[Dear mods, I see succession games galore, full of amazing player descriptions and in their own threads separate from game discussion, but no threads for solo game narratives. I am hoping people are interested in following an SMAC game and that making a thread for this is acceptable, if it is not, feel free to let me know and close the thread.]
I play a lot of classic SMAC (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri), usually just to relax as I eat or watch NASL. I usually play on Thinker, the second-highest difficulty, as Transcend/Deity is a little too stressful, and a big step up from Thinker as well. I've read a lot of solo game descriptions for Civ3 and Civ4 on Civ-based forums, but have never seen any for SMAC. Since the Alpha Centauri thread was recently necro'd, I've noticed quite a few people are familiar with this amazing game, and more than a few are unfamiliar with it, but interested in learning about it. So I'd like to chronicle my latest game for your entertainment. Feedback and questions are very welcome.
Note that I play on a Macbook Pro, hence the OSX bar in the screenshots. I have a very old copy of the game, and there is a Carbon frontend or whatever you call it available out there somewhere. Please do not discuss ways of getting the game here, other than pointing to this link, courtesy of deth2munkies. Take your discussion to the Alpha Centauri thread.
Settings are random map, standard size, standard rules, Thinker difficulty. I am choosing the University of Planet (affectionately "Uni"), as I have the second-fewest wins with them (Believers are dead last, for the curious).
Let's get to it.
MY2101
We land on the surface and establish University Base. We see a vibrant monsoon jungle to the NE, the best possible bonus landmark to have; we immediately send both our first scout and our colony pod to try and take territory. it's going to be a critical area to hold, as the a natural +1 nutrient in every square means that our bases will grow at a remarkable rate, with no effort on our part.
Plus, the only goodie pod in sight is to the NE.
MY2104
The pod gave us energy resources, normally only a decent boost. But the fact that it is on a monsoon square, and the fact that we are playing University makes it amazing. I immediately order our lone citizen to shift to that square.
MY2106
Our scout-colony pod duo reach a flat square in the monsoon jungle, where we establish a new base, Zoloto-Gold. Perfectly located on an isthmus, we will be able to move sea units through the city, conveniently linking the two oceans. Plus, the flat square is less useful when worked.
Just when I thought things had been going as well as could be expected, the pod to the east yields an alien artifact! Useful for either a free tech when connected to a Network Node, or rushing a Secret Project. As Uni, we have free network nodes at every base, so I immediately link it up for that free tech. While it may be more useful to hold on to it until more difficult to research technologies are within reach, I want to get our faction to get established quickly, and that requires an early tech lead.
MY2111
Uh oh. We bumped into a Spartan unity rover only a few squares further into the monsoon jungle. The Spartans are one of the strongest military factions, fielding highly trained, expensive units to slice through poor researchers like ourselves. Think dark templars slicing through drones.
I meet with "Colonel" Santiago, the Spartan leader. Our intelligence indicates that they are "anemic", incredibly weak, and that we are currently "unsurpassed" in strength. While this is encouraging, and will keep them begging for tech handouts instead of trying to bully us into giving up tech, I am sure that they could probably still give us serious problems with just that rover. We will need to make sure that we stay at least one conquer tech ahead of them.
Anyway, they give us rover tech in exchange for some base level techs. We elect not to give them another tech in exchange for their world map, since with our amazing luck energy-wise, we can be aloof and neglect finding other factions to trade with.
MY2116
We stumble across a Believing scout patrol in the jungle as well. I'm getting a bit worried, are there three of us this close together? And we're the only non-military faction? Sheesh. Anyway, Believers are also anemic, but I'm getting seriously worried about how close their HQs are. If they started as close to the jungle as we did, we may be in for a tough time. Unscouted marine-scv all-in tough. So I give them basic weapons (2 attack) for a copy of their maps, which shows that Sparta Command and New Jerusalem are actually somewhat distant.
Perfect, we should have enough time to grab the whole jungle. We don't bother signing a treaty, we both know that I am dominant right now and it will be up to Miriam to respond with either probe teams or straight up military force.
That's fine. I intend for her to fight Santiago anyway, and once they are fighting, they will have no forces to spare for this corner of the continent. Remind me to hang on to some techs to hand out, to keep them happy in the meantime.
Looking at the map again, one of their scouts must've gotten a pod that tapped a river in the middle of the jungle, too, so energy shouldn't be a problem for us at all. I'm feeling confident about this situation, especially since my scout patrols to the NW and south haven't come across any other factions.
The uranium flats to the south give +1 energy to each square, but are going to be firmly in Believing territory soon. Southward expansion will be at most a single buffer base to keep our headquarters a little safer.
MY2119
I rushed a colony pod out from Zoloto-Gold, and will rush another out from Uni HQ in a few turns, too. I hope to get by with a bare-bones defense for the time being, while jumping ahead in econ, Spanishiwa-style.
MY2124
I get a third base up. Mir Lab sits in the middle of the jungle, on the coast of the inland sea to the south. With the territory claim it gives, we should be able to hold the majority of this nutrient-rich super-imba area. I use the free minerals that each new base gets to start another colony pod.
HQ has finally finished its first colony pod. Since the scouts on the western border located monoliths from two of the goodie pods, I will want to set up two bases in that sector. Monoliths are used for instantly repairing military units, giving the unit a single morale upgrade in the process, but they are primarily important for the resources they give: 2-2-2 (that's 2 nutrients, 2 minerals, 2 energy), which is unrivaled for the first 100 turns, at least.
Lovely, we also got probe tech. This unlocks probe teams, which is good because we will need to build some to repel enemy probes, but also gives us an opportunity to rush for the Virtual World secret project (network nodes count as hologram theaters), one of the two projects that make Uni ridiculously powerful if they grab them (remember how we get a free node at each base? so yeah we'd get a free theater everywhere too). But we want that jungle so bad! Sun Tzu says land is the foundation of the state, and I doubt we can land grab and build the project AND defend ourselves from twin aggressors all at once. Haha, I feel spoiled and a little silly, I'm stressing about choosing between two ways to get ahead. Jungle, though, is the more stable choice. No one can build the jungle out from under us, after all.
MY2129
Fourth base up, this time in the west. Monitoring Station sits next to a monolith and two (!) energy bonuses), one on a rolling&rainy square (2nut 1 min). I have barely enough units to garrison each base, but hopefully our brilliant scientists will figure out the secrets for making synthmetal armor (2 def) soon. I glance at the stats, and it seems Santiago is ahead in tech. Sigh, the AI gets crazy bonuses sometimes. I only see one city so far though. Hm.
Then I see the Gaian city to their east, and it all starts to make sense. They must have beaten some explore tech out of the poor pacifist hippies. Oh well, at least it probably wasn't anything they can use to bolster their military.
Oh and I triggered an earthquake (from a pod) on Pholus Ridge (north-south mountain ridge, gives +1 energy/square), it's more a blob than a ridge now.
MY2130
Oh wow, I need to pay more attention. Growth-capped Morgan has highest population, not the Gaians?
MY2132
I decide to try talking to the Spartans. Turns out they already have particle impactors (4 attack), they offer it in exchange for probe tech. I decline, end up trading it for 25 credits. Not a smart trade, but I promise you, this land grab thing will pay off! I hope. Oh and I try to ask for the Gaian comm frequency, but no dice.
Since I already sat down at the comm, I ring up Miriam, of Believer infamy. She's pissed, and demands a base level tech. I decline, but her power is rated "sufficient" now... I may pay for this soon.
Oh gosh, both Hive and Morgan are climbing the power ranks. My tech lead is dwindling and I suppose power rating followed. I can't wait to face swarms of units and exceptionally well-funded probe teams. I hope they're far away, Hive especially will go after the nearest soft white belly. No pun intended (Uni is always colored white).
MY2133
A random alien artifact owned by Morgan shows up north of Monitoring Base, I go out to meet it with a scout. Hopefully I can steal it (undefended artifacts are up for grabs), but first he wants to talk.
He immediately tries to get a tier 2 tech for his measly 2 def basic tech. I pass, but try to buy it off him. He wants 100 energy for it! He must be the only one on the planet to have it, and he starts with it. Hm, that partially explains his power rating. Still, we sign a treaty for commerce purposes. He'll benefit from it more than I, but I don't want to lose a major city to a random mind control attempt.
On the eastern front, I put down a fifth base, Otkretia-Discovery, in the northern part of the jungle. I have also sent an undefended colony pod out toward the SE edge of the jungle. I don't like leaving colony pods undefended, but I haven't seen a mind worm in quite awhile, and the faster I finish setting up, the sooner I can start ramping up.
MY2134
I take the artifact from the Morganites. Going to use it for a free tech, hopefully something useful.
MY2135
I talk to some of the other faction leaders before linking the artifact. I get that 2 def tech from Morgan in exchange for another tier 1, such a change of heart on his part. Still no idea where he is, by the way. I manage to get Santiago to trade her 4 attack tech for sea tech, perfect. It also makes her very happy, for some reason. I also contact Miriam but all she does is demand, and she's asking for 4 attack tech! No way I am giving that to a military faction, it's more than worth a war (in which they won't have 4 attack, haha). She's truly angry at this point--must be entitlement issues--but she doesn't declare vendetta.
Diplomacy exhausted, using artifact. Artifact link gives us artillery tech, which at the moment is more interesting because of its bonus to base probe team morale. Still, overall a useless tech for our situation. At least it's out of the way now, and it puts us closer to the wondrous chaos gun tech (8 attack!).
Status check: This turn shot us way ahead. Our bar is long, theirs are short, and hey look at that, we're #1 in tech again. Let's hope it stays that way.
Haha, I remember this game from when I was a wee little nublet!
SMAC will always have a place in my heart. I was so young when I played it that I wouldn't want to play it without my dad because I was afraid of being attacked . I also felt sick when I played Zerg in BW because the animations of morphing buildings were just really nasty for my mind to want to watch
Now I'm old and disillusioned and desensitized to violence
I play this game about once or twice a year, and always find it enjoyable. I'm sorry to say i've never gotten particularly good at it, probably because I treat it somewhat like a game of the sims or whatever, where I want all the cool shiny stuff.
Anyway, nice write up. I'll be checking back soon.
I really want to install this game again after reading these threads.
I think you're really missing out on a lot of benefit by not making more workers. Just like in starcraft, the earlier you make workers, the more you benefit from them over the course of the game. For instance, let's say you rush a worker out on your first turn. 4 turns later, you have a forest and are earning a bit more from that one tile - for the rest of the game. Once you have a number of workers, you can terraform the land in just a few turns. So, the earlier you start, the better!
Also, roads and sensor towers are great for defence. With roads between bases, you can defend multiple bases with a single rover. If you're willing to make your cities closer together, even an infantry unit can cover 2 bases. If you make your road to your next city before settling it, your colony pod gets there a few turns earlier, meaning you start benefiting from the extra base sooner. If you put a sensor tower on the city location, it gets a permanent +25% combat bonus for your troops.
In this game, with good worker and supply vehicle use, even transcend difficulty can be mastered easily.
On June 14 2011 17:05 zylog wrote: I really want to install this game again after reading these threads.
I think you're really missing out on a lot of benefit by not making more workers. Just like in starcraft, the earlier you make workers, the more you benefit from them over the course of the game. For instance, let's say you rush a worker out on your first turn. 4 turns later, you have a forest and are earning a bit more from that one tile - for the rest of the game. Once you have a number of workers, you can terraform the land in just a few turns. So, the earlier you start, the better!
Also, roads and sensor towers are great for defence. With roads between bases, you can defend multiple bases with a single rover. If you're willing to make your cities closer together, even an infantry unit can cover 2 bases. If you make your road to your next city before settling it, your colony pod gets there a few turns earlier, meaning you start benefiting from the extra base sooner. If you put a sensor tower on the city location, it gets a permanent +25% combat bonus for your troops.
In this game, with good worker and supply vehicle use, even transcend difficulty can be mastered easily.
I knew someone was going to thrash me for the utter lack of formers. I'll try and justify it in this admittedly weird game.
First and foremost, most of my workable squares are already very good. since I don't yet have high explore tech, I am capped at a production level of two of each resource per square. Uni HQ is working a 2-1-0 and a 2-1-2, where the latter energy-unrestricted due to the bonus. I would get at most +1 resource there. Zoloto is working a 1-2-0 and a 2-0-2, but the first is a sea square so too difficult to improve for now. Here, a forest in the 2-0-2 would be huge, making it 2-2-3 and bliss in all forms. So yes, I could use a former there. Similar situation with Mir Lab, but I'm going to jump ahead and say that forests in the monsoon all give 2-2-1 and so are amazing. But compared to the normal versions of the squares, I already get a free farm due to monsoon, so I am more concerned about proper pop management, not letting any base get past size 2 so as to avoid drone riots. So I'm playing as though I have free farms, which many will disagree with. I hope to prove people wrong by holding the entire monsoon jungle and then sweep SE if my bases are ready to churn out chaos rovers, ETA 50 years (=turns).
