Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999)

Hive

Transcend, dry, smallest ocean cover, tech stag. Dry made the game more interesting because what few good tiles were present felt like gold, and there was more variety to terraforming. I started on a decent sized landmass in the SW, about equivalent to real world Australia. Capitol had food bonus, mineral bonus in ocean and a few moist tiles. Built 2nd base nearby, raised taxes to make the money to adopt police state, then upped research as much as I could. 1st tech was formers and I pumped out a former for each base, then scouts and colonies (but not in capitol so it would not lose population). One time I got biogenics from a pod, hurried recycling tanks and began the human genome, but worms killed some scouts and I reloaded not realizing I had not saved after that free tech. Oh man that was so worth losing units. I still managed to build recycling, then genome, then weather, then virtual world, then command nexus. Got to love Hive industry, especially with planned. Never before have my cities got stuff built so quickly that I struggled to find stuff for them to do. My other bases pumped out so many colonies and scouts that it was tough to keep track of it all. I was easily top in territory and population. I got a free foil from a pod which I used to move free rovers to nearby landmasses to get pods, and to ferry alien artifacts back (used 2 for the 1st wonder). I settled the perimeter of my land, leaving mount planet in the center unused for now. I had lots of formers all over for each of my around 12 bases, and raised land to link the 2 closest islands, 1 of which was technically Antarctica and linked to the biggest continent that was like South America. I soon met Peacekeepers, who lived there in the south and they conquered the University to their north. The Gaians came down with a transport and landed 1 mind worm to declare war. Pointless. I started pumping 2-2 foils and lost 1 because of movement impairing fungus. I sent probe foils to infiltrate P and find G. I did find a transport far to the north with a setter so they must be up there somewhere. Upon seeing my probe they wanted a truce. They were also in 1st place overall with me close 2nd. Morgan was 1st in tech and Believers 1st in military, so everyone except Sparta was doing well. Sparta sent a couple rovers to my land and we exchanged multiple techs and her map. She was directly N of me in like Siberia and not doing well at all. Her maps also failed to reveal any other faction so she must simply be failing against worms and at basic terraforming and base building. Those rovers were annoying because they blocked access to the last 2 spots to squeeze in bases along my N coast. Tech was now at 4 attack 3 defense.

I let them get away with the blocking because if I asked them to leave it might move to where I wanted to build the bases. So I used a transport to go around and had them leave afterwards. Soon I met everyone else. Gaians were NW wrapped around the map edge to about North America, Morgan was in the center and closest to me, and Believers were on the same landmass as Sparta just N of Morgan. M and B were allied somehow. I sent probes to steal tech from P which triggered war, as usual. Then I traded and bought tech from Morgan, even getting flight and a tech in exchange for just my map. Then I stole more tech from Morgan while framing the other factions, starting a massive world war. He was at war with everyone except B and me, though that soon changed when I refused to join against Sparta because they were allied with G. Didnt matter because soon enough every faction declared war on me. I bee lined for cruisers to get maritime control wonder while also managing to get ascetic virtue and great library in the same city over 2 turns. Morgan was building those and had a head start because I had to steal the tech from him, but my city had a lot of production from boreholes. I was building the virtue in that city but decided to switch to great library and hurry it to deprive Morgan. The next turn he switched that city to the virtues with 0 turns but I still got it by hurrying. Was that worth the cost? Probably not. I was running wealth during this time for the production and switched to knowledge once I had the wonders. I focused my tech on getting wonders and now I had the lead, eventually getting super collider, theory of everything, hunter killer, cloning vats. I was at a point where most cities had nothing to build so I pumped out troops. By the time I decided to move on Morgan I had 12 attack 4 defense and fusion reactors. I sent 2 clean transports filled with clean marines and AA ecm defensive rovers, with 1 offense rover, along with a dozen AA ships. I sent fighter jet escorts to guard them for the 1st turn, then they were on their own as they bypassed the closest bases to go for 1 that was making prototype planet buster. I made my own nukes too. Took that base then a couple others on a separate island, then a sea base before letting them rest. Meanwhile I sent another 2 transports full of troops with escorts west to capture more cities. That gave me a base close enough to move copters and jets up there. I did lose a few jets and ships and despite pumping clean AA defense infantry I did not have enough actually on the front line yet to properly defend every city I took. Flooding had been going on for a while and we did not have the tech for solar shade yet. The flooding was annoying but seemed to hit the other factions worse than me. Side note, mt planet volcano tiles gave both mineral and energy boost but could not have farms at all, and the top caldera could not have any terraforming at all. I took M's Capitol and all his best cities, all the while he was demanding his bases back and trying to make me pay money to stop the war. Dumbass thought he was winning. It seemed like flooding cut off access to the rest of his territory, plus he had conquered much of P and moved his capitol to a former University base. I had to disable removing fungus from automation because my sea formers were going around only doing that instead of improving bases. All of them were in a big convoy heading to the M bases I had captured and putting themselves at serious risk.

