Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
- Thread starter mdc_1957
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Susano
Banned
I'm feeling a little dumb, how do i use supply crawlers? I've never used them myself...
Three ways:
-Put them on some field and it can harvest one of the three resource types of it for the base it belongs to. Hence can boost bases without the need for additional workers, and can be used beyond base borders, of course (globally, theoretically, but that would be an unnecessarily complicated transport, heh)
-If you move a crawler from its base to another, it can start a ressource convoy, and... some? all? I forgot... of the home base ressources of one kind are then transferred to the target base.
-If you move a crawler to a base building a secret project you can use it to boost the project: It is dissolved, and its mineral worth is added to the project. This way de facto several bases can build one project, and you can build up a "mineral cache".
Whats ICS? You mentioned it before, but...
That's Infinite City Spam/Sprawl. Which seems to be your prefered strategy, ie a large number of closely spaced, individually poorly developed cities. It's main advantage is the large number of recycling tanks you get as well as a huge base of support for troops. It's extra powerful for factions like the Hive or University that get free facilities, and benefit from/are limited to smaller base sizes. I just find it ugly.
I'm not sure actually. I've definitely run into enemies 30 turns in without a single former.
I dont know whats good about flatland
Well, you can drill a borehole, plant a forest, or build a condensor farm with a crawler that can feed 2 Engineers, all impressively powerful. The whole idea of the suggested mod is to encourage forests and farm/solar. It seems that the large number of 1N tiles from spreading forests encourages the AI to build more farms.
No, efficiency is not capped. Though pushing beyond +4 is not really necessary most of the time, as the reduced drones and waste aren't really that big unless your empire covers all of Planet. The only threshold that it's important not to go over is +3 probe because a bug causes it to loop back to -3.
I have to admit, the importance of crawler pickets is something of a flaw, thanks to how easy it is to get infiltration and how powerful it is. If infiltration weren't so powerful and didn't last forever, it wouldn't be so important to keep the enemy from clearing the Fog of War over your territory, and it wouldn't be quite as important to keep enemy probes from ever reaching your cities.
Nono,m as indicated, I dont want Social Engineering to be used for short term gains. Obligatory ideological choice for every faction, and the rest only as a matter of long term strategy. Hm, maybe gigantically raising the costs of changing social engineering to achieve that?
I suppose I do see your point. It's a bit odd lore wise for the Gaians to be faction with tons of huge sprawling bases from their popbooming massively polluting to generate worms to hunt, or for every faction to go for short periods in Free Market except for the Morganites who stay mostly in Green, or for the Hive to be crippled by limited population growth thanks to their near inability to popboom. I suppose I've played enough to no longer care, much like how I don't care that Miriam is a raving nutcase despite being a rather reasonable messiah figure in the lore and datalinks, or how Santiago is disturbingly reasonable despite being the traitorous bitch who murdered the captain, or how nobody seems to pay attention to the fact that as the Executive officer, Yang should be in command of the expedition once the factions make contact. That said, I do feel that the diversity of strategy more than makes up for the odd deviations from lore, or even common sense.
I'm feeling a little dumb, how do i use supply crawlers? I've never used them myself...
Like Susano mentioned, those are the 3 listed abilities for crawlers. The first is huge, since single resource tiles like mines and condensor farms are pretty much made to be crawled, and a number of strategies revolve around maximizing the number of single resource tiles and relying on crawlers to work them. Even early game, the crawler on a forest is a tremendously valuable means of increasing mineral production when your population is limited. You should also not forget trawlers. (ie a supply module on a boat) They're a little expensive, but trawling kelp farms is a pretty good way of feeding your bases, since kelp is cheap in terraforming turns and automatically spreads, plus there's never any shortage of ocean tiles to use and there's never anything better for those tiles to do.
