Aliens everywhere! Am I the only one...

[Rokdog]

...having this problem?

So many...

I'm trying to follow the guide in this thread. The thread is about using AU, but I'm playing as the Slavic Feds for the achievement with the AI difficulty set really low.

On a larger, terran map I did okay. My victory by turns was still much slower than anyone in that thread is reporting so I'm trying again to refine it, but this is a problem I keep having that I don't see others mention at all. I asked for some advice in that thread, but it doesn't really apply in this situation.

I want to expand into the ocean south of the two expansion cities there, but with the waterways that choked up with aliens, I can barely keep a trade route going. Notice the aliens are green, or "passive." I have not attacked them at all. But I played forward some turns from here and any attempts to colonize or trade just get crushed by the aliens moving all over the place.

I don't think they're actively "attacking" my civilian units so much as colliding with them as they patrol around, but I have no idea what to do about this. Ultrasonic Fence doesn't help expansion. I could raise a navy to start pushing them back, but that's hammers that are going into naval units and not colonists. With the current production levels of my budding cities it would easily be T100+ before I made any real progress against them.

Then you have screenshots like this:

How the hell is he doing this?

That's 14 workers, at least 6 colonists (7 if he didn't take the free one from Prosperity), 6 or 7 trade units and at least 2 gunboats by T100?! Not to mention the 9-13 pop in 5/7 of his cities and 151 science per turn...

 

[Ryika]

Sometimes you have easy starts, sometimes you have not. There are 3+ Nests in/around your Territory, you didn't manage to clear them, so obviously you have aliens around. Mass-Expansion is not possible is you're surrounded by aliens, so either restart or build units to kill them (well, it's already too late for that if you want a decent finishing time).

If you see you have a lot of Aliens near you then pushing out some boats and getting the Alien-Farm-Virtues in Might is a good alternative in Rising Tide.

 

[Rokdog]

I was under the impression that destroying alien nests would quickly increase their aggression, making your explorers' lives more difficult. Is it generally advisable to destroy them as soon as they're found to prevent the disaster in my screenshot?

 

[MAMoob]

Aliens do not attack your combat units unless you've attacked them first in this version. Just spam colonists like crazy at the beginning, then snowball. If you want to expand into alien infested territroy just cover the colonist with an explorer or smth (even friendly aliens can kill civilians by accidentally moving on their tile). They won't attack if you weren't hostile previously.

 

[Ryika]

Is it generally advisable to destroy them as soon as they're found to prevent the disaster in my screenshot?

No, the right solution is to do nothing and accept that Aliens destroy your trade routes.

Aliens always gravitate towards nests (Aquatic Aliens a bit less than land-aliens as it seems), so you destroy the ones that show up near your borders and ignore those that are not in your way.

 

[Rokdog]

No, the right solution is to do nothing and accept that Aliens destroy your trade routes.

Don't understand why the sarcasm is necessary, I came here asking for help... All the advice I've seen has always said to leave the aliens alone, I assumed that meant nests as well.

Aliens do not attack your combat units unless you've attacked them first in this version. Just spam colonists like crazy at the beginning, then snowball. If you want to expand into alien infested territroy just cover the colonist with an explorer or smth (even friendly aliens can kill civilians by accidentally moving on their tile). They won't attack if you weren't hostile previously.

The only thing I usually build in a city before the next colonist is a trade depot, trade unit and maybe recycler. Maybe I'll just try letting the city grow to 2 and switch to colonist asap, as well as destroy close nests but not distant ones and see how that works out. Covering them with a military unit is probably my best bet, as well as clearing out early nests, even though I know for a fact this quickly pisses them off. Unless I'm mistaken, I don't think you can stack Explorers and Colonists any more (Explorers have the circle-icon of a civilian unit, not the pentagon of a military one)

This is a good example that confuses me about approaching aliens in BERT.

- Advice 1: Don't attack them early, they won't be hostile.
- Advice 2: Clear out early nests, making them hostile, or get swarmed.

