/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.5015357]

how do i git gud at combat in this game?

i started a game earlier as the stepdaughters, which was bad idea #1. i was all excited to launch a major naval assault on my neighbours, the morganites, except that i found out too late that foils apparently cannot take coastal cities: bad idea #2. then my impact teams basically could not get anything done on their own. a boring stalemate ensued. i'm probably going to have to restart a new game at this point.

combat and war-planning strategies, i need them.

[Anonymous No.5015632]

I won a game once on second
or third easiest difficulty.

Research weapon technology that is superior to your enemies.
They will be powerless before your superior technology.
Good luck commander

[Anonymous No.5015720]

>>5015357
Combat is the weapon of the attacker vs. the armor of the defender. This means a 1-4 (weapon strength-armor strength) guy will probably win a fight with a 2-5 guy, if the 2-5 guy is the one attacking, because your only comparing the 2 against the 4. So it's cheaper, and smarter, to make 2 units, one with a good weapon and no / little armor, and a second with good armor and a cheap weapon, and put them on the same tile. Have the guys with good weapons attack, and the high armor guys will be prioritized to fight off any attackers during the enemy phase.

Units have a zone of control. If a unit is within one of the nine squares surrounding an enemy, he (normally) can't move into one of the other 8 squares. He can only either attack the enemy, or retreat into an unthreatened square. By having your units spread out, you can extend your zone of control so that the enemy is pinned in and can't move, and can't attack your vulnerable units or move from one city to protect another one.

Although Conquer has the most combat relevant techs, good ones are spread out amongst other disciplines. The new chassis are in Explore as are some weapon techs, there's armor under Build, and unit abilities like artillery are under Discover. If you want a certain tech and don't think you can trade for it, look through the in-game tech tree and see what research you need for a tech, and change your research priorities to head towards that tech and it's prereqs.

Specifically for you, the Gaiains strength are mindworms. If you can hold off the Morganites, start capturing or breeding mindworms, make them native mindworms to level them up, and then attack Morgan with them. Also, once you unlock it, go with Green economics. The bonuses to Planet help you capture more mind worms and make them stronger in psi-combat, which Morgan's Free Market choice will make him weaker at, and choosing Green only risks pissing off Morgan, who you're already fighting anyway.

[Anonymous No.5016205]

>>5015632
i don't even know what tech is superior tho. in Civ i have a relative sense: great warinfantry > samurai &c. but it's harder to gauge the difference here. but, thanks for the vote of confidence.

>>5015720
my man! this is what i was looking for.

okay. so i've read this, mindworms are the gaians secret weapon. i've won before, as the hive, but it was clumsy and i still really didn't have much of a strategy. and all mindworms have to be captured, is that it? i can't breed them. ah, but using them in combat makes them bigger. i remember now.

also, i've heard that green/democratic/knowledge/cybernetic is a pretty optimal social engineering plan.

i'm starting to understand the combined arms aspect of this game tho. because, unlike civ, there's no 1PT. so this makes more sense, i should try to make the whole stack look like an army

>and not just throw waves of infantry like an idiot.

what about air support and copters, things like this? i know that it's easier and perhaps better to fight wars earlier on, before the other factions get too strong. but you have such weak units. also, which sea units can actually capture cities? foils can't do it, it seems, only bombard.

thanks so much for writing a detailed post anon, i really appreciate it. i love this game but i suck at it. but this game is just so awesome.

[Anonymous No.5016376]

>>5016205
>i can't breed them.
Centurai Empathy is a relatively early Explore tech, is what lets you build mind worms like any other unit. It also unlocks Green economics, among other benefits.
>also, i've heard that green/democratic/knowledge/cybernetic is a pretty optimal social engineering plan.
That's pretty good, especially as Gaians. Democratic cancels out the growth penalty from Green, and end up large planet and efficiency bonuses. Just be aware that for each of the first 3 social engineering categories, you risk upsetting the AI into if you pick something either than default or that faction's favorite choice. They will warn you with diplomatic messages about how much they hate your social engineering before eventually declaring war.
>what about air support and copters, things like this?
Needlejets totally change the game. Send them to attack a city and take out defenders before your infantry gets there, this'll steamroll the AI unless they catch up and build anti-air units.They crash if they run out of fuel, so get them back to a friendly city or airbase every other turn. You can also use them to attack enemy forces in the open, but being forced to return to base often limits where you can carry this out. Choppers are a bit better at this, as they stay out longer before returning to base.
>also, which sea units can actually capture cities? foils can't do it, it seems, only bombard.
Sea units fight normal combat against other sea units, and can capture aquatic bases (those built in the water). They bombard against land targets. Land bases built on the coast can not be captured by naval units, foils or other types, they must be captured by land units. Similarly, air units can't capture either.

[Anonymous No.5016581]

>>5016205
>but it's harder to gauge the difference here. but, thanks
How is it harder? You can see the weapon-armor-moves*reactor stats under any unit, enemies included, if you move the cursor on the tile. They both skip some values but usually weapon number corresponds to twice armor value at the same tech level, since
Weapons go from 1 to 24(only one more tech for 30 in smax) and armor goes from 1 to 12.
Reactors go from 1 to 4 and define amount of HP the unit has from 10-40
That's the basis, there's also a bunch of +25/50% bonuses depending on abilities, morale and other external factors like terrain
http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Unit#Abilities

And if you want to do a naval attack on the coast, bring a unit or 2 of ground troops to capture and finish off non combat units. Naval transport are also very important for expanding early.

[Anonymous No.5017405]

>>5016376
>>5016581

really awesome posts. thanks very kindly anons. i'm copying these over so that i have them as a reference for my next game.

[Anonymous No.5017432]

here's another question, then.

in Master of Orion 2 there's a pretty standard early build order to follow, since production is king. and even there the techs are sort of imbalanced such that some of them are almost objectively better than others. but i pretty much just beeline for early production techs, then research, then turtle up until i get enough of a tech lead to begin outwards colonizing.

in SMAC expansion seems to rule everything, getting out lots and lots of bases and cities. but do you guys have anything like a general build order you follow? special projects that you beeline for, stuff like this?

i know that it depends not only on which faction you are playing, but the way you are playing it, and so on. but i was just curious.

[Anonymous No.5017620]

>>5015357
1) Focus on mobility and aerial units
2) Concentrate your forces and move them as a single unit
3) Use fast moving land units to take over cities after the aerial attacks.
4) "Heal" the aerial units in the cities you've just taken over.
5) Rinse and repeat

If you're army isn't big enough, engage in war of attrition. Hunt down isolated units and destroy the enemy's land improvements.

[Anonymous No.5017631]

>>5017432
The order you want to follow depends on your strategy. There's always a drawback to any decision you make. I usually try to ramp up production as fast as possible at the risk being attacked early in the game. Once I'm able to pump units and planet busters within a few a turns, I start attacking.

[Anonymous No.5017676]

>>5015357
So you are basically saying you've started with the best and easiest faction around with access to the best and cheapest military from the get-go... and you still fucked up?

[Anonymous No.5017823]

>>5017676
>So you are basically saying you've started with the best and easiest faction around with access to the best and cheapest military from the get-go... and you still fucked up?

yes! that's it!

it's my third attempt. i won a previous game as the hive by just throwing human waves my neighbours until i had one of the continents, then gunned for transcendence the rest of the way. very lame, although i was blown away by the literary quality of the game and fell in love with the setting, the characters, all of it. but it was a very clumsy game without much finesse. this time i thought i'd try a different faction (except i obviously forgot to work with its actual strengths...duh.)

having the best and easiest faction with the best and cheapest military doesn't mean much if you don't know what to do with it. i wasn't aware the gaians were so awesome with the mindworms. i'm going to breed the friskiest worms on chiron this time around.

si do all right with EU3, MOO2 and Civ, so i'm not a complete noob with these games. but this one has its own quirks. building a couple of powerful combined-arms doom stack will be something i'll be doing.

>>5017631
okay, that's good advice. more production then, and fewer tree farms, maybe.

>>5017620
this too. maybe i'll hold off until i have a little more air support.

i had another question. how do you guys like to specialize your research? i've mostly just been sticking with colonial stuff until i've REX'd out as far as i can go. then i usually find i want to get expansionistic and knock somebody over, so i switch into military research. in the last game i was doing a lot of tech-exchanging with the university, but i was wondering if that was a good idea. maybe it's better to not get greedy and wait for the mid-game to start conquering.

thanks for all the advice anons. i know some of this stuff is too contingent to get into detail about but this has been very useful.

[Anonymous No.5017857]

>>5017823
Pro-tip: there are other ways of winning the game than just conquest of everyone on your path.

Also, due to research: which faction you picked on your first play and why?

[Anonymous No.5017918]

>>5017857
>Pro-tip: there are other ways of winning the game than just conquest of everyone on your path.

yes, i know this. on my earlier playthrough i won via transcendence and i'll probably go for that one again, it's the most satisfying. war isn't quite as satisfying in these games as in other ones, although it is necessary (and sticking somebody who's been really shitty in the punishment sphere is "fun" also). and there's the UN option and cornering the energy market.

so, i know there are things to do other than fight. but i do like to absorb one or two other factions along the way to have a nice border. an all-conquest game seems like it would be kind of boring atm.

>Also, due to research: which faction you picked on your first play and why?
the first couple of times i took the hive, winning with one of them. and one playthrough as the cybernetic consciousness too, i kind of like those guys, but we got curbstomped early on by the cult of planet. i was off to a good start! but cha dawn just ramped up a huge army and blitzed me. that game hardly got off the ground.

in this last playthrough - the gaians - i was off to a good start: lots of bases, friendly relations with most factions, lots of tech from trading with the university, and i snatched up a lot of sea pods from exploring. i had the spartans to the north and morganites to the west. they looked like a good target, although i really brought the wrong troops to the fight and then the spartans DoW'd me soon after. i had a big navy full of seafoils, but those were useless.

so, my early buildup was strong but everything went pear-shaped as soon as i decided to go to war. i'd send you a screenshot, actually, but it's on my other PC. i'm going to restart anyways. i enjoy the early game.

i took the gaians b/c i just liked their background. i forgot that they're supposed to focus on worms! super-dumb. obviously you're supposed to just play them like Hive Green, which is what i was doing, i guess.

[Anonymous No.5017921]

>>5017918
>west

east, sorry. and they only had four or five cities, the spartans maybe six. i had ten-twelve, all hovering around 4-5 pop. nothing big.

but when we attacked the morganites they suddenly had this huge army and all i had were the useless boats. now i'm tempted to bring just a horde of mindworms.

[Anonymous No.5017928]

>>5017432
Your order entirely depends on:
Your faction of choice
Starting position (especially if it's random map and not Map of the Planet variant)
Dumb luck with exploring pods within the range of your initial base
Distance to nearby special terrain (and what type of terrain it is)
Topography (especially if it's random map)

Essentially - adapt or die. Said that, there ARE buildings you want to get online pretty quick, but they aren't in any way sequenced, as they are case-sensitive.
And of course there is the never-ending base crawl, which makes every possible strategy instantly obsolete and pointless, because you are just pumping more and more bases.

[Anonymous No.5017943]

>>5017928
>And of course there is the never-ending base crawl, which makes every possible strategy instantly obsolete and pointless, because you are just pumping more and more bases.

but you can automate this too, with the governors, to alleviate some of the tedium.

is there any reason not to build as many bases as you can? apart from the tax on your sanity (again, using the auto-governor judiciously).

>Said that, there ARE buildings you want to get online pretty quick, but they aren't in any way sequenced, as they are case-sensitive.

any gaian-specific ones? secret projects that you would consider a must-have?

[Anonymous No.5017961]

>>5017943
>is there any reason not to build as many bases as you can?
Yes, actually: inefficiency. There is a formula for how many bases you can easily manage (your social engineering Efficiency rating is a part of that formula). Go over the limit, then your bases will have an increased inefficiency penalty (red bars in psych/labs/energy output), and an increased rate of producing drones. In other words, if you have too many bases, it becomes much more difficult and expensive to manage them all. The number of bases you can own before it becomes "too many" depends on difficulty; the 2 lowest difficulties let you have many many bases before hitting the limit.

[Anonymous No.5017962]

>>5017943
If you are playing multiplayer, base crawl is outright forbidden and/or expect getting hit by entire series of planet bursters.

Secret project that is absolutely must have for Gaians? You start with THE best Secret Project already unlocked (Weather Paradigm). If you are planning going for mind-worms, then Xenoempathy Dome, Dream Twister (nuff stuff) and Neural Amplifier for denial purposes. Pholus Mutagen can be handy, but nothing special. If you are playing SMAX, then Manifold Harmonics are absurdly useful for Gaians, essentially being THE most important project for them.

[Anonymous No.5017964]

>>5017961
Anon, inefficiency is based on DISTANCE from HQ, not number of bases. Besides, he's a Hive player. He couldn't care any less about inefficiency

[Anonymous No.5017983]

>>5017943
>is there any reason not to build as many bases as you can?
After a certain cap you start getting more drones with each new base, it depends on difficulty, map size and efficiency
http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Bureaucracy
If you were playing with Gaians on citizen it would be 24 for normal map. And usually if you are not hitting this cap you should think of getting more bases.

Energy losses due to inefficiency can be extremely high too, that's why children's creche and other buildings that raise base efficiency are important.

>>5017964
it's energy losses, everybody cares about it until/unless you cover everything in supply crawlers to redirect energy to hq.

[Anonymous No.5017998]

>>5017983
Anon, it's like you never did infinite base crawl.

[Anonymous No.5018040]

>>5017998
Memes aside, I've tried it once. Jesus... shit's so OP it feels like cheating. Short from nukes, there is no way to stop it after first 12 bases.

