16-07-2005 02:54									#1
	How do you use Mindworms? Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

I'm just curious, when and how do you use mindworms, if at all? I've played a good number of games with them, sometimes solely with worms, othertimes combining them with conventional forces of varying degrees...

I have had good success with them, as they are a lot cheaper than mid-game units, especially those with missiles, chaos guns, or better...at least until quantum or singularity reactors...however, they have many problems...no special abilities, bad against missiles, expensive in early game, require many facilities to actually become useful, etc...

	16-07-2005 04:12									#2
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If your social engineering combines to give a positive planet rating, you can easily achieve a total conquest victory with nothing but mind worms.

And expensive? They are the cheapest units you can find! In fact, this army will pay YOU!!

Just build about five 1-1-1 units, send them out to the nearest fungal patch and start worm farming. Once you have captured two worms, game over. You just keep using your worms as farmers until

a) you have generated more cash than a free marketer could ever hope to produce,
b) most of your worms have grown as large as possible, and
c) you have a huge army.

Then you start attacking, mindful to never stack your worms (lest a whole stack get wiped).

	16-07-2005 06:03									#3
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Mindworms are cheap, indeed, but cost 50 minerals...on the other hand, a 1-3-1 unit only costs 20...

True, if you are the Gaians, you can go worm hunting, or wait until you can do green economy...in this case, you probably won't need to build any units...

	16-07-2005 06:24									#4
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Mind worms are most useful when you're behind on tech, either overall or in a tactical situation. They're adequate defense against needlejets/choppers if you don't have SAM or AAA. They can take out probe teams at handy times by moving through fungus. Their sighting can induce your opponent to build trance units, costing them minerals or the opportunity to add other abilities (such as ECM). They're great for popping pods. Overall, they spice up a military and, in small numbers, make it much stronger and more threatening.

	16-07-2005 09:29									#5
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quote: Originally posted by Kinjiru If your social engineering combines to give a positive planet rating, you can easily achieve a total conquest victory with nothing but mind worms. And expensive? They are the cheapest units you can find! In fact, this army will pay YOU!! Just build about five 1-1-1 units, send them out to the nearest fungal patch and start worm farming. Once you have captured two worms, game over. You just keep using your worms as farmers until a) you have generated more cash than a free marketer could ever hope to produce, b) most of your worms have grown as large as possible, and c) you have a huge army. Then you start attacking, mindful to never stack your worms (lest a whole stack get wiped).

This strategy is so awesome. I once set the planet to random conditions and random faction, and got a planet with lots of xenofungus and... Cha Dawn! In short, I basically rolled over everyone.

	16-07-2005 09:57									#6
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I've never been a worm user, but I just gave the Cult a first try the other day, and the worms were great. Miriam was right next door, and she had the biggest army in the world until I started with her. Don't think I lost a single worm on offense, and the fast movement without hasty penalties was very tasty for making overwhelming mass out-of the-blue attacks on bases. The ability to hide in fungus and heal up nice and fast was great for keeping up a rolling offensive too. Deirdre fell pathetically easily too, and her planet bonus and fancy perimeters did nothing to save her. Nice.

But it was painfully obvious the whole time how pathetically easily my (very mineral-intensive) offensive could have been brought to a screeching halt.
If they'd only made a bunch of 10 mineral trance scouts, I would've been stopped in my tracks for a fraction of the cost of my very pricey worms. And most people (even the AI!) are going to have a whole bunch of trance and/or 3r units around anyway. Especially if they're right next to Cha Dawn.
Or if they'd done some terraforming and cleared away the fungus, forcing my expensive wormies to stop dead next to their bases, ripe for the mass plucking off (btw, if a normal defender stacked with a worm loses, does the worm die too?). Even hand-weaponed garrisons seem to have a very good chance of winning on the attack. Worms don't seem to get the planet bonus on defense either, is that right? In any case, whenever my worms were forced to defend, even in fungus, they performed pretty damn poorly. Add a few empath rovers into the mix and I reckon a worm-only horde is gonna get soundly massacred.
But I have no doubt that this is because no idea how to use the things properly. I'd really like to hear some native offensive strategies for those times your enemy hasn't just left you a nice fungus bridge straight to their tranceless capital.

No support cost in fungus seems a REAL gem to me, though. Has anyone had success using them as support-cheap backup defenders? I was thinking it could maybe be defensively worthwhile to have a biolab city and leave a bit of fungus in your empire and near the borders, and just leave these guys around as a bit of a counterpunching defensive force, as well as cashcows. Even for a non-green faction. I'm thinking Domai in particular, with his good production, lagging tech and ordinary support. He'd also certainly gain the element of surprise with a sudden worm force turning up in defense!

	16-07-2005 11:10									#7
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I use few of them. I rarely play Gaians or Cult.
However, I have seen some interesting strategy of a friend of mine. He played Spartans and created mindworm army threatening quite efficiently all other human players.