In Civ5 with barbs, it was much simpler. They're always hostile, always kill them, and always cover your civilians with a military unit. The big difference in BERT so far is that the aliens are much stronger in early game compared to your first military units and there are way more of them. It seems like a choice between pissing off nearby, more-powerful aliens or doing nothing and getting swarmed by "friendly" ones that wreck your civilians.

 

[MAMoob]

I usually do not clear them out early. A good reason to do that is that if you do not have to worry about your explorers getting attacked. And grabbing all the ruins on the map gives crazy benefits. Aliens do not attack your trade routes either unless you've attacked them earlier (It's important not to take even a single shot, even if it did not kill anything). I mostly spam colonists out of the capital and either go pioneers or artists + 1 free colonist. Or at least engineers. I don't think anything else will work for fast expand. A bit later a 2nd city can help, but before it gets setup you can usually build like 3-5 colonists already. For the new cities you do need a trade depo + establish a trade route ASAP because otherwise you have no production in your next city (you need to build a chain at first e. g. capital -> city1 -> city 2 etc. After the first route it's often a good idea to concentrate all routes on a single high food sity that uses prod -> food process).

 

[Olodune]

I play similarly to MAMoob. Building too close to a nest makes this difficult - especially for aquatic cities.

 

[Roxlimn]

It's not true that aliens will not attack trade routes if you don't take a shot at them. In fact, I just lost a trading vessel early in the game to an unseen alien because I failed to see an alien nest near the route. So long as the vessel runs into an alien on its turn route, the alien takes it unless you have Ultrasonic Fence defenses. Heck, they should just name that tech Trade Defenses.

Aliens may not attack Explorers unless you attack them first. They will definitely attack any units classed as "combat" units and anything within 2 tiles of a nest. That's how you harvest aliens without getting them mad at you - you park a Marine 2 tiles away from a nest and let them come to you. Saves your Explorers.

Most of my games are similar to your screenie. If you don't clear them out, you will not be able to establish trade routes before the Ultrasonice Fence quest clears. You may even have difficulty clearing your Colonists.

Use City attacks to clear aliens. That will not trigger aggression responses. You only have two nests - clear one and then then other. This will trigger an orange status - your Explorers will have to be extra careful for a while.

Playing my games as if this sort of thing will always happen delays my win to about turn 250 or so, but the upside is that I always win my games and my starts are not always the same BO over and over again.

I just did a Might game harvesting aliens with Brasilia. I even instigated and won an early war (before turn 90) with Chungsu. It was different. Fun. BERT is easy enough that you can do flavor crap with your choices and you should still win handily at Soyuz.

 

[Roxlimn]

As for the guide - it reeks of Artist-Prosperity Settler railroading, which is unnecessary for the strat. You can vary your approach by intentionally choosing "suboptimal" choices. Refugees or Engineers are perfectly doable with the Specialist approach to economy. You can use Continental Surveyor or Tectonic Scanner. You don't have to be a slave to the strat du jour. It's not that hard of a game.

 

[MAMoob]

Are we playing the same game? Do you have frenzied aliens on maybe? In my game aliens NEVER attacked a trade route if I didn't attack them first and I can stand with military units on nest tiles without getting attacked... They've only attacked me if they have no space to move to.

 

[bruntfca]

A couple of tips.

Set your first cities close to each other. Trade routes are more important than resources early on.

If you settle your first city on land, settle the second one at sea. This gives you a ship (4 moves per turn) and will allow you to gain contact (diplo capital) and pop pods faster. Send trade route to sea city - it will get insane food and hammers if you set capital to turn hammers to food.

With the diplo perk, you can get 20 food 10 hammers to your city. Hence improving a tile for 1 (lol) hammer is academic compared to the trade route. After 5 in prosperity got to Production and get 25% bonus for buildings already at capital.

If you trade and use sats you will have large amount of energy. You can buy buildings at the capital fast so that your other bases get the 25% bonus - leaving your capital at food conversion.

I've played games where I've ignored the aliens all the way through. It's not worth touching them otherwise they will endanger your explorers. Explorers = free cash, science and culture, and overpowered buildings.