[Anonymous No.5018239]

>>5017961
thanks for the tips. i currently have a +7 efficiency, which is as high as i've seen anything get. so more bases shouldn't be a problem.

>>5017962
this makes sense, lots of stuff to boost psi power. i understand.

>>5017983
i'm well short of 24 bases. do i get a pop-up or anything letting me know when i've hit the cap? i guess it doesn't matter, i'll start spamming bases like a mother. now that i've secured a continent this shouldn't be too hard.

so far the current playthrough is going well. i shared my new continent this time with the morganites and the hive. yang made a strong push early on but we fended him off. i felt kind of disappointed having to pay for truces just so he'd leave me alone, but it worked out well. once i got some of my big demon boils involved and some stronger infantry we managed a stalemate and then began to push back.

also, holy smokes the probe teams are powerful. i didn't even use these before, you can just walk in a buy a base outright. guess stockpiling energy came in handy, it was crazy to just buy out key bases from yang. after that i basically just browbeat him into giving up the rest of the bases i wanted under threat of attack.

we stuffed him in the punishment sphere and soon he was joined by morgan. santiago wiped out the university and the believers, so now it's just us gaians, the UN, and the spartans. even though lal escaped early in a colony pod and had to rebuild his empire from scratch he's now #2 and closing fast. we're going to be paying him a visit next.

this game is so gnarly. unfortunately it seems i can't run any of the videos tho or the computer slows down to a crawl. 'tis a pity. but overall things are doing much better than before. the advice is very much appreciated, anons.

[Anonymous No.5018283]

A few basics

1. Trade for tech with everyone.
2. Steal tech with probe teams.
3. Before contacting another faction, change your values to match theirs.
4. If you start on an island with another guy, kill him ASAP.
5. Connect all your bases with roads ASAP.
6. To start, have one active terraformer for each base.

[Anonymous No.5018446]

>>5018283
Improving on his:

1. Don't tech trade with Yang and Miriam (most likely she won't have anything to offer anyway)
2. You can tech-trade with Yang if you are on separate continents/allied
3. Use probe teams on factions you plan to eliminate anyway. If things go south, you will conquer or wipe out them anyway
4. Terraforming is close to useless before you lift production limits - initially only fields with bonuses can give you more than 2 of either nutrient/minerals/energy; thus all terraforming is good for early on is getting you solar panels for any energy production at all and roads, but that's it
5. NEVER, EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, rise or lower the terrain. You are risking continental-wide change of rain patterns without any way of predicting them, it's completely not worth the risk.
6. Tiles under 2000m should be covered with forest; it is the most efficient tile to use in the first place and at 0-1k and 1001-2k they out-perform tiles with solar panels - energy output is the same, but you gain extra mineral
7. When in doubt - plant forest. Arid, flat and especially arid flat tiles are best used to cover them with forest
8. Unless the tile is rocky and comes with mineral bonus, building mines isn't useful at all, mines are dead-end in terms of productivity
9. As long as you are working under the production limit, focus on tiles with bonuses. They are especially valuable if they get combined with landmark bonus, like nutrient bonus on Monsoon Jungle, giving you absurd nutrient production even for late game standards
10. You can place forests over the jungle without cutting it down. Monnies!
11. Use supply crawlers, even if you plan to use them as spare colonist. Say you have no special place to send the crawler to. Just use it on a tile within base limit that isn't used by any of local pops.
12. Did I mention forests are the best tiles in the game?

13. If you are playing SMAX, satellites are an over-kill thanks to Coudbase Academy secret project

[Anonymous No.5018449]

>>5018446
Oh, two more:
* Auto-generated units are trash. Don't bother, but remember to get your prototypes if you turn off auto-generated designs.
* If you know what you are doing or if you lifted limit on all three resources, design terraformers on rover chassis. This way they can move AND build the same turn, which combined with sheer number of them should allow to finish things super-fast

[Anonymous No.5020459]

>>5015357
>combat and war-planning strategies
First and foremost, DO NOT stack units when facing mindworms. Just don't. You are risking potential stack wipe-out, which, as you might guess, is awful. Early on it's not a big deal, but later, when you face stacks of worms, things go nasty.
As Gaians, you have a guaranteed capture of the first mind worm you will encounter. This is a monstrual bonus and one of the reasons why Gaians are "easy mode". Worms move over fungus as if it was roads. You've just gained a scout moving potentially 3 tiles rather than one AND with decreased chance of triggering encounter with other mind worm while being in fungus tiles.

If you find alien monolith, get all your units (unless of course it's far, far away) to it for free morale upgrade and instant healing. Monoliths are pretty shit tile upgrade, unless you are playing SMAX, but useful for doing this shit
Speaking of monoliths. If you happen to be close to The Ruins landmark (8 monoliths creating a circle in the middle of fungus-infested area), it's a perfect spot for grinding your army, earning cash and potentially get more worms. All you have to do is move around in fungus. If you trigger mind-worm encounter, fight it. If you survive, you can then instantly heal by returning to any of the monoliths. Each defeated mindworm is 10 energy credits * it's maturity (morale of worms), meaning you earn 20 credits for each worm defeated early on. This is fuck-huge bonus for first 100 turns, especially if you do it deliberately. In the process you will also level-up your unit by winning combat.
Oh, and one more thing - read up:
http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Morale_(Advanced)
It's important to understand how morale works and what it does.

[Anonymous No.5020471]

>>5020459
As for regular combat with human enemies, it's important to always have attack higher than enemy defense by about 2-3 points for guaranteed win. If you want to squash your enemy, just have 150% or more of his defense and you will rolf-stomp them.
Exact same rule applies when defending. And your defense force DOES NOT require assault weapons. It's perfectly viable to have defenders with stats of 1/6/1 and curb enemy assault, killing the attackers, as long as your defense is higher than attack. This means you can cheap-out on your garrison troops, giving them good def, but no weapons beyond bare basics.
Chassis affects performance against enemy, depending on terrain. It's not a big factor, but it can lead to unexpected defeats.
Remember about special abilities. Some of them are virtually useless, while others are super-handy. Highlights include clean reactors (no upkeep for units with upkeep), drop-pods (especially after you get space elevator, basically instantly transports unit at any spot on the map you want) and hypnotic trance (if you are a bad boy and worms attack you non-stop)
Also, read up:
http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Unit#Combat

[Anonymous No.5020476]

>>5020471
Oh, and I forgot: heavy artillery ability, which gives you range attacks, rather than tile-to-tile. Artillery engages ENTIRE STACK, so you can easily soften up defending force without any risk of retaliation AND easily overcoming it with 1-2 fast units with multiple attacks.

[Anonymous No.5020730]

>>5015357
Unrelated, but must share
>Play SMAX
>Original seven, but Domai instead of Miriam
>Pick Gaians
>Have fun taking over most of the continent, as it was empty
>Meet Domai
>He's allied with Yang
>They attack me
Jesus fucking Christ, never-ending wave of unit. The only reason I even survived that shit was due to resorting to PSI combat, otherwise the sheer numbers would crush me.

[Anonymous No.5020820]

>>5017998
>>5018040
Never managed to pull this. Always end up with tiny bases and eventually lose momentum and stagnant. How do you even start this thing? Spacing normally and then increasing density or what?

[Anonymous No.5020834]

>>5020820
Yup. Early on you are going to screw yourself due to excessive micro and insufficient population. Sure, the "2 turns sooner to new base" is great, but quickly loses it's charm when you stop just making new bases (and that's not sustainable, because you are going to fall off behind quickly) and start to manage existing ones. Besides, the whole strategy relies heavily on having access to boreholes, crawlers and copious amount of formers. Unless you play as Gaians, you can forget about getting anywhere with the "full density" before first 50 or so turns, unless you have super-favourable land.

[Anonymous No.5020843]

>>5020834
Besides, if you base-crawl, you can forget about efficient micro or just any micro, eventually ending up with turns going for hour or two to just set up production with new technology. The full, 20 square bases are immensely more efficient in the long run, but have much longer set-up for full benefits.
Fringe-bases (assuming you are ever planning to stop base-crawling, which is not advised, the strategy relies on non-stop expansion) are always most productive of them all, if you slow down.

Said all that, base-crawling combined with Planetary Transit System is a nightmare for enemies, because you start with 3 pops and instantly set up new pods. If you are playing against humans, expect planet bursters.

[Anonymous No.5021157]

bump

[Anonymous No.5021956]

>>5021157
Provide content, rather than bumping

[Anonymous No.5022000]

>>5021956
content

[Anonymous No.5022357]

>>5021956
all right.

well, i'm the OP. i just finished my Gaian playthrough of this wonderful game again, and had a lot more success, thanks to kind anons. truly i have learned the power of the mindworms. getting the dream twister and my planet score up with social engineering was really helpful, a total gamechanger. i was starting to think it would be a complete slog trying to take cities with slow infantry...nope.

in the last post i mentioned that the game had become a standoff between the three remaining powers: the gaians, peacekeepers and spartans. the peacekeepers were the first to feel the wrath of /vr/ improved battle strategy and became our vassals. our game ended with the spartans fighting a series of desperate guerrilla wars against us (presumably, where they too are also the happiest. i imagine that somewhere colonel santiago is somewhere out there looking like pic rel. so, everybody gets what they want.)

it was also helpful to learn about the base cap, somewhere along i started getting drone riots left and right even though i had all the available facilities built. i looked at the psych info and the newly conquered do tend to get pretty restless.

but, all in all, a great success. thanks to the many kind anons for sharing your wisdom!

[Anonymous No.5022373]

>>5022357
so, i guess a follow-up question would be: what other builds/factions do you guys like to play? as opposed to my earlier games, i felt like i really 'got' the feeling of the Gaians on this one. by focusing around the synergy of psi/planet and using the right units (locusts, isles of the deep, demon boils) and getting the right secret projects (the dream twister, manifold harmonics - thanks anons) i really had a powerful army to work with. and they have a pretty awesome flag too.

but, now i'm not sure how i would go about similarly abusing the game with another faction. and i don't want to do the insane hive base crawl, that doesn't look like it would be enjoyable at all.

one other thing: the lore of this game really gives you the feeling, in the late game, of being a runaway transcendent power, it's just too amazing. there's a point beyond which you really feel like you're not just another faction jockeying for power, but a kind of historical force, the 'true' faction of the planet. maybe not all games are like this one, of course: the Gaians really steamrolled everyone this time and had the canon victory.

but, for next time. i kind of like the idea of the cybernetic consciousness, or maybe the spartans. anyways, what are your favorite factions to play and strategies to use?

[Anonymous No.5022420]

>>5022373
I mostly played with Zakharov. Success varied wildly depending if I get strong neighbours or not. If I could get through early game without building much of a military I end up researching everything and sweep all or almost all secret projects. And if someone tries to snatch something before me, you bet that base gets a visit by a fleet of jets equipped with nerve gas. Can't let that hunter-seeker fall in the wrong hands.

Oh and btw, the way to deal with drones at specific bases is you click on the exploited squares that make the least resources, stopping exploitation of a square automatically turns worker into specialist generating most psych, keep doing it until talents offset drones. Sometimes it's worth doing that to get bases into golden age.

[Anonymous No.5022484]

>>5022000
Trips and dubs of truth

[Anonymous No.5022510]

>>5022357
>the gaians, peacekeepers and spartans
>Spartans get booted by Gaians
Daily reminder this is canon within the game fluff, just follow quotes from Spartans and Gaians, along with the one you get for moving your HQ

>>5022373
Morgan makes fantastic warrior.
Yes, you read that right. Morgan, the biggest military wimp with small bases, bad Support rating and no bonuses to combat makes great fighter.
How? Probe teams. Probe teams don't need Probe rating, but money to burn. Literally fight with money. Support malnus? Just use supply crawlers extensively. You produce so much money, you can just keep swarming enemies with units, not to mention being able to still expand, grow and research, while any other faction would have to pick - war or expansion.
And yes, I know how ridiculous it sounds to call Morgan good at war, but it comes from understanding how wars are fought in SMAC, rather than assumptions about mechanics (Miriam for example is God-awful as prober, despite, you know, having a bonus, and the -1 Industry and inability to go Wealth makes Santiago hard-pressed for decent army)

[Anonymous No.5022516]

>>5022373
As for your potential picks:
CC is basically University without Uni's downsides. The fact they steal tech on conquest makes them even more broken. The "downside", -1 Growth, is barely noticable, since you can still go Demo-Plan. It's fun faction to play, don't get me wrong, but you just blitz tech tree and if somehow you are not a leader of research, you can easily pick up pace by coming for a visit to your neighbours
Nothing really to say here, they are so vanilla and open-ended with strategies you can do whatever and still win. You can grow HUGE due to +2 Efficiency

Spartans work only and only if you understand your strenghts. You've got +2 morale bonus (I hope you did a read on morale already) and you start with rover, along with tech to make more. This is MASSIVE bonus early on, because you can cover twice as much ground (and with rivers even more... because you know rivers count as roads, right?), fight anything on your path and essentially gain momentum that will push you forward. True, you can't into Wealth and your "best" choices are only good once you have Cloning Vats (Power and Thought Control have normally horrible downsides), but Spartans really are about knowing your strenghts and exploiting them, rather than trying to be good in everything. You want to be mobile, you want to be elite and you want to have as high morale as you can.
So shit you absolutely MUST have: Command Nexus and Cyborg Factory. You don't need that much of Morale, BUT it's also important denial strategy to your enemies. There is also Neural Amplifier that makes you laugh with your Morale at anyone even trying Psi attacks on your hard-core killing machines. Cloning Vats are also another must-have, but that's regardless of faction
Maritime Control Center is optional, depends on how water map has
Nano-Factory is nice, but late. Main advantage is halved upgrade costs, rather than ability to repair freely

Have you notice a pattern? All those projects have quotes from Santiago

[Anonymous No.5022523]

>>5022516
Also, if you are planning to play Spartans, you absolutely MUST know unit abilities. All of them. Your success depends almost entirely on ability to make untis with extra abilities and emply them correctly.
And copters are the most broken chassis you can have, forget needlejets. If you by chance land copter from unity pod (they are rare), you are set as any faction. Shit's just ridiculously long-range.

