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European History/The Crises of the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages was a period of approximately one thousand years of history; generally accepted as spanning from the fall of the Roman Empire (toward the end of the 5th century) to the Protestant reformation in the 16th century. This period began with a demographic downturn at the end of the Roman imperial era, with European populations shrinking and many cities and rural estates abandoned. A cooling climate, disease, and political disorder each played a part in this opening period which saw Classical Mediterranean civilization eclipsed. Across Europe, there emerged smaller, more localized hybrid societies combining Roman, Christian and Germanic or Celtic barbarian influences. By the 9th and 10th centuries, populations had reached their minima, and Europe became a largely rural and somewhat backward region. Commerce and learning flourished in the Islamic world, China and India during the same period. Islamic armies conquered Spain during the 7th and 8th centuries, but were defeated by the Frankish kingdom in 732 when they attempted to enter France.

The turn of the first millennium saw renewed growth and activity, as kings and cities consolidated their authority and began to repopulate lands left empty by Rome's decline. Warmer weather after 900 allowed more land to be brought into food production. The feudal system of agriculture, where peasants were tied to their estates by obligations to local lords or to the church, provided a degree of economic stability. This was aided by the arrival in Europe of the horse collar from Asia, which increased crop yields by allowing plows to be drawn by horse, rather than by slower oxen. Commercial towns flourished in England, France and the Low Countries. German rulers dispatched monks and peasants to clear forests and settle in Eastern Europe and the Baltic regions. The city-states of northern Italy rose in wealth and influence. Islamic Spain became a center of learning and culture where Christians, Muslims and Jews coexisted in relative amity. Despite many local wars and disputes between knights, the High Middle Ages, from 1000–1250, saw growing populations and prosperity enough to build great cathedrals and send European armies abroad on crusades.

After 1250, demographic stagnation emerged. Population growth slowed or stopped as the limits of medieval agriculture were reached. Major conflicts between powerful kingdoms, such as the Hundred Years' War between England and France, became more frequent. The Christian church, previously secure in its spiritual authority, was racked by schisms and increasing financial corruption. The year 1348 saw a catastrophe as the virulent bubonic plague (the "Black Death"), entered Italy, carried by ships from Asia. It spread across the continent over three years killing, by some estimates, one-third of all Europeans. Many believed it was the end of the world foretold by Christian prophecy. Along with its suffering, the plague wrought economic havoc, driving up the cost of labor and making the old feudal system untenable, as surviving peasants scorned its demands.

The following century and a half transformed Europe from a patchwork of feudal fiefdoms, under loose royal and church control, into a collection of newborn but increasingly unified national states. Towns became centers of resistance and dissent to the old royal and church authorities. Former noble and knightly influence declined, and rulers realigned themselves toward the increasingly wealthy and influential burgher and merchant classes. Emergence of the printing press and spreading literacy, increased religious and political conflict in many countries. By 1500, Christopher Columbus had sailed across the ocean to the New World, and Martin Luther was about to challenge the authority of the Roman Papacy and its right to award dispensation of sins for money. These developments opened the modern era of history, and brought the Middle Ages to their true end.

A number of modern institutions have their roots in the Middle Ages. The concept of nation-states with strong central governmental power stems from the consolidation of powers by some kings of the Middle Ages. These kings formed royal courts, appointed sheriffs, formed royal armies, and began to collect taxes - all concepts central to modern government. A leading example was the French kingdom, ruled by the Capetian dynasty from 987 until the early 14th century. French provincial nobles and their castles and knights were brought under effective royal control during this time, and national unity benefited. Conversely Germany, which had strong kings in the 10th and early 11th centuries, suffered a series of political conflicts during the High Middle Ages between rulers and the Church, which weakened national cohesion and elevated regional lords to great influence.

During the Middle Ages, Kings originally called Parliaments to explain their policies and ask for money. Parliaments at this time represented the three collective estates - the clergy, nobles, and merchants - not individuals.

The idea of limited government also arose, challenging the traditional notion at the time that rulers were all-powerful (such as a Roman emperor or an Egyptian pharaoh). The most substantial occurrence was in 1215, when the nobles of England asserted their rights against King John in the Magna Carta. In addition, the notion of parliaments, as explained above, came into existence, and the reciprocal nature of the feudal and manorial contracts laid the most basic groundwork for the concept of the social contract.

In addition, the formation of governmental bureaucracy began during this time, as the royal councils of medieval kings evolved into modern government departments.

Finally, the regulation of goods and services became increasingly prominent during the Middle Ages, as guilds protected the consumer from poor products.

Thinkers of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment tended to look at the Middle Ages with scorn, but the Middle Ages were essential in laying the groundwork for the times to come.

Crusades
The history of the Crusades is a  violent one. In 1095, Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade. These were a series of military expeditions by European Catholics. The goal was for the European Catholics to take back the Holy Land, which was mostly controlled by Muslims. These conflicts ended in 1571, due to the Protestant Reformation, which led to a decrease in papal authority and overall decline in Catholicism. The Crusades lasted a very long time and caused much division in Europe.

Christianity was used to justify the crusaders’ atrocities. The crusading armies were made up of mercenaries hired by the Catholic Church, which gave mercenaries a reason to sack and loot Muslim towns and cities. The papacy also told crusaders to crush domestic enemies  such as so-called pagans, witches and heretics. Knights and noblemen could seize land and force commoners to live in servitude; these domestic Crusades were used to terrorize poor people. This idea of forcing the poor into servitude also influenced the development of slavery in the Americas.

According to historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, the Crusades also played a part in the birth of white supremacy across the world. The phrase Limpieza de Sangre, meaning “cleanliness of blood,” was popular during the Crusades and was also used during the Spanish Inquisition. Dunbar-Ortiz also states that white supremacy was “ the core ideology of modern colonialism”. This newborn idea of white supremacy gave privilege to “ Old Christians” whether they were poor or rich. This idea of “ Old Christians” punished Jews and Muslims who were forced to convert to Christianity. Elie Wiesel observed, “The road to Auschwitz was paved with the earliest days of christendom”. In this way, the Crusades are also influential in the rise of white supremacy.

New Forms of Art
Both painting and literature received a new burst of life as the Early Middle Ages came to an end.

Painting
Giotto began to express the human form more realistically. Although his forms seem primitive compared to those of the Renaissance artists, he was the first to attempt to bring back the realism of Roman art. He also began to develop techniques of perspective in paintings to achieve depth. Most of his art was in the form of plaster-based frescoes on the walls of chapels and churches.

Literature
As the prestige of the Papacy began to decline, national consciousness began to increase; this nationalism was manifested in literature written in national languages, or vernacular, instead of traditional Latin. This use of the vernacular opened up such that cultural peculiarities could be more naturally expressed. This allowed literature to feel more realistic and human to the readers, and is why pieces such as The Canterbury Tales are considered depictions of life in the times in which they were written.

While the literacy of laypeople increased as a result of increased vernacular writings, society was still largely based on oral culture.