I next decided to wipe out B and had another large fleet with 2 transports full of clean garrisons on the way from home. Much later another fleet with 2 transports was sent from home, then I stopped pumping troops. Once I got the living refinery for max support I had no more worries about building clean units and micromanaging unit support. I made a lot of formers everywhere and focused on terraforming both my core home and conquered lands. Money income was going lower and lower though so I pumped solar satellites. This was the 1st time I read the note saying that satellite yield was limited to base size and that aerospace complex was needed for the full amount. Good to know. I pumped hydroponic satellites after about 20 solar even though max base size was 16 right now. This massively improved my income and I could afford to rush defenders. Once B was wiped out I got a solar shade put up at 3vs2 vote, but the bastards unanimously did polar melting right after and I could not veto. The flooding had stabilized though, probably because I had the ecology boosting wonder and plant of preserves. I later got another shade put up and sea levels returned to the starting level, which meant lots of new land to terraform. Unfortunately 1 of my fleets was on a tile that became land so I lost all those ships while the ground troops took refuge taking an enemy base. The ships should have stayed there but been unable to move from the tile, being sitting ducks to ground attack but able to be rescued by lowering terrain. My military tech rose to 16-10 while the AI was at 12-3. I don't know how they avoided researching armor tech for so long but it made the war trivial. I lost the occasional jet or ship to attack but I had the overwhelming advantage when I attacked. While building the space elevator I designed drop infantry with AA, attack and armor to orbital drop at enemy bases to supplement my fleets. I also made hover tank behemoths with the same stats that only took 1 extra turn to build in my highest production cities, but I never got to use any before winning. It was fun dropping troops to take bases but once clinical immortality was done I had enough votes to win diplomatic victory. Base populations were shooting up over 20 too with drone riots being a problem in my home bases that lacked punishment spheres. The tech for the wonder eliminating riots was no where in sight but not long after completing the space elevator I got the tech for orbital drops. Cloning vats + punishment spheres + the 2 wonders that increase votes + war = easy diplomatic win as long as I avoid war crimes. The only future civic I had unlocked was cybernetic but Hive did not benefit from the efficiency so I waited until I built the wonder that removed the penalty. Captured a couple mind worms and further solidified my tech lead a bit. Debatable whether thought control would be better for this match.

End score 3777 year 2410

Believers

Transcend, highest land, dry, abundant worms, tech stag, no map scan. I definitely like dry because it makes terraforming and already existing good tiles more important. I started on what seemed like a small island near the center south. The Capitol had 2 monoliths and free tech from a pod allowed me to start the merchant exchange very early. Unfortunately the 2nd base was not growing so I had to wait until formers before I could spread. I switched to weather and got that wonder but was not able to get any other early wonders. My land was connected to the NE and SW by narrow strips, which I raised in anticipation of eventual flooding, and I began spreading both ways. Morgan shared my continent to the west and he wisely went for pact with me. To his north were University and Hive. U conquered H, leaving them with only an island city while M eventually wiped out U. I was getting regular techs and map updates from M, and was running just police state. I did not want to ruin police by going free market nor adopt power with its penalty when the Believers only needed 1 of police state or power to get free support by base population. Sparta was on a large island to the east while Gaians and Peace had the entire north. I used probe ships to incite war between S and G but it would not work vs G and P. G was in 1st place overall, M was tech, S was military and I had top territory, population and wealth since I switched to fundamentalism, planned, power with 100% tax going to energy. Support was still max though now I could only use 1 police unit per base and happiness was more difficult to control. I later built punishment spheres in every city, might as well since I was doing 0 research. I made so much energy that I regularly rushed buildings that were close to finished. I had jets, cruisers, 10 attack and 4 defense. I sent a settler by sea to the uranium flats, which was otherwise only accessible through M's territory and put 4 bases there. G attacked me regularly by land, which seriously slowed my expansion northward. P also hated me and were in pact with both G and M, but he never sent anything other than an occasional probe. Then S declared war. I had superior tech and they had no air or AA. I took a sea base with ships and sent a transport with some marines, a rover and defense. I made a backup save before capturing a land base and it was a good thing because they took that back with their overwhelming amount of rovers and infantry. So I loaded and spent more time bombing roads before capturing a city. My sea formers cleared a path through new sargasso to get to Sparta, and improved some mines for captured cities. The rover I included with the marines proved crucial because it inflicted a ridiculous amount of collateral damage as they foolishly put 20+ units on the same tile. Bombers got a lot of kills but air does not cause collateral. Later I added copters after stealing from G. It was interesting that they spammed me with probes and with my immunity to mind control they most often just infiltrated. A few destroyed buildings and sabotaged production but they never stole tech. Come to think of it, I think I could not steal tech from B during my university game. G and M were also capturing a few S bases until things took a drastic turn.