The second reason is support. Formers are 20 min, easy to build compared to the colony pods (30? 40?), But every pod is a base square plus citizen working another square without support cost, in fact giving me 10 free mins and 2 more support. Every former is taking up a garrison or scout spot. Imagine my scout to the west was a former instead. I would be down two monoliths. Scout to the east? Down 50 energy and delayed contact with the neighbors. I have lost only ~5 min to support, and only left ~5 min of unused support across 35 turns. That's with building 4 colony pods plus about 4 scouts, say 160-200 min total, that's some efficient building. Oh and support is also an issue because I had no idea if/when Miriam and Santiago might attack. Having a few too many formers is just like having too many drones, and early game scouting is nearly impossible, not even speaking of "scouting" their decision to declare vendetta.
Third is a situational lack of need. Not only have the mind worms been strangely amiss (seen 3 in 35 turns), so sensor towers have felt unnecessary, the unique thing about land grab in the monsoon jungle is that you new bases are able to help build colony pods immediately, thanks to the nutrient bonus. This significantly reduces colony pod travel time. Each colony pod has only moved a max of 5 squares so far (fifth pod is halfway through a long trek but roads wouldn't be that far east yet anyway), so road savings would be about 3 turns of movement per pod, or 15ish turns including the fifth pod on its way SE. To cover the roughly 10 squares between cities, it would take 20 former turns (FT), plus about 5 turns build time per former. Best case, roads give me 15 turns for the pod movement, and take away 25 FT. While FTs are technically free once you have the former, keep in mind that the one or two turns faster that these bases each get up when beelining for lots o' pods means 2-1-2 extra from the base square alone, per turn earlier. I feel that these factors combined more than justifies late formers. I do feel it needs to be justified because it is so odd, however, and you definitely may end up being right.
Seriously though, you leave bases empty just because you have a unit that can reach it?! Mind worms will either sack your base or cost you a pop point and your precious node. I already feel undefended with one unit per base and i abhore sending out pods without military cover. Hmmm. You've won a game on transcend? Maybe I haven't tested this enough, but i figured losing my third base to worms once was enough testing. It feels like losing your hatchery to a 1 rax bunker pressure, it should never happen.
Hope to continue this evening. Cotemplating a switch to planned economy (-2 efficiency for +2 pop growth and +1 industry [build speed]), but efficiency will lower the number of bases we can build before unhappiness starts becoming a problem, and that is always an issue with Uni due to native unhappiness problems (1 unhappy citizen per 4 pop in a base, rounded down) Since we are going to have a lot of fast-growing cities, it would have to be a temporary choice anyway. It may be best to save the 26 energy credits.
I almost always play the game on transcend. It isn't that hard to beat it once you learn to exploit the game mechanics to the fullest. If you look in the other thread about alpha centauri I made a longish post with some tips that should let you dominate the AI. It is a couple posts after yours.
thnx for posting your game. Looks like a fun start and you're doin well w/ ICS strategy. Once you get a few crawlers out to rape some boreholes on those energy bonus squares Zak will be laughing!
Does "standard rules" allow you to chose your tech path? I forget, it's been awhile.
SMAC is a great game. Some of the units are a bit OP and the AI can be exploited, but its still one of the best in the civ series. I keep popping into civfanatics and hoping to see a GOTM w/ SMAC. There are GOTM w/ civ2,3,4,warlords,bts, and civ5, but nothing for SMAC. Someone seriously needs to get this ball rolling. I'm sure it would be a big hit. GOTM's are fun because even tho you play single player and on your own time, you still feel connected to everyone else when the final scores/saves are posted. Maybe you can post your MY2101 save file and we can start one here at TL.net! We should pester Petek at civfanatics.com to get involved in bridging the gap between the 2 fanbases too. TL.netters and civfanatics need to come together on this one. SMACOTM gogogogo!
... subscribed to your thread. look forward to reading more.
Great stuff man. I've played a ton of civilization 1,2,3 and 4 and some CTW but I have to admit I played very little Alpha Centauri. I might try to play some a bit later. Until then, I'll be waiting for the next updates of your game. ^^
This is post 2 of the game. [search for this sentence, changing the number as needed, if you are trying to only read game descriptions and not deal with the discussion.]
MY2138
I found our second western monolith city, Budushii Dvor, and our SE colony pod has made it to the river on the edge of the monsoon jungle to settle Koppernigk Observatory. I've also built our first former, and had it start linking the monolith-laden west to the eastern jungle with roads, as the monoliths may be my strongest production for awhile, but I will want the units to defend the jungle that we've worked so hard for. One more colony pod finished this turn, and I rush out two more for next turn. This should mark the end of the heavy colonization phase, and things should get more interesting soon. I'm starting to prototype foil (sea), 2 atk, and 2 def all on one unit (2-2-4sea), and starting a synthmetal garrison in Koppernigk Observatory, roughly timing it so that the prototype completion should allow the garrison to finish as though it were built normally (i.e. not 150% like normal prototypes). I'm also prototyping rovers and 4 atk on one unit at Uni HQ. These could be formers, but the sea exploration should pay for itself quickly, and having an impact rover will make Miriam think twice--or pray twice, whatever--before attacking.
MY2139
As expected, the Believers took the Uranium Flats. I wish years of radiation poisoning on them.
Looking over our faction again, I think Monitoring Station should built up some population to take advantage of those two energy bonuses. Since size three gets precarious, happiness-wise, I'm electing to built a Recreation Commons there to keep things stable. The NE section of the jungle has two rocky squares with mineral bonuses (= huge minerals, no restriction), so I am comfortable shifting military production duties to... two bases that I haven't even established yet. Sigh, that truce never felt more shaky.
MY2140
FINALLY. Every game, it is a toss-up between the Gaians and the Uni who will get the Secrets of the Human Brain tech first. It is a pivotal tech because it gives a free tech to the first faction to discover it. So we get the free tech, and move further into the lead. Poor Gaians, they're lagging behind and could've used the extra tech.
The free tech is Optical Computers, one of the only a handful of wondrous technologies in SMAC that give no benefit whatsoever. ... I guess it's out of the way now, though, and since it's required for later techs, it's not a complete waste, just extremely close.
Oh god, the rankings tell me the Gaians actually have the strongest military? What's going on?! I don't have contact with Deirdre so I don't know if she and Santiago are at war, so now I'm guessing they're all chummy and Deirdre still has all her captured mind worms intact. And now Miriam has highest population. Hm, I only see 6 pop points worth of bases from her, and I have 9 at the moment. So she's probably hiding two 2s. It can only be to the south, or east to the plateau (another +1 energy/sq landmark)...
Enough thinking, let's get on with it.
MY2141
ARGH. Gaian mind worm appears in the southern part of the jungle, two squares from Mir Lab. Does she have a pact with Santiago, how did she get here through Spartan territory? I change the Lab's production from formers to scout patrol, and rush production by 6 credits just to make sure I have it. Let's go out and meet her.
Well, she's unsurpassed, but she's been talking to Lal of the Peacekeepers. 40 credits is a lot this early, and I want to rush both prototypes soon, so let's decline. Note that she's anemic, we kind of guessed, but it's good to confirm. She then offers to give us her maps in exchange for a tier 2 (t2) tech. I counteroffer with a treaty plus the tech, trade is good and Deirdre tends to be a good little lady and stick to her word. I will trade the tech to everyone else this same turn, though, so that I dilute its value quickly (so she can't sell it off for much). I then sell her probe tech (which several people have, and the rest soon will too haha) for 25 credits. We hang up with her feeling ambivalent towards me.
I call up Morgan, sell him Deirdre's comm frequency for 20. I sell him the t2 tech that I gave Deirdre and move on.
Santiago wants to sell me Lal's frequency for 55, I laugh and politely pass. She tries to ask for that useless t3 tech we got for free, but I'm not handing her anything for free. I ask what tech she'd like to buy, she wants the t3 tech or artillery. I decline. I'm feeling adventurous though, and query what it would take for her to ally with me against the Believers.
She wants pretty much all my tech, three t2s and that useless t3. Now isn't the time to take this trade, since it provokes war between us and the Believers too, but it's tempting.
Finally I call Miriam, scourge that she is. She's at "potent" strength now, still demanding 4 atk tech. I decline, she tries to offer me maps for it. I decline and hang up. Useless conversation, I won't waste my time on her again.
Using our newfound bonanza of cash, I rush through our wonderful prototypes. Miriam will soon see that 4 atk tech, oh yes.
MY2142
OH GOOD LORD. Before our turn starts, Deirdre calls council election for planetary governor.
How she got everyone's comm, I don't know, but here we are, in a three-way election for governor (gives bonuses to trade, automatic infiltration in all factions). And it gets worse! Miriam has a four-faction bloc: Santiago, Deirdre, the Hive, and herself. That's 28 votes, we have 11 by ourselves. Miriam and Lal, voting for themselves, cannot be swayed.
Sigh. That means we need to remove at least the Hive (10 votes) from Miriam's USSR. Let's try to bribe him to vote for us.
He wants 4 atk tech, sea tech (t2) and the useless t3. ...how much do we want governorship? The trade bonus will be nice, and council gives everyone access to all comms, so we can sign more treaties afterwards. And information is the key in our war, I don't want to fight Miriam blind. But the Hive is tied for #2 right now, and 4 atk may cause him to roll straight through whoever is next door. Wait, is Morgan (other #2) next door? This is a risk we have to take (since we can't afford the 153 credit bribe option).
Awesome, I am governator.
Turn now starts, our prototypes pop, and hey we're #1 military.
A precarious position, probably only due to our being the only ones with a 4 atk unit out. Since Santiago has 4 atk tech (we got it from her) and her prototypes have no extra cost, I won't be surprised if we lose #1 in a few turns.
But Miriam... does she even has 2 def?
Looks like every base has scouts defending?? And she's building pods and formers.
I switch all production to impact rovers. We have maybe 25 turns to destroy her.
Before the turn finishes, I talk to the Hive. Yang immediately demands t2 tech from me, and I can tell he's serious. I still think he's really far away though, and I don't mind being at war with him because soon, everyone else will be too (his natural choices for gov/econ/social all cause conflict with others).
I then go talk to Lal, he sells me maps of Hive territory for a fair price. I trade tech with him, then sell him a few more. He's not doing so hot, I bet he's the one stuck with the Hive. We sign a treaty. I check the map...
...and yes, he's dealing with the Hive. If you check the minimap, too, you'll notice that they're both far away. I'm not concerned anymore.
I then turn around and try to sell off some more techs. Deirdre bites for two (1d2 damage?), plus her world map, Morgan for four (one of which is 2 atk tech haha), Santiago for three. That's a lot of cash, but impact rovers are expensive.
Here's the full Believing map (or as much as will fit on one screen).
This is our future territory.
Status check: Here is our base operations summary.
It would be more impressive if that last former were also an impact rover. Oh well.
EDIT: took out duplicate screenshot, put correct one in.
On June 15 2011 03:38 zylog wrote: I almost always play the game on transcend. It isn't that hard to beat it once you learn to exploit the game mechanics to the fullest. If you look in the other thread about alpha centauri I made a longish post with some tips that should let you dominate the AI. It is a couple posts after yours.
Read through what I believe is the post you're referring to, but I feel like the only tip I didn't know is the supply crawler upgrade. I feel like that one is exploiting unintended game mechanics though. But I know pop booming, and I don't do it often enough. I think you're definitely a cut above my level if you throw these around as basic tips though, haha. Oh and the bonus resource restriction thing is always fun with Uni, you can borehole an energy resource and just crawl it for energy. I will definitely be crawling the rocky minerals in this current game.
ICS I love, clearly, though I believe the canon ICS is only the cities back-to-back (2 squares apart) version, the more spaced-out ones are called some variant of ICS? I also crawl things to oblivion and back in every game, since the AI never goes for cheap choppers to deny it.
I'd love to hear more input/criticism as I run through this game.
Does "standard rules" allow you to chose your tech path? I forget, it's been awhile.
Standard rules is blind tech. I left tech settings to discover, I love getting chaos guns before missile launchers, then plasma shard before fusion lasers. Plus, HSA and VW are both discover techs, and the sooner we get the option for those as Uni, the more fun this game will be!
