4X The Unsurpassed Brian Reynolds' Alpha Centauri thread

[Nevill]

You can beat computer on one city. It is called one-city challenge. You can beat it by almost beating all factions by conquest, then switching to the weakest faction, then almost beating all the factions by conquest with your puny faction, then switching to the new weakest faction... until you build Voice of the Planet, then switching to the weakest faction again and still getting the Transcendence victory.

The AI in the game is non-existent. The true challenge lies in multiplayer games.

Those usually are an exercise in autism. Need... to win... that arms race. Just a dozen more bases...

Normally, we just make some house-rules to not make the game into a chore. Like, ban crawlers, or get a hard limit on the number of bases, because managing 70+ bases (I had games where we ran out of unique names AND Greek letters) is not all that fun.

Hard base limit has the bonus of making ICS-like placement of cities straight out inferior.

Edit: what I am trying to say is that SMAC is a game in which you have to handicap yourself to have fun. Be it role-playing, or a challenge, or a set of house-rules. The most efficient ways of playing are too ugly and mechanical.

 

[octavius]

Built a Thermal Borehole, but instead of getting +6 Minerals and Energy I only get +2.
I assume there is some tech you need to get full effect, but the in-game documentation is lacking.

 

[mastroego]

More than one tech IIRC.
You need to lift energy AND mineral restrictions.

Long time no play. There' also some secret project that lets you get away with it earlier.

 

[Nevill]

I'm game if you are.

Sure. Let's take it to the Multiplayer forum.

 

[Nevill]

Built a Thermal Borehole, but instead of getting +6 Minerals and Energy I only get +2.
I assume there is some tech you need to get full effect, but the in-game documentation is lacking.

Things that aren't documented in-game or anywhere (at least, I don' think so)

1) Special resources ignore tile limits. If you build a borehole on a bonus mineral, you will get 8 minerals from a tile, regardless of whether you know the tech. It is normally useless trivia, since you can't build boreholes until you research EcoEng, which lifts the restriction anyway... but it is useful if you go for an early Weather Paradigm when you can build advanced stuff but can't really profit from it yet.

Similarly, if you build a borehole on an energy bonus, you'll get 8+ energy.

2) Building a Condenser will let you ignore nutrient limits in a tile, breaking the general rule once again. Plus, condensers don't just make the tile and surroundings more humid, they also increase food production by 50% there. So it becomes a useful tactics to spam condensers + farms after building an early Weather Paradigm for tiles producing 4 food even when you don't have Gene Splicing yet. Every tile is like a nutrient bonus - how cool is that?

On an actual nutrient bonus condensers + farm produce 7 food. This allows for some very fast growth.

These two factors make Weather Paradigm a very OP project if you build enough formers to take advantage of it.

 

[lemon-lime]

I fully recommend Nethog's SMAC/X tech trees:
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=19519.0
It has a shit ton of important information (including techs needed to lift the resource limits) in condensed form and it's printer friendly.

Another important information: Native life's psi combat ignores the enemy's reactor tech, but the displayed in-game stats don't reflect that. So a mindworm attacking a unit with a fusion reactor (which buffs the unit's hitpoints from 10 to 20) has no actual penalty, despite the game telling you otherwise. The game straight up lies with the given combat odds in such a case. You need to mentally double/triple/quadruple (depending on respective reactor tech level) the displayed native life's combat odds to get the true picture.

 

[octavius]

I miss the simplistic terraforming of Civ 2.
I get a headache trying to figure out the optimal improvements. Borehole? Mine or Solars? Forest or Condensors? And where to put Mirrors and Condensors for max effect? And do I have the tech to get the benefit from the improvements?
Should I just leave it to the Governor?

BTW, what's the (un)official ranking of the factions from easiest to hardest to win with in SP?

 

[Jason Liang]

The three extremes are:
Gaian terraforming- Forests everywhere
Morgan terraforming- Boreholes + Farms + Condensers + Bases
Native terraforming- Fungus everywhere

It's up to you, there is no optimal. Well, ICS is still optimal but the other extreme options are nearly as good.