The second is not so big, since it's only ever useful as a means of starving a city you don't want when you aren't willing to commit an atrocity by destroying it. (funny how starving your citizens is perfectly fine)
The third is critical for building Secret Projects. In multiplayer, people never start a project until they have enough crawlers to finish it in one turn, because beginning a project immediately announces to all other players that you have the tech, and also where you are building it. Further, each crawler you build can boost your output from the moment it is finished to when you cash them all in for the Project, as opposed to minerals invested into the project itself, which pay no dividends until the project is actually completed. This is also why you should always have a large surplus of forests and other terraformed tiles hanging about, for temporary crawler swarms to use.
There's a fourth unlisted ability, and that is that crawlers are automatically clean, that is crawlers do not cost upkeep even without the clean reactor ability. This is very important for any faction running Democracy and especially for Morgan, as their low support limits the number of military units they can field without killing their production with upkeep costs. If you put armor on a crawler, it no longer counts as a noncombat unit and thus no longer has the noncombat penalty in battle. Put an armored crawler on a forest and either on or next to a sensor, and it becomes a fortress, blocking enemies with its zone of control, and potentially even blocking enemy probes who can't enter that square without bribing the crawler, which would send the probe back to base and giving you warning and time to reblock the hole. And with the defensive bonus from the forest and sensor, they have a good chance of defeating the first attacker, or at least badly damaging it for your own units to counterattack. And while the crawler does all this, not only does it cost no upkeep, but it is also sucking 2 minerals a turn from the forest it's sitting on, rapidly paying for itself. On the ocean, an armored trawler, with the radar upgrade (which is free for ships) does the same, guarding against sudden amphibious assaults and potentially blocking the incredibly annoying probe cruisers/foils which are incredibly common in multiplay, all while feeding your bases from a kelp farm.
Susano
Banned
Gah. Lost the first reply to this due to being stupid.
And also, makes it really ever sense to stop expansion? I mean, sure, if you expand rapidly, that cuts into facility production. But a slow and steady expansion that just never stops? A colony pod isnt a large investment, after all. Really, the main advantage to me is simply the added growth potential...
And Im not even sure _I_ have a former at 2130
Well, it depends. Build order for the capital (assuming a rainy, hilly field is nearby) is Scout Patrol -> Colony -> Recycling Tanks -> Synthmetal Prototype (Research, Morgan or data pod, by then you usually have Industrial Base) -> Secret Project (Human Genome, or later switched to Human Genome). If the second city is mineral rich, the same might happen there, and when the third city has built its recycling tank and then the first former, well, by then it might well be way past 2130
And besides, in the upgraded game versions (as was planend from the beginning of course), the Planetary governor or whatever the title has every fatcion infiltrated, as does the Guild of Empaths, so its very much open knowledge anyways...
Yeah, well, I find unused land ugly
And also, makes it really ever sense to stop expansion? I mean, sure, if you expand rapidly, that cuts into facility production. But a slow and steady expansion that just never stops? A colony pod isnt a large investment, after all. Really, the main advantage to me is simply the added growth potential...
That might be because they simply dont build them, though. What with the AI always creating masses of useless military units...
And Im not even sure _I_ have a former at 2130
Well, it depends. Build order for the capital (assuming a rainy, hilly field is nearby) is Scout Patrol -> Colony -> Recycling Tanks -> Synthmetal Prototype (Research, Morgan or data pod, by then you usually have Industrial Base) -> Secret Project (Human Genome, or later switched to Human Genome). If the second city is mineral rich, the same might happen there, and when the third city has built its recycling tank and then the first former, well, by then it might well be way past 2130
I dont like forests. Its good for dryland, of course, and also for moist/flat tiles, but I much prefer solar/farms and mines. Of course that might be because I never really get into late game - the forrest farm and hybrid forest facilities make forests very powerful. But only then. Before, 1N tiles are just a growth hinderance...
Really? Hahaha. Well, I always assumed it was capped at the lower end, at -2, as descriptions dont change and theres also no "continuable" advantage. Which would de facto mean the University has the IMMUNITY advantage for Knowledge... if true... but apparently not.
