This mod enhances Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire experience by improving AI and rebalancing other features. It is more diffcult to beat and play style may differ from vanilla if you mastered it before.
The mod keeps developping and may become slightly obsolete in parts. For more contemporary informtion and visual tutorial, please, watch an incredible useful Loladarulz's video channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDGozj3_2wdEv_cEhBgwzmgZ-pGfxLMPB.
This mod tries making all original strategies viable. As such it may require reviewing general strategy every 5-10 turns or so. Whether to attack or build a defense or expand on land or expand on sea or to strengthen infrastructure or to rush for new technologies. It is not possible succeeding in all directions at once but savvy player evaluates most important direction/strategy at the moment.
Standard "Fusion Power + Needlejets = global conquest" strategy is not the ultimate answer anymore. It is still a strategy among others, though. You need to mix and match it with other macro and micro strategies.
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Besides of general direction you'll be making decisions on lower level about many movements, attack, defenses, maneuvering, etc. Hopefully, the new battle winning probability display helps you in that.
DO NOT get frustrated if you cannot beat the game from the get go. It may take some learning of new balance. Once you do, you never go back, as vanilla would feel too strategically shallow.
- No plantpearls = Aliens are the pure threat and no benefits.
- All triad psi attack-defense ratio is 1:1 = No first strike bonus. => With above in mind, avoid hunting them unless they threaten your infrastructure.
They are more abundant and they are a threat. Normally it is about 50% chance of survival agains worms. Higher morale and PLANET rating help. Nevertheless their attack frequency is enough to slow your expansion down quite significantly. Player needs to decide wether they want to send defender with every colony for extra safety or go for good old colony spamming in all direction. Both strategies are viable just be prepared to lose some number of unprotected colonies and bases and don't get frustrated. Extra protection costs extra units. No protection costs some lost colonies. The choice is yours.
It is also important to keep more than one defender at bases. With more frequent worm attacks player often loses a defender to worm. Second one assures base security and give player some time to replace lost defender.
In midgame, with a lot of ecodamage, popworm can destroy even two defenders easily. Then it makes sense to keep empath attackers in most ecodamaging bases as well to deal with popworms swiftly. Actually empath attackers are needed even in early game to quickly kill spore launchers. Otherwise, they destroy a lot of improvements around.
Stack bases with at least two defenders. It is still beneficial to build bare Scout Patrol for retaliation even after aquiring Hypnotic Trance.
Best strategy agains worms is not to pop them going through fungus and not to fight them Use base defense bonus. It is better to lure worms on a base as you have better fighting odds there. Especially before turn 50. There are no planetpearls. No use in hunting natives. Avoid going through fungus and evade all natives outside of bases. The only natives worth killing immediatelly are spore launchers next to improved lands. Kill them quickly at all costs. Produce more Scout Patrols as needed.
PLANET positive factions can build up native army but not for free. You will be converting 1-2 units into 1 captured native with +1 PLANET (into 2 with +2 PLANET). Still it may be beneficial for preparing attack against faction which is ahead of you in conventional weaponry. Assess cost and benefits.
Forest is twice as long to erect. Makes sense to plant sparingly to increase further spreading coverage. Use in arid/flat areas mostly. Normally prefer combination of rainy farms + rocky mines.
Coastal bases with both land and sea formers are best self supported production centers. They have plenty food from sea and excess of minerals from land rocky mines.
Land and sea equally. Land bases are quickstartes and give you immediate benefits. Sea bases grow fast but develop slowly due to lack of minerals. Yet they have huge nutrient and energy potential. Fast growth fuels further ocean expansion and enormous energy intake results in both faster research and hurrying production. Unless player claim extremely fertile land (like jungle) from start they won't be able to overtake AI economically without heavy sea presence. AI faction that breaks into sea first usually ends up being pretty might one by the mid game. Aquatic factions are slightly different. They have immediate ocean expansion potential but their initial development speed is quite slow. So they rank kinda average depending on resourse quality they able to secure from the start.
Don't worry about claiming territory to occupy it later. Unlike vanilla here expansion is a work in itself requiring huge investments. Put your investments at work as quickly as possible. Build new bases more or less nearby and don't drag colonies across the map just to deny territory to opponent. AI develop so quickly that you won't be able to secure whole perimeter of your desired territory. Use what you have on hands and use it wisely.
Overall slower repair rates lay out a foundation for attrition war. Player is not limited to one turn assault to capture a base anymore. Fighting for 5-10 turns may be fruitful as well. Economy of war is to destroy more enemy HPs and lose less of your own. Bombardment lets you do just that by taking away enemy HPs unpenalized. Economicaly wise artillery superiority doubles or triples your sheer army power.
Armor and weapon values are going hand to hand in this mod. With territory and base defense bonuses it is much more economically beneficial to fight in own territory. That tilts confrontation strategy toward turtling up. Now is it completely possible and viable to defend against aggressor on borders with just part of your production potential and divert the rest to economical growth. With some allies fighting common enemy it is even possible to outgrow aggressor economically in defensive war due to better combat odds. A completely new stratedy that didn't exist in vanilla.
