EPTOn November 28 2013 17:14 ninazerg wrote:
You can save the game and come back to it later...
You can save the game and come back to it later...
Yeah, we just didn't.
Alpha Centauri - Page 8
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
Yeah, we just didn't. | ||
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ninazerg
United States7290 Posts
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Ayaz2810
United States2763 Posts
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bo1b
Australia12814 Posts
On November 29 2013 02:55 ayaz2810 wrote: Like the only Meier game I never played. Is it free yet? Spend like $5 and get it from gog? | ||
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Nightmarjoo
United States3359 Posts
On November 29 2013 02:55 ayaz2810 wrote: Like the only Meier game I never played. Is it free yet? lol I've been playing Alpha Centauri on and off for over a decade now. The only game I've played longer is Broodwar. It's easily worth whatever price it's still being sold at. After all this time and I still have new stuff to learn, new tactics and strategies to try, not to mention the random map generator and map editor ensures no game is the same on top of all that. It's an incredibly sophisticated (but not overly complicated, you can go in as deep as you want-- you can run automated things and watch the game play itself almost if you want) and highly in-depth game which has yet to really be replaced by a better, modern alternative. Just go play it! | ||
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Nightmarjoo
United States3359 Posts
This game I (as Deirdre) was on a continent with Morgan, Miriam, Zakharov, and Santiago (50-70% water). Myself, Morgan, and Zakharov were very close to each other, and more importantly next to the monsoon jungle. With scouts, unity rovers, and a single mind worm I killed both of them instantly. Unfortunately all of their bases died in the process. Then I made an extremely stupid blunder right before I finished Zakharov which allowed him to kill my capital (I was on 3-4 bases I think). The loss of it shut down my research, such that instead of finishing Industrial Automation right after getting my first 6 cities up in time to grab a few secret projects, I had a bunch of shitty bases with no chance to grab any projects except for barely snagging the Virtual World (the best of them anyway). Santiago started bullying me early, but I didn't care since I had a good amount of space to expand through in addition to having the Monsoon uncontested. Since I gave her everything she wanted she left me alone and killed Miriam instead, who was on the opposite side of our large continent. Yang shared a huge continent with Lal which was seperated by two large oceans in the west and east from our continent. Yang killed Lal and then just focused on mass expansion, including littering my western coast with sea bases. For reference: the eastern-most of Yang's cities (relative to his continent) were only barely in needlejet attack range from the sea cities on my western coast. His western coast was even farther from our eastern coast (large map). I got bold when Santiago made a new base really close to one of mine when I realized my infrastructure was good enough to churn out impact rovers. It wasn't complete, I didn't have 16+ minerals at every base, but I had at least 12 at all of them I think, and had already prototyped the rover when she started randomly moving units around my territory (during a sunspot no-less, I was terrified, but she didn't attack). I killed her new base with a scout patrol to get High Energy Chemistry (she had Gatling tech too, but I figured the armour and nerve gas if I wanted it was better). I barraged her bases with my probe rovers and foils. About half my bases made impact rovers, most of the rest made +3 armour probes, and I think one or two were in developmental stages. I fought her to a stand-still, I don't think I made any territorial gains, but the free excuse to take all her research briefly put me in the tech lead (Yang would pass me for a fairly long time a little later) and was probably worth the vendetta. Her counter invasion was shut down handily yielding a stalemate. After I finally took a frontier base with mindworms she accepted a truce for some research. Naturally she broke the truce the turn after, preventing me from building up my bases like I wanted to. I think at some point during the war Lal actually traded me Missile tech right before Yang killed him, or maybe I stole it from Santiago, I forget (but Lal definitely made a bunch of tech trades with me). The war ended very rapidly once I finished Air Power. I captured the Human Genome Project before she surrendered. She actually surrendered really early on, when she still had a fair number of bases left (even one really nice one that I had eyed hungrily and had killed all of its garrisons). I considered not accepting it, but I really did want the war to be over and I figured having a not-useless ally would be nice, so I capitulated. I forget when exactly Yang killed Lal, but pretty soon it was just us 3. Yang left me alone for a very long time. I think he was battling Santiago, but he made no ground vs her. Only fairly late in the game did he manage to take a single city of hers, which I eventually captured (it was on the exact opposite side of the continent from my colony). Yang eventually declared war on me for leaving Democracy on for a very long time (I never turned it off actually-- just pop-boomed the whole game). I had chaos tech at the time, but finished fusion lasers fairly early in. I made almost exclusively needlejets and interceptors, with only a few destroyers (I got the Maritime project and Cyborg Factory... actually I got almost all the projects after I conquered Santiago-- Yang got the research projects since he was ahead of me on tech and had gotten Weather Paradigm and Merchant Exchange early, but I think I got the rest) as I had very few coastal bases. I eventually made some Marine Infantry to assault his cities off my coast. There was no chance of ever invading his territory nor could he invade mine. Unfortunately I made the same mistake of not having preemptive clean interceptors prior to Yang's declaration of war, enabling him to knock out all of my supply convoys and formers with a couple choppers and a ton of needlejets. I didn't mind too much, as by that point my bases were competetive without