4X The Unsurpassed Brian Reynolds' Alpha Centauri thread

[Jason Liang]

Yeah, I've come to think Condensor are not worth bothering with.
I find that I have trouble "staying sharp" in this game, and don't expand and explore as aggressively as I could. Ignoring Condensors, Echelon Mirrors and Crawlers will cut down on the tedium of micromanagement.

I never build enough formers unless I play Mirriam, so my non-Believing empires are usually only 30-40% optimal. For example, in SP, by the time I get magtubes, I'm already so behind in terraforming that I hardly have a single magtube path before I reach the endgame.

More bases is less micro, not more, at least for terraforming. If you are planting a base every other space, then basically you don't even need to terraform 25% of your land. Each base basically only has 3 terrain tiles- one for a farm, and one for a borehole, and the last usually a second farm. Pretty easy.

Condesers and Mirrors you can do without but crawlers are again, build fire and forget. Crawling food means you really don't need to care about terraforming outside of farms. Your coastal bases can build sea crawlers and crawl for food in the ocean. That's unlimited food! Crawlers don't have to operate within a base's area- a sea crawler can crawl food from a kelp farm (or energy from the energy upgrade) ANYWHERE within your empire.

One of the best ways to feed a base, even before Gene Splicing, is to build a sea former and kelp a sea tile that has a nut nutrient. Any coastal base can crawl that tile from anywhere for +4 nuts (5 with the Kelp Farm facility although that's a waste).

Once you are scientifically advanced, the quickest and simplest terraforming is fungus. You can use fungal payload to spread fungus many tiles per pop. Fungus counts for resources, defense AND roads!

 

[octavius]

So, Conventional Missiles - what are they good for?

 

[Jason Liang]

Planetbusters and shooting down opponent's orbitals (but mostly in MP). You need to get the payload technology first (N-Space Compression?) then you get fungal payload and tectonic payload to fuck up everyone's terraforming. Or to quickly fungus your own territory.

You can also put them on a carrier and they have the range to strike deep into opposing territory, possibly opening up invasion by drop pods.

I mostly build them after I'm sick of building more infantry and rovers at that point. And also they're clean iirc.

IDK, this is more a question for the others since missiles are mostly for mp.

 

[octavius]

I thought they would damage all units in a square, and I could swear Yang managed to eliminate all 3 or 4 of my units in a city, but when I use one I only kill one unit, and don't scratch the other ones.

I'm playing my first serious game (still learning, though, although having mastered Civ 2 certainly helps) as the Gaians on highest difficulty, and it seems I may have a chance to win by Transcending if I keep the research up.
It's interesting that you can actually role play your factions to a certain degree in this game.

 

[Jason Liang]

It's interesting that you can actually role play your factions to a certain degree in this game.

It's really a sandbox to play in.

You haven't read any of the awesome Codex Alpha Centauri PBEM write-ups in Codex Playground? They're awesome, once you've gotten to know all the factions better.

We should perserve the pictures for those somehow, in case the links get broken.

Note: Codex Playground has an index stickied.

 

[octavius]

What the hell is up with Drone Riots in this game? Turn after turn my cities revolt, even though when I check them before hitting next turn, there's an equal number of Talents and Drones and there's no imminent pop increase. So i fix it, and two more turns and there's a new friggin' riot!

 

[Quatlo]

What the hell is up with Drone Riots in this game? Turn after turn my cities revolt, even though when I check them before hitting next turn, there's an equal number of Talents and Drones and there's no imminent pop increase. So i fix it, and two more turns and there's a new friggin' riot!

Probes?

 

[octavius]

What the hell is up with Drone Riots in this game? Turn after turn my cities revolt, even though when I check them before hitting next turn, there's an equal number of Talents and Drones and there's no imminent pop increase. So i fix it, and two more turns and there's a new friggin' riot!

Probes?

No. I have defensive probe teams in most of my cities, and it's happening across the whole board.
I've conquered a few cities from Miriam, which I at first though accounted for more drones with the empire getting bigger. But it has continued past that.

 

[Jason Liang]

Drones increase when population increases across your whole empire, so if any of your bases grow, it might increase drones in any of your bases. Also make sure you have an infantry unit protecting each base. If you have Police enabled, you can give the infantry non-lethal methods to reduce drones. If that fails, put psych spending up to 10-20%.

There's a menu that shows you where and why drones are occuring. You can use that to see where the next drone will potentially pop up when you end the turn.

If all else fails, nerve staple or punishment sphere. I've never had to use nerve stapling but it isn't so bad.

Drones increase really quickly on transcend difficulty though. You'll quickly reach a point where every new pop will be a drone. Just have to take those pops off tiles and crawl food to feed the base. Reason #14 to go ICS. ICS also increases the effectiveness of the Human Genome Project, if you get that. It's not one of the top early secret projects but it'll help you deal with drones a lot if you aren't Yang, Mirriam or Lal.

And if the AI builds it first, even better. Now you have a target.

There are quite a few anti-Drone projects later on like Longevity Vaccine so once you get those you wont have drone problems anymore. Like most problems, science solves everything by end game.

I usually play Yang or Mirriam. Yang of course has one of the easiest times dealing with Drones, while Mirriam has no reason not to spend on Psych since... what, you're going to put that energy into research? lol

 

[octavius]

I do have police units. All my infantry were Trained and Police, now the ones I train are Clean and Police.
I guess the riots are due to the empire growing bigger, then, although it seems rather excessive.

 

[mastroego]

There are other factors that create drones anyway.

