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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
I guess I've come to realize how gigantic a failure I'd be if I ever tried to lead anything.. I mean, it somehow made me doubt my ability to do things right.. I guess I'm too much of an idealist to play this game and not feel bad. This probably sounds pretty confused and possibly dumb but the game has made me think a lot.. Still, great fun and really well made game but it's a bit dark - perhaps gothic and it has somehow made me uneasy. | ||
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
I'll see if I can fix it somehow in the morning, I don't seem to be able to put words to my thoughts. | ||
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Meat
Netherlands3751 Posts
On October 27 2004 17:28 FrozenArbiter wrote: Okay reading this over this is probably the most confusing post I've made.. I'll see if I can fix it somehow in the morning, I don't seem to be able to put words to my thoughts. i thought you should have had enough practise with almost 10k posts  | ||
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LetMeBeWithYou
Canada4254 Posts
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XDawn
Canada4040 Posts
can you give me a demo link? | ||
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pheered.user
United States2603 Posts
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IDWIJNI-
Mexico332 Posts
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DanCboh
United States36 Posts
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koit
United States450 Posts
yeah, it used to freak me out too ^^; I played this while everyone else jumped to starcraft =[ | ||
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nvnplatypus
Netherlands1300 Posts
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EAGER-beaver
Canada2799 Posts
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mindspike
Canada1902 Posts
playing against the computer is not nearly as fun | ||
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Cygnus
United States845 Posts
 thats really fun ^_^ | ||
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koit
United States450 Posts
On October 27 2004 19:17 EAGER-beaver wrote: I tried the demo years ago. Couldn't figure out how to do anything, couldn't be bothered to struggle past the steep learning curve. Keep in mind that that was my 1st sid mierer (sp?) game. meier :D ! | ||
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haduken
Australia8267 Posts
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Fedaykin
Netherlands2003 Posts
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haduken
Australia8267 Posts
Whats really annoying is when ur faction grew too big and ur enemy is big as well. When u pass ur turn to the coms, it takes them forever to finish, so i have to wait like 5 mins before playing my turn again... stupid.. Its hideous when u are playing 8 factions and populate the entire map. | ||
ToKoreaWithLove
Norway10161 Posts
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gravity
Australia1847 Posts
edit: and the tech-quotes in this game are really cool and well done. | ||
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KontraBanned
Portugal10 Posts
For me its far superior to civilization II. I think the tech concepts, the facions and the map are so inovative. Specialy the tech concepts are amazing, who came up with that stuff?? I like the terraforming a lot, usually i make a lot of raise terrain to get room for more bases, since i dont like sea bases. In the transcend dificulty its hard, i can only win all the times with Peacekeepers and Gaians. With University not always, and the others dont really know, since i am a mix of perfectionist and expansionist, im not really a full militarist unlesse my oponents start very close to me right in the start. I think the morganities are very low ballanced. Usually i like playing with university cause its really boring to start having riots so soon (2, 3 or 4 pop) in transcend dificulty. Btw, if someone wants to make a game add me msn: kontra@iol.pt and we'll play sometime! | ||
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
The relevancy of the bump comes from the fact it is now available, DRM free, for $5.99 from Good Old Games here. Unfortunately this doesn't include the expansion, Alien Crossfire, due to more rights issues, but if it does become available in the future, GoG has a reputation of throwing it in free with the package for everyone that bought the game already, so I wouldn't put it past them. Seriously, though, anyone who likes strategy games should get this because it's exactly as in-depth as you want it to be. At the higher difficulties, resource management becomes intense, whereas you can largely ignore it on the lower difficulties and focus on army building and tech paths. It's got something for everyone. | ||
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ToT)OjKa(
Korea (South)2437 Posts
It's been a hell of a long time since I last played it. I'd like to go customise my units and build cities on the sea baby lets go lets go LETS GO. I used to play it with my bro and I didn't get that far through playing it by myself. | ||
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Maginor
Norway505 Posts
I actually liked the original game much better without the expansion. I thought the new factions introduced were to gimmicky and didn't fit too well in with the others. | ||
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BoilOlo
United States139 Posts
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procyonlotor
Italy473 Posts
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Vequeth
United Kingdom1116 Posts
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KillerSOS
United States4207 Posts
Still, this game was amazing. | ||
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Perscienter
957 Posts
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turdburgler
England6749 Posts
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
On June 11 2011 08:55 Perscienter wrote: I've always thought that the fights were so unrealistic. A lot of random events and one unit attacks at a time, right? Then there a lot of annoying things in the game and late-game regularly becomes pretty overwhelming. In the end it's still a great game. The fights are entirely stat based. You get really good at predicting them after a while. Unfortunately, it's a really complex game to just "start" out of nowhere, but if you bought it on GoG there's a PDF of the manual (and it is a loooong manual) in the download folder that you can look at. Apart from that: 1) Build lots of colony pods early. 2) If you are new, use the Governor for each of your bases. Turn him on Discovery early, Build later, and Conquest if you're at war. 3) Set research focus to Discovery until you (or someone else) gets Secrets of the Human Brain, then switch to Conquest/Explore dual focus till Chaos weps, then swap back to Discovery. 4) Don't make too many enemies early. If you outright refuse too many requests, they might declare on you, so always propose a trade, that will make it less likely for them to declare on you. If the trade is incredibly lopsided their way, don't do it, you're so far ahead of them even if they declare on you it's no big deal. 5) Air Power is awesome. 6) As soon as you get Orbital Spaceflight, Immediately build a Hydroponics Pod (it requires an aerospace facility at the base just FYI) as it reveals the entire map and gives you a huge food advantage. 7) Play Gaians first. The Morgans on a low difficulty setting will be your mortal enemy, but they're pathetic till higher difficulties when economy actually matters. You also can sometimes control rather than kill Mind Worms giving you an early game advantage. When you can research green economics later, it gets to like a 75% capture rate. That's all I can think of atm. Edit: Oh yeah, if you can help it, GET THE LONGEVITY VACCINE. It's a decent project in itself, but the cutscene is hilarious. Oh yeah, lemme list some of the better secret projects that you want to prioritize off the top of my head (not exhaustive): Weather Paradigm Virtual World (ESPECIALLY for the University) Hunter-Seeker Algorithm (^) Cyborg Factory Network Backbone Neural Amplifier Planetary Transit System That's all I can think of atm, more probably when I finish my first game in years | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
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SigmaoctanusIV
United States3313 Posts
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Danger_Duck
Burkina Faso571 Posts
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Trizzen
Norway74 Posts
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Aurdon
United States2007 Posts
Instead they keep making more Civ games. | ||
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Quesa
United States304 Posts
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6xFPCs
United States412 Posts
On June 11 2011 08:22 BoilOlo wrote: my copy of the game didn't come with a manuel, so i was clueless as what to do. sadly, i gave up on it . I can give you a decent starting push. Qualifications (i.e. "what league are you?"): a month ago I managed to beat the game on highest difficulty (transcend) for the first time, and I regularly steamroll through the second-highest difficulty (thinker), and have beaten thinker difficulty with every faction. I've played enough games to see the meteor fall random event. Start off creating a random map, on a small planet, on citizen difficulty (easiest), and using standard rules. Choose the Hive as your faction. Why Hive? The ease of building things faster will make things easier since you won't be able to anticipate things you've never learned about. Plus, the leniency of unit supply and police means you won't have to worry about either of those. Start by building scouts, and send your guys out to explore and pop pods (those things that give you bonuses). Keep building scouts until you have 4 total, should be quick. Then switch to building a colony pod. Any time the pop-up asks you about tech direction, just keep the default. Once your colony pod is out, find a nice spot to build at. As Hive, your cities can be 2-4 squares apart, with 3 being my favorite early on. Any bonuses (the weird green, blue, or yellow things on the squares) are good, plus rainy squares and rivers are nice. You can build near landmarks (borehole cluster, freshwater sea, etc.) too, as they are all good except for the dunes, but it's not necessary. If you meet anyone, just agree to trades and treaties. Don't worry about giving away stuff for now. Once you have 50 credits, open up the social engineering menu. Change to Police State and Planned economy if you have them, accept the payment. (You can now support 4 units per city, and and up to 3 units in each city will act as police.) Keep expanding following this same pattern until you have four or five cities. Then start adding some formers. Once you have one former per city, have your strongest production city start prototyping the best new unit you have, while the others continue adding 2 military units and one former per new city. Have formers add roads between the cities. You can automate them if you don't want to deal with farms, etc. Roads are the critical first step, though. Think of it as creep spread, and all you have are slow lings (1 movement units). Once your prototype finishes, have all your cities split between building defensive units (e.g. 1-3-1) and the others build offensive (e.g. 4-1-1). Go to your nearest neighbor. Break whatever treaty or pact you have with them, run them over with cheap units. Did you run them over? Congrats, you just roach-ling all-in'd, but now you have their cities. You can do it to the next guy too, but before you do, start prototyping the next unit. gl hf. | ||
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r.Evo
Germany14080 Posts
It was the fucking best civ-like game ever created. | ||
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zylog
Canada943 Posts
