Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

[OAM47]

Some think that the Christian States didn't really exist, and the US either became fundie or that certain groups promoted it but never really got anywhere, or perhaps it's down right historical revisionism.

[xchen08]

Originally Posted by Nugax

In multiplayer that wasn't a problem due to humans knowing to build satellite-killers, but the AI just doesn't get space. Of course multiplayer games rarely lasted that long anyway...

Well, satellites are hardly an issue in single player when the AI's inability to use supply crawlers dooms them long before getting to satellites. Plus, there's the fact that you had to be winning in order to get early satellites, since it takes a rather expensive facility in every base or a really powerful secret project for which whoever is in the lead would sacrifice near anything to get most of the benefit.

Originally Posted by OAM47

Some think that the Christian States didn't really exist, and the US either became fundie or that certain groups promoted it but never really got anywhere, or perhaps it's down right historical revisionism.

Yeah, pretty sure the U.S. just went fundy, and nuts like Godwinson called it the Christian States of America when its actual name stayed unchanged. Witness Pravin Lal:

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last loose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."


God I love the quotes. Though anyone else find it odd how the quotes paint Miriam as a reasonable and thoughtful theologian with some well founded doubts on some of the more "godless" technologies, while in gameplay, she's an insane luddite nutcase who's impossible to please and who hates science?

[Susano]

Originally Posted by xchen08

Well, satellites are hardly an issue in single player when the AI's inability to use supply crawlers dooms them long before getting to satellites. Plus, there's the fact that you had to be winning in order to get early satellites, since it takes a rather expensive facility in every base or a really powerful secret project that whoever is in the lead would sacrifice near anything to get most of the benefit.

Eh. All it takes is an airspace complex. There are other facilities that are more mineral-intensive... but yes, supply crawler are out of whack anyways. Okay, theyre vulnerable to attacks, being outside of bases, but you nonetheless can so hilariously break the game with them.

But even that isnt necessary. The thing where the AI sucks most is simply not creating enough bases. That alone is quite sufficient to doom it. Oh, and those hilarious artillery stacks, and only using infantery, of course. There are really only three kinds of units in SMAC: Mobile units, air units - and targets

Yeah, pretty sure the U.S. just went fundy, and nuts like Godwinson called it the Christian States of America when its actual name stayed unchanged. Witness Pravin Lal:

Err, I dont see any contradiction? The USA falls because it should have learned that lesson but didnt, and the CSA (and probably other factions as well as the USA balkanises) arise. Look at the video to that project (the Planetary Datalinks): It explicitly aims among other things at morality censorship, something Christian fundies would do.

[Emperor Qianlong]

In my opinion, there probably is some remaining "rump" state of the US. If we follow classical lines, the Christian States of America - with all likelihood, cover the area of approximately the Bible Belt, and the rump US probably covering the rest - or at the very least only the northeast (Svensgaard is from Massachusetts, after all).

[xchen08]

My point was that we know the USA went despotic, and that there are quite a few hints that that despotism was in the form of Christian fundamentalism. This means that if/when said despotism lead to balkanization, it is exceedingly unlikely that there would exist both a Christian States of America and an USA since the Christian theocrats would have been in control of the legitimate U.S. government at the time of the collapse. The most likely scenario would be the most basic one, ie the USA became a Christian theocracy, there is no balkanization, and the more fervant of the theocrats refer to their nation as the CSA.

Originally Posted by Susano

Eh. All it takes is an airspace complex. There are other facilities that are more mineral-intensive... but yes, supply crawler are out of whack anyways. Okay, theyre vulnerable to attacks, being outside of bases, but you nonetheless can so hilariously break the game with them.

