4X The Unsurpassed Brian Reynolds' Alpha Centauri thread

[laclongquan]

Anyone has an early Transcend advice for Morgan?

I am not ready to give up yet, since it's still too early (8 turns till Clean Reactor and no Fusion Power) but I am ready to tear my hair out.

Morgan, Transcend, Huge Map of Planet

Income each turn run from 40-60. Big base the maintaince cost of facility is eating me alive. Small base actually are in the black. I Hurry a lot, and upgrade the early 121 defenders to police, so the budgetis barely above zero.

From what I can see it seem Transcend gear me toward small base design, since I can get a 3pop immediately. If set up at the right place I can run it at stagnant growth. Plus my growth is too horrific.

(Thinking back, last game University was okay because I stole a lot of credit each turn from a nearby Morgan city, the which I capture from a Gaia and present to Morgan for EXACTLY that purpose. Without that trick I may get as much headache as this one)

 

[Nevill]

Anyone has an early Transcend advice for Morgan?

Beeline to Industrial Automation. Switch to Wealth for +2 ECON.

When you start getting bureacracy drones, switch to Free Market and hurry RecCommons in every base you've built. Spam bases, it's a free income, and you can't Popboom or even grow too far through regular means. It's a bit like Hive.

Avoid Democracy until midgame. that SUPPORT penalty hurts.

Spam crawlers and get Planetary Transit System ASAP. As you can't Popboom and grow past 4 pop, starting your bases at 3 is a huge boon that can offset the lack of growth options. RecCommons and PTS bonus should keep them free of riots. Designate some of the bases as support cities and rehome all the units there. Build a lot of formers, you will need to terraform a lot of land. Weather Paradigm would come in handy.

If you can grab Virtual World, do that and start hurrying Network Nodes in new bases instead of Rec Commons. Your income should allow for it, and your research will skyrocket since you gather a lot more energy than other factions.

When you feel you can't handle Support, research Doctrine: Loyalty and Centauri Empathy and switch to Police State + Green + Wealth. You keep your ECON at +2, and with PTS you don't need growth. Futhermore, you will have no need to spend money on RecCommons anymore.

At this point you should be able to afford an army and tech up to the Air Power quickly. From here, it is standart fare.

Somewhere around Orbital Spaceflight you can try to launch a few satellites to boost your food income, but your best bet is still the Cloning Vats. Failing that, a condensor+farm on a nutrient bonus. Failing that, just grow bases manually by designating a few to produce nothing but Colony Pods and adding them to other bases. With PTS it should be fairly easy to do.

Sometimes it pays off to do a quick Recycling Tanks rush - research Biogenetics as your first tech after Centauri Ecology, and rush the RecTanks at your first two bases. The food and mineral bonuses that early will allow you to build more Colony Pods and Formers than your rivals would, giving you a much needed boost. At least you would offset that -1 SUPPORT penalty.

Once you get to Clean Reactors, switch to Democracy and roll the enemies over. It isn't uncommon to earn hundreds of credits by 2200s without compromising your research. You can hurry units and turn yourself into a money-grubbing Hive.

I am not ready to give up yet, since it's still too early (8 turns till Clean Reactor and no Fusion Power) but I am ready to tear my hair out.

What year is it, and what do you have?

Big base the maintaince cost of facility is eating me alive.

Maintenance in vanilla should be negligible, especially compared to the amount of dough Morgan earns. What do you have built?

 

[Ashery]

Re: Forests:

Perhaps tie forests to the aridity (or lack-thereof) of the tile they're on? It eliminates their unique aspect, but it's not as though you guys are giving off the impression that their current implementation is well balanced. Perhaps 0-1-1 for arid, then 1-1-1, and finally, 1-2-1.

 

[Nevill]

Forests are hard-coded to produce the same amount of resourses regardless of which tiles they are on (except for energy, but they share these rules with other enhancements).

I'd leave them at 1-2-1, ramp up the terraforming time to 6 or even 8 turns, and make formers available without a pre-requisite (but leave the ability to clear fungus on CentEco). Remove nutrient penalty for farms and mines in one square.

It would make for a nice balance between 2-2-0, 2-1-2 and 1-2-1 tiles. Later on, with Tree Farms it will be between 4-1-0, 0-4-0, 3-1-2, 0-6-6 (I'd also reduce the minerals on Boreholes, they are insane) and 2-2-1. Still a good balance.