[Anonymous No.5022526]

>>5022516
>>5022523
Oh, and remember one more thing. Elite moves (maxed out-morale or very good veterans) have +1 movement. This means your infantry moves at the pace of rovers, rovers are tanks and tanks are even better. Makes MASSIVE difference, especially how easy it is to get elites with Spartans

[Anonymous No.5022665]

Random advice:
If you are making random custom map, NEVER exceed 512 horizontal and 256 vertical. "Standard" max size is 256x256. The game can handle "wider" maps in generation, but chokes on making sensible maps that are "taller" than 256. It basically generates tiny archipelagos, regardless of water settings. 512 for "wiidth" is twice as big map and also the limit of the system, after making it more it again starts to sprout tiny archipelagos and 90-95% of map is water

[Anonymous No.5022672]

>>5022665
Honestly, I just want a mod for SMAC/SMAX that has map of the planet in size of 512x512 and all 14 factions present. It would be glorious.

[Anonymous No.5023454]

>>5022420
>Oh and btw, the way to deal with drones at specific bases is you click on the exploited squares that make the least resources, stopping exploitation of a square automatically turns worker into specialist generating most psych, keep doing it until talents offset drones. Sometimes it's worth doing that to get bases into golden age.

holy smokes, i didn't even know you could do this.

>all those punishment spheres, now lying factory-sealed in their boxes, unused

would that in a portal/SMAC mash-up the companion cube were replaced with a punishment sphere. things that only exist on 4chan, alas.

>And if someone tries to snatch something before me, you bet that base gets a visit by a fleet of jets equipped with nerve gas. Can't let that hunter-seeker fall in the wrong hands.

this game always reminds me of what a failure of imagination i have. it's a good feeling.

[Anonymous No.5023930]

>>5023454
You essentially remove one of your "popukation" from work and make them a free-loading artist. It makes sense, if you played Civ 2 before.
How do you fail imagination? Please don't tell me you didn't just squash enemy bases before they finish projects.

[Anonymous No.5024334]

>>5023930
i started Civ with a little 4 and then 5. the dumbed-down easymode ones. but they have this feature in Civ 5, it just never occurred to me that it was in this. the more you know.

>How do you fail imagination?
mostly just by overlooking how many options the game gives you. the unit designer, for instance. in the last game i fell in love with the gloriously OP locusts that this thread helped me to produce.

it's not lost on me that the ascent to transcendence was paid for by untold thousands of enemy soldiers dying in about the most horrific possible way, that is, first suffering shit-your-pants psionic terror and then having their brains devoured. it's a good thing we're the Good Guys and large-scale terror-worm breeding doesn't count as an atrocity. sarah kerrigan can kick rocks, deirdre skye was the original queen of the swarm.

>Please don't tell me you didn't just squash enemy bases before they finish projects.
i don't think this came up, i either got most of the projects i was looking for or captured finished projects. i did interrupt a late-game spartan build of the ascent to transcendence, but but that's a special case.

in general i didn't make too much use of probe teams after the initial battles with yang (where they were absolutely crucial, because his human wave tactics were going to overwhelm me. and i got very lucky in one key encounter where i luckily had a battle ogre mark 1, without which i probably would have lost Gaia's Landing and the rest of this never would have taken place).

>>5022516
hmm. spartans sound interesting and complex. it sounds fun to play an all-out war game, tho. just preying on all of your neighbours with super-soldier blitzes.

i like your morgan strategy too, of combining the high energy income with really skilled probes, that's a great idea! hostile corporate buyouts and sabotage sound like a very Morgan way of doing business. it's even thematic.

what about the free drones? do you have a strategy for them?

[Anonymous No.5024549]

>>5024334
SMAC is all in all Civ 2.5 in terms of gameplay mechanics. Some things are unique to it (heavy role of morale, unit designer, very specific way of tile-improving), but everything else is the same as in Civ 2 and 3, which by extension means Civ 4 (social policies are the lasting legacy of SMAC for example, while the stiff "government type" is a thing that eded with Civ 3).
Either way, playing Civ 2, 3 and 4 (any of them) means you should easily be familiar with entire gameplay, aside quirks different from the Civ you came from. So for example unit stats might be problematic if you never played Civ 2 and 3, as starting with 4, there was no difference between attack and defense and units have just single power stat instead (shit change in design, if you ask me) or how social policies might be alien if you never played 4. And so on and forth. But having base in older Civs helps figuring out most of things about SMAC instantly.

As far as Free Drones go:
Build.
Just build. You have absurd +2 Industry bonus and can easily run Planned and Wealth for even more absurd +4 total. Add late game Eudaimonic (a preferred choice for AI) and it's +6 Industry. Or ignore those and go Knowledge/Cybernetic and you can get your research in green, while being super-efficient.
Nobody builds this cheap. Nobody. Just the basic +2 means everything is 20% cheaper. Who cares if you have -2 Research, if you can simply build more bases faster and in all of them get Network Node (getting those should be your 2nd tech, after getting Centauri Ecology).
Essentially, focus on your strenght and keep building. It doesn't mean base crawl, but it definitely means expansionist early game to make best use of your bonuses. Remember this faction can use Demo-Plan for pop-boom once having Creches, making expansion considerably faster.
>TBC

[Anonymous No.5024550]

>>5024549
Crucial secret projects:
Weather Paradigm (duh), Planetary Datalinks (super-crucial for early game catch-up), Universal Translator (2 free techs alone make it good), Planetary Energy Grid (great project that's cheaper for you to pull off), Network Backbone, Ascetic Virtues, Living Refinery (since you are running Democracy non-stop)
Denial projects (still useful, but mostly for denial):
Supercollider, Theory of Everything (build those in the same base, preferably one that will produce most energy of all your bases and contain Network Backbone)
Projects to ignore:
Manifold Harmonics, since you can't run Green anyway.

Everything else is purely situational and optional.

[Anonymous No.5024553]

>>5024550
Also, remember to build units with Clean Reactor.
And once you catch up technologically, forget the meme about Drones using human wave of cheap units, because you can produce high quality troops (tech-wise) with zero effort and cheaper than anyone else.

[Anonymous No.5024567]

>go Nwabudike
>spam bases as densely as possible
>spam as many boreholes as you can
>spam forests everywhere else
>spam supply crawlers so that you can instantly win secret project races
>mass generate credits
>probe purchase anyone that dares to so much as ask for a single credit or piece of research
>obliterate anyone with a sheer, endless wave of units if they so much as take one uninvited step onto your territory

[Anonymous No.5024579]

>>5024567
>go Lal
>spam bases in every direction
>spam forest everywhere
>spend part of income on psych
>have never-ending planned population boom democracy
>create an utopian society
>never build a single soldier
>vote on meltdown of solar caps to send deluge on the wicked

[Anonymous No.5024590]

>>5024579
Ulrik approves!

[Anonymous No.5024931]

>>5024549
>>5024550
>>5024553

anon you are the greatest. this is solid gold. i'm already looking forward to my next playthrough now. i think it's going to be the drones. just wanted to say thanks for sharing all the SMAC-wisdom.

the paperclip revolution shall be glorious!

[Anonymous No.5024980]

>>5024590
Daily reminder pirates are the worst faction ever concieved for the game and are one huge meme.

>>5024931
Not him, but since you are planning to run Drones, an important announcement:
SMAX has Cloudbase Academy. This means satellite-based strategies are more than viable once you build CA.
Which means boreholes are obsolete and should be replaced with just about anything else. Satellites make your population essentially eat half (pop needs 2 nutrient, satellites are equal to number of pops and each produce 1 nutrient), so you want to max-out food production in your bases, because 3 people a simple forest tile can feed (with satellites) will net you MORE than just putting down a borehole.
More details here:
https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/alpha-centauri/9331856-terraforming-for-dummies

[Anonymous No.5026381]

>>5022516
Not OP, but tried your insight on Spartans and it was first time since I started playing SMAC in '08 I've got fun with Santiago and her mucho-macho faction

[Anonymous No.5027743]

Don't you die on me, thread!

[Anonymous No.5027928]

>>5026381
what happened? share some highlights from your game, the spartans never get enough love, i want to vicariously experience some spartan conquest.

[Anonymous No.5028276]

>New guy in the office
>Doesn't talk to anyone, barely communicates at all
>Two weeks in, he gets a text message
>Mfw the ringtone is fragment of the tune playing when Yang builds new base
>Finally a way to communicate with
And they said playing video games won't be useful for being in HR.

[Anonymous No.5028360]

>>5027928
I started between Uni and Miriam, exploring entire continent we were on. I intentionally left them alone early on, focusing on exploration and quickly visiting other continent, along with sporadic tech trade with everyone who wasn't Miriam.
Eventually, the eons old "Knowledge vs Fundamental" happend and I used it as leverage to strenghten bond with Zak's AI, stream-rolling together over Believers (but I took most of the useful bases and orchiestrated wipe-out of useless, space-consuming bases build by AI). Once Miriam was out, I had super-loyal Uni on my side and the game was pretty much done.
Yang started throwing a fuss over people running Democratic later on, so I used the opportunity to gang against him (or rather - take part in the conquest, doing most of the heavy lifting and AI taking over his bases, since they were too far away for me to have any real value), so I ended up with very friendly, Gaians and Peacekeepers, too.
Then I just voted myself a new leader of the Planet, with my counter-candidate being Morgan, on whom nobody voted.
It was a pretty fun ride to take, because it was a nice mix of politicking and conquest, almost entirely based on the fact I had the most elite army on the Planet and all the military-enhancing Secret Projects. That one extra move for maxed out morale really helps and it was first time when I had real use of Maritime Control Center without playing Pirates (had to attack Yang from both sides of the continent, the abilit to get my ships move 3 extra squares further away was glorious; I had foils moving further than cruisers of other factions) rather than building it because.

[Anonymous No.5028365]

>>5028360
Also, since I had superior mobility from the start and then did my very best to keep it that way, I popped out most of the pods. Thus while AI wasn't getting credit boost nor random finish of on-going construction projects, it also didn't have to deal with being assaulted by massed worms and I earned extra credits. Not to mention the game engine simply gives higher chance to human players in getting bonuses from pods, so the map had a lot of more spots for good bases and/or crawling.

[Anonymous No.5028863]

>>5022373
Peacekeepers because UN superpower plus I wanted to clone my waifu

[Anonymous No.5028871]

>>5024980
>Daily reminder pirates are the worst faction ever concieved for the game and are one huge meme.

One of the reason I hate the expansion despite the fact an faction of anarchic cyberpunk allures me a lot.

[Anonymous No.5028872]

>>5028871
>an faction
*a faction

[Anonymous No.5029149]

>>5028871
>One of the reason I hate the expansion despite the fact an faction of anarchic cyberpunk allures me a lot.

one of the reasons why scaling up to 14 factions on an extra-large map would be nothing but bliss. it's hard to see these guys as being planet-conquering super-powers with a huge army, but i can't imagine a map that wouldn't be improved by having them in it, even just as a minor power with the world's greatest and most feared probe teams, monkeying things up for the Lals and Yangs and Deirdres by making deals for tech left and right and snagging cities and so on.

[Anonymous No.5029178]

>>5028871
Didn't Reynolds openly said "Sorry for pirates" on his twitter few years ago?

[Anonymous No.5029462]

>>5029178
are they really that bad?

[Anonymous No.5029525]

>>5029462
>Is "Le Shiver me timbers maymay" faction really that bad?
They are fanfic-tier faction. I mean it's not like SMAX factions are great and all, but Pirates are absolutely abysmal. The fact they are in the same time completely broken and OP (even for SMAX standards) doesn't help either.

[Anonymous No.5029613]

>>5029462
They can start expanding sea bases and building up a fleet safely before anyone else can get into the water, and get all the sea pods, while everyone else is busy fighting with their land neighbors. Nautilus sea bases are instrinsically more productive (extra mineral production, can build in deep sea tiles) than other factions', and their ships getting marine detachment built-in means any fight they win has a chance of automatically capturing the ship and adding it to their own fleet, even better if they attack a transport because that includes the troops inside. The -1 penalties to balance this out are barely noticeable.

[Anonymous No.5029649]

>>5029525
>>5029613
okay, so they can dominate at sea. but you will still need land units to take the bulk of the enemy bases. i still don't see what's so OP about this yet. grabbing the sea pods and a few extra ships? true, getting bonus armies from transports seems like a good deal. but i'm still not seeing what would make Reynolds need to apologize.

i haven't played them before, so don't shit on me too hard for asking this. just curious.

[Anonymous No.5029683]

>>5015357
>how do I git gud?

Pick Morgan. Get Money. Buy Everything. Win Game. Hope you're not near the Hive or Believers.

[Anonymous No.5030124]

>>5029683
>Befriend Hive
>Send it after Believers
Works every time, each time

[Anonymous No.5030129]

>>5029649
>you will still need land units to take the bulk of the enemy bases
Ever heard about melting polar ice caps?
The only thing that prevents everyone from crazy levels of pollution is global warming. Otherwise water level will rise, fucking you sideways. With Pirates, you couldn't care less, because more water = more profit. And since they produce more minerals AND their bases already are water-based, they don't even need to prepare for the rise of water.
Not to mention you can just vote for that using UN Council.
Oh, and pollution-based fungal explosions and sudden attack of mind-worms? It only works on land, on water it doesn't apply NOR does it destroy tile upgrades, just covers them with fungus.