Hm. I see your point. Having always played against the AI, that just never was important to me. Data Infiltration, meh, not important - the AI never amasses troops anyways, and it can absolutely do nothing with data about me.
And besides, in the upgraded game versions (as was planend from the beginning of course), the Planetary governor or whatever the title has every fatcion infiltrated, as does the Guild of Empaths, so its very much open knowledge anyways...
Haha, yes.
Did Santiago truely assassinate him? I always thought that was just hinted. As for Miriam, I see no conrtadiction: She may pack her theo-ludditism in very nice and reasonable words, and yet still, err, aggressively pursue it against outsiders. Yang is a good point, but I can see how absolutely nobody would want to submit to his control. Personally, Id much rather fuck up the chain of command and the entire mission then to have the mission become his domain.
Well, this "hyperstrategy/gaming the system" vs "casual playing/observing lore" split is not just in SMAC of course, and Im pretty much always on the latter side...
Since theyre supposed to bring ressources in that even makes sense.
Meh. Two minerals per base difference...
...Why did this never occur to me? I mean despite everything, despite my stance on that. I could at least have had the idea, it seems so obvious, yet clever!
Uh, really? Doesnt it just enter the field of the probed unit?
Meh, depends on the time in game. The later the game, the more weapons and armours diverge, after all... Later in the game, the up to date weapon can slice through the up to date armour like butter, so to say.
Well, those did occur to me, heh. But youd have to cordon off the entire coast, as there are no ZoGs on sea...
I've found the AI does use base spam, but only under certain circumstances:
1) Whenever it finds the Monsoon Jungle (+1 nutrient every square), it will carpet the area with closely spaced bases. This can give the controlling faction a significant population boost compared to the others, but if the bases are poorly defended (and/or you have superior attack units) it can be a bonanza as you can overrun it very fast.
2) The Pirates faction spams bases all over the ocean, not super-close spaced, but enough in terms of numbers to give it a huge population (their population growth penalty is offset by the insane amounts of food kelp farms produce compared to most land improvements). If you're playing as either of the alien factions, the Pirates are like freaking cockroaches, because their giant sea bases spawn gajillions of fast-moving sea colony pods when captured.
1) Whenever it finds the Monsoon Jungle (+1 nutrient every square), it will carpet the area with closely spaced bases. This can give the controlling faction a significant population boost compared to the others, but if the bases are poorly defended (and/or you have superior attack units) it can be a bonanza as you can overrun it very fast.
2) The Pirates faction spams bases all over the ocean, not super-close spaced, but enough in terms of numbers to give it a huge population (their population growth penalty is offset by the insane amounts of food kelp farms produce compared to most land improvements). If you're playing as either of the alien factions, the Pirates are like freaking cockroaches, because their giant sea bases spawn gajillions of fast-moving sea colony pods when captured.
Susano
Banned
Well, yeah
Thats likely a specific AI trigger built in, but its really only narrowly specific for the Jungle.That would be so if AI Pirates would build sea bases on shelf, but they dont really. Granted, good shelf is rare, but really, neither coasthugging nore open sea makes any sense. Which really all of the AI does (and superdense on the open sea where they cant terraform anything, too... though I dont think the Pirates do that.)
Seeking Their Destiny Beneath an Alien Sky
Reading this thread has inspired me to re-installed my favorite game. (Without Alien Crossfire, even though I have downloaded it. Having a bit of trouble mounting the images,at the moment. Thank Goodness I still have the disc for the original game.)
The post title is from the last line of the intro movie; and the title to my Buffy crossover fan fiction story over at Twisting the Hellmouth. I am planning on rewriting some of the chapters before adding more. (As soon as I get a new keyboard. Some of the keys are not working right, especially the quotation marks.)
P.S.: The title also applies to my writing challenge for a Buffy/SMAC crossover story. Which I answered myself.