Just a quick post to let you know I'm watching this and it is awesome and nostalgtastic, although I realize now I probably spent as much time playing around with modding the .ini files as I did playing this game. There was some hilarious hidden stuff programmed in, especially in terms of the unit creator.
And as a small note towards your posts, direct link to the image files on imgur. They don't mind and it saves us a click to expand the screenshots. Looking forward to more!
I approve of this, actually started playing this again like a week ago, it's funny to see a sudden resurgence in popularity of this game on TL.
Currently in the middle of a game myself where I control half the world (as University) on a large map and have Lal, Yang, and Miriam as my minions after my mighty armies conquered them. Santiago is confined via my naval blockade to a small island, so isn't a threat, but Diedre, fearing my rise to power, has just declared war on me. I've given my minions all my tech so hopefully they can keep her distracted while I get in position to destroy her.
It's really amazing the different scenarios and stories that play out when you play these civ games.
Short update tonight, I got home late and plan on heading to the gym in a little bit. Yes, NaDa is an inspiration to us Asian gamers.
MY2150
Remember when I said something almost-weird about 25 turns before Miriam isn't easily rollable? Well, turns out she has plasma armor. She went from 1 def to 3 def! Or rather, she will once she can prototype one, and notice how my rover is already at the front door. It's business time--and I made sure to wear my business socks.
...I know.
MY2151
The assault begins! The particle impactors sing out over the arid plains, and vendetta is declared!
We take three Believer cities immediately, including the capital. The remaining two were where the western rovers are (the top base having just been established). Miriam pleads for a truce, even offering 3 def tech (plasma steel), but we are not satisfied. WIth New Jerusalem already defended by a 2 def synthmetal garrison, there is no hope for The Lord's Gift. The University will settle for no less than the Uranium Flats, and the Believers have yet to prototype a plasma garrison. They will not have the time. They will capitulate, and become our pet faction. This is inevitable.
MY2152
Do you hear that, Miriam? That is the sound of your doom, blazing across the hills.
MY2153
Three mind worm attacks from the east, out of nowhere! How odd, but I doubt it's anything significant, as it's too early for environmental damage and a planet response.
Our scout foil out on the western ocean also triggered some mind worms from a goodie pod, but it survived thanks to its trance upgrade (+50% vs psi attacks, e.g. mind worms). It did net us a free rec commons at Monitoring Station from another pod, so it's paid for itself.
Oh and the assault continues. The Believers have been pushed out of the uranium flats, and they still don't have plasma armor, but they're getting close.
MY2156
Victory! Miriam submits when Throne of God falls. I didn't even need that last round of rovers, but they probably helped convince her to give up. We accept her surrender, taking all her technology (just the one 3 def tech) and all her energy credits (14, bleh). But now, we have a nice situation where one of the best military factions is bound to our service. Maybe later we'll give her some attack techs and set her loose, since she gets a +25% boost when attacking.
I peruse our captured bases, and it turns out the command centers (+2 morale to ground units built in that city) survived in New Jerusalem and Throne of God. I will begin making probe teams from those bases once the captured base unhappiness goes away.
A quick check for our next victims. Santiago has managed to get gatling lasers (5 atk); Gaians have highest wealth after our rover-buying spree. Let's see what a little intimidation can do...
Or Santiago can offer me 5 atk for a nice price. Sure.
Oh hey Deirdre. Yes, I'd like that money now. Oh good, you DO remember that loan I gave you.
The others are less eventful. Morgan won't budge when I demand his latest base. We'll take it later anyway. Lal gives up a measly 25. He'd better watch out. Well, watch out for me as well, Hive forces are already at 4 atk and their bases aren't far away. So, you know, he's probably already watching out. For the Hive? Yeah.
Ahh, another title I need to re-install. As much as I loved Civilization series the politics, socio-economical factors, research, unit upgrades, terraforming and basically everything except graphics is better in SMAC.
Even shorter update. Very sorry, been busy with work, and I'm up early for work as well. I just didn't want to leave you guys with nothing for your Friday workdays.
Oh and a little extra, hopefully save files work between mac and pc... Try your hand at smashing the Believers! This file has the first few rovers out, but out of position (i.e. you can't just steal my special tactics). University, MY 2146 (before believer war) [url blocked]
MY2157
Three bases riot! The sudden influx of bases pushed our inefficiency-unhappiness pretty far, it seems. I move the sliders to 40-10-50 (40% energy goes to econ, 10% to psych/happiness, 50% to research).
We get the knowledge tech, I immediately switch social values to Knowledge.
MY2158
Hive has moved into #1 military. Not surprising, he naturally has the ability to support a large military, and he has 4 attack units as well. We may have to deal with him sooner rather than later, as Lal seems to be faltering. A quick look over their bases shows me that Lal actually has several probe teams, plus perimeter defenses at his critical bases. Maybe he is doing alright, I think to myself. Then I see that the only unit he has sitting in his capital is a scout patrol.
MY2159
We've found the New Sargasso Sea, a fungus-infested area of water into which a large number of goodie pods have drifted. Hopefully our trance sea foil will make it past this isle of the deep (sea-based mind worm) to grab a few.
Several factions are starting secret projects ("wonders", for the civ fans). Each one of those is pretty much the best one for the faction building it, except perhaps Morgan's choice of the Weather Paradigm. Hive with Command Nexus (free command center at each base) is a serious military force, though, and Gaians with HGP (+1 talent/happy citizen each base) can make for some scary expansion.
I played this way back when, can't remember exactly. I see now that I played like a total noob: you've got so many tactics/strategies, oh my word! I remember now that I treated this game like a sci-fi SimCity, playing the Peacekeepers and terraforming the world. Fun =)
Great write-up and pictures 6xFPCs, keep it up as well as you can if you're still enjoying it, cause I sure am =)
Hey guys, first off, thanks for all your support. I highly recommend that you guys start up your own games; if you need help or tips, feel free to post here or in the Alpha Centauri thread, or even PM me. If you state your faction and give a quick description of terrain and AIs around you, and I can point you in the right direction.
Anyway, I played through another 20 turns (2159-2179). I recorded it this time, to see if things would go faster, and am currently splitting it into smaller files for youtube upload (four parts). Why? I want to speed up how fast this thread can progress, otherwise it'll be a month before this one game finishes, so I wanted to see if it would be faster if I just talk my way through it in a video.
Well, it turns out I am terrible at multitasking. Even as a reportedly intelligent being, it was difficult to simultaneously think and talk--who knew? I'm sure I will get better as time goes on, but on the post with the video (soon to come, laptop is slow at splitting video), I will put up a poll so you can tell me which you prefer, video or narrated screencap (i.e. what I've been doing).
I am leaning towards screencaps right now because I can take my time writing things and make sure what I say is actually intelligible. Plus, it'll be faster for you guys to read through, as I can summarize and skip and add info as needed. But since I didn't screencap as I took video this time, you'll have to deal with it this once. Everything is worth a try, even Transcendence victory as Believers.
tl;dr I will have youtube videos up for MY2159-MY2179 soon (not to be confused with Blizz' "Soon").
p.s. Gaians finished a secret project! Hive is stomping through Lal, and his army is growing! Two factions are down to just one city! These are two decades you CAN'T AFFORD TO MISS!! Dun dun... dun.
Poll: Do you prefer video or screencaps for SMAC game coverage?
I prefer screencaps, I may or may not read this thread at work. (20)
69%
I prefer video, this isn't the 1998 Battle Report on Zileas' victory over Straus. (6)
21%
I don't care, I'm pretty sure we'll smash face and eat cake either way. (3)
10%
29 total votes
Your vote: Do you prefer video or screencaps for SMAC game coverage?
(Vote): I prefer video, this isn't the 1998 Battle Report on Zileas' victory over Straus. (Vote): I prefer screencaps, I may or may not read this thread at work. (Vote): I don't care, I'm pretty sure we'll smash face and eat cake either way.
Part 1 of 4: Part 2 of 4: Part 3 of 4: Part 4 of 4:
Those videos were cool but they were only cool because I actually had the time to sit through them haha. Pretty insightful but I think screenshots and text is still preferable. That's just me though.
Great stuff as per usual. The videos were enjoyable, but I think I like the write ups a bit better, as they allow me to read casually while working on other things. Either way, I appreciate the effort you're putting into this. Keep up the good work!
Great job man. But I have to agree with Excalibur and Alethios here, screencaps are better. Mostly because it's faster and you only post the highlights and key moments, skipping all the tedious stuff.
On June 18 2011 17:51 Manit0u wrote: Great job man. But I have to agree with Excalibur and Alethios here, screencaps are better. Mostly because it's faster and you only post the highlights and key moments, skipping all the tedious stuff.
Yeah, I am leaning that way too. I wasn't going to do video unless there are a supermajority or something that wanted it. Good to hear you guys name the same reasons I was thinking of, though.
On June 18 2011 19:16 Lunaticman wrote: Can you somehow play this game in windows mode?
As in, run boot camp? I don't have the windows version, so I can't do that.
If you meant in a window, then yes, that's what I am doing. For my version, when you first start it up, there is an options dialog that lets you set that (though it notes that windowed mode is unsupported).
FYI, your terminology confused me because the terms are "windows" and "windowed [mode]". Hopefully one of my answers helps.
There are some critical moments in a lot of games. There's warpgate and stim in SC2, there's +1 speed zealots and the moment nine mutas pop in BW. We have reached one of those moments: Fusion Power. Imagine if there was an upgrade that doubled the hitpoints of every single unit. Well, that's what the Fusion Reactor does, and while it doesn't automatically upgrade current units, it does mean that we are going to be nigh-untouchable until someone else discovers it too. And that's not all: it also lowers the mineral cost of more "complex" units. Suddenly that trained 5-3-1 juggernaut you wanted can be built at half cost; our impact rovers would be roughly 2/3 cost if built with a fusion reactor. Oh, and the proper unit designation for fusion reactor is to add a *2 at the end, e.g. 5-3-1*2. And it also lowers the cost of complex chassis, too, so now every colony pod and former we build will be a rover colony pod and rover former (i.e. now 2 movement)
In light of this ridiculousness, I will be slowly building new versions of all our units to replace our obsolete garrison units. In the cases where the units are highly trained or experienced (we have a commando impact rover in Throne of God), I can simply spend some cash and upgrade them straight to the latest tech (5-1-1*2).
MY2182
The Hive suddenly changes from Command Nexus to and instantly completes Merchant Exchange (+1 energy each square in this base)! Then they start building Command Nexus again in another city. Hm, they also still have #1 military, in spite of the fusion reactor goodness I've already upgraded to. I'm pretty sure we will have time to get to Air Power (another lifechanging tech) before he really comes our way, but it's still worrisome that now he has a serious economic wonder on his side.
The power graphs make me worried too. Hive is moving up quickly, we're plateauing a bit. Gaians are in a solid third, and the rest of them make their respective beliefs and social values look bad.
Since we're running Green econ, maybe we should stop threatening Deirdre and set up an alliance with her again the Hive. Her mind worms are terrible against the swarms of Yang, though. Still, she's closer to him, so she can take the casualties while our needlejets slowly pick away at the horde.
MY2185
Now I'm very much regretting the placement of New Arzamas. No good resources, it'll take some serious terraforming to do anything useful. Just moving a former out there to plant a forest bothers me like that single scouting ling attacking drones--gotta take care of it, but really don't want to have to.
MY2186
Hive builds Command Nexus. Lal, are you ready to die?
some scary Hive production going on. Hive is such an easy faction to play when you go all out military.
MY2187
Didn't expect that. Santiago takes out Lal. Suddenly we go from two 1-base factions to zero. Actually wait, since it's the first 100 turns still, Lal gets free respawn.
MY2188
There's the Manifold Nexus! The nexus gives +1 planet on the social engineering table, which is to say that it makes your social more green if it is within your territory. Time to do a little more expansion.
The lack of formers early on, plus the singular military focus, is really starting to hurt now. Several bases desperately need terraforming, several more are outgrowing their happiness infrastructure, and Monitoring Station hasn't had any minerals for production in 30 or so years. This stagnation is contributing to our rapid decline relative to Yang, since his economy is always terrible anyway, but now he has the de facto superpower military. It remains to be seen how far he can stretch that military without us finding a spot where we can break it.
