Faction Profile: The Believers

[Aureustgo]

Faction Profile: The Believers

Starting Tech: Social Psych (B1)

Advantages: +2 Support, +1 Probe. +25 percent to attack.

Disadvantages: -2 Research, -1 Planet. No research until MY 2110.

Natural ally: Allies? If opting for building approach, Lal, Morgan, Deirdre, Zak are all generally agreeable and worthwhile factions to consort with.

Target Techs: As Gaians, the Secrets of the Human Brain (D2), Centauri Empathy (E3).

Target Special Projects: Depends on one’s preferred style of play. Command Nexus and Human Genome Project usually come in handy.

Overview:
Miriam is one of the most feared AI opponents and that reputation is well deserved. Miriam will eat the Spartans or the Hive for lunch any day of the week - most factions rightly give Miriam all the room she wants rather than incur her wrath. A rather misconceived (and misunderstood) faction, Miriam is one of the more challenging ones to play (in most situations). Crippled by some misguided research penalties, Miriam nevertheless has some good flexibility in style of play. Just don't expect it to be much fun.

[Aureustgo]

Keys to Success

1. Miriam is Miriam

Probably the best attribute to playing Miriam is that Miriam will not be one of your opponents. That sounds trite, but it actually makes a huge difference. Early survival is almost never an issue with the Believers. With that hefty +25 percent bonus, Applied Physics (C1) is all she needs to take down any aggressor.

What this means is that Miriam has lots of options. If she’s around neighbors, she can play aggressively - with plus-two support, she can put out an enormous military force, particularly early. (Other nations go ape @#% when they see 10 laser squads rolling into their borders. Extract an appropriate price). Unlike other aggressor factions, Miriam’s got good money and not encumbered by production penalties, so her army can come faster than you think. Acquisition of Non-linear Mathematics (C2) and Planetary Networks (D2) are probably standard go-to techs for this style of play. Fundamentalism gives her immunity to probe team subversion, which is a nice touch.

Sometimes those techs are elusive. But even if they’re not, Miriam can exploit the power vacuum in another powerful way: to expand almost uncontested across Planet – almost as fast as the Gaians. Miriam’s plus-two support is quite nice in spamming out formers (I'm thinking like 3-4 per base). This sets her up well for early crawler parks and, along with her otherwise balanced set of abilities, early special projects. I can't believe I'm saying this but an otherwise poor social engineering choice (democracy) synergizes pretty well in Miriam's hand, as she adopts it effectively with no penalty (in builder-mode).

[Aureustgo]

2. Don't worry about being dumb

The arbitrary research penalty the Believers are hit with is crippling... but that’s mostly in theory rather than in practice.

First, unity pod scattering is the great equalizer - Miriam can pick up a ton of tech about as fast as any other human faction (Gaians excepted). Second, other nations are quite happy to trade technology with her – more so than with other human factions, or so it seems. Third, the most important techs in the game are the early techs (first three levels). To wit, consider the effects of armor: synth metal increases armor by 100 percent, plasma by 50 percent, silksteel by 33 percent, and so on. The main facilities and mechanics are likewise scaled favoring the early technology. In any event, Miriam mostly needs just the first two levels to be effective, and these come via pods and early trading. Fourth, by the mid-game, all her (many) bases will have network nodes, and the efficiency gains of democracy will narrow this research gap.

Remember, Miriam also gets a token +10 credits for her trouble of no research until MY 2110.

A discussion on technology wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging where she begins. Miriam’s starting tech is actually pretty sweet. With Social Pysch (B1), she can often get a free recreation commons or two by opportunistically switching production prior to pod popping (something the Hive, Morganites and Gaians can’t do). It also puts her in an excellent spot to get Secrets of the Human Brain (D2) on blind research, which she’ll want to have. (Actually, you might just get Secrets before other factions, landing her a free bonus tech. It does happen!). Secrets net her the trance ability (particularly important to the Believers) and one step closer to green economics. Finally, recreation commons is an important facility that can be elusive in the early going to other factions, making drone management an issue.

If playing aggressively, Miriam can literally ignore the research penalty. Fundamentalism, for some reason, dumbs her down to nothing so she won’t have to worry about learning anything at all. In the unusual event she needs more technology, probes will do just fine. Better, just (cheaply) mind control the units you want and build those instead.

[Aureustgo]

3. Wind power is red, not green.

Miriam’s biggest obstacle is her arbitrary minus-one planet rating.

To begin with, forget about traveling through fungus. Getting stuck 5+ turns in a row is not uncommon. (Thank goodness she churns out lots of formers… she’ll need them). Frustrating. Scoring an early rover really helps here. Learning to navigate this dynamic (or getting lucky) is important to keeping Miriam competitive in the early land-grab and finding research pods. Moreover, if one happens to finally get in the red stuff or one wants to ward of roaming fauna, the minus-10 psi attack penalty really hurts you - it's barely enough to win most battles. Even veterans will have a habit of dying a lot, which means Miriam has to waste time replacing these scouts. This makes for a lot of unnecessary micromanagement. Did I mention she's not very fun to play?

It follows that green is an important social engineering choice, and she should adopt it immediately. The only one who will care is Morgan, and the AI simply neuters his dominant potential. (As one might notice, a reoccurring theme here is that Centauri Empathy (E3) is a crucial tech in the game). Unlike some other factions, Miriam doesn’t necessarily require the Empath Guild. She just wants to be able to move and live in fungus.

Finally, like the Gaians, in most cases I would ignore pop booming. Coming at the cost of green, planned is too expensive. Regardless of adopting aggressive or builder approaches, Miriam’s impressive base sprawl can be greened all the way to victory. Compared to the Gaians, it just might take her a little longer.

[magic9mushroom]

3. Wind power is red, not green.

Miriam’s biggest obstacle is her arbitrary minus-one planet rating.

To begin with, forget about traveling through fungus. Getting stuck 5+ turns in a row is not uncommon. (Thank goodness she churns out lots of formers… she’ll need them). Frustrating. Scoring an early rover really helps here. Learning to navigate this dynamic (or getting lucky) is important to keeping Miriam competitive in the early land-grab and finding research pods. Moreover, if one happens to finally get in the red stuff or one wants to ward of roaming fauna, the minus-10 psi attack penalty really hurts you - it's barely enough to win most battles. Even veterans will have a habit of dying a lot, which means Miriam has to waste time replacing these scouts. This makes for a lot of unnecessary micromanagement. Did I mention she's not very fun to play?

I think you have made a mistake interpreting the game mechanics.

Travelling through fungus is not penalised by a negative PLANET rating. It's simply an "if PLANET > 0, skip the check vs. bounce".

The downsides of Miriam's -1 PLANET (unless she goes Green or gets the Manifold Nexus) are strictly the penalty when attacking psi-defenders (this sucks), the increased chance of fungal bloom when over CML (this is arguably a good thing in the midgame since it lets you force the first pop more easily to trigger the Tree Farm CML boost, though not in the lategame when you are almost-unavoidably over CML), and the -1 nuts/mins/energy from fungus (negligible; without the Gaian bonus it's never really comparable to the alternatives anyway). The big breakpoint is going from +0 to +1 PLANET since that removes the bounce chance and starts to allow capture (and thus Deirdre's +1 is a big deal); where exactly you are between -3 and +0 doesn't matter a whole lot unless you're doing psi-attacks (and thus Miriam's -1 isn't a big deal unless she's fighting worms or has +PLANET from somewhere).