SMAC (Alpha Centauri) exhibition game - Page 4

tsuxiit

1305 Posts

June 23 2011 00:58 GMT

#61

OH MY GOD.

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-

6xFPCs

United States412 Posts

June 24 2011 14:38 GMT

#62

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.

Alethios

New Zealand2765 Posts

June 25 2011 06:57 GMT

#63

If I go brush my teeth, as instructed, will the next installment be up by the time I get back?

6xFPCs

United States412 Posts

June 25 2011 17:03 GMT

#64

MY2232

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.

[image loading]

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.

6xFPCs

United States412 Posts

June 25 2011 22:02 GMT

#65

MY2238

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

[image loading]

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.

This will be fun.

deth2munkies

United States4051 Posts

June 25 2011 23:07 GMT

#66

Game is pretty over unless Hive somehow....well they could...nope, game's over. Good job :D

KaiserReinhard

United States554 Posts

June 25 2011 23:58 GMT

#67

Can you explain supply crawlers? I never quite figured out how to use them.

Alethios

New Zealand2765 Posts

June 26 2011 00:47 GMT

#68

Yay. Just mopping up now eh. Are you going to play another after this, on Transcend difficulty?

muffley

United States280 Posts

June 26 2011 01:27 GMT

#69

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.

kongor

Canada38 Posts

June 26 2011 18:02 GMT

#70

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.

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!

6xFPCs

United States412 Posts

June 27 2011 17:21 GMT

#71

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 10:27 muffley wrote:

Show nested quote +

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.

EDIT: missing parenthesis

Snoman

Canada191 Posts

June 27 2011 19:13 GMT

#72

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

6xFPCs

United States412 Posts

June 30 2011 02:11 GMT

#73

MY2247

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.

GLHF.

Snoman

Canada191 Posts

June 30 2011 03:04 GMT

#74

*claps*

Cool stuff, thanks again!

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.

Dfgj

Singapore5922 Posts

June 30 2011 04:59 GMT

#75

Aw I remember playing this, what a great game. Enjoyed reading this a lot, thanks.

AntiLegend

Germany247 Posts

June 30 2011 12:34 GMT

#76

well done! i hope you will play another one.

Warmonger

United States69 Posts

June 30 2011 14:42 GMT

#77

On June 30 2011 12:04 Snoman wrote:
*claps*

Cool stuff, thanks again!

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.

I hope you enjoy reading!

The SMAC Academy hosted on Civgaming. These are short articles detailing specific parts of the game and all worth a read.

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.

6xFPCs

United States412 Posts

July 01 2011 04:13 GMT

#78

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")

Disquiet

Australia628 Posts

July 01 2011 06:23 GMT

#79

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.

Born)Slippy

Norway1904 Posts

July 01 2011 20:31 GMT

#80

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

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