/vr/ - Retro Games

Nah, I played it for a bit and discovered that I'm apparently dumb as fuck.

I've played it for quite a while and still don't understand everything.

The velsmax guide helped once I'd gotten my feet wet.

I've only started playing it a few weeks ago but I've been playing practically non stop. Finally getting decent and loving this game.
My favourite faction is probably Gaia's Stepdaughters because mindworm shenanigans and pumping throngs of the things late game.

>>1947138
me too and honestly thats the only faction i play as.

Been playing it on and off for a while now and love it, although i don't really end up finishing a lot of matches.

How long does multiplayer matches generally last anyway?

Miriam is best girl

>>1947148
i dont know, never tried it before, like im thinking that the first one will definately be a test run

i dont even know how to set them up at this point because i dont wanna look into if no one wants to play.

>>1947148
Fuck you fundamentalist scum, Provost reporting.

But seriously, if you get a good starting location and get your formers on the move quick, Zakharov will quickly outclass everybody in tech, especially if you pick your first two techs as biogenetics and social psych to get secrets of the human brain before anyone (Which nets you a free tech) you'll quickly make allies with trades of weapons and base facilites. I normally mix this with police state and green social engineering choices. I've been playing for years on and off, but still only really play at the third level down, after that it's just too much brutal micro management to keep me interested, but yet i have never once got bored of this game, ever.

A couple of questions when playing as Deirdre, I'm still new.
Late game how do I manage to keep planet happy? Seems like whatever I do, no matter how much fungus I plant the planet still sends mind worms and spore launchers after my bases.

Any tips in general for playing Deirdre? I think her faction is the most interesting.

>>1947282

Playing as Deirdre you should fucking LOVE attacking worms.

As diedre you need to focus on ecology and spreading fungus, then level up the free mind worms.

>>1947315
>As diedre you need to focus on ecology and spreading fungus,
What about my own bases? Working fungus tiles isn't particularly beneficial until late game. Planting forests and using farms, boreholes or other enhancements kills planet.

>>1947065

I really like Alpha Centauri. I prefer Morgan, and doing free market capitalism, then teaming up with the university and buy their tech.

Sometimes I submit the spartans as ally.

Fuck all other factions. Especially Yang, that socialist cunt. And Miriam, that literal cunt.

>>1947326
>. Especially Yang, that socialist cunt. And Miriam, that literal cunt.
Those two spread like a cancer in almost all of my games

>>1947326
>Especially Yang, that socialist cunt. And Miriam, that literal cunt.
Agreed i hate Miriam one of my first games she colonized right next to me so i teamed up then that bitch tried taking me out

>>1947317

You should use ecology and wonders and tech to thrive off fungus. Fucking hell. Did you somehow not understand the whole "symbiosis with planet"?

Yang is best chairman.

Socialism Tunnels is best tunnels.

You want talk shit? I pump out soldier every 2 turn 50 bases kekekekekeke

>>1947329

Fully upgraded planet busters will easily take care of late game Yang. Literally wipe him off the map.

And Mirriam, usually can be gobbled up in early to mid early game. Spies help disrupt.

>>1947332
Fungus only really becomes beneficial late game. I'm talking about early-mid game.

>>1947339

Appreciate the lessened ecological damage you get and terraform.

>>1947339
>>1947340

Diedre is all about rushing with the added mind worms she can get early, and how they auto-upgade.

>>1947345

Meaning you can focus base production on formers and base facilities.

>Lal
Does anyone even play him?

>>1947362

The complete lack of anything unique about his faction is pretty nice, sometimes. He's good for trying new things with.

>>1947369
He's probably the least interesting faction. Sometimes when I play I just replace his faction with one of the expansion factions for a little variety.

>>1947358

1v1 me faggot

>>1947371

I can dig that, actually. He's the only faction that could be replace while keeping most of the original game flavor

>>1947374
213374U/\/\/-\T3

>>1947376

It's been forever since I'd last seen hardcore l33tspeak. Apparently someone still practices.

>>1947065
I love this game but can't figure out how to install wine on debian stable to play it

>>1948163
I've been playing it on wine for a good few years without problems.
Install PlayOnLinux.

I love this game but it is really hard and the micomanagement gets too much in late game for me. The atmosphere is top notch, the little videos and story bits and technologies you research actually make you stop and think sometimes.

>>1947317
Forests actually reduce ecodamage. Plant them everywhere.
Boreholes fuck shit up bad, don't use them unless you really need them or you simply don't care about ecodamage.

Why are the expansion factions so shitty?

>>1949583
They feel a lot less well-rounded and their philosophies aren't nearly as well defined as their vanilla counterparts.

That said, cybernetic consciousness is my favorite faction. Mai awkward Norwegian aspergers waifu.

>>1949579
Also, leave boreholes for desert tiles and/or rocky tiles, having a borehole will net you 8 minerals + 8 energy, while a rocky tile will give you 5 minerals with a mine and road. It's less, but what else would you do with desert tiles?

>>1949583
Nobody has ever yet found out, or even proposed, an entire sociological/political ideology for the Data Angels. Having an entire country made up of anarchist hackers is just... ugh

>>1949948
On the bright side, you get to pretend that it's a group composed of Tumblrites and Redditors when you finally planetbust them.

I was never really able to get into it which is quite odd since I'm a big fan of the Civ games. Dunno, somehow the tech stuff is just too over the top for me and I can't really relate to the whole faction stuff like I can with nations in Civ.

I might give it another shot though.

