4X The Unsurpassed Brian Reynolds' Alpha Centauri thread

[L'ennui]

Got into playing this for the first time and I like the atmosphere a lot (Quotes being from the game's leaders instead of historical figures was a nice touch). I miss how fast turns used to be in games from 90s. Even on low graphics settings, modern strategy games just become long loading screens.

Every game I've played just has Hive/Spartans/Church wipe out the other factions and it's not even close (playing on difficulty 3). Should I be supporting other civs more or is it just an AI being stupid problem?

The Spartans and Believers are pretty scary early game attackers, because of their combat bonuses. The Believers often stay dangerous long into the mid-game. The Spartans usually fizzle out if they don't do enough damage to cripple all their neighbors early on.

The Hive is in a different league, it's probably the most dangerous foe on Planet, early game, mid game, late game, whatever. Good thing everyone hates them, ganging up on them is usually the best way to take them out.

 

[Absinthe]

Got into playing this for the first time and I like the atmosphere a lot (Quotes being from the game's leaders instead of historical figures was a nice touch). I miss how fast turns used to be in games from 90s. Even on low graphics settings, modern strategy games just become long loading screens.

Every game I've played just has Hive/Spartans/Church wipe out the other factions and it's not even close (playing on difficulty 3). Should I be supporting other civs more or is it just an AI being stupid problem?

Install kyrub's AI enhancement patch, but the difficulty will rise.

Supporting the other factions is indeed an option and will usually do you good when it comes to making the stronger factions wear themselves out without you expending your own strength. Just donating techs and energy can do a lot.

The Spartans and Believers are pretty scary early game attackers, because of their combat bonuses. The Believers often stay dangerous long into the mid-game. The Spartans usually fizzle out if they don't do enough damage to cripple all their neighbors early on.

The Hive is in a different league, it's probably the most dangerous foe on Planet, early game, mid game, late game, whatever. Good thing everyone hates them, ganging up on them is usually the best way to take them out.

The Spartan INDUSTRY malus means that unless they seize a big enough advantage early on (and likely continue capitalizing on it with warfare/Secret Projects) they will simply fall behind everyone as the game progresses. That's why Spartans are typically viewed as the Impact Rover rush faction.

The Spartan builder perks mainly consist of +1 POLICE which means non-lethal methods is unusually good for Spartans, and that can be combined with Police State for +3 POLICE which ensures every police unit will suppress an extra drone. This can be used to offset the need for expensive psych buildings which should save you minerals, except for the part that Police units tend to be a drain on support. The other economic perk is +2 MORALE, which means any city with a Command Nexus and Bioenhancement Center produces automatic elites. The main perk of this is that you can crank out elite formers which have 2 movement while everyone else only has 1 movement on their formers unless they're running Fundamentalism or Power for some reason, so that's worthwhile, at least. Everyone else will just monolith upgrade a lot of their military units into elites which makes a bit of a joke of the Spartan morale bonuses later on, since there are no bonuses for morale scores above Elite, but at least you have elite formers, which is actually worth something.

Honestly Spartans tend to be perhaps the scariest faction in the early game but the weakest faction as the game drags on.

 

[shywn]

Please explain air defence to me.

What's the condition for aircraft to "scramble out" of a base to intercept an enemy needlejet?

What's the difference between "Fully automate air defence" and "Place unit on alert"? Does Hold work? What about Skip unit turn?

The bloody AI keeps destroying my formers every time my interceptors suddenly fly out to defend a transport that's sailing through friendly seas and thus does not need to be defended.

 

[Hellraiser]

Please explain air defence to me.

What's the condition for aircraft to "scramble out" of a base to intercept an enemy needlejet?

What's the difference between "Fully automate air defence" and "Place unit on alert"? Does Hold work? What about Skip unit turn?

The bloody AI keeps destroying my formers every time my interceptors suddenly fly out to defend a transport that's sailing through friendly seas and thus does not need to be defended.

My advice is don't build interceptors. About the only thing they are good for is picking off enemy planes you spot out in the open (since usually you need another interceptor to shoot them down, so they might have higher survavability rates than say a lone hovertank with air superiority shooting down planes that can be bombed afterwards easily), and that's without considering the AI stupidity you just mentioned. They just fly out whenever there is an enemy air unit attacking anything in their range from what I can tell. There is also another use, but it is also rather flimsy, in bases without an aerospace complex they prevent air drops in a 2 tile range (square, same as base vision in fog of war). It's better than nothing if fighting a goy with the space elevator who can orbital drop anywhere on the map, but aerospace complexes are way better for that purpose since the stupid interception AI does not apply to them.