Anyhow, one of my favourite games of all time. A few years ago I replayed it, trying to beat this "impossible scenario" of 1v7AI on transcend difficulty, forced to play cult of planet against all the war oriented factions, on permanent alliances. I learned lots of tricks, but eventually my old computer was not powerful enough to run the scenario as there would be too many units on screen. Anyhow, some tips that I can remember: - supply crawlers are ridiculously overpowered. You want to have a basic supply crawler design, then a fancy one with as high of a cost as possible. Build the cheap one at your city, then when you get a new tech that unlocks a secret project, upgrade the crawler and contribute it to the project. The cost to upgrade is 1/4 the cost to build, so with this method you'll eventually be able to build secret projects in a single turn! - the best city configuration is to build as many of them as possible, something known as the infinite city sprawl (ICS) technique. For instance, the university faction gets a free network node at each city - so if you make a ton of cities, you get a ton of free buildings! - Mineral, energy and nutrient resource tiles are not subject to early game caps, so it is necessary to abuse this as much as possible. You'll want to build lots of formers, and shoot straight for the Weather Paradigm wonder. Then you can build things like thermal boreholes on the mineral/energy resources, giving you 7+ per turn (can't remember the number exactly). Remember the ICS strategy I mentioned above? Let's say you have 3 cities surrounding a thermal borehole - they can take turns sharing that mineral resource to build city facilities quickly, then you can make nutrient condensers on the green tiles as that structure also happens to circumvent nutrient limits. This gives you a cluster of 3 decent cities for each mineral resource in your territory. - the planetary transit system makes all your new cities start at size 3, but what's less known is that all your cities below size 3 when it is build get upgraded to size 3. So again, build a ton of cities, making sure that they're all size 1-2, then boom, your population suddenly increases by 2-3x. - for pollution control, you need to understand how the mechanics work. There is a magical number known as the clean mineral limit, which starts at around 17 minerals. Early on, you want to push at least one city past this mark to force fungal blooms. After the second one, an interesting mechanic comes into play: any subsequent tree farm, centauri preserve, etc building you build will increase the clean mineral limit by one. Many make the mistake of playing too eco-conscious early, resulting in many tree farms made before the fungal blooms, and therefore a much lower mineral limit resulting in tons of late game pollution. This is bad, as you'll get attacked by massive stacks of mind worms lategame if you have pollution on transcend difficulty. - if you want to get super good, you have to learn how unhappiness works. There's a pattern - on a X-sized map, on Y difficulty, you'll get your first unhappy civilian when you build your Zth city. There are these super unhappy citizens, which won't be appeased easily, so if you want to be as efficient about it as possible you should try to calculate which cities those citizens are likely to appear so you can prepare appropriately for them. I don't remember the exact formula, but this is an important part of super efficient ICS styles. - if you get your growth to +6, you are in population boom mode and grow 1 size for each excess 2 food per city. Since the children's creche gives +2 growth, you'll want to build one in each city, then switch to planned economy and democratic government to quickly saturate your food production. Not all factions can choose those two options though, so for them you have to force golden ages by pumping luxuries for a few turns to get the necessary growth bonus. Anyhow, it's been a few years since I've played, but once you learn to abuse the game mechanics I've mentioned above, you'll be crushing through transcend difficulty games with ease. Some people used to play the game as one faction, then once it got to #1 score, they would use the cheat editor to switch to the weakest faction. They would repeat this process until finally winning the game using the 8th faction after having played each faction to the top. | ||
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Z3kk
4099 Posts
Random question: this is turn-based, so there really is no micro or any situation that requires fast thinking or reactions, right? One can think for as long as one wants? | ||
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Tracil
Australia505 Posts
The game was awesome, and quite complex, but because the netcode was shitty I don't think there was ever a significant multiplayer community. There was a lot of luck involved with early city placement and pods. Was great fun to play, though. Would've liked to get a 7-player game going, but yeah that never happens. | ||
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KillerSOS
United States4207 Posts
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Zona
40426 Posts
If only the AI was stronger I'd play this game and nothing else. It's eventually gotten tiring even to eat transcend AI's alive with just worms... | ||
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-{Cake}-
United States217 Posts
On June 11 2011 11:46 deth2munkies wrote: Edit: Oh yeah, if you can help it, GET THE LONGEVITY VACCINE. It's a decent project in itself, but the cutscene is hilarious. Out of all that quality advice to new players, this is the most important part Also, Forests. | ||
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nepeta
1872 Posts
Just try some stuff, it's not like dwarf fortress :p Also, the meteorite can be summoned quite easily: Get a map with a huge land base (without any water tiles in a main continent), can do this via the customize world size or via editing the alphax.txt, get 50+ cities, and it'll be snowflakes all over the place. I once had a meteor take out the city which built all of my projects, about 20 of them Build projects in your HQ, as it won't get hit! | ||
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Perscienter
957 Posts
On June 11 2011 12:56 r.Evo wrote: I don't get how there is no remake of that game yet. It was the fucking best civ-like game ever created. It's not necessary to create a remake. It's already a very complete game. One or two patches wouldn't hurt, though. But which game doesn't need a new patch? If they would create a remake, they'd probably screw it up with 3d graphics, bugs, huge waiting times between rounds etc. | ||
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Diks
Belgium1880 Posts
On June 11 2011 23:39 Perscienter wrote: It's not necessary to create a remake. It's already a very complete game. One or two patches wouldn't hurt, though. But which game doesn't need a new patch? If they would create a remake, they'd probably screw it up with 3d graphics, bugs, huge waiting times between rounds etc. Starcraft Broodwar I've never heard of Alpha Centauri and that's a shame as this seems to be quite an interesting and deep game. I would like to give a try but the game seems so complexe at first. Are there any good tutorials on the net ? | ||
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Talin
Montenegro10532 Posts
But yeah, on topic, AC is a pretty epic game. It's weird that people didn't hear of it, I thought it was quite famous, and it's pretty mainstream too. It's not exactly Dwarf Fortress complex, it's quite well designed and playable, I definitely recommend it to everyone. | ||
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SilentchiLL
Germany1405 Posts
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Fraidnot
United States824 Posts
On June 12 2011 00:23 SilentchiLL wrote: I'm just 17 but sid meyers Alpha Centauri(the addon Alien crossfire was even better <3) was one of the first strategy games I've played AND my first sex dream was about Aki Zeta 5 from Alien crossfire :D TMI dude, to much information. | ||
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
On June 11 2011 23:54 Diks wrote: Starcraft Broodwar I've never heard of Alpha Centauri and that's a shame as this seems to be quite an interesting and deep game. I would like to give a try but the game seems so complexe at first. Are there any good tutorials on the net ? If you've ever played a Civilization game, you will find it quite familiar. Otherwise, the game has some interactive tutorials (whenever you open a new screen or get a new unit for the first time, it will point out what all the buttons do and how to do everything) and meta strategy can be found around the net, although I and some others have provided a few tips here and there in the thread. | ||
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SilentchiLL
Germany1405 Posts
prudish american :/ ^^ btw if you want to play it on Xp you'll have to download a patch from the official site and change a number in the gamefiles | ||
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iamke55
United States2806 Posts
On June 11 2011 15:33 Zona wrote: This game is better than all other Civilization games and clones, despite the advances made in the more recent ones. Customizable units, changing faction bonuses and penalties (including the extreme benefits), the story, the terran, everything was so amazing. If only the AI was stronger I'd play this game and nothing else. It's eventually gotten tiring even to eat transcend AI's alive with just worms... I agree with this completely, though I prefer the immersion of civ games. It felt better to discover some historic tech that actually happened in our history. | ||
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
but its crashing on Win7 - "Terran.exe has stopped working". | ||
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murphs
Ireland417 Posts
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SilentchiLL
Germany1405 Posts
On June 12 2011 01:33 Liquid`Jinro wrote: This thread reminded me and made me buy it, but its crashing on Win7 - "Terran.exe has stopped working". try updating it to the latest patch and if it still doesn't work then try the solution for XP the explanation and the downloads are here http://www.firaxis.com/games/game_detail.php?gameid=7 EDIT: If you liked alpha centauri I strongly recommend the addon Alien Crossfire | ||
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
On June 12 2011 01:49 SilentchiLL wrote: try updating it to the latest patch and if it still doesn't work then try the solution for XP the explanation and the downloads are here http://www.firaxis.com/games/game_detail.php?gameid=7 EDIT: If you liked alpha centauri I strongly recommend the addon Alien Crossfire I have all those installed =[ GOG compatibility lists the game yo buy from them as being WIn7 compatible from the get go too. | ||
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
On June 12 2011 01:33 Liquid`Jinro wrote: This thread reminded me and made me buy it, but its crashing on Win7 - "Terran.exe has stopped working". I had the crash problem on vista and the patch fixed it. I haven't had a problem with it on 7 yet. In RE: Alien Crossfire, I've tried to find it anywhere but e-bay and super overpriced on Amazon, but it's just not there. Like I said, it's tied up in rights issues so GOG can't stock it atm, and they'll probably give it out for free if and when they do get it (to people that bought the game, and include it in future purchases), but for now all I can say is that it's on TPB. Also, I had a hilarious sequence of quotes, I finished the Supercollider ("God does not play dice. - Albert Einstein, Datalinks) Followed by Probability Mechanics the next turn ("Einstein would turn over in his grave, not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Yang). XD | ||
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Mikilatov
United States3897 Posts
On June 12 2011 01:55 Liquid`Jinro wrote: I have all those installed =[ GOG compatibility lists the game yo buy from them as being WIn7 compatible from the get go too. Did you try that silly compatability mode junk? It actually works sometimes. edit: Now that I think about it, I recall having that same issue and believe compatability mode fixed it? I could be wrong though. | ||
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
On June 12 2011 01:58 Mikilatov wrote: Did you try that silly compatability mode junk? It actually works sometimes. edit: Now that I think about it, I recall having that same issue and believe compatability mode fixed it? I could be wrong though. tried all T_T | ||
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
Is it crashing immediately on startup or after a while of playing? | ||
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SilentchiLL