	16-07-2005 13:50									#8
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Even as the Gaians i'll rarely use them in the later stages of the game, early though they are very useful for generating cash and exploring. Also perhaps taking some weakly defended outer bases, but against a player who's got sensor arrays and a few bases packed tight enough together to easily produce half a dozen 1-1t-1 units i've found them to be of very limited effectiveness especially since most players will not have fungus anywhere near their bases.
They do make decent defenders against FM players especially if you've got the neural amp, nothing like seeing him waste a few of his better trained units just to torch a bug.

	16-07-2005 15:14									#9
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worm free zone - except for attacking me.

	16-07-2005 16:18									#10
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I don't use worms for real offense much, but If I capture a IotD with worms onboard (usually from popping a pod) I'll leave them on some worthless uninhabited island full of fungus and farm them for cash. Eventually when I've got a bunch of demon boils I'll load them into IotDs and have them raid somebody, but not with the intent of serious conquest, just to force them to spend resources. I also use IotDs to defend sea cities since they can easily be moved around like ships, but don't recieve the "in port" penalty. I also keep a small reserve of independant worms on my home continent to deal with enemy incursions (or worm incursions). I very rarely actually build any native life.

	16-07-2005 17:52									#11
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In an emergency as a draught excluder, but usually as explorers and sentries.

	16-07-2005 19:01									#12
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Every game I play, I beeline for Secrets of the Human Brain...not for the free tech (although its nice), but for hypnotic trance...

Immediately after getting hypnotic trance, I obsolete the scout patrol and give it the trance ability...

Every time I found a new base, I use the free ten minerals to build a 1-1t-1 unit...

Essentially, my bases are immune to any stray mindworms...my next 3 techs I will go for are centauri empathy, ecological engineering, and synthetic fossil fuels...

With these techs and are their prerequisites, each base can have a 1-3t-1 defense, and a few 6e-1-1 rovers will be floating around...

While if I'm playing the Gaians, I might not do this, as I'll have plenty of mindworms, most boil, mature boil, or better, but I have found this strategy very effective for almost any faction and any SE...it works especially well for Morgan with -3 planet and -3 support...

	17-07-2005 01:00									#13
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I'll use worms if I capture them, but I seldom actually make them.

They are useful for fast travel through the fungus with all the benifits that gives.

They can be more useful for defense if you have the NA.


Nowadays, I tend to avoid making native lifeforms (except for locusts, man are they expensive to build).

I will sometime still make locusts because they are very useful for occupying bases after the choppers empty it out, particularly those sea bases that you can't drop into.


I don't think I have ever captured a locust, I don't know how. Can you capture a locust? It seems you can capture every other form of native life form.


Even though I may make locust from time to time, once I get the ability to make grav ships (if the game lasts that long) I won't make them anymore.


Mead

	17-07-2005 07:05									#14
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What ends up happening is that once you get singularity reactors, decent units can be made that are cheaper than locusts of chiron...

Another problem with locusts is that they don't get the 3 to 2 attack advantage in psi combat, only worms on land get that...

	17-07-2005 07:35									#15
	Re: How do you use Mindworms? Tired of ads?

quote: Originally posted by Commy I'm just curious, when and how do you use mindworms, if at all?

I'm a Gaian player by nature and have always used the Gaian mindworm capture capability to then start popping pods. Some pods produce rovers. Because these rovers possess the Gaian +10% Planet rating, why they then often survive battles against NL's. These units, once upgraded at a monolith and upgraded to Best Weapon/1/2 capability (usually a 4/1/2 unit) accompanied by a worm army can definately inflict some significant damage on an adversary (or at the very least intimidate an adversary into seeking a lucrative peace offering).
Later, after discovery of Doc:AP why worms serve as the first line of defense in that they are usually chosen first in battle against a/c, thus saving my AA Rovers for a counterattack against the a/c!
Finally, in a couple of games, I've created moving walls of LoC's to impede an enemies ability to penetrate my airspace, whether with a/c, missiles, or PB's.


D

D

	17-07-2005 07:47									#16
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quote: Originally posted by Commy Another problem with locusts is that they don't get the 3 to 2 attack advantage in psi combat, only worms on land get that...

This is inaccurate. The triad of the defender determines starting psi values. Any psi attack that involves a defender on land starts at 3:2. Any other psi attack starts at 1:1.

	17-07-2005 15:20									#17
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Locusts can be captured just fine. It's just that you can't capture native life while causing ecodamage and locusts appear when you're causing ecodamage... sometimes it gets quirky, like the locust pop causes you to stop causing eco damage (it might knock out a borehole, or raise the clean mineral limit) and you stop causing ED and can hence capture worms on the same turn as the pop. Free stacks of locusts are nice.

	17-07-2005 21:58									#18
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: Originally posted by Blake Locusts can be captured just fine. It's just that you can't capture native life while causing ecodamage and locusts appear when you're causing ecodamage... sometimes it gets quirky, like the locust pop causes you to stop causing eco damage (it might knock out a borehole, or raise the clean mineral limit) and you stop causing ED and can hence capture worms on the same turn as the pop. Free stacks of locusts are nice.

Locust pops stop ecodamage?

	18-07-2005 01:29									#19
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Okay take this for example, only one of your bases is causing ecodamage, and only like 4 per turn. One of it's workers is on a mineral node rocky mine, producing 7 minerals per turn. The fungal pop destroys the mine, relocating the worker to a ocean tile, the base produces 7 less minerals than at the start of the turn and hence 0 ecodamage. It's like that.