But generally, until/if you get the Space elevator, it's a lot more efficient if you spend the minerals for the ASComplex and satellites on more supply crawlers instead. Crawlers let you focus output in a single base, and generally by the end game, something like 90% of my energy output is in a single base. (and also something like half my mineral production in another base, which I like to call the worm base, since the high mineral output leads to a massive worm incursion every single turn, which my empath res-laser rovers proceed to harvest for most of my energy credits) Satellites spread out production, which means you can't take advantage of all those multipliers, and is only really powerful if go ICS, which I never do since I find it aesthetically displeasing.

[Emperor Qianlong]

Originally Posted by xchen08

My point was that we know the USA went despotic, and that there are quite a few hints that that despotism was in the form of Christian fundamentalism. This means that if/when said despotism lead to balkanization, it is exceedingly unlikely that there would exist both a Christian States of America and an USA since the Christian theocrats would have been in control of the legitimate U.S. government at the time of the collapse. The most likely scenario would be the most basic one, ie the USA became a Christian theocracy, there is no balkanization, and the more fervant of the theocrats refer to their nation as the CSA.

Not necessarily. Actually, there's also the possibility of a civil war - possibly with rivalizing factions (imagine, the US military launches a coup against the CSA regime in order to defend tradition American values, a scenario I could very well see in this scenario). It could also explain what the "other" faction in the Battle of the Baffin Bay was - even though I admit that's somewhat far fetched (and why Baffin Bay, what were the Canadians doing in that war, anyways?).

[Keith]

I'm another big fan of this game, both the plot and the gameplay. I love the little touches in the ongoing plot like naming a captured base after the lost leader of your first mind worm boil. And the 'distant finale' that comes with the Transcendence victory is just wicked cool.

I also have the Alien Crossfire expansion pack, which increases the replayability by increasing the number of factions. The two alien factions in particular add a lot to the game by allowing you to get away with more naughtiness than usual when you're controlling or attacking them - in particular, I tend to make gratuitous use of nerve gas-equipped air units to just obliterate bases with repeated attacks (you don't get much use out of them anyway when they reduce down to size 1 on capture). This can remove the need to invade an entire continent at times.

Gameplay notes on things already mentioned:

-Oh yes, the AI's useless legions of artillery and infantry that fall like wheat before the scythe once 'copters are invented. 'Copters are a bit broken in SMAC, to be honest, though they can sometimes be suppressed in usefulness if the enemy has lots of interceptors.
-With Alien Crossfire, the satellite supply problem is alleviated because you can get a new Secret Project much earlier than the Space Elevator that gives you an Aerospace Complex in every base.
-Crawlers are indeed great for massively boosting resources (especially from one-use squares like mines), but they are vulnerable to mindworms. In fact, playing with abundant native lifeforms is a good way to make the game more challenging.

[xchen08]

Originally Posted by Keith

Crawlers are indeed great for massively boosting resources (especially from one-use squares like mines), but they are vulnerable to mindworms. In fact, playing with abundant native lifeforms is a good way to make the game more challenging.

Always play with abundant native lifeforms. It gives you 25% boost to your score, and at worst hurts your opponents more than it hurts you. (well, except for the Gaians and the Cult) At best, you should think of worms as a very nice supplement to, if not your primary source of energy credits. The more worms there are around, the more prey there is for your worm hunting rovers, and past Fusion, it's actually pretty cheap to pack res armor and trance onto your crawlers making them actually not that vulnerable should a worm outbreak somehow occur where you have no worm hunters available.

You can expect a well set up Worm bait base to net over 500 energy credits a turn in planet pearls. Better yet, if you set it up early, thanks to that wierd bug relating number of clean minerals to the sum total of fungal blooms, it greatly reduces the chances of global warming.

[OAM47]

I loved the quotes. I like how some are linked, such as the "God does not play dice", followed later by "...Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded!"

[Leo euler]

The best quote in the game, after self-aware machines are discovered:

Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

Immanuel Kant
"Critique of Pure Reason"

I swear sometimes they're watching me.

Bozon Pete, Shift Foreman
Metagenics Biomachinery Division

The interesting thing is that this quote is actually two quotes! Nice.

