First time AC player

[Tcho]

Lost story short; I bought Civ4 yesterday and returned it today and I ended up walking back out with AC and Alien Crossfire. I'm currently in the middle of a game and I'm thinking of starting over. I'm playing The Hive and was going for a conquest win. The reason why I want to start over is simple. On Citizen the A.I. is not providing me a challenge at all. I've already took out two factions with very little effert (Razors I think and the Drones), and the remaining three will be a push-over I think judging by the in-game graphs. I was wondering if anyone here would be willing to take a look at my save, before I start another game, and tell me what I need to improve on? If you're willing you'll need Alien Crossfire to load my save since I'm playing that. Thanks in advance.

 

[Petek]

Tcho,

Welcome to SMACX! I looked at your game and have a couple of quick observations:

* You're doing well for your first game, but you're definitely ready to move up to a higher difficulty level.

* You should learn how to use crawlers. You can use these units to provide more nutrients, minerals and energy. They have other uses as well. See the links at the end of this reply for more information.

* Your terraforming could be improved. It appears that you're controling your formers (instead of automating them), and that's good. However, you should consider planting more forests. Also, it's not usually a good idea to build a farm and a mine on the same square. I usually build mines only on rocky squares. Again, the following links provide more information.

Look at the articles here:

http://www.civgaming.net/smac/academy.shtml

and download Velociryx Strategy Guide v 3.0 from here:

http://smac.2be.cc/tools.html

Good luck.

 

[Tcho]

Thanks a lot! I'll take a look at those links asap.

I had a feeling that placing farms on my mines wasn't a good idea when I was doing it. What happened was I was having problems with cities not growing. So I placed a farm for a quick fix. Now that you've pointed that out I should have placed a forest down and switched my worker to it until the city grew. Heh I got so caught up in removing fungus (at one point I had over 50% of my formers removing it) that I let my cities slip for a good 20 turns.

I'm a bit surprised that you said I did well for a first time player. Before AC I have never played a civ-type game before. Civ4 was going to be the first if it would have worked on my PC. The only strategy games I play are MoO2, Space Empires 4, Age of Wonders 2, Masters of Magic, and HoMM3. Maybe I'll hunt down a copy of Civ3 or Civ2 later today. I generally don't like earth-based games, but if the strategy is as good in them as it is in AC then I think they'll be worth checking out. Civ4 was going to be the test to see if I could get myself to like earth-based games. I bought it because I needed something new to play. Playing those same five games for years has left me with little challenge in any of them.

 

[Tcho]

I could use a bit of advise for my current game. Once again I'm playing The Hive. Going by the FAQ that I've read I'm playin hybird-style. I meant to do a full conquest but when I saw that I was alone I switched. My question is about developmet of the land I have. In this screen-shot - http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/2011/emptyland8aq.png - I've marked the tiles where I plan to build more cities, but I'm not sure what to do with the empty space between The Hive and The Leaders Horde. There's so much fungus there. I was thinking of building a few formers to clear the fungus and work the land to set-up supply crawlers for my cities. I'm not sure if that's the best idea though. Would it better to do that or build a few more cities? Right now I 9 (13 once I build the tiles I've marked).

 

[Sukenis]

This post is over a month old so I am assuming you have finished this game and moved on. Still, her is some advice from me.

The Hive is all about numbers and nothing about being efficient. When playing the Hive, your bases should be no more than 3 tiles apart. Overlapping is your friend. This will allow you to have more cities, build more units, and crush anyone who dares come in your boarders. On higher difficulty levels, this is more important.

I could not tell your social engineering choices, but I hope that as the Hive you went Police State/Planned. If you did, do not use Knowledge either (since you will not get the efficiency bonus). I go with power, but that could be just me.

Like with the believers, do not bother upgrading units. Just build the better ones and use old units to A) garrison (captured) cities B) swarm the enemy with. As a Police state, you can use 3(?) units as police. While extremely useful (while on the warpath) this gets expensive. Leaving the outdated units behind (do not forget the change tithe support city) will save time and effort. Also, 10 obsolete units can kill 2 fully upgraded units AND lower your support.

Removing fungus is overrated. Plant forest and remove rocky areas and let natural forest growth get rid of the forest for you. Unless you need more spaces for citizens to work OR you need to clear a spot for a new city, do not bother removing the fungus. Forrest are your friend.

This will not help on your current level (might hurt though), but use forest to control your population. When you get 1 or 2 non-droned citizens, growth can be bad. A forest ca help maintain your city’s population while you get the police units/recreation buildings to handle a higher population. As the Hive, you do not have that much energy to put into controlling drones.

 

[Cataphract887]

Im no hiver,but am them in 2 PBEM (and may i recommend apolyton.net or civgaming.net for MP) and some things so far:

* All bases are 1 tile apart. If a base is widely spaced to get a special,fill in.any spot than can get a base,build a base. You should have 50-100 bases by the date your game has gotten to.

* Police State,Planned,Wealth. And never change. This will let you have 2 formers and 2 military units per base,and i recommend you make (at least) 2 formers per base. The best hiver around advocates this, and so do most players. Maybe knowledge later when in seriously heavy fighting to avoid wealth's morale hit. I wouldnt go with power, ever.

* Lots and LOTS of crawlers. Later on,you can use an all-condenser strategy with specialists to have decent research.And make as many boreholes as possible. If you dont have anything to do with more crawlers,cash them in for SP. and if you still get to many, make some transports, a bunch of rovers\inf and kick some tail

You should be able to handle Transcend level easily if you do all that.

 

[Cuivienen]

Bah. Why play the Hive with Infinite City Sprawl to beat Transcend and create an extremely visually displeasing game? Transcend is a walk with the Gaians (or any faction) using Optimum City Placement and planting forests everywhere.