Morgan declared war on me, complaining about my planned economy. He broke the pact a while ago. At the same time S wanted truce and respecting my use of power also wanted friendship. I pulled most of my forces back home, hurried most buildings, and pumped troops in almost every base. M had better tech at 13-6, and air units. He used a cruise missile, bomber and paratroopers to capture my 2nd city. I already had mag tubes linking my entire empire so it was trivial to take back, but I had to rebuild the sphere and recycling tanks before that base could go back to pumping ships. It had my only naval yard on that side. I had my plan, his Capitol was on the coast bordering my land and had several wonders including the hunter seeker. Take that and I could steal his tech and even mind control if needed. However it was very shaky whether I could succeed. I only had 3 ships and 4 marines there while he had better garrison troops and several copters. Rather than attacking anything of direct threat though he sent all those copters after my supply crawlers, which was too far to keep them safe and was right on the path of my own copters. Such a joke. I just barely captured his Capitol after that since my marines did not have great odds. With no defense units nearby and not even all the mag tubes leading to it destroyed, my single rover took the base and M wanted to go back to peace in exchange for declaring war on S again. Hell yes I will take that deal. It will give me time to secure his Capitol and lock in keeping those wonders. And steal his tech. Stealing from M was tricky because I needed to steal from a different city each time in order to have decent chance of framing another faction, and save scum. I switched to democracy to population boom most of my cities to 14, and later switched to free market and cybernetic. With the living refinery I still had max support while running democracy, the -8 to police did not matter with punishment spheres in every city, my research went up to baseline, and my income was ridiculous. I was making almost 2k energy per turn while still doing decent research. I significantly improved my military with enough to attack both M and S, and ended up in and out of war with them. I took 3 more M cities, and gave 1 that I could not defend that turn to Sparta. I was not expecting them to ally. With my civics I was on very good terms with M, S and P, but G and H hated me. H even declared war despite being pathetic with only a few cities. Everyone was at war with P though, who was losing badly. They wanted me to declare on them too and make a 3 faction coalition but I wanted to focus on G.

Sparta was almost half conquered by G. With me taking a few coastal and ocean cities, and destroying their units with air power, S was able to take back their continent. Then I conquered dozens of Gaian cities until taking their Capitol and 2nd best city with all their wonders. With my tech and industry lead I got all late game wonders, especially cloning and matrix (no riots ever). I then sold all my spheres but my research rate only improved slightly, like by 1 or 2 turns. My energy reserves were between 30k and 50k, and I considered going for economic victory. I had energy tax at 90% making over 5k income per turn while still having single digit research turns. I was spending a lot on rushing a garrison unit in each conquered city, and spheres until they went obsolete. My strategy was carrier repair bay transports with marines, a couple attack rovers, and 2 defense rovers, stacked with large fleet of ships, and supported by mostly fighter jets with a few bombers and copters. Probe cruisers went too and I mind controlled a base with several bombers. The main thing was to check which bases had bombers and send mine to kill the garrison to allow killing those bombers, and shooting down ones in the open. It was important not to let my fleet get stuck in fungus because that gave G a big attack bonus. I lost a few ships, aircraft and marines along the way but had no trouble building more. With my high population I won governor and was able to veto melting the ice caps but could not reverse the existing flooding. I designed grav ship formers to help with the annoying flooding but won diplomatic victory before building any. No one resisted despite G hating me so much.