MY2190
The lack of mind worms is amazing to me. I've played games where I lose more units to worms than to other factions, and right now the only worms we're really seen were those three on the eastern border. So the weirdness continues in that it took until now to see a perihelion event, which causes all mind worms to upgrade to the next morale level--and since psi combat is based on morale only, it means all of them get deadlier. But we have trance garrisons and rovers scattered everywhere, so we should be alright. As Uni it's easy to lose a random high tech unit with low morale to worms, though, so I'm going to have to try to keep all the trained fusion reactor infantry behind their trance brethren. Did you know that the trance garrisons have a little speaker in front of them? Hypnotic trance via repeating speaker helps in psi defense, makes perfect sense.
Oh lord, the Gaians are not ready for any military action. They have the same amount of probe teams as defensive units. That's like having your spire up and building overseers--by itself, contaminate won't win wars, and probe teams won't either.
MY2191
Spartans pronounce vendetta against the Gaians? They take a second city and suddenly they think they can rule the world, I guess.
I want this city.
I grabbed a goodie pod. It was not good.
This is not looking good.
MY2193
Hive takes U.N. Planning Authority. We now share a border, and we will need to begin preparing defenses immediately. Again, I feel that the natural barrier provided by the fungus is a good bet, and as always, defeating a superior force will require some kind of abusive tactic. In this case, I'm thinking we should build some mind worms, and use them to ambush the Hive forces as they try to cross. That, plus our probe teams subverting stray units, should be enough to hold. 9 turns until HSA finishes (immune to probe), 13 until Virtual World finishes. If we can hold on for the next 20-30 years, the Hive offensive should not be a significant threat.
Oh come on Miriam. Are you really going to plop a base down right there? You're breaking my balls, Miriam. Breaking. My. Balls.
MY2195
Hm ok Miriam walks that colony pod right on by. No idea where she's going, but as long as it's not here, I'm fine with it.
Spartans sign a treaty with the Gaians. My guess is that they both don't want to be fighting when Yang comes knocking. The critical issue right now is which direction Yang sends his troops.
Getting drone riots almost every turn now. I wish I could expand more to increase production, but if I'm already facing this much unhappiness, I'm not sure I can. Even raising the allocation of energy to psych/happiness won't make much of the difference, so best not to push things too far.
Crawler tech, crawler tech, wherefore art thou?
MY2197
I see you, Yang. I knew you'd go for the monolith. I'm already waiting, entrenched on a hill where the sensor tower tracks your every move. Go ahead, get the morale upgrade. It will be the last thing you do.
MY2198
Yang moves to the monolith, asks to talk. All he does is demand 75 credits, but I'm not giving up anything. He's pissed, I'm mostly amused.
In Japanese, there is a term for an undisciplined warrior who tests his new blade on the first passerby he sees--tsujiri. Well, we have three blades to test, but two will be deadly to the testing subject. First, I check how much it will cost to subvert the unit: 54 credits. That's awesomely cheap, we can buy half his army as it slowly crosses the fungal fields. Second would be our mind worms, but they're still out of position, having just been built. So let's try our third, our nice Fusion Gatling Squad.
Might as well be named Firing Squad.
Our rovers in the west will help us turn that giant army of mind worms that we triggered into some nice credits and maybe a few captured worms, if we're lucky. Also, I suck at math and counting, so our newest base, Zvedny Gorodok, does not actually put the Manifold Nexus in our territory. So we'll need another pod. Sigh. At least it's in a nice spot.
MY2199
"Who gets to shoot him?" "I'll flip you for it?" "Sure!" Actually the logical choice is to use the guy to the south, since the guy to the west is holding down our western flank and further from reinforcements.
I use the probe team to scout ahead one square, turns out there are four gatling laser squads (three 5-2-1, one 5-3-1) coming up. I move one of the eastern squads further west to get ready, and the first mind worm will be there in time as well should they try to hide in fungus (fungus is +50% def against non-psi combat, but gives +50% attack to psi attackers). Since they're stacked, each time they lose a unit, it deals 30% damage to the remaining. So with three, maybe four units ready to attack them, we should wipe out a serious chunk of their army thanks to our defensive setup. And if they get the chance to counter, there will be two units left at perhaps 40%, attacking into our units sitting in fungus (they have no psi attack), supported by sensor towers, for a total of 40% health vs 200% health and +75% def. If you multiply those numbers by their attack strength (5) and our defense strength (3), you get 2.0 vs 10.5.
Still, our power ranking is sliding, so let's not get too cocky.
Hm, I scout ahead with another probe team, seems like there's also two 4-2-1s coming at us from further west. All my calculations were for nothing! Our priority will be to take down that stack of four, however, and just count on native terrain defense bonuses (all my units are sitting on +50% defense) to hold through. I dispatch another squad from Mendelev College just in case. A look at the College also shows three turns to probe team immunity! Virtual World in seven turns, too, though i will rush that one at 3-4 turns remaining if we can afford it.
As soon as we get more mind worms, we will push to UN Planning Authority. The sheer amount of fungus there means that our mind worms will have a field day.
pic20 And it looks like Yang is starting to feeling some of the growing pains we were dealing with. Riots in three cities, all of which are probably rushing out rec commons, and two cities building non-military units. Maybe he's realized that trudging for ten turns across the unyielding landscape of Alpha Centauri, only to get smashed before getting near any bases, is not worth his time.
MY2200
Happy new century!
Deirdre wants to talk, they want to trade their crawler tech for fusion power. Uh... no. Hm, it turns out that she has both crawler tech and the higher level terraforming tech (let's us build boreholes, condensors, echelon mirrors, all very FT-heavy but ridiculously good improvements). Negotiations are at an impasse, though, since I will not trade away fusion power or the tech needed to build HSA (probe immunity) until I have it, especially since mine are a tech tier above hers in each case (hers are Explore 3 and E4, mind are Discover 4 and D5).
Here is Yang's troop movement. Time to slice and dice. Or perhaps just slap chop.
I start with the obvious: mind worms attacking the two units in fungus. I then use the squad furthest south to kill the now weakened remaining unit.
I work my way north, again attacking based on which units can reach what. I think I will need to use probe teams to capture some of Yang's units.
Two probe team subversion: 175 credits. Maintaining four squads and one mind word: 5 minerals per turn. One-turn massacre of half of Yang's army? Priceless.
On the western front, we lost our mind worms in a close attack on wild mind worms, but our rover finished off the thing, giving us 40 energy credits. I use the money to rush the last turn of HSA.
MY2201
Damn, Yang had a unit hiding in the fungus. We lose our subverted 5-3-1, plus a probe team. They will be avenged in a moment, but first...
HSA is ours!
We killed the unit hiding in fungus, and now we're movin' on up. Yang still has #1 military, but clearly our tactics are a match for his numerical superiority.
Looking ahead: The Gaians are trying to build VW, but are 12 turns away to our 5, we should be fine. I think we may as well just steal those two techs from them, since their military force consists of a mind worm, a recon rover (2-1-2), and five probe teams, which we are now immune to. So even a vendetta with them means very little to us.
Looks like you let Yang get way too big, good luck cleaning it up now :p Nice to do this exhibition games, more people should know about this game.
Personally, I'm not very good at it I'm afraid -I like to play on very large maps on medium difficulty settings, building/conquering until I've got more than a hundred cities and planting forests all over my land. Opponents who don't agree with me I kill or out-position, the rest I declare war on after a looong time and kill them off with quantum warheads. Seeing their entire land sink into giant sea-craters is really great for relieving stress ^^
The colours are off somehow, but look at the minimap and think about the size of the world :p
End game bases. Notice the straight lines in the minimap: wherever it looks like someone took a rhomb out of the land, there was a nuke blast -^
I don't know why the screenshots are so messed up sorry
My biggest complaint with playing vs the AI (which is all I've played against so far) is that Lal and Morgan always become someone else's bitch (usually the Hive or Miriam). If Lal starts next to Yang (which he has in the past two games) he's dead. The AI of course doesn't know how to play with Morgan (since strategically speaking, you have to play him the most different than any of the other factions I think) and I made him my bitch in my most recent game after taking one of his bases (he only has like 6 bases total anyways). I got really lucky and was able to curbstomp Miriam after she stacked 29 of her units in one space (via artillery bombings + mindworm rape I'm Gaians). But really, the only two factions I feel like I ever have to worry about while playing are Yang and Miriam (the two most militaristic ones of course).
On June 19 2011 04:42 nepeta wrote: Looks like you let Yang get way too big, good luck cleaning it up now :p
He's big, but he's far away, and his military will always be behind ours in tech. Working on the next post, but I can let you know that we get chaos theory (8 atk), and I don't even feel the need to prototype it because our mind worms are messing up his units using the screamingly gruesome approach that is psychic terror.
On June 19 2011 05:17 nemY wrote: My biggest complaint with playing vs the AI (which is all I've played against so far) is that Lal and Morgan always become someone else's bitch (usually the Hive or Miriam). If Lal starts next to Yang (which he has in the past two games) he's dead. The AI of course doesn't know how to play with Morgan (since strategically speaking, you have to play him the most different than any of the other factions I think) and I made him my bitch in my most recent game after taking one of his bases (he only has like 6 bases total anyways). I got really lucky and was able to curbstomp Miriam after she stacked 29 of her units in one space (via artillery bombings + mindworm rape I'm Gaians). But really, the only two factions I feel like I ever have to worry about while playing are Yang and Miriam (the two most militaristic ones of course).
Yeah, the computer has trouble with Morgan if he gets limited early, or doesn't have time to set up proper defense. Usually this is because he spawns too close to another AI, as you've said. The other thing is that Morgan has to use rush-buying intelligently, but the computer doesn't seem to understand the concept, instead pooling cash for no reason that I can see. So one of his biggest strengths is completely unused.
Lal likes to get a few bases and make them grow big, for specialists plus good city improvements, and the problem is that if he doesn't have proper defense, losing even one base is a big deal. Hive will almost always be able to take one base from him, so Lal v Yang almost always goes to Yang. The exception is if Yang gets energy starved and has no tech--it's funny to watch 10+ laser infantry (2-1-1) die trying to take a base with perimeter defense and two 1-3-1 plasma garrison, the defenders end up commando or elite by the end of it.
On June 18 2011 19:16 Lunaticman wrote: Can you somehow play this game in windows mode?
If you have Windows 7: What I did was download Windows XP Mode from Microsoft here, and if you dont have windows ultimate or professional or whatever download VMLite so ur able to run XP Mode off of that, then install Alpha Centauri in that to play windowed. It's really complicated but it's worth it, so much easier to play with a high resolution monitor
We lose a mind worm and probe team to Yang; that +2 ground morale is keeping his units at veteran level so they're trained enough to take down mind worms when they are on the attack. What he didn't expect is the second mind worm, and since he had to leave his unit in fungus to make the attack, we win with a handy +70% to psi attack on our side (+50% fungus, +20% planet rating due to green econ).
MY2204
What is this? Morgan wants to talk, and it turns out he's sitting on 520 credits and a "sufficient" strength rating. I trade him HSA tech (we have HSA so it's much less valuable) for ecological engineering (E4, let's us build boreholes, removes mineral restrictions). I also trade a useless D3 for crawler tech!
He's so happy with our trading that he declares war! Haha, of course it's because of our green econ. But now our probe teams can go rough him up for cash AND tech. Everyone wins.
Moving on... we follow the river up to UN Planning Authority, and steal a tech (B2). I then subvert Morgan's random low tech unit, kill his nearby colony pod, and start moving his weak little unit towards his undefended base. What made him think he can fight me?
I start Zoloto Gold on a research hospital. I think if I can hold UN Planning Authority with just the current army, I can switch to crawler production and make ZG a science supercity, since we got the tech for Supercollider (+100% labs this base) earlier. With the Uranium flats, plus plenty of free ocean for tidal harnesses, it won't be hard to get ZG producing 100+ beakers a turn, given the time to set up some crawler parks.
MY2205
Yang tries to push me out of the fungus near UN Planning, but he loses the expensive unit he attacks with simply because Fusion Reactors are amazing. I blithely attack straight into his perimeter-defended base, and we take UN Planning Authority, perimeter defense intact. We also remove what is hopefully the last Hive unit lurking in the fungus. With two mind worms in the area and several squads moving up, this should be an easy hold. We will wear down his army here, as we don't want to press forward into the heart of the Hive military-industrial machine.
MY2206
We spot several Hive units moving in from the NW, we send out a mind worm to destroy them, but Yang wants to talk first...
Nah, I think I like UN Planning Authority. And there's no way you'll take it from me when you have two squares of fungus to trudge through before even reaching the base. So he gets seriously pissed when I decline and he will probably stay at war with us for the rest of the game. That's fine by me.