And we can ignore it all and add the following: Pirates start with such massive advantage, the fact they might eventually need to build land-based units is meaningless. They simply have early game that pushes them so far ahead of everyone else.

So Reynolds apologized for a meme faction with utterly broken mechanics. Especially since SMAX introduced a bunch of base improvements that further made Pirates OP

[Anonymous No.5030736]

>>5030129
aah, that's brilliant. of course! the pirate strategy really writes itself!

holy shit, the number of things this game allowed for. i basically never use the terraforming features but the ecology of planet and the things they account for - increasing mindworm boils, jamming the comms, sea levels rising and falling, volcanoes - fuck. it's just amazing to me.

i don't think i've even deployed a satellite in this game. there's that whole menu where you can make orbital attacks on other satellites and things that i never even interact with or use. i should try that out.

i'm almost positive that the third expansion for Beyond Earth was going to be dedicated to the orbital layer, since they were introducing some cool features with that, maybe even orbital cities too. on the one hand it's too bad we'll never see that, but on the other Beyond Earth is in general a conversation about sadness and disappointment.

[Anonymous No.5030907]

>>5030736
>i don't think i've even deployed a satellite in this game
In SMAC, satellites are useful, but have long pay-off. In SMAX, due to Cloudbase Academy, satellites are outright OP. Sure, you can lose them all in single solar flare, but you can then rebuild them in 3 turns (or sooner, depending on number of bases you have and satellite demand)

As for BE, the best approach is to pretend it never happend.

[Anonymous No.5030924]

>>5030907
what's the tech that unlocks them? i understand they're good for resource collection and make boreholes obsolete. but then you can shoot them at other factions' bases as well? it's never occurred to me to use them but now i'm going to gun for them on my current run.

sorry, i know this question seems stupid and i can figure this out when i play, but this thread has been a goldmine.

[Anonymous No.5030989]

>>5030924
The first tech for satellites is Orbital Spaceflight (this also lets you build missiles), more advanced satellites are techs after this. You need an Aerospace Complex to launch satellites from a base. There's one separate satellite for each resource type, which adds +1 per turn of that resource to all your bases. This adds up for each satellite you have (eg. 3 Hydroponics Labs in orbit gives all your bases +3 food), but this is then halved at bases without an Aerospace Complex (ignored if you have the Space Elevator secret project). There's also Orbital Defense Pods which shoot down incoming missiles, or you can use the satellite menu to sacrifice one to destroy another faction's satellite.

[Anonymous No.5031050]

>>5030989
>There's one separate satellite for each resource type, which adds +1 per turn of that resource to all your bases. This adds up for each satellite you have (eg. 3 Hydroponics Labs in orbit gives all your bases +3 food), but this is then halved at bases without an Aerospace Complex (ignored if you have the Space Elevator secret project).

okay, i understand. and, holy shit, that really would be huge! i guess there's a reason why it comes along so late in the game.

>The first tech for satellites is Orbital Spaceflight (this also lets you build missiles)

SMAC is also the only game in the civ series that i think accurately depicts the scale of atomic weapons. obviously in my first game i rushed to these and threw them around because, you know, you have to see it for yourself. and because when i was a kid i had this weird obsession with atomic warfare, the way that writers would talk about having The Bomb as if it were a kind of a deity (and, i suppose, that's still true).

but this game also, i think, would really give you an accurate description of how truly destructive a missile war would be. i've never played a game where there was a protracted exchange of fusion-buster weapons on that scale, but they really don't disappoint. imagine if they had allowed for something like the Annihilaser from Planetary Annihilation to be incorporated into this, it would be really insane (or, if they let you use orbital satellites to shoot down missiles, as you could in Supremacy). i guess the fusion busters are enough as they are, really.

figured i'd share this, although the hard-core players of this game already know about it. it's just a guy waxing poetic on the various lore and things in this game. really interesting to read.

https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/introduction/

[Anonymous No.5031068]

Every game of SMAC I play, Yang, Miriam and Santiago end up overrunning and destroying every other faction on Planet.
Is there something I can tweak to tone them down a bit, or at least give the other factions a fighting chance?

[Anonymous No.5031092]

>>5031068
i'm on my free drones game now and i edited out yang to take his place. everything else you said is exactly what happened to me too. miriam has completely taken over the eastern continent, where she was apparently alone, and now santiago is devouring morgan and deirdre to take over the one in the west.

i would denounce their naked imperialism had i not backstabbed lal in about the most nakedly cynical manner possible (and i'm going for the university next).

[Anonymous No.5031380]

>>5031068
Give Growth as a focus to every AI. Every single one. It makes AI much more competent, regardless of faction. If you ever wondered why AI controlled Morgan or University are so damn bad - it's lack of Growth as their focus.

[Anonymous No.5032540]

>>5031380
Fucking this. Growth solves 7 out of 10 issues AI has. In case of Morganites it turns them into a fucking economical powerhouse they should always be.
AI is horrible in executing most of the focuses, but Growth combines a lot of elements in it for economic prosperity and AI is relatively good at applying it, as opposed to, say, Economic.

[Anonymous No.5032586]

>>5031380
>>5032540
How do you add focuses to AI? I'm using GOG version, if that helps

[Anonymous No.5032691]

>>5031380
>>5032540
This is by editing faction text files, right?
Any other suggested balance changes for the original factions? I'd rather make them myself than use some of the more drastic mods out there.

[Anonymous No.5032882]

>>5032586
>>5032691
Unfortunaltelly yes. The existing faction editor, "facedit", only supports single focus, or "emphasis" as it calls it. Instead, you need to add it manually in the text files. Naturally make back-up first, then try toying around.

And nope, Growth is all you really need. For whatever reason AI is really damn good on executing it, while utterly failing at (theoretically superior) Support, Economy (ESPECIALLY Economy) and Industry. And since originally factions are limited to having just one focus, if they happen to have any of those three, they are fucked. Research is also faulty (insufficient expansion by the time mid game begins), but not as much as those three.

[Anonymous No.5033249]

>>5015357

JFC, how hard is it to remake this game with better graphics?

I was so hoping that Pandora First Contact was this game but more modern but it turned out just to look like AC and not really be it.

[Anonymous No.5033272]

>>5033249
No game is in less need of a remake than SMAC. I returned to it after 15 years, I was struck by how modern it is, in any aspect imaginable. Better keep those Morganite claws off of the game...

[Anonymous No.5033362]

>>5033249
Wasn't there a mod "updating" the clips using HD release of Baraka? So at least that part is covered?

[Anonymous No.5033367]

>>5033272
Higher graphics resolution, extended music tracks, and some better unit animations would still be nice though.

[Anonymous No.5033393]

>>5033367
I've got a better one:
14 factions at once, map twice and four times the size of current "huge"

[Anonymous No.5033420]

>>5033367
>>5033393
Those, combined with more intracite terrain shape. I mean sure, SMAC is one of the best modelled terrain ever commited to 4X (which speaks really bad about the genre when 20 years old game still is the best), but it has its issues.
And let's not forget elephant in the room - better AI. Even the one used in mods and turned into "official" would work.

[Anonymous No.5033665]

>>5033393
I'd like to see a version where you start out with the original seven factions, and the expansion factions slowly 'appear' over time, maybe tied to specific projects or tech milestones. Like if your drones riot enough you spawn Domai, or if you found a lot of sea bases you spawn Pirates. Maybe aliens could spawn later too.

Would be better (and make more sense) than just only starting new games with each faction.

[Anonymous No.5033798]

>>5033665
that's a good idea. other factions could support spawning the new factions with probe teams as well. why take over a city or incite a riot when you could be secretly bankrolling an entirely new faction that spawns with a positive relation towards you?

[Anonymous No.5034014]

>>5033367
>>5033420
True, but you know how remakes work - there is no way the devs would restrain from making it casual so that they attract "modern players".

[Anonymous No.5034254]

>>5033665
Would be unbalanced as fuck. Not that SMAX factions are balanced, but this would just be insanely unbalanced

[Anonymous No.5034256]

>>5034014
Only that you are wrong, jaded and pointlessly cynical. Just because you saw a bunch of high-profile failures at remakes and late sequels doesn't mean it absolutely has to be true.
Pic semi related

[Anonymous No.5034293]

>>5034014
Because SMAC is totally not a casual game. Literally my mother plays it. Want to know the kicker? She doesn't speak English beyond knowing about 400 words. But the only thing it prevented was learning in-depth lore, rather than inability to play the game. In fact, she's pretty damn good with Yang, the same way she's really damn good with Necropolis in HoMM3.
So if a retired social worker can play it, how it's not casual?

[Anonymous No.5035128]

>>5034256
>>5034293
I am cynical. I would like that you guys are right and I'm wrong, but small chance that is going to happen. Perhaps a total conversion of another similar game would be better? I've recently started playing Dune Wars - it's amazing! It's just that development time would be unreal, but it might churn out a good game.

[Anonymous No.5036391]

>>5035128
The first and foremost problem with SMAC remake or remaster or whatever is the copyright issue. Rights are split over few different parties that are absolutely unwilling to cooperate on the matter and/or demand exorbitant sums of money.
Then, the game would require assembling the old team doing the design and putting Reynolds in charge. Now I don't know how much you stalk old devs, but Reynolds is currently completely out of the video game industry, doing fucking streams of games to earn some extra cash to his bank stipend. And for previous decade or so he was busy making mobile games as a way of survival.
Then there is the fact what the game would have to contain to maintain its spirit and what would have to be avoided, along with all the temptations on the way.
And in the end, there are of course all the countless shortcuts that are soooooo god-damn appealing to use when producing a game, not only today, but ever.

So it's not like you are cynical and I'm overly optimistic. I just know what kind of shit it would take to make the remake/remaster in the first place and I'm realistic about it - there is slim chance of it working out, which is good, along with rather large chance someone would at any point of development decided "fuck it" and cut things down for quick production time.
But I know shit like that can be done, giving us games like Siberia 3 or Broken Sword 5 and certain utterly new, indie franchises, as long as the dev team really believes in what they are doing, rather than being sell-outs looking for quick buck, a la Brian Fargo and co. (who is the exact middle point between "dedicated dev wants to make game of his dreams" and "cynical asshole trying to milk own fandom for quick buck", so he's not even bad guy per se, just the lowest point on the scale before the game actively and deliberately aims for quick buck and nothing else)

[Anonymous No.5036397]

>>5036391
Oh, and one more thing:
It won't be a cheap project, even if we ignore entirely copyright stuff and related to it financial issues. We are talking about 15+ mil, which is a fucking lot in terms of indie project and the point where some publisher cuts in to add their funds, but also push their own imput. Which is probably the most feared part of the project, as it would pretty much shot it dead in the water.as quality remake/remaster and instead turned it into a cheap knock-off

[Anonymous No.5037207]

>>5036397
I myself am into indie game dev thing so I have a basic idea of how that works. What I said was in regards of how it would function if all the "back work" was done - funds secured, team assembled, time reserved for the project and all that. I agree with you that these aspects are already nigh impossible to resolve successfully.

I knew that Reynolds was in the mobile games industry, didn't know that he couldn't earn enough that way so that he had to turn to streams. It's a shame what today's world does to the creative people. Percentage of such magnificent titles is ever shrinking and industry devouring people and churning out casualized "experiences" is a big part of that picture.

But I would like to return to what I previously said - yes, it would probably be nice to have SMAC with 2018 graphics and I would certainly buy it, but the game as it is now is unbelievably modern and polished (not talking about the balance issues) and even if there is never a remake of it, I think SMAC will stand the test of time.

[Anonymous No.5037884]

>>5037207
Consider this:
We have SMAC threads on /v/ and /tg/ on regular basis. By people barely older than the game itself.
So as far as standing test of time, the game did great. Especially when you compare with Civ 2 (great, complete classic, but obviously dated) and Civ 3 (red-haired cousing from the poor side of the family)

[Anonymous No.5038545]

>>5037884
That's precisely what I am saying. Some games are hard to consume these days as they are, while SMAC is obviously not one of them. A remake would be nice but (luckily!) it's not absolutely necessary.

[Anonymous No.5038687]

>>5038545
My favourite comparison is Master of Orion 2 vs. SMAC or even Civ 2. MoO2 is close to unplayable from modern perspective (and was like that since early 00s), while the only issue Civ 2 has is (relatively) low res, but gameplay is perfectly fine and accessible.

[Anonymous No.5038901]

>>5037884
>Civ3
What was wrong with that game as an iterative improvement over Civ2? It got us standardized Civilization traits (later reprised in 4), some nicer systems and higher overall difficulty for those who want a challenge. About the only complaint I have is the deranged looking portraits where the leaders look at you and then slowly smile at you without ever breaking eye contact and you feel like you're Chief Bromden.

[Anonymous No.5038981]

>>5038901
AI, anon.
AI was literally broken. Not in term of being disfunctional or poor, but literally not working at fucking all. And it was never fixed.
And Conquest introduced a bunch of changes that pretty much disabled a lot of strategic elements introduced in Civ3

And consider this:
Civ 3 was my entry point to the franchise and I absolutely love it. Resources were great, borders were great, culture was absolutely fantastic addition and the game to this day is my go-to "map maker" for /tg/ purposes.
It's a game with great and iconic elements with lasting impact, but the execution was fucked and as a whole, the game was a STEP-DOWN in terms of gameplay and replay value.
Civ 3 is the same as Alien 3 was for it's own franchise, if you think about it: all the great elements crammed into universally disliked, flaved final product.