This was an interesting match. I had never done 0 research before, nor had such late game income. I didn't think I would like this faction but their support bonus was huge and their research penalty was not too difficult to work around. The early game was very slow and put me far behind but the weather paradigm and good terraforming allowed me to catch up and surpass.

University

This was my 1st playthrough on my windows 10 PC. It took some work to get the game running. Apparently I had only copied the expansion iso and maybe the install folder from my old xp machine. I downloaded a new iso with the entire game, and had to install a series of patches to get the base game running. Crossfire still will not start. Been many years since I last played so I went University on random huge map, transcend with average settings, aggressive AI, tech stag, spoils of war. The world was all islands of various sizes but nothing large enough to call a continent. I started near the center on a fairly small island with a monolith just outside the capital and a fair concentration of fungus and rock. I took formers as my free starting tech and built 2 right away. Then I pumped settlers to cram 6 bases on that island with room for an ocean base later to exploit that monolith. I let the capitol build up while the smaller bases kept spreading. I was in the lead with tech and territory, and the Capitol built weather paradigm, virtual world, and maritime control wonders. I was focusing on naval tech. Unfortunately didn't get human genome project or command nexus. Fortunately I did find a lucky unity foil from a pod which allowed me to build more bases on nearby islands before learning how to build my own ships. I soon found the Believers and Morgan very close to the south on a long landmass that was several times larger than my starting island. They were at war of course. Towards the NE I put a base on a small island that could fit another if there was not a Believer base on the other side of the 1 tile straight. I put a base on a 5 tile island, and another on a 3 tile island. The latter was actually connected to the Believer mainland but I did not realize at the time and thought it was safe from attack. It pissed them off because they considered it their territory and they declared war. For some reason they had a troop build up there but never crossed to attack until many turns later. If I had known they could cross there it would have completely changed my war strategy. As it was, I first had to deal with tiny Gaian and Hive attacks. G attacked the most NE island but I bombed them with ships and they lost a unit to wild worms, so that attack did nothing. Hive landed 2 garrison units on my main island and captured my worst city there. I could have prevented it by attacking the transport or maybe rushing a defender. That area was thick with fungus and rocks, and my formers had not been there yet. By this time I had 4 attack and 3 defense tech. I made some offense units, including an artillery, and converged my 3 or 4 attack foils to take the city back. It was not difficult and I even used my probe foil to steal 1 garrison unit that was hiding in the rocky fungus. SW of my island was a fair sized C island filled with jungle, where I fit 4 bases and 1 sea base in the middle. It was a very lucrative spot. NW was a small island where the Hive destroyed the base I put there before I had a chance to build a defender. On top of that I ended up in a brief war with the Spartans who were threatening my west. I took their nearby ocean base with my ships.