I really wish they had kept terrain levels and the unit workshop in Civilization 4, but it probably would have screwed up the game balance they were looking for. They really need to develop a true sequel to this game.

[Albidoom]

Originally Posted by Susano

those hilarious artillery stacks

SMAC artillery units were/are (since I still play it, too) a bit useless anyways, doing to few damage to the opposing units IMHO (and building them meant the respective city can't build better stuff in the meantime).

Oh, and the AI was also a bit weak in the use of Copters.

But all in all one of the best in the genre (and very friendly concerning system requirements)

[Ion_StormH]

Look at my signature, and it will tell you all you need to know.

[OAM47]

Arty was good for destroying improvements, and also prevented the units in the city from repairing that turn, which can be usefull.

[Susano]

Originally Posted by Keith

I'm another big fan of this game, both the plot and the gameplay. I love the little touches in the ongoing plot like naming a captured base after the lost leader of your first mind worm boil. And the 'distant finale' that comes with the Transcendence victory is just wicked cool.

I must state that I philosophically absolutely disagree with that anti-individual concept, but - well, if one can reach that level, those are the best games. Long-drawn and fun. Of course, most of the time you utterly dominate everybody else before already, and simply moving around units in the world is no fun, so Ill usually have myself be elected Great Top Honcho, or whatever the title is

Of course, the assistant storyline and the Centauri technologies/transcendence storyline are also the only plotlines in the Book of Planet...

I also have the Alien Crossfire expansion pack, which increases the replayability by increasing the number of factions.

I dont like it. The new (human) factions simply make no sense at all. They would make sense as an expansion to the old factions (and their storyline is written as such), but since you can only have 7 factions, well... Also, it makes no sense to have the ideological goals in the 4th category (whats teh categroy name for that, again?), because that only comes up after centuries. And finally, the new Centauri units are... meh. Make the units too bland - a non-transport naval combat unit and an artillery unit. The fun of the mindworm units was that before they were not 1:1 equivalents of normal combat units...

The new landmarks are fun, though. However, the main use of the SMACX CD to me was the update to SMAC 4.0 before the time I had internet, heh.

-Oh yes, the AI's useless legions of artillery and infantry that fall like wheat before the scythe once 'copters are invented. 'Copters are a bit broken in SMAC, to be honest, though they can sometimes be suppressed in usefulness if the enemy has lots of interceptors.

*chuckles* And whats better than Interceptors? Right, Copter Interceptors, which can also attack several times a turn But yes, once you have copters and droppod units the game is essentially over. However, it doesnt even take copters - rovers are quite sufficient to have quite an advantage over the lame enemy infantery. Thus the only real enemy is Santiago, because shes the only one to also use rovers. (Well, Miriam sometimes does, too, but it are then nearly always the ridicously expensive armoured rovers...)

-With Alien Crossfire, the satellite supply problem is alleviated because you can get a new Secret Project much earlier than the Space Elevator that gives you an Aerospace Complex in every base.

...How is that allievating it?

-Crawlers are indeed great for massively boosting resources (especially from one-use squares like mines), but they are vulnerable to mindworms. In fact, playing with abundant native lifeforms is a good way to make the game more challenging.

But theyre so easily replaced... hm, that reminds me maybe a quick fix to alpha.txt to make them more expensive? Should work. However, besides, theres still the other use xchen has said, transferring all minerals and energy units (or at least all of one continent) to a single base, each.

Originally Posted by xchen08

Always play with abundant native lifeforms. It gives you 25% boost to your score, and at worst hurts your opponents more than it hurts you. (well, except for the Gaians and the Cult) At best, you should think of worms as a very nice supplement to, if not your primary source of energy credits. The more worms there are around, the more prey there is for your worm hunting rovers, and past Fusion, it's actually pretty cheap to pack res armor and trance onto your crawlers making them actually not that vulnerable should a worm outbreak somehow occur where you have no worm hunters available.