the extra minerals (some still had upwards of 22 minerals). The last coastal city took fucking forever to capture, as his war effort had degenerated into massing conventional missiles, and he just destroyed my military and every garrison he could reach, which hurt my reinforcement rate. I eventually had to just mind control it with a foil probe. The problem was that my gigantic air force couldn't do anything to his multiple AAA Photon garrisons and boats in conjunction with his air port facilities while my boats and marines were getting constantly picked off by conventional missiles. I could only do very limited damage to his eastern most continental cities with my needlejets. After that I wrote conventional conquering victory off and just prepared for planet buster production. My empire became pretty big since the war wasn't really stopping my expansion (though I probably could've expanded more and earlier, but I'm still not super confident about when and with what frequency I should expand. I sped past him in research. I finished quantum tech as my first fusion planet busters were finishing. Since Yang was periodically nuking Santiago he voted with me to repeal UN Charter (I didn't want to have to kill Santiago). I was dumb though and let my first two planet busters get nuked at once on one of Santiago's sea bases (whence I intended to nuke Yang's capital from). That delayed the war effort, but eventually I took out the annoying fucking cities on his eastern coast which had been spamming me with conventional missiles. I stopped the missile spam just in time for worm and locust spam, spawning from Yang's horrible ecological damage. I had post-fungal-bloom tree-farms at every city, forests across the continent, and the Pholus Mutagen, and I was still getting shit on by the huge worm pops. Part of the problem was lacking formers thanks to Yang's missile spam, which prevented me from getting Mag tubes up for a long time. The other part was from lacking a ground army to dispense the worm stacks with, but apparently low morale scout patrols suffice, which I didn't figure out until later on. I was just sitting there clearing one worm/locust at a time with my huge clean needlejet fleet like a moron. I also had to fight rising sea levels with solar shades. The water went down since I countered quickly, then went up faster than the shade(s) and my voting frequency could handle. When the water sank I was actually connected with Yang's entire continent. I let Santiago and Yang reinstate the UN charter (which Yang continued to ignore despite voting for it) and switched over to mass hover-tank production. The rising sea levels broke his massive continent into a few pieces before I could conquer him (the nukes had already neutered him, but he rebelled against my diplomatic victory because of the nukes). Killing worms made me rich enough to corner the global market (which I've never done before), but the 20 year timelime that gave me wasn't acceptable so I switched to aquatic hover tanks and made destroyer transports to hunt his islands and sea bases down. I maxed out tech as I was finishing him off though, and without even using convoys transcended right before I could kill his last base in the middle of the ocean. Santiago remained effectively useless for the duration of the game. She finished one tech I didn't have after I gave her all my techs in exchange for the base with the Empath Guild, and that was her only contribution. I can only imagine that all she did was throwing away units at Yang's conventional missiles for two hundred years-- afterall, that's what I did. I made a big blunder in the midgame that slowed me down a lot. I wanted to see how useful Research Hospitals were (which I normally never build), so I made them at all my bases at some point in the midgame. This ceased when I realized I had a net income of 1 credit per turn. Even by the end of the game I was only churning out 1500 credits per turn, and that was with the maintenance cut project (which made a huge difference). Luckily Yang's shit ecology spawned a new source of income to make me filthy rich. I had some >8 drone riots too, not sure how many workers I need to take off production for a given number of psych/drone facilities. Overall this game was easy but incredibly frustrating and incredibly long. The midgame and lategame were completely driven by the map's geology. The swift elimination of everyone but my submissive pactmate and Yang in addition to the complete isolation of Yang which rendered his midgame advantage moot gave me an inevitable but delayed victory. The final year was in the 2370s, so the game would have just ended within 30 turns. | ||
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Nightmarjoo
United States3359 Posts
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screamingpalm
United States1527 Posts
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radscorpion9
Canada2252 Posts
On December 17 2013 02:12 screamingpalm wrote: Played this game for the very first time last night (just a little late to the party lol) after having this in my GoG library from a bundle deal a while back. First Impression: HOLY SHIT! From the little time I've played so far, I really like it and can see why it's so highly regarded. I've tried many of the old games recently that are considered legendary classics, but most of them didn't really hold my attention and seemed like they were hyped up by nostalgia. Have to see how it holds up as I play more, but really impressed so far. The technological advancements are the coolest and most interesting parts of the game, besides the occasionally hilarious video that make fun of certain leaders  . It was (is) an awesome game. Its funny how the religious faction angers nearly everyone with their blind arrogance and perceived superiority. I think Sid Meier may have been trying to send a message with that | ||
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ninazerg
United States7290 Posts
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EatThePath
United States3943 Posts
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
Both those combined make it amazing. | ||
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Eliezar
United States481 Posts
I actually think I prefer Civ 5 at this point with all the expos and no unit stacking. It would be cool if they did an Alpha Centauri remake. | ||
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