22-03-2001 03:50									#1
	"Pop" goes the game... Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

I had placed SMAC on the shelf for some time, took it off the other day and began thinking to myself, "What on Earth (or Planet) could I have been thinking to have placed this on the shelf? This is fun!"

Then, "Pop" it came back to me. I'm trucking along enjoying a fantastic game, with great interaction between myself and the other factions, when lo and behold up starts popping more fungus. And mind worms. And locusts. Et al. And now all my hard terraforming work is going up in "Pop"s--and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it!

Two questions. First, does it bug anyone else? Second, what do you do about it?

-David
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

	22-03-2001 03:58									#2
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Yeah, SMAC is lots of fun.

The fungus and mindworms are a real pain. My advice:
1)try to get the best PLANET rating as possible.
2) start a "war" against the fungus.
- build units to attack mindworms
- build terraformers just to eliminate fungus. If you have the tech, make superformers with the funguicidal secial ability to help you eliminate fungus faster.
- plant forest near your bases, and near fungus. forest can grow and give you some extra help pushing back fungus.

Now, with those units, superformers go all out to eliminate fungus, mindworm.


------------------
No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

	22-03-2001 04:28									#3
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I prefer to control my eco damage rating by:

1) Building eco damage reducing facilities. Tree Farms & Hybrid forest to eliminate terraforming damage. Centauri Preserve, Temple of Planet & Nanohospitals (?) to reduce mineral damage.

2) Control your mineral output. Transform workers into specialists to reduce your damage rating.

3) increase Planet rating when feasible by running green and avoiding free market.

I really have having to reterraform a fungus outbreak.

	22-03-2001 05:29									#4
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Maybe you cool off a bit on the use of gas, stapling and busters. Planet does not like that.

	22-03-2001 12:12									#7
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Try this strategy:

As early as possible in the game start creating ecodamage, prepare by building empath rovers. Do whatever you have to in order to create ecodamage as quickly as possible, run FM to boost the damage 3 fold, use crawlers, build more boreholes than you are comfortable with, planet starts going nuts at you, but the attacks are small, the income very usful and the more ecodamage you create the more tolerant planet becomes. In the early game your terraforming is mostly forest and it grows back over the damage, and you probably don't have displaced workers.

By forcing edodamage down planets throat in the early game you have much less problems later in the game.

It wont feel right to pursue ecodamage, but DO! Try to keep ecodamage at ~20, in several bases. Values above 50 quickly result in rising sea levels, which I aren't fond of. But 3 bases producing 20 ecodamage each shouldn't create problems, every couple of turns you get a fungal pop, which lets you create one more clean mineral in every base. Every pop reduces ecodamage, so crawl more minerals, once you get bored of this you should have bases with a clean limit of about 30 minerals. Which is much nicer than the standard 18.
You also get a about 60 credits per pop from planetpearls, in the early game this makes a very nice suppliment to your income.

So create ecodamage early and often, so you don't suffer later. That's my advice

Oh and if locusts give you trouble build some (Best)-1-1, SAM, Bombards units, these shred locusts like nothing else, a chaos gun can kill a locust in one shot, and because it damages all units in a stack you can reasonably expect 10 locusts out of a stack of 20 to die, then next chaos battery blows away those 10 survivors, leaving just the patch of fungus to clean up. Magtubes are invaluable for shuttling around SAM batteries to hotspots, and because they never get attacked they never need to be repaired. My usual strategy is to build one (4)-1-1, Clean per base in the early-mid game and later they evolve into locust killing machines from Hell.

Also use 1-2t-10 needlejet for (base) worm defense, air units defend 1:1 so it provides better defense then a ground unit, and it costs the same. Use AAA garrisons to defend against locusts which get past the artillary (but really, SAM batteries are so effective against Locusts you don't need passive defense, any surivors are likey in 10% health so are easy pickings for a chopper).

	23-03-2001 01:16									#10
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knowhow2, you just can't shut those interceptors down. Even when they are 90% damaged and have no hope of winning the dogfight, and your nice 1-8-1 AAA/ECM garrison is just sitting there.

	23-03-2001 03:51									#11
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Blake, interesting strategy! I'm looking forward to giving that a try on the very next game I start up...

...just as soon as I finish the current one, that is!

Thank You.