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

 * I am the way to the dolent city
 * I am the way to eternal sorrow
 * I am the way to a forsaken people
 * Abandon all hope ye who enter here.
 * -- Canto III, Inferno

Dante Aligheri was born in 1265 in Florence, Italy. His family was not rich but was considered an aristocratic line. He was taught by Brunetto Latini, who trained him in the classical liberal arts, including Latin and Greek. Yet, Dante set out to embrace his vernacular language and began to write The Divine Comedy in his local Tuscan dialect. Today he holds a place in history as the first author to do so. Alighieri considered his work a comedy due to the differences between his Italian writing style and the great Latin tragedy. His three-part epic poem sarcastically criticized the Church and commented on a variety of historical and contemporary individuals. The most important of these figures is Virgil, the Latin poet, who plays the role of Dante's guide through the afterlife. Dante's personal feelings towards many people are also evident in his writing. In the deepest layer of hell he punishes those for whom he personally had the greatest disdain. Much of this personal disdain came from his position as a politician in Florence. One of the victims of his deepest layer of hell is Boniface VIII, a pope whose political policy of expansion he opposed. Each of the poem's parts portray degrees of salvation, with "Inferno" being Hell, "Purgatorio" being Purgatory, and "Paradiso" being Heaven. Inferno includes many of the archetype depictions of hell including the River Styx, and the ferry man Charon who carries people across the river.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400)
Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories, exposed the materialistic, worldly interests of a variety of English people. This collection of stories was set in a frame based around a trip to Canterbury as a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket. The stories are the individual tales of thirty people making this pilgrimage. The accounts range from romance to family to religion, providing a cross section of society at the time. A large percentage of the populace, and therefore a large percentage of the characters, seemed more focused on material pleasure than on their eternal souls. The Canterbury Tales is also useful as a study of English vernacular at the time. It is a classical example of Middle English that linguists and those studying medieval and early modern England continue to use to this day.

The Hundred Years War (1337-1453)

The Hundred Years War was a very complex war, fought between France and England (with the occasional intervention of other countries), over three main conflicts. In particular, the nations fought over control of the Gascony region in France, rebellions supported by Britain in French cloth production towns, and English claims to the French throne after the death of Charles IV.

The war, initially sparked by a dispute over who would become King of France after the death of King Charles IV, quickly became an amazingly complex and multi-faceted war. King Edward III and his son Edward, commonly known as "The Black Prince", invaded Aquitaine, a huge region in southwest France claimed by England. As time went on, the Kings of England and France involved themselves in many more operations, ranging from a civil war in Brittany, trade disputes in what became Belgium, even a war in Castile. The three major battles of the Hundred Years War, Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, were resounding English victories, the flower of French nobility being cut down at every battle. However, even though the English won every major battle and many of the smaller ones, relatively poor England was never able to subdue southern France, by far the wealthiest portion of France, which eventually led to the English losing the war.

The Rise of Towns and Commerce
From the 6th to 10th centuries, there were few commerce centers and only small merchant classes in Europe. What long-distance trade there was usually focused on luxury goods for the nobility and church elites, and was mediated by traveling merchants such as Syrians or Jews. Crafts were carried on locally in manors. Populations were not large enough to support further economic developments, and Viking and Arab attacks made trade routes hazardous.

During the High Middle Ages of 1000-1500, long distance trading became safer and thus more profitable. As a result, craftsmen moved into growing centers of trade, forcing lords and serfs to have to get their goods from these centers of trade. Towns formed leagues and urban federations, or communes, that worked together to fight crime or deal with monarchs and nobles. Guilds also arose, allowing for the collective supervision of affairs - the work was done by reliable people, and the guilds provided for vocational education. The spirit of the medieval economy, however, was to prevent competition.

The rise of towns had an emancipating effect. They forced the lords to offer freer terms to the peasantry. Often, peasants earned freedom in return for an annual payment to the lord. Allowing large numbers of people to move from agricultural to industrial work in the towns brought economic acceleration. Indeed, a sort of handicraft industrial revolution took place during the 12th and 13th centuries, especially in the Low Countries where great cloth-making centers such as Ghent and Bruges accumulated much wealth and stimulated growth in Western Europe generally. The Hansa, a widespread league of North Sea, Norwegian and Baltic trading towns, emerged in this period, opening up Scandinavian resources to supply Western Europe with furs, timber, beeswax, and fish.

The High Middle Ages also saw Europeans returning from Crusades in the Middle East, where they had developed tastes for goods not produced at home. These homecomings introduced medieval Europeans to exotic spices, silks, fruits, drugs, and other eastern products for the first time. Cities around the Mediterranean took part in the trade that developed, with Venice becoming the richest port of entry for Asian goods, the base from which Marco Polo and his companions set forth on their journey to China.

Growth of National Monarchies
During this same time period, the monarchies began to grow, and as a result people began to see the formation of unified nation-states. Kings sent executive orders and began to institute royal courts, and they lived off of money from the manors that they owned and fees from their vassals. The king's royal council was a group of his vassals that advised him on state matters, which resulted in the formation of basic departments of government. When representatives of towns began to meet, this was an early formation of basic parliaments.

These parliaments didn't have the ability to dictate to the king, but could state grievances and the king could act upon them. This was a basic sort of legislation.

In addition, the formation of these parliaments led to the establishment of the three estates: the first estate, which was encompassed by the clergy; the second estate, made up of the landed and noble class; and the third estate, or the burghers of chartered towns. England had two houses of parliament - the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The House of Commons allowed lesser landholders to become members.

The Black Death

Black Death, or Bubonic Plague, hit Europe in 1347. Transmitted primarily by fleas and rats, the bacteria Y. Pestis swept across the continent, killing one third of the population by 1351. The bacteria is thought to have been endemic among rodent populations on the Asian steppes, and jumped to humans in Europe with great virulence. The onset of the disease was sudden; the symptoms were fever, weakness, delirium, lung distress, and dark-colored swellings (buboes) in the neck, armpit and groin areas. Quite often, those infected died within 1–2 days, including young and previously healthy individuals.

Causes of the Plague
The revival of trade and commerce increased the potential for the spread of communicable diseases. Europe had not suffered a continent wide plague since the plague of Justinian in 535, and the unexposed populations of 1348 had no inherited immunity. Though prosperity had risen, nutrition and sanitation for most Europeans were very poor by modern standards, decreasing immune resistance in general. Many adults had also suffered as young children in the Great Famine of 1316-1321, when several years of cold and wet weather caused crops to fail across the continent. This experience in childhood may also have compromised their resistance to the plague bacillus in later life.

The plague is thought to have been brought to Europe during a Mongol attack on Kaffa (in the Black Sea); when sickness forced the Mongols to abandon their attack, they catapulted a few plague victims into town before leaving. Ironically, this became a common practice for Europeans in castle siege. From there, merchants spread the disease to Constantinople, where it propagated throughout Europe, first by ship to Mediterranean ports such as Messina and Genoa, and then by land in all directions.

A shortage of wood fuel, due to cutting of forests for agriculture, resulted in the shutting down of bath houses which relied on burning wood to heat the water. Particularly in winter, only the rich could afford to bathe. This further contributed to poor hygienic conditions. Cities were also very poorly designed for hygiene. Citizens commonly dumped waste into the street which attracted rats, and thus fleas. Living in cities was also very close, which meant that fleas had little area to travel to infect another person.

The plague was blamed on many things in particular the Jews were a common scapegoat for the plague, including city leaders claiming that members of the Jewish community had poisoned the water supply, or spread a poisonous salve on the gates of the city.

It is important to understand that Europeans did not understand the real cause of the plague. To them the plague was a curse brought on them by their lack of piety, or the failings of the church, the cities' Jewish population, or even the configuration of the stars. Others even attributed the plague to bad air. To combat it, they carried kerchiefs or bags of "aromatics" that they could hold to their noses as needed. (The opinion of Europe's leading medical faculty, at the University of Paris, was that the outbreak was brought on by an unfavorable astrological alignment in the year 1345). Lacking the real facts, many Europeans' attempts to quell the disease actually helped it spread.

Responses to the Plague
Some people thought the plague was punishment by God against sinners. The flagellants arose as a result. Flagellants whipped themselves to bleed, prayed for mercy, and called upon their congregations to repent sins. Wandering over plague-stricken central Europe, many groups of flagellants turned to banditry and violence. Towns and feudal lords eventually prohibited them or even tried to wipe them out. In addition, violence against Jews broke out, and mobs killed all who refused baptism. Many Jews were forced to flee their homes.

