Looking for two or three other newbies for a PBEM

[Senethro]

Ooof, sorry, I forgot. I'll have it done by tomorrow evening.

[Mid]

Sorry to chuck a spanner in the works, but I'm going to have to pull out of this one - I've just started in the Ladies Tea Party game, and Real-Life(tm) doesn't allow much free time right now!

*creeps away before he's pelted with rotten fruit*

[Kyttn]

well, i'm ready whenever Mid is replaced

K <3

[dfy]

Well, well, so if anyone's interested to replace Mid, raise your hands! We won't bite you .

[Nims]

Hi,
another newb here
I'm interested in replacing Mid.

[Vaniver]

Sounds good.

[Senethro]

Maps made, what faction do you want Nims? Also, your email address?

Edit: Et tu Leon, what faction do you want?

[Nims]

oliver_stoike AT gmx.de

I'd stay with Mid's initial choice, the Gaians. I doubt that choosing Sparta ( my faction of choice in SP) would be that smart, right ?

[Senethro]

You'd be advised to stay well away from Sparta. I've just lost horribly playing as the Spartans in another game. You can do some fancy tricks with them if you can produce elite morale troops but at the end of the day, a good Uni/Morgan/Cyborg player will be at air power before you can kill them and the Hive/Drones will kill you by throwing waves of cheap offensive units at you because they build at close to twice as fast as you.

Gaia is better than Sparta but you should probably practice before taking on the Uni and co. Settle your early bases on or close to rivers/energy sources and then set your econ/psych/labs slider to 30/0/70 or 30/10/60. The Gaian efficiency and the way the game treats fractions of whole numbers means your early research is almost as fast as the Uni. Once you've got Industrial Automation go Planned/Wealth, 50/0/50 and try to get at least 2 crawlers per base working forests for minerals. You should have a slight Industry and Population bonus over most people so try and turn that into Secret Projects and good base infrastructure. Recycling tanks/Commons/Creche/Node are the essentials.

Farm native life by mucking about in the fungus. Once captured send them out to hunt pods. Remember that native worms don't attack your worms, so you don't have to attack them. Isles of the Deep are the best naval unit so make sure you capture a few of them too.
In the midgame your research will be suffering because you can't use Free Market. If you have enough worms then harass the biggest Free Marketeer's formers and supply crawlers until they pay you to go away or switch to Planned to fight you. Either of those is a victory for you.

Phew, didn't mean to write just quite so much, but once I started I couldn't stop.

[Nims]

Thx Senethro, interesting read even though I know most of that I've been reading the forums here for years + Vel's Guide and playing the game. The real difficulty will be breaking out of SP habits, but that's what this PBEM is there for. If I'd just play to win I wouldn't play with the Gaians as a first choice, as you said before, there are stronger factions. But as this game is for learning and fun, they're ok.

[sailorwhofell]

I'd like to play if you're still seeking.. also a newbie here.

[Senethro]

I think trotsky is busy elsewhere. Call a faction before he does and you're in. Just make sure you've got SMAX and not SMAC.

[Leon Trotsky]

Games are becoming a scarse commodity, and by no means I am getting in the way of a newcomer. Pick a faction of your liking and start SMACing, comrade sailor!

[sailorwhofell]

Thank you gracious Mr. Trotsky, but think I have to pull out anyway... really sorry for any convenience..My game crashes (computer blacks out suddenly) at seemingly random intervals and the patch I just downloaded doesn't help. I'm using Windows XP on Acer Aspire 3002LC if anyone thinks they might be able to give me any advice...

[Senethro]

Back to you Trotsky, whats it going to be then?

Sailor: No idea, that sounds like a new one to me. Try the big FAQ in the general forum. That has some good deas.