4X The Unsurpassed Brian Reynolds' Alpha Centauri thread

[RK47]

New dawn arrives after a prolonged sunspot event...

The invasion of Peacekeepers' Island ended. Order and peace were restored by the Believers police force. Pravin Lal's whereabouts are unknown.
Those who resisted were subjected to nerve stapling. Their cries for freedom will not be heard nor tolerated.

The University's hope of controlling information ended as Mir Labs fell. Their populace went into a frenzy as the Virtual World network was shutdown and nodes were powered off one by one.

Zakharov was last seen fending off attacks on his lab from an angry mob before it was engulfed in a barrage of Believers' missile barrage.
Elsewhere, Gaia's seclusion in the north did not spare them from the wrath of the Believers. For far too long they've subjected their populace to these alien mind control. Arguments for peace were not entertained as the zealous army descended upon the poorly defended peaceniks.

Deidre offered no resistance.

And so ended all resistance on the Planet.

The Spartans were happy to live in their isolated strongholds. Kept in check by the Believers' Strength and governance, they could not impose their will towards their more fiscal-minded allies, the Morganites. Hostilities broke out between the two multiple times with the Believers playing the resolute peacemaker. Eventually, the Spartans will be absorbed into the military arm of the Believers while the Morgans take a more commercial role in governance.

 

[RK47]

The Year is 2242 - Morgan Inc. enjoys a good period of prosperity as they've catered to the demands of their faithful customers, the militaristic Spartans, and the ever-expanding Hive.
Fending off a faraway war against the Believers, the Spartans are only too happy to enjoy commerce and the occasional airstrikes on their enemy from Morgan's Top Guns.
Things can't get any better -

'CEO Morgan? We may have a problem here.'

Hive troops have landed. And we don't have a pact with them. Gotta send them a demand to withdraw.

The Hive's been resistant to an idea of an official Pact, despite having a treaty and joint military operation of sorts against the Believers.
Let's hope Yang exercise some patience and understanding.

Welp. No choice. We've got a pre-emptive strike opportunity. Operation Nest of Vipers commencing.
We've prepared for this. I wasn't looking forward to it. But it had to be done.

When Yang took Planetary Governorship, he repealed the UN Charter.
He's about to reap what he sowed.

'Cobra-1 in position.'

'Hold fire. Team 19, move in.'

'Plague has set in. Fire at will.'

'No civilian survivors. I repeat. No civilian survivors.'

No turning back now.

 

[RK47]

What the Hive has built over 20-30 years was annihilated within a year.
5 colonies ceased to exist in 2242. And over 200,000 colonists' lives were cut short.

The surviving bases had to cope with supporting the surviving armies and could hardly mount an invasion. The artery of the Hive giant has been cut and the bleeding isn't stopping yet.
Garland Crater's quiet farms, mines and solar collectors were the silent witnesses to the destruction.

This is bad news for the Hive's military campaign in the Believers' territory.

They've devoted their air force to that campaign and is powerless to strike back at Morgan's assaults.

CEO Morgan gave the perfect response: a VX-Missile Barrage to the Hive's HQ.

With the loss of core colonies and HQ, the Hive's steady plummet towards decline is complete.
And Morgan-Spartan Pact is strengthened with a big tech trade: Morgan's Fusion Power for Spartan's Orbital Spaceflight.

 

[TemplarGR]

It is not unsurpassed. Beyond Earth is better.

 

[Casual Hero]

It is not unsurpassed. Beyond Earth is better.

You have to tell us why, or else you're just asking to get torn apart. Well, either way you will most likely get torn apart.

 

[RK47]

The Hive's driven out from their core territories. Three colonies were spared from the nerve agent as they will repopulate the Crater. Already the CEO has plans for land raising to unite the two islands.

Such conquest was unthinkable a decade ago. They could've co-existed but the Chairman had other plans and dragged the poor Gaians into the war.

Deidre chose poorly.

No matter. Morgan's been dying for an excuse to wipe out those eco-terrorists. They've held secrets to mind control for too long. Offers for trade were always rejected. A swift invasion consisting of multiple airstrikes and drop troops successfully annihilated Deidre's powerbase. And the seizure of the Empath Guild made the Planetary Governor seat vacant. The rest of the colonies are of no value and were razed to the ground.

The Morgans are on top. The Spartans have held firm against the Believers. While the Hive is a shadow of their former glory.