Physicians in medieval Europe used a mixture of trial-and-error methods and classical Greek or Roman sources to care for their patients. Without knowledge of microorganisms, or the role of rats and fleas in spreading the infection, doctors were unable to cure infected victims or limit the spread. As a result, plague sufferers survived or perished according to the general state of their health, and whatever genetic resistance they happened to possess.

Consequences of the Plague
Massive death opened the ranks for advancement in society, and as a result landlords made more concessions to obtain new tenant farmers. The supply of laborers plummeted, resulting in higher wages for workers. A low grain demand resulted in the drop of overall grain prices. Noblemen lost a portion of their wealth, and became more dependent upon monarchs and war for income and power.

Additionally, the plague resulted in the improvement of living standards for the peasantry and the urban working population. Peasants and artisans now had more luxuries and a better diet, and production shifted from manufacturing for a mass market to a small luxury market. However, the monetary disparity grew, as fewer people possessed proportionately greater money.

Finally, Europeans saw that the church's prayer did not cure the plague, and that even leaders of the church were dying. This caused the general populace to lose a great deal of faith in the church, and opened the door to many new and local religious movements which had previously been suppressed, a factor which helped prepare the coming of the Reformation a century later.

Challenges to Spiritual Authority at the End of the Middle Ages
The Middle Ages provided many foundations to the Reformation of the 16th century. During the time, the church provided order, stability, and a framework for the medieval world. The most essential foundation of medieval life was salvation - and the ultimate life goal of all people was to obtain salvation. As people lost faith in the church and its ability to provide salvation, the church began to lose its hold on the populace.

Plague
As explained earlier, the plague contributed to the people's loss of faith in the church. However, some more ardent believers would have regarded such a plague as being sent from God to punish the world for its sins. The church of the day would have played upon such a notion so as to encourage more ardent belief and to attack any dissenters.

Heretical Movements and People
A number of movements and people challenged the authority of the church during the end of the Middle Ages.

Free Spirits
The free spirits believed the church was not meeting the spiritual needs of the people, and advocated mysticism, or the belief that God and humans are of the same essence.

John Wycliffe (1328–1384)
John Wycliffe, an English priest and professor at Oxford, founded the Lollard movement. The Lollards argued that salvation didn't have to come through the pope, and that the king was superior to and more important than the pope and religion. He said that Bible reading and prayer were important to religion, not the interpretation by priests. He was one of the first to set out to translate the Bible into a vernacular language rather than using the Latin Vulgate. He also objected to the extreme wealth of the church and clergy.

Jan Hus (1369-1415) in Bohemia
Jan Hus, by forming the Hussites, attempted to bring about reforms like those attempted by Wycliff in England. Hus was a priest in Bohemia when he learned of Wycliff's teachings. While the people around him thought them heretical and forbade them, Jan thought they had a right to be taught. Through his various disagreements and dealings, Hus came to think the church corrupt, and left his native land to pen On the Church, a work which criticized the manner in which it was run. His teachings appealed to the masses, and he developed a group of followers known as Hussites. In 1413, Hus was invited to a council designed to reform the church, but when he arrived he was arrested for his views. The following trial was in many ways just a formality, as he was guilty the moment he stepped in. Hus was burned at the stake on July 6, 1415.

Corruption in the Church
The vast corruption in the church also led many to doubt and question its authority. The excess wealth of clergy and the frequency of clergymen having mistresses and illegitimate children was a major concern. The people also questioned the church's sale of indulgences, or receiving payment to forgive people of their sins; nepotism; simony, or the sale of church office; pluralism, or holding multiple church offices; and the extreme luxury of cathedrals.

The Great Schism

In 1305, the King of France invited the Pope to move the headquarters of the Church away from Rome, a city plagued by warring local factions, to Avignon in the Rhone Valley. After Pope Gregory XI's return of the papacy to Rome in 1377, elections were convened for a new Pope. The citizens of Rome, demanding the election of an Italian Pope, forced the Cardinals to elect Urban VI. Dissenting French Cardinals reconvened in Avignon and on their own elected their own pope, Clement VII. The French popes of the Great Schism, referred to by historians as antipopes, held papal power in some regions of Europe, and for 39 years there were two Popes. In an attempt to reconcile this Schism, Conciliarists held a conference at Pisa to elect a new Pope, but could not depose either of the two in power, resulting in a threefold split in the papacy. Not willing to give up, the Pisan convention elected yet another Pope, to the same result.

Finally the Council of Constance (1414–1418) stepped in and called for the abdication of the three popes in power. With the support of the Holy Roman Emperor, the three popes were deposed and Martin V was elected as a single pope, ending the Great Schism. The Council of Constance also took action against John Wycliffe and John Huss, two reformers within the Catholic Church.

História da Europa/Crises da Idade Média Lịch sử châu Âu/Cuộc khủng hoảng của giai đoạn cuối Trung Cổ


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Electronics/Inductor Construction

An inductor is the electrical equivalent of a flywheel. When you introduce energy to an inductor, the current flows slowly at first, just like a flywheel doesn't instantly get up to speed. And if you try to stop a flywheel instantly, something will break. If you let current through an inductor, then open the switch, the energy of the inductor must go somewhere - it will arc back across the switch, quickly ruining it - thus the condensor used in coil-type automotive ignition systems: it stores the energy until the inefficiency of the flywheel can turn it into heat.

Inductors are formed of a coil of conductive material. Normally they are made of copper wire, but not always (Example: aluminum wire, or spiral pattern etched on circuit board). The material around and within the coil affects its properties; common types are air-core (only a coil of wire), iron-core, and ferrite core. Iron and ferrite types are more efficient because they conduct the magnetic field much better than air; of the two, ferrite is more efficient because stray electricity cannot flow through it. Ferrite is more expensive but operates at much higher frequencies than iron cores.

Some inductors have more than a core, which is just a rod the coil is formed about. Some are formed like transformers, using two E-shaped pieces facing each other, the wires wound about the central leg of the E's. The E's are made of laminated iron/steel or ferrite.

Toroidal inductors are most efficient of all, they are wound around a donut shape which is made of ferrite. They are more difficult to make, because the formed coil cannot be manufactured directly on the toroid - it must be wound onto it.

Important qualities of angf inductor

There are several important properties for an inductor.
 * Current carrying capacity is determined by wire thickness.
 * Q, or quality, is determined by the uniformity of the windings, as well as the core material and how thoroughly it surrounds the coil.
 * Last but not least, the inductance of the coil.

The inductance is determined by several factors.
 * coil shape: short and squat is best
 * core material
 * windings: winding in opposite directions will cancel out the inductance effect, and you will have only a resistor.

(someone add formulas etc. for determining inductance, please.)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Electronics/Inductor Construction


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Civ/Civilization III/Civilization Traits

Each civilization has two traits (except in scenarios, where this is usually but not always true). In the epic game, the civs have been carefully designed so that every possible combination of traits is held by at least one civ.

We cannot tell you what are the best or worst traits to have, because everybody is different. Some people may even like "weak" traits because they make the game interesting, or they feel they can really take advantages the trait does offer. There is also no consensus: some experts feel that Commercial is weakest, while others feel it is the strongest! Therefore, what traits are desirable to you must be decided yourself. What we can do, however, is help you decide.

Commercial
If you are constantly spending money to rush-build, and maybe you need to research just a tiny bit faster, this trait may be just what you need. While you will experience less corruption throughout the game, the real effects of the trait will not be pronounced until the middle-game, when you also have cities beyond size 6, which will have an extra commerce per turn. Your advantages will be most pronounced at the endgame, where such considerations are very often irrelevant.