 

[mastroego]

I miss the simplistic terraforming of Civ 2.
I get a headache trying to figure out the optimal improvements. Borehole? Mine or Solars? Forest or Condensors? And where to put Mirrors and Condensors for max effect? And do I have the tech to get the benefit from the improvements?
Should I just leave it to the Governor?

NO, you'll get the hang of it, and develop your style.
Solars gain more from high ground, so if you have a city on a rise it might be a good place to invest in energy. Forests give overall balanced production and less pollution, they're often a good choice but might not be the best fit in many situations.
Boreholes kill food production, you'll want to use tiles that contribute little already, perhaps that also generate little production and energy, for maximum gain and minimal loss.
And so on.
Most of all, it depends on your larger strategy and which techs you're going to rely on, every terraforming approach can be leveraged provided that you know what you're doing.

Again I suggest going through the guides I linked to before, they're great and a good read too

 

[Nevill]

BTW, what's the (un)official ranking of the factions from easiest to hardest to win with in SP?

I gave my estimates in an earlier post:

Tiers:
Godly: Aliens.
Powerful: Gaians, University, Cyborgs, Hive, Drones
Normal: Believers, Peacekeepers, DataAngels, (Morgan?)
Who? Spartans, Planet Cult, Pirates

With comments/reasons about particular cases. Morgan is a wildcard, alternating between shit-tier and powerful depending on many factors, but he can be rather dangerous if played to his full ICS strength (on Free Market and Wealth each base gives 6+ energy just by existing. Normal bases have 1-2. Aggressive base spam can bring you ridiculous money - but I mean 'aggressive'; you have to pop those bases as fast as Hive does).

Terraforming (starting):
arid flat - forest
arid rolling - forest
moist flat - forest
moist rolling - forest of farm+solar depending on height (+nutrient - may go just farm for a +4 food tile; +mineral - may go mine for a +5 min tile, but it's expensive)
rainy flat - forest (+nutrient - may go farm for a +5 food tile; +mineral - may go farm+mine for a +2 food/+4 min tile, but it's expensive)
rainy rolling - either nothing (just use the tile for food when you don't have the time to terraform it), solar, or farm+solar depending on height; in case of bonus resources go for specialized terraforming
rocky - either mine (if you lifted the min. limit), or terraform level to rolling. Mineral bonus on a rocky tile gives 7 minerals with a road. That's a lot in the beginning.

In most choises forest would be the right call. It's OP. Exceptions are the tiles that give more food, or resourse tiles.

Terraforming (advanced):
- boreholes everywhere, the more you can put, the better. I usually place landmarks with 'b' on the map where they can be built, trying to maximize the number.
- two condenser near each other boost their tiles to rainy automatically. As such, there is no difference whatsoever where you build condensers. They give most food, so if you are not using crawlers and actually work the tiles, they are preferable to build on rolling tiles for an extra mineral. With crawlers, you don't care. Build them when you need more food and where you don't plan to build boreholes. Build them on nutrient bonus tiles to get mad boosts to food production.
- echelon mirrors - don't bother. Outside of crawler energy farms (which consist of wide swath of land artificially raised to max height with the intention to gather energy with crawlers) they are useless to you, and boreholes give you better energy returns as well as more minerals.
- forest improves greatly with Tree Farms and Hybrid Forest facilities. In midgame forest + boreholes + condensers on high-yield nutrient tiles become the go-to combination.
- fungus starts to shine in a very late game. You can ignore it, it won't matter for anyone but Gaians who could use fungal tiles for easy 2 food (matters when you pop-boom and need 2 extra food to grow 1 pop per turn)
- you can drill rivers when you've got nothing better to do. It will give you +1 bonus energy per each worked river tile, and if placed smartly, you can really improve your output. Word of advice, though, rivers do strange things with tile heights. You do not want to do this during Global Warming, or you will find out that rivers have leveled the terrain you thought safe down to the sea level, and it submerged shortly thereafter.
- raising or lowering terrain is done mostly for the lulz, and only rarely to maximize tile yields (lowering a tile to place a borehole, for example). It can be used offensively, though, to expand an island nation and make it continental, to advance your land forces to the opponent who thinks himself safe behind his navy, to sink his bases etc.

