Usurpers punked by early mindworms

[bvanevery]

In another one of these "don't even know how to play my own mod" posts, I had a seriously rough time starting with the Usurpers.  On a Huge map I seemed to have a large continental land mass in front of me, with all me needing to do, is expand graciously into it.  Except, shortly after insisting on this strategy for "the next river up ahead", it turns out to be occupied by the Cybernetic Consciousness.  I didn't feel like wiping them out, even though I easily could have.  So I just kept on walking with my 2 remaining colony pods.  Remarkably, they didn't die and eventually settled cities just east of the Cyborgs.  I figured I'd just do a long term encirclement and crushing exercise.

Thinking I had no problem, a mindworm larva shows up near my capitol.  It attacks from fungus and actually kills my defending Cloaked Scout.  It's at this point that I'm sorely reminded the Usurpers have -1 PLANET, the only faction in my mod with that as an inherent disadvantage.  I got rid of the Believers version of that a long time ago, on the grounds that it's stupid / baseless as far as the game's lore goes.  Anyways, it kills my Cloaked Scout!

I actually had to replay this turn a couple of times, not for the purpose of making the Cloaked Scout live, but to avoid having the Artifact get killed with it.  Forgot 1 move or the other a couple times while I was at it.  Finally got it set right, but it wipes out my base completely, it doesn't just destroy my HQ.  So then I lose support for a Colony Pod I had sent out, and that's just not cool.

So I quit, and wrote this up.  Lesson learned that my Usurpers are now rather vulnerable to mindworms at the beginning of the game.  In the stock game they might have 3-Res armor, although I personally never built it because it was too expensive starting out.  For quite awhile in my mod the Aliens started with Trance ability for Field Modulation, instead of 3-Res armor.  Recently I changed that to the Cloaking Device instead, which of course does not help against mindworms.  And this is what it buys me.

[bvanevery]

In my next game I was randomly assigned the Believers.  I started on exceedingly dry and fungus filled land.  So rather than settle a capitol, I started walking.  I threaded a maze of fungus, ultimately heading 8 or 10 squares west.  I managed to pop a Monolith using one of my colony pods and settled a capitol.  My 2nd pod continued west and found yet more dry land, even near a river system.  Thinking this sucks, I popped another pod and drew a mindworm.  Which, since it wasn't the beginning of turns anymore, killed my pod.  So I quit the game.

It could be argued that I was punked by a dry environment rather than a mindworm per se.  It was a very unsatisfying start location.

[bvanevery]

Started another game, this time assigned the Free Drones.  Find myself 8-balled behind both the Peacekeepers and the Gaians.  What's up with the close proximity starts?  This is a Huge map, with my own terrain setting adjustments to make more space.  Granted, the Caretakers are in the game, so whatever that does to mess up faction placement applies.  But the Pirates are also in the game, so only 5 human factions on all this Huge map land.  Whatever.