Expansionist
In contrast to the Commercial trait, the Expansionist trait has its strongest benefits early in the game and virtually no benefits by the endgame. That means your advantage will not last and it is vital that it be played correctly, lest you waste one of your two traits. All civilizations need to be aggressive in the early game, and that goes double for you. But the rewards! You begin with a Scout unit (and the ability to build more), whose two-tile movement rate is a huge boon for the first few turns and helpful for many more. These scouts will likely stumble upon a good number of goodie huts, leading to your other advantage: you will never encounter goodie huts with barbarians. Not only do you not have to treat every goodie hut as though it were "loaded", but that means that the more desirable results, such as a new Settler or city, or a free tech, are more likely.

Industrious
The benefits of this trait will last you the entire game. Your workers (except enslaved workers) will work faster. You also build stuff faster: you get a free shield per turn in every city. Of course, you won't have as many shields knocked off as you would for, say, a temple if you were Religious. (If you're Scientific or Religious and Industrious, then you can really build!)

Militaristic
If you want to kick butt, you might like this trait. Buildings like barracks are cheaper, but you gotta build 'em to take advantage of 'em. Unit promotions occur more easily.

Religious
If you want to wage a culture war, you definitely want this. This gives you temples and other religious structures at half price, effectively meaning they will be constructed twice as fast and they can be rush-built sooner. It also effectively makes your citizens happier if, as you should, build Temples and Cathedrals sooner than you normally would. Anarchy is also guaranteed to only lasts 2 turns, regardless of empire size.

Scientific
A scientific civilization receives a free civilization advance when the civilization enters a new age, provided there exists an advance in the new age. The civilization advance that is received is the cheapest available tech, that is, the tech costing the least amount of scientific research. Buildings marked as scientific also cost half as many shields. In Civilization III: Conquests, a scientific civilization has a 5% chance of spawning Scientific Great Leaders when they are the first civilization to discover a new tech, as opposed to the 3% chance for non-scientific civilizations.

The scientific trait is generally useful with another trait that also gives cheaper buildings (militaristic or religious). Thus, in the epic game, Babylon (scientific and religious) and Germany (scientific and militaristic) are often good choices for players that wish to exploit as much of the trait as possible. In particular, Babylon is an ideal civilization for culture wars.

Conquests traits
Civilization III: Conquests introduces two new civilization traits. They are:

Agricultural
Cities will have +1 food. However, in Despotism this only occurs on cities sited directly on rivers. Therefore, agricultural civilizations highly value rivers and will invariably build on them when possible. This can be used by rival civilizations to predict expansion — it is usually wise to build on rivers anyway, but they will have much higher priority for agricultural civs.

Seafaring
Your civilization is more likely to start near the coast of an island or continent. All naval units get +1 movement. The capital also has a commerce bonus, which will likely keep you on par or better against the AI even on higher difficulty settings below Demigod.


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Civ/Civilization III/Unit Index

''This is not yet complete. The accuracy of the information already present is not guaranteed.''

Units still to add: Explorer, Conquistador, Military Great Leader, Scientific Great Leader, Army

 * Data in pink apply for Civilization III:Play the World and Civilization III:Conquests.
 * Data in light blue apply only for Civilization III: Conquests. Note that this is only for the epic game, not the actual Conquests.
 * A.D.M is the attack/defense/movement rating for the unit. For instance, a 2.3.2 unit has two attack points, three defense points, and two movement points.  For air units, the unit's movement rating represents its operational range.  Wheeled units, which cannot enter mountains, marshes, volcanoes, or jungles without the presence of roads, will have "w" appended to the movement points rating.  Sea units will have "n" appended to the movement points rating, while "*" will be added if a unit exerts a zone of control.  Units with zero attack cannot attack or capture units.  Units with zero defense, when attacked, will be captured if the attacker has the tech requirements to build the captured unit, and destroyed otherwise.
 * B.R.F is the bombard/range/firing rate for the unit. A bombardment rate of "N/A" denotes that the unit cannot perform bombardment.  All air units have bombard ranges equal to their operational ranges.  A unit with zero-range bombardment can only bombard while being attacked from a fortified position.
 * Tech is the civilization advance needed to build the unit.
 * Resource is the strategic resources that must be connected to the city in order to build the unit.
 * Cost is the number of shields required to build the unit.
 * Upgraded from and Upgrades To is the unit(s) that it can upgrade from or to. It costs two (three in Conquests) gold for every shield in the difference of costs to upgrade a unit.
 * Description is a short description of any other capabilities it may have, in addition to various uses for the unit.

Abilities
Units in Civilization III may have several capabilities, which may enhance or restrict what the unit can do. They include:

Blitz
 * A unit with the blitz ability may attack, bombard, or pillage more than once a turn.

 Enslavement
 * After defeating an enemy unit, there is a one in three chance that a new unit (of foreign nationality) is created. The unit that is created is dependent on the attacker.

Lethal Bombardment
 * A unit with this ability may destroy other units when bombarding. Normal bombardment cannot.

 Stealth Attack
 * When attacking a tile that contains two or more enemies, a unit with stealth attack may choose a specific defender.

Non-military units
These units do not have technological prerequisites and require no strategic resources.

Unique units

 * Rome - Legionary
 * Greece - Hoplite
 * Germany - Panzer
 * China - Rider
 * Japan - Samurai
 * India - War Elephant
 * Aztecs - Jaguar Warrior
 * Iroquois - Mounted Warrior
 * Egypt - War Chariot
 * Babylon - Bowman
 * Russia - Cossack
 * America - F-15
 * France - Musketeer
 * Persia - Immortals
 * Zulus - Impi
 * England - Man-o-War
 * Arabs - Ansar Warrior
 * Carthaginians - Numidian Mercenary
 * Celts - Gallic Swordsman
 * Koreans - Hwach'a
 * Mongols - Keshik
 * Ottomans - Sipahi
 * Spain - Conquistador
 * Scandinavia - Berserker
 * Byzantines - Dromon
 * Hittites - 3-Man Chariot
 * Incans - Chasqui Scout
 * Mayans - Javelin Thrower (w/ Enslavement)
 * Netherlands - Swiss Mercenary
 * Portugal - Carrack
 * Sumeria - Enkidu Warrior

title: Civ/Civilization III/Unit Index


text:
Civ/Authors

Primary contributors

 * Kef X-Schecter, alias "furrykef", created the book and some of its initial content, including compiling unit attributes and such.
 * Chris Hartpence, alias Velociryx, wrote the definitive Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri FAQ on GameFAQs, which was so popular and in-depth it eventually appeared in printed form. Some of the material from his guide and his Apolyton message board posts appears here, in modified form or otherwise, with his explicit permission. (He also might write new content for the wikibook as well. :))

title: Civ/Authors


text:
Civ/Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/Factions

''For information on the Alien Crossfire factions, see Civ/Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/The Alien Crossfire Factions. Also see Civ/Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/Understanding the game.''

Morgan Industries
CEO Nwabudike Morgan

At a Glance:
 * +1 Economy
 * -1 Support
 * Extra Commerce income
 * Severe population limits (smaller bases)
 * Starts with 100 extra energy credits

Morgan's game
Probably the most underrated faction of the original seven, Morgan is terrific if played correctly, but a novice will probably have to work a bit to get the faction humming. This is mainly due to the fact that Morgan's style of play is somewhat different from the others. The Morganite player must make the most of the faction's one big advantage: money. Morgan is the only faction in the early game that can go to war and still maintain a highly profitable economy. Selecting Values: Wealth, the faction receives +1 energy per square and gets an industry bonus to boot, strong advantages which can negate the Morale hit. Many players regard Morgan as incredibly weak because of the base size limitation, but this need not be a significant obstacle. Wealth is an integral part of almost any Morganite strategy, and Wealth comes with Industrial Automation, which also allows Supply Crawlers, a terrific Secret Project (The Planetary Transit System), and Hab Complexes, which allow Morganite bases to grow to size 11 without stopping. A more pervasive problem for the faction is the support hit, which tends to reduce the total size of the army it can raise (until the discovery of Clean Reactors, at least). However, this is largely offset by the acquisition of Supply Crawlers via Industrial Automation. Building additional bases and Crawlers can render the support issue moot. Granted, most Morganite players will tend to keep expanding a bit longer than the other factions to keep pace with overall population numbers, but in truth, another 1-2 bases will generally produce population parity. Further, The Ascetic Virtues will largely remove the small base issue, and The Living Refinery undoes the support problem once and for all (though by this point in the game, Clean Reactors will have long since come into play).

