Petek is
right about getting to Doc: Flex (with directed research, it is Doc: Mobility, then Doc: Flex; with blind research, just check "Explore")
Once you get Doc: Flex, you basically follow the same strategy you would on land.
Instead of scouts and rovers exploring, you should build a lot of (1)-1-4 gunboats and send them out to pop sea pods. One trick: if you are entering a non-fungus square with a pod, always have 3 mp's left before you start. If you pop a IoD, you lose a mp (in addition to the mp for entering the square). This way you have a mp left to attack the IoD for points (and if you are the Gaians, you may capture the IoD).
Popping pods will get you ec and techs and gunboats are cheap.
Be sure to attack any enemy transport with your gunboats.
When you find land, islands or continents, send transports (which are available with Doctrine: Flexibility) with land exploration units if your sea units were not able to fully explore the land. Then send transports with colony pods. Land bases are much better than sea bases in the pre-fusion era. They are cheaper to build and you get more minerals from land than from sea. (If you aren't an aquatic faction, you get no minerals from the sea unless you establish a mining platform and then you get only one mineral until Advanced Ecological Engineering.)
Obviously, if you hit a continent, you can use all the tactics that you use to win in a Transcend mostly-land game. However in such a case, don't stop exploring with the gunboats you already have. Even after your gunboats have explored the entire ocean, the occasional IoD can be very profitable.
Once you get Doc Flex, switch your research to get Applied Physics (Conquer), Information Networks (Discover) and Nonlinear Mathematics. Applied Physics will give you (2)-1-1 and Nonlinear Mathematics will give you (4)-1-1.
Now you can think about taking control of the seas from the Pirates. (Even applied physics may be enough early on.) Sea bases can be conquered with only naval units. Use your naval units to attack the defenders, sea or land, in a base. Then a naval unit can occupy a sea base (note you can't do that for a land base on the coast.)
Have you found the
SMAC Academy at CGN?
In particular, the
Offshore Radar Platform: Your New Best Friend and
associated comment thread addresses your question about water worlds strategy.
Once you have doctrine flexibility, nonlinear mathematics and armor, you should be ruthlessly patrolling the seas. Knock out all enemy naval units and sink all enemy tranports. You can blockade coastal ports. On good islands or small continents without any other factions, you can colonize and follow the same tactics you use in a mostly land based game.
If there is opposition, the sea fungus is less of barrier than land fungus (a ship can always enter a fungus square), but you can still use them to channel the enemy.
At this point, you can work toward Industrial Automation, which will give you crawlers.
From Industrial Automation, you can get Doctrine: Initiative and build the Maritime Control Center, which is obviously an important Secret Project for a water-world with the +2 movement for your naval units, free naval yards in all your bases. Doctrine: Initiative also gives you cruisers, but more importantly it gives you amphibious pod ability.
From here, besides the techs that you use in your mostly-land Transcend level victories, fusion is an important tech because the cost of sea formers and sea colony pods drops dramatically.
Now sea bases make more sense. Build your sea bases next to islands that may have been too small to colonize profitably and next to continents you control (and to enemy continents to provide a beachhead). I like building a land transport in these sea bases (transport on an infantry chassis). As long as the land transport remains in the base, land units
without amphibious pod ability can travel between the sea base and adjacent land squares. In addition, the land transport can move between the sea base and adjacent land squares carrying a (non-transport) land unit.
If you terraform sea squares (sea kelp/tidal harness), you can create fairly large bases that produce a lot of energy (if you are crawling, then you only need sea kelp or tidal harness) on a square. A borehole or mines on land squares will give your sea base the necessary minerals (it is a good idea if they can produce ten minerals). If you crawl, those useless rocky squares surrounding the poles can be very useful. Send formers to them, alternate boreholes and mines and then crawl them for minerals to a sea base. If these boreholes and mines are outside the sea base radius, then the only ecological damage is from the mineral production and not from building boreholes.
One final thing: you can use sea formers to sink land bridges and enemy coastal bases.
At this point you should be able to employ all of the tactics you use for your transcend level mostly-land victories.
I took a look at your most recent
Water Worlds post.
chuft said:
Well I tried another water world game, this time as the Usurpers...
If you have a saved game, post it here. Without seeing the saved game, here are some suggestions:
(1) Are you expanding fast enough? Once you get Doc: Flex, you should be expanding the same way you would on land. Instead of sending out rovers and scouts to explore, you send out gun ships. Land bases are more important than sea bases. The pirates succeed because they locate good land, especially the Monsoon Jungle, and send land colony pods there. You should be doing the same thing.
(2) You place too much emphasis on Doc: Init. The Usurpers start with Res-3 armor. So you should be going Doc: Mobility, Doc Flex, Applied Physics, Information Networks, Nonlinear Mathematics.
Once you get (4)-3r-4 foils, you can make shortwork of the Pirates. Even (2)-3r-4 will make short work of them.
(3) A infantry probe team only costs 2 rows (a standard probe team costs 3 rows). If you have two infantry probe teams per exposed base, you don't have to worry about probe teams taking over your bases.