The other reason not to build them is due to how interception air defence works. For one if there is a unit that would have higher defence against the air attack in the stack that is defending, they will still fly out or defend first (if their stack/base is attacked) despite the odds unlike all other defenders in the game.

But the real killer of their usefulness is the actual interception defense strength calculation, the defence strength of interceptors is just their weapon attack times morale. Nothing else, sensors or aerospace complexes or tachyon walls don't increase this bonus (just checked this in a test scenario to be sure). This means that at equal weapons tech (say 6 attack to 6 attack) you only get 1:1 or better odds of winning on defense if you have more morale than the attacker. Firaxis fucked this up from a game design point of view, and you pay one row of minerals extra for this dubious defensive capability r00fles.

Even worse is if the attacker uses nerve gas, then they will always have 3:2 odds assuming weapon tech and morale parity, which is even more problematic because interceptors will always defend first so it means it is an easy way for an enemy to kill your population with a gas bombing which happens if the attacker wins.

The proper way to defend against air attacks, besides destroying the enemy bases from which they are launching and killing the planes while on the ground, is to stack infantry with AAA in a base with an aerospace complex and (not necessarily but it is a fairly cheap luxury to have) a sensor array nearby the base.

All combat bonuses in SMAC are multiplicative, so +100% from AAA and +100% from an aerospace complex stacks to 4x the defense (and with a tachyon wall +100% you get 8 times the defense, but tachyon walls are quite late-game), multiply it by 1,25 (+25% bonus from infantry defending a base) then again by 1,25 from a sensor, another 1,25 bonus from a geo-survey pod if playing SMAX (I know alien crossfire is decline, but just mentioning it in case anyone is wondering what that thing is good for) and whatever morale bonus you might have, add two more defenders and the enemy will have a very hard time of cracking the air defense even with elite nerve gas bombers that get a 2.25 attack multiplier needing to spend disproportionately more resources to have a shot at it, with there always being a risk of super bad rolls where the defenders takes 0 damage from a fight with a gas bomber. And your defenders will not stupidly leave the base to defend a former or something.

 

[shywn]

And your defenders will not stupidly leave the base to defend a former or something.

Yeah, that's the problem I'm having. They're not leaving the base to defend a former. I keep losing formers because of that. I want my formers to stay alive.

Instead, they fly out en masse to defend transports that are way out of their range, on open sea, with no enemy aircraft in sight.

And the AI knows this, and sends out its needlejets the moment this happens. To kill my poor formers.

 

[Cael]

And your defenders will not stupidly leave the base to defend a former or something.

Yeah, that's the problem I'm having. They're not leaving the base to defend a former. I keep losing formers because of that. I want my formers to stay alive.

Instead, they fly out en masse to defend transports that are way out of their range, on open sea, with no enemy aircraft in sight.

And the AI knows this, and sends out its needlejets the moment this happens. To kill my poor formers.

Have AAA infantry grouped with the former, and plant sensor arrays everywhere.

 

[Hellraiser]

Have AAA infantry grouped with the former, and plant sensor arrays everywhere.

Everywhere is a waste of TURNs that could be spent on building boreholes or condensers, but if at war and within jet range one should indeed send AAA infantry with the former and maybe pop one sensor per base if you expect to get attacked in the sensor range anyway. Plus the sensors are not that needed if the former+AAA defender are already in rocky terrain or fungus or a forest, getting that +50% bonus.

 

[Cael]

Have AAA infantry grouped with the former, and plant sensor arrays everywhere.

Everywhere is a waste of TURNs that could be spent on building boreholes or condensers, but if at war and within jet range one should indeed send AAA infantry with the former and maybe pop one sensor per base if you expect to get attacked in the sensor range anyway. Plus the sensors are not that needed if the former+AAA defender are already in rocky terrain or fungus or a forest, getting that +50% bonus.

It may actually be beneficial to mount terraforming equipment on a chassis other than infantry. I found Rovers to be a pretty good compromise between speed and cost.

 

[Hellraiser]

It may actually be beneficial to mount terraforming equipment on a chassis other than infantry. I found Rovers to be a pretty good compromise between speed and cost.

Yeah, especially with fusion reactors when they are what, 3 rows of minerals? Anyway 2 moves doubles the work they can do since they don't waste TURN just on moving to the tile they need to work on.