Morgan, the Builder
This approach to the Morgan game takes his mercantile nature to heart. You don't profit by killing off your customers, and Morganite Builders can make utterly obscene amounts of cash. The commerce bonus gives you the kind of windfall normally reserved for the Planetary Governor (magnified further still if you are the Planetary Governor), and by running Free Market, Wealth, and "doping" your citizens into a Golden Age, you not only achieve pop-boom status (if you're running Democratic too), but also get +4 Economy, which does amazing things to the energy you get from your base squares! A Builder game, Morgan style revolves around defending all your bases with Trance Scouts until you get Clean Reactors, and catching up on all your prototyping or building a defense force at that point. In the meantime, all the money you're making each turn, combined with the industry bonus from wealth, enables you to rush-build your infrastructure with a speed that will make the other factions green with envy. It's all too easy to beat out even Domai's vaunted industrial capacity with Morgan's cash. As much as possible, the Morganite Builder will want to run Democratic, Free Market, and Wealth (while building and enjoying the benefits of many pacts or treaties), or Knowledge if an extra bit of research boost and efficiency is needed. If you need to go on the offensive, your Social Engineering settings of choice will be Wealth/Green, with or without Democratic (mostly depending on if you have clean reactors or not yet), and if you want to push your labs up to 100%, run Democratic, Green, Wealth (+4 efficiency), make your +1 energy per square, and dump it all into your labs. In this manner, you can out-tech even Zakharov, despite his research bonus!

Even if you've got your heart set on playing the Builder game, you need to be prepared for war, but the good news is that you start with Synthmetal armor, and will find yourself only a few steps from Silksteel once all the early game resource restrictions are lifted (though in most case, getting to Bio-Engineering first, for Clean Reactors, will serve you better). Still, Morganite defenses revolve first and foremost around covert ops. If an opponent builds a base too close to you for comfort, either buy it and burn it down, or stack so many clean defenders in it that, regardless of your almost guaranteed lower morale, your enemies will have a hard time taking it back, and when fighting a defensive campaign, the presence of Children's Creches everywhere will offset Wealth's only minus, putting you in reasonably good shape.

Morgan, the Hybrid
Industrial Automation is crucial for this style of play, as some portion of your industrial capacity will be tied up in the maintenance of a standing force, and if you have to make use of that force to launch an attack, simply drop out of Market in preference for Green, keep Wealth unless you just really need the extra morale percentages, and use Wealth's industry bonus and your inherent cash to replace lost troops at a faster clip than your opponents can kill them. Morgan excels at the art of attrition warfare. It does not matter if your first unit makes a kill, because one of the four of five coming right behind surely will, and you'll wind up with a core force of elites (survivors of the many battles) in the end! Remember, it applies to all the factions to a degree, but even more so with Morgan: You should never actually build the kind of unit you want! Build Laser Scouts or Rovers, and selectively upgrade your way to the kind of force you need, and don't worry about ignoring the weapons techs in the early game. If you're behind militarily, just make it a point to capture an enemy unit with whatever weapon you're looking for, and you can start building them as well, even if you don't yet have the tech for it!

All the basic fighting strategies for Morgan's Momentum game work just as well for the Hybrid game, and unlike most other factions playing a Hybrid scheme, your cash position will be so good that you can almost always make offensive use of your probes. Do so!

Morgan, the Conqueror
Again, put your eyes, mind and heart firmly on the goal of acquiring Industrial Automation. Crawlers, coupled with the building of new bases, will quickly put you in a position where you will be able to crank out as many if not more troops than your opponents!

Two basic ways you can go about this are: Beeline for the Command Nexus to offset Wealth's Morale hit, and rake in the cash while beating your opponents with average to slightly above average troops, or, forget the money, run Green (still beelining for Doctrine: Loyalty) and beat on them with better than average troops. Either way works, but running Wealth opens up more options for you with Morgan, enabling you to offset your average troops with regular and very active offensive probe teams, subverting a base or two to establish a foothold, and then pouring your troops into it (and, if you really want to get mean, run Fundamentalism and Wealth to make it harder for your opponents to run probe actions against you). The Support problem is offset by an early emphasis on crawler production at all bases to spike up mineral outputs, and troops can be easily reinforced by rushing selective defensive structures in captured bases and by upgrading scouts produced to best/best configurations. Remember, as Morgan, you have a far easier time at paying for a war effort as you go, because you can get that magical +1 energy per square and still fight before Punishment Spheres. Everybody else has to either wait until they get higher up on the tech tree, or save for the invasion in advance. Use that to your advantage and attack earlier rather than later. Also, make active use of your probe teams to subvert enemy troops, adding them to your available force pool. Best of all, you can compare morale levels, and make suicide attacks with the worst of the lot, keeping the best for "sure kills" and consistently raise the morale of an elite core of your army, which will soon have you fighting on "Morale parity" with whatever enemy you are attacking, even if they began with an advantage in that department. About the only person you'll be hampered against in the early game is Miriam running Fundamentalism, as that will shut down your probe actions, but even then, with your better research rates, you should be at a higher tech level when you begin your attacks, and a series of swift, hard, unexpected blows (and who the heck expects Morgan to come out fighting?!) will give you all the edge you need.

The University of Planet
Academician Prokhor Zakharov

At a Glance:
 * +2 Research
 * -2 Probe
 * More Drones
 * First tech research is free.

Zakharov's game
Zakharov is plagued by drone problems, making the acquisition of either the Human Genome Project or the Virtual World of paramount importance. Fortunately, since you start with the pre-requisite to Planetary Networks, it is often quite easy to grab the Virtual World. Probe actions are expensive for you, and it's relatively cheap for your enemies to launch probe actions your way, so guard against that, and make the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm a high priority, but in the meantime, bulk up on defensive probes. You'll need them. Your main advantage is your labs, and whichever way you decide to run your game, your inherent research advantages will put you ahead of the pack quickly. Persistence and good planning will keep you there. Remember, you're getting the benefits of a no-maintenance-cost Network Node from the first turn you found a base. Everybody else has to build their Network Nodes, and pay maintenance costs for them, so build bases like crazy! Not only does this keep your bases smaller (to a point, offsetting the drone issue), but it also makes your colony pods very good investments for the minerals spent!

Zakharov, the Builder
This approach plays to your native facility. You're already a step ahead of the game, and if you get the Virtual World, then you're two big steps ahead of the game, as it totally negates your factional drone problems for bases size 4-7 and gives you two free facilities at each base you build. That's two less items on your infrastructural list, which makes building the rest that much easier for you. If you're playing the builder game, your main goal after restriction lifting should be to secure the Planetary Energy Grid to get yet another free, and maintenance free facility. Then, each time you build a base, about all you need to do is toss up a Tree Farm and a Creche, and you're ready to boom! (Building the Research Hospital as the base grows each turn). Nobody can build peacetime infrastructure faster than Zakharov, because the others don't start with a free peacetime facility. Morgan comes close, but even his vaunted money can't touch that. If you speed-build selected bases, you can turn those over to the production of battle-capable prototypes far more quickly than other builder factions, and be in a more classically "Hybrid" stance than most running this type of game. The two things you need to be ever-watchful for though, are covert attacks made to attempt to catch up to you, technologically, and, if you do plan an invasion, you will need to save cash for it in advance, because when you drop out of Market, most of your money dries up too (if you want to keep a decent research rate while warring).