At the start you can use up some artefacts for huge boosts to culture and production if you need to pop out a building or policy. Once your empire gets bigger build the fence for the quest (you can do it in 2-3 turns) - even pop an artefact if you want to. I've even used Alien Attractor sats to move away the huge turtles - anything to keep my explorers safe as they hoover up the map.

Final tip, play on the "Frigid" biome; the aliens are semi comatose on this biome.

 

[MAMoob]

A few more tips: building a city on a tile adjacent to a nest will turn aliens "blue", and after that you can work tiles occupied by aliens. You also get the strategics fro the nest, without even needing the prerequisite tech. Nice for smth like floatstone, because I tend not to get terraforming early, but it's needed for some nice stuff like the drone sphere.

Alternatively you can get alien lifeforms, build a few extra explorers and just leash and sell aliens for cash. You sell them to the local zoo I guess, as alien lifeforms does have that alien preserve building... This does not anger them. So nests can even get you a bit of cash .

 

[Ryika]

Don't understand why the sarcasm is necessary, I came here asking for help... All the advice I've seen has always said to leave the aliens alone, I assumed that meant nests as well.

Alright, I'm sorry.

But still, you're basically asking: "It's raining, do I have to take cover to not get wet?" ^^ Obviously you have to clear out nests if they spawn next to you. The only alternatives are to either not use trade routes early on (which is extremely bad) or to push out an Ultrasonic Fence (if you happen to somehow have the technology required) and then pray that the quest triggers quickly.

And of course you should avoid expanding into alien-infested areas if possible. That's even true if the alternatives are worse city spots overall.

Are we playing the same game? Do you have frenzied aliens on maybe? In my game aliens NEVER attacked a trade route if I didn't attack them first and I can stand with military units on nest tiles without getting attacked... They've only attacked me if they have no space to move to.

Aliens always eat trade routes if the trade routes happen to run into them. They don't seem to actively try to block them though. With that many Aliens between the cities he's bound to get his trade routes eaten.

Also, especially aquatic Aliens love to attack Naval Combat Units even if they haven't attacked first and even if no nest is around.

 

[MAMoob]

Also, especially aquatic Aliens love to attack Naval Combat Units even if they haven't attacked first and even if no nest is around.

That never happend in my game, and I played quite a few. By attacking I mean attacking ANY alient on the map, even a hydrocoral. I had trade routes going through aliens without any issues. Krakens/Siege worms can still pillage tiles but that's about it. What you're describing was the case in BE, but in BERT I don't feel it's the case. Or one of our games is bugged.

 

[Rokdog]

It's not true that aliens will not attack trade routes if you don't take a shot at them. In fact, I just lost a trading vessel early in the game to an unseen alien because I failed to see an alien nest near the route. So long as the vessel runs into an alien on its turn route, the alien takes it unless you have Ultrasonic Fence defenses.

Aliens always eat trade routes if the trade routes happen to run into them. They don't seem to actively try to block them though. With that many Aliens between the cities he's bound to get his trade routes eaten.

Yes, exactly! So glad you guys posted this, I thought I was going crazy. Both of these also happen to me, and what MAMoob and Olodune were saying was completely the opposite of what I've been experiencing.

Are we playing the same game? Do you have frenzied aliens on maybe? In my game aliens NEVER attacked a trade route if I didn't attack them first and I can stand with military units on nest tiles without getting attacked... They've only attacked me if they have no space to move to.

Funny you should say that, it's what I thought when you said aliens never attack your trade routes, lol >< My games are very default right now and I only use the "Setup Game" menu and haven't gone into "Advanced Setup" to mess with any settings at all.

