Griefed by Domai

[bvanevery]

I'm Morgan, playing against random opponents on a Huge map.  I'm being militant lately, adopting a BUILD CONQUER outlook on life.  What would Yang do if he were a Capitalist?  I'm probably running Haliburton.

I got this crap start on a small island.  2 supply pods gave me fungal blooms as well.  Maybe I should have smallpoxed that island.  Anyways, really rough start.  I did have The Borehole Cluster on my island, but that's actually useless at the beginning due to the minerals and energy restrictions.  It's a liability trying to protect it from mindworms until one can actually harness its power.

I did manage to catch up though.  Made powerful friends and discovered The Monsoon Jungle relatively nearby.  Managed to get a base out there.  Bloody pod jacked Svensgaard onto my land, grr!  Sometimes I think the game actually plans for that to happen, as it has happened so many times in so many games in the Jungle.  Although maybe the actual implementation, is a high frequency of pod earthquakes at the beginning of the game, tapering off some time in the future.

Domai was on an island just south of me, although it wasn't his starting island.  Perhaps he got a slow ship earlier.  At some point he declared war on me, no particular reason.  It didn't seem like it would be that big a deal to fight him, but I'd had such a bad opening that I really needed to get some productivity together.  Just barely managed to get The Command Nexus built as Domai was assaulting me.  If his badly wounded recon rover had walked in with only an Alien Artifact in the city, he would have had it.  But fortunately, he sat back and tried to heal himself, giving me the 1 turn I needed to get defenses together.

I sloooowly built 3 impact squads to go kick his butt.  I had to put them on the Boreholes to keep them from being shelled from offshore.  I've gone Fundamentalist.  Domai shows up with a probe team and BUYS MY UNITS!!!  Ok, maybe he was Fundamentalist too.  Maybe he had a huge pile of money, as he's been known to do that.  Then I couldn't even manage to kill my own units, WTF!!!  Rage quit, what a cluster**** of a game.

So I guess I had to smallpox my tiny island.

And I guess I needed to garrison the Borehole Cluster differently.  But if he bribes a unit sitting on top of a Borehole, he can just pillage it.  Damned if you do, damned if you don't.  Only answer I'm seeing is to stack 2 units, as stacks seem to be unbribeable for some reason.  Maybe that could be 2 scouts per Borehole.  But as Morgan, I didn't have the support to waste 6 units on this job, waaah!!  The Borehole Cluster is a liability.

[bvanevery]

I played another game as a Militant Morgan.  Had a more reasonable start, and I'm doing better at spreading.  It's important to realize that -1 Support changes things a bit.  It doesn't give a lot of "slack" for making decisions at the beginning, it tends to amplify minor mistakes.

Usurpers showed up on my large island, so I had to kill them.  Not that difficult since I had that Militant outlook on things.  Later on though, when I had to leave my island to attack more stuff, my war machine devolved into merely Building stuff.  I had this idea that I'd liquidate the Usurper cities on the isle south of me, using X Missile Penetrators.  In hindsight I don't think that's the fastest way to get rid of someone, because it takes a long time to build planes.  You also end up having to wait for cities to have enough units in them to be able to completely destroy them.  It was definitely effective at ending the southern alien menace, but not as effective at wiping him out for good.

Maybe I should have used X Missile Speeders.  I forgot that they're reasonably effective at pseudo-amphibious operations.  Anyways I lost interest in that game at 4 AM, a typical pattern with me.  Being tired lets me know where I'm really at!

[bvanevery]

Possibly my final game in the Militant Morgan series.  I got a "diagonal strip island" to start on.  I did fine... spread decently, built lots of Secret Projects.  Then got into a pretty serious war with Svensgaard that occupied my attention for several hours.  More SPs would tend to become available to me through The Planetary Datalinks, and with my huge cash, I'd build them in 3 turns or so.

I tried to make a "candy shell" around my core empire, of sea bases so that I could sail anywhere I wanted without my citizens getting mad at me.  This was partly based on all the Pirate cities I took over.  Eventually the act of garrisoning all of this just wore me out though.  That's a problem I've seen in many games, that it's just too damn boring to push mere garrison units around as the empire expands.  I quit and uninstalled, as SMAC doesn't have any answer for this logistical quandry.

Much to my chagrin, I've never figured out an answer to this kind of problem "on paper" either.  Having full control isn't an advantage when it's over a dull task.

Yeah, I know SMAC has got Governors.  I never use them, because their decisions are so stupid.

After a night's sleep, I realized I have SMAC installed on my other laptop, lol.  And that being afraid of citizens complaining in a Free Market economy, is the rub.  Perhaps the new motto on my recruitment posters should be, "Don't Be Afraid!"  Just stop researching and jack up the happiness or something.  Sorta goes old school to Civ II, "how does a Democracy make war."  It's doable, you just have to be really, really Happy and have big populations in your cities.

I also need to bring a mix of defensive forces in with my Marines.  I make a bunch of "no defense" Marines because they're a lot cheaper than giving them armor.  However I actually got counterattacked and one of the sea bases I took over changed hands a couple of times.  That actually had a mild benefit because the base was captured by an alien, not liberated by the original owner.  So when I took the base, it thought I was liberating it!  But anyways as interesting as that corner case phenomenon was, I think I'd rather just own the city to begin with.

I probably shouldn't bother to make new "candy coat" cities.  It's enough of a task to invade the ones that are actually on the board already.  Excessive mouseclicking is probably better spent on conquest.