Although if you go for elite units you can just produce default formers with 2 moves that do the same for those 2 rows of minerals, but that is not viable all the time because you probably need to run Power to do it (unless playing Sparta and getting just a command center+bioenhancement center).

 

[shywn]

So, how does air defence work? When does an interceptor scramble out to defend against an incoming needlejet?

What's the difference between "Fully automate air defence" and "Place unit on alert"? Are there any other commands that activate air defence?

 

[Endemic]

I haven't kept up to date with the SMAC modding scene lately, what unofficial patch should I use (mostly interested in bugfixes, although sensible balance tweaks are welcome)?

 

[Silva]

Replicating the question from the "Games with best AI?" thread:

Do SMAC AI mods respect the setting and it's factions original behaviors, or do they make everyone a bloodthirsty city-boomer borehole-psycho like a bastard child of Yang and Miriam?

 

[oldbonebrown]

I'm currently playing with the Will to Power mod and The Peacekeepers really don't seem interested in keeping the peace with my Morganites.
Just my initial impression.

I'm interested in mod reviews for this game if anyone feels like sharing

 

[Absinthe]

Silva, I don't know about Induktio's Thinker mod but kyrub's AI enhancement patch appears to do so, and re-enables some faction-specific AI that was accidentally inactive because it checked for conditions that no longer apply, like a psi attack bonus for Gaians (when they now use PLANET score for that sort of thing).

oldbonebrown, peacekeepers have erratic personality by default. They aren't pacifists, despite what their name would have you think.

 

[oldbonebrown]

I guess I should've known that looking at Lal's face.

 

[mastroego]

I haven't kept up to date with the SMAC modding scene lately, what unofficial patch should I use (mostly interested in bugfixes, although sensible balance tweaks are welcome)?

Was about to write an identical post.

So, is there any consensus?
I see there's Thinker Mod, AI Growth Mod, with somewhat different approaches. Then there are straight patches. Right?
Scient, Kyrub, Yitzy....
Am I supposed to combine stuff?
What would people suggest around here?

 

[passerby]

Thinker, it's a "vanilla+" type of mod, get this if you are new to SMAC.

It includes Scient's patches, optional SMAC with SMAX executable mod and some optional but imo essential gameplay changes and most importantly competent AI.
Playing singleplayer without thinker AI is pointless now imo.

The Will to Power, it's an extensive gameplay mod built on top of thinker mod.

Try it if you already have some experience with SMAC and make up your own mind.
I use it, but with a personal config and alphax.txt that disables at least half of its changes, creating a kind of "thinker+" mod.

 

[mastroego]

Thanks, by skimming the descriptions I already ruled out (for now) the Will to Power.
I gather you haven't tried the AI Growth mod? It seems more oriented to a general rebalance, but it's not built on previous fixes.
No, I'm not new to SMAC, just haven't played it in a long time. Was never a pro anyway.

 

[passerby]

I gather you haven't tried the AI Growth mod?

I didn't, it's an alphax.txt only mod and you could probably use it after few changes with both Thinker, or WtP binaries.
It's mostly wildly shuffling around stuff in the tech tree and the author is unhinged.

WtP is the real deal, the author has math skills, cool ideas and is able to disassembe binary and replace vanilla functions to implement them by himself, like Inducti0 and Scient.
He even made some small improvements to Thinker features in addition to new features, some were merged back into Thinker, some are exclusive to the WtP for now.
It's just a bit too eclectic with changes for the sake of changing for my taste, but fortunately 90% of what it does is optional, if you find your way around alphax.txt and mods ini file.

 

[Silva]

Will to Power is fantastic. I've never used it as given, of course, but it adds all sorts of essential features for modders and quality of life changes. For example, reactors no longer add HP. They still decrease cost. This was badly needed, as early reactor advantage was wildly unbalanced. You can also disable planetpearls, which you never knew you needed but turns out to make a vast improvement. Lots of other excellent features as well.

You can contact the mod author directly at his haunts and ask for features.

what is a planetpearl? and how Kyrub mod compare with those?

 

[Cael]

Will to Power is fantastic. I've never used it as given, of course, but it adds all sorts of essential features for modders and quality of life changes. For example, reactors no longer add HP. They still decrease cost. This was badly needed, as early reactor advantage was wildly unbalanced. You can also disable planetpearls, which you never knew you needed but turns out to make a vast improvement. Lots of other excellent features as well.

You can contact the mod author directly at his haunts and ask for features.

what is a planetpearl? and how Kyrub mod compare with those?

Planet pearls are basically the in-game reason why you get 50 credit per wild mindworm kill.