Conquering neighbor bases is still beneficial if you manage to catch them unprepared. This will be just partial conquest with economical and armament parity but extra bases will speed up future development. As usual, allying agains single opponent is always the best.
With sure economical advantage the slow advancement with bombardment strategy is the best economically wise. Move up a lot of artillery and bombard base to halve its defenders health. Then move in infantry and attack weakened defenders. With reduced healing rate it could be done in few turns. One turn assault is no longer necessary. Of course, defend artillery with strong dedicated defenders. Another option is to use armored infantry. There still will be losses among attackers but preparatory bombardment reduces them in half.
In addition to generic combat strategies preemptive borders protection is a must as well. It does pay off! Start establishing defense in borderline bases as soon as you border other faction. Build Perimeter Defense and couple of strong defenders to deflect first wave of sudden attack until you weaponize ecomony to fend off aggressor at full scale. Keep at least one slow probe in each border base at all times. AI has a nasty habbit to avoid fair fight and just buy bases outright. Slow probes are 50% cheaper and require no maintenance. Preferrably also to keep one offensive unit per two bases or so for counterattacks. Counterattacks are also 50% more effective in own territory. Use central production strong bases to create combat units. Don't burden young border bases with it. Such border protection does not need to eat all of your resources in peace time. Build it slowly but steadily. Pease can break any time. Sometimes quite early in the game. It would be outright stupid and frustrating to lose all of your frontier bases to just few gatling rovers.
Artillery is not too effective in defense as it requires some bombardment rounds to decrease enemy health to near zero and sudden attack doesn't last that long. It is better to employ defensive bombardment durning ongoing conflict already when density of attackers is hight because artillery damages all units in stack.
Start building defense against more hostile neighbors but don't neglect deceptionally nice ones as well. Good relations last the longest when two factions allied against common enemy in ongoing conflict. But even then I saw it changed overnight. Also keep your defense up to date during peace time by replacing or upgrading units.
There is no front line and ZOC in ocean. Even sea bases in depth of territory are vulnerable. Still AI tend to attack frontier bases anyway.
Keep there 1-2 Trance Scout Patrol against constant native attacks. It is much more difficult to reinforce garrison from neighbor bases. Scout Patrols are also can be instantly upgraded to armored defenders in light of conventional attack threat. A slow infantry Probe Team is a must! AI will attempt mind control few times. Optionally stationary Probe Teams at frontier bases and sea Probe Teams interceptors to catch those sneaky enemy sea probes trying to get inward player territory. There is no point to keep large attack fleet just for protection. Probably 1-2 fast ships is enough to get to the hot point.
Build frontier Naval Yard at the last moment when war is ongoing or inevitable.
Do not overbuild ocean defense. Ocean war is very volatile and losing few bases is acceptable. Just make sure assailant pays hefty price for each captured base to reduce their invasion forces.
Waves of mind worms is not a single best tool anymore. Hypnotic Trance and Empath Song can be slapped on any unit for cheap 1-2 mineral rows making pure native assault quite ineffective without huge disparity in PLANET rating.
Use natives with hight PLANET rating or against faction with low PLANET rating (or both). Preceed worms wave with launchers bombardment. Artillery does make a difference.
For conventional warfare use a mix of artillery and heavy armored infantry on main attack direction. Use fast light armored units on main attack direction only if they can bypass bombardment range in one turn or enemy artillery tears your speeders in pieces before they strike. Otherwise, use them to harrass remote locations, destroy non combat units and infrastructure. Air units can be used for direct attack against opponent without AAA tracking and Airspace Complex. Against more prepared opponent they can be used to cut out reinforcement coming from inside of enemy territory.
Mixing conventional and native units usually doesn't work well as it is difficult to maximize both MORALE and PLANET ratings at the same time. However, natives do ignore base defensive structures so one can use them against heavily walled important bases. That is especially usefult in past mid game against bases with Tachyon Field.
Keep few of them at frontline whether you attack or defend. Period. No much change from vanilla here.
Armored probes are good to sneak into enemy territory. Opponent risks losing own attacker removing such probe.
Armored formers allow player to improve tiles a not far from front line within enemy needlejets reach. That makes sense when defense is holding well but enemy air forces are overwhelming. They tend to knock down former in absense of other targets. Why abandon the whole band of fertile land? I agree the scenario is quite exotic but possible. More often I add Trance ability on formers to reduce losses from sudden worm attacks.
Negative EFFICIENCY ratings are no longer that dreadful especially for compact empires. HQ coverage is extended to 1/4 of map width. It is now quite viable to pick Police State + Planned in early game even not for Hive.
GROWTH bonuses stack up pretty good up to +9. Meaning ten times faster growth! One more step up the GROWTH scale triggers population boom. It is now beneficial to pick GROWTH bonus at any level. The more the merrier.
Multiplying facilities become beneficial when there is something to multiply. The more the better. Recycling Tanks start making sense at 8 minerals. Genejack Factory at 16 minerals. And so on. Due to their high maintenance it may be not useful to build them all just because they are available.
Energy Bank and Network Node are borderline beneficial at about 10 of corresponding income (economy, labs). Advanced eco/psy/lab multiplying facilities may make sense with less income since they improve income in two areas at once.