(Got impatient waiting to see if it can be done. Plus, the plot bunnies were starting to drive me (more) insane! )
Anyone here willing and able to write a SMAC story? Alternate (future) history might make it quite easy (or quite hard) to do.
Reading this thread has inspired me to re-installed my favorite game. (Without Alien Crossfire, even though I have downloaded it. Having a bit of trouble mounting the images,at the moment. Thank Goodness I still have the disc for the original game.)
The post title is from the last line of the intro movie; and the title to my Buffy crossover fan fiction story over at Twisting the Hellmouth. I am planning on rewriting some of the chapters before adding more. (As soon as I get a new keyboard. Some of the keys are not working right, especially the quotation marks.)
P.S.: The title also applies to my writing challenge for a Buffy/SMAC crossover story. Which I answered myself.
(Got impatient waiting to see if it can be done. Plus, the plot bunnies were starting to drive me (more) insane!
)Anyone here willing and able to write a SMAC story? Alternate (future) history might make it quite easy (or quite hard) to do.
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Yeah, well, I find unused land ugly
And also, makes it really ever sense to stop expansion? I mean, sure, if you expand rapidly, that cuts into facility production. But a slow and steady expansion that just never stops? A colony pod isnt a large investment, after all. Really, the main advantage to me is simply the added growth potential...
Well, continuous expansion also means continuous increase in the number of bureaucracy drones. Which, admittedly, is not a problem one might care about if one plays Miriam with punishment spheres, Santiago/Yang with cheap superpolice, or any other faction while going all specialist. Or if you like going Gaian and really going crazy with efficiency, I suppose your bureaucracy limit will be so high that it really doesn't matter. I find sometimes, that just blocking off an area and colonizing it with crawlers works just as well as building a new base, and without the drones
Though there is that funny late game trick, if you have both the Planetary Transit System and Cloudbase Academy and can get Transcendi and have at least 3 food satellites in orbit, and you don't mind the extra bureaucracy drones in your real bases. You then start spamming bases in every nook and cranny of your empire, on the ocean shelf, at the poles, anywhere. You rush recycling tanks taking advantage of the base founding minerals, giving you precisely 6 food, enough to sustain the 3 starting citizens without any outside input or workers, then turn all 3 citizens into Transcendi. This base then generates for you 18 energy equivalents +2 from the recycling tanks, 24 if you are University with the free network node, more if you get the SP giving free energy banks, without any need for infrastructure, garrison, or police, since specialists cannot be drones. This also works earlier with Empaths, though of course the returns aren't nearly as high, and a bit more work and 1 condenser farm crawler/kelp trawler and 7 food satellites can get you up to size 7, ie the max before needing a hab complex, and you can run 7 engineers if you want energy credits more than labs, with absolutely 0 infrastructure producing 42 base energy equivalents per turn. With the AV SP, or as Lal, with 9 food satellites and a soil enricher for the condenser farm, this goes up to 9 engineers/transcendi at 54 base energy equivalents. As University, with both AV and free energy banks, you top at 54 labs/27 credits with Transcendi, or 27 Labs/54 credits with Engineers, and as Lal with both SPs, 11 food sats and 2 kelp trawlers, you top out at 44 labs/33 credits, or 22 labs/66 credits per turn!
And finally you can use the base to support troops or formers since it needs no garrison, and the dinky 2 minerals from the recycling tanks can be used for whatever you want. Quite a return from a single colony pod.And Im not even sure _I_ have a former at 2130
Well, it depends. Build order for the capital (assuming a rainy, hilly field is nearby) is Scout Patrol -> Colony -> Recycling Tanks -> Synthmetal Prototype (Research, Morgan or data pod, by then you usually have Industrial Base) -> Secret Project (Human Genome, or later switched to Human Genome). If the second city is mineral rich, the same might happen there, and when the third city has built its recycling tank and then the first former, well, by then it might well be way past 2130
Well, you've probably figured that this is not the most efficient order. Generally depending on whether you start with Biogenetics or Centauri Ecology, and whether you are aiming for Secrets of the Human Brain, the former should definitely be your second or third build after an initial scout patrol. As Gaians, it could even be your first, since your starting scout patrol is guaranteed to capture a mindworm, which can then take over the scouting duties.
