I have been playing SMAC on and off since it was released almost 20 years ago. Every few years, I play for a few months, then move on to something else, but I always come back.
I think that I long ago found "a winning formula" and now repeat it without knowing why.
The salient part is that I early on drill a borehole and an aquifer near each city. After a while, I will be getting all of my money, food, etc from satellites, so I turn the rest of the landscape over to forests, plus lost of rivers.
I have a separate question about rivers (upvoted, but no comments or answers).
This one concerns covering 95%+ of the landscape with forest. Am I doing anything wrong? Are there any disadvantages or negative effects?