09-05-2004 22:32									#1
	Mind control probe too powerful Suffering from ads?

Well no game is perfect, but one thing that really makes me throw things at the wall is when I have just gone through an extensive capture of a city and it gets mind-controlled and most (if not all) of my invading army gets taken by the enemy. This happens a lot when capturing alien cities and the size is reduced to 1 (making it cheaper I presume). What makes this worse is if those bastards are sufficiently behind in tech and now that they've mind-controlled by city and gotten my advanced units, now they have the prototypes of those units. So now not only am I set back without any units, but the other guy can start pumping out superior units. Combine that with the army they just took, and there goes my newly conquered area.

	09-05-2004 22:34									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

It's all about tactics, I suppose. Never thought of including probes in your conquest force?

	09-05-2004 23:09									#3
	Inflate your Upload Space

Indeed, simply build some probes. If they don't do that in multiplayer games for example, you're toast.

	09-05-2004 23:16									#4
	Suffering from ads?

I never mess around with defensive probes that much (although I hear they are a must in multiplayer). How effective are they? I thought they were like only 50% effective, or maybe that was in Civ2.

Another strategy I take is not to take a city and place all my units inside of it. You want to move some units out onto the roads and scan for other units to destroy. And of course this would force the probe teams to go around. This may not work if the AI has put mag tubes on every square surrounding the city. In that case, I just say drop a few planetbusters . These units I take are usually infantry. I never put armour on rovers, but I almost always put armour on infantry. I've been using infantry a bit more recently. I try to create a more balanced army (although I still never get around to using artillery )

	09-05-2004 23:37									#5
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Take no less than 16 units. Fortify stacks of two in a ring completely surrounding your newly conquered base. The base is now immune to probe attacks.

	10-05-2004 02:47									#6
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Better take a few extra just in case you lose some during the conquest of that base.

	10-05-2004 04:41									#7
	Put an end to popups!

Taking along probes is a good idea.
My slant on the matter would be to energy-rape as many bases as possible.
Do that, and your enemy -can't- mind control stuff.

	10-05-2004 08:00									#8
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

I've never seen probing for energy give very much. I guess the proportion of your opponent's energy you get is the probed base's population divided by the opponent's total population, though I've never rigorously tested this. For a base you can actually reach, this tends to be pretty low.

	10-05-2004 13:31									#9
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

I find inciting drone riots very handy in MP It wastes a turn's income and production, while costing me nothing, and if done often enough to the same base can cause it to starve to nothing. Ah, the joys of probes

-Jam

	10-05-2004 15:25									#10
	Got spare money?

A question on that, Jam. If you let a base riot, and a few turns later you take that base, will these drones come on top of the drones caused by the conquest of that base?

	10-05-2004 18:23									#11
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

That happens, Geo. Any incite drone lasts for 10 turns.
You can only incite drones once in Transcend (beyond that, every base citizen is a drone).

It's a useful thing to do, but limited in application.

	11-05-2004 02:33									#12
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

quote: A question on that, Jam. If you let a base riot, and a few turns later you take that base, will these drones come on top of the drones caused by the conquest of that base?

To be honest, I have no idea at all

-Jam

	11-05-2004 08:15									#13
	Remove this text

On transcend, probe-induced drones are completely irrelevant when you capture (instead of liberate) a base, since even one conquest drone makes all the citizens drones and the conquest drones last for 50 years.