It's time to end this on high.

 

[RK47]

The Lord's Believers zealous beliefs prevented our covert ops from making any headway into their datalinks.
Fortunately, the seized Empath Guild at Gaia's Landing is giving us valuable insight: Miriam's making something big.

A Fusion Planet Buster.

Planet Buster is the future's ultimate atrocity. Planet Busters destroy everything within a radius equal to their reactor size, often leaving immense craters. Under the U.N. Charter, the use of Planet Busters is punishable by immediate expulsion from the Planetary Council and total military destruction.

Miriam will complete one within 13 years. We're unsure if she's going to employ this against us.
But we'll not wait till then to find out.

 

[RK47]

The war against the Believers is a long one, but the launch of the planet buster never came to be.
Multiple airstrikes forced Lady Miriam to deploy interceptors and anti-aircraft troops, diverting her production from offense to defense.

The Morgans Air Force was slowly being chipped away. A downed jet there and a chopper over-extending itself lost behind the enemy lines.
No land invasion is possible. The Believers were simply too numerous, and too zealous to be contained. The nerve gas attacks are slowly being nullified by the Believers Air Cover.
The Morgans will just have to be satisfied in containing the demon on their own island. The destruction of the Maritime Control Center at New Jerusalem ensured the Believers' naval supremacy is broken.
And so CEO Morgan struck with the best move he had: cornering the planetary energy market.

Through years of planetary governorship, shrewd bargaining, and treaty signing, he successfully accumulated enough wealth to kill the market.
The Peacekeepers, Spartans, and University took some time to convince but realized further conflict is futile. Either they follow the Morgans or perish slowly.
The Believers will take more time but they are isolated and unable to turn things around.

The Morganites have done it. Against all odds and pacifism, they've beaten their opponents and emerged supreme.

Their colonies flourished and a paragon of scientific advancement.
Everyone enjoys a great degree of freedom ... to make profits of course.

Now play that song.

 

[Absinthe]

RK47, you're kind of turning this into a LP thread.

Also, yeah, as Nevill said, Morgan's solution to SUPPORT and POLICE (if going Free Market) woes is to make disposable bases that take the hit for you so the rest of your bases are unhindered. It actually works pretty well. Also, Morgan is usually all about aggressive base spam (so beeline for Planetary Transit System) because of the high energy gains from each base tile. Done right Morgan snowballs out of control very quickly through his superior income and research speeds. He does tend to have a fragile early game though.

I've been looking at how to extract more value out of the Spartan faction for the builder game (all they get is free prototypes, +1 POLICE, and +2 MORALE, but also -1 INDUSTRY), and the main takeaways I get from that is that Police State can replace the need for any psych buildings (at the expense of crippling your ability to run Free Market and your GROWTH if you pair it with Green economics, but that's manageable if you lean on pop booms for growth or decide to take the EFFIC hit), and that you should try to leverage Sparta's bonus MORALE for elites to travel fungal rivers. More interestingly, if you have a base with both a Command Nexus and a Bioenhancement Center (or only one if you are running Power value), you get elite terraformers (2 moves instead of one), which is a definite boon to your terraforming game. You should pretty much also get ready to grab Weather Paradigm if you can or SPs that make facilities in all your bases, and especially try to grab Cloning Vats (at which point Police State + Green + Power is great). If you are playing with Supply Crawlers you can probably do Police State + Planned and crawl all energy to HQ (this also makes Merchant Exchange and Supercollider completely overpowered). I think it's better to disable crawlers in SMAC though, since there are entirely too many cheesy stunts that get enabled by them.

 

[RK47]

I tried Hive run on transcend. Jeez, what a fucking joke. I destroyed Morgan in the early game prior to Impact weapons.
Then quickly claimed the entire continent for myself and just expanded with wild abandon.

Yes I'm making terrible eco but with non lethal garrison for drone suppression I have spare support that goes into a large former army.

Switching to Free Market is just not feasible for Hive. I lose drone suppression, anti worm strength for meager increase in income that gets consumed by extra drone suppression facilities.

And so I'm stuck with police state, planned and wealth for a long long time it seems until some conflict demands I spend my 1500 credit stockpile into nerve gas upgrade and drive those fuckers into complete extinction.

Ugh, Believers wiped out University and Peacekeepers.
Spartans wiped out Gaians.
I wiped out Morgans.