[Anonymous No.5038992]

>>5038981
AI is pretty bad in pretty much every Civ game, though. Civ2 in particular I had to stop with (it was my entry point) because on Deity you end up cruising around on 50 cities when the AI has 9 cities and doesn't do anything, they just shuffle uselessly and fall behind in tech.
In Civ3 if I want to satisfy my inner masochist I can at least play on Sid.
About the only game in the Civ series that had non-intrusive (but still bad) AI was 4.
Civ2's AI for instance is a ridiculously massive cheater and it still doesn't leverage it that well. Case in point, Civ2's AI once managed to Incite Revolt in my capital city, which is illegal. They still got steamrolled 5 turns later because railways.

[Anonymous No.5039013]

>>5015357

Polite reminder that the /tg/ thread is at >>>/tg/61905997

[Anonymous No.5039018]

>>5017405

If you don't want to just go for the mindworm rape:

Tech up to helicopters.

From then on your only units should be pure attack helicopters to conquer cities, and pure defense infantry to hold them. Maybe make a few paratrooper defenders to keep up with the choppers.

You can conquer a continent in ten turns this way.

[Anonymous No.5039060]

>>5030907
>As for BE, the best approach is to pretend it never happend.
Hey, there is a decent bit of flavor text in the game it just hidden away in the civopedia rather than actually tied to the building.

[Anonymous No.5039161]

>>5039060
I don't know if it's decent. Meaninglessly explaining the technical working of something that's moderately-hard scifi at best is a waste of time, rather than trying to convey the effect that the given unit/building/wonder has on your society.

[Anonymous No.5039175]

>>5039161
http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Abyssal_Mirror_(CivBE)
http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Crawler_(CivBE)
http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Precog_Project_(CivBE)
Its not great but there are some gems in the rough. They may not be diamonds but with some polish they could legitimately shine.

[Anonymous No.5039180]

>>>/tg/61905997

[Anonymous No.5039184]

>>5039175
I kind of liked the Crawler one a bit, but what does it do in game? Fuck all. Plus 25 percent towards production for wonders and buildings not only doesn't line up with the description in the slightest, it's also incredibly boring and almost never worth actually investing in. Even a rather "eh" wonder in AC like the space elevator is far far better.

[Anonymous No.5039191]

>>5039184
Never said the game was good mechanically
Only that the flavor has promise
All their effects are boring ass stat bonuses rather than total gameplay changers like in AC.

[Anonymous No.5039196]

>>5039191
Fair enough. I just get kind of sad sometimes that the people that started the 4x genre are so damn bad at them nowadays.

[Anonymous No.5039218]

>>5033665
As I recall, the aliens do indeed turn up later than the humans. If you play as them, you join in a few turns after the humans have faffed around for a while.

[Anonymous No.5039257]

>>5038992
You clearly didn't get what I meant.
When I say "broken AI" I don't mean it was bad. I'm talking AI ignoring its scripts and acting on full random mode (but not quite), because there was a bug in half of the files, making it pretty much impossible to unfuck.
So it's not about the AI cheating, being lame or whatever else. It's about the AI not working.

[Anonymous No.5039551]

>>5039257
Ah, I see.
I recall something similar in Civ2's Multiplayer Gold Edition, where they tried to make the game harder and completely fucked the AI as well - AI is set to be hyper-aggressive at the beginning of every single turn, nullifying any diplomatic bonus you ever rack up with them instantly. On top of that, they were cranked up to just keep declaring war, backstabbing, and throwing endless units at you with no rhyme or reason.

[Anonymous No.5039569]

>>5039551
In case of Civ 3, AI is absolutely unable to use diplomacy, because the script for doplomacy was never delivered. Thus it is unable to understand even the basic weight of diplomatic actions or relationship level.
Add to that fuckery caused by Play the World and Conquest and the game has AI that is unable to do anything beyond handful of preset actions AND conducting diplomacy on any level.
The irony is, the pre-set bits are big enough to create the illusion of AI being capable of any sort of functionality, so most people have no clue how fucked it is, since on surface level it's peachy.

[Anonymous No.5040145]

>>5039551

Gotta keep up with the Nuclear Gandhi tradition.

[Anonymous No.5040263]

[Anonymous No.5040735]

>>5040263
>Yang
>6 votes
>Morgan
>3 votes
Let me guess - Santiago jumped on Morgan and everyone else ganged on Yang. Being the only one with an actual brain, you ended up taking over entire continent.

[Anonymous No.5040787]

>>5040735

I wonder what that world looks like.

[Anonymous No.5040868]

>>5040787
Honestly?
It's early game diplo-victory, just judging from the general size of population. Deirdre is smol, which she is in early game (and then explode), Miriam is at 100 (which is like 12 bases) and Santiago is at <100, so... yeah, it's an early game, where Zak was probably curbed in first 30-40 turns.
Lal population here is 397. Considering extra talent + HGP secret project along with bigger bases, that's about 25-30 bases, depending on variables.

But it's an educated guess, nothing more

[Anonymous No.5040901]

>>5033393

But the AX factions and lore are garbage

[Anonymous No.5040910]

Im rather suprised at how early the hive got canonicaly taken out. They barely make it past early mid game

[Anonymous No.5040934]

>>5040901
Only Pirates are garbage due to being OP meme shit.
Domai is as good as any of the original seven and after a while I learned to appriciate even Data Angels.

The real answer is to have certain factions as outright minors or something like city-states (but better implemented) from Civ 5 or potential effect of prolonged drone rebellion, rather than outright starters that are separate "big" factions. This way both CC and DA work out perfectly and Domai with Cha'Dawn are fine. Aliens, despite being "OP" (that's on fucking purpose, for fuck's sake, people, how hard it is to understand?!), start later and with penalties toward "standard" game, so they are more of flavour than factions.
Either way, all 13 factions and let's pretend Pirates never happend.

>>5040910
Literally what? Yang is present till the fucking end. It's Miriam and that disappear in early late game from quotes and of course Spartans are canonically wiped out/conquered/both by Gaians

[Anonymous No.5041206]

>>5040735
>>5040787
>>5040868
Good guesses, that's more or less it. Basically pulled ahead with pop booming, everyone declared vendetta on the big scary monster, and being in perpetual vendetta with ants was so tedious that I called it the second MMI unlocked diplo victory. Deirdre would have been 2~3 times the size, but she was the only one I shared a landmass with, so I took about half her bases before she was willing to declare truce (for 4 turns).

Only had 20 bases, 5 of which were captured and still small, but most of them were at 18 from lal+ascetic virtues, and stealing the empath guild from the gaians further inflated the vote count.

It was honestly a bit unengaging. Hadn't even seen any of the other factions when the reports started coming in - Morgan, Zak, Yang have all taken escape pods and landed on itty bitty islands where they cease to be relevant for the entire rest of the game. Eventually found Yang holed up with his single base on a literal single-tile-island biting at the believers ankles. And then everyone else gets a whole continent to themself.

[Anonymous No.5041209]

>>5039018
nice, i'll definitely try this.

[Anonymous No.5041212]

>>5040910
>>5040934

can somebody post the canonical order of succession? i'm too much of a brainlet to have ever realized that a story was being told in the tech-quotes and the lore about factions disappearing. what happens? who kills off who, and who's the last faction remaining?

[Anonymous No.5041252]

>>5041212
This dude did the best write-up of the Game I've ever read (Brian Renoldys approved)

https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/introduction/

[Anonymous No.5041254]

>>5040934
Yang is not present to the very end m8, he dissapears from tech quotes and secret projects a little bit after ascetic virtues

[Anonymous No.5041339]

>>5041212
Canonically, Gaians win Transcendence victory with either Uni or Peacekeepers as pact member.
Morgan Industries is reduced to "just" mega-corp, lead by Morgan's nephew, Spartans are wiped out by Gaians without even knowing they were at war (they never stopped thinking mindworms are just planet going on their asses), Miriam fucked up something with teleportation tech, taking out the leadership of her faction (including herself) and Yang misteriously disappears somewhere in late game, either holing down under the surface entirely or getting eaten by mindworms

[Anonymous No.5041528]

Ho closely packed together should my bases be?

[Anonymous No.5041532]

>>5041528
>>5017998

[Anonymous No.5041536]

>>5041532
I feel like I shouldn't have to have stated this but
How closely packed together should my bases be if i'm not cheating

[Anonymous No.5041552]

>>5041536
4 squares. How's that even a question? Each base, city or whatever else in Civ 1-4 and thus by proxy SMAC and CtP1 has the radius of 2 squares each direction So optimal placement means base, two squares of free space for that base to work, two spaces of free space for new base to work, new base. While in early game it might seem like a waste of time, once you have sufficient amount of crawlers, you by default build roads first, send colony pods later, meaning you easily get instant profit. Seriously, the whole "every turn matters, especially in early game" is only true if you are playing on small maps and in multiplayer. Otherwise the sheer size of the map is going to prolong your game until at least 2350s, if not longer.

[Anonymous No.5041631]

>>5041552
And before you ask - it creates a 2x2 empty lots between 4 bases. That's where you put out shit for crawlers and/or just construct condensers/echelon mirrors.

Speaking of which:
If you plan to build a new base on a tile that is 2k meters above sea level or higher and so are surrounding tiles, build echelon mirron on the tile where you plan to build the base BEFORE you build the base. This way you will get echelon mirror bonus on surrounding tiles, essentially giving them +1 energy when they have solars build.
And as already stated itt, you want to build solars on tiles 2k meters and higher above sea level due to higher energy yield than forests. With mirror, that's not just +1/+2 (2k/3k) over forest, but +2/+3, so go fucking figure.
Also, if you ever plan to use condensers and NOT save-scum with them, you will absolutely have to use them on regular basis, rather than one or three spread over your entire empire, as they will fuck up rain patterns over vast areas.

[Anonymous No.5041678]

>>5041552
>>5041631
>inb4 roads only allow to cover 3 squares and distance is 4
It's not an issue when facing AI and if you are facing a human opponent attacking you, he's going to use artillery against you anyway to even the odds or tip them on his side, thus making stacking units WORSE option than having them spread around and blocking certain avenues of assault.

[Anonymous No.5041761]

>>5041536
It varies, depending on the terrain, your tech level, and your objective.

If you're talking super-postgame-optimized, bases are limited to 127 pop, so each base would need 10 farm-enricher-condenser squares+satellites, and that doesn't tesselate very well. Or maybe your bases can build anything in one turn, so you want them as close as possible to maximize the number of queues. But stuff like that's also a massive pain in the ass, and totally not worth it.

More, generally speaking, while you might want to have every base using each of the 20 squares in its radius, you'd need hab domes to go above 14, and those are relatively late game tech. And even then, you'd need hab complexes to go above 7, so you can get by with significant overlap early game. But putting them super close together makes them compete for open land, and it might not be worth it if you have to spend a ton of former turns clearing fungus.

But besides all that, before the point where bases can finally use all of their tiles, specialists become as good (or better) as working a tile(except for minerals, but hurrying to turn cash into production makes that not matter so much). So it can also depend on what a base is for, if it needs tiles for minerals, or if it just needs a few farms to grow specialists. And all of those are just vague strategic concerns, and more tactical issues can take precedence. Maybe defense is an issue, so you want them 3 apart. Or it's early enough that you need to build bases around what special resources you find, as opposed to keeping to some 'optimal' spacing. Or maybe the terrain just isn't accommodating and you have to build with what you get.

Basically, it varies, so if you can't decide on an answer, don't worry about it too much.

[Anonymous No.5041859]

>>5041761
I'm just wondering because the images earlier in the thread showing that 15+ bases is normal for mid game meanwhile i'm sitting at like 7 as zak already launching satellites.

[Anonymous No.5041909]

>>5041859
Nothing wrong with that, just a matter of wide vs tall. There's a lot of variables besides, and number/spacing of bases doesn't always correspond to their quality. For example, you could have a couple of bases that are basically just staging areas for military ops, a handful of att/def buildings and otherwise unproductive. Maybe some of them were built later and never spun up into being productive before the game ended. Maybe you're building cities everywhere for the extra support and spitting out cheap units, but they don't contribute economically. Maybe focusing on a few really big bases that are terraformed to hell and crawl outside their radius. Lots of strategies, so differing by a factor of 2 doesn't necessarily tell you a whole lot.

[Anonymous No.5042653]

>>5041761
>It varies, depending on the terrain, your tech level, and your objective.
Hahahahahahahahahaha
Oh, wait, you are serious, let me laugh harder
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>>5041859
There is nothing wrong on going tall. However, if you are going for satellites, they are most beneficial in wide. Each base gets the bonus from a single satellite, so you can get +7 energy at 7 bases, but +40 at 40 bases. Satellites are pretty much only really worth it with wide growth, especially if it's SMAX and you can build Coudbase Academy.

[Anonymous No.5042659]

>>5041859
>>5042653
Also, it made me realise something. There are really only two stages of growth, as far as I'm concerned:
Early game explosion to get as many bases going as possible AND late-mid game explosion, where you have enough formers to set up entire base in virgin area within a single turn, with all tiles improved. In late early and most of mid-game, you are going to upgrade your bases due to lift of resource caps and ability to profit finally. In late game there isn't much point or profit on next bases and usually there are no sensible spots anywhere left in the first place. But in general, expansion in any other period of the game other than the two listed is pretty rare and definitely low intensity if it happens.

[Anonymous No.5042684]

Just started a new game...

[Anonymous No.5042696]

>>5042684

[Anonymous No.5042749]

>>5042684
You'll have a nice castle with a moat there.