So in other words that makes the game even easier And primarily it makes the game easier because the AI has no clue how to properly deal with fungus...

You can expect a well set up Worm bait base to net over 500 energy credits a turn in planet pearls.

Whoa That would be... around 16 worm units generated every turn? That would mean the entire base has to be re-terraformed every 3 turns or so!

Better yet, if you set it up early, thanks to that wierd bug relating number of clean minerals to the sum total of fungal blooms, it greatly reduces the chances of global warming.

Uh, what? Please explain.

Originally Posted by OAM47

I loved the quotes. I like how some are linked, such as the "God does not play dice", followed later by "...Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded!"

"Why do you insist that the human genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter -we- are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself. "
-Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Looking God in the Eye"

[xchen08]

Originally Posted by Susano

I dont like it. The new (human) factions simply make no sense at all. They would make sense as an expansion to the old factions (and their storyline is written as such), but since you can only have 7 factions, well... Also, it makes no sense to have the ideological goals in the 4th category (whats teh categroy name for that, again?), because that only comes up after centuries. And finally, the new Centauri units are... meh. Make the units too bland - a non-transport naval combat unit and an artillery unit. The fun of the mindworm units was that before they were not 1:1 equivalents of normal combat units...

Yeah, I definitely agree. The old factions made sense, each played differently in important ways, and were all well balanced. The new factions had none of these advantages. AX is still great though, simply for the new units, facilities, and projects. And while normal artillery is absolutely worthless, worm artillery is great, and attaching a few to your armies is worthwhile as anyone except Miriam. (in multiplayer, that is, in single, you need nothing except copters and drop troops)

So in other words that makes the game even easier And primarily it makes the game easier because the AI has no clue how to properly deal with fungus...

Well, it also makes the game somewhat more unpredictable, since an early worm can be either a boon, or a disaster you have to recover from. (unless you are Gaian or Cult of course)

Whoa That would be... around 16 worm units generated every turn? That would mean the entire base has to be re-terraformed every 3 turns or so!

That's why you build the worm bait base in the monolith ring landmark. Well, it works elsewhere too, but the monolith ring works best. You surround the ring of monoliths with 6 boreholes, the most you can fit in, allowing you to work 14 squares, which is plenty, and neither boreholes nor monoliths get destroyed by fungal blooms. (condensors and mirrors don't either, but that doesn't matter, when farms and collectors do) You crawl in food from condensor farms outside the base radius, and minerals from damn near every mine in your empire. By the end game, you can generally have the poles, which in most maps is a continuous row of rocky terrain covered with mines and crawlers feeding back to your supermineral base, allowing you to crank out planetbusters or secret projects or tricked out superunits in just 1 or 2 turns.

Uh, what? Please explain.

The ecodamage system in AC makes no sense. You get a base number of clean minerals, which I think is around 9 or something. Each base can produce that many without causing ecodamage. That number increases by one for each worm "pop" that occurs, and by one for each ecology facility (ie treefarm, hybrid forest, centauri preserve) you build anywhere in your empire after the first fungal bloom. It's really counterintuitive, since it's pretty important to use crawlers to force a pop as early as possible, so ecology structures can reduce ecodamage. The important bit is that the clean mineral limit increase from each fungal bloom applies to all empires, no matter where the bloom occurs, and that global warming results when there are multiple blooms per turn on Planet. Towards the endgame, even if all your cities are clean, you can be certain that there would be enough dirty bases in the other factions to cause multiple blooms per turn, making global warming (messing up all your expensive terraforming) near certain. The only real way to get around this is to force up the clean mineral limit early by continuously inducing 1 (and only 1) fungal bloom per turn before the other factions start seriously industrialising. (well, you could also kill all the other factions, that works just as well.)