Just three of us left with Spartans being the weakest of the three.

Had to bribe Spartans for votes at Election since both Miriam and I are tied at 104 votes.
Think I'll just abandon this game. It's a foregone conclusion with just me raising land from home continent to Miriam's and then wiping them out with Mass of Nerve Gas Impact Rovers

 

[RK47]

Transcend University Game - Or 'anything is possible with SCIENCE!'

Zakharov is extremely pleased - how could he not?

The nutrients will feed the populace, the police will keep the drones in check. But that is today. Decades ago there was no borehole to feed the factories, and the populace had to be kept in check with nerve stapling. Decades of sanctions and condemnations did not dissuade him. Lady Deidre of Gaians declared vendetta upon establishing contact. Her swift ascension to power propelled by Monsoon Jungle was not unnoticed and the Empath Guild ensured her planetary governorship. Other powerful factions demanded he shared his discoveries - for FREE. Only CEO Morgan is willing to make a trade.

With the Virtual World up, the drones are pacified. Non-lethal methods were introduced to keep the larger cities in check. And then came the final act of connecting the accumulated alien artifacts to the network nodes.
That was the last shot to propel him to equal footing with the arrogant Deidre. Already Miriam of Believers signed a pact with the Gaians to steal his secrets and punish him for his 'indiscretions.'

The nerve of those fools!

'Sir, Project 812X Rover is complete. The Superstring Theory data from the artifacts fit perfectly. The Prototype is complete and is ready for mass deployment.'
'Where is your sense of imagination? Let's call it... 'The Ender.'

'Get the transports ready, I want the Empath Guild seized as soon as possible.'

As expected, Deidre has vetoed the UN Charter's repealing. No matter, sanctions are meaningless.
The power of science will overwhelm them. That vile witch employs the native biomass in her arsenal, it's only right he brings forth humanity's greatest weapon to bear.

'The Citizens' Defense Force project is secured.'
'Excellent. I must thank Deidre personally for preparing all these projects for our acquisition...'

 

[RK47]

Don't think I like Spartans a lot TBH.
They're... inflexible.
Playing Spartans as a builder means having to depend on RNG - two things specifically determines your path: Unity Pods and Worm Hunting.

The early rovers are great for those 2 roles but once the goody bags are given away and you found nothing else of value you're gonna have to pay 10% more for your infrastructure to set up.
Probe action is necessary to keep tech parity. Spartans can't really afford to trade away their Mobility tech too early.

So my plan usually involve getting to Planetary Network asap and Probe Team escorted by Scout Rovers. Switch to Planned, eat the Inefficiency just to get production going. Make the first contact with another faction as painful as possible for them, so they have to play catch up while you run away with their tech.

That stolen tech will determine whether I go on conquest (weapons tech) or build up (non-lethal etc)

 

[Absinthe]

Spartans are generally considered the weakest faction of all, but a good SP can bridge the gap between Spartans and other factions (esp. if you manage to get Weather Paradigm or Planetary Transit System). It can be worthwhile to build units in adjacent bases that you then disband in your SP building base for the minerals, simply to win a SP rush. Other than that the free rover at start can be leveraged into faster pods which can help you get an early lead for some snowballing. Spartans are better suited to beeline the foils tech as well, and you can get a lot of artifacts and locate valuable landmarks that way. Stealing a march on people can be leveraged into early snowballing which makes up for the weakened industry of the Spartans. Worm hunting can also be improved by planting fungus or drilling rivers (Weather Paradigm helps). The value of elite formers should not be underestimated either. Then there's the standard tactic of annexing a neighbor early on. Do the impact rover rush right and you develop a much stronger position than the other factions early on which you use to snowball again.

When you play Spartans a big part of your playstyle will be to ask yourself how you can use your early gains to develop a permanent lead on others. Another thing to note about Spartans (especially if you are not doing Police State, but are using police units) is that much like Morgan, it can help to make a base or two dedicated to taking the support hit for your other bases while you scout, build police, and terraform, as Spartans naturally pursue a unit-heavy strategy but also want to hold on to every mineral they can spare.