My overall ranking fell significantly from here on as I ran out of steam. Much more difficult and tedious to manage larger empires plus I was more focused on war. I ran my usual police state + green and don't recall running any others. The Peacekeepers sold me a map for cheap, which revealed the Hive and Gaians. G were on a circle island a little bigger than mine NE across a large expanse of ocean. Hive had the largest island and plenty of other land they were spreading to and were leaping ahead far past everyone else. I attacked the B directly south of my base, which was their frontier with Morgan, who they conquered soon after. I had multiple ships bombing and multiple transports filled with marines. They hardly built any ships, but had a ton of high quality ground units. Since I was running wealth my troops were very green and had a hard time winning. Amphibious attacks bypassed their attack bonus though since all they could do was sit in the city as I bled their army away. In retrospect I should have been using that monolith to heal and improve morale. I held off on capturing their city for a while because I did not want them to just capture it back and steal a tech. I used the cheat editor to look at their territory since I could not probe them. At first I just looked then load the save but later left it on since things were not going my way. That was when they suddenly crossed to my island base that was actually not really an island. I ended up cheating to sink the terrain. They destroyed the forest and sensor I had there, and that was when I realized I should have attacked from there. The Hive and Gaians sent several attacks but my fleet of destroyers easily intercepted them now that I had full map vision. My probe ship even took 2 4-3 high morale foils. The Hive then started using isles of the deep. I always hated in Civ games how you could not see past your own borders. The fog of war. It made it far too easy to suffer from surprise naval attacks, and doing recon every turn was tedious. There were 2 other great boons of cheat mode. Restoring moves to units that were moved accidentally, and assigning home base without having to actually visit that base. I prefer the minerals support system for this and Civ 2 over the gold cost of Civ 4 because it gives good trade off between military vs production, but rehoming units is very tedious. Much better to do it in the cheat menu, especially with my islands. I did a couple edits for extra kills but that was probably unnecessary, and save scummed a lot to avoid losses. I broke off my forces to capture 3 bases that used to belong to Morgan, but this area was not terraformed at all. Then I moved east taking a small coastal base, which I abandoned due to the large number of troops they sent for it, from their Capitol no less. So of course I easily captured their poorly defended Capitol and wiped out that army. All that was left were 2 heartland bases on the south side of the island, and 2 frontier bases to the north. Unfortunately around this time the Hive and Gaians had missile jets, though thankfully they were fighting each other. G was planetary governor for a while until I called an election and voted for Peace. We won over Hive by 1 vote, everyone else abstained. They motioned to repeal the UN charter against atrocities and I voted yes. I upgraded a couple of my non marine units (including a rover) to nerve gas to more easily conquer the Believers, and nerve stapled most of their cities. I turned off spoils of war because it was too easy to capture a poorly defended frontier base and get tech, and it ruined my strategy of abandoning a captured base to preserve my marines at sea. I was surprised when I seen green bombers flying across the huge ocean because they just barely made it to Believer cities before running out of fuel. I was not aware air units could be stationed in bases of allies, well god damn this will ruin my war effort since I had no counter to air. The best I had was 4 armor and then after that missiles for 6 attack, but I could not research air yet for some reason. I had the prerequisites but I guess I needed more explore tech before I could go that high. I was in and out of war with the Gaians over those jets by bribing them with my tech. Soon as I seen them I went for truce, then had to declare war again when I could not capture the city those jets were in. Even more annoying they gave jets to the Believers and gave them the tech. 1 jet I flagged only to attack adjacent units otherwise it would kill a transport full of troops. I ruined their jet prototype by attacking with my ship, which made them switch to artillery. They had 2 cities left with 4 jets and a handful of ground units as my forces approached. They foolishly sent the jets after my crawlers and former, and later missed my transport by 1 space. I simultaneously landed a rover and marine from the west while my main transport stacked with the destroyer escort to attack from east, and the artillery plus a couple other units went via land. They could not bomb everything and the war was over.

I consolidated my forces to go far south against Sparta while focusing on filling in my territory with new bases and terraforming optimally. I stole tech from the Hive to catch up, started pumping out jets, got ascetic and cyborg wonders, and later switched to knowledge. It did not take long to bridge the massive gap to the Hive and now I was in 1st place with superior tech. I nerve gas bombed the few Hive bases that were in reach, which halved the civilian population and destroyed bases with 1 population. I love scorched earth war. I did realise I had been doing drone control wrong all this time. I thought you could tell at a glance from the population bar in the city screen (like in other civ games) but I had to click on the psych box to see the true amount of drones. I had been nerve stapling when I did not need to. Sparta was easy to defeat but I made a major blunder in not sending probe teams for defense. I lost my entire attack force when they bribed their capitol back. I cheat spawned in a probe team to fix it and rushed another since I am not keeping backup saves. I could have easily built them from all the sea bases I took. I razed 3 coastal bases with 2 move elite infantry so as not to worry about defending, and did not keep another base until I built the hunter seeker. With Sparta wiped out I moved my forces to the jungle towns, stopped using scenario view in lieu of save scumming before ending each turn, and focused on building up. My tech zoomed ahead and I focused on getting every wonder, which led to me skipping quantum reactors altogether and getting singularity, 13 attack and 8 defense. I built punishment spheres in Sparta and turned the entire area into industry focused military production. My capitol had every research boosting wonder and had insanely high research. When I built the cloning vats I switched to power and thought control for maxed police and support. I did have to fend off occasional attacks from G and H, but they were mostly focused on each other. Peacekeepers betrayed me and allied with G, but they were too weak to do much. I took a few ocean bases and the Hive took all but their Capitol and 1 crappy base in the middle of nowhere.