Germany1405 Posts
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
On June 12 2011 02:07 deth2munkies wrote: Is it crashing immediately on startup or after a while of playing? @ Firaxis Games logo | ||
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nepeta
1872 Posts
[PREFERENCES] ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=0 | ||
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
EDIT: Bah cant find that either. Screw this for now. | ||
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rebuffering
Canada2436 Posts
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zylog
Canada943 Posts
http://www.firaxis.com/games/downloads.php I think at the time it was to help get the game to work on XP/2000, so you might still need to use compatibility mode after that. There was also a fan patch made just last year that fixes a bunch of bugs and exploits. http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7511 | ||
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Gnosis
Scotland912 Posts
On June 12 2011 01:55 Liquid`Jinro wrote: I have all those installed =[ GOG compatibility lists the game yo buy from them as being WIn7 compatible from the get go too. I'm running Win7 x64 and Centauri runs just fine (from GoG)... GoG forums showing others are having the same error you are. Have you tried forcing a low resolution? | ||
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Perscienter
957 Posts
*BEEP* Wrong answer. The behaviour of dragoons alone justifies a patch for Brood War. | ||
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nemY
United States3119 Posts
On June 12 2011 02:07 SilentchiLL wrote: Is there anybody with Alpha Centauri or even better Alien Crossfire on his computer who'd like to play a game with me? I've never played an Alpha centauri or Alien Crossfire game against a Human, so I'd love to try it with somebody who knows how to do it, or is atleast patient enough to find out a way to do it with me :D I would enjoy it, but I've never been able to get the game to work on multiplayer (be it gameranger, hamachi, or just using tcp/ip settings) | ||
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Moonie
Norway33 Posts
If anyone want to try and play an online game, PM, and I will dig my CD up from the bottomn of my game drawer. :D | ||
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schmeebs
United States115 Posts
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Randomaccount#77123
United States5003 Posts
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nitram
Canada5412 Posts
Does anyone know the fix? When i click install it doesnt do anything. Something to do with a 16bit installer on a 64bit processor. | ||
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Icemind
Germany570 Posts
On June 11 2011 15:33 Zona wrote: This game is better than all other Civilization games and clones, despite the advances made in the more recent ones. Customizable units, changing faction bonuses and penalties (including the extreme benefits), the story, the terran, everything was so amazing. If only the AI was stronger I'd play this game and nothing else. It's eventually gotten tiring even to eat transcend AI's alive with just worms... This is so true. Although i actually still have it installed (and had even before this thread was revived ) even though the AI is a little weak. Its still fun to play every once in a while and for a turn based game it has a very good athmosphere. | ||
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
^interesting. Evidently this is somewhat illegal, but Hamachi will let you play Alpha Centauri over TCP/IP even though they brought down all the servers years ago. Also, Jinro, it's 1 of 2 things: 1) Compatibility mode w/ Windows 95 and the lower colors, run as admin, etc. 2) It's an issue with multi-core processors, the fix mentioned earlier usually does it, but I seem to recall having to do something else to the .ini file to get it to work on my old laptop, I'm researching now, but that's at least somewhere to start looking. | ||
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athief
United States85 Posts
I'm up for games, but given my schedule they'd pretty much have to be PBE... can't set any reliable amount of time aside. Transcend with worms? My last game was an Ascent to Transcendence rush with University on Librarian... Nothing like pulling out an inch-thick manual and tech trees and finding your notes from middle school. | ||
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rolfe
United Kingdom1266 Posts
you're too nice though jinro, i love nerve stapling my citizens 8) has anyone got the expansion/is it any good? | ||
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
On June 12 2011 05:57 rolfe wrote: this is pretty coincidental, i just reinstalled the game today as well. i was having huge problems installing it, i would press the setup button and nothing would happen, i tried running it in compatibility modes and as administrator and nothing worked. then an hour or so later when in the middle of a game the installer just came up all of a sudden and i was able to install it. i'm on vista though so dunno what happened. you're too nice though jinro, i love nerve stapling my citizens 8) has anyone got the expansion/is it any good? The expansion is OK. It gives 2 unplayable but overpowered alien races, so it makes it a bit harder, as long as a bunch of new factions that are at best slightly more powerful than the normal factions, at worst stupid attempts at making something different (Pirates), and otherwise pretty decent. It's not worth $45 on Amazon or E-bay, so just torrent it. | ||
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ToxNub
Canada805 Posts
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Alethios
New Zealand2765 Posts
On June 12 2011 02:46 Perscienter wrote: *BEEP* Wrong answer. The behaviour of dragoons alone justifies a patch for Brood War. You must be new here  This game is freaking sweet. Such a lot of fun to dive back into every year or so. | ||
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KaiserReinhard
United States554 Posts
University is op. | ||
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g1rg10
Italy186 Posts
On June 12 2011 05:10 nitram wrote: This game doesnt even instal at all for me. Does anyone know the fix? When i click install it doesnt do anything. Something to do with a 16bit installer on a 64bit processor. Take this as a grain of salt since i run W7 32bit. I had the same problem some times ago when i tried to reinstall it too. There is a workaround to that I found somewhere i can't recall: - create the directory where you want to "install" the game (ex. c:\SMAC) - copy from the cd what's inside the programs directory into your chosen dir (copy from d:\SMAC\programs to c:\SMAC) - copy the whole fx, movies and voices dirs from the cd into yours. - run terran.exe | ||
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ToxNub
Canada805 Posts
On June 12 2011 06:46 KaiserReinhard wrote: Wow, how crazy. I actually started playing this again like a week ago. University is op. I found university op at lower difficulties but rather weak at higher. Your population is a bunch of spoiled brats and always revolt, and you grow too slow to compete long term. | ||
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Hunterai
Thailand842 Posts
On June 12 2011 07:08 ToxNub wrote: I found university op at lower difficulties but rather weak at higher. Your population is a bunch of spoiled brats and always revolt, and you grow too slow to compete long term. One of my favorite games of all times. Loved to play as The Hive faction in that game. I think the OP faction is Green but my memories may be fuzzy. It was quite some time ago. | ||
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xeR
Germany19 Posts
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Wesso
Netherlands1245 Posts
On June 12 2011 07:29 Hunterai wrote: One of my favorite games of all times. Loved to play as The Hive faction in that game. I think the OP faction is Green but my memories may be fuzzy. It was quite some time ago. Best TBS (not RPG) I know, the expansion was really good too, added lot's of content etc, only problem with the expansion was that almost every new race was better than the old ones. games took waaaaay too long for multiplayer though (could be because I was a total noob when I played it (and still ) | ||
KwarK
United States42668 Posts
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-{Cake}-
United States217 Posts
only problem with the expansion was that almost every new race was better than the old ones. I'd disagree, imo morgan > roze deidre > planet cult kid yang isn't worse than domai, though probably not better either ^same with zak and cyborgs pirates are too different to compare imo (closest comparison is spartans which isn't even that close) aliens are obviously op | ||
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Ahnaris
United States70 Posts
...I think it's time to find my pre-2005 CD binder! | ||
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SOB_Maj_Brian
United States522 Posts
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Taco_Bueno
United States43 Posts
http://irrationalgames.com/insider/irrational-interviews-7-brian-reynolds/ | ||
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zylog
Canada943 Posts
On June 12 2011 07:08 ToxNub wrote: I found university op at lower difficulties but rather weak at higher. Your population is a bunch of spoiled brats and always revolt, and you grow too slow to compete long term. I think university is the standard for "fastest to transcendence victory" challenges because its free network node bonus works so well with ICS base building concepts. Add the virtual world for a hologram building in each city. For an example check out this link http://www.dos486.com/alpha/index.html | ||
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
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Wesso
Netherlands1245 Posts
On June 12 2011 10:15 -{Cake}- wrote: I'd disagree, imo morgan > roze deidre > planet cult kid yang isn't worse than domai, though probably not better either ^same with zak and cyborgs pirates are too different to compare imo (closest comparison is spartans which isn't even that close) aliens are obviously op You're probably right, like I said I was a total noob in that game | ||
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SilentchiLL
Germany1405 Posts
(I usually chose Aki-Zeta as my partner, because although the cultures are pretty different they add to each other very well, getting scientifical discoveries from your bloodsister is always awesome.) | ||
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
On June 12 2011 10:15 -{Cake}- wrote: I'd disagree, imo morgan > roze deidre > planet cult kid yang isn't worse than domai, though probably not better either ^same with zak and cyborgs pirates are too different to compare imo (closest comparison is spartans which isn't even that close) aliens are obviously op Aki > Zak for 2 reasons: 1) No Cybernetic penalty. 2) No probe team penalty, you can't just get HS Algorithm anymore. | ||
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ThaZenith
Canada3116 Posts
I really did love how you could make units that you "wanted", make really good ones that would cost a lot, etc. Customization is always awesome. | ||
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
On June 13 2011 13:33 ThaZenith wrote: I remember this way back in the day. I built up to some kind of unit that was a swarm of "somethings" and just sent waves of them at the enemies until I won. I really did love how you could make units that you "wanted", make really good ones that would cost a lot, etc. Customization is always awesome. Locusts of Chiron. Those things are imba as hell when you get enough psych to produce them at Demon Boil. | ||
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Tracil
Australia505 Posts
On June 13 2011 13:30 deth2munkies wrote: Aki > Zak for 2 reasons: 1) No Cybernetic penalty. 2) No probe team penalty, you can't just get HS Algorithm anymore. Zak vs Aki The first bonus is actually irrelevant because most games are gonna be won or lost long before cybernetic tech comes into play. I'd much rather have free network nodes, which are pricey and extremely relevant early on! The second is hugely relevant, however, and HS isn't perfect either in the expansion. The growth penalty is kinda nasty, though. I think Zak edges out since you can defend against enemy probe teams if you take the proper precautions- thus, a more complete player will play a better Zak than he would Cyborgs. Morgan totally smashes Roze. So does Myriam. Cult kid is trash due to the huge industry penalty. Yang is stronger than Domai, though. Free perimeter defences means you can actually hold on to your sprawling bases, and the no inefficiency penalty is pure goddamn gold. | ||