	18-07-2005 05:11									#20
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The one thing I don't like about locusts pops is that the locusts will attack any target within their range...usually a base, but even by reloading the turn and playing it again, the target rarely is the same....whereas worms, usually they will attack the closest target (usually a base), and won't travel very far due to their movement limitations...

	18-07-2005 06:10									#21
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quote: Originally posted by Blake Okay take this for example, only one of your bases is causing ecodamage, and only like 4 per turn. One of it's workers is on a mineral node rocky mine, producing 7 minerals per turn. The fungal pop destroys the mine, relocating the worker to a ocean tile, the base produces 7 less minerals than at the start of the turn and hence 0 ecodamage. It's like that.

This isn't really an accurate description of what happens for a fungal pop.
If there was a city producing only 4 eco damage, likely moving only 1 mineral off would fix the eco percentage.
Also, if a pop occurred in a tile not being worked, it would increase the threshold for minerals, and the city would no longer be causing ecodamage.
Someone who has done more investigation could probably break it down by the numbers, which I don't really feel like investigating that deeply.

	18-07-2005 06:21									#22
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quote: Originally posted by Blake Locusts can be captured just fine. It's just that you can't capture native life while causing ecodamage and locusts appear when you're causing ecodamage... sometimes it gets quirky, like the locust pop causes you to stop causing eco damage (it might knock out a borehole, or raise the clean mineral limit) and you stop causing ED and can hence capture worms on the same turn as the pop. Free stacks of locusts are nice.

Thanks.

Mead

	18-07-2005 07:25									#23
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Half and half for me. I usually play as the Gaians. PSI attacks seem to work well as both defense and offence. So far none of my friends can even beat me on this game.

I often use the locaus for for off attacks and base take over or take out. Air units that don't need to land, can take over all forms of bases. Don't have to deal with armor most of the time unless I play the expantion.

Can't find my expantion CD lately though so I haven't been able to play it.

Both are good for other things though. Most of my conventional forces will usually be air and sea. Most my conventional ground is often defending base, unless they are terraformers a forming, and supply crawlers a harvisting. Usually have 5 or more crawlers out and about, modded with deep radar and clean reactor, and PSI armor. Tend to bore some hold and have them sit and collect energy.

My stradigy is usually the way of out tech and out facilities my bases, so most attacks normally fail agaist me.

Last edited by jadenstriker on 18-07-2005 at 07:31

	19-07-2005 04:07									#24
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My use of mindworms tends to be situational. Relegated exclusively to the early game, I make worms when I share a fungus rich continent with a neighboring faction. Later on, I'll migrate to the more flexible conventional military, and clear the fungus.

	19-07-2005 15:28									#25
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I rarely use them unless I'm playing the Gaians or Fungboy. I do use them when I'm seriously behind on military techs and in a major conflict. They work pretty well in defense against air attacks, and I've turned the tables against Miriam a couple of times as Morgan by unleashing perhaps 6-10 worms, destroying her attack force and going on to conquer her.

	19-07-2005 19:48									#26
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Even if you do not plan to use mindworms as part of your army, it really is worth it to have a few around at all times.

Find an unpopulated spot with some fungus, even if it is only a few squares, and continually farm for cash. It's free credits, so why wouldn't you do it?

If you find you gather too many worms doing this, you can always ship to other areas near your enemies, as they make a fantastic early warning/picket system.

	19-07-2005 20:19									#27
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I mostly play PKs and Gaians, and with either faction I usually build lots of worms...although, I will say, with out nueral amplifier and dream twister, the AI does eventually find ways to defeat your worms, even the demon boils...

It's a lot easier with the Gaians, obviously, as doing a green economy early on gives me +30%...very, very nice benefit...

	20-07-2005 04:03									#28
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I think the game at the start was reasonably balanced, but gamers discoverered crawlers and this upset the overall balance.

In the original pre crawler environment there was a good argument for green factions.

	20-07-2005 04:44									#29
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Crawlers are inherently a positive feedback mechanism, since they're manufacturable production. Citizens are somewhat like that, too, in good terrain, since each one harvests more food/mins/energy. Citizens are limited by drones, hab limits, and the need for nutrients. Crawlers are only limited by space, and sometimes hostile choppers. This gives me some ideas for balancing crawlers...

	21-07-2005 22:45									#30
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I rarely build them. About only case when I do is if I have sea base next to land where I don't have land base. That way I build IotD and land former. Former then terraforms land, as it can move from the base. And IotD can be used to defend base or attack naval units next to it.

If I capture some I keep them. IotD are excellent for opening pods. If it's natural IOTD there you can fight it. If it's node or rover you can carry it to base (something you can't do with ships).

Other good use is to clear path when attacking base. So you are aproaching enemy base and he has either units between your army and base or formers. I use MWs to destroy them, thus saving my striking units for base itself. Also for destroying sensors around enemy bases. And I use "arty" MW if I have as I don't built arty.

But I think that when faced with enemy in base with good defensive positions and good reactor worms aren't that usefull.