Zakharov, the Hybrid
This approach plays to your ability to rip through the early game tech tree much more quickly than anybody else. You can be running Planned/Wealth by the early twenties if you set your mind to it, and specialize your bases out, with the fringe ones doing early war-tech prototyping, and your inner core working on infrastructure. Best of all, you can get to Industrial Automation that quickly, and still go back and pick up Mobility and Flexibility, generally ahead of those who beeline straight for them (exception: The Spartans, who are only one tech from Doctrine: Flexibility at game start). This means that you can get probe foils in the water plenty early enough to send them out exploring, and infiltrate most of your opponents' datalinks before they can even mount a good probe defense, which a crucial play. Combat wise, again, thanks to your free facility, you can pay comparatively less attention to your infrastructure and focus more on the warring techs, again thanks to your free facility. You can also let current game circumstances dictate exactly how your research edge is used, magnifying your advantage depending on the prevailing climate of the game. If you're isolated, fine. Drop to peace-time expansion till something develops, but if you've got neighbors close at hand, you can carry the fight to them rather quickly.

Zakharov, the Conqueror
Simply put, while everybody else is spending time and energy to get where you start from (i.e., the building of Network Nodes), you can be building fast attackers to take their bases! About the only group that can do this as or more quickly than you are the Spartans, and that's only because of where they begin on the tech tree. Theirs is a short term advantage in the sense that, research-wise, there's no way they can keep up with you. Even a heavy builder focus won't do it. This is a huge advantage, and if you put your mind to researching nothing but combat techs, you can have enough impact rovers for a good early game rush by the early to mid 30's! Except for the previously mentioned exception, nobody can top that, and that kind of raw speed plays well for a momentum game. If you find somebody on the continent with you, this is the kind of speed that will win you the game, and, once you make a couple of early kills to put you in a position of dominance, your faction is better suited than most to rapidly shifting gears.

The Spartan Federation
Colonel Corazon Santiago

At a Glance:
 * +2 Morale
 * +1 Police
 * Free Prototyping
 * -1 Industry

Santiago's game
You've got the all around best, most balanced fighting force in the game. True, Miriam has an edge when attacking, but your bonus helps both attack and defense, and the free rover at game start really helps you if pod scattering is on, enabling you to pick up a larger than normal share of Unity Pods, and more intangibly, enabling you to build your bases with a better understanding of the map you're playing on (meaning simply that your bases will tend to be better arranged on the map, thanks to a more complete understanding of the continent as a whole....most people have to build their first few new bases somewhat blindly if they want to expand quickly, but this is not the case for you). Also, the Police bonus mitigates the effect of running Market, and enables you to forestall (or, depending on SE choices) do away almost entirely with drone control facilities, saving you time on infrastructure. The free prototyping is not a huge advantage until later on in the game, as all early protos can be completed with a single cashed in supply crawler anyway, but it's still a marginal advantage, and should be exploited whenever the opportunity presents itself. The industry hit hurts, but no more so than Morgan's support drain, and you can get back to "normal" Industrial capacity by simply switching to Planned. True, you take an efficiency hit, but that in turn can be undone by building Children's Creche's, rendering your negatives easily dealt with and gotten around. The Command Nexus is a very attractive project for you, and you're pretty well suited to getting it, as it is only one tech away from you, and grabbing it will give you hands down, the best troops in the game until the advent of bio-enhancement centers, which will bring the rest up reasonably close to your troopers. The Spartan's main strength though, lies in the fact that they need not necessarily make use of their army to instill fear. Just the simple knowledge that the Spartans are out there is oftentimes enough to give others pause.

Santiago, the Builder
It takes you slightly longer to get your infrastructure in place than the rest, but the police rating helps in that, again, you can delay the building of drone control facilities, and once you DO get the infrastructure built, it serves you just as well. In the meantime, you have seasoned troops to defend your holdings with, a thing that cannot often be said of other Builder factions. Because of this, and because it's common knowledge that the Spartans can more than hold their own in a fight, you are uniquely positioned to build in relative safety. Think of it as classic isolationism, and most Momentum folk are looking for soft targets, something the Spartans have never been accused of. Add to that the fact that most of your opponents will not be expecting you to play the Builder's game, and that alone can often buy you the time you need to get the bulk of your infrastructure in place. Once it is, it's a simple enough proposition to take a look around the map and reassess your current situation, and again, if somebody decides to play rough and tumble with you, then they're just asking to get pasted.

Santiago, the Hybrid
Your starting tech makes you a natural at this. You're only a single tech away from Doctrine: Flexibility, and only two away from running Planned and getting Probe Teams. Taken together, that alone puts you in a strong Hybrid stance (and if you get the Virtual World project, you will almost never have a drone problem). Others need to build command centers just to get to where your troops start, and because of that, most factions will think twice about attacking you, and with even a single Monolith someplace in your territory, and building a Command Center of your own, it's easy for you to put together a core force of elite whatevers to attack or defend with. You have normal cash and research rates, which means, thanks to a slightly lagging industry, that you might be a bit behind the curve, tech wise, but a bit of luck with pods (which, as mentioned, you have an advantage in getting) will easily balance that out, and oftentimes, those pods render your industrial lag moot, as they "autofinish" whatever you were building at the closest base to the pod you just popped. All in all then, a Hybrid approach is very easy to play with Santiago.

Santiago, the Conqueror
This is probably the easiest way to run the Spartans, and it is a no-brainer, which also means, unfortunately, that this strategy can be predictable. You've already got rovers. It's a short hop to Impact weapons, and a short hop from there to global conquest. All of the speed work Velociryx has ever done on early transcendent victories has been with the Spartans, and with good reason. Quite simply, nobody can put together a crack attack force of high-morale Impact Rovers faster than Santiago. Zak might be able to get them about as quickly, but they still won't be as well trained, and in battle, that will be the telling difference, and in the early game, four rovers is about all you need to utterly lay waste to an enemy empire (Yang not withstanding, thanks to his Perimeter Defense network, but even then, a Probe action against the base in question can render his key defensive advantage useless). If you want a fast and furious game, build four Impact Rovers and send them hunting while you build up your empire. When they find someone, you'll be amazed at how much damage and terror they can spread, and at nominal cost to you.

An important footnote here is that with Santiago, you can do reasonably well at fighting without Punishment Spheres under Market conditions, thanks to your Police rating.

Gaia's Stepdaughters
Lady Deirdre Skye

At a Glance:
 * +1 Planet
 * +2 Efficiency
 * -1 Police
 * -1 Morale
 * +1 Nutrient (fungus)
 * Auto-capture first worm

Deirdre's game
The efficiency boon is terrific, and if you had a good way to rake in the energy (Free Market), your faction would be almost unbeatable. As it stands, about the only way you can do it is via Golden Ages, which, while workable, is far from being as good, since the money invested in Psych detracts from the total cash earned. Still, you've other important advantages that make up for your lack of raw energy. Specifically, you are good at "channeling" what energy you do get. Run either Democratic or Green and you have a paradigm economy, allowing you to run either 100% cash or labs and rake in a respectable amount. Again, the drawback is that you can either have good income or good labs, but only average both if you keep your allocation at 50/50. The trick then, is knowing when to do which, and the approaches will vary (see below). Regardless of your playstyle though, you have two other important advantages which will serve you well. The first is the ability to draw resources from fungus squares. This helps your early game immensely, and means you have to spend comparatively less time terraforming (and you get Centauri Ecology at game start), to get your bases productive. The second is the ability to catch mind worms, with the added bonus that your first worm capture attempt is always successful. Goal number one then, is to send your scout patrol out trolling for worms! When you find one and catch it, you have the perfect pod-popping unit (assuming pod scattering is on), because even if the pod in question unleashes more worms, they will ignore your native life form, leaving it to you to either try to catch them and add them to your force, or move on to the next pod. Repeat this process when you get Doctrine: Flex and gun skimships, and you're pretty much set for the whole game, as Isles of the Deep make tremendously good pod-poppers, scouts, and transports...very versatile units!