When Hybrids come around, it would be 6-1-0, 4-1-2, 0-6-6, 3-2-2 and ~2-2-2 (from fungus, getting as high as 3-3-3 in late game).

it's not as though you guys are giving off the impression that their current implementation is well balanced.

SMAC is anything but balanced. Still, most excesses can be fixed with a bit of tinkering or just plain old house rules.

 

[Hellraiser]

I never had an issue with Golden Age induced pop-booming and Kyrub's patch. Seems to work 100% correct all the time.

Re: Forests:

Perhaps tie forests to the aridity (or lack-thereof) of the tile they're on? It eliminates their unique aspect, but it's not as though you guys are giving off the impression that their current implementation is well balanced. Perhaps 0-1-1 for arid, then 1-1-1, and finally, 1-2-1.

I think the problem with forests is the role they were designed to fill and what they ended up doing.

Compared to farms/mines/collectors forests are supposed to be the jack of all trades master of none, which is independent of the base stats of the tile. Basically from a design point of view, forests are there to turn useless tiles into something useful when all other terraforming options would do jack shit. By extent tree farms and hybrid forests should be there so that a player who has been fucked by the map generator, can still catch up with proper investment.

As it is now forests pretty much outclass mines for mineral production. Apparently on Chiron the average factory produces shard rovers by burning wood and turning wooden logs into plasmasteel. Occasionally a fiery orifice extending into the bowels of Planet may also be involved in the process. At the same time they also provide food and energy. And infrastructure turns them into a no-brainer. I mean honestly, tree farms give +1 nutrients, reduce the ecodamage caused by forests by half AND increase the no-ecodamage mineral threshhold. The latter 2 are exactly why if forests are an industry no-brainer. On top of that you get +50% econ and psych. I doubt there is a better facility in the game. Oh wait, actually it's the hybrid forest which does all that and gives +1 energy to all forest tiles.

To be honest I would just buff vanilla solar panels, farms and mines early game. Maybe increase the food, energy and mineral caps before restrictions lifting tech by 1. Or give them better bonuses for humidity/elevation/rockyness by +1. Then I would separate the mineral threshold increasing mechanic from tree farm/hybrid forest construction. Have the threshold increase with eco tech, planet rating and later on with preserves/sanctuaries.

Of course all of that is probably hardcoded so this is just speculative rambling on my part, if there was ever a proper sequel/successor to SMAC.

 

[jcd]

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[Irenaeus II]

only homos turn off blind research

+1

 

[laclongquan]

Morgan lose the Virtual World race with Gaia. I would love a free cost3 hologram theatre at every base but it really can not be helped. Side note: it took all my resource just to stay neck to neck with that huge power early on. I grasp a third, Gaia grasp a third, and the rest shared between Lal and University. Though lately Believers get to the top, half bigger than 2nd power which is me, thanks to a huge continent they only have to share with Yang, which they kicked his ass.

Currently 2288, I am aiming at clean reactor tech, Uni at fusion, Believer at Air Doctrine. I aim to steal Air at next turn.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Lots of good points and ideas raised here, I will try and reply with some once I collect my thoughts, I am a bit tired.

sid meier is a fraudster, you should not give him credit for this game

I was seriously thinking about renaming it BRIAN REYNOLDS' ALPHA CENTAURI, but I was afraid someone would wonder wtf is going on.

To be fair to Sid, he pretty much admits that yeah, Alpha Centauri is Brian's baby, there's even "A Brian Reynolds design" in the main menu. No idea why Sid Meier keeps putting his name on games.

 

[laclongquan]

Marketing. Nobody know who Brian reynold is, but we can grasp a pretty good guess what a Sid Meier's game is like.

 

[Hellraiser]

Pretty much, it was Firaxis' first game, they had to sell it somehow.

 

[Nevill]

Side note: it took all my resource just to stay neck to neck with that huge power early on. I grasp a third, Gaia grasp a third, and the rest shared between Lal and University.

Hm. I imagine you are not building enough bases then. Stranded on an island? How many of them do you have?

Morgan really has no downsides putting bases in every other tile. If you have PTS you should be waaay ahead of the others, and you can grab one as early as by the 2140s (depends on whether you play with Unity Pods on). Once you get to crawlers, really, all projects should be yours since 10 crawlers put together allow you to instabuild them.