And, well, it's generally very inefficient to start building any SPs before Industrial Automation and crawlers, because of the long period of investment without any returns. In multiplay, it's only ever done when blind research is turned on, and you are a faction like University that really, really, needs a particular project like HGP. As a standard, going for an early SP instead of crawlers means getting that one SP, and losing all the other first tier SPs, as well as starting significantly behind in productivity and expansion.
Well, this might be partly due to my playing Morgan most often, but a single 2N+ tile can get Morgan up to his size 4 limit with recycling tanks and the other 3 citizens working forests. Before the resource caps get lifted, forests are about the most efficient nonmonolith, nonbonus tile, as well as being the cheapest in terraforming turns, thanks to all resources being limited to 2 per tile. (and thus rainy, rolling tiles with farm/collector only produce 2/1/1 compared to a forest's 1/2/1, unless the tile is over 1000m) And by the time the resource caps get lifted and hab complexes become available, I would either have condenser farms (having built the Weather Paradigm), or will have them shortly, meaning any nutrient shortfalls can be made up for by crawlers, and the tree farm is not far in the future. There's also the fact that having more nutrients than needed to feed your population is not very useful in AC, because there's no slavery option to convert food into production, and popbooming is a vastly more efficient way to increase population than waiting for conventional growth.
Heh, this is why in multiplay, the governor is a heavily fought over position, and building the Empath Guild guarantees all the other factions allying to destroy you. (and unless they agree to raze the EG city upon capture, there will be a second round of wars once someone in the alliance takes the city) This is also why it's really important to keep the enemy from lifting the Fog of War over your territory, since it's nearly impossible to permanently prevent any of your enemies from gaining infiltration, you have to minimize what they can use it to see. There's nothing like an enemy scout punching into your territory and with the aid of infiltration identifying your faction HQ/Super Science City, with a Planetbuster arriving the same turn.
As I recall, the prologue short story in the manual all but points to Santiago as the culprit. I suppose it's not guaranteed, but still... And the thing about Miriam is that in the prologue/datalinks, she's neither a theocrat, nor a luddite.
There's that quote: "The righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress. Though the song of yesterday fades into the challenge of tomorrow, God still watches and judges us. Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil," which hardly sounds like a luddite. Then, there's the prologue, where she and Pravin Lal were good friends, hardly likely for a true fundamentalist, and she and Lal were the only ones to refuse to abandon the mission in order to further their own ideological goals. And she refused to be drawn into the infighting even when Lal at last gave up; with the Believers faction being canonically made up of those rejected and abandoned by the other leaders for whatever reason. The prologue describes Miriam as intent on going down with the ship when civil war broke out and the other leaders began cannibalizing the Unity, when she ran into a bay full of refugees and broken down equipment, and realized she could not abandon them to die. Incidently, this also explains why her followers are so fanatically loyal without any need for religious fundamentalism. And while she might be a bit disappointed that Lal abandoned his principles in the final hours of the Unity, it's rather odd she would turn around and attack him as is guaranteed in game.
But it's two minerals the count towards your clean mineral limit. Since a well set up empire has all bases producing at the clean mineral limit (except for a super mineral base), it can hurt pretty bad.
What do you mean? Hostile/neutral units, including probes, cannot enter an occupied tile. So if a chokepoint is completely blocked, a probe has no choice but to bribe the crawler, which can be expensive, and which would send your probe back to base. So it serves as warning, ie that a probe attack is imminent and what direction it is coming from, as well as weaken the enemy probe stack by 1, and drain them of cash needed for probe activities. Incidently, this is why naval probes are so prevalent, since it's much harder to completely block off the sea approaches.