This is the war zone. I'm building a road up to connect our main territory to UN Planning Authority. Creep spread so important! The rivers help (they act as roads if you follow them), especially when sending probe teams towards Morgan, but roads are the foundation of nearly every major empire in history. Who am I to argue with history?
The first probe team drains 51 energy from Morgan, AND gets promoted to Elite (+1 movement); the second nets 33 energy. We'll keep stealing energy until our infiltrators report that he has a new tech that we don't. That's what I like about this guy, he always has something I want to steal.
MY2207
Gaians build Xenoempathy Dome (all fungus act as roads for your units). Sigh, they're using the Uni-Hive war to their advantage.
MY2208
We take out a few random Hive units NW of UN Planning Authority. Their forces in the area seem to be mostly gone, only reinforcements to prepare for now.
I also sabotage Morgan's production of a defender for his still-undefended city. Now we have 14 turns before he can build a defender haha.
But count on a random wild mind worm to ruin my day. I will lose a squad for sure due to the fungus bonus now working against me.
MY2209
Gaians pronounce vendetta upon the Hive! This is exciting.
A few Hive troops moving in from the north, I simply put an elite squad out one square and wait for them to try something
MY2210
They tried something and died, how sad.
Hm, the Gaians have now dragged the Spartans into their war against the Hive. This could split their forces enough that our crawler focus back home becomes a smart choice. Thanks for making me look so smart, Deirdre.
We take Morgan Data Systems, plus 40 energy for our troubles. We also use a sea probe team to download their world map. Looks like it'll be tough for them to even send units at us, as they are on an island. Note that I took Data Systems first, then used the probe team, so that the probe team gets sent to our new base upon completion of their mission, instead of going all the way back to a base in our main territory.
The white line goes up! We're happy!
Oh, goodie pods, why do you hate me so? We're going to disband that rover and let that Hive city deal with this, hopefully they'll lose the city and thus their inclination to attack our western border.
MY2212
We continue to press forward against the Hive. Morgan will just be a host for our probe team leeches for the time being.
Fusion reactor continues to be unstoppable, even in covert ops. Though to be fair, we would have won without it in this case.
MY2213
Miriam gives us five plasma garrisons and an outdated impact squad. The garrisons somehow get auto-upgraded to fusion reactor, the squad doesn't get upgraded. Weird. We'll use two to garrison some of the nearby cities, but probably just disband the others for minerals towards formers.
Morgan makes a pathetic attempt at retaking Data Systems, his units are the least trained morale level possible, and he's still only at 2 atk. It would take every last unit he has to retake this base.
MY2214
We take UN Equality Village. Hive asks for truce, we give truce. We know he'll break it, but it'll just be another hit to his reputation, and the sooner people realize they shouldn't make treaties with him, the more stuck in his military-only hole he'll be.
MY2215
Hive troops are milling about near UN Equality Village. Going to reshuffle defenses to favor Equality Village, and hope one or two units can hold the fungus north of UN Planning Authority by themselves. With a rover now in play, plus artillery, our tactics need to shift, but we simply lack units of any kind at the moment due to all the crawlers we're building back home. We will need to consider evacuating UN Equality Village, then giving it back to the Hive to keep them at bay for a bit. Our Chaos rovers are in production, with the first prototype already heading north. Once they get to the war front, we should be able to take and hold UN Equality Village and UN Commerce Committee by sniping units with rovers as they try to head south across the open ground (rovers get +50% attacking into open terrain). We also have several probe teams in the area, but subversion becomes more expensive here due to the smaller distance from their capital.
After pulling apart the first Hive offensives and taking two cities in the counterattack, their power graph has taken a nosedive. We're still doing well. Gaians are still bumbling along at about the same level relative to us, though they've overtaken the Hive. I can't wait for them to build more secret projects; their cities will be ours eventually.
Oh and I talked to Deirdre, but she really wants Fusion Power (D6) and I only kind of want Centauri Meditation (E5), so no trading happens, she just praises my green econ while I smile, nod, then hang up. Maybe one of our elite probe teams will head in her direction, steal a tech, and blame it on Yang. Hopefully successfully; if we fail, we give both of them justification to go to war. Still, a free E5 might be worth it.
I just bought this of GOG thanks to you, man it brings back memories from when I was too young to know which units and tech were good and bad, so I think I'm gunna copy your choices while i learn
speaking of which i sorta wanna try it out, any of you know if there is an download working for windows vista? the one at firaxis' homesite is only updated for XP
Busy day yesterday so no update, sorry all. Hopefully I can crank something out tonight. I am not sure how to proceed against the Hive, but I feel that even with chaos rovers, waiting until our Supercollider is up before pushing further into Hive territory is the safest option. 90% confident he will break the truce, and soon, so I am thinking about how to best defend Equality Village, since there is no fungus to abuse with mind worms, and subversion is a bit costly now that we're closer to Yang. I hope chaos guns will be enough, but I don't want to just put them up front and pray, either. It's feeling more and more like I will need to set aside cash for emergency subversions, just in case.
On June 20 2011 21:35 JohannesH wrote: It's not so interesting when it's so obvious you'll win the game :/
Sigh, you're absolutely right, especially now that the Hive's resugence is over and their subsequent attempt to stop me failed. But since my intentions were mostly to demonstrate sone of the thought processes and complexity in SMAC, I am probably just going to continue steamrolling through the rest of this game without adding any random restrictions (only econ victory allowed, etc.). On the plus side, we're winning!
I'm also brainstorming ideas for a succession game (Morgan, Librarian difficulty?, 2x 40yr turns to start then 20yr turns?) but no one with the PC version has let me know whether or not they can load my Mac save. GOTM (game-of-the-month, everyone plays same starting save independently, in competition) is also a possibility if others want, though i feel that succession is more community-oriented and engaging to follow.
Short update again, apologies. Hope you're all still enjoying this, and remember, feel free to ask questions or discuss! I know I'm not a perfect player, and I definitely have my idiosyncracies when it comes to things like base layout and military style. I can respond more easily than I can do new posts, and don't worry, the former doesn't cut into the latter (thanks, iPhone!).
MY2216
We lost another unit to wild mind worms, near UN Planning Authority. Yang moves his forces back from Equality Village though, so at least the loss is not going to compromise our defense.
Also forgot that I built a lot of Hologram Theaters pre-Virtual World. I check how much I can sell them for, and it turns out I have 9 I can sell for 270 credits. I can't recall if I get charged maintenance on them, so I sell immediately.
MY2217
Gaians are almost done with Planetary Transit System (all bases start at 3 instead of 1). PTS plus Human Genome is a swell combination.
I'm using a number of crawlers to speed up construction of the Supercollider in Zoloto Gold. Sea formers are already putting up tidal harnesses nearby, ready to be crawled/seacrawled.
MY2218
Gaians build PTS, start work on Maritime Control Center (+2 sea movement for all sea units, naval yard in every base). That means they have new tech!
Crawlers!
Remember that Hive city that we send a horde of wild mind worms after? No, really, it used to be there!
Oh and Deirdre wants 325 energy for Centauri Meditation. No thanks, we can do our own research. She won't even talk about Doctrine: Initiative, the tech that let her start Maritime Control Center.
MY2220
Morgan builds Planetary Datalinks (you get tech automatically when 3 others have it). Not too useful since only the Gaians and ourselves have any decent tech, but I guess they're far enough behind that they'll get plasma armor. We do plan on eventually taking their island, but it's still not a priority.
We build our first borehole. Still energy capped at 2, but 0-6-2 is still a nice square toi have.
We are seeing some serious mind worm activity now, perhaps Planet is trying to make up for the last century. We lose a sea former, and I rush out an empath (+50% atk vs psi) and trance sea unit to take care of things. We will want more such sea units to defend our sea crawlers. I decide to rush the last 12 turns of Supercollider for a hefty investment of 464 credits, since we don't have many other avenues of spending money short of rush-buying crawlers (not very worthwhile).
MY2221
Our empath hoverboat cleans up the isle of the deep, and our rover captures the mind worms that landed from it.
With a measly 4 crawlers up, ZG is already running 68 beakers! Network Node, Research Hospital, and Supercollider combined give +200% research here. Adding a fusion lab will give us another +50%. Pretty soon ZG will crank out more research than every city on Alpha Centauri combined. No joke.
Another 65 energy from Morgan, via probe team. Running total is around 600 energy.
I messed up another image in the previous post, but I've already deleted the old screenshots! Another one lost forever, sorry. It was just a picture of the first borehole, though.
MY2223
Lal wants to talk. He's at war with the Spartans and wants us to help. No thank you. We sell him a D5 for 50 credits, since I think Morgan already got it for free (me, Deirdre, Yang all have it).
Retroviral Engineering is our next tech, which allows for Genetic Warfare (probe team attack that decimates a base, considered an atrocity) and for the Genejack Factory improvement, which gives +50% minerals (first of its kind) but causes one extra drone (remember, drones=bad here). Fairly useless because we're more energy-heavy than mineral-heavy, and because we have enough drones issues already.
side note: there is an improvement called the Punishment Sphere that suppresses all drones at the cost of -50% tech, plus makes mind control more difficult. Probably the most interesting improvement in the whole game, it enables free market factions to have an army, makes your critical cities holding twenty secret projects impossibly expensive to mind control, etc.
I rush buy the 9-turn-distant Fusion Lab at ZG for 180 credits. Next up in production: Energy Bank (+50% econ).
MY2224
Gaians starting to feel the brunt of Hive military power. So that's what Yang's been busy with, I was wondering where his forces went.
Upon inspection, it appears that the Gaians' primary city (Resplendent Oak, with 3 secret projects) is already under siege as well. Let's gear up to take advantage. Maybe we'll stomp Santiago out, then take Resplendent Oak for ourselves once the Hive army has been worn down a little against Deirdre's perimeter defenses.
I spend 160 credits upgrading some of our 5-3-1*2 infantry to 8-4-1*2. They're commando-level morale, so it's definitely worth it. I will begin to move them south towards Resplendent Oak, it's a long march.
MY2225
100 beakers.
I rush buy New Jerusalem's Bioenhancement Center (+2 morale all unit types). By building trained versions of units, I should be able to produce commando units out of the box. With the nearby monolith, this means I can crank out elite units (+1 extra movement, very important). With New Jerusalem supply me with this kind of military, plus the tech of Zoloto Gold, I don't see how anyone can stop me.
MY2226
A borehole completes near the once-useless New Arzamas. Did you know that a borehole on the western coast causes extreme moisture in the surround area? I did, and now New Arzamas has a borehole and lots of rainy squares. FYI, a borehole anywhere else dries the surround area.
120 beakers. Ok, I'll stop counting.
MY2227
Our first fungal bloom ("fungus pop")! Caused by excessive minerals production at bases (you may have noticed the "Ecological Damage" thing), each pop adds one to the allowed limit of minerals that are considered "clean" (starts at 17, I think). Each pop also causes some fungus to grow near one base that has been causing damage, and after the first few (first 2?), spawn mind worms.
Oh and until the first bloom, no "clean" actions (building tree farms, centauri preserves, etc.) count towards raising the clean mineral limit. So the first one is good. The second one is neutral. Then it starts getting bad. By the 20th you may die to mind worms (completely serious, it starts to spawn double-digit numbers of them, in land, sea, and aerial form).
MY2229
We drain 96 energy from Morgan, among other things.
Yes, that's 27 active crawlers, 11 active sea crawlers.
Our army is getting into position. Maybe Santiago will declare vendetta herself, but we don't really care anymore. Our reputation may not be so great, but who needs trading partners when you are getting a new tech every 4 years? Yang still has #1 military, however.
Good luck, Deirdre. (notice all her injured units? Hive artillery prevents them from healing, so she's trying to build her own artillery to fight back.)
What's this? Hive and Deirdre both have Missile tech (6 atk)? It's not like we really need it, but we're Uni, we like tech. Let's talk to them.
Hive ignores us, Deirdre offers us Synthetic Fossil Fuels (aka Missiles) for 375. We don't have that much on hand. It may be time for us to make our move...
Status check: Big white bar, small bars of other colors. It's like racism, almost.
I used to play this game ALL THE TIME. I was so good. I was the University every game unless I wanted to rush to corner the global energy market as the Morganites. When I beat the game on Deity I felt like a God. But it was almost pure luck because I spawned in Monsoon Jungle and was able to kill the Spartans off early.
I officially challenge anyone on TL who has the gall to challenge me-
Summer is busy, that's all I can offer in the way of paltry excuses.
MY2230
Gaians try to talk to us; we start up Skype. They've lowered their price on tech to 200. Deirdre's main purpose in contacting us seems to be for a pact against the Hive, though. We decline.
