14 DAY TRIAL // I love science, so, naturally, my first pick when playing Pandora: First Contact was the Togra University, a good carbon copy of the research-focused faction from Alpha Centauri, and I love the way the characteristics of their ideology forces me towards one style of play.
The scientists can discover new tech quickly and are able to then translate it into working prototypes, but they lack the stomach for a fair fight and tend to anger those factions that are focused on survival or believe in any kind of deity.
That means that the Togra are rather weak during the first era of Pandora because others can use strength in numbers or superior manufacturing capabilities to flood them with units and take them out.
This happened to me a few times, I was forced to admit defeat because my expansion was slow and I was never able to match the enemy forces when they sniffed out my weaknesses.
I then tried a boom strategy and, after learning a little about the tech tree, I raced as quickly as possible to the Mech unit and built exactly three before any enemy became sufficiently annoyed with me to declare war.
I then proceeded to use two of them as a deterrence force on the edge of my border while the other, supported by a force of human soldiers with flamethrowers, cleared out a number of hives to boost my economy.
This is a clear sign of how the ideology of my faction drives my actions and I have similar examples with the survivalist, the capitalist and the fanatic factions in Pandora: First Contact.
The game is heavily based on the classic Alpha Centauri, but it manages to introduce some new ideas to turn-based strategy and fans of the genre should give it a spin.