Abundant life form problem

[Terraformer]

I've recently made the jump from Librarian to Thinker difficulty lately to add a little challenge, and I've been doing ok. I played Morgan with average or low life forms, and then the Gaian's with Abundant life forms. I just started a Spartan game- Thinker with abundant life forms. I had no problems with the natives in Librarian mode, but in Thinker they are kicking my butt. I'm making empath recon rovers and they are still giving me problems. I'm running out of minerals to make any more of them......
I just acquired the Police state tech, should I forget about staying in Democracy and go Police State so i can make more empath rovers? Or is there another option?

[BlackCat]

I've played on trancend for more than 10 years and never had problems so bad as you describe.

Can you post a save of your game ?

[Terraformer]

I'm not sure how to do that. I see Link, Insert Image, and Insert video- no insert file.
The natives aren't giving me a problem anymore. Now i'm in a war with the drones. I'm way behind on tech because of all the mind worm problems so i'm having to steal tech from the drones with probes. I couldn't get any of the early SP's done...

[BlackCat]

Click "reply", click "go advanced", then scroll down until you see "Manage attachments" - the rest should be selfexplanatory.

[Terraformer]

The first time I tried to upload it told me invalid file. Then I tried again and the file doesn't show up even though it is still in the same folder.
It's a .sav so I don't get it....

I'm giving up on this spartan game- I loaded instead of saving after I had almost completely conquered the drones. Plus I wasn't able to make any of the SP's because while I was fighting the drones the university just out tech'd me to oblivion.

[BlackCat]

The first time I tried to upload it told me invalid file. Then I tried again and the file doesn't show up even though it is still in the same folder.
It's a .sav so I don't get it....

I'm giving up on this spartan game- I loaded instead of saving after I had almost completely conquered the drones. Plus I wasn't able to make any of the SP's because while I was fighting the drones the university just out tech'd me to oblivion.

Valid extensions are :

Valid file extensions: 7z bmp civ4savedgame civ4worldbuildersave civ5mod civ5save civbeyondswordsave civwarlordssave colonizationsave doc gif jpe jpeg jpg mp3 pdf png psd rar rtf txt zip

nowhere sav is mentioned

Make a zip file and you should be good - that if you have posted enough to be allowed to do it - otherwise you might have to ask a couple of questions more

[Terraformer]

Santiago of the Spartans, 2236.SAV.7z

Well this is the aftermath of the worm attack. I didn't have a save in the middle of the attack.

[Petek]

I looked at your save file. What was triggering native life forms? Were they coming from pod popping? Were formers encountering them in fungus (I notice that you've lost six formers and several more are damaged)? You should send some of your empath rovers to eliminate that fungal tower near the borehole cluster. It will spawn mind worms until you kill it. I also would consider giving your formers the trance ability for better defense against native life. I also noticed that you're playing with blind research and have your research priorities set to conquer. You might want to change this to something like build and discover. You have plenty of weapons, but could use some techs to develop your infrastructure. You also might want to consider using directed research for more control over what you research. That will help to get some of those early SPs. Directed research will also allow you to discover Industrial Automation sooner and thus build supply crawlers. Those units can be used to increase your bases' mineral output and thus support more units.

[Terraformer]

Yeah I popped two pods with worms and those fungal towers were giving me fits. Thanks for all the good advice. Next time I play thinker difficulty with abundant life i'll use directed research.

[551262]

1-1-1 Empath Trance rovers are really good for native forms, except I think they won't work against Locusts of Chiron, though they do get cheaper with Fusion reactors. Only problem is you need C4 Neural Grafting, Centarui Empathy (Empath) and Secrets of the Human Brain (Trance). Although they can also disengage, and attack as many times as they have movement points (to a point), and are faster than troops so fewer of them can cover a wide area. If you get the Xenoempathy Dome SP, then your units do get to move at normal rates through fungus (like roads, but grown or captured mind worms are still better for pod-popping in fungus), and with the Pholus Mutagen SP, you can get the +50% bonus for attacking into fungus that you normally wouldn't, plus you can heal in fungus...but by then there's usually more important and powerful units available.