Hive wants to talk next, and he wants a peace treaty? Probably so he can focus down the Gaians. We decline, we don't need his trade, and I'm pretty sure our 8-1-1*2 chaos rovers can secure our borders better than any treaty.
He then offers 150 credits to convince us to sign. Does he realize how much Razorbeak Wood is worth? Well, probably yes, since he's sieging the city. We decline to take his bribe...
...and we bully him into giving us Missile tech. He must really want Deirdre's bases.
We steal some of Morgan's tech! This one lifts energy restrictions, so our boreholes are now 0-6-6 juggernauts.
MY2231
Hive takes Razorbeak.
And we get Air Power. Perfect. Needlejets bypass perimeter defenses, so the Hive's natural perimeter defense at each base can be nullified.
AND it turns out that trained units from New Jerusalem pop out elite. A pleasant surprise, like finding out that you actually did research adrenal glands by watching your lings tear down a nexus even faster than usual. Not critical, but nice to have.
We try to intimidate Santiago for some money, and she declares war! Very fun, all the pieces are falling into place.
We start moving our army in. In three turns, our first Chaos Needlejet will be ready, and it will be in combat range in another two turns. First we will take Sparta Command--just a minor roadbump, really. Then, Razorbeak Wood, in all her three-project glory. Life is good. Brush your teeth.
We lose our trusty elite foil probe team! An attempt to steal another tech from Morgan went seriously wrong. Oh well, rush buying another.
MY2233
We finally see where the peacekeepers respawned, small island in the south ocean. They're still on 2 def. We're on 5.
We steal 47 credits from Santiago. Our forces are closing in, they have lots of stuff but it's all weak. They also rioting, so all units get a morale penalty. They can't change workers to doctors (+2 psych) because otherwise citizens would starve! (though starvation is the better choice now). They're gone even without needlejets.
MY2234
Air power, and...
missiles.
We now have control of the skies, gentlemen. Anything we can't shoot up, we can blow up with a missile. Useful for when people with super-powerful units (e.g. Santiago) start building anti-air (AA). Shouldn't be a problem this game.
Oh and Planet Buster is a nuke. An inelegant military solution, but if your production is extremely far ahead of everyone else, you can nuke a bunch of major cities to cripple all your opponents, then slowly mop up the pieces. The problem is that nuke usage is an atrocity, so everyone will declare war on you and you can no longer subjugate those who you have nuked (factions hold a grudge against those who commit atrocities against their citizens).
We take Morgan Hydrochemical as an afterthought.
Sparta Command has one turn to live. And yes, that's our first chaos needlejet sitting in Gagarin Memorial. There's another in that Believer base to the south, too.
And with the advent of needlejets, we take #1 military.
MY2235
Morgan wants peace but won't give any tribute gifts in exchange. We decline. Gaians nearly done with Maritime Control Center (MCC).
We finish Empath Guild, just cleaning up leftover secret projects more for score than for benefit. This cements our position as governor forever, though, as it gives +50% votes in elections. This is also critical if/when we go for diplomatic victory.
Next project is Longevity Vaccine.
Spartans are gone. We immediately start remedying the unhappiness issues in the city.
MY2236
Gaians finish MCC. Yes, our map is 70% land. No, I don't think they really know that. Yeah, I think they're stupid.
We use our sea foil to shell Morgan Entertainment, reducing their probe team to 50% health, so that our sea probe team has no trouble winning the covert ops fight.
We try to tell Yang to get out of our territory, but he's ignoring us. Hm. We'll heal up at Sparta Command first.
ZG at 250 beakers, in the middle of crawler park #1 (#2 not pictured, but it's the Uranium Flats filled with forests). For reference, the closest bases have 14ish beakers each.
We bully Deirdre into giving us Centauri Meditation, and force Yang to leave our territory. He tries to offer us 225 credits if we'll sign a peace treaty with him. We decline.
We check how much it costs to subvert an artillery from the Hive. This far away, it's 34 (!) credits.
MY2239
WOW. Morgan just raised his terrain via formers and destroyed our 8-5-4*2 sea foil and our sea probe team. I didn't see it coming at all, Morgan rarely has the formers to spare for this kind of thing. I guess I did abuse that sea channel for nearly 10 turns though, and cost him two techs and about 800 credits.
But now he's completely open to a direct invasion. I pull a handful of units from the NE border (near Hive territory) and start them on their trek west.
MY2240
Yang calls an election for governor. I have more votes than everyone else combined. He loses miserably, but consoles himself by taking Silverbird Park, in the north part of the Garland Crater that Deirdre used so well one century ago.
We get Unified Field Theory. See that project, the Theory of Everything(TE)? That's another Supercollider. Guess where we'll start building it?
Oh and the 12 attack is awesome too.
I rush-buy a shiny new tachyon needlejet, and start ZG on TE. I change all nearby cities' production to crawlers, which are able to contribute their whole mineral value to secret projects in other cities (normal units can disband to add 50% of their cost).
I also rushbuy an aerospace complex (+2 morale for air units) at New Arzamas, then queue up a sky hydroponics lab. As a satellite, sky hydroponics give us full map vision, and +1 nutrients at each base, rounded down for bases that lack an aerospace complex. Yes, there are mineral and energy versions, but they come much later.
Oh and we have monopole magnets, forgot about that. This lets us build magtubes to replace roads, making movement cost 0. That's right, infinite movement across magtubes.
MY2241
See that giant swing in favor of the Hive? That's from them taking Razorbeak Wood.
I rush the last seven turns of Longevity Vaccine. Just had extra cash lying around.
Also it turns out Hive has air tech. Probably not prototyped, but that'll only take them a few turns.
MY2243
Mind/Machine Interface caps off what I consider the midgame techs. Let's take a few paragraphs to talk about this critical tech.
Choppers are ridiculous because unlike needlejets, they can attack more than once per turn. In fact, they can attack once per movement point, so you're limited more by your HP than anything. They take 30% dmg each time they end the turn outside of a base or airbase, though. Drop pods are amazing because they allow your ground army to keep up with a fast aerial assault. That is, I could use needlejets to take out defending units, then paradrop a unit into the now-undefended base (8 square range). I can also drop heavily armored units onto easily defended squares (rocky terrain, forest, fungus) in the middle of an important road, preventing them from reinforcing until they take out this entrenched unit (this is best countered by subversion). Diplomatic Victory is the econ powerhouse version of a Conquest victory; basically once you control 75% of the world's votes for governor, you can call an election for Supreme Ruler or whatever. No small feat, but it saves you from hunting down pylons or random sea bases. Oh and the Cyborg Factory acts as a Bioenhancement Center at each base. So, you know, free +2 morale on every unit. No big deal, just a 12.5+% boost to your military strength across the board.
Let's get some tachyon choppers going.
I rush buy our first Sky Hydroponics Lab out of New Arzamas, partially for the food, a little for the map reveal, but mostly so that New Arzamas can start pumping out choppers.
MY2244
Our first all-seeing eye (i.e. satellite) goes up.
Peacekeepers are on an island with the borehole cluster, but not doing much.
Gaians are pretty much up against a wall, it looks like.
And Morgan has a random ocean base. He can keep it, we'll take everything else. Oh, yeah, we took Morgan Entertainment. Next is Aerodynamics, which has the Weather Paradigm (+50% terraform speed, all terraform tech restrictions removed) and Planetary Datalinks (you discover any tech that three other factions have). We would like terraform speed, thanks.
MY2245
With all the crawler feeding to Zoloto Gold, we should be able to rush Theory of Everything next turn.
Morgan surrenders before we can attack Aerodynamics! I accept his surrender, taking one tech. I then demand that he turn over Aerodynamics, but he won't give it to us for less than 2076 credits. Might be worth it, but after we rush Theory of Everything.
Half the units I sent towards Morgan never even made it there. Now diverting them back to the Hive border.
MY2246
Hive wants peace treaty still, I refuse and demand money. They give 225, not bad. Then they take two more Gaian cities. That's about enough Hive dominance, I think.
I give the order, and Razorbeak Wood is ours. Simple.
Another order, and our probe teams take UN Commerce Committee, cutting off the Hive army in the field from Hive territory. We will need interceptors to secure our hold on the area, but a few tachyon rovers will carve up their infantry as they wander south along the road. They don't even have fusion reactors, for heaven's sake.
Not a single project is under Gaian control. That means all the projects are within our grasp. We'll need to take out the Hive on our way to a Diplomatic/Conquest victory anyway, might as well take all the projects they had too.
Quick theoretical military comparison, Uni vs Hive: us attacking them: 12 atk vs 3 def them attacking us: 6 atk vs 5 def we are immune to probe teams we both have natural perimeter defense at each base (2x def vs ground attacks) we have fusion reactor, they do not.
On June 26 2011 08:58 KaiserReinhard wrote: Can you explain supply crawlers? I never quite figured out how to use them.
You place them on a square, and "supply train" (or whatever the ability is called), and pick a resource. That square is considered as "being worked" for the crawler's home base for that resource only.
I downloaded one of the files to my PC, added the ".SAV" extension at the end of the file name, and loaded it up in SMAC. Works great. Thanks again for sharing.
I just bought the game (again, since I had the "battlechest" version with strategy guide poster of all techs, was sweet, threw it out though =() and it's a blast, playing librarian and getting outdone by believers, barely tied with the Gaians and Morgans... fun times!
On June 27 2011 03:02 kongor wrote: MAC and PC save game compatibility: check!
I downloaded one of the files to my PC, added the ".SAV" extension at the end of the file name, and loaded it up in SMAC. Works great. Thanks again for sharing.
Excellent, thanks for figuring that extension thing out, I'll need to note that if/when we start a community game. I'm going to assume that the renamed file works on the Mac, with or without any extension changes.
On June 26 2011 08:58 KaiserReinhard wrote: Can you explain supply crawlers? I never quite figured out how to use them.
You place them on a square, and "supply train" (or whatever the ability is called), and pick a resource. That square is considered as "being worked" for the crawler's home base for that resource only.
Yeah, exactly this. Pretty much gives you an extra citizen (crawler prevents citizens from working that square), but only for one resource. So it's perfect for squares that are focused on one resource, e.g. rocky square with minerals bonus. Or for squares outside your base radius, e.g. where forest has spread by itself.
To do the crawler park thing, you send newly built crawlers to your supercity-to-be, then set the crawlers home base to that base (in the action menu, or go to base screen and right-click the crawler at bottom). This makes the crawler send its supplied resource to the supercity. You then move the crawler to the desired square, press "o", then select the appropriare resource.
Other than science supercity, having a military production supercity can be very useful (imagine if New Jerusalem were producing one elite infatry unit per turn, or one veteran chopper per turn). But unlike energy, minerals production caps off after a point, especially since you can only build one item per turn, and because the city will trigger tons of ecological damage, so fungus and mind worms can become a problem. Nutrient supercity is not too useful, because stacking nutrients has quick diminishing returns. Nutrient supercities are usually only good for Lal because he can get to size 9 without building hab complexes, and he gets extra talents (happy citizens), everyone else either doesn't want such concentrated growth, or doesn't want growth concentrated in just one base.
Hey 6xFPCs, just wanted to say thanks for the time you put into this thread! It's an awesome read and actually got me to get the game and start playing.
I don't think too many people reading would get upset if you started another one this one seems pretty much won haha
Probe team reports that the Hive has "nothing of interest", tech-wise.
We notice two Hive needlejets in the area near UN Commerce Committee. Nothing to do at the moment but eat the losses, we can't take assault their bases just yet, and we don't have interceptors in the area yet. In fact, we may not bother building interceptors, with enough choppers we will just take down the needlejets when they land.
MY2248
We pincer the cities in between our newly taken bases.
We also push towards the lovely ex-Gaian cities. Forest Primeval holds two projects, Silverbird one. Tactical mistake, I meant to take Forest this turn. Ah well.
We're going to sabotage their production, so that they have to start disbanding military units. Notice how many red "shields" are in the lower right hand "Forces Supported" box? Yeah, and the red box showing the decefit eating into stockpiled minerals in the lower left production box? They'll have to disband at least one unit to make up the shortfall.
Our probe team takes out a rec commons in Socialism Tunnels, the base will start rioting next turn. Afterwards, our subverted artillery shells the road, destroying it. This will help buffer us from their reinforcements.
MY2249
Socialism Tunnels riots as predicted. Yang turns one worker into a doctor for the psych, so I take my next probe team and incite more riots. As this stops production at one of seven major cities in Hive territory, the rioting effectively decreases their reinforcement strength by ~16% (assuming continuous military production, which they seem to have committed to).