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Reyis
Pitcairn287 Posts
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Manit0u
Poland17257 Posts
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maryelizbethwinstead
Mexico223 Posts
Played all the civs except "Call to Power" (does that count?). This is the best one. Soooooo much thought and care was put into making it. I fall in love with this game again and again, despite RL and other games pulling me away. It's the only one that can make the sun rise and set again for me. | ||
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Bajadulce
United States322 Posts
While succession games are popular here at TL and probably are more open for discussion, a GOTM has more freedom in that you get to play your own game without any commitments. For those unfamiliar with GOTM, players download and play a start game and then submit their final saves for comparison with others. The games are rated by speed and score, taking into account the type of victory or defeat. Anywho.. it's a lot of work for someone to organize something like this, and don't think I have the time nor organization skills/leadership to run something like this, but I would definitely actively participate/help as best I could. ... any thoughts? | ||
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whatusername
Canada1181 Posts
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nemY
United States3119 Posts
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HaXxorIzed
Australia8434 Posts
I do love this game however, I still play it frequently. The practiced, steady expansion of the university hinging on the power of that "free supply" from established bases for mass formers and the bonuses of all those network nodes, oh god yes. | ||
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Nightmarjoo
United States3360 Posts
My last game was as Santiago, and I was on a small island. I covered it with bases and forests with some farms. When I terraformed the last square I sent all my formers with a Colony Pod with a few formers to the nearby island to colonize it. Isles of the deep destroyed the scouting boats I made. The few factions whose coasts I found were entirely unfriendly. I obtained the Merchant thing, Citizens Defense Force, and the free tech when 3 factions research it projects. I ended up getting Cyberethics before resource bonus techs, so I was running Police State and Knowledge while researching towards Tree Farms. I had lasers and synthmetal armour only. Yang and Lal landed on my second island and started bullying me. I gave them everything they asked for. Morgan offered me a shitload of money and a tech to vendetta on Miriam, so I did. Then Lal instantly declared war on me and showed up with a few elite Gatling Infantry on my second island. My police synthmetal infantry defense melted like butter and I gave up. I just dunno what I needed to be doing differently. Any advice? | ||
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
You pretty much have to find someone to make friends with and try to keep treaties up but never take pacts because no one on Trancend will make you a pact offer that's worth it. | ||
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arb
Noobville17921 Posts
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Warmonger
United States69 Posts
On November 06 2013 13:25 Nightmarjoo wrote: Transcend isn't very fun. I became recently reinvigorated to play this game, and wanted to finally win on Transcend, but I just feel lost. I can't make any headway in any direction with any faction on that difficulty. Everything just sucks every turn. I don't know what to do anymore. Every faction I meet demands tech and won't trade anything, and usually declares war on me if I say no. Frequently the first faction I meet just instantly declares war without even saying anything else. I'm not even playing with intense rivalry. I'm always so far behind on tech that aggression and defense both aren't options. I can't get any advantage with formers early. Drones. Drones everywhere. I don't know what kind of goals I should be making or how to meet them. I try to make a bunch of forests with some farms if I lack nutrient bonuses, to get Police State asap, to get Supply Crawlers, but have always lost or given up before I can get Tree Farms. My last game was as Santiago, and I was on a small island. I covered it with bases and forests with some farms. When I terraformed the last square I sent all my formers with a Colony Pod with a few formers to the nearby island to colonize it. Isles of the deep destroyed the scouting boats I made. The few factions whose coasts I found were entirely unfriendly. I obtained the Merchant thing, Citizens Defense Force, and the free tech when 3 factions research it projects. I ended up getting Cyberethics before resource bonus techs, so I was running Police State and Knowledge while researching towards Tree Farms. I had lasers and synthmetal armour only. Yang and Lal landed on my second island and started bullying me. I gave them everything they asked for. Morgan offered me a shitload of money and a tech to vendetta on Miriam, so I did. Then Lal instantly declared war on me and showed up with a few elite Gatling Infantry on my second island. My police synthmetal infantry defense melted like butter and I gave up. I just dunno what I needed to be doing differently. Any advice? Alright, I'll try to be brief to get you started, but I'm pretty sure I could write on a book on this game so I apologize if I get long winded. I'm going to assume you aren't using any governors/auto builders (they are terrible) and you understand the basic mechanics of Terraforming, Social Engineering, Rush Building, Supply Crawlers, and Bureaucracy. If you need any clarification just let me know and I'll go more in depth. I am going to focus entirely on the first 50-75 turns of the game. After that point you can very easily already have the game won (although 200 turns of clean up may be necessary). The first thing you need to get a handle on when increasing difficulty is drones. The early levels will make or break your entire game and loosing even a turn to drone riots will set you back massively later (just like getting supply blocked in SC2). What this means is you need to become familiar with how large your empire and each of your cities can grow for the faction/map size you choose. I'll use the Spartans as an example (I feel they are probably the weakest/second weakest of the original 7 in regard to dominating the AI, but they are still easily usable). On Transcend difficulty you get 1 worker at each base you found, afterward every population point becomes a drone. You can manage these drones via a number of ways but in the time frame mentioned your main methods will be doctors, police, and colony pods. Assuming you aren't going to be running FM (it is amazing, but hard to manage correctly) nor Police State (it is, generally speaking, garbage unless you are Yang) each garrison will control a drone and you can have two police garrisoned at each base. This is really all we need to know to get started other than the size of the map (I will assume standard for the following example, which places a BUreaucracy limit of 6 on +0 Effic factions). MY 2101: So you start on turn 1 and you must immediately assess your situation. You are looking for the best two base locations your two Colony Pods can reach in the next turn or two. You do this by scouting with your initial Scout Patrol. I recommend you place all of your bases within 3 squares of each other (a unit will be able to move from one base to another in a single turn with roads) in a somewhat grid like pattern, terrain permitting. Obviously you must be flexible. If there is an initial river or energy special consider planting a base directly on it. If a much better base location isn't immediately apparent i recommend you drop your headquarters right where you start so you don't loose out on base turns. Next set your research (see the end of this post for research suggestions) and start cranking out another Scout Patrol. MY2102-2105ish: Your second and third Scout Patrol are done and you have minerals already banked toward four and five. You have two bases founded and your scout patrol is continuing to look for new base locations, pop pods and look for mind worms for those planet pearls (fungus is your friend until MY2115 when worms get stronger, I prefer to move through it rather than not). You desperately need those early energy credits to rush build. If you founded a river/energy special you will be close to your first tech. Before scout patrol 4 and 5 finish your goal is to switch them to a move useful production goal. If your first tech was CE you can build Formers, if you have +2 nut squares you can work toward colony pods (your base must grow a turn before it can make the pod), if you have a +2 min square as Sparta you can proto a Scout Rover 1-1-2 (or 2-1-2 if you are rushing NMath). If you have none of those things I feel your pain... you will have to finish another set of Scout Patrols. Your free maintenance at each base is two units and you want to stay at or below that if at all possible. (Keep in mind your initial scout along with any free units from pods are independent. These units are amazing and after you are forced to garrison they should be thought of as free facilities more than military units. Keep them alive.) MY2106-MY2115: You are scouting more of the surrounding area and have collected a few planet pearls by now (hopefully). Your goal is to have another set of bases founded as soon as possible. As soon as you get formers you will want to make sure each base has a +2 nut square (so it can grow asap and produce colony pods) and 1-2 forests (so it has production/research/income). After than build a road between your bases and then out to future base sites where you can start building forests/farms/sensors. You want to juggle your base workers to get colony pods out from your first two bases asap. Ideally the base would grow to size 2, a garrison would arrive there the turn before to handle the drone, and your colony pod would finish or be rushed for next turn. If you can manage to do this, you are doing very well. MY2116: From this point forward a mind worm attacking a scout will kill it nearly 100% of the time so you must be much more careful. Don't loose units early! MY2117-2150: You should have a handful of techs and six bases come MY2150, continuing in the same fashion as before. You want to switch to Planned asap and continue to rush buy mission critical units. You shouldn't be worried about facilities at all unless you researched/popped Biogen in which case you could build Rec Tanks at a min heavy base while waiting for maintenance to go down. When you found a new base make sure to re-home Scout Patrols/Formers to redistribute the maintenance cost (Ctrl-h) while the unit is in the base. Assuming to are going to play fairly passive each base should have a garrison and a former taking up the two free maintenance mins. If you are playing aggressive you simply build as many 4-1-2 rovers as you can and go wreck MY2140-2160: Assuming you aren't playing crazy aggressive and you haven't conquered your 6 closest neighbors yet you really need to have IA around this point. The AI will be finishing Secret Projects soon and you want to get in on that action, which requires you to have crawlers. The turn you get IA you need to be ready to switch production of all 6 bases to supply crawlers and get them working forested squares (after your formers finished their initial 1x forest, 1x +2 nut square, road at each base they should continue to spam forests). Continue to do this until your bases have run out of forest or are producing 16+ minerals a turn (send any excess supply crawlers from your best cities to those that are farther behind and re-home them with Ctrl+h). Rush as many Secret Projects as you can with upgraded crawlers. If at all possible grab the Weather Paradigm first so you can do some cheeky super fast pop-booming. MY2160+: You have any secret projects the AI didn't beeline (or maybe you have those too if you got a good start). Your tech is starting to really slow down at this point (increased cost/tech) and as such you need to do one of two things: grow vertically or grow horizontally. Horizontal growth requires pre-planning for the Bureaucracy drones, vertical growth requires pre-planning for the food requirements. This is already pretty long so I'm just going to cover pop-booming very quickly: You will be working forests with half your population and the other half will be doctors/scientists(population/drones allowing). The rest of your required nuts to support the popboom will be harvested by crawlers working farm/condesor squares. When a base hits 7 make sure it has a hab complex. When your bases stall out or hit 14 switch out of pop-boom and change all your workers to scientists. Bam! you are now getting a tech every three turns or so! Now some hints to manage your civ: Turn on the setting that pauses the game before going to next turn. When the next turn button starts flashing check: 1. Cycle through bases by going into the base screen and then hitting -> or <- to see if: a. they may grow next turn b. they have eco damage c. any units/facilities are low enough to be rushed with energy credits 2. Hit F4 to bring up the base menu and check both the workers tab and the production tab to ensure all your bases are doing the things you want them to. If your base grew and set a doctor you need to change it to a scientist. If you have a drone you need to change it to a doctor. If you aren't building something, fix it.