I knew how much military the Hive had; 100s of units with many of them copters and jets. Attacking them conventionally would be painful so I resolved to use planet busters. They were building them too but I was able surgically strike the bases that were building them. I nuked 1 or 2 bases that were in range of my cities. Then I built a couple carriers to extend the range and also put in my ground troops and a couple interceptors. This allowed me to nuke a couple further away bases that were building nukes, 1 base that already had 1, and any base that had a large concentration of troops. Meanwhile my ships and marines took ocean and coastal bases. Most I genocided with nerve gas, and all but 1 ocean base I obliterated with troops. I built that base up with defenses to use as a staging area. I had to move the fleet 1 full turn out of that base to get a nuke in range to destroy another base that was making a nuke but by this time I had a defense satellite. I had to land my troops to destroy an inland base that was making a nuke since I had no nukes ready. I landed on their coastal bunker and wiped out that base surprisingly without any losses. However shortly after that I had to cheat to restore movement to the fleet to head back to the sea base rather than move closer to their Capitol, because they got overwhelmed by copters. The war was progressing fairly well but other things were not. The planet was pissed and I was getting attacked by a lot of native life, including dozens of demon boil locusts at a time. They mostly flared up at my Capitol and Sparta Command, and it was a job to have enough units to defeat them. I was investing in trained trance scout patrols, empath copters and empath battleships. I managed to capture 7 locusts at once plus a few more individually, and sent them all to the Hive. They wiped out troops and captured a base but were not able to destroy it. The AI left them alone unless they were in a base. I nuked their Capitol and these singularity nukes could destroy 2 or 3 bases at once. I think it might br useful to still use fission or fusion busters for smaller area of destruction since I could not nuke the closest base without destroying all my locusts and the base they took. I built a transport copter to move garrison units from the sea base to the locust base, and to see how useful air transports really would be. It could go half way then crash on the land, which would make it vulnerable to attack. Jet might be safer, and going from fusion to singularity reactor gave 2 more fuel.

The other main problem was flooding. Not only from global warming but the bastard AI were deliberately going 3vs1 in favor of melting the ice caps and nay on solar shade. The only way to stop the flooding will be to wipe out 2 factions. I never bothered to design hovertank formers but I might have to make grav ship formers to offset having to baby land based formers with transports as my empire becomes more and more unconnected little islands. I pumped a lot of sea formers and automated them. I won fairly quickly after this though, nuking the Hive 1 or 2 more times, then 2 for the Gaians as my ridiculously huge fleet captured or wiped out every city. I did elect myself with diplomatic victory but the 2 defied it, then PK broke pact after I nuked. The fool only had 1 city. I captured a stack of 12 demon boil locusts but they were too late for the party. Unintentional discovery of broken strategy: abuse nukes, run green + cybernetic to capture locusts? I had switched to cybernetic after building the wonder that removed its penalty. Between nukes, nerve gas and obliterating bases my civilian kill count was probably well into the millions.

Final victory was conquest with 2457 score, 15k energy, year 2455

The only play from here on would be to do repeated solar shades to fix the waterworld. University was a fun faction to play due to the early game bonus of starting with formers, and ability to lead in tech to ensure dibs on most wonders. Dealing with prototypes was interesting and made it slightly more challenging to use new tech compared to the Spartans. Building a skunkworks in 1 or 2 high production cities offset the extra production costs with minor maintenance fee.

I wanted to recreate my 1st game from long ago, this time on the huge map of planet on transcend. Ironically the random start put me on the largest east continent with only 1 AI, while 2 were on the middle, 2 west and Believers by themselves on the north island. I used scenario mode to customize the starting locations. I had the middle continent all to myself and started in the uranium flats, far enough inland for the 2nd city to be coastal. The Capitol had food and mineral bonus, the latter of which was rocky. I put the Peacekeepers at Pholus ridge near the top of the west continent, and Gaians at the freshwater lake to the south. I did not want anyone starting on the smaller islands so the other 4 split the largest continent. Very similar setup as my random 1st game except I swapped some faction positions. University started at monsoon jungle, which caused him to dominate. Morgan was nearby to the east across the large water channel. If the map was earth then University was in Africa, Morgan in India, Believers in Norway, and Hive in Mongolia.

