4X The Unsurpassed Brian Reynolds' Alpha Centauri thread

[octavius]

Just finished RTFM. It's silly how they go out of their way to not mention Civilization, and how things from Civ have been given new names, when they clearly are the same.
Also, no tech chart poster with the GOG version that I could find.

On the bright side, it looks like they have been inspired by Master of Orion, to make the game less predictable and formulaic than Civ 1-2, with the factions being more unique and tech development seemingly being more random.

 

[mastroego]

There are a lot of mechanics and concepts that were in never in any CIV, AFAIK.
The game is DEEP, trust me.

EDIT: found the SMACX tech tree here for you.

EDIT 2: I suggest to read this legendary guide. Or the updated one for the expansion.

 

[octavius]

My point is that it should have been included by GOG.
But I already found a nice tech poster here.

And I don't doubt SMAC is deep. But it's obviously based on Civ II and is a sequel to the Civ games, but yet no mention of Civilization in the manual is weird.

 

[mastroego]

Brand/rights issues, probably.
Still, it's very different when you start to know it.

 

[Jason Liang]

The better strategies for SMAC/X are completely different than the ones for CIV II. Half or more of the technologies, even early ones, expand your power exponentially, once you learn how they can be leveraged. And, love or hate the unit workshop, being able to stick modules on formers/ probes/ crawlers/ boats opens up vast strategic space.

 

[octavius]

So, "blind" or normal research?

 

[Nevill]

Try blind. Less exploitable.

 

[Comte]

Blind

 

[catfood]

Blind like a real man.

 

[Jason Liang]

For single player, also accelerated start so that the initial secret projects are evenly distributed among the players and AI.

 

[Nevill]

No.

Accelerated start is a nice feature, but its implementation is dumb. Take research mechanics. The research cost for each new tech is not fixed, but iuncreases based on the number of factors, depending on how many techs you know, who is the current tech leader etc. A faction who is a constant tech leader will find that pioneering is getting more difficult, while the faction that is behind will find catching up easier.

Accelerated start distributes techs randomly without looking at the faction's capacity to research new ones, and that screws with research cost formula somehow. The costs become astronomical, way higher than is warranted by 'normal' play. And you are in no way guaranteed the ability to catch up. If by some whim of dice you didn't get Centauri Ecology and Planetary Economics... have fun with researching the next tech for 50+ years with no formers and no spies. You can easily cripple a faction's development that way.

You will learn a few things as you play that are governed more by the mechanics than by logic. Among them is 'try not to pick up or trade techs before you research at least one of your own' and 'do not use accelerated start if you are not a game mod who would edit the scenario further'.

If you want a challenge of not taking all Secret Projects, you may impose that challenge on yourself. Or just don't use crawlers that enable this stupidity in the first place.

 

[Jason Liang]

I find accelerated start games more likely to be interesting but perhaps for more experienced players. I'm pretty sure accelerated gives you some formers automatically, and if you optimize teching, teching is too fast already, even with slow research turned on. Starting with random tech helps make accelerated start more interesting, so that the correct research path might no longer be the optimal research path.

 

[octavius]

What the deal with "crawlers"?

 

[mastroego]

They drastically increase your potential resource output since they can gather stuff outside city limits.
They make Population Booming easier.
They free your workers, giving the option to make more specialists.
They can be used to support ANOTHER city that's struggling with food or something else.
They can be abused to fast-produce Secret Projects by mass-producing them and mass-scraping them at the selected city (you should avoid this).
They can be armored and even provide some sort of first defense along your borders.

A lot of "deals" with crawlers....

 

[Nevill]

Dirt cheap units assigned to an early OP technology that cost no support, have potential to multiply the base production, and can hurry Secret Projects*.

* possibly cheaper than you can hurry buildings if you upgrade your crawlers before feeding them to a base - upgrade costs are significantly cheaper than hurrying costs.

Essentially, from 60s and on, if you have the tech, you have the Secret Project - you have no excuse not to.

(Also, they come with a Planetary Transit System SP that breaks the game all by itself... I had a game that made me go from 32 pop to 150+ in 16 turns without a population boom)

 

[mastroego]

They also make Super Science cities possible.
Have one science city amass the various science projects and research multipliers.... then send crawlers everywhere to harvest energy... even SEA crawlers that you'd design for the task of harvesting from the "terraformed" sea.
You'll swim in research.