Deirdre, the Builder
Forget the money. Beeline for Democratic, and make the switch as soon as you can, netting you a paradigm economy, and +4 growth (when you build Creches). At this point, you can slam your labs to 100% and keep pace with the best researchers in the game. True, your income suffers, but you can ease back from 100% periodically to save up more cash, and once you arrive at restriction lifting techs, you can reverse that for a time, effectively turning labs off to help you rush through infrastructure builds. Also, when you're ready to boom, you merely add Planned to what you've already got and giant bases are yours! Again, your research efforts are helped, if pod-scattering is on, by the presence of your mindworms, and, since you cannot run Market, you will be spending the whole game actively exploring, so if you find others who are running Builder or Hybrid styles (and making regular use of Market), a few probes into their territory with your mindworm force just might be sufficient to scare them away for Market (to avoid fighting a losing battle with your worms). Of course, this is an early game advantage, rendered much less effective once Secrets of the Human Brain are discovered, but the implications are that, if you spend a bit of time focused on catching 3-4 worms, you can keep your builder stance and put together enough of a force to effectively worm rush someone. Your troops aren't great, but Children's Creches are an excellent build for you, as it helps with both troop morale and further enhances your empire's efficiency.

Deirdre, the Hybrid
As with the Builder Game, capturing worms is important, and even moreso for the Hybrid game. You will definitely want to make early use of the worm rush if at all possible. Essentially, this is a denial strategy, added to the usual Hybrid mix. The goal is not so much to succeed in taking out an empire (though by all means, do so if you can), but to force them away from a Market stance and slow them down, enabling your 100% lab focus to blow past them, tech wise (Note: The reason it is important to force your opponents away from Market is simply that, Democratic/Market at 70%, despite the inefficiency, can out-tech Democratic/Green at 100%). You'll probably be stuck using your Probes defensively, unless you pull back from your lab focus in advance to horde cash, and again, with the Gaians, it is almost always more productive to run either 100% labs or 100% economy. To keep a 50/50 stance with this faction undoes one of your chief advantages. The real trick to playing this faction is in knowing when to run which setting, and that is determined by prevailing game conditions. Hybrids will probably want to run both Democratic and Green unless game conditions turn nasty, in which case, the Hybrid player will likely drop Democratic to go on more of a war footing, again, relying heavily on Native life forms to offset your otherwise less-than-remarkable troops.

Deirdre, the Conqueror
Go Native! Forget Democratic. Beeline for Doctrine: Flexibility and Planetary Networks for Probes and boats, then to Green, catch as many worms as you can, run Economy at 100% and build lots of Probes. The probes will make up for your lack of research, infiltrate enemy Datalinks, and augment your native attack force with captured enemy troops caught alone and in the open. Plus, the worms don't care what techs your opponents have and you're the best Psi-fighter in the game, especially if you zero in on Market-loving Builders (who probably also have a lot of nice techs you want). Again, the worm rush is vital to your success, so do not delay in building up your native attack force and constantly be scouting for opponents! And, once your attack force is on its way, focus on spreading your empire, growing lots of small bases to offset Green's growth penalty (you hardly feel it from size 1-2 bases).

The Lord's Believers
Sister Miriam Godwinson

At a Glance:
 * +2 Support
 * +1 Probe
 * -2 Research
 * -1 Planet
 * 25% attack bonus

Miriam's game
A superb faction, helped greatly by the Support bonus. The Believers get off to a slow start, but this need not be a crippling disadvantage. One good thing about it is that your bases will be laid out better on your continent, as you will generally have more time to explore before you can start expanding. The planet negative puts you at a slight disadvantage when fighting the natives, unless you attack first, which more than negates your -10% penalty, and the Support boon lets you field more units per base in any event. Also, your attack bonus allows you to work your way to "Trans-elite" troopers, giving you an extra point of movement, and a 25% attack bonus above and beyond what everybody else gets too. Also, the ability to switch to Fundamentalism and render your bases and units immune to subversion is a huge advantage! Oh, and remember, Miriam is the only faction in the game that can run Democracy and still build a new base with free minerals! (The key advantage here being that you can have comparatively more bases before you start getting drone warnings due to size). A word of warning with this faction: If you are attacked by a psi-force, get as far away from Market as you can. In fact, it would be far and away in your best interest to run green when faced with such an attack, because if you are caught by the worms while running Market, even with trance or empath-assisted troopers, there's almost no way you can win, especially if those worms are being controlled by Cha'Dawn or Deirdre.

Miriam, the Builder
This might seem like a contradiction in terms, considering the slow start with research and the twenty percent higher tech costs, but in truth, you can offset both of these things with relative ease. Once you get Centauri Ecology, the boost in support enables you to crank out an obscene number of formers, very quickly moving to terraform the entire continent, and making all your bases that much more productive. Not to mention the fact that, as with the Spartans, most people will be content to leave you be if you play a Builder game, and odds are, they're just breathing a sigh of relief that you're not attacking them! If you ARE attacked however, your best chance at defending is with an active stance, using pre-emptive strikes to take advantage of your native 25% attack bonus and running Fundamentalism to prevent subversion. Research wise, even when you're running Fundamentalism, Network Nodes everywhere gives you a net gain of +10% to your research rates. Not nearly the boost it gives others, but then, you'll only be running Fundamentalism if there's trouble brewing, otherwise, you're better served by some other Social Engineering choice (Democratic springs immediately to mind here). You're cash is good (ability to run Market), your troops are good, and you can offset the research hit by a program of steady builds and active probe teams to keep up until your infrastructure is in place. The Miriam Builder game is by far the most active of the lot, as she must make early and regular use of probes to keep pace until the infrastructure is in place, but it's quite easily pulled off.

Also note here, that when you play the Builder's game with Miriam, you will want to be very careful and specific about when you run Fundamentalism. True, it gives you almost total immunity to enemy probe actions, but it utterly kills your research, regardless of your infrastructure, so use it only when pressed, or when pressing an attack against someone else.

Miriam, the Hybrid
Miriam's Builder game is so active that there really aren't many differences between it and the Hybrid game, except that, where the Builder will focus mostly on early game formers, the Hybrid player will take a few of those "free unit" slots and use them for the building of prototypes, sending them out hunting in much the same way that the Deirdre Hybrid player uses her native life forms.

Miriam, the Conqueror
Again, like the Spartans, this one's a no-brainer. Race for Doctrine: Flexibility and Planetary Networks, switch to Fundamentalism, save your money, find an opponent, infiltrate, Probe them to death to get their tech, steal a base and upgrade all the garrisons to best/best, using pre-emptive strikes to defeat the forces sent against you (and continue to subvert them all the while). Build cheap scouts or Recon Rovers every turn, upgrading them to whatever is needed (remembering that the newly captured base will get a larger than normal share of "free" units), and keep punching your opponent. In the field, with even tech, your forces are very hard to beat, especially if you're running Fundamentalism, as they cannot use Probe trickery against you, and you get a morale boost too!