[Anonymous No.5042818]

>>5042684
Sweet Jesus, I'm dying here.
Ironically, this would be a perfect start for Pirates.

[Anonymous No.5042829]

>>5042818
I absolutely hate random map generator
>Set water to 30-50%
>Play as anyone but Pirates
>Tiny-ass archipelago and maximum water coverage possible
>Play as Pirates
>Minimal water coverage possible, regardless of setting
It's like RNG isn't really RNG and it all happens on purpose.

Does anyone have any knowledge of some improved map generator? So it gives better maps than random slashes of land over vast oceans? I'm sick and tired of having to making new maps on continous basis for 2-5 hours until I finally get something with satisfying continents. SMAC really does suffer in random maps from Civ 2 retarded map-generation options and lack of the sophistication Civ 3 brought to the table with type of land masses being generated.

[Anonymous No.5043078]

>>5042684

[Anonymous No.5043274]

>>5041859
You are playing Zak. Each of your bases has a free Network Node. Going wide is the only sane solution.

[Anonymous No.5043340]

>>5043274
This.
You don't have to build them, nor pay upkeep and you have +2 Research beyond that. You also have extra drones from high pop, meaning you don't really want to get high pop count early on, at least not in terms of population within given base.
So building new base means you have for free +50% more research (and you don't have to pay 1 energy of upkeep, which usually nullifies the bonus in early game) and your technology is cheaper to research too. Thus going tall is utterly counter-productive, because 14 bases population 3 each are going to be more profitable than 7 bases population 6.

[Anonymous No.5043352]

>>5043340
Maybe early on, but once you get hab complexes and can pop-boom, all of the multiplier buildings make tallness much more attractive. That is, for example, 3 14-sized bases would be more productive still, since you only need to build things like energy banks/hospitals/labs 3 times instead of 14 times, and paying less maintenance accordingly. The problem is getting the technology to go tall in the first place, in which process going wide can help. But once you have it, it's generally better to make your existing bases tall, as opposed to going even more wide.

[Anonymous No.5043360]

>>5043352
I think I made myself pretty clear I'm talking about early game with context alone. And satellites are definitely early game, at least the nutrient ones.

[Anonymous No.5043364]

>>5043352
Different anon, but who the fuck is going to build anything beyond base necessities in pop 3 bases? And they are still going to be more productive if in sufficient quantity than bunch of tall bases if you have some upkeep-free building in them, like in case of Uni and their Nodes. You aren't building more bases for the sake of making them rich, you are building more bases as a way of containing your drone issues and using your faction's advantage of free building, along with multipliers from it. Which in turn allows to tech-up faster, so you can eventually start going tall, or rather - keep getting wide, but with decent bases.

[Anonymous No.5043425]

>>5043360
Huh. I usually find satellites to start the transition from mid to late game, so I dunno. Even just the nutrient ones let bases ramp up so quickly.

[Anonymous No.5043651]

>>5043425
>I usually find satellites to start the transition from mid to late game
>Satellites
>Late game
Literally how? Mid-game starts once you can build Orbital Power Transmitter

[Anonymous No.5043754]

>>5043651
imo, mid game starts the second you get everything you need to pop boom effectively. crawlers, demo+planned, lifted nutrient restrictions lets your bases get big, quickly+cheap. what I usually do is farm a rainy square, crawl it for the 3 nutrients, and then that lets the base work 3 more forests, holding them over until I get tree farms up. Then, once they're big, switch to free market, and all of those boosted forests make you rich. Just the massive spike from turning all of those 3s into 14s, with building multipliers, is such a massive spike. And then it's a long way to hab complexes, which give a similar boost into late game.

While satellites are great, I feel they don't help your tall bases a ton while they're capped at 14, since tree farms+hybrid forests yield plenty of resources already. Nutrient satellites are good if you want some leeway to turn workers into specialists, or prop up production/military bases with little infrastructure, but your production centers shouldn't need them. And while power transmitters are a nice boost, they're imo the weakest satellite since you can already get 3eco/2labs from an engineer, or 3/2/3 from a free market forest, and an extra 1 energy on top of that isn't game changing. And around that point, iirc I'll have a new research every 2-4 turns, so it's not a long wait to more paradigm-shifting techs.

[Anonymous No.5043845]

>>5043754
Different anon and early game lasts until you still have all three resource caps in place. You can be running a demo-plan and still have caps in place.

[Anonymous No.5043848]

>>5043754
Also
>Free 14 minerals
>Free 14 energy
>Not helping much
You must be kidding

[Anonymous No.5044326]

>>5043848
Energy is mostly meaningless after certain threshold, which is easily achieved by just working tiles, but true, extra minerals are very noticable, each and every single one of them.

[Anonymous No.5045027]

>>5044326
>Energy is mostly meaningless after certain threshold
You can rush build units.

[Anonymous No.5045049]

[Anonymous No.5045086]

>>5045027
That's not the point.
The point is - energy credits come with ease and in quantity. Average worked square delivers AT LEAST 2 energy, further amplified by early and mid game improvements in the base. Meanwhile, average square delivers 1 minerals. Well, 1.25, but that's beyond the point, when energy easily can be triple.
Meaning after certain point, you produce so much energy, a difference of 14 in either direction is meaningless. But difference of 14 minerals? Great, you produce enough to have instant production at a discout, since you got more minerals produced than the required 11 to get discount on rush-build, regardless of anything else and in all your bases.

tl;dr small amount of minerals has more impact than small amount of energy

[Anonymous No.5045091]

>>5045049
I would give up on my kidney for a chance to read all the books mentioned in SMAC.

[Anonymous No.5045548]

>>5042684
It's funny all by itself, but the best bit is how all the tiles but one are flat

[Anonymous No.5045824]

>>5042684

[Anonymous No.5045837]

>>5033665
If I recall correctly Planetfall mod for civ4 had something like that.

[Anonymous No.5045867]

>>5036391
>but Reynolds is currently completely out of the video game industry, doing fucking streams of games to earn some extra cash to his bank stipend


He is responsible for the fun I had playing Civ2, Alpha Centauri and Rise of Nations. I feel bad whenever I hear what he does these days.

[Anonymous No.5045883]

>>5017620
>destroy the enemy's land improvements.

Seconding this. Personally I like building a handful of locust units (half a dozen or so, usually) and have them do nothing more than swarm around enemy territory, destroying their tile improvements.

If you can't build locusts yet, any unit with multiple moves will do, but I find locusts excel at it.

[Anonymous No.5045918]

>>5039018
I've tried that before... Unless you've got a significant tech lead, and therefore good weapons, then your choppers are going to be getting shot down a lot if the enemy has the Tracking special ability and/or Aerospace Complexes. Probe teams can take care of the latter, fortunately.

[Anonymous No.5045946]

>>5041552
>4 squares

This is terrible advice. You're not going to be utilizing the entire 20 tiles of free land around your base until your base is size 20. TWENTY! Do you have any idea how long that's going to take?

I almost always build my bases with no more than two spaces in between any two adjacent ones. Infantry units can be moved to adjacent bases in a single turn, provided roads, and with proper terraforming you won't need more worked tiles than you can get with bases this close together anyway.

[Anonymous No.5045975]

Another noob question:how do I best utilize talents?

[Anonymous No.5046103]

>>5039551
Speaking of Multiplayer gold, does anyone knows where I can get the original vanilla version or some patch which restores the gold version back to it?
All download is of gold version.

[Anonymous No.5046230]

>>5045867
He himself doesn't mind and is very sincere about it. He earned what he wanted and now lives off the percentage, being basically a neet by choice

>>5045883
AI cheats on production anyway, no point bothering with razing the countryside.

>>5045946
17 turns after the base is build. 19 if you don't have Planetary Transit System secret project
4 squares is for optimal use of land and original anon asked for "non-cheating" option.

[Anonymous No.5046234]

>>5045946
Also, the point was for OTHER strategy than infinite base crawl (which is, by the way, banned in multiplayer), and what you did? Explained how to do infinite base crawl.

[Anonymous No.5046235]

>>5045975
Depends entirely on population within the base and stage of the game, along with your general labs production. Also depends if you are dealing with drones, or just messing with talents for extra efficiency.

[Anonymous No.5046350]

Are you gimping yourself too hard by not planting forests? I've played a bunch of forest/condenser/borehole only games and it works well, but it gets a little boring and seems silly that the best use of land in the future is planting pine trees everywhere.

[Anonymous No.5046384]

>>5046350
Trees are literally best option for tiles below 2000 meters and outclass pretty much everything else. Said that, farms with solars still are a viable choice, even if the final energy yield is going to be the same and there are going to be less minerals.
Ironically, you gimp yourself by building mines. Mines, unless build on rocky tile with mineral bonus, are pretty much useless and applying them is all about intentional gimp.

[Anonymous No.5046393]

>>5046384
Honestly, I'm still confused with mines. Boreholes are absolutely superior to them, while mines only produce minerals and not really that many. The top efficiency of mine is 7 minerals, 3 energy (if your Economy is high enough and you have Merchant Exchange in that base). Borehole build in the same base in same set-up would be 8 minerals, 9 energy.
And since neither produces food, they are fucking useless in the long run.

[Anonymous No.5046509]

>>5046393
Mines exist for two reasons. Well, three:
- early game can create situation where building a mine is the best thing to do (mineral bonus on rocky square with river)
- depending on terrain, boreholes might be impossible
- AI is really fucking bad at terraforming and can't into optimal choices
Of course, first two reasons go out the window once you get Weather Paradigm or just plant forests on nutrient tiles, being much more productive than mines can ever be. Ultimately, mines are a stop-gap measure and not the best one.

[Anonymous No.5046513]

>>5046509
>AI is really fucking bad at terraforming and can't into optimal choices
How fucking hard it is to script AI for "plant forests on flat/arid/both tiles"? I mean it sounds like a no-brainer choice and an instant choice of what to do. In fact, AI's inability to use and utilise forests is what fucks things up the most. No fan-patch that I know managed to fix this, despite it being a pretty straighforward directive for AI to follow, along with few other things, like "Don't reduce tiles to flat, ever", which AI absolutely loves to do

[Anonymous No.5046515]

>>5046513
The actual rules for AI would have to be a bit nuanced for forests, otherwise it would over-rule anything else
>If square is flat, arid or flat and arid, plant forest
>If said square is above 2k meters and rolling, consider farms with solars
>If that square is in lowlands, reconsider for borehole
>If it has bonus resource, reconsider for maximum possibility
>Increase chance of picking forests once Tree Farm is possible to build
>Increase chance of picking forests once Hybrid Forest is possible to build
But I agree, AI always planting trees on flat and arid squares is still better than what it mostly does with those.

[Anonymous No.5046516]

>>5046515
*maximum efficiency
Because at times, building a condenser with farm and soil enricher is the best thing to do

[Anonymous No.5046615]

>>5045946
Not him, but literally what's your problem? The gains of building a base that single turn earlier due to putting them closer is meaningless. The only time it makes any difference is first 10 turns, then gets tossed under the bus. Have you ever managed to shit out a colony pod in first 10 turns and move it to position for new base? I doubt it.
And if you aren't pop-booming your bases to max population for given moment, you are playing the game wrong. You absolutely have to have pop-boom going if you plan to play the game serious, And since you are pop-booming, you want to have as many workable fields as possible for maximum profit. Considering the game applies a penalty based on the number of bases you have, ICC (IBC in case of SMAC) is the surest way to get fucked by over-expanding. Not due to distance, but sheer amount of basesm all of which have shit productivity.

[Anonymous No.5046695]

>>5046615
Not him, but the problem is that 'maximum workable tiles' is being held up as some golden ideal, ignoring any possible considerations otherwise. Even putting aside early-game-momentum, and that a small advantage can snowball, even putting aside mobility and defense, even putting aside that a lot of times oceans, fungus, and resources make ideal spacing impractical, the lateness of hab-domes in the tech tree means your practical tile limit is 14, not 20. That leaves room for most bases to be 3-spaced and still work all their pop, or even 2-spaced in certain cases. And by the time that you do get hab domes? Specialists keep pace with workers, and the minerals you already get let you hurry production efficiently. And any drones you might get from # of bases are negligible next to all the drones from from those bases having high pop, unless you're going full ICS, except NOBODY in this thread has been arguing for full ICS. Only that any possible gains from 4-spacing aren't so imperative that one should disregard everything else.

[Anonymous No.5046909]

>tfw sunspots are perfectly timed for you to obliterate all of Miriam's shitty sea bases on your continent without getting sanctioned by the U.N.

[Anonymous No.5046920]

>>5046909
>Wait, how many of us were there again? 4, 5, 6... I can't help but feel like we're missing someone.

[Anonymous No.5047041]

>>5046695
Anon, a "4 tile distance" doesn't care about terrain structure, just like ICS doesn't. But unlike ICS, it doesn't rely entirely on the same set up for all bases and allows to use heigh over sea level and rivers for extra profit. Something ICS can't do, because it relied on a steady pattern. So you have basically more flexible and more profitable design.
If you are in defense in early game, you are fucked anyway. ICS won't save you, in fact, it will make things worse for you.
As for pop limit - Ascetic Virtues are a thing. and even at 14 pop, you still have higher productivity with much higher flexibility (so you can focus on minerals and energy once base hits 14) and leaving room for continous expansion of the base. ICS can't do that either.
But most importantly, if you aren't going full ICS, then there is literally no point doing it "partially". It gains you nothing and chokes down your "inner circle" of bases if you used it in early game.
So it leaves us with ICS not being used, thus still being 3 spaces away. Which means you are still extended, so you can easily build that one square further away and reap full benefits of the entire process.
There literally is no middle ground between full ICS and 4 spaces. None.

