GameSpot's Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Game Guide

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part 2

Chapter 5: Controlling Your Empire
Chapter 6: Terraforming
Chapter 7: The Art of War
Military Might
Unit Design
Chapter 8: Diplomacy
Chapter 9: Situational Awareness

Chapter 7: The Art of War

The Art of Unit Design
Offensive and defensive units come in a wide variety of flavors and serve a wide variety of uses. What is useful against one faction may be pointless against another, simply because of its defensive posture. For instance, your impressive air armada may seem like a force to be reckoned with on paper, but how come it's getting wasted the second it sets foot in enemy territory? The answer is you're not softening up those air defenses before sending in your fighters.

Unit Workshop
Pressing the U key will bring up the unit design workshop, the place you'll go to create all manner of new military units. Even if you've set the game up to create units on your behalf, you can still come to this screen at any time and make new units or change existing ones.

WARNING
Don't choke your workshop with outdated units. Unless you manually delete them, they will remain in your library. You only have 64 slots, so use them wisely and keep them updated.

Let's take a look at some custom unit designs that, taken together, represent a flexible stable of units ready for any situation. Keep in mind that, obviously, your ability to create these units is contingent on your technology level.

Infantry
Infantry units are ground-based foot soldiers that should used for taking over cities after the city in question has been softened up. Here are three different designs, each representing a technological stage in the game, that is, early, middle, and late in the game.

Trained Laser Squad
* 2-2-1
* Cost: 40
Cheap to build, the trainer laser squad consists of a laser weapon, synthmetal armor, and a fission power plant. What sets this unit apart from a normal infantry is the special high morale ability. This lets the unit be constructed at a higher experience level, in turn making it more effective in combat. Optimally, a trained laser squad should seek out a monolith for yet one more level upgrade.

NOTE
The units contained in this chapter are not the only way to go. You should experiment with new designs and chart their own course.

Trained Missile Shock Troops
* 6-6-1
* Cost: 60
* +25 percent offense when attacking city
Trained missile shock troops deal out the punishment with missile launchers. Outfitted with probability sheath armor and a fusion reactor, these shock troops have two special abilities (you can have two special abilities after researching neural grafting): high morale and deep radar. Deep radar lets the unit see two terrain squares away, making it a good choice for watching enemy activity along the borders.

SAM Singularity Artillery
* 24-12-1
* Cost: 300
The ultimate in infantry offense, but it comes with a very high price tag. You won't be rolling these out on a conveyor belt. However, all you need is a handful to keep your enemies on their toes. Outfitted with a singularity laser, stasis generator armor, and a singularity engine, the SAM artillery has two special abilities: air superiority, letting it attack air units, and heavy artillery, letting it bombard a city from two squares away. Have a couple of these outside an enemy city, and they'll quickly soften up the defenses, fight off air attacks, and roll into town. The SAM is virtually unstoppable