But I don't want to sound ungrateful! Everyone's advice has helped a lot and it's given me plenty to think about and what I can do differently to approach this. Speaking of which, with all the help I've gotten, you guys deserve another screenshot. I went back to a very early save in that game and combined the advice given to me, especially from Ryika and Roxlimn. Said screw my early victory and invested in a small navy of 2-3 gunboats and 4-5 submarines to get the aliens off my front porch. Here's the same game at T180:

The Alien Liberation Project

I've already finished my Institute -> Hypercomputing slingshot to build an Emancipation Gate, sort of a Supremacy spin on the strat. I'm now just blitzing through affinity points to start building it. Kuzma, Uspekh, Serik, and Konecho all have their own sources of titanium which is what made me want to so greedily expand in those directions. Stanimir and Svyatoy are also in very resource-rich locations, attested to by the fact they were actually my last 2 cities but grew very rapidly. Well, and TR spam I suppose

I still have much to learn and improve, but I again want to say thank you to all of you for taking the time to post and share your tips and advice, it's definitely appreciated.

 

[sugerdady87]

It's not true that aliens will not attack trade routes if you don't take a shot at them. In fact, I just lost a trading vessel early in the game to an unseen alien because I failed to see an alien nest near the route. So long as the vessel runs into an alien on its turn route, the alien takes it unless you have Ultrasonic Fence defenses. Heck, they should just name that tech Trade Defenses.

Aliens may not attack Explorers unless you attack them first. They will definitely attack any units classed as "combat" units and anything within 2 tiles of a nest. That's how you harvest aliens without getting them mad at you - you park a Marine 2 tiles away from a nest and let them come to you. Saves your Explorers.

Most of my games are similar to your screenie. If you don't clear them out, you will not be able to establish trade routes before the Ultrasonice Fence quest clears. You may even have difficulty clearing your Colonists.

Use City attacks to clear aliens. That will not trigger aggression responses. You only have two nests - clear one and then then other. This will trigger an orange status - your Explorers will have to be extra careful for a while.

Playing my games as if this sort of thing will always happen delays my win to about turn 250 or so, but the upside is that I always win my games and my starts are not always the same BO over and over again.

I just did a Might game harvesting aliens with Brasilia. I even instigated and won an early war (before turn 90) with Chungsu. It was different. Fun. BERT is easy enough that you can do flavor crap with your choices and you should still win handily at Soyuz.

Well then your game is glitched. Aliens do not attack trade units nor combat units if they weren't attacked before.

EDIT: Btw, Are we talking about rising tides here? In RT, they never attack explorers or trade units if not attacked. In vanilla, aliens attack anything once you got close to the nest.

 

[Rokdog]

Well then your game is glitched. Aliens do not attack trade units nor combat units if they weren't attacked before.

EDIT: Btw, Are we talking about rising tides here? In RT, they never attack explorers or trade units if not attacked. In vanilla, aliens attack anything once you got close to the nest.

First of all yes, we're talking RT. I have the most recent version of RT, a fresh copy from Steam that's barely a week old with no mods or extra options turned on, and this is exactly what happens. But I think there's some misunderstanding going on here. It's not necessarily the aliens becoming aggressive and attacking out of no where, it's this very important point Roxlimn brought up:

So long as the vessel runs into an alien on its turn route, the alien takes it...

So the alien doesn't even have to move, it can happen on your turn. In the game from the first screenshot, my trade routes could not get out of my capital because the aliens clogging the water ways. The aliens were not attacking so much as my trade routes were committing suicide by running into them.

If you don't believe us, it would be very easy to test. Take a colonist or a worker and try to move it through a neutral alien and watch what happens. If you're lucky and the random movements of the aliens never collide with your civilian units during a regular game I could see how players would miss this, but it definitely happens and doesn't seem like a bug.

 

[MAMoob]

Yes, aliens can randomly kill unprotected colonists and workers but that's about it. Use explorers to wall off with ZOC or military units to stack on top if needed.

 

[Ryika]

Looks like City Attack now counts as an act of aggression to the Aliens. I just did some testing and can confirm that, if you never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever attack any alien not even with the city attack they will not eat trade routes, but after loading the game and attacking with only my city (from 2 tiles away) they did eat my trade route as expected.

So yeah, seems like there's another option to clearing out alien nests - if you're willing to accept that you won't be able to work half of your tiles for half of the game and that you will be Zone of Controled in half of your territory you can completely ignore them.