>>1949980

I can't get into it because it's too archaic. My first Civ game was Civ III, and I tried II after I had already tried IV. It's just too old. I tried C-Evo, too, and it's just too archaic.

>Lal decides to invade
>massive invasion force on the right side of my empire
>probe teams every turn coming at me
>using all of my morgan money to buy out units and ship shit off as fast as possible to protect the border cities
>finally after half an hour of stalemate and so many units ead break through his line
>very next turn he pops up on commlink
>pls no war am peaceful I gib u 14 energy credits

I love this game simply for the fact that everyone is an unabashed asshole. Feels more like playing with humans compared to other games.

>>1950180

>>1949579
Well, there are two sources of eco-damage: damaging improvements (boreholes, etc.) and mineral production. Forests are not ecologically damaging improvements but they do produce minerals, so having a lot of forests can actually result in eco-damage. This can be mitigated, though, with ecological buildings that you get in the Explore branch of the tech tree which reduce your mineral-based eco-damage.

>>1949945
1) Flatten rocky tile
2) Plant forest
3) Build tree farm, hybrid forest
4) Profit

Mid-to-late game I pretty much want all of my land tiles to be forest. With tree farm they're amazing and with hybrid forest they're fucking beast mode.

>>1950269
>Mid-to-late game I pretty much want all of my land tiles to be forest. With tree farm they're amazing and with hybrid forest they're fucking beast mode.
Would you play any differently as Deirdre? Since fungus tiles only become effective late game is it really worth going through all the trouble of planting fungus just to reduce your own eco damage? It would certainly be beneficial if you're in a war and have xenoempathy dome but otherwise it just seems to be more trouble than it's worth.

>>1950286
Even as Diedre I don't bother planting fungus until very late game when fungus resource production becomes incredible; but by that time the game's about to end anyway. Forests with tree farm and/or hybrid forest are amazing. If you have eco damage, take some of your workers off of the tiles and make them specialists until you get a tech that lets you build an improvement to reduce eco-damage.

>>1950301
Thanks. It's difficult to balance tile usage and eco damage. I almost always end up getting mindworms attacking my crawlers or formers.

>>1950308
Keep at least one unit in every base so you can deal with mindworms. They'll come regardless of ecodamage. As Diedre you can use them to your advantage if you manage to capture them.

>>1950320
Just one more question. Sometimes when I fail to capture mindworms it says "failed to capture" but sometimes it says that "a greater mind is controlling the mindworms". Is this a reference to the planet or is it an indicator that I should research more E techs before I try to capture again? How can I overcome this?

>>1948163
Didn't Loki make a native Linux port of SMAC ?
http://www.lokigames.com/products/smac/
> "we're sorry, Loki has closed"
oh god damnit.

>>1950326
You can't overcome it, it generally means planet's doing something like attempting to raze a massive eco-damage source.

One of the best things, if not the best, is that they automatically spread (albeit slowly) on their own, killing fungus in the process.

>>1947065
I love scifi and 4x/TBS games (moo, moo2, xcom, SoSE).

Alpha centauri is, on the surface, my ideal game. The writing is amazing, the atmosphere and presentation are great.

I just can't get into the game though. Please help.

I find the interface insanely unintuitive. Navigating the techtree or trying to work out whether what I'm doing is actually useful, or what the consequences of my actions are, is just so opaque and confusing to me.

I have basically everything on automate too, so the game practically plays itself. The combat system is a complete anathema to me too.

Do I need to just walk away, print out the manual and read that for 10 hours? I have sunk about 10 hours into this and feel like I'm getting nowhere. Are there any patches or mods that improve the interface?

>>1947070
I'm with this guy. Should i read a manual?

>>1951232

First rule of /vr/

ALWAYS
READ
THE
MANUAL

You'll be glad you did. Back then they actually were interesting and comprehensive. Of all the travesties of modern games, the loss of the instruction manual pains me the most.

>>1949948

They are RON PAUL MY2116 for all I can gather

>>1949349
No I mean wine 64 bit package seems to not actually be wine. If I want to try installing wine 32 bit it wants to uninstall half my damn system

I like it, but being a Civ5 casual, the controls seem really archaic. End up just using the numpad to move units instead of clicking around.
Also, research is supposed to be semi-random, right?

>>1951832
The default option is blind research (and the most logical, being in an alien planet). Which means you don't get to choose what you want to research, instead the game lets you focus into any number of 4 different trees: discover, build, explore, conquer, if I remember right.

Blind research can also be turned off though. Or you can play as the alien races. But that's cheatmode.

>>1950213
oh god why did I lal at this?

Do you have to customize all the vehicles and such? I'm just not the kind of person who is really into that deep 'piece by piece' customizing

>>1951063
I would recommend watching a few lets plays to really get your head around the game. They helped me immensely
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBLWJqVGvAk&list=PLs3acGYgI1-tXM4wTuSuuHjuOkyypudvb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaIjHW81JBM&list=PL80EF6E0CA063E4CB

Also don't be afraid to use a strategy guide for tips
http://spyang.com/strategy/alphaCentauri.html

>>1951741
Install playonlinux, You can choose the wine version and can conviniently install 32bit wine through that.

>>1951886
It's best to not let the ai propose designs as a lot of the time they're overly expensive and inefficient for what you want to do.

Early game you'll be fine with basic scout infantry in each colony. It's only when you meet other players do you really need to prototype effective troops as a deterrent. The customization is very straight forward and imo one of the best aspects that sets this game apart from the rest.

>>1951952
awesome, thanks