Growing your own mind worms is another method. Native (red) worms won't attack yours, so what you do it get a base with a biology lab going and send the new worms on the monolith ritual. That should get them to boil status, which is "okay". Use them to defend against invaders (have them sit in fungus), defend the formers, and when they are in fungus, don't draw a mineral from the base for support, and move at speed through fungus, so they're good for pod-popping and exploring, plus they "heal" when in fungus. Don't like a base the enemy just plopped in your area? Put a few mindworms next to it (assuming no defenders and size 1) and release one in into the wild, which will then promptly wipe the base off the map without getting you into trouble. If they're great boil or higher, they're real good for causing headaches to your hostile neighbors (take out their sensor arrays first) and wreck havoc with their formers and eat up their special bonus square enhancements.

Mind worms are good in the early game as a strategy goes, assuming they're at least boil, but as the game progresses to Fusion Reactors then they don't work very well at all unless you're attacking into fungus for the +50% bonus. They work better when you have the Dream Twister SP but by then it's pretty late, as does having a +4 (+40% attack bonus) Planet rating, but this usually comes at some hefty costs in other departments, like Industry and is best suited for dedicated "Green" factions like Cha Dawn (SMAC-X) and the Gaians.

Spartans, with their +2 Morale standard troops (and +2 again for a Command Center) and a monolith pilgrimage leads to easy elite troops, so don't mess with them much. But mind worms are great against Green and especially Very Green troops, which sounds a lot like a good target against factions with on shaky ground in the beginning -- like Morgan and the Believers. Free Market grants a wonderful -30% Planet (-3) rating, so that's all the better when they're trying to counter attack. Having the Ruins is a good idea because it's usually surrounded by fungus, and the monoliths lead to easy troop upgrades, though on the Map of Planet it's kind of out of the way and remote so it's not really worth it, not to mention the massive cost in inefficiency to that base. On Random maps if it's close by it's worth going after...otherwise, don't worry about it. Make sure to put two defenders in the base with trance ability.

By the very late game, attacking with mindworms is best left to people fooling around with the AI or not done at all. A good human player knows that a trance unit in a base literally can't be beaten, as seen below:

-Best case mind worm: Demon Boil (+50%), +4 Planet rating (+40% attack), Dream Twister (+50% attack) for a total of 140% attack. You won't get the +50% Fungus bonus because...that only applies when you're attacking into fungus, not from it.
-Best case garrison inside base: Elite (+50%), Base (+25%), Sensor (+25%), Trance (+50%), Neural Amplifier (+50%) for a total of 200% defense, 300% if it's Trance AAA against Locusts of Chiron. Add in the SMAC-X bonuses like Resonance armor and you're up to limit -- the last time I got attacked this way there was a limit to how much bonus % I could get (it was like 200%). Do note that the attacker gets a 3 to 2 advantage (you'll see it when attacking, one has a Psi of 3 and the other has a Psi of 2) but still, defending with Psi combat is easier than attacking (you'll also see it when you get worm-raped running Free Market and hauling in loads of minerals, giving you like 30+ ecodamage). If you see a square stuffed full of mindworms, bring a battery unit around and try to damage "the stack" then call up the empath unit to clean up the mess -- easy money sometimes.

Putting cheap junk armor on formers takes out the -50% combat penalty. Thus, if you nab the Ruins, get a 1-2-1 Trance former out the door and also get a sensor put up as soon as possible. Once you get Fusion Reactors, synthmetal and plasma steel armor cost on formers is minimal or even free. (There's a formula used to calculate the unit cost, and once you get Quantum Chamber and Singularity Engines, which I don't get to often since I usually get bored or conquer everybody, you'll see you can decrease unit cost by picking the reactor type carefully, though do note that the reactor value determines the hit points of the unit. Only with air units (needlejet, chopper, gravship) does the range of the unit increase, and with transport foils or destroyers, the capacity increases as a function of 4 to the power value of the reactor. So if you have my favorite attack foil, 13-1-4*2 SAM foils, don't upgrade them to quantum chambers because you won't gain anything from it.)

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Yeah I popped two pods with worms and those fungal towers were giving me fits. Thanks for all the good advice. Next time I play thinker difficulty with abundant life i'll use directed research.

The biggest way to give advantage the haplesss AI is to use non-directed research. Could be many years of game time before you get the coveted automated industry or resource restriction lifting techs. To my mind while it makes the game more difficult (likely have to rely on probing your enemies moreso than researching your way to the lead.) It also makes the game too random.