I pumped labs to 90% and was still making money each turn. The Capitol ended up making a command center while waiting for the tech for formers as I wanted to keep its population high for wonders. I only had 3 cities for a long time, even sending 1 colony to increase the population in the Capitol. I got a bunch of rovers from pods and explored my continent, getting several alien artifacts. I managed to build the human genome project with the high production (+7 from that rocky mineral mine), nerve stapling, and artifacts. I used cheat to view what everyone else was doing because I hate the early game everyone going for the good wonders. I was initially building the weather paradigm but switched to the genome after seeing the Gaians building it. I was able to get both. Had to cheat to get the virtual world though. I was beating University Capitol by 1 turn, but they had another city further along. Who builds the same wonder in 2 different cities when there were like 3 other wonders available? All I did was switch the AI's production to a different wonder in that 2nd city. Afterwards I really focused on expansion with goal of settling the entire perimeter of the continent, saving the interior for later. I was running planned to help with the wonders and switched to free market after for better income and research. No government options yet. A pod gave contact with the Gaians, and despite complaining about my economy and nerve stapling, she still wanted to ally. It was nice to see her running green for a change after I modded her to be immune to the growth penalty. I also modded Morgan to be immune to police effects to try and give him some kind of advantage but he was still last. That eliminates half of the penalty of free market but also half the benefit of police state. By this point, the Gaians have settled almost all of the southern part of their continent while Peace are doing their best by spreading as far south as the freshwater sea, saving the ruins to the north for later. University has multiple high population cities, the Believer Capitol and a Morgan base. For some reason Morgan spread across the water right next to university. The Believers spread in a line to the east while Hive have the entire north coast. The 2 are clearly at war, and at least 1 also at war with University. I was far behind everyone except Believer and Hive. I switched to free market and democracy for additional income and research but this just reminded me how much I hate those; ruined production from having too many units, riots from sending escorts with settlers, and lost a couple new cities and a few units to worms. I did a new thing where I made my own worms to scout, pod pop and escort settlers but wild worms still attacked cities defended by worms. Gaians also declared war and took my 1 ocean city. I took that opportunity to steal some tech then probe the city back. Got a free ship out of it.

As my probe ships did more exploring I met the rest of the factions, except Morgan who was eliminated. I used my research to get green and police state, and G asked for friendship. I knew the Peacekeepers would hate me so I shamelessly stole tech from them, even once framing the Gaians. Not sure if that caused them to fight but they were at war by the time PK attacked me. They sent jets to kill a couple formers. I had flight too and made some jets but because I was relying more on stolen tech I could only make 5 attack gatling jets and did not have synthetic fossil fuel for 6 attack missile. Funny since that is a prerequisite for air power. The university immediately wanted a pact upon meeting and when I asked for tech they gave me orbital spaceflight for free. I was shocked and immediately made a planet buster. U had completely dominated the east continent with only B having a few ocean cities left. Not long after he tried to elect himself as supreme world leader. Meanwhile I probe controlled a peacekeeper ocean city right on the turn after it built a chaos copter. That also gave me a nice infantry unit on land which I used to capture 2 land cities due to the shockingly bad military they had. I could not hold them though due to lack of proper units. I donated the larger city to U so I would not lose money. I had cruisers and jets but transport and ground troops were still being built. Eventually I had pumped out over 3 transport loads of infantry, plus air support and began the attack. Jets destroyed roads and blocked enemy movement, probe teams defended each city, while the infantry slowly advanced with 3 to 7+ units per tile. I cut their territory in half and took their Capitol, netting the maritime control and super collider wonders, then headed south to establish a border with Gaians before conquering the rest up north. All the while I was running knowledge and later thought control. During this war tech advanced from 8, 10, 12, 13 to 16 attack, and up to 6 defense. But my unit design workshop was full so I could not make every best unit. I had a lot of slots for obsolete garrisons and formers. I steadily stole money, built new cities, struggled to deal with mind worms in my highest eco damage cities, optimized terraforming, proposed a shade to counter global warming, built a land bridge from my continent to PK land, and sent a copter colony to the north island.

