Demon Santa

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Hey thanks everybody for your help! Becoming a Neutral civ has been pretty much the only way I play because of the "instaforming" thing and the uber-strong Neutrality Learning Centers. And yes, I am playing only Dread Lords, so I guess I'll have to change my strategies a bit when I get Dark Avatar.

I've been playing this game for about a month now, and it has quickly become one of my favorite games ever. As I understand it, choosing the Neutral alignment makes all upgradeable tiles instantly usable. Building the Orbital Terraformer achieves the same effect. But, I'm still quite confused about some things even after searching through the forum and wiki. I find that if I research the terraforming technologies (Soil Enhancement, etc.), not only does it make the unusable tiles usable