The Human Hive
Chairman Sheng-ji Yang

At a Glance:
 * +1 Growth
 * +1 Industry
 * -2 Economy
 * Immune to inefficiency
 * Free Perimeter Defense at every base

Yang's game
If not for the lack of energy, this faction would be all but unstoppable, and as it is, they are far and away the most powerful AI faction, coming out on top of the AI heap in almost every simulation we have ever run. Their Growth and Industry bonuses make for rapid expansion, and their inefficiency immunity makes a massive empire with few to no drawbacks a real possibility. This, combined with their inherent "Citizen's Defense Force" makes them a tough faction to match, and if they happen to also get the Command Nexus (not difficult to imagine, since they start with its requisite tech) and Planetary Transit System (also not too much of a stretch, with active Probe Teams), then the rest of the world stands a good chance of being doomed. An important note about Yang: the immunity to inefficiency ability allows you to run Social Engineering settings which would utterly ruin any other faction in the game. Quite simply, you may freely ignore negative modifiers to efficiency!

Yang, the Builder
First, absolutely no one will be expecting you to play Yang as a Builder, so this will work very much to your advantage, but consider: You can switch over to Police State with impunity, enabling you to control your drones without the need to build any drone control facilities at all, and the addition of a Children's Creche at each base goes a long way in capturing what energy you do generate. Add to that the ability to run Planned (again, without penalty), and you get a faction with a huge industry bonus and no drone problems whatsoever. If you work heavily with forests, your income won't be bad, although you will never even begin to approach the energy levels of the real "Research Factions" in the game, forcing you to look for other alternatives. Fortunately, there are some very good ones, and you get them at the same time you get the ability to run Planned, namely: Librarians. While you're waiting for Industrial Automation, you can be whipping out Network Nodes and expanding like mad, and once you have the ability to create crawlers, it's easy (again, with your prodigious Industry bonus) to crank out enough crawlers to give each base some minerals to work with, and feed the entire population, and once you do that, every citizen you have can be converted to a Librarian, giving you perfectly efficient research capabilities, magnified by your already built network nodes. Now consider that if you take the time to build the Command Nexus, you essentially wipe out the penalties for also running Wealth (adding a bit more to your energy reserves, and giving you yet another boost in Industry). The only person in the game who can out-build you is Domai, and he has to contend with less-well defended bases, efficiency problems, and a research penalty, which more than offsets his additional +1 bonus to Industry. In short, although it might not appear so at first glance, the good Chairman makes an astonishing builder, and that capability, coupled with an active stance with probes will quickly see you on par with every other Builder in the game, should you choose to run the game this way.

Yang, the Hybrid
Again, this approach uses Yang's industrial might, and is not terribly different from his Builder game, except that a certain set of bases will be geared up specifically for the purpose of providing an offensive punch to the empire, whereas the pure Builder approach will not do so until and unless threats begin appearing on the horizon. The Yang-Hybrid model enables you to maintain an active attack/trolling force while keeping a fairly brisk research rate, and the ability to drop into full Builder mode if you determine that your potential enemies are very far away. On the other hand, it's easy (gotta love that Industry) to kick into high gear and get ready to fight, and very quickly, you can find yourself with an army numbering so many units that you can simply sweep the opposition off the map.

Yang, the Conqueror
Once more, your Industry and Police are the key factors to the Conquest game. The goal here is to simply skip over any real Infrastructural builds and focus on rapid colonization, followed by a buildup of troops that no one else in the game can match prior to the arrival of clean reactors. Even Miriam, with her support bonus simply cannot keep up with a fully geared-for-war Yang. So what if she's got better troops, you can replace your losses almost half again as quickly as she can replace hers, and her Probe Immunity is nearly meaningless to you. You likely won't have the cash to do much subversion anyway, and you can simply keep building units until you overwhelm her. Same with the only other truly good fighters in the game, the Spartans, except in their case, it's even easier to overwhelm them, because they have Industrial problems of their own, and the moment you achieve your first conquest on an enemy's soil, that is the kiss of death, as that faction must now deal with your enhanced Industrial output right there on their turf. Simply put, if they do not or cannot re-capture the base immediately, they're doomed.

The Peacekeeping Forces
Commissioner Pravin Lal

At a Glance:
 * -1 Efficiency
 * Extra Planetary Council votes
 * Extra Talents
 * Population limits eased (bigger bases)

Lal's game
You might not look so hot on the Social Engineering table compared to the others, but that doesn't mean you're a pushover. Not by any stretch. Your advantages make you a force to be reckoned with in any game. Consider a fairly normal expansion paradigm. Even if you only do an "average" expansion, you're virtually guaranteed the Governorship, giving you a healthy Commerce bonus (extra energy to help offset the -1 Efficiency), and Infiltration of all factions (as good as the Empath Guild, for free). Add to that the fact that your extra talents and larger bases (giving Lal the ability to execute a Pop-Boom with little control infrastructure in place), and what you end up with is a faction that is quite far from being average.

Lal, the Builder
Democratic completely negates your singular negative, and is two thirds of what you need for a population boom. Add Planned and Wealth to that mix, and snag either of the early game drone control projects (Human Genome Project or Virtual World), and you can boom to size 9 with ease. The ability to do this earlier than almost any faction will give you a huge advantage in population, at which time, you can switch to Free Market, and out-tech even drone-plagued Zak. And once you get crawlers and Hab Complexes, you can boom all the way to size 16 with near-impunity, giving you such an edge in population that you'll be hard-pressed to lose the game. Yes, your troops are only average, but your greater population enables you to have more of everything: more research (despite the efficiency hit), more minerals, and more troops, and with the right facilities, your bases can quickly become very tough nuts to crack.

Lal, the Hybrid
One of Lal's main strengths is his sheer "averageness." True, you lack the Industrial Might of Domai or Yang, the Morale and Prototype bonuses of Santiago, the cash of Morgan, and the Research boon of Zak, but you're also not saddled with their liabilities, and your one disadvantage is easily offset by the simplest of base facilities. All of this puts you in the position of great flexibility, enabling you to shift gears much more readily than any of the other problem-plagued factions. Your one "banned" Social Engineering choice, Police State, would be something you would never need to run thanks to your extra talents (which, by the way, is like the Human Genome Project on steroids, as its impact on your bases is relative to the size of your bases — not static, as is the case with the Genome — and you get it for free!). All in all, you couldn't ask for a better Hybrid faction than this! Beware, however: That sheer flexibility can be both a blessing and a curse, and in a Lal-Hybrid game, you need to become adept at reading the ebb and flow of the game, and make the right choices at the right times (knowing when to shift into a war footing and when to pursue relentless research is vital to you: if the other factions make a mistake, they can play to their inherent advantages — cash, morale, or what-have-you — but all of your advantages are contingent on you making the right decisions at the right time, and a misstep can set you back very badly, as you have nothing really to fall back on). Still, with practice at reading the game, Lal can be one of the very best, most well-rounded factions in the game.

Lal, the Conqueror
At first glance, with your efficiency problems and average troops, you might think Lal ill-suited to conducting a conquest war, but again, his sheer flexibility (and, assuming you got the Governorship, his auto-infiltration of all factions) serves him well in this capacity too. Even fairly large, newly captured bases seldom have drone problems, as your "Talent" bonus kicks in as soon as you occupy the base, often completely negating the drones created via conquest. That, combined with a lack of any pronounced weakness which can be exploited by your enemies, makes you a wily and tenacious faction on the battlefield. To that end, however, you will only be as wily and tenacious as your own personal skill in battle allows, again, because your faction has no native combat advantages, meaning that you will have to engineer any and all advantages yourself (through a steady program of militaristic builds, and smart use of your standing army). Learn to do that well, and you will find Lal to be a doggedly determined fighter.

''This information was originally written by Velociryx in his SMAC FAQ. Used with permission.''

title: Civ/Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/Factions