[Keith]

I'll have to try that trick with the mindworm-farming base sometime. Recruiting native units for fun and profit is definitely a good strategy, which is why I always go for Green economics as soon as possible (and/or play Gaians, Planet Cult or Caretakers). With an army of mindworms and Isles of the Deep, you can save resources from building military units, and run rapidly all over the map investigating those lovely Unity Pods. Alien Artifacts are your friends.

What are people's favourite/least favourite factions? The ones I use most are probably University, Gaians, and Caretakers; I think the only faction I've never actually won the game (or even played very far) with are the Believers, partly because they repel me ideologically (even more than, say, the Hive) and partly because they just seem weak. There's definitely not a perfect power balance among the factions; you can see this in the way certain ones do better than others under AI control.

On the Ascent to Transcendence being anti-individualistic: I didn't get the impression that was entirely the case. People who wanted to spend some or all their time as individuals could incarnate in a body or exist as a semi-independent persona within the hive-mind.

[xchen08]

Originally Posted by Keith

What are people's favourite/least favourite factions? The ones I use most are probably University, Gaians, and Caretakers; I think the only faction I've never actually won the game (or even played very far) with are the Believers, partly because they repel me ideologically (even more than, say, the Hive) and partly because they just seem weak. There's definitely not a perfect power balance among the factions; you can see this in the way certain ones do better than others under AI control.

I find the Gaians to be the easiest to play, because of how straightforward it is to just forest everything and how easy you can popboom. The Hive is a straightforward powerhouse well suited to the all specialist strategy, as is the University, but my favorite has to be the Morganites. They are a bit harder to play since you can't afford a military before clean reactors and their early low population, but enough cash can solve all problems. I find all the expansion factions to be lacking except for the Pirates, mainly because their ideology is "loot and burn." I also dislike the Spartans, because of their poor industry, which I find much harder to counter than the Hive's poor economy, or the Believers' crappy research if I want to be a warmonger.

And I would argue that all the factions are balanced, just not for singleplayer. The Morganites for example are always weak under AI control because of their crappy military, and low population, which a human knows to counter with armored crawlers, armored infantry probes, and worms sitting on fungus for the former, and extra crawlers and beelining for hab complex/domes for the latter. The same applies to the Believers, who are crazy powerful if they beeline to probes and find someone to attack. Once you steal enough tech to reach parity, it's easy to enslave one of the tech factions for free technology, then go for a Paradigm economy so you can abandon research alltogether and end up richer than Morgan. I find that the trick is to use fundamentalist for superprobes to get your technology on par, then go Democracy/Green for a paradigm economy, allowing you to switch off research entirely for more cash, and using that cash and your still above par probes to get more tech. You can build and rush buy a ton of troops under Wealth ignoring all those research facilities and Secret Projects that you have no use for, then switch to Power, and kill everything you see with high morale units with +25% attack. And the real fun part is once you get a tech slave and probe teams up, you can build punishment spheres in every base, eliminating all drone problems permanently. No need for police meaning more troops up front, and no need for drone control facilities, meaning more industry to devote to troops and more cash for probe teams and rush buying troops. This is huge, since unless you go all specialist, drones are the primary factor limiting growth for all the other factions, and half of all the facilities you build would be for controlling them, which is all unnecessary for the Believers.

[DarkSlavik]

Ah SMAC, and its lovely expansion Alien Crossfire. I really do enjoy the game, especially playing as the Free Drones, simply because they are a extremely powerful faction late-game when played properly - essentially having a isolationist policy, running Free Market, rush building 'Build' related secret projects, facilities and terrain enhancements.

[OAM47]

I prefer the Spartons or University. No matter who I play, I generaly neglect the military untill my first war, at which point I can crank out units a dime a dozen.

[truth is life]

I like SMAC, but I don't play optimized. At all. I suppose that makes it more fun, because late-game the other AI factions can actually sometimes be a slight threat (not if I play on the default large map, though, I just dominate my continent). Of course I don't play multiplayer, never have in any game. Maybe I never will.