Sea terraforming:
- either kelp farms and tidal harnesses, or don't bother. Mineral yields are too weak, and sea bases are weak in general.

* forests and kelp farms can grow and expand by themselves, making them excellent 'poor man's' terraforming options and potential fungal removers when you don't have time to do it manually. Sometimes I build a kelp farm near fungus and hope if eats its way through it. Sometimes it does.

 

[Johannes]

I gave my estimates in an earlier post:

Tiers:
Godly: Aliens.
Powerful: Gaians, University, Cyborgs, Hive, Drones
Normal: Believers, Peacekeepers, DataAngels, (Morgan?)
Who? Spartans, Planet Cult, Pirates

Pirates are bad? I haven't played with them since the sea turtling premise is so retarded to start with. But isn't the defensive advantage of being in the sea a yuge boon?

 

[Nevill]

Their defensive advantage is a perfect case of Elusive Joe - yes, few would capture their bases because no one really wants them. Sea bases are terrible. SMAC is a game where expansion is key, and sea colony pods cost 70 minerals while sea formers cost 40... and mineral output of sea tiles is horrendous. There are no forests, formers are few and expensive, and mines are slow to build. By the time they develop 10 bases others will do 20. By the time jets are flying, their advantage is nullified, and they won't be the first ones to make it to jets.

Their penalties are horrible too: -1 EFFIC means they can't spread out too much or they will lose energy, and -1 GROWTH means they can't use pop boom. Can't really expand, can't build, can't grow, and all they get in return is a little headstart in sea exploration. It might work if - if - you get lucky with Unity pods, but you'll still be limping for the rest of the game.

The only method I found to play them semi-reliably well is to grab your starting colony pods, make your way to Monsoon Jungle and colonize those, then play them as a standard land-based faction... but that's because Jungle is OP and can carry any faction.

 

[Quatlo]

Is it so bad? Sea shelf gives you +1 mineral for free, your every shelf is a forest pretty much for pirates, you are free to do anything for a very long time since you are untouchable and can explore all the water based ruins
-1 growth is pretty bad but sea shit gives you pretty okay food supply, i think the biggest negative is inability to borehole overall, but they come into game when your sea invincibility fades too.
Nobody forbids your from spamming stuff at secluded islands aswell, and pirates are the only ones that can get them early.

But I dunno, I dont really see any reason to play AC in multiplayer except crippling autism.

Edit:

These two factors make Weather Paradigm a very OP project if you build enough formers to take advantage of it.

Man I LOVE to do that as believers.

 

[Nevill]

Is it so bad? Sea shelf gives you +1 mineral for free, your every shelf is a forest pretty much for pirates

It is pretty bad. They get +1 mineral for free, but a forest gives every other faction +2 minerals as well as some energy. You can spam forests with land-based formers, but sea formers cost twice as much and mines require twice as many former-turns.

It might be the case of forest being too good, but regardless of the reason, Pirates are not a competitive faction. They could be made bearable if sea CP cost 50 mins and sea formers cost 30 (I firmly believe the game's unit cost formula to be idiotic and in need of modding when it comes to sea and air units), but as it is they are gimped by combination of low production and extremely high unit costs.

They can mitigate their poor conditions by claiming more special resources, but they can never expand massively like land-based factions can.

 

[Johannes]

Not having to spend resources on defense seems to make a bigger impact in early expansion speed than you give credit for, seems to me. But Im not familiar with how the pacing of the game actually is in semi skilled multi, whether ppl more commonly leave each other to build and boom in peace, or if they more likely go out and conquer whole nations in fast, low-cost blitzkriegs.