 

[Quatlo]

Do you ever stop producing supply crawlers? Is there any reason not to just spam them all the time, especially in midgame when they pop up in 1-2 turns and just fill every square not used by your bases with them?

 

[mastroego]

yes, there's a reason, you need production time to do other stuff too
Come to think of it, it's their very purpose, ultimately.

Also land is limited, when all is said and done

 

[Jason Liang]

No matter how much mineral you have stored in crawlers, each base can only build one thing a turn. So if you need to produce five 40 mineral rovers, that takes 5 base turns to do even if you have 300 minerals in crawlers saved up.

But yes, there's almost no reason to use population to "work" tiles once tiles can be crawled. The only tiles that should be worked are ones that aren't specialized for one resource, generally just 1 borehole for each base, or obelisks, or maxed out fungus tiles. Once you have crawlers, ideally most of your population is turned to librarians/ transcends that provide research and happiness. Way better than nerve stapling.

Land is limited, but the sea is near infinite (of course there's a hard cap on units too ) Sea tiles can't produce mineral very well but its a near infinite source of energy and food.

Also, crawlers are a liability in a war since they are squishy, especially unarmored crawlers. On the other hand, the provide sight (especially sea crawlers) and protect your coasts from invasion.

 

[Nevill]

Basically, 'you stop once you run out of land to terraform'.

Once your raw production start hitting 25+ mins, you get less benefits out of a crawler, but that's well into the midgame. By then it's easier to just buy facilities for less developed bases than to make them grow their own crawler fleet to boost their production.

They will likely always remain relevant for specialist-heavy bases, but you'll be capped at 14-16 pop for a long time... meaning that you won't need more than 30 food, and with the satellites, even less than that.

But yes, there's almost no reason to use population to "work" tiles when tiles can be crawled.

Hybrid forests can break even or surpass specialists with resource output, and trade is only boosted by naturally produced energy. A worked 3-2-3 forest tile could supposedly work better than just a 3 Econ 2 Labs Engineer supported by a crawler.

 

[Jason Liang]

What the deal with "crawlers"?

This is basically the most hyper efficient way to expand and terraform in Alpha Centauri.

 

[octavius]

Sounds like mud crabs something to avoid.
That level of micrpmanagement is a huge turn off for me.

 

[Nevill]

I gave a counter-example for it on the 4th page. It was a valid build without crawlers.

Generally, the ICS build is slightly more energy-efficient, but also lower on the production and more vulnerable to crawler sniping.

Both are very micro-intensive. But that's just the nature of the game. The more you micro, the more you can sqeeze out of your bases. Small advantages multiply exponentially.

Civ IV attempted to do away with heavy micro-ing on the individual base level. It succeeded, mostly, but I could never get into the game, and I thought it extremely boring when it first came out. I never returned even after the expansion.

Never quite found a worthy Civ game after SMAC, even with all its flaws.

 

[Jason Liang]

Sounds like mud crabs something to avoid.
That level of micrpmanagement is a huge turn off for me.

Supply Crawlers are crawl and forget; they reduce micromanagement.

But yeah, having 40+ bases is a pain and unnecessary. Still, it shows that you can do a lot with very little land. Crawlers is probably the least micro most sane way to manage lots of bases. The problem is that bases are so powerful in Alpha Centauri. They build things, provide support, work themselves for free, extend LOS, automatically road, produce energy with transmitter orbitals, reduce eco damage, house units, etc... there's very little reason not to have as many bases as you can manage.

But i don't play full ICS either. Ok, except when i play Mirriam... I rarely have more than 10 formers at one time. SMAC/X is more of a role playing experience; you can try building whatever type of society you want.

Industrial Automation is probably the most radical technology in the game, but there are many others too like Suborbital Flight, MMA, advanced ecological engineering, submersibles, magtubes... its what makes this game not Civ II.

Civ IV is still a pain to micro once you get to the endgame.

 

[mastroego]

Sounds like mud crabs something to avoid.
That level of micrpmanagement is a huge turn off for me.

There's no need to get autistic like that.
I never did, in fact, I tend to build ecological heavens (viable strategy).
You can play without ICSing, and without abusing crawlers. Perhaps focus on a couple of minerals/energy heavy cities.
I certainly wouldn't build boreholes everywhere, what's of the point of studying the terrain if you grid/build like that, that's not playing it's a menial job. Imho of course