 

[passerby]

What is a planetpearl?

Money for killing wild mindworms, midgame when you start getting huge easy to kill worm stacks due to ecodamage pops you get flooded with free money.
It was already possible to set it to 0 in alphax.txt, so the only thing WtP adds here is removal of "you've collected 0 planetperals" popup.

How Kyrub mod compare with those?

Thinker is much more advanced work and better in every way.

 

[mastroego]

What about the issue I've read that with Thinker factions will behave "out of character", as a consequence of their acquiring a "competent" AI?
Any truth to this statement?

 

[laclongquan]

So, how does air defence work? When does an interceptor scramble out to defend against an incoming needlejet?

What's the difference between "Fully automate air defence" and "Place unit on alert"? Are there any other commands that activate air defence?

WTF? Didnt this very question of yours get answered already?

Please explain air defence to me.

What's the condition for aircraft to "scramble out" of a base to intercept an enemy needlejet?

What's the difference between "Fully automate air defence" and "Place unit on alert"? Does Hold work? What about Skip unit turn?

The bloody AI keeps destroying my formers every time my interceptors suddenly fly out to defend a transport that's sailing through friendly seas and thus does not need to be defended.

My advice is don't build interceptors. About the only thing they are good for is picking off enemy planes you spot out in the open (since usually you need another interceptor to shoot them down, so they might have higher survavability rates than say a lone hovertank with air superiority shooting down planes that can be bombed afterwards easily), and that's without considering the AI stupidity you just mentioned. They just fly out whenever there is an enemy air unit attacking anything in their range from what I can tell. There is also another use, but it is also rather flimsy, in bases without an aerospace complex they prevent air drops in a 2 tile range (square, same as base vision in fog of war). It's better than nothing if fighting a goy with the space elevator who can orbital drop anywhere on the map, but aerospace complexes are way better for that purpose since the stupid interception AI does not apply to them.

The other reason not to build them is due to how interception air defence works. For one if there is a unit that would have higher defence against the air attack in the stack that is defending, they will still fly out or defend first (if their stack/base is attacked) despite the odds unlike all other defenders in the game.

But the real killer of their usefulness is the actual interception defense strength calculation, the defence strength of interceptors is just their weapon attack times morale. Nothing else, sensors or aerospace complexes or tachyon walls don't increase this bonus (just checked this in a test scenario to be sure). This means that at equal weapons tech (say 6 attack to 6 attack) you only get 1:1 or better odds of winning on defense if you have more morale than the attacker. Firaxis fucked this up from a game design point of view, and you pay one row of minerals extra for this dubious defensive capability r00fles.

Even worse is if the attacker uses nerve gas, then they will always have 3:2 odds assuming weapon tech and morale parity, which is even more problematic because interceptors will always defend first so it means it is an easy way for an enemy to kill your population with a gas bombing which happens if the attacker wins.

The proper way to defend against air attacks, besides destroying the enemy bases from which they are launching and killing the planes while on the ground, is to stack infantry with AAA in a base with an aerospace complex and (not necessarily but it is a fairly cheap luxury to have) a sensor array nearby the base.

All combat bonuses in SMAC are multiplicative, so +100% from AAA and +100% from an aerospace complex stacks to 4x the defense (and with a tachyon wall +100% you get 8 times the defense, but tachyon walls are quite late-game), multiply it by 1,25 (+25% bonus from infantry defending a base) then again by 1,25 from a sensor, another 1,25 bonus from a geo-survey pod if playing SMAX (I know alien crossfire is decline, but just mentioning it in case anyone is wondering what that thing is good for) and whatever morale bonus you might have, add two more defenders and the enemy will have a very hard time of cracking the air defense even with elite nerve gas bombers that get a 2.25 attack multiplier needing to spend disproportionately more resources to have a shot at it, with there always being a risk of super bad rolls where the defenders takes 0 damage from a fight with a gas bomber. And your defenders will not stupidly leave the base to defend a former or something.

That's the best you can get. If you want to know, detail by detail, then there's nothing else left~

 

[shywn]

I wanted to know how and when the interceptor scrambling happens, not a six-paragraph post saying "don't build interceptors".


I believe they scramble out when a unit is attacked within three or four tiles from a base. If a needlejet appears out of range but is within the nine-tile flight range, they automatically attack on the next turn.

"Fully automate air defence" means that they can fly to other bases as they see fit, "Place unit on alert" means that they tend to stay in base. I don't know if "Hold" or "Skip turn" help.