\ 3. Turn on notifications in the game preferences for facilities finishing (units as well if you have incredible amounts of patients). Nothing is worse than stockpiling energy because you didn't notice your Rec Commons finished 4 turns ago. Lastly, once you are at the stage i described, you can win any number of ways, but the easiest is to simply bee-line to Doc:Air and spam 6-1-10 needlejets until you win. Throw in clean reactors if you are feeling especially awesome. Oh, I almost forgot. You don't need to worry about the demands the enemy AI place on you because you can simply give them any techs they ask for and your energy credits will be low from rush building so they won't ask for $$ (if they do it may actually be worth it to refuse them and go to war, if you feel comfortable doing so). You won't be building much military if you are going for builder style so you won't show up as a threat as your score will be low until you explode with secret projects/pop-boom. Refusing most factions once will result in war, twice and you will almost certainly see vendettas flying. Further reading: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=233305¤tpage=4#77 | ||
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Nightmarjoo
United States3360 Posts
How long do you stay on 6 bases? Once you have your 6 bases and your 1 garrison/former per base, what do you produce? Do you just start working on secret projects and hope your base gets big enough in enough time to finish it before another faction? | ||
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EatThePath
United States3943 Posts
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Warmonger
United States69 Posts
On November 08 2013 05:10 Nightmarjoo wrote: How do you protect your supply convoys? Even if you rule out bad luck with mind worms, the AI will inevitably declare war for one reason or another. In my transcend experience this has always happened before I could make the military to defend myself. How long do you stay on 6 bases? Once you have your 6 bases and your 1 garrison/former per base, what do you produce? Do you just start working on secret projects and hope your base gets big enough in enough time to finish it before another faction? It only takes a single turn to finish each secret project by saccing upgraded crawlers. Each crawler can be added to the stockpiled minerals of a Secret Project or prototype with 100% efficiency. This means the min output for your entire empire can be focused on a single SP with a little bit of crawler juggling. If those crawlers first are used to harvest for a turn or two, you are actually over 100% efficient. Further, upgrading crawlers to more advanced models (for example S-1-1 -> S-2t-1 is incredibly credit efficient. (The best ec -> min conversion from rush buying is 2->1, and upgrading crawlers and cashing them in always beats this.) This is the best way to spend any excess credits you may have at this point in the game. I'll outline the process: 0. You have all bases producing well by working mins at 5-10 forest squares for each base using crawlers. 1. Send all your additional crawlers to the base where you want finish the SP (I will refer to this as the SP base). 2. If you haven't finished a prototype of your highest armor crawler you will want to do so (you can use already built crawlers to speed this process as well). Most efficiently at a base <=3 squares from the SP base so on the turn it's built it can immediately move to the SP base via road and be added to the mineral stockpile. 3. Take note of the cost of the SP you wish to build. I'll use Weather Paradigm for this example, which is 20 rows. Note i measure the cost in rows because the actual mineral cost will vary depending on your industry SE settings (ie it would be 220 min for Sparta or 200 min with planned). With this number you can tell how many crawlers you will need: a S-1-1 crawler is 3 rows, a S-2-1 is 5 rows, etc... Upgrade as many crawlers as needed or you can afford to the newly prototyped model in the SP base square (or alternatively the turn before upgrade crawlers working squares next to the base square and set them back to work. They will be able to move into the SP base next turn when you start building the SP.) 4. Set production of the SP base to the SP you want. 5. Now the actual crawler rushing. Any crawlers that have already used their movement (either moving or upgrading) you must manually select from the SP base menu and then hit 'O' just as if you where harvesting with them. Select the option to add to the Secret Project. Any crawlers that aren't in the base square and you wish to add you can move them into the base square and the dialogue will pop up automatically. You can add more crawlers than needed so be careful! Don't forget the SP base is also producing 10-20 min so you don't need to pay those if its is close. A few tips that might help. 1. I rename all my crawler designs in the design workshop (hotkey: U) to include the number of rows they require to build. (so "Synthmetal Crawlers" become "Supply (S-2-1)(5rows)".) I actually do this will all my units but it is a lot of micro management for not a lot of gain, so you may want to forgo that step if micro management isn't your thing. 2. You can assign crawlers to harvest even with zero movement points by hitting 'O' with them selected. This means if a base builds a crawler and all the adjacent squares are worked you can "push out" a crawler and still have both of them working that turn. Now to defend: First sensor towers and forests are your friend. I build sensors on the edges of my territory along with a forest and park a crawler on top of them and I fill everything that isn't rocky/farmed with forests. Why? because not only are forests incredibly square efficient, they lower eco-damage from your min heavy bases, and they self-proliferate (removing fungus even), but they also reduce movement, so your enemies can't pierce past the edge of your territory in the early game. Your sensor tower sees the enemy/worm coming and you just pull back all your units in that area and send a military unit to collect your planet pearls/morale upgrade. (Seriously, early mind worms are a boon in most cases, not a hindrance. Farm that!) Also, don't go into drone riots because your garrison is off killing worms, set that drone to a doctor and have a turn or two of hunger! For growth: You want to expand horizontally once you can handle the drones. Each base beyond your first bureaucracy limit will produce two additional drones in the newly founded base as well as another base in your empire (so you will have no free workers in a size one base). If you are set to handle that with pre-built garrisons and facilities/secret projects you can (and should) expand horizontally. Another method is is to former/crawler the area before the colony pod arrives, set all drones to doctors, and collect all your nut via crawlers on farms to sustain the base. You can even plant a sensor array on the location of an upcoming base to give it a 25% defensive advantage if you have the former turns. On production: Crawlers. If you don't have at least 10 crawlers per base you are not doing it right in my opinion. Work every square. Use crawlers as forward scouting outposts. Every coastal square should have a crawler working it so units cannot land without amphibious pods. Every terraformed square should have a crawler working it so it cannot be bombarded. This is even more important with the Spartan -1 Industry SE default setting. Take every base to 20+ min output until you get your second mind worm <pop> (each pop gives you 1 free clean mineral at each base, but they get progressively worse), and then scale back to 0 eco-damage, setting everything else to energy/nuts. Then probe teams. What do crawlers and probes have in common? Zero support cost. You can crank out a P-1-1 defender (manually create it in the design workshop) for every single base in a single turn with your now amazing min output. P-1-2/P-1-4 probes/foil probes are amazing scouts and infiltrating an enemy is the single most important thing in any war. If you can build enough to steal some tech or sabotage some bases, even better, but at the very least get infiltration and vision via scouting. Keep in mind you are very strong industrially but you have no standing military. This means you have to react immediately to threats. If at any point someone declares vendetta you need to immediately start cranking out laser/impact rovers to defend your empire (Rovers for the move speed so you can reinforce where the attacks are coming from. Let the enemy push into your territory then counterattack them). Keep in mind every military unit you create reduces your effective industry by 1 min, so you want to defend with as few military units as possible until you get clean reactors. Playing a builder style in SMAC is a lot like playing zerg. | ||
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bo1b
Australia12814 Posts
On a side note upgraded couriers are such a dirty way to win a game | ||
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Warmonger
United States69 Posts
On November 08 2013 20:27 bo1b wrote: I think when people get a grasp on balancing drones/workers/crawlers/mineral income/fungus/economy/labs they're pretty much ready to start never losing vs ai. On a side note upgraded couriers are such a dirty way to win a game I agree. If you can handle all of those things you really won't have any problems beating AI most likely. Luckily with a little knowledge you can add more difficulty to the game with very little time invested through the scenario editor. For example, set the AI to all have permanent pacts with each other and permanent vendetta with the player, or give each AI faction a farm/condenser/nut special and rocky/mine/min special squares with crawlers already working them turn 1. As far as "dirty" ways to win I think there are plenty of things in the game that give an huge advantage to the player vs AI because the AI doesn't utilize them. Quite frankly the AI is terrible and only stands a chance against players because the rules for AI factions change so much they are basically playing a different game. Then again I would rather increase the AI difficulty like I mentioned earlier than decrease the number of tricks like crawler upgrading I can do. | ||
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Nightmarjoo
United States3360 Posts