[Anonymous No.5047167]

>>5047041
>4 tile distance doesn't care about terrain structure, except that it allows you to take advantage of terrain structure!
>just get this secret project
>mind worms can fuck you over and spacing only ever makes it worse
>there is literally no middle ground between 4 tiles/base and 25+ tiles/base. 23 tiles? you're absolutely screwed
>all of the 4-space spots are water, guess I can't expand yet

are you seriously telling me, there is absolutely, literally, no scenario in existence in which you might want two bases to be closer than 4 tiles, and that even a single overlapping square will turn into an inevitable death sentence?

>inb4 goalposts
except no one's been saying you absolutely should be building 3 spaces and nothing else, just that it's an options you have, and that it won't kill you if two bases overlap a little. are you telling me that that is not the case?

[Anonymous No.5047202]

>>5042684
Hah. Slightly different game, but due to Civ2's spawning algorithms giving the Purple player the shittiest starting location, I once rolled a "Canadian Sioux" start that put my initial two Settlers (it was Deity) smackdab in the middle of the North Pole. Instead of settling Little Bighorn instantly, I insisted on exploring and found out that there is no way to connect the Pole with any other landmass, and the closest food spot (some Fish) was really, really far away from my starting location.

[Anonymous No.5047254]

>>5047167
It's like you read my post, then decided to answer some different post that doesn't exist.

And as far as your question goes - no base is better than fucked up base. Overlapping bases are waste of effort that could be put into something else, unless you are going into ICS. Like I've said, there is no middle ground. 3 tiles means you can't do effective ICS anyway, while you can't benefit from all 20 tiles either.
I'm not sure why I'm repeating this, if I already said that.

[Anonymous No.5047520]

>>5047254
>no base is better than fucked up base
then, just to be clear, if you were to find yourself in a situation similar to this, the proper solution would be to:
a:colonize the north or west
b:cannibalize your col pod to take your hq up to 2
c:wait until you get formers, then clear the fungus near the resources
because you sure as hell aren't advocating for colonizing one of the already open spots

[Anonymous No.5047604]

>>5047520
Of course I'm not, that would be outright stupid and wasteful of the colony pod you've got, considering all the tiles are useless anyway and the potential (for overlapping bases) spot using the monolith is pointless anyway, because you are Morgan.
Unless you plan to get to that peninsula North and thus use your bonus from being morgan, there is literally no other option than just turn the pod into 2nd pop in starting base. You are not going to make better profit by having two shitty bases, because you can have (potentially) two good bases solely by taking that peninsula OR by having 2nd pop (and considering starting location, you really could benefit from one, as this shithole is arid or flat or both)

tl;dr peninsula up north or 2nd pop.

[Anonymous No.5047608]

>>5047604
And by peninsula, I mean this tile specifically. You aren't using that base to get productive base right now (because no spot on given map is going to be productive, desu), you are using it to exploit Morganites' bonus to energy produced by new base AND leaving yourself a room for future construction once you have means for that.

[Anonymous No.5048421]

>>5047254
>>5047604
>>5047608
Not him, but:
It seems to me that the no-brainer move is to plop the colony immediately to the east of Morgan Industries and make the most use of the monolith tiles, then continue with a base to the south.

Overlapping bases works off the principle that by the time you hit extremely high pop bases that can utilize all of their tiles "efficiently", you're already out of the early game which is where the biggest snowballing occurs, so making perfectionist cities is simply wasteful unless you're grinding for score with some monstrous towns that you don't really need to win.
Morgan in particular favors overlapping because the virtually guaranteed +energy from central city square is vital to the low-pop Morganites in the early game.
In this case I'd build as dense around the resources I do actually have, and spend a lot of turns micromanaging them for biggest dividends.
Am I missing something here?

[Anonymous No.5049575]

God damn micromanaging builds and units for a large empire is difficult
Trying to take over the world as Yang and there's just so much to keep track of
Though a volcanic eruption did just open up a land bridge between me and Miriam so at least I don't have to pull off an amphibious invasion anymore

[Anonymous No.5050785]

>>5048421
>unless you're grinding for score with some monstrous towns that you don't really need to win.
>He never had entire country consisting of just 5 bases, 80+ pop each.

[Anonymous No.5050820]

>>5050785
>an entire 5 bases
>not going for a 1CC
>not having just one massive metropolis, crawling an entire continent to fuel its massive research engine
>not ignoring bases altogether and becoming worm-nomads

[Anonymous No.5051062]

>>5050785
It's not an optimal way to play, and unless I'm deliberately making this a challenge for myself there is no point to it. Unless the aforementioned start is in the One Colony Challenge or similar, this comment is moot.

[Anonymous No.5052443]

>>5051062
>It's not an optimal way to play
Neither is ICS

[Anonymous No.5052449]

>>5048421
>Morgan in particular favors non-overlaping because the guaranteed +1 energy from all squares is what makes him absolutely OP in mid and late game
Here, ftfy

People who brag about early game momentum are the people who are absolutely incapable of playing the game once the early game is over. This is a 4X. It's not an RTS. Rush isn't what's going to win for you against human opponent. It's what going to grind you into a stand-still by mid game, because you will be in serious disadvantage. And if ICS is forbidden (which is usually true), you are going to get either trashed in-game or simply kicked out the moment someone notices.

[Anonymous No.5052471]

>>5052443
>>5052449
Have you guys ever heard of playing the fucking map? What's the point of making potentially "perfect" cities 300 turns from now on when they grind to a standstill at the start of the game because of the godawful starting position? You have crap flatlands, scarce resources and only a few decent tiles. My proposition is to build sparsely around those while sharing tiles early on to maximize Former turns as much as possible.
Then, after simply placing *the first few cities* sparsely around this absolutely crappy starting area while expanding towards a different spot, where you're absolutely free to start plopping "monster" cities the moment you have more land. If your 2nd or 3rd city is, in the late game, relegated to "helper" role where most of its tiles are swallowed by a more major city, it's absolutely fine! They probably contributed enough to any terraforming or war effort simply by being a bonus resource hub producing supply crawlers, formers or impact rovers throughout the game. In the Civ2/SMAC model, there's barely any incentive to not plop more cities, unless you're playing something like Transcend/16x16 and plopping your 2nd city immediately sends you into bureaucracy problems.
>People who brag about early game momentum are the people who use it to win their games 100 turns earlier
Here, ftfy. Making the most out of your start is capable of snowballing you way harder than waiting a long, long time for infrastructure to kick in to make the pipe dream size 44 cities available. Name any 4X game, and "growing faster" is usually a bigger concern than "cashing in a number of massive metropolises 300 turns from now". This is certainly true in any pre-5 Civ game, especially 4.

[Anonymous No.5053243]

>>5052471
>Hey guys, remember how this game allows you to reshape the terrain and get decent fields out of worst nightmare?
>Yeah, let's forget that, so we can just do ICS
The absolute state of ICS faggots

If you have crap start on multi, you are dead, REGARDLESS of what you are going to do and how play it. Because ultimately the guy with better start is going to trash you.

And tell us all how you are going to win a game, when the other guy(s) is on the different continent. Oh, right. I forgot. All you can do is early rover spam for quick conquest, then you end up fucked and bogged by micro, while having sub-optimal outcomes on everything.

I absolutely love how fucking god-awful you must be in this game to non-stop keep bringing "300 turns" as some measurement when things get perfect. No wonder you play ICS, if you are so fucking bad you have games lasting 300 turns in the first place, while also only being able to rush with ICS tactics.
Get bend and fucking learn to play finally, it's 2018, about fucking time.

[Anonymous No.5053253]

>>5053243

[Anonymous No.5053265]

>>5053253
I'm not the one who made up some bullshit 300 turns counter or being unable to plan bunch of turns ahead, so get jumpy on everyone else who can play beter.
It's also not me being so salty about it all you have left is reverse-psychology explaination of eristics, especially if you mis-attributed the techniques I've used on you.
Stay salty. Salt preserves, you will live longer this way.

[Anonymous No.5053276]

>>5017998
I love this image so much. Papa Yang would be proud.

[Anonymous No.5053357]

>>5053243
>If you have crap start on multi, you are dead, REGARDLESS of what you are going to do and how play it.
Then what's the fucking point of playing a start out at all in the first place? Why did anyone even post it? Might as well just say "No, fuck that, gg, I'm out" and *not* bother with it. Just keep rerolling starts until you get three resources in the starting BFC and that fucking monolith circle feature next to your starting location.
Or, we can take that starting situation and figure out the best solution to it, which I attempted to do and gave rational reasons to do so.
I never even said that I "ICS" all of my games, and I don't even believe extremely tight and sparse ICS is the way to go in this game, breathing room is great to have - *but* this screams to me like a start where your best tiles will be the ones with resources, and if you're going to settle next to those you might as well make the towns share some tiles early on because you're not going to grow too fast in this terrain, and your priority should be to try and claw your way out of a bad start like this, probably through aggressively pushing colonies forward or maybe even, yes, rovering a nearby AI.
You're talking all about reshaping the terrain and getting decent fields from the worst nightmare but you are still fixating on the moment where you actually *have* a fuckton of Former turns available and all the tech needed to support your pipe dream, but we're talking about the here and now.
All we're talking about is the most efficient way to kickstart the bad start and make the most of it. Play the hand you're dealt, you know - one of the fucking principles of 4X games.
And now you decided to backpedal because "Oh but in an MP game you are dead anyway!" Well why was this start even posted? It is probably perfectly winnable on Transcend regardless of whether you employ ICS or not, and in MP, it's apparently unwinnable either way according to your dumb ass. Who cares, then?

[Anonymous No.5053370]

>>5053357
dude, I'm like 95% sure he's trolling. just stop replying. mostly, I'm mostly just curious how he keeps pulling people in; it got kinda obvious a long time ago when he started misinterpreting everything everyone was saying.

[Anonymous No.5053375]

>>5053357
Now, to try and keep things civil, here's my proposition:
The start is ass, no two ways about it. My proposed way to salvage it is to claim these two resources within the next colony's BFC. You grab a solid tile - the Monolith - and a mine. You can later plop another colony 1NW of the food resource, to grab both the nutrient and the mineral resource. The two new colonies share Morgan Industries' burgeoning forests with the early former turns and keep swapping the mineral resource to complete certain builds faster. All the while, we expand northwest.
The tile to the north that was proposed here >>5047608
doesn't really do anything for us in terms of helping us produce Formers, Colony Ships or supply crawlers (for rushing projects). There's not enough food and no decent production to really churn them out fast, and as Morgan, we can't run Police/Planned at any point to speed up our expansion, so I propose we should try and make the most out of the resources available by using 3-4 starting colonies around this land, built fairly sparsely, to keep pushing west and find our luck elsewhere.
If we can conquer anyone and take their rightful expansion land for ourselves, it'd probably be for the best.
When late-game hits and we actually can terraform away all the fungus and make them more productive, we can just have 1-2 of the cities in that core take up most of the tiles and be the production/commerce powerhouses while the rest remain solid helper cities and have already paid their dividends through front-ending our early game production.
The fishing village proposed earlier should probably be the last colony in this expansion scheme simply because even the original proposal mentioned that there's no way it's going to become immediately productive, and water tiles aren't spectacular by themselves in SMAC.
Building sparsely early on will also help deal with Morgan's pop cap until Habs and +1 Economy also helps boost the central tile, esp. with Recycling Tanks.

[Anonymous No.5053392]

>>5052471
>"growing faster" is usually a bigger concern than "cashing in a number of massive metropolises 300 turns from now"
You know you can and should be doing both in SMAC... right? If you aren't, you are no better than AI in this game.
Which creates for me a dissonance, because on one hand you advocate adaptation and flexibility, but what you suggest as solution is based not on adapting to the situation, but outright ignoring it. That's what overlapping is for, especially if turned into ICS.
And ICS is hated not even because how efficient it is, but because how brain-dead it is. It actively removes all the planning, thinking, strategy and just about any possible factor aside sufficient amount of space for another row of bases. AI is perfectly capable of ICS if you script it (which isn't hard, since that's fixed pattern anyway), so why should anyone bother with human player doing it?

[Anonymous No.5053394]

>>5053375
The point was to get Morganite bonuse energy from base AND not over-lap. That's the only spot fitting that requirement and I've explained it already. Twice.

[Anonymous No.5053413]

>>5053392
>>5053394
None of those are an argument to my reasoning.
>It actively removes all the planning, thinking, strategy and just about any possible factor aside sufficient amount of space for another row of bases.

Using the plan I proposed, I outlined and thought over a plan and strategy for the next 100~ turns and argumented why this is the best way to do something with this start. Also in response to the idea that this map is unwinnable against a human anyway.
>what you suggest as solution is based not on adapting to the situation, but outright ignoring it
No?
Imagine the situation that's exactly the same but the relevant resources/monoliths claimed by Pink Dot are seven tiles away from Morgan Industries instead of three. Do you think that I wouldn't place them there instead?
Resources are in a spot they are in, so I settle for the resources. This is not ignoring the problem, this is acknowledging the strengths of this start and maximizing them while minimizing weaknesses.

>>5053394
Yes, you get those two perks. But you give up too much for that. It's a painfully weak 2nd spot location that doesn't do anything productive by itself. You simply can't afford to waste time on this yet. Not to mention that settling closer to the starting location gets the central square Energy bonus online faster, so you're getting slightly more dosh from the first turn.

This land has so little to work with that my plan is simply to maximize the tiny portion of land that actually is productive and use it to further your goals, be it a perfectionist utopia a few turns later (when more land is discovered to the west) or a quick conquest of AIs (with a core of 3-4 cities borrowing tiles from one another).