 

[RK47]

Still not clear on the pop booming for Morgan.
This is only executable after achieving golden age + creche + democracy correct?
But with the Hab Complex requirement, I have to wait till I'm mid-game before I can start doing that correctly?
Even so, with pop booming, the drone suppression without a police force is proving to be a pain on Transcend.
I spent 20% Budget on PSI just to get 1 talent for the 1 drone at 2nd pop followed by Rec Commons after the Rec. Tanks & Energy Banks are out.
It seems like I'm maxing out my cheap drone suppression options at Pop 4 already. And that's assuming I have enough energy income to get the PSY slider to kick in.

Setting up this infrastructure takes a lot of minerals and credit spending. Is it worth it?

Former
Scout
R-Tank
E-Bank
R-Common
N-Node

 

[Xamenos]

Still not clear on the pop booming for Morgan.
This is only executable after achieving golden age + creche + democracy correct?
But with the Hab Complex requirement, I have to wait till I'm mid-game before I can start doing that correctly?
Even so, with pop booming, the drone suppression without a police force is proving to be a pain on Transcend.
I spent 20% Budget on PSI just to get 1 talent for the 1 drone at 2nd pop followed by Rec Commons after the Rec. Tanks & Energy Banks are out.
It seems like I'm maxing out my cheap drone suppression options at Pop 4 already. And that's assuming I have enough energy income to get the PSY slider to kick in.

Setting up this infrastructure takes a lot of minerals and credit spending. Is it worth it?

Former
Scout
R-Tank
E-Bank
R-Common
N-Node

You know you can build units in your more developed cities and switch their home base to the new one, right?

 

[RK47]

Huh, of course. Doesn't matter much for Morgans since I hardly waste time with garrisoning shit in early game unless it's next to fungi or I'm at vendetta with someone else.
I can't police the drones, so the scout's role is just worm defense.

 

[Xamenos]

Huh, of course. Doesn't matter much for Morgans since I hardly waste time with garrisoning shit in early game unless it's next to fungi or I'm at vendetta with someone else.
I can't police the drones, so the scout's role is just worm defense.

Then why do you start the build order of a new city with a former and a scout?

 

[RK47]

Well, I go for Former first to get the tile development set up and depending on the situation, scout, or just go straight to Recycling Tanks for nice resource income.
Problem with the developed colony helping new ones, there's really a quick demand for improvements on them that I can't really spare the minerals to help the smaller colonies.
Recycling Tanks, Energy Banks and Network Nodes are really great, the earlier you get them, the better the payoff. The first two make more energy, the more energy = more rush buys for everyone else.

So I really don't feel like I should slow down the earlier colony for the new ones' supply of scout/former.
I have a rule of having 1 former support per colony anyway.
Why? I guess a decent size former army is necessary to implement the tile improvements immediately upon tech discovery. Things like Thermal bore is a game-changer for Morgan, and I fucking want it asap.

This playstyle seems a little too robotic but I just can't help it, slowing down the better colonies for the smaller ones does not seem to pay off for me.

 

[Xamenos]

Well, I go for Former first to get the tile development set up and depending on the situation, scout, or just go straight to Recycling Tanks for nice resource income.
Problem with the developed colony helping new ones, there's really a quick demand for improvements on them that I can't really spare the minerals to help the smaller colonies.
Recycling Tanks, Energy Banks and Network Nodes are really great, the earlier you get them, the better the payoff. The first two make more energy, the more energy = more rush buys for everyone else.

So I really don't feel like I should slow down the earlier colony for the new ones' supply of scout/former.
I have a rule of having 1 former support per colony anyway.
Why? I guess a decent size former army is necessary to implement the tile improvements immediately upon tech discovery. Things like Thermal bore is a game-changer for Morgan, and I fucking want it asap.

This playstyle seems a little too robotic but I just can't help it, slowing down the better colonies for the smaller ones does not seem to pay off for me.

You'll get tile development done even faster if you build the former beforehand. MUCH faster, as the older city will both start building the former earlier, and built it faster. As you said yourself, you want those basic buildings built everywhere asap and you want to minimize the turns spent building something like formers.

And I'd say one former per city is actually too little.

 

[RK47]

I would be very interested in knowing what magical source of minerals is possible to support 2 formers and 1 scout per Morgan colony in the early game while still being able to build improvement at acceptable rate.
Sure, if I have mineral tiles, go ahead. Go crazy. Crawlers is when Morgan can play a little loose. But in the early game, no way.