I try to rush out 6 bases, then 6 formers, then recycling centers, rec commons, then on my best base (or a couple if I have really good land) work on secret projects, then on the other bases and following the projects I make the energy things, network nodes (virtual world is always my priority secret project), then I just make probes until I can make supply convoys. I scout with rover and foil probes as is possible and try to infiltrate every faction. When I get convoys I try to get every base 16-18 minerals, with one base in the low 20s. When I get the +3 mineral tech I turn the farm I have for every base into a condenser (every other square is a forest), and when every base has a children's creche I pop boom, and start to make more bases. Aside from a rover to prototype my weapons I have no military. When I'm happy with my convoy count I make synthemetal foil probes at coastal bases and my best armour rover probes at other bases. The latter don't do anything assuming I have infiltration with any neighbors-by-land until I have a real army and want to fight. When I get clean tech I switch all bases that aren't catching up with supply convoys to military production, which usually means clean missile rovers and infantry (and needlejets if I ended up with airpower before clean tech). Then I piss off my neighbor with probes, and when they declare war I push with everything, using the armoured probes to defend my forward rovers while the infantry catch up. One frequent problem is the person I want/need to go to war with the most frequently gets the Hunter Seeker Algorithm before I can attack, rendering my probes useless. That means I can't remove perimeter defenses, so my army's strength is greatly diminished. I found that not setting any social options until I want to pop boom results in me living longer, as unless I'm Miriam (in which case every single faction I meet declares war instantly for some reason...) no one declares war on me when I use default options. I can sometimes win my first war (usually if my target is fighting one or more other factions at the same time), but after that I'm completely boxed in by land and sea and can't expand, in addition to having an inferior military anyway. It seems like my problem is from having too few bases, but I either don't know when I can afford the drones and can make the bases, or I literally don't have a place to make them because I got boxed in especially early. I usually can't get very many secret projects because I just don't have the prerequisite techs in time to compete with the ai. If I'm really lucky I can get virtual world, human genome project, merchant exchange, and the bases-start-at-3-project. That's usually about it until a hundred turns later or so, when I can get some of the reject mid-tech projects. I never get the weather project. I can sometimes get maritime. Is there anything blatantly bad about what I'm doing? Or is it just a matter of little things accumulating over the course of the game? edit: Got pissed off and tried something completely different, and it accidentally is working so far. I went for industrial automation asap (before formers even, so it was pretty suboptimal), then centauri ecology, then beelined for airpower. Santiago had immediately declared war one me (Zakharov) but wasn't near enough to do anything about it. My neighbor Miriam, who had already conquered Morgan and all but 2 of Lal's bases, broke the treaty and attacked with her laser/impact units. I rushed my missile rover prototype and started making missile rovers and needlejets and crushed her. It took a long time to actually conquer her because her empire stretched a great distance, sprawling from the west of to me in a great arc north of me to the east of me, and had no roads. I truced with Santiago with 0 bloodshed, and am now building up my very neglected bases. The only facilities I made were rec commons (and late, I had to take a worker off production for a while because I didn't even research social psych) and recycling centers. I didn't even try to make any secret projects, but had the great fortune to capture the Virtual World from Miriam. I suspect I'll be at war with Deirdre sometime soon because she's my neighbor and kind of surrounds me from the south and east, but she randomly gave me some chaos rovers (I don't even have superstring theory yet), to fight Miriam I guess, even though we only have a Treaty. When I finish the formers and some basic facilities in my conquered territories I'll pop boom everything and should be in a pretty good position. | ||
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Warmonger
United States69 Posts
Lets assume Zhak for the rest of this post since you mentioned having some luck with him; he is, imo, the easiest beginner faction (although Deirdre is close) and against the AI on Transcend his weaknesses actually aren't that big of a deal. First, techs: assuming a standard map, you should have Industrial Automation (crawlers) & Centauri Ecology (formers) by 2112ish (larger maps may require a few more turns, smaller maps a few fewer). If enemies are close you can easily switch to get Nonlinear Math (4 attack) & Doc: Mobility (speeders) instead (or get them after the beeline if possible) and get them to submit quickly. Second, facilities: it sounds like you may be getting base facilities too soon. Rec Tanks aren't a bad early investment but anything more than that is a waste until you want to start pop booming (and I wouldn't build *any* facilities until all of the early game Secret Projects were off the table). Rec Tanks have the side effect of growing your base faster which can be troublesome if you are having drone issues. Each Rec Commons requires 1 maintenance per turn and they aren't needed until your bases start growing - Zhak has more drones late game, but early game he is the same as everyone else: under your first bureaucracy cap you get one free worker and the rest are drones. In the early game (until ~MY2140-60 when you are getting ready to pop-boom or you built PTS, VW, or HGP) your bases should never grow beyond size 2, and the majority of the time they should stay at size 1 (the only time this won't be the case is a nut special square within the base radius, and a doctor will stabilize the base at size 3 with only 1 worker wasted the turn before the base grows). You manage this by timing Colony Pods to remove population just as the base grows and by adding a garrison/doctor the turn before the base grows. Once you can do this well you can start expanding to your second bureaucracy limit sooner (which is ideal), but if you don't feel comfortable with that, 6 bases will work fine early game. Third, post-SP: Alright it is roughly MY2160 and all the early game SP are gone or nearly gone. If you choose to forgo a few that is fine but as UoP I recommend at least trying for VW, WP & HGP/PTS. (Depending on how many bases you want to make: HGP is your friend for fewer, large bases while PTS is better for massive empire with small bases. That said both are great so getting them all can definitely be worth it.) Each of your bases is ~16min/turn and you are close (or already have) Gene Splicing and you are getting ready to either lift the other resource restrictions (Ecological Engineering & Environmental Economics) or getting ready to mess someone up (Doc: Air Power). - If you are going the peaceful route you need to start building the facilities necessary to pop boom (Children's Creche, Rec Tanks, Rec Commons, Hab Complex, Holo Theaters in roughly that order, don't build drone controlling facilities until you need them). Note you don't need all of those facilities to start booming and if you secured VW you can start booming with just Creches and crawled farms. (Once your city is large enough to pay for the Tree Farm's 3 maintenance without problem you can build them, so not until after you need the other facilities listed; they are not necessary at this point in the game if you have the nuts to via crawled farms/condensors.) After you are done with your facilities its time to start cranking out more pods or some military to expand your empire. - If you are going the offensive route, as soon as you have Synth Fossil Fuels (6 attack) start the proto on a speeder and in a few turns once Doc:Air finishes you can crank out 6-12 needlejets and a few more speeders. Take the army to your nearest enemies land and mess them up. If you hit this window no one has Aerospace Complexes or AAA defenders and they will be powerless to stop you. Remember needlejets cannot be attacked in the field without the SAM special ability so you can block enemy units using jets and ZOC. After you have forced a submissive pact it is time to read the paragraph above about pop-booming or take your military to the next enemy (until the AI has two of AAA defenders, Perimeter Defenses, or Aerospace Complexes your needlejets will gain free kills every time they attack). It sounds like you are having trouble before or at this point so I won't go into anything latter unless you have specific questions, although I have thought about doing an exhibition game recently, so if you have a preference for what faction/strategy you would like to see I would gladly take suggestions. | ||
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Nightmarjoo
United States3360 Posts
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
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Warmonger
United States69 Posts
Hopefully it will help you out a little bit, or at least probe to be entertaining! | ||
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Hagen0
Germany765 Posts
On November 23 2013 14:56 Nightmarjoo wrote: Miriam would be cool to see, as I've had no success whatsoever with her at transcend. If not her, then Yang or Morgan would be neat too. I won't dictate the strategy, but I'd certainly be interested in seeing your lategame tactics if you don't mind. I feel like I at least understand what I need to be doing in the first 100-150 turns, I'm just not doing it efficiently yet; but I still feel fairly lost once the techs start going over the 5th level. When I was playing at lower difficulties my strategy was either win with clean chaos rovers or afk-build until Space Elevator and end with mass clean drop-pod units. Those kind of cheese tactics don't seem to have any merit at transcend. Miriam is somewhat challenging to play. You need to abuse your neighbours to keep up. Steal and/or extort their tech and money. Kill them once you have sucked them dry. Repeat until no enemy remans standing. Regarding fighting techniques, honestly, I don't think they are what you need. Smac is at heart an economic game. If it is played correctly, you can eventually kill the AIs by any method you chose since you are simply 10x as powerful as all of them combined. Even playing against other humans this remains partially true. Most Smac multiplayer games are won by the player with the best economic management. | ||
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Warmonger
United States69 Posts
On November 26 2013 10:28 Hagen0 wrote: Miriam is somewhat challenging to play. You need to abuse your neighbours to keep up. Steal and/or extort their tech and money. Kill them once you have sucked them dry. Repeat until no enemy remans standing. Regarding fighting techniques, honestly, I don't think they are what you need. Smac is at heart an economic game. If it is played correctly, you can eventually kill the AIs by any method you chose since you are simply 10x as powerful as all of them combined. Even playing against other humans this remains partially true. Most Smac multiplayer games are won by the player with the best economic management. This is dead on the money. | ||
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Nightmarjoo
United States3360 Posts