And if you know about the trick with upgrading crawlers (or the rules of hurrying in general), then past a certain point no one else should get a project. Note, however, that in multiplayer some of these methods are often banned by home rules due to how broken they are.

Also, this might be of interest to you, including the original article it refers to. Sadly, SMAC is a niche game and many of the posts on apolyton that once hosted the largest gaming community are lost to time. There were some good turn-by-turn strategy threads for Transcendence vicroty in the early 2200s.

Currently 2288, I am aiming at clean reactor tech

Wait, 2288 or 2188?

Regardless, if you got PTS, you can afford building a lot of formers and expanding quickly to improve your research rate. If you lack the space to expand (on an island), simply build more formers and raise the terrain. Always work them in stacks so that they would finish their jobs quickly - it is more beneficial to have several formers working on 1 tile simultaneously than to have them work independently.

Lots of formers and boreholing your way to victory is usually the universal answer.

 

[Gondolin]

I was seriously thinking about renaming it BRIAN REYNOLDS' ALPHA CENTAURI, but I was afraid someone would wonder wtf is going on.

Thank you for doing it.

 

[laclongquan]

I dont know~ Maybe the latest patchs do something. It seems to be harder than the old time to play Morgan.

After getting a decisive edge in this run i will restart to see if I play Morgan better~

 

[Destroid]

Very in depth interview with Brian Reynolds covers a lot of stuff about alpha centauri. Posted before on the dex but worth a repost.

http://thegamedesignroundtable.com/2013/10/28/episode-51/

 

[rezaf]

Marketing. Nobody know who Brian reynold is, but we can grasp a pretty good guess what a Sid Meier's game is like.

First of all, I reckon many older "serious" strategy gamers in fact DO know who Brion Reynolds is.
But then ... I hold Brian in high regard for his work on games like Colonization, Civ2 and of course SMAC, but the stuff he's turned to in the last decade or so?
I only wanna ask him: Brian, mobile free to play browsergame crap? Sir, have you no sense of decency?

 

[LizardWizard]

I only wanna ask him: Brian, mobile free to play browsergame crap? Sir, have you no sense of decency?

Probably really bitter watching Sid make millions doing literally nothing so he just went for the easy money.

 

[Average Manatee]

What can be done to lessen the impact of ICSing (all learned in the process of making the mod):

The biggest advantage of ICS is that the primary penalty of ICS, drones, are completely irrelevant if you run specialists. Fix that somehow by preventing players from changing citizens into specialists if they are all drones and ICS would be dead, dead, dead.

Transcend in particular makes ICS more powerful because the increased drones hurts cities trying to work lots of tiles while being irrelevant for cities that at most are only working a single borehole. If you implemented the above change you'd probably want to somewhat ease up on the transcend drone amount to prevent players from pulling their hair out at cities they can't use.

Alternatively any weakening of specialist stats in general weakens them far more a normal build strategy (and I personally really hate managing specialists). Knock down Technicians to +2 Economy and Engineers to +2/+2 econ/labs would be a good start. The fact that specialists don't suffer from inefficiency like normal energy harvesting is a huge benefit, if that could be changed it would knock ICS down a bit.

 

[Nevill]

Fix that somehow by preventing players from changing citizens into specialists if they are all drones and ICS would be dead, dead, dead.

Nope. Also, it runs contrary to the idea of using Doctors/Empaths to fix the drone problem.

You need size 5 base to utilize advanced specialists. Drone problems start with size 1. You still have to do something about them before they start proving useful.

Specialists are not the biggest advantage of ICSing, production and support is. This:

Transcend in particular makes ICS more powerful because the increased drones hurts cities trying to work lots of tiles while being irrelevant for cities that at most are only working a single borehole.

isn't a specialist problem. The screenshot from the last page? That's ICSing, but while there is a base in every possible tile, there are only 6 of those that are larger than pop 5.

ICS is one of the more effective strategies for Morgan, and his bases can't grow past pop 4 without a HabDome (so, no specialists). ICS is the default Hive strategy, and Yang never has drone problems on account of him running Police State.

