When we last left off, I was winning at Transcend with only a fair amount of difficulty, but that was 2 yrs ago. With that in mind, I loaded the 3rd easiest difficulty, and began to run amok; pressing buttons at random and trying to remember what my strategies were.
I got stomped. Hard.
Looking through my old games and journals, I found out that I had completely forgotten about collectors. I played through the 1st and 2nd level of difficulty, doing some wondermongering and rover rushes, until I got to the 3rd level again.
Now, Im trying to focus on terraforming skills; Im decent at building cities, and roverrushes have been done to death. So Im mostly chilling back with my 10 cities, and trying to be left alone.
With that in mind, I rapid built 8 cities in 40 turns, along with a dozen formers, and started my little cluster of happytreefriends. To my south is Zak, who I make a treaty with, to my north is Sparta, who I get a truce with, and to my east is Miriam, who I get a truce with.
I handed out some tech bribes to make friends with everybody, and later on believers declared war on me. So I hired my pactbrother zak to attack her, made a truce with her, used spies to provoke a war between her and sparta, and then sparta called me up to ask for pactbrother against Miriam. I accept, and then I swear truce against her.
When the truce ends, I use my half dozen spies to practice inciting riots, and then I make a truce again, and use my commando spies to encourage Sparta and Zak to keep attacking believers. I also give away tech to people on other islands so Im elected governor with treaties with 5 factions. When my pact brothers call me up to fight Miriam, I either accept and just hold rovers on my border, or give them tech so they arent unhappy with me. From time to time, I advance rovers into Miriam's newer cities and conquer them for the horde.
Yeah. I like this way of playing
Dang.. it's been ages since I played that game, though I have a habit of cheating 
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