Then the Gaians attacked University. So Stupid, who attacks 1st place faction that is allied with 2nd place? So of course U wanted me to join in the war and I would be on the front lines. They attacked the south bases on my continent with bombers and took 1 city with drop infantry. Joke on them though because my naval probe team took the city back, including about 6 bombers. And within several turns I had replacement garrisons and interceptors. They never tried that again, instead focusing on attacking former PK territory. I held the line in the 1 city and U kept giving me free units, mostly copters and a few infantry. I had about a dozen 16 attack copters there (most kindly donated to me) that easily decimated their ground forces, even those with AA. And air superiority jets and copters. My attack force finished up in the north with U managing to capture only 1 city, and I began moving them to the south. Everything except those newly conquered cities was linked by mag tubes by now and I had quantum reactors. I was pumping out clean hover tank super formers that were just as expensive as the previous rovers. I had submarines and my primary garrison infantry could have 16 attack for free! Unfortunately I had no room to make carriers, hover APCs, hover attack tanks or grav ships. I focused my money on keeping my air force and navy top of the line, and had like 5 different slots used on formers, and several on obsolete garrisons going as far back as 2 defense. I tried using a submarine former to sink a G city but they immediately killed it. Invisibility does not work against AI. I methodically conquered more than half of G, including their Capitol. My attack tech got to 20 and defense to 10 while they were stuck with 13-6, though my infantry were still at 16 attack. My copters killed units in the field while bombers and fighters bombed roads. I focused on fighters instead of bombers because they could defeat enemy fighters. Later I added grav ships but they lacked the copter's ability to attack more than once per turn. They instead functioned like a jet that did not need to return to base, and thus were very effective at destroying roads and mag tubes. I had 4 move attack hover tanks that were quite good, though a couple times I had to cheat to avoid losing a newly captured city to mind control. I don't know how they got a probe team in range though I guess it was elite with 3 moves. I had a ton of high armor infantry probe garrisons among the invasion force but they could not always get inside the city in time. Technically I could have switched to fundamentalism to be immune. Now I think I should have a hover tank probe team to make sure a newly captured city can't be probed.

The bigger problem though was global warming and flooding. I missed most wonders due to my tech lag but I did get the cloning vats, living colony, and clinical immorality from tech granted by alien artifacts. My bases were in constant population boom and every turn I had to deal with multiple drone riots. My bases focused on minerals, and I was continually building new bases on my continent and on the north island. U got upset for some reason and ended the pact after a long period of blocked communications. Maybe because they had sea bases all along the east of my continent and didn't like me settling the land. So back to the flooding, we rejected a proposal for more solar shade just before the flooding started, since things were stable then. I used my highest population to become governor but still had to wait 20 turns before proposing the shade. Just before that time was up solar activity blocked communication for another 20 turns. So I had to deal with 40+ turns of flooding. In particular my Capitol was going below sea level, as well as other cities, that land bridge and some valuable resource tiles. I was not worried about losing any cities as I built pressure domes, but I did not want my very high production Capitol to become a landlocked ocean base that only amphibious units could enter or leave. My formers worked hard raising the land. Several were mysteriously lost. I guess being on a flooding tile was fatal. There were rivers suddenly appearing on those tiles. I also discovered that raising bases killed a lot of the population and destroyed much terraforming. My Capitol in particular went from 14 pop to 9, lost evey farm, solar collector, mag tube, even road, and some tiles even lost the uranium bonus. So I had to pump even more formers to fix everything. Eventually comms were restored and I put more solar shading to counter the flooding. I tried to get diplomatic victory but despite having vastly more voting power it was not enough to win. U lost a few minor cities to flooding, and G had the rest of their territory split in 2. They gave up trying to beat me with air or infantry power and began pumping mind worms. They actually killed 1 of my defense infantry but I made sure never to let them get that close again. My Gaian cities produced 0 energy so I built punishment spheres in them to not have to worry about riots or spending on happiness buildings. Around this time I finally upgraded my attack infantry.

Soon the game ended. University built the voice of planet and everyone began the transcsndance victory. G had no hope because I had her best cities. U only had about 47 production in their chosen city. Meanwhile my top 2 cities had 102 production, and I was barely using supply crawlers. I pumped crawlers from almost every base and won in about 5 turns. I discovered that the move unit to location command did not always take the mag tube route, so had to use shorter moves. G paid me 2k energy for peace and I figured might as well since I will win soon.

End year 2444 with 15000 energy, researching matter transmission, score 3376

I still had friendly relations with University and they were still in 1st place, with me only having the best population and wealth. We each had 1 defense satellite and I noticed he had a ton of isles of the deep around everywhere. If I was going to continue playing I would prepare for possible war by putting trance defenders (either probe garrisons or trained scout infantry) in all ocean cities, pump out empath cruisers and copters, and pump more defense satellites and nukes. Also build carriers and much more air and ground units. I would switch to power to get free support for units up to base population, and since most of my cities were over 20 pop with some approaching 30 that would be staggering military. They only have 2 land bases on my landmass, which would be easily taken. I would likely send a massive fleet to their best cities in the jungle and wipe them out with several nukes, then methodically capture the rest using the same strategy I used on P and G. Orbital drops would definitely be needed to provide reinforcements but not sure if it would be useful to conduct simultaneous drop assaults all over their territory.