I found the specialist bonuses pretty well thought out. Working actual tiles in well-developed bases is still preferable most of the time.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Hey bros, interrupting a bit the balance discussion:

This is sort of a mock-up of Panchiron map I intend to do:
http://imgur.com/RtTgnlM
Original: http://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1366/32/1366321085252.jpg

Idea is that its the Map of Planet gone Pangea.

Notes:
- Did it with photoshop. Basic stuff, really.
- Parts of the western continent were casualties of my malfunctioning mouse that sometimes clicks when its not supposed to.
- Seas would be shallower in general, like Pangea's were.
- I wonder if some of the nearby islands would follow the mainland or stay there.
- I noticed I lifted both landmasses north. Perhaps straighter-on and south would be a better fit?
- There's some oddly-fitting terrain there. Did the map designers think of continental drift as well? Considering SMAC has a file in the folder with the astronomical specifications of Chiron, Nessus, Phollus and Eurythion as well as its stars, it would't surprise me.
- Freshwater Sea fuses with Pholus Sea to become the huge Freshwater Pholus Sea or the Pholus Sea gets smashed, Tethys Sea-style?
- The water south of Moonsoon Jungle? Lake or Mountain?
- Eurytion Bay + New Sargasso + Landing Bay + Isle of Deinira = Europe + Mediterranean, with the western landmass being Asia?
- Mountains mountains mountains where continents crash. That means the center continent might become a barren wasteland of arid terrain. More volcanos where they meet?
- Monsoon Jungle: Dead On Arrival?

Gotta go, more later.

 

[Average Manatee]

Nope. Also, it runs contrary to the idea of using Doctors/Empaths to fix the drone problem.

You need size 5 base to utilize advanced specialists. Drone problems start with size 1. You still have to do something about them before they start proving useful.

Specialists are not the biggest advantage of ICSing, production and support is. This:

isn't a specialist problem. The screenshot from the last page? That's ICSing, but while there is a base in every possible tile, there are only 6 of those that are larger than pop 5.

ICS is one of the more effective strategies for Morgan, and his bases can't grow past pop 4 without a HabDome (so, no specialists). ICS is the default Hive strategy, and Yang never has drone problems on account of him running Police State.

I found the specialist bonuses pretty well thought out. Working actual tiles in well-developed bases is still preferable most of the time.

uhh, what?

Specialists are far preferable to working squares. You can crawl at least 4 nutrients per square mid-game. This supports 2 specialists. For engineers this is the equivalent of 10 energy, with no efficiency malus. Tell me what mid-game square produces 10 energy + the 2 food required to work it? Nothing comes close, even extreme land reformation can't hit it (and raising land requires far more worker turns). This isn't even close to the limit though. Hitting 6 nutrients per square is easy late game, and specialists effectively only cost 1 nutrient each with satellites. That means that crawling a single +6 nutrient square supports 6 engineers, producing 30 energy (not subject to efficiency) along with 6 normal energy and 6 minerals (from the satellites). Pray tell, what square comes close in output? Even if you could work 100% boreholes somehow that's only 6 energy/6 mins, and we all know that's impossible. I'm not even going to mention what Transcends add.

ICS is balanced (or at least not incredibly OP) in the early game where the paradigm is "work more squares, but do it less efficiently". Where it becomes OP is when the paradigm changes to "work no squares and just crawl food, becoming legions more efficient than anything else while ignoring any penalty or malus designed to inhibit ICS".

Normally the psych required to quell the super-super drones would greatly inhibit this. If specialists didn't automatically cancel drones then you'd have to either run half engineers/half empaths, or directly waste normal energy worked by converting it into psych. At the very least you'd actually build psych-bonus or drone-preventing buildings, slowing your growth. But since specialists cancel drones you not only get the +3 econ +2 labs from engineers, they also provide dozens of effective psych that would otherwise be needed to make the pop not a super super drone.

As to your ICS screenshot, had you abused specialists you probably would be on the zenith of transcending and your net income would be closer to 5k

 

[laclongquan]

Limit : red icon= maximum specialist - maximum population

I said red because in some scenario, even with no drone you still get a red icon shown.

 

[Nevill]

Specialists are far preferable to working squares. You can crawl at least 4 nutrients per square mid-game. This supports 2 specialists. For engineers this is the equivalent of 10 energy, with no efficiency malus. Tell me what mid-game square produces 10 energy + the 2 food required to work it? Nothing comes close, even extreme land reformation can't hit it (and raising land requires far more worker turns). This isn't even close to the limit though. Hitting 6 nutrients per square is easy late game, and specialists effectively only cost 1 nutrient each with satellites.