I buy Forest Primeval for 216 credits, thanks to both riots and the huge distance from the Hive capital (called.... The Hive).
Before our probe teams go after the perimeter defense of Silverbird Park, Yang asks for truce. We decline, we're intent on subjugating him for the diplomatic victory. We go ahead and attempt to sabotage the perimeter defense, but there are extreme security measures at the base! I try anyway and fail. So I let the next probe team sabotage at random. It's a 1/4 chance of hitting the perimeter defense, but we get it! Our elite infantry takes down one defender, and the tachyon chopper slices through three, allowing our mind worms to claim the next secret project!
We land out needlejet and chopper in Silverbird Park, but not before we use them to sweep away four Hive artillery sitting too close.
Oh and we took some other bases, I forget when. We'll leave Deirdre to try and reclaim Gaia's High Garden in the SW, she can probably do it now that the Hive army is barely a memory and since we're between her and Yang.
I probably should have mentioned that we finished that Theory of Everything project. We're at 640 beakers.
MY2250
ooooooOOOOoooo
I think we're like 5 population away from diplomatic victory, can I make it happen this turn?? I attack Deirdre, breaking the treaty. We need the population, although since we have Planetary Transit System (all bases start at size 3) at this point we can probably just stop conquering Yang and build twenty random cities for the win. She wants to talk after I take Vale of Winds (size 7), but doesn't capitulate, just asks for truce.
Vote time. Pretty sure we have this.
VICTORY!!!
Hm yeah just an OK score. If I had taken my time and played out the game, we could've gotten quite a bit more score by going for transcendence victory, since we had the ridiculous science supercity (SSC).
This is kind of a pointless flavor screen, but everyone knows it, so you should see it too!
Well... it's in my top 5 Uni victories, anyway. I think my highest is a 314% Gaian victory, should've taken a screenshot of that for proof though. That 214% Uni you can see isn't bad though, right?
***
Hope you guys have had fun following this game, I definitely did. A wacky start, that high pop Uni in monsoon jungle with low former count. Then impact rover rushing down the Believers, and afterwards still managing to snag for Hunter-Seeker Algorithm and Virtual World. Once we had those we were invincible, and the SSC of Zoloto Gold just made us win that much faster thanks to a serious tech lead (250 turn game!).
FYI, I am going on vacation tomorrow, so I won't be able to start another game, exhibition or community, for about a week and a half. When I get back, hopefully we can get a succession game going so you guys can be a part of the action. But for now, you guys should play a game or two, and maybe use some of the techniques you've seen here to carve yourself a piece of Alpha Centauri.
Anyone have any resources that are helpful for a new player to get a grasp on some of the mechanics/strats of the game?
Some things i end up doing, knowing that im not exactly sure what exactly the effects of the choice are and I end up with the kinda sense of wandering around in the dark as im playing.
Like I'm trying to attack a city with a decent skimship (6-4-4 i think) but it did very little damage for 3 rounds then the defensive skimship finished and killed mine.
Anyone have any resources that are helpful for a new player to get a grasp on some of the mechanics/strats of the game?
Some things i end up doing, knowing that im not exactly sure what exactly the effects of the choice are and I end up with the kinda sense of wandering around in the dark as im playing.
Like I'm trying to attack a city with a decent skimship (6-4-4 i think) but it did very little damage for 3 rounds then the defensive skimship finished and killed mine.
Velociryx strategy guide. This is "the" guide as far as SMAC/SMAX is concerned. It's quite long but Vel is a gifted writer.
The Voice of Planet is a collection of archived threads on Apolyton that are worth reading if you have the time although you'll probably get more out of the previous links. Reading the threads on a specific topic you want to work on is what I suggest.
If you read and follow the advice in these links you'll easily be crushing the AI even on Transcend difficulty.
Leaving in a few hours, but I wanted to leave these polls here for you guys so that when I come back, we can get straight into the next game. The options should be self-explanatory, or google-able, except perhaps for game-of-the-month, which means we all play the same starting save and compete for points or fastest victory.
Poll: The next game should be...
exhibition! (More just like this please!) (15)
79%
game-of-the-month! (I can do better than you! And you! Oh and especially YOU!) (4)
21%
succession! (Let's take turns running an empire into the ground!) (0)
0%
19 total votes
Your vote: The next game should be...
(Vote): exhibition! (More just like this please!) (Vote): succession! (Let's take turns running an empire into the ground!) (Vote): game-of-the-month! (I can do better than you! And you! Oh and especially YOU!)
Poll: What faction should we play as? (excluding Uni)
Gaians ("mind worms are our friends") (9)
36%
Morganites ("money is power, also screw you") (8)
32%
Believers ("who needs tech, we have faith") (3)
12%
Hive ("let's cover the world in humans") (2)
8%
Peacekeepers ("we're the United Nations, but without nations") (2)
8%
Spartans ("military might makes political right") (1)
4%
25 total votes
Your vote: What faction should we play as? (excluding Uni)
(Vote): Gaians ("mind worms are our friends") (Vote): Hive ("let's cover the world in humans") (Vote): Morganites ("money is power, also screw you") (Vote): Spartans ("military might makes political right") (Vote): Believers ("who needs tech, we have faith") (Vote): Peacekeepers ("we're the United Nations, but without nations")
heh nice game, really made me nostalgic. I had to pirate this and start playing again (I lost my original somewhere.) My favorite faction was always the morganites, I love their shiny gold cities and being able to buy absolutely anything when running free market. Only problem is you can't leave your territory then or all your cities end up with more drones than workers. I also like how morgan is all "screw the planet", I take joy in erradicating every bit of fungus in my territory and turning it into a lovely perfectly terraformed network. I HATE mindworms with a passion, the amount of times I've lost a critical colony pod to them means I could never like using them or those planet loving hippies the gaians.
Also sometimes I like to play as the hive and use nerve gas and planet busters on everyone, fun times.
Great game, thanks for writing this up more please! Also, you can submit this at www.battlereports.com or even www.civfanatics.com, a bit more friendly formatting for this type of thing I suppose. But here is fine too :-D
When I do this I play Gaians and sim city a half dozen cities with manually controlled formers and converting every square. With hardest difficulty and native wildlife set at most dangerous you can get some interesting games. Mind worms are pretty easy to tech to, have massive mobility advantages on fungus and can pretty much kill anything else if they attack them and with room to breathe you can easily get some 10+ cities while the rest of them are still in mud huts.
Cool man, it's been far too long since I played this and even then I don't recall how much of it I got through. hfhf in the next game I will be reading
On July 01 2011 13:13 6xFPCs wrote: Leaving in a few hours, but I wanted to leave these polls here for you guys so that when I come back, we can get straight into the next game. The options should be self-explanatory, or google-able, except perhaps for game-of-the-month, which means we all play the same starting save and compete for points or fastest victory.
Poll: The next game should be...
exhibition! (More just like this please!) (15)
79%
game-of-the-month! (I can do better than you! And you! Oh and especially YOU!) (4)
21%
succession! (Let's take turns running an empire into the ground!) (0)
0%
19 total votes
Your vote: The next game should be...
(Vote): exhibition! (More just like this please!) (Vote): succession! (Let's take turns running an empire into the ground!) (Vote): game-of-the-month! (I can do better than you! And you! Oh and especially YOU!)
Poll: What faction should we play as? (excluding Uni)
Gaians ("mind worms are our friends" (9)
36%
Morganites ("money is power, also screw you" (8)
32%
Believers ("who needs tech, we have faith" (3)
12%
Hive ("let's cover the world in humans" (2)
8%
Peacekeepers ("we're the United Nations, but without nations" (2)
8%
Spartans ("military might makes political right" (1)
4%
25 total votes
Your vote: What faction should we play as? (excluding Uni)
(Vote): Gaians ("mind worms are our friends" (Vote): Hive ("let's cover the world in humans" (Vote): Morganites ("money is power, also screw you" (Vote): Spartans ("military might makes political right" (Vote): Believers ("who needs tech, we have faith" (Vote): Peacekeepers ("we're the United Nations, but without nations"
Any reason you're not playing SMAX? I know not all the new factions are that great(cult is a lame weaker gaians clone, aliens don't really fit and the data angels are just crap) but the free drones, pirates and cyborgs are all fun factions. The best thing about smax though is the alien armors that give psi protection, mindworms are not so ridiculously overpowered.
Hey guys, I got back from Asia a few days ago, but, due to a slight illness, have held off on starting up the next game. I'm feeling ready now, though, so I just wanted to post here to let you know that your votes have been tallied and the next game will an exhibition game playing as the Gaians on Transcend difficulty.
I'll start the writeup soon, but first let's talk about the Gaians for a moment, as they are one of my favorites, and also rather special (imho).
The Gaians are the faction that makes SMAC truly different from classic civilization games, in that they don't just have the normal variations that might "distinguish" different civilizations/factions (i.e. tweaks to build speed, natural military strength, econ, tech), they rely on a wholly different approach to army strength, colonization, money generation, and base improvement. This is because they are the faction that does not just deal with, but actively seeks to interact with the uniqueness of being on an alien planet (called either "Alpha Centauri" or just "Planet").
Gaian armies are like Terran mech armies, you don't want to lose units because they take a long time to build. That is, your army will be made up of captured mind worms, and capturing is slow. Smart Gaian players are actively scouring the fungus for mind worms to capture, and for the energy credits that slain mind worms give. Capturing mind worms gives a unit that will perform roughly the same regardless of atk/def tech, potentially will not require support from your bases (i.e. is truly free), and generally wins any 1v1 unit fight thanks to the Gaians native +1 planet rating giving +10% mind worm attack. Oh, and since the fastest way to search fungus is with mind worms, your capturing will go faster as you get more captured worms. Don't lose your worms, they're both Thor and drone.
Gaian expansion is fun because you get +1 nutrients in fungus (total of 2-0-0 fungus early game). So not only can you outpop most factions, you can colonize random spots without too much thought. At worst, you get a base without minerals or energy. Add in some forests, and you can get by with very few formers, focusing on getting even more colony pods instead.
Energy generation I touched on above. Basically, if you don't capture any given worm, you'll kill it (that +10% combat bonus applies whether you are controlling the worm OR fighting it), giving you 10 credits per morale level of the worm. Also, stacked mind worms all die or get captured if you kill or capture one unit defending the stack, so things can get ridiculous, especially against sea worms (isles of the deep), which generally carry two worms. So you can expect around 90 credits per isle, for example. That's two well-timed rush-buys, or can purchase almost a whole tech. For one fight that favors you from the get-go, and will often capture you those worms anyway. In case you're still not understanding Gaian military wickedness, note that if you plop a random base at the Manifold Nexus (+1planet), and also run Green econ, your worms have +40% attack. Counterable, yes--isn't everything, in a well-made game?--but it means an aggressive Gaian player can smash face in a terrifyingly unexpected way.
The last thing to note is that Gaians on blind research tend to get the unit type/chassis techs early, so quick speeder tech or quick air power supported by mind worms often means death to even a faction with the military tech lead, or will save you from an attack by that same faction.
tl;dr We playing Gaians for the next exhibition game. Gaians are awesome in a way that is unique to SMAC.
In the interest of making it so that no one has to find a re-subscribe to another thread, I'm going to post the new game in here. Someone pm me if that's a bad idea.
Also something exploded at work, hence the week's delay. Not literally exploded, though that occasionally happens, but still, time-consuming.
Oh and I'm going to speed through the first parts until something happens. While I'm sure you want to see my thoughts behind base placement, scouting, etc., I plan to place upwards of 20 bases in the first 100 turns and explore most of the map in that same time. So I'll just point out the good stuff.
Here we go:
Gaians. Transcend. All random map of standard size (that includes random native life-form setting!)
MY2130
Our little empire. Monsoon jungle again! And FOUR monuments? This... might be too easy.
Morgan conquering the Hive? Hm...
MY2133
Santiago is across the strait from us. Has contact with Miriam, we decline to purchase the comm frequency for 35 credits. Miriam hates everyone anyway.
MY2138
We get Centauri Empathy! We immediately switch to Green econ, though Morgan will get angry at us.
MY2139
Peacekeepers get HGP?! Ugh, I was hoping we were at least in the running for this very Gaian project. At least we know that Lal won't get too much benefit from it.
MY2143
We trade a ton of techs with the Hive after getting contact through Morgan. Sign a treaty, too. Now our weapons are enough to hold off Morgan (well... 2 atk is useable, anyway), and we have police state, which we move to immediately for the increased support. We will walk over Morgan once we're done expanding. Four units per base in support is enough to have a garrison, former, and two army units, and the two police that police state allows means that we can hold off on rec commons or increasing psych rate for awhile. An excellent turn, if I may say so myself.
