SMAC: Should I initiate flooding?
I have gotten into a rut:
- play university
- race up the tech tree
- build one thermal borehole per city
- when available, have hundreds of clean reactor formers, to raise land levels in preparation for the inevitable flooding
- build all the wonders
- wait for graviton, then go for conquest victory
- just about this time, mindworms become a major problem, requiring a massive army of hovertanks (and helicopters, as with multiple attacks)
- and global sea levels being to rise
- at which point I generally vote in council to launch a solar shade to cause sea levels to fall, evening things out
I have, in the past, tried changing to green and building as many green buildings as I can. I even removed my thermal boreholes as soon as I have 20 or so nessus mining stations. But I just can't seem to stop the midworms, which drain huge resources to counter.
Now, I am thinking that just letting the world flood because manufacturing, even voting for it, might not be a bad idea.
- I haven't seen ocean bases attacked by aliens, so I could devote the resources such as formers, hovertanks and helicopters, which are several hundred units on a huge map, to producing gravitons and wiping out the other factions
- I get all of my food/money/manufacturing needs from satellites
- I also have every base with a quantum converter (from a wonder), nessus mining stations, genejack factories (since drones never riot), etc, I can heavily out-manufacture the other factions, even if my land-based cities suddenly become ocean-based
Question: Considering this strategy, should I be trying to deliberately flood the planet? Are there any technical, game-play reasons for doing this or not (as opposed to opinion based)?
Solution 1:
Unclear if this will answer your question, but since this has sat here a bit:
Ocean bases will get attacked by mindworms. The attacks are not as severe, because it's generally only Locusts or Islands that do the attacking, but you will need to maintain garrisons that can handle psi-attack, and possibly want to have some local anti-worm patrols to intercept islands.
Flooding the planet, however, will starve your opponents for industrial production and probably wipe out some cities outright unless they're pressure-doming everything.
Just don't expect the worm attacks to stop. Planet finds a way.