07-07-2004 09:20									#31
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Multiple Headquaters:
This is THE way to improve hive performance. The main problem was that only the Hive bases near The Hive produced energy/labs, all the other bases produced 0 energy and so were a large drain on reserves (because they still had facilities). Manually adding extra Hive Headqauters would dramatically improve hive research and cashflow later in the game. I would reccomend a HQ in London and another on the east coast of South America. I think the worst abuse possible from this is isolating an HQ then probe-raping it to assassinate researchers. A side effect is making probing generally more expensive.

Pre-seed terraforming - just a few dots of forests will expand a lot over the course of the game, and forest is dramatically better than the AI's usual crap-special.

Reduce agression of the AI, this encourages them to build infrastructure. Set the diplomacy so the AI won't be inclined to be friends with the human player.

Theres also some things that can be done with custom factions for the AI's... like giving them techshare.

Anyway, I gave Yang 2 new HQ's and pre-seeded the map a little, and I'm trying it as Miriam. So far so good, Yang sneakattacked me early but I drove him off with scout patrols and snyth armor rovers (*sigh*). I finally traded for Applied Physics so Yang shouldn't be a serious threat now... Fanatic + Mobile in open is enough to overpower plasma armor. Once I get Impact weapons & probe teams I'll purge Yang from North America. Im running Free Market, later adding Fundie and prehaps Wealth. I might actually research my first tech soon. (just been tech brokering so far)

Update 2219: Yang Mine fell to a horde of Impact Rovers, an Impact Infantry and Plasma Garrison. The tech options included Plan.Nets, Eco.Eng, D:AP, Ind.Auto - and those were only the most attractive ones! I selected Plan.Nets, in order to steal the others. This also helped Morgan open up and trade me SothB for Fundie fun - hurray for l337 probes. Then I gave all the other AI's plan.nets - theres no point keeping them below Yang in tech, if i'm lucky they might steal something from Yang to trade. Unfortunately although Miriams position is far more secure than Zak's, she also can't do much to save the other AI's. As Zak I must have been asorbing the brunt of the attacks from the Hives strong core bases, without the distraction of a human player on his homelands Zak, Lal and Dee are probably toast.

Update 2240:
The last two decades involved expansion and building, Miriam is quite different to play, because she has all of Canada and Greenland to expand into. I'm at around 20 bases, with Hawaii and Auckland founded where you might expect, as advanced outposts in the pacific. (a lowly transport carried a pod down to Hawaii, the base there built another pod, the transport hauled it down to New Zealand, where I plan to also found Wellignton, Christchurch and Dunedin.
My research rate is appaling, I'm still much better off stealing or brokering for tech. I have no real plans to get good research, going Militaristic all the way. The most ineresting thing about Hive is with his two extra headquarters he is making a tidy 150 credits profit per turn (compared to nill or negative) and his units are also far more expensive to probe (a combination of closer to HQ + more cash in Hive bank). The good thing is, not feeling the need to invest in much infrastructure i'll be able to focus on the important thing, kicking Hive butt and using that fanatic bonus!

2152 Update: As usual I changed my mind about investment, mostly due to the 1 million hive needlejets occupying his bases. So I switched to Demo, and was happy to discover Golden Ages were still a very real possibility, so with tree farms in most my bases I started a GA pop-boom, the econ bonus also made commerce income even crazier.
Unfortunately, Zak got squished. I'll liberate him with a cruiser probe team, with luck he'll appear in Greenland where I can protect him.

Last edited by Blake on 08-07-2004 at 15:32