With the large amount of faction diversity present in Planetfall it would stand to reason that each one brings a different set of tricks to the game. With that in mind I would like to ask you guys to share your strategies that you use in the game and if there are any significant differences between the various factions.
I'm asking this because I'm used to playing fall from heaven 2, which contains extreme faction diversity and I would like to know if the same environment exists in Planetfall.
I would describe Planetfall strategy initially as the big choice between Hybrid and Terraformer play style (or the third option of playing balanced). Terraformer is close to standard Civ4 game play - you try to growth your cities real big by maximizing out the terrain yields. You built Mines, Farms (which grow like Cottages under stock rules), Condensers and Boreholes. Your advantage is that you have a lot of people and tons of production. The downside is that the environment (the Planetmind) will not like you and that you will have both to live both with its attacks and being not liked by any Hybrid follower.
Hybrid is kind of the opposite. You sacrifice economical development to live with the planet side by side. What you gain is harmony (no attack from wild native lifes), you can even tame those creatures to fight at your side. You become part of the Concordate council, a kind of "UN" for the Hybrids. Later you can get free research and Great People out of this.
A balanced approach is in the middle - you restrict terraforming business to not damage the planet, but you don't sacrifice it completely to go the green route.
Below that you can run various sub strategies - like Great People, Espionage, Builder/Warmonger, Religion.
There is always synergy with certain factions, but usually it is not as strong to force you in that direction - Miriam for example is suited to be Terraformer. But I tried playing her Hybrid in my last game. It felt uncommon, you can't use all of her boni, but it is far from being impossible.
For the sub strategies, the leaders special abilities give you a hint: e.g. with Yang it is effective to build a huge army of mainly infantry units to overrun your enemies with simple masses, while Roze can get most out of espionage (her probe teams can't be identified when cought) and Lal has his focus on big population, dominating the Planetary council and Great People.