Randomly and inexplicably Lal declared war on me while he had absolutely nothing of worth. I wasn't really ready for fighting, but had enough infrastructure and wealth that it wasn't long before I was pumping out Shard needlejets, Shard marines, and Shard silksteel destroyers. The war most benefitted Deidre, who jumped on the chance to go to war and crushed Lal. She probably took at least half his cities. The war drug on a while despite Lal putting up almost no resistance whatsoever because of a combination of inconvenient sunspots and Yang being his pact-mate. Yang didn't mess with me, but he afk'd needlejets in a lot of Lal's cities and I just wanted to finish the war and go back to building so I didn't declare war on Yang. Sunspots ended when Lal was on one puny island base, and he refused to surrender despite it being surrounded by the best boats on planet. A couple years later Yang finally declared war on me and started spamming me with his 30+ conventional missiles. The missile spam destroyed the bulk of my previous invasion force and it took a long time to make and get the troops to Yang's bases (large map, I was in the north, he in the south). I destroyed most of his missiles with a small needlejet fleet, a few boats, and a couple marines in a transport by attacking a single base for at least 10 years. Once I finally started to get traction as far as taking Yang's sea bases (missiles prevented me from ever landing an invasion force on his continents) Morgan started giving me shit and when I refused to bend over he declared war on me. This was also inexplicable as he had a pathetic military. However his continent was even farther away from me then Yang's, so I stopped making marines and switched to drop-pod infantry while I built the space elevator. Not long after that Santiago decided she wanted in on the action and tried to bully me just like Morgan, so I declared war on her. Lal died the moment Yang declared war, as I could finally finish his last base with Yang's needlejet. He still wouldn't surrender. Santiago proved a great nusance, as she actually had choppers which she used to decimate my defenders and formers in the cities I took from Lal and Yang. Lacking a significant number of interceptors to deal with choppers is one of my biggest mistakes, not that it ended up mattering. I took out Santiago's islands with destroyers and needlejets; I started backdooring her and Morgan's cities with drop infantry as well. The bulk of the planet's cities being marine meant that I was still spending a lot of my production on boats and planes though, which were getting obliterated by Yang's missiles. I was still making progress though on the island cities. The rammification of all that though meant that I wasn't producing enough drop-pod infantry to get much done on the land-invasion front. Finishing the mineral projects pissed off planet despite my high number of tree-farms (all started after the 2nd fungal pop), the ecology project, and my relatively few number of boleholes (mostly used by convoys for energy rather than the minerals anyway), and my war-effort was further weakened by having to deal with some minor worm-rape. Furthermore the seas started to rise and I had to cut off production to work on pressure domes in some of my coastal cities. In the end I just got bored and bought the first transcent project, started the second, then gave supreme leader a shot and won handily despite being at war with 3 factions. I didn't really do too much different this game. The biggest differences were that I turned off random personalities/social choices, that I was aggressive early rather than just afk-building, and that having subjugated two factions early I was out of proximity of the other factions so my formers and convoys never got raped by choppers. I almost feel like the win sprung from luck rather than my actually playing better. In the end the actual victory was pretty easy. I bought myself some time, and the other factions happened to leave me alone long enough that my potential war machine was too great for them to handle. I didn't get many early projects, but I was able to get the critical virtual world. However actually obtaining a research lead helped me secure some very important midgame projects, such as the probe defense and cyborg factory. The former meant the fact that I'd omitted to make many probes didn't matter, and the latter let me respond to Lal extremely quickly, as I didn't bother making command centers or naval things. So basically I just magically got ahead early and never really gave up the lead. I was never behind on tech, and by being ahead I wasn't bullied very much for techs either. Research lead secured projects-- whereas normally I get almost none. Projects let me cut corners, establishing an insurmountable lead that let me fight three fairly large and developed factions, as opposed to not even being able to fight one faction. I just feel like I cheesed basically. Deidre ended up being an essential ally who helped me against Lal and Yang, and a little bit vs Santiago as well. She would actually have been a threat if I'd needed to fight her for some reason. Miriam was useless the entire game, and on one occasion got in my way by having a conventional missile as the sole garrison of a city belonging to someone I was at war with. I dunno; I just don't know what to get out of this victory. I don't feel like I can just go start a new game as any faction with any start and win yet. How often do you mess with the social sliders? I saw you using them in the exhibition match, and in a transcendence speedrun I read the guy put 10% in psych very early on. When I tried the psych thing it gave me more drones rather than fewer, so I didn't bother with it. The other guy on tl who did a couple exhibition matches had many more than 6 cities fairly early on as Deirdre in the monsoon, do you know how he was dealing with the drones? I'm always too scared of drones to make more cities than the first 6 until I have both ~16 minerals from convoys as well as a condenser for every base and am thus comfortable with removing workers if I need to. Additionally I don't like pop-booming until I have treefarms at every base for the forest nutrition, which I only make after I get a few fungal pops for the ecology mineral limit. This is why I end up usually having a weak midgame I think, as my bases are too small and too few. Am I overreacting? | ||
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ninazerg
United States7291 Posts
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Nightmarjoo
United States3360 Posts
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Warmonger
United States69 Posts
1. Your energy income is low enough the inefficiency losses get rounded to zero (usually very early game). 2. Your efficiency is high enough you don't have losses (running demo/green for example). 3. You are running energy into psych for drone control or talent creation reason. 4. You are Miriam in the first 10 turns. Psych is a weird mechanic: every 2 points of psych will change an angry drone to a regular drone, a drone to a worker, or a worker to a talent. All angry drones need to be taken care of before regular drones are controlled and all drones need to be removed before talents are created. Psych is the first measure used to handle drones by the game, and it is the only mechanic that recognizes the angry drone counting "double", so it can be very difficult to actually control drones with psych, let alone create talents unless you have a very high energy income. In my opinion it isn't worth it unless you are trying to dope a golden age (which doesn't work unless you have the expansion) and you have to be very careful in order to do so. As far as growing beyond your bureaucracy limit (it changes with map size: it is 6 bases on a standard/large maps, 9 on huge) you definitely want to fill your continent, and the sooner you can do that without harming your empire the better. You'll notice in the exhibition game I went to 6 bases and then paused for a few turns to build up an army before expanding my empire again (this time by capturing bases rather than building them). The same concept works as a builder faction on an isolated continent: you pause your expansion to get your crawler fleet going, then you start making colony pods once again. You really only need one thing for expansion early game: a +2 nutrient square, and the reason for this is several fold. First it allows the base to quickly grow to size 2 so it can actually produce a Colony Pod. Second, assuming a garrison for drone control, you will have one worker which must provide enough nutrients for 2 population (because the other is forced to be a doctor once bureaucracy drones kick in); the base square provides 2 nutrients so you will need 2 more to keep the base from shrinking. Ideally, after the base is size 2 you either rush a Colony Pod so you can start working a forest square again or you have a crawler army already setup so you don't care what the worker is doing so long as the base isn't rioting (although in that case you may want to crawl the nutrient square and work a forest). I would encourage you start a game and make a save after you get your initial 6 bases down. Then just play the next 30-40 turns through a couple times, trying different things until you get the hang of judging when to expand horizontally and when to grow vertically. You won't have that many units to give orders to so the process should be fairly quick. You touched on something that I've taken for granted as well: submissive pacts are amazing, especially early in the game. It will take the AI a few decades to get back into the game, but they will almost always be worth more than the bases they had left at the time (although I do agree, Miriam would be much less useful than the rest). Also, if you are at war with someone and your pact mates aren't, you can always ask them to join the war, which they will likely do if they are submissive. As far as multiplayer goes, I have a 9-5 job but otherwise I should have time to give it a shot if others are interested. I personally think ~4 people would be the best if that is possible. | ||
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ninazerg
United States7291 Posts
On November 27 2013 19:58 Nightmarjoo wrote: How do you actually coordinate a multiplayer game? Just decide on an hour or two per day to play as many turns as fit in that time window? I suppose I'd be interested in playing multiplayer even though I'm not that good. I'd think playing with just one other human would be boring though. Same way we do any multiplayer game. Except that Alpha Centauri is very picky about who it lets play together. You can set it up through hamachi, a virtual LAN. It actually is fun to have another human in the game. | ||
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turdburgler
England6749 Posts
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sharkie
Austria18403 Posts
Happy to see other fans. Imo this beats any civilization game. I love Deidre! | ||
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Warmonger
United States69 Posts
On November 28 2013 04:13 turdburgler wrote: but if you have more humans who will keep sending you messages demanding you give them technology or else? That would be me! | ||
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sharkie
Austria18403 Posts
On November 28 2013 04:13 turdburgler wrote: but if you have more humans who will keep sending you messages demanding you give them technology or else? humans can interact with each other in this game too! | ||
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ninazerg
United States7291 Posts
But uh, send me a PM with your skype if you want to play, cuz I definitely want to play. My skype is: ninazerg Hit me up, yo. | ||
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
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Nachtwind
Germany1130 Posts
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bo1b
Australia12814 Posts
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
On November 28 2013 12:26 bo1b wrote: Any one not choosing Zakharov has chosen wrong. Here here. Also, yes, this is the best Firaxis strategy game solely because of the worldbuilding, faction identities, and the awesome quotes that range from hilarious to super deep. | ||
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ninazerg
United States7291 Posts
On November 28 2013 11:23 deth2munkies wrote: My friends and I played a game of AC over LAN one time. Went on for 8 hours and we were barely 50 turns in. It can take quite a while. You can save the game and come back to it later... | ||
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bo1b
Australia12814 Posts
On November 28 2013 17:14 ninazerg wrote: You can save the game and come back to it later... Only if you're a pussy. Man up and play on a custom sized map thats like 300x300 70% water and tech stagnation without taking breaks. | ||
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ninazerg
United States7291 Posts
On November 28 2013 17:20 bo1b wrote: Only if you're a pussy. Man up and play on a custom sized map thats like 300x300 70% water and tech stagnation without taking breaks. I'd do it, but all of these guys are scurred. | ||
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
On November 28 2013 17:14 ninazerg wrote: You can save the game and come back to it later... Yeah, we just didn't. | ||
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ninazerg
United States7291 Posts
