limit (by the way, terraform improvements that are crawled only contribute half the pollution than terraform improvements that are worked), subsequent crawlers can be used in several ways.

(2) They can be used to speed up special projects.

(3) They can be sent to the HQ or Merchant Exchange City, re-homed and sent to crawl any square for energy.

(4) They can be used for nutrients.

(5) As Vel has suggested, armored variants are very helpful on defense. There are several reasons.

One, they don't require support! Regular combat units (unless they have the clean reactor ability) require support once you've exceeded your support limit.

Two, they are cheaper. Those choppers you like so much? How many crawlers armored with the latest armor and AAA do you think a chopper could destroy before it was destroyed? One, two. Now calculate the cost.

Three, unlike combat units, crawlers can provide minerals, energy or nutrients when they are not needed for defense. If they are outside a base, they can also provide minerals, energy or nutrients while defending (only one crawler in the stack can do this). And if they're in the base and homed to another base, they can convoy nutrients or minerals to the defending base (very useful if the defending base can't work critical tiles because there are enemy units on them).

Originally posted by belanca
It seems that armored probe teams do not work exactly how I imagined them. I had several in one city and after the first was destroyed the city fell....

The first armored probe worked. As you discovered, if probe units are stacked and one is destroyed by conventional (i.e. non-probe attack), the other probe units are automatically destroyed.

**belanca** · May 28, 2008, 17:48

Originally posted by CEO Aaron

First off, you get a huge boost to probe rating. If you've got polymorphic encryption, you can defeat the Hunter-Seeker, and continue to wipe out Yang's ubiquitous perimeter defenses. Second, with the morale bonus from Fundy offsetting half the penalty of Wealth, you can effectively build troops as though you're at a net morale of zero. How? Creches.

I could not reproduce the situation. With Fundamentalism / Polymorphic Encryption (on the probe team ??) still my elite probe is destroyed by Hunter-Seeker on contact with city or troop.

**vyeh** · May 28, 2008, 18:34

Originally posted by belanca
With Fundamentalism / Polymorphic Encryption (on the probe team ??) still my elite probe is destroyed by Hunter-Seeker on contact with city or troop.

Polymorphic Encryption is a special ability that needs to be built into the probe team.

Edit: I mixed up polymorphic encryption with algorithmic enhancement.

Polymorphic encryption is a special ability you give a non-probe unit to DOUBLE the cost of subversion. Algorithmic enhancement is a special ability you give to a probe unit to have their chance of failure cut in half when acting against normal targets (a 60-40 action would become an 80-20 action), and have half the normal chance of success penetrating the defenses of factions with the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm, or whose social engineering choices have rendered them “immune” to mind control.

**CEO Aaron** · May 28, 2008, 18:36

Go into the unit designer, find the probe team design, and add the polymorphic encryption special ability to the chassis (which is, ironically, a rover). Now build one. You'll see you can now get past HSA.

**Hydro** · May 28, 2008, 19:23

As the CEO mentioned, armored probes are useful. Go to the unit workshop, click on the Probe, change the chassis to infantry (from rover), and select armor.

Now you've got a support-free defender. It can't attack (except other probes) but can defend.

Hydro

**Maniac** · May 28, 2008, 20:03

Polymorphic Encryption can bypass HSA? Wow. Never knew that. The special ability has some use after all!

**vyeh** · May 28, 2008, 22:23

Originally posted by Maniac
Polymorphic Encryption can bypass HSA? Wow. Never knew that. The special ability has some use after all!

Polymorphic Encryption was added in Alien Crossfire because the designers felt HSA was too strong.

Edit: I meant algorithmic enhancement.

**Maniac** · May 28, 2008, 22:26

You guys probably are talking about Algorithmic Enhancement, right?

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