There's no point to making a perfectionist core if the map demands something else.

[Anonymous No.5053756]

>>5053413
>It's a painfully weak 2nd spot location that doesn't do anything productive by itself
... which was acknowledged right off the bat, so what's your problem?
Besides, that's long-term planning. The "problem" with SMAC is how unrewarding it is for short-term plans. Got yourself a monolith in first 20 turns? Great! Got yourself a monolith in first 40 turns? Ok, could be better. Got yourself a monolith pass the 50th turn? Fucking hell, why this shit happens at all?

But honestly, I don't care. You are going full-on short term without going into ICS. Meaning you are having problems of both without of benefit of either ICS or full 20 tiles. Which translates into extremely suboptimal performance for most of the game in some ill-concieved concept of "flexibility", or rather - inflexibility due to insufficient planning.

Simple tip: start playing multi. You will realise within... dunno? Single game? Maybe two? How god-awful the middle ground between ICS (if it's allowed at all) and striving for full 20 tiles bases is. Mostly because the other guy won't try to short-sell profits OR build a structure that doesn't care about profits, but sheer weight of the system as a whole. And both of them are going to be more flexible than your "let me keep adjusting to terrain, because I've read a forum post once about it and didn't follow then the 11 pages of critique"

[Anonymous No.5053778]

>>5053413
>this is acknowledging the strengths of this start and maximizing them while minimizing weaknesses
... for first 40 turns, 50 tops.
What you are planning to do later? Aside having your core fucked into uselessness?
Because even if your newer bases are going to be placed with more brain into it (rather than behaving like AI, top lal), you still have shit core. Probably with some secret project in it already, so ending up being forced to not only keep it, but defend it. Gee, such a marvelous thing to end up with. If only there was a way to not fuck your own ass with a rebar...

[Anonymous No.5053806]

>>5053756
>>5053778
You sound retarded. I'm sorry, it's just the truth.
Nothing you ever proposed in this thread comes even close to being a solution to the problem of that start being bad.
You just said "position is fucked and unwinnable", and went on an useless diatribe about how fucked my "core" will be after all of this happens. (Hint: My "core" in SMAC won't start and end at 3-4 cities, but around 20-25 on a regular map, at which point I can live with the 3-4 initial cities being subpar). There's no winning with you - you propose an useless city spot in the north based on a dumb notion of "long-term planning", which in this case is worthless. With my solution, you at least have a possible shot at some global, early-game projects and some sort of production and tech output to help propel you somewhere instead of twiddling your thumbs on one shitty capital and a fishing village that won't ever come to fruition.
I already accounted for the long term planning way more than you did, because there's absolutely no-fucking-problem with turning at least 2 cities in that small core in the middle of the map into fully productive ones, using all tiles, and using the rest as helper cities that use whatever tiles around them.
>Simple tip: start playing multi.
I might not be a SMAC MP veteran, but I'm a Civ2/Civ4 MP veteran and in both of those games my approach in this situation would have been correct. Particularly Civ4, where regular ICS has not only been killed as a strat but overlapping is still heavily used because guess what: in 4X games, early game is everything.
>Mostly because the other guy won't try to short-sell profits OR build a structure that doesn't care about profits, but sheer weight of the system as a whole.
This entire sentence doesn't make any fucking sense. It's pointless drivel written by a pseudointellectual. Doesn't provide any help with making this start bearable, doesn't challenge any point. It's just conjecture and appeal to non-existent authority.

[Anonymous No.5053818]

>>5053806
>Here, let me project my knowledge of two different games on SMAC, because I'm such a massive scrub
>I also literally don't understand what's written, so let me chimp out
And you have the audacity to question anything or put yourself in the position of authority?

[Anonymous No.5053825]

>>5053778
>What you are planning to do later? Aside having your core fucked into uselessness?
Again, just to hammer the point home - read. Read the posts. Then read them again.
My entire gameplan has been posted there. You can easily figure it out.
I know I'm arguing with a fucking wall because you already decided that the start is unwinnable and shouldn't even be played out, but at least give it an honest thought instead of making up fantasy scenarios.
If we were both playing in MP and we were both given the same start, I'd win, because you'd type gg by turn 10.
In that case I understand that you don't ever see games get to turn 300 - you retire any start that doesn't suck your dick.

[Anonymous No.5053835]

>>5053818
You gave me a simple tip to start playing multi. I didn't play SMAC multi. I played multi in games that are extremely similar to SMAC, conceptually. Including Civ2. Which is basically a prelude to SMAC in terms of most mechanics.
And yes, I don't understand what has been written simply because it's such a meaningless, retarded sentence. It doesn't mean anything. What profits? What short-selling of said profits? What sheer weight? What structure? What the fuck are you talking about?

[Anonymous No.5053837]

>>5053825
>Read
>It's all there
So... you have no clue whatsoever what you are going to do after early game is over?
Fine

[Anonymous No.5053846]

>>5053835
Only that SMAC has TERRAFORMING AND OPERATES ON COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MICRO WHEN COMPARED TO EITHER CIV 2 OR 4.
Something that apparently never occured to your stupid ass, since you neither use it, nor plan around it nor even take a second to consider supply crawlers.
You literally are talking about game with extremely primitive and "all-size-fits-all" micro AND a game with tile-dependant micro, rather than ability to change the tile as if they were interchangable with SMAC, despite being nothing like it in actual gameplay.
All while acting like you are anything even resembling experience with playing against human opponent. Just because your shitfest of "plan" works against AI doesn't make it good. It;s just AI being still worse than you, even if you are actively trying to reach its level.

[Anonymous No.5053848]

>>5053837
>I propose we should try and make the most out of the resources available by using 3-4 starting colonies around this land, built fairly sparsely, to keep pushing west and find our luck elsewhere.
>When late-game hits and we actually can terraform away all the fungus and make them more productive, we can just have 1-2 of the cities in that core take up most of the tiles and be the production/commerce powerhouses while the rest remain solid helper cities and have already paid their dividends through front-ending our early game production.
>The fishing village proposed earlier should probably be the last colony in this expansion scheme simply because even the original proposal mentioned that there's no way it's going to become immediately productive, and water tiles aren't spectacular by themselves in SMAC.
>Using the plan I proposed, I outlined and thought over a plan and strategy for the next 100~ turns
Here, just so that you can't pretend that you missed it somehow. Now please, if you're so great at SMAC and totally owning your own dog and 5 Librarian AIs in multiplayer, formulate an alternate plan that won't suck shit, because you have not. You also haven't shown me what exactly is it that you will do "after the early game is over". I haven't formulated exact plans for what I will do because I don't know how many Civs I'm against, what map I am on, and I don't have a clue about what the land west of the pitiful starting position looks like, so I obviously cannot comment on any of those.
Show some actual effort after I've already done most of it. I'm waiting. Until you write something substantial, this is the last (You) for ya.

[Anonymous No.5053860]

>>5053846
>Something that apparently never occured to your stupid ass, since you neither use it, nor plan around it nor even take a second to consider supply crawlers.
No, again, this was accounted for in my posts. If you take your time to actually read them, you might find out that I did expliclty mention using my initial colonies to help churn out Supply Crawlers, whether it is for rushing projects (an useful multiplier/denial mechanic especially if the land is ass) or for their other uses.
Yes, you can change the tile. But you are flipflopping at this point - either you're telling me the game will be over too soon for me to even start thinking about terraforming, or you're telling me that I'll fall way behind everyone else because of my bad start (making the entire exercise and discusison pointless, as you said this is just not a land to win any vs human game with), or you're telling me that I can't even squeeze whatever productivity from these tiles to gain any sort of leverage, which is the entire point of this exercise.
Yes, you *CAN* terraform everything into a lush paradise - but try a farmer's gambit in any multiplayer game in any Civ game and you are gonna get fucking killed. So the most you can do is build sparsely and squeeze as much productivity as you can from those initial tiles, because that's how fucking ass this start is. We're trying to *get* to an empire with a few cities, some Formers, some Crawlers, maybe a wonder, and a decent defense force instead of just giving up or trying to set up a 2 city empire that can't even support building Formers or Colonies at any acceptable rate.
Anything I propose, by design, is wrong, according to you, because the map is unwinnable so why even bother, and that's just a stupid and boring way to play these games.
Again, you made a nice effort trying to read my posts, but not enough. That's last (You) until you trade for Literacy with the Zulus.

[Anonymous No.5053865]

>>5053846
>>5053848
>TERRAFORMING has no opportunity cost
>former turns are free!
No one is missing the point you blatant troll.

You have all but explicitly stated that shaving 2% off the productivity of 2 bases, 50 turns in the future, is somehow worse than doubling, or even tripling your productivity now. This implies that early-game growth is completely divorced from any possible strategic considerations. That a single impotent city will somehow grow into the middle-game just as easily as a continent spanning empire - just so long as you make sure to only colonize distant. A clearly ludicrous idea. And if you bothered to post literally ANYTHING backing up your point; math, testbed data, forum threads, real-game examples, even theorycrafting, maybe someone might take you seriously, except all you can do is drawl '3 space bad, 4 space better'

>Until you write something substantial, this is the last (You) for ya.
I sincerely hope so, because that would at least mean that this asinine not-discussion can die. But I also sincerely doubt it, because I am still convinced you are a (you)-addicted troll.

[Anonymous No.5053875]

>>5053835
>It doesn't mean anything. What profits? What short-selling of said profits? What sheer weight? What structure? What the fuck are you talking about?
For a guy talking about reading, you are somehow read-aversive. And really lacking experience with 4X.
>short selling
Colloquially referring to the concept of selling something you don't own and thus generating a "fake" profit. In given context, however, means the situation where player will be focused on long-term profits and playing the game toward the goal set up far away in the future, rather than trying to dominate here and now, knowing it's not feasible in vast majority of games unless extremely lucky with both start and opponent positioning
>weight
ICS strategies depend entirely on the size of the whole sprawl. The bigger it gets, the more powerful it gets. Thus - it gains weight
>Structure
Clearly referring to the ICS as a structure of your faction, blatantly obvious from the context. So the "structure" in question is just ICS itself

It's really not rocket science to read what's posted. At least if you play the game long enough to understand what people are referring to, rather than getting confused.

>>5053825
Calm your tits. This is not CoD

>>5053846
If anything, SMAC does have "one-size-fits-all" micro, it's just much more nuanced than in Civ 2. And Civ 3 made it moot with colonies (as opposed to crawlers), strategic resources and re-worked borders. Anyway, there is only this much terraforming can do and early game isn't exactly the best moment to entact it, even if you have Weather Paradigm build. It also depends on the size of the map itself. The bigger it is, the less impactful forming (duh), while you still have all the spots around you that could be used better
Or crawled. Crawling is really the only answer for early game, because it solves all the issues and problems, without affecting long-term game and still keeping momentum of game. One you don't need crawlers, you relegate them elsewhere

[Anonymous No.5053879]

>>5053865
Not him, but just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean he's a troll, /v/

[Anonymous No.5053883]

>>5053846
>You literally are talking about game with extremely primitive and "all-size-fits-all" micro AND a game with tile-dependant micro
not him but you surely mean smac?
forests and boreholes are the only tiles worth bothering with
farm + soil enricher + condenser takes forever to set up (like 18 former turns) and still isn't efficient
all the other improvements are bad
in any other game you actually have to think about what sorta stuff will you put on what terrain
in smac, slapping a forest on every tile and beelining to tree farms is an extremely viable strategy

[Anonymous No.5053885]

>>5053879
>Not him
I also sincerely doubt that too.

[Anonymous No.5053887]

>>5053875
*once you don't

[Anonymous No.5053894]

>>5053875
Yeah, none of this makes any sense still. What you're doing is attributing non-existent qualities to my playstyle or my gameplan without even trying to understand it. You just live in some sorta binary that you can't be shaken out of. I'm outta here, I have better things to do with my life.

[Anonymous No.5053906]

>>5053875
I'm not even sure if something as obvious as crawling should be mentioned. And this is precisely why non-overlapping bases make sense in early game. You can simply crawl in/for them. Once you get sufficient pop, crawlers can be used in the non-overlapping, "empty" spots without having to move them far away.

>>5053883
>not him but you surely mean smac?
I meant Civ 2 (all size fits all) and Civ 4 (tile-dependant).
If you are joining the argument, at least take your time to first get the context, then grab your own pile of shit to throw.

Also, as proven long time ago, boreholes are shit unless you are going (extremely) wide. Single borehole could be instead used to feed 3 people. Not an issue if you are going wide, but a serious problem if going tall or tall-wide hybrid. So it's very much context sensitive. Meanwhile, planting forest pretty much equals with win button

[Anonymous No.5053908]

>>5053894
The irony of your post is fucking golden. GOLDEN. The absolute lack of self-awarness you display is killing my sides right now

[Anonymous No.5053919]

>>5053894
You know, it's no wonder the other guy just shrugged and started lobbing insults at you, if explaining boils down to entire thing getting ignored without any acknowledgement, all while talking about everyone else being ignorant. The line about binaries probably sums it up the best - about you yourself.

[Anonymous No.5053936]

>>5053883
Also not the anon you are replying to, but there is a three-way split and two-way split for tile improvement. Either you build forests everywhere below 2k meters above sea level and farms+solars at 2k and above (preferably with Echelon on base tile if it benefits any of surrounding tiles above 2k). And then there is a three-way split, where you add boreholes to the whole thing.
The main difference is: do you plan to use satellites. If so, then boreholes can be skipped, because you want to get as much food as only possible from your tiles.

[Anonymous No.5055810]

[Anonymous No.5056409]

fukin nerds

[Anonymous No.5057187]