 

[Xamenos]

I would be very interested in knowing what magical source of minerals is possible to support 2 formers and 1 scout per Morgan colony in the early game while still being able to build improvement at acceptable rate.
Sure, if I have mineral tiles, go ahead. Go crazy. Crawlers is when Morgan can play a little loose. But in the early game, no way.

You do realise there are numbers between "1 former per colony" and "2 formers per colony", right? No need to be autistic about having every base support the exact same number of units.

 

[RK47]

Anyway this discussion is straying from what I asked: advice on Morgan pop boom. Because I need quite a lot of stuffp to achieve it. GA plus democracy and creche and Hab complex to grow beyond size 4.

I could cheat a bit n just stuff colony pod to bypass that but that's not pop boom anymore.

 

[RK47]

 

[Hellraiser]

Anyway this discussion is straying from what I asked: advice on Morgan pop boom. Because I need quite a lot of stuffp to achieve it. GA plus democracy and creche and Hab complex to grow beyond size 4.

I could cheat a bit n just stuff colony pod to bypass that but that's not pop boom anymore.

Creche and demo you would anyway, same as everyone but Yang. Obviously demo is a pain as morgan due to the support issues, on top of the fucking size 4 limit in vanilla, who at Firaxis thought that was a good idea. GA is a bit trickier to pull off and the actual hard part, not impossible but obviously the effort is high. Hive, while making less money and fucked from effic perspective, has an easier time to GA pop boom due to being able to run police state-planned for booms which gives them extra police drone squashing, but they have less options for the psych slider high. Also they can get the longetivity vaccine for extra -2 drones with planned. Lastly they don't have to deal with hab complexes as soon as vanilla Morgan and start with +1 growth anyway.

To trigger GA you need three conditions, talents equal to at least half of the base's population, a base size of at least 3 and no drones.

http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Golden_Age

Getting talents is arguably the easier part, for every 2 energy going into psych one worker becomes a talent. If you run out of workers the psych budget slider will start turning drones to workers. This sounds simple enough but the reality is the psych slider alone is the hardest way to trigger GA, because it removes drones as a last resort, so you need obscene amounts of energy or lots of +psych facilities.

http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Psych

With that out of the way this is what you can do in practice:

1. drone reduction facilities, rec commons and hologram theater are a must. Both reduce the number of drones by a flat amount of 2. Theater also gives +50% psych to whatever energy is going into psych at the base, that translates to one extra talent (or one drone less) for every 2 created directly by energy diverted to psych. Problem is the theatre has a maintenance fee of 3, but that still is more economical than putting that 3 energy into psych to reduce drones, plus it really is the next fastest to build drone suppression solution after police scouts or the rec commons.

Apart from that the research hospital kills one drones and grants more +% psych. Not sure if there are any other facilities reducing drones directly apart from the punishment sphere. There's also the longetivity vaccine, but you can't run planned for -2 drones, green lowers growth, so you would need to run simple econ. Probably better to just go market as explained below, unless you go wealth, simple-wealth-vaccine would give +2 drone reduction (one from vaccine, one from police) compared to market which is a lot.

2. Police as that also reduces drones, although as Morgan at best you will have 0 police when going demo, and have low support. Practically as long as pacifism is not an issue in the bases scheduled to boom it is better to go market and use the extra energy (since market effectively doubles it) for the psych budget. If you snatch the ascetic virtues it also makes it easier for GA pop booming if you go simple economy-wealth as you will have +1 police.

3. anything giving free talents since those reduce the pool of workers/drones that psych has to deal with and get you closer to the 50% of the base's population. In vanilla this practically means only the human genome project, as the paradise garden is very late game. In the modded version we play in PBEM I think the starting future society value gives an extra talent making GA easier overall.

4. specialists granting psych, this works better once empaths are available, but doctors are good enough if the alternative is 10% more into the psych slider just to boom one more base.

5. making lots of energy and pushing the psych slider up, facilities with psych multipliers are your friend. Hologram theatres are the cheapest to build, research hospitals also increase labs and squash one more drone to boot. Tree farms don't squash drones but they also give econ, food and raise the limit of minerals before eco damage starts fucking up tiles.

And the last but most popamole option:

6. Playing on a lower difficulty level than transcend since then you have less drones

 

[RK47]

I'm struggling to trigger GA on Hive atm.
I got less eco to juice up the talents.
So I'm just concluding, Hive popbooming doesn't work as well as other factions. Correct?