Ah, I see what you mean.

But doesn't it also mean that you have to buy infrastructure (that is, the buildings that multiply the production and energy values) over and over and over again, with no means to build them naturally?

One well-developed base without crawlers can produce ~60 minerals at a Hybrid/Genejack stage of the game to afford the Hospitals, Hybrid forests, Fusion Labs and the like. While a specialist-only base can outperform it in a raw energy output, does this raw energy compare to what we get when all the modifiers from the buildings are applied?

I am not very concerned with late game, as most of the time the outcome is already decided by then.

 

[Average Manatee]

But doesn't it also mean that you have to buy infrastructure (that is, the buildings that multiply the production and energy values) over and over and over again, with no means to build them naturally?

It means you need far less infrastructure to begin with since all you need is boosting econ/lab, not everything boosting minerals/econ/lab/psych. Everything else is rush-buyable, after all you're getting 2-5x as much energy per square as someone who actually tries to harvest energy, with no efficiency loss (easily worth another 20-40%) and avoiding the need to build a dozen more facilities per base.

One well-developed base without crawlers can produce ~60 minerals at a Hybrid/Genejack stage of the game to afford the Hospitals, Hybrid forests, Fusion Labs and the like. While a specialist-only base can outperform it in a raw energy output, does this raw energy compare to what we get when all the modifiers from the buildings are applied?

Huge mineral amounts are overrated. All overflow beyond 10 is lost (what good is 60 minerals if you are building 30 mineral crawlers?). Then there is the problem of the clean mineral limit, where all energy is naturally clean.

And yes, it does. Pre-spaceflight colonies will produce around 45 effective energy with only a hab complex. With +econ and +labs they'll produce around 150-250, depending on what you've built. And this requires only a 2x2 square, not a 3x3 with multiple expensive to terraform boreholes.

I am not very concerned with late game, as most of the time the outcome is already decided by then.

None of my examples are really late game. Engineers are a level-5 tech which is already immensely valuable to rush due to fusion, and the only requirements beyond that is to have squares squares with food. Hydroponics labs aren't far behind. If either of these are considered late game then its only because they are so OP that they immediately allow the player to escalate to 1 or more techs per turn and hit ascension.

It also bears noting that specialists ARE still abusable even before the beeline to engineers. Where the normal handicap of ICS is only having 1 or 2 energy per base, simply switching from working squares to specialists lets you trade 2 food for 3 labs or eco easy. A single 4 food square is worth at least 6 energy this way and more like 8-10 energy due to the efficiency/psych benefits. You're putting Morgan to shame from the start of the game, with less terraforming required to do it.

 

[Nevill]

Did a bit of an analysis comparing two different builds, and it appears that you are mostly right. I compared a scrap of land 5 by 5 tiles with 4 fully upgraded bases and 9 specialist-based ones.

The following assumptions were made:
- There is a maximum amount of borehores (16) around the bases.
- Builder bases mine 4 borehole and 10 forests each. ICS bases all mine 2 boreholes each (even though there are only 16 boreholes, not 18), and have the rest of their pop turned into Engineers, mining the food through crawlers.
- Labs and Econ are split 40 by 60 percent (to imitate the Engineers and simplify the count).
- The builder style puts emphasis on Hybrid Forests and facilities enhancing mineral output. The ICS style omits those.
- There is a satellite network that the builder doesn't really need to support their bases. This slightly favors the ICS numbers when they aren't using crawlers.
- The mineral output is converted to energy at a 2-to-1 ratio. That's what you pay to hurry production if you need something built.

Spoiler

Overall, the Builder churns out 3 times more minerals than the ICSer does (might be handy for costly units such as locusts and/or rockets), while the ICSer earns 2 to 3 times more energy/research points, depending on whether the Builder uses Free Market or not. Still, the ICSer outperforms the Builder by 10 to 25 percents.

However, if the ICSer needs to feed themselves the old-fashioned way instead of collecting food through crawlers, their performance drops to a point where they are almost on par. The builder does not depend on crawlers at all.

All the more reason to abolish crawlers.