The less likely wars resulting in stalemates are, the less advantage the sea safety gives (when you have to compete against the winners of land wars, not just match the performance of an avg land nation).

But seeing how everyone's somewhat nooby at the SMAC MP (as so few games get played), I doubt how doable it is to really gauge national strength in an FFA setting for a unique nation like this.

 

[octavius]

So does the star going into perihilion mean that moist squares turn arid?
Or is there some other explanation?

 

[Nevill]

No, that normally does not do it (I think). Somebody must have screwed around with eco-system and humidity - raised terrain, drilled a river somewhere or built a condenser.

 

[octavius]

I haven't raised terrain or build a condenser, but I did drill a river on the other side of a bay relative to the two bases where squares have turned arid.

I did some testing, reverting to an old save: the minute the new river appeared, four squares went dry on the other side of the bay.
Grrr...why is this side effect not mentioned in the manual?
EDIT: also, I should have not been able to do the Aquify terraforming, since I don't have Ecological Engineering. I have the Weather Paradigm, though, but it does not list drilling as one of the new options.

 

[Nevill]

Well, they don't usually do that. But they may alter tile height along the river's course (they always flow from higher altitude to lower one, and sometimes they make new riverbeds), which in turn alters humidity. It's a side-effect of a side-effect.

Weather Paradigm allows to use all advanced terraforming options normally available through Ecological Engineering, including raising terrain.

 

[laclongquan]

If factions make too much pollutions that could be it. I look at Yang and the Hive here.

 

[octavius]

Playing as the Gaians Mary Whitehouse Miriam Godwinson was so offended by my Democratic politics that she declared war.
I figured a Police State would work better in a state of war, so she kind of won the ideological war.

 

[octavius]

So I met Mr. Morgan.
Shortly thereafter I was 600 credits poorer.

 

[Jason Liang]

Don't waste minerals building every facility at every base. It's a huge drain of minerals and eventually a huge drain of energy as well (as most facilities have an upkeep of 1-3 energy). In the beginning the only facilities you should build are recycling tanks, children's creches, recreation commons once your population gets too large and hab complexes once you get them (and your base grows to 6-7). You only need network nodes in your HQ and to pop artifacts. It's worth building cheap infantry/ rovers/ probes immediately since you'll need to build them eventually and you can always upgrade them to your current tech level- the only thing you can't upgrade is the chasis. Rovers stay relevant for a long, long, long time since hovertanks are way late.

Probes are especially good to build since they're clean and you'll eventually want to station at least 1-2 probes at each base.

You also need to garrison at least 1 land unit in each base or else the base will suffer from unhapiness for being unprotected.

You can build units in a developed base (say crawlers) and then reassign them to a different new base that's still building its basic facilities (recycling tanks, creches, commons).

Also always rush build when you get to the last row of a facility or unit. Any extra minerals carry over to the next thing you build, and you get the best energy: mineral rate.

Also, in war, Fundy is best. And you could have been fundy friends with Mirriam too!

Fundy is also great if you get Morgan or Zak as a neighbor:D

 

[laclongquan]

I miss the simplistic terraforming of Civ 2.
I get a headache trying to figure out the optimal improvements. Borehole? Mine or Solars? Forest or Condensors? And where to put Mirrors and Condensors for max effect? And do I have the tech to get the benefit from the improvements?
Should I just leave it to the Governor?

BTW, what's the (un)official ranking of the factions from easiest to hardest to win with in SP?

You are joking, right? Forest got the defense bonus. PLus it's easy to manage: just spam the forest and forget about it. If you choose to go Condensor you will lose brain cells figuring ways to optimize it. Brain cells that can be better use in other things.

Probabbly the only way you can use Condensor is in a captured city where they already build the farm. Tear them up to forestify them is too much work.

 

[octavius]

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.