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Ayaz2810
United States2763 Posts
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bo1b
Australia12814 Posts
On November 29 2013 02:55 ayaz2810 wrote: Like the only Meier game I never played. Is it free yet? Spend like $5 and get it from gog? | ||
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Nightmarjoo
United States3360 Posts
On November 29 2013 02:55 ayaz2810 wrote: Like the only Meier game I never played. Is it free yet? lol I've been playing Alpha Centauri on and off for over a decade now. The only game I've played longer is Broodwar. It's easily worth whatever price it's still being sold at. After all this time and I still have new stuff to learn, new tactics and strategies to try, not to mention the random map generator and map editor ensures no game is the same on top of all that. It's an incredibly sophisticated (but not overly complicated, you can go in as deep as you want-- you can run automated things and watch the game play itself almost if you want) and highly in-depth game which has yet to really be replaced by a better, modern alternative. Just go play it! | ||
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Nightmarjoo
United States3360 Posts
This game I (as Deirdre) was on a continent with Morgan, Miriam, Zakharov, and Santiago (50-70% water). Myself, Morgan, and Zakharov were very close to each other, and more importantly next to the monsoon jungle. With scouts, unity rovers, and a single mind worm I killed both of them instantly. Unfortunately all of their bases died in the process. Then I made an extremely stupid blunder right before I finished Zakharov which allowed him to kill my capital (I was on 3-4 bases I think). The loss of it shut down my research, such that instead of finishing Industrial Automation right after getting my first 6 cities up in time to grab a few secret projects, I had a bunch of shitty bases with no chance to grab any projects except for barely snagging the Virtual World (the best of them anyway). Santiago started bullying me early, but I didn't care since I had a good amount of space to expand through in addition to having the Monsoon uncontested. Since I gave her everything she wanted she left me alone and killed Miriam instead, who was on the opposite side of our large continent. Yang shared a huge continent with Lal which was seperated by two large oceans in the west and east from our continent. Yang killed Lal and then just focused on mass expansion, including littering my western coast with sea bases. For reference: the eastern-most of Yang's cities (relative to his continent) were only barely in needlejet attack range from the sea cities on my western coast. His western coast was even farther from our eastern coast (large map). I got bold when Santiago made a new base really close to one of mine when I realized my infrastructure was good enough to churn out impact rovers. It wasn't complete, I didn't have 16+ minerals at every base, but I had at least 12 at all of them I think, and had already prototyped the rover when she started randomly moving units around my territory (during a sunspot no-less, I was terrified, but she didn't attack). I killed her new base with a scout patrol to get High Energy Chemistry (she had Gatling tech too, but I figured the armour and nerve gas if I wanted it was better). I barraged her bases with my probe rovers and foils. About half my bases made impact rovers, most of the rest made +3 armour probes, and I think one or two were in developmental stages. I fought her to a stand-still, I don't think I made any territorial gains, but the free excuse to take all her research briefly put me in the tech lead (Yang would pass me for a fairly long time a little later) and was probably worth the vendetta. Her counter invasion was shut down handily yielding a stalemate. After I finally took a frontier base with mindworms she accepted a truce for some research. Naturally she broke the truce the turn after, preventing me from building up my bases like I wanted to. I think at some point during the war Lal actually traded me Missile tech right before Yang killed him, or maybe I stole it from Santiago, I forget (but Lal definitely made a bunch of tech trades with me). The war ended very rapidly once I finished Air Power. I captured the Human Genome Project before she surrendered. She actually surrendered really early on, when she still had a fair number of bases left (even one really nice one that I had eyed hungrily and had killed all of its garrisons). I considered not accepting it, but I really did want the war to be over and I figured having a not-useless ally would be nice, so I capitulated. I forget when exactly Yang killed Lal, but pretty soon it was just us 3. Yang left me alone for a very long time. I think he was battling Santiago, but he made no ground vs her. Only fairly late in the game did he manage to take a single city of hers, which I eventually captured (it was on the exact opposite side of the continent from my colony). Yang eventually declared war on me for leaving Democracy on for a very long time (I never turned it off actually-- just pop-boomed the whole game). I had chaos tech at the time, but finished fusion lasers fairly early in. I made almost exclusively needlejets and interceptors, with only a few destroyers (I got the Maritime project and Cyborg Factory... actually I got almost all the projects after I conquered Santiago-- Yang got the research projects since he was ahead of me on tech and had gotten Weather Paradigm and Merchant Exchange early, but I think I got the rest) as I had very few coastal bases. I eventually made some Marine Infantry to assault his cities off my coast. There was no chance of ever invading his territory nor could he invade mine. Unfortunately I made the same mistake of not having preemptive clean interceptors prior to Yang's declaration of war, enabling him to knock out all of my supply convoys and formers with a couple choppers and a ton of needlejets. I didn't mind too much, as by that point my bases were competetive without the extra minerals (some still had upwards of 22 minerals). The last coastal city took fucking forever to capture, as his war effort had degenerated into massing conventional missiles, and he just destroyed my military and every garrison he could reach, which hurt my reinforcement rate. I eventually had to just mind control it with a foil probe. The problem was that my gigantic air force couldn't do anything to his multiple AAA Photon garrisons and boats in conjunction with his air port facilities while my boats and marines were getting constantly picked off by conventional missiles. I could only do very limited damage to his eastern most continental cities with my needlejets. After that I wrote conventional conquering victory off and just prepared for planet buster production. My empire became pretty big since the war wasn't really stopping my expansion (though I probably could've expanded more and earlier, but I'm still not super confident about when and with what frequency I should expand. I sped past him in research. I finished quantum tech as my first fusion planet busters were finishing. Since Yang was periodically nuking Santiago he voted with me to repeal UN Charter (I didn't want to have to kill Santiago). I was dumb though and let my first two planet busters get nuked at once on one of Santiago's sea bases (whence I intended to nuke Yang's capital from). That delayed the war effort, but eventually I took out the annoying fucking cities on his eastern coast which had been spamming me with conventional missiles. I stopped the missile spam just in time for worm and locust spam, spawning from Yang's horrible ecological damage. I had post-fungal-bloom tree-farms at every city, forests across the continent, and the Pholus Mutagen, and I was still getting shit on by the huge worm pops. Part of the problem was lacking formers thanks to Yang's missile spam, which prevented me from getting Mag tubes up for a long time. The other part was from lacking a ground army to dispense the worm stacks with, but apparently low morale scout patrols suffice, which I didn't figure out until later on. I was just sitting there clearing one worm/locust at a time with my huge clean needlejet fleet like a moron. I also had to fight rising sea levels with solar shades. The water went down since I countered quickly, then went up faster than the shade(s) and my voting frequency could handle. When the water sank I was actually connected with Yang's entire continent. I let Santiago and Yang reinstate the UN charter (which Yang continued to ignore despite voting for it) and switched over to mass hover-tank production. The rising sea levels broke his massive continent into a few pieces before I could conquer him (the nukes had already neutered him, but he rebelled against my diplomatic victory because of the nukes). Killing worms made me rich enough to corner the global market (which I've never done before), but the 20 year timelime that gave me wasn't acceptable so I switched to aquatic hover tanks and made destroyer transports to hunt his islands and sea bases down. I maxed out tech as I was finishing him off though, and without even using convoys transcended right before I could kill his last base in the middle of the ocean. Santiago remained effectively useless for the duration of the game. She finished one tech I didn't have after I gave her all my techs in exchange for the base with the Empath Guild, and that was her only contribution. I can only imagine that all she did was throwing away units at Yang's conventional missiles for two hundred years-- afterall, that's what I did. I made a big blunder in the midgame that slowed me down a lot. I wanted to see how useful Research Hospitals were (which I normally never build), so I made them at all my bases at some point in the midgame. This ceased when I realized I had a net income of 1 credit per turn. Even by the end of the game I was only churning out 1500 credits per turn, and that was with the maintenance cut project (which made a huge difference). Luckily Yang's shit ecology spawned a new source of income to make me filthy rich. I had some >8 drone riots too, not sure how many workers I need to take off production for a given number of psych/drone facilities. Overall this game was easy but incredibly frustrating and incredibly long. The midgame and lategame were completely driven by the map's geology. The swift elimination of everyone but my submissive pactmate and Yang in addition to the complete isolation of Yang which rendered his midgame advantage moot gave me an inevitable but delayed victory. The final year was in the 2370s, so the game would have just ended within 30 turns. | ||
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Nightmarjoo
United States3360 Posts
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screamingpalm
United States1527 Posts
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radscorpion9
Canada2252 Posts
On December 17 2013 02:12 screamingpalm wrote: Played this game for the very first time last night (just a little late to the party lol) after having this in my GoG library from a bundle deal a while back. First Impression: HOLY SHIT! From the little time I've played so far, I really like it and can see why it's so highly regarded. I've tried many of the old games recently that are considered legendary classics, but most of them didn't really hold my attention and seemed like they were hyped up by nostalgia. Have to see how it holds up as I play more, but really impressed so far. The technological advancements are the coolest and most interesting parts of the game, besides the occasionally hilarious video that make fun of certain leaders . It was (is) an awesome game. Its funny how the religious faction angers nearly everyone with their blind arrogance and perceived superiority. I think Sid Meier may have been trying to send a message with that | ||
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ninazerg
United States7291 Posts
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EatThePath
United States3943 Posts
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
Both those combined make it amazing. | ||
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Eliezar
United States481 Posts
I actually think I prefer Civ 5 at this point with all the expos and no unit stacking. It would be cool if they did an Alpha Centauri remake. | ||
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