Oh and fighting Morgan will be like a fight between two bronze leaguers, our armies will be tiny and ridiculously weak (we both have natural negative morale, I think, and neither of us has a military tech setting up).
MY2145
I forgot to take a picture of the Uni scout patrol. Sorry!
We find Zak to the SE. We trade some techs, giving up Centauri Meditation (E3) for probe team tech (D2), since we'll need probes for any fight against Morgan.
MY2147
This Spartan transport didn't worry me until just now, when it turned back around towards me. Surprise attack, in spite of a treaty? Need defense quick, just in case. Santiago is close enough that subversion will be expensive, so it's not really an option. I'll need better weapons to take down a 2-2-1 veteran though. Hoping my mind worms can handle it. All... two of them.
MY2148
Transport turned back around. Sigh. Playing on Transcend is stressful.
MY2149
New Sargasso Sea? Hope so, I like them goodie pods.
MY2150
It is New Sargasso! Only... the first pod I grabbed spawned an isle of the deep (which, when it spawns in fungus, is hidden). Time to send another gun foil over, this guy is dead next turn.
Our nature-loving, mind worm-snuggling, everything-smells-vaguely-like-weed, green police state.
Early lead! Oh Deirdre, you're so easy. To play, I mean. Wait, that's not much better...
Oh, and we're at 11 bases. Gosh, maybe I should restart, monsoon jungle is just unfair sometimes.
I just shared the game with all the old friends that used to play it with me (we had a LAN party) so hopefully we'll start playing again (with Hamachi) and have some good times.
Sweet, a new exhibition game. I never got the hang of Gaians (though I was...10) - could you explain some of your micro? By which I mean the manual Formers, the jockeying with other factions. Your last game was entirely thought-out, it seemed; do you know what techs you're expecting when and do you individually manage which bases are supporting given units?
Been terrible about replying to posts, going to try to be a little more social. Feel free to ask questions, I don't doubt that I go on autopilot a lot and accidentally assume you guys just understand some of the things I do.
On July 25 2011 22:59 athief wrote: Sweet, a new exhibition game. I never got the hang of Gaians (though I was...10) - could you explain some of your micro? By which I mean the manual Formers, the jockeying with other factions. Your last game was entirely thought-out, it seemed; do you know what techs you're expecting when and do you individually manage which bases are supporting given units?
Former usage is about maximizing former turns. That is, you want the most production benefit you can get for the least time. So for the Gaians, I build roads to connect cities (through flat squares whenever possible, takes only one turn), because the biggest benefit you can get early on is often getting your colony pods to their destinations faster and safer. Then I start planting forests, which coincidentally give the greatest additional production when placed on flat squares. Forests are especially great in the monsoon jungle, but generally are awesome because forests can expand by themselves, meaning you can get free improvements. Oh and place sensors where they can reach two or more cities, to help against wild mind worms. Bonus: sensors can be placed on forests (sensors are mutually exclusive with solars and mines)
Tech-wise, I play blind tech as per standard rules. Since that means you choose your research priorities--by setting any combination of the four tech types as "priority"--I usually just keep in mind what the default settings are and prepare accordingly. So as Uni, I knew I would get chaos guns (8atk) at a time when most others would have 6 atk and 3 def. I could have either pre-built lesser rovers and stockpiled money to upgrade them the moment I got the tech and prototyped it, or just built one and postured a bit, seeing what I could bully out of people because military power for every faction depends on the the most powerful weapon and armor currently in existence. As Gaians, I know I would get speeder tech and foil (sea) tech quickly, so I could've blitzed through Morgan early had I also gotten laser (2atk) tech from someone, or randomly. I did not get it, and I took the jungle before he had a chance to, so I elected not to fight him. I did use the foil tech to push for sea goodie pods, which tend to net a lot of insta-build-base-improvement events for the nearest city. Often, it'll be the same city at the edge of your territory over and over, so you can pump out some serious infrastructure in the space of a few turns. Thus my excitement over finding New Sargasso.
Oh and for dealing with other factions, it depends a lot on situational things such as army strength, tech lead, empire size, current secret project ambitions, money, and relationships with other factions. A lot like dealing with other people. Basically, you can rely on the strength assessment at the bottom to see what position you're in relative to the other leader. If you're weak, be prepared to be nice, or at least agree to trades. If you're strong, don't be afraid to at least try and demand some kind of tribute. Even 50 credits helps, that's a rush-bought rec commons to stop drone riots. If you're equal though, make even trades; techs are always listed as letter-number, with the number indicating what tier tech it is. Generally, an even trade is determined by tier, though you have to be careful not to give away a tech that only you have (can be sold for more money, can be sold to multiple people on the same turn), or that will mess up your secret project plans. Also don't give away weapons in general. On that note, don't wait for others to contact you. Be proactive about trade relations, because this way you can sell your techs to everyone at once, rather than selling to one guy and having HIM sell to everyone else. And you never know when it's to your benefit to talk to someone, you just have to keep in contact.
tl;dr Use formers for roads and forests, occasional sensor for defense. Blind tech still has direction, know tech trees and plan ahead. Diplomacy complex, but take initiative and try stuff, almost always positive results.
Peacekeepers build Merchant Exchange. Great project for big city Lal, +1 energy per square worked, and works for supply crawlers, too.
MY2154
Lal starting Empath Guild, one of the projects we should have, and definitely want. Starting it at Gaia's Landing now, ETA 32 turns. We have no info on Lal so hopefully he doesn't finish it first. It's looking like we're going to have to conquer some of his cities later, so nice of him to build those projects for us.
MY2156
Morgan demands a tech, I propose a trade, he declares vendetta. Well, we knew that Green econ pissed him off, and since he just mentioned that he's at war with Santiago and wanted help against her, now Santiago won't get angry at us. Good stuff. Oh and Yang, Morgan's other enemy, likes us because we're running police state.
and Morgan is running Free Market, so he gets -30% attack against our worms.
Then he mind controls Forest Primeval. Sigh.
MY2157
I retaliate against Morgan and kill two probe teams.
We trade with Santiago and get 4atk, and trade away a tier 2 tech for her maps.
Which shows us where the Peacekeepers are, and Miriam too.
We rush buy an impact rover (4atk), and set cities to produce impact rovers. The two cities closest to Morgan will make garrison units.
MY2158
+30% attack vs Morgan, and his -30% attack, means that mind worms will stomp him.
We also catch another probe team in the open. That's hopefully all the probe teams he current has.
Oh and a rover moves up, scouts that Forest Primeval is entirely undefended, and retakes the city. We plan to give them keys to the city, and steak dinners.
With the map info from Santiago, we waltz up to Lal's nearest city, and start some negotiations. He probably hates us for running police state, we'll see how this goes.
No. No, thank you. We sell it to him for 25 credits, hopefully he doesn't declare vendetta right now. He doesn't, we leave. Not productive, really, but the only probe tech won't help him much since he's on a different continent. Sure, he could build sea probe teams, but at this early a reactor level (i.e. pre-fusion power), it'll cost him quite a bit of production for a weak (low-morale) probe team. 25 credits will help get out a unit or two a few turns earlier, and we want Morgan subjugated ASAP. Not too bad a deal, in the end.
The war front.
MY2159
Mind worms take down the garrison at Morgan Pharmaceuticals again. Perimeter defense does nothing against psi attack. Rover moves in to take the city. Parade in their honor scheduled for Thursday, mark your calendars.
The war front. I like how I am SO committed to colonization that there's a colony pod moving along the edge of Morganic territory in the east, so that I can grab that monument. That's also the eastern coast, so I can use that city to build sea foils to finally get those pods in New Sargasso (never had the chance to send another foil out that way).
MY2160
Captured an isle of the deep and its one mind worm passenger, this is going straight towards Morgan.
Morgan sends out another probe team, steals an E3 tech. Fine by me. Kills a mind worm, turns out he's not running free market anymore so he's at ±0% psi attack. Gotta protect worms and use only for attack, now.
Lost my main mind worm attacker trying to take Morgan Industries. Also lost an impact rover in the same folly. Oh well, both garrison units (2def) are now at low health, and with our navy shelling the city, they won't be able to heal. Just a matter of time until the cavalry charges in. In related news, the parade has been canceled (since that rover died).
MY2163
Santiago wants to talk, we trade E3 for 3 def tech (C2)--for those paying strict attention, we we're fine with that because Morgan just stole that same E3 and probably sold it to Hive anyway, so its value is lower than usual. We give her a loan (at 100% interest and 100 turn payment plan), and then, at her request, seal a pact of sisterhood with her. Awesome, I can count on a serious military ally against Miriam (who, like Lal, will hate me for running police state).
We steal Industrial Automation (crawlers, planetary transit system) from Morgan. Nice, if we wrap up the war quickly, we'll use PTS (all bases start at 3 pop) to balloon outwards. If we can find a good point where we insta-build a garrison and maintain size 3, we should have zero unhappiness problems, and a crapton of energy and production. Mmmm diplomatic victory.
MY2165
We take Morgan Industries. Morgan down to three cities, none of them much good.
We establish our first sea base, in the strait between us an Santiago. We plan to establish two more, to shut down both sides of this channel, preventing Santiago or Zak from using it. Then again, Santiago is currently our ally, so it's not much of a priority, and she can move through our bases for the time being. Never hurts to plan ahead, though.
MY2166
Good luck, Morgan, with those wild mind worms.
OK I just messed up the save. Damn all the many layers of hell. Thank the heavens and the Royal Mother of the West for autosave.
Morgan submits.
We buy that last jungle city from him.
Then go capture those two mind worms.
War front, aftermath.
MY2168
Santiago requests help against Miriam, I declare vendetta for her. There is probably some kind of inappropriate joke to be made here, but I'll leave it alone. Seriously though, Miriam has been #1 military since time began, this is probably a good time to take her down.
On Transcend, half of everything you build is rec commons. Then half of everything will be hologram theaters. Drones, drones, drones, it's like playing zerg but you want fewer drones, not more.
Long-term? After all those rec commons are done, we're going to start PTS at Gaia's Landing and funnel in crawlers from probably five or six cities. After that, I will push out sea colony pods as much as possible, and hopefully find a crazy balance point where two workers harvest fungus (2-0-0 now, 2-1-0 in a few decades), and the third is an empath (+2 psych +2 energy). So basically we build a crapton of floating cities that give 5 energy (3 at base square, 2 from empath), and eventually will be able to crank out missile needlejets when we get the tech. The monsoon jungle--I mean, forest--should have five cities pumping mind worms, say five worms every three turns. With the close proximity of Lal and Miriam, that may be enough to roll through them and hopefully claim diplomatic victory once Lal's giant cities and Miriam's weirdly expansive fanatic empire have fallen (and her cities become size 3 thanks to PTS).
We rule, they drool. Also we're at the maturity level of a six-year-old.
Man...this takes me back. The problem with playing against the AI though is that there are a few tricks they absolutely don't know how to use, which makes it pretty easy if you exploit them yourself, even on transcend (read: supply crawlers, pop booms). Anyone here played SMAC multiplayer? It's been really long, but I would re-install in an instant if there were some community mp sessions up .
This is probably my all-time favorite strategy game, even though I've put more time into the Civilization series. The main problem was that when we played SMAC multiplayer my friends had no chance so Civ got more play. Thanks for doing these exhibitions, I'm really enjoying them.
Anybody remember when the game was coming out, the website had a really long and drawn-out pre-release backstory thing? Am I just imagining that or did it really happen?
Yeah, I remember. I think it was printed in the manual or something. I'm not sure, but I thought it was really good at the time. I still remember the whole plot too, which was completely unnecessary to play the game but was pretty cool once you connected the dots. Yang was badass, Lal just wants his wife back, Santiago is some rebel, Morgan isn't even supposed to be there, Zhakarov is scientist man, and Miriam and Deidre go slightly crazy, explaining the state of the game at the start!
Oh, and about the UN charter, it's pretty much the same as anything else. You can buy the votes, but on transcend, it isn't really necessary to repeal it anyway. By the time you get down to 3-4 factions remaining, you're all going to end up with vendetta against everyone else anyway so you might as well use your planet busters when you still have the chance (before everyone gets orbital defense satellites)
If we could get a full MP game, I'm ready to re-install..
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/69Cqq.jpg)
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. I also felt sick when I played Zerg in BW because the animations of morphing buildings were just really nasty for my mind to want to watch
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