 

[Jason Liang]

I do have police units. All my infantry were Trained and Police, now the ones I train are Clean and Police.
I guess the riots are due to the empire growing bigger, then, although it seems rather excessive.

You also need some Police rating or police wont help (besides getting rid of the defenseless penalty).

Go ahead and staple them then. If they aren't your headquarters they probably aren't contributing much to your energy production anyway. Although iirc you need police 1 to do that.

 

[octavius]

Yeah, I think I will change to Police State for increased Police and Support.

BTW, how does "On Alert" work? Seems to me it's always the other guy being the attacker, and thus having the advantage anyway.
And does "Air Defense" work the same way?

 

[Nim]

Drones increase when population increases across your whole empire, so if any of your bases grow, it might increase drones in any of your bases

This is wrong.

 

[octavius]

Hmm...suddenly an Alien Artifact appeared at one of my bases. I have no idea how it got there. Not complaining, though.

 

[Nim]

Hmm...suddenly an Alien Artifact appeared at one of my bases. I have no idea how it got there. Not complaining, though.

Artifacts in bases can behave like that when the last defender is destroyed. Sometimes they go the attacker, other times they teleport to some other faction. Not sure if it happens outside bases too.

 

[Nim]

This is probably the most comprehensive on drones
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=3538.msg22392

 

[Jason Liang]

This is probably the most comprehensive on drones
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=3538.msg22392

I'm sure you're right, but there's a point when ICS ing even with Yang that even the initial pop in a base is a drone. Doesn't your total population affect bureaucracy? That was my meaning. When your total population increases, you get more bureaucracy drones, and you use the drone menu to figure out where the bureaucracy drones are going to be added next.

 

[Nim]

This is probably the most comprehensive on drones
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=3538.msg22392

I'm sure you're right, but there's a point when ICS ing even with Yang that even the initial pop in a base is a drone. Doesn't your total population affect bureaucracy? That was my meaning. When your total population increases, you get more bureaucracy drones, and you use the drone menu to figure out where the bureaucracy drones are going to be added next.

Bureaucracy drones come from surpassing a certain number of bases, depending on map size and efficiency iirc. Nothing to do with total population.

 

[laclongquan]

I thought they would damage all units in a square, and I could swear Yang managed to eliminate all 3 or 4 of my units in a city, but when I use one I only kill one unit, and don't scratch the other ones.

I'm playing my first serious game (still learning, though, although having mastered Civ 2 certainly helps) as the Gaians on highest difficulty, and it seems I may have a chance to win by Transcending if I keep the research up.
It's interesting that you can actually role play your factions to a certain degree in this game.

I think it's related to the strength of your missile reactor. The stronger it is, the more collateral damage it cause.

 

[Nevill]

So, Conventional Missiles - what are they good for?

Normally, they are one hit - mutual kill wonders that punch somewhat above their weight (depending on their reactor - I think they have 9*reactor Power when it comes to combat) and have great range. Most of the offensive units with the exception of Choppers will only last for 1 combat, if that - you destroy a enemy unit, expending their move, and then the enemy destroys them in turn. If so, why not go for a nigh-guaranteed kill?

Their range makes them decent scouting options during war when your standard air forces can't penetrate too far into enemy territoty. They also can't be intercepted, unlike Needlejets and Choppers. I don't remember if they follow the rules of Psi combat, though, will have to test it sometime.

They do not cause collateral damage - they only hit one target.

BTW, how does "On Alert" work? Seems to me it's always the other guy being the attacker, and thus having the advantage anyway.

'On Alert' IIRC wakes your unit up once a enemy unit comes face-to-face with it, as opposed to Hold/Sleep (which does not wake it up without your input). My memory is fuzzy, but I think it also makes the unit attack first during Simultaneous Turns in MP. It's been too long since I played that, what with Win7 and up abolishing IPX and DirectPlay.

As for the drones - see the breakdown on the base screen under the Psych tab in the middle. It never lies, though sometimes it is not all that easy to understand the logic. Normally I would suspect Free Market (or negative POLICE ratings in general) as main causes for 'drones out of nowhere' due to how pacifism works.

Another reason is, indeed, a bureaucracy which is affected by your total number of bases. Once you reach a certain limit, every new base will start adding a drone on a couple of other bases, which is difficult to predict and track. To my knowledge, this includes captured bases, so military conquest might eventually lead to unrest on your own home soil.

 

[octavius]

The game (at least the military conquest part of it) sure got easier once I got Copters. Just let the Copter do all the hard work, and then move in with a ground unit or a cruiser.

 

[octavius]

Stupid AI...Miriam used a nuke and then everybody ganged up on her. So why stop with that one nuke? If you've first used it and become public enemy number 1, then why not go all in and use the ultimate weapon to righteously smite down all enemies?
Now the Believers are in the same situation as Nazi Germany, except the good guys (me) are attacking from the east and the commies (Yang) is attacking from the west. The Believers used to attack with waves after waves with 10-15 troops every second turn, now they have hardly enough units to defend their cities.

 

[Nevill]

So why stop with that one nuke?

Try it. No, really. Do it for science, then tell us about the results.

 

[octavius]

I found out that a Huge map was just too tiresome, so I retired Deirdre when I was in the lead.
I started a new game with a more managable Large map as The Hive, and started on an island and didn't get a chance to expand much. But still I'm in the clear lead on both Tech and Wealth, with a core of only four bases and some others scattered about. Since the AI don't bother to develop their bases much they don't get much Energy income.

Also, it seems it's a good strategy to just defend and build until you run out of improvements to build, and you can build "clean" units and/or Needlejets (before the enemy is able to shoot them down) and Copters.