This is where comm jammers come in. Consider a mid/late game war, where the attackers will be using either Tachyon bolt (12), or Plasma Shard (13), and defenders will be using Probability Sheath (6) or Neutronium (8), assuming roughly equal advancement. An armored crawler will have 50% bonus from the forest, and 25% bonus from a sensor, taking its strength up to 10.5/14, which would give you roughly even odds against an attacker. However, with the commjammer upgrade (which is free for unarmed units) a rover/tank will face 13.5/18, losing odds. Even if the attacker has disassociative wave, which is not cheap, this still leaves 12/16 for the rover/tank, which is worse than even. Of course, if the enemy uses infantry, you can't use commjammers, but infantry are vulnerable to counterattack, which is precisely where you gain the advantage from attack being stronger than defense. If they attack with needlejets, even killing the crawler leaves the needlejet damaged and hanging about in your territory for one turn, where a cheap AA rover can shoot it down with almost no risk since it's too expensive to heavily armor planes. If they attack with copters..., well everyone knows copters are overpowered and if you don't have plenty of interceptors ready by the time copters are up, you deserve to lose.
The logical end of this thread is setting up a MP game guys
Ahh, how I miss College, with long stretchs of free time and friends in roughly the same schedule.
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Ahh, how I miss College, with long stretchs of free time and friends in roughly the same schedule.
Actually, in theroy, I have little to no free time. In practice I'm a slacker who doesn't do their homework (it still doesn't matter
)Though I only have time for things like this on the weekend even then
Reading this thread has inspired me to re-installed my favorite game. (Without Alien Crossfire, even though I have downloaded it. Having a bit of trouble mounting the images,at the moment. Thank Goodness I still have the disc for the original game.)
The post title is from the last line of the intro movie; and the title to my Buffy crossover fan fiction story over at Twisting the Hellmouth. I am planning on rewriting some of the chapters before adding more. (As soon as I get a new keyboard. Some of the keys are not working right, especially the quotation marks.)
P.S.: The title also applies to my writing challenge for a Buffy/SMAC crossover story. Which I answered myself.
(Got impatient waiting to see if it can be done. Plus, the plot bunnies were starting to drive me (more) insane!
Anyone here willing and able to write a SMAC story? Alternate (future) history might make it quite easy (or quite hard) to do.
I've come across a good SMAC fanfic/AAR a while back. It's somewhat an Alternate Universe where Earth-humanity isn't extinct and forms a United Federation: a cross between those of Starship Troopers and Star Trek. The story itself is about the fate of Planet by the time the Federation answers the strange Unity signals. Don't have the link though.
Wow, blast from the past. I loved this game back in the late 90's (at least I think that's when it was; it's been long enough that I'm honestly not sure anymore). I particularly enjoyed how every single faction was composed of extremist lunatics - religious crazies! capitalist crazies! mad scientist crazies! survivalist crazies! eco-crazies! whatever the Hive was! Well, except for the UN.
And as for the quotes, I'd say my favorite remains this gem from Morgan: "Gentlemen, forget what your courtesans have told you: size does matter!" Even better, he's referring to nanotechnology.
And as for the quotes, I'd say my favorite remains this gem from Morgan: "Gentlemen, forget what your courtesans have told you: size does matter!" Even better, he's referring to nanotechnology.
Susano
Banned
Eh, the standard +5 Efficiency maximum (+7 including that cyber government stuff, but of course thats late game again) is good enough, it doesnt even necessarily need the Gaians two additional efficiency I think. Mostly drones are an annoyance - the need for extra specialists should really be more than compensated by the additional size in general.
Err... yes
Which shows that the Cloudbase Academy is a bad idea!
(though its the same with the space elevator in the base game already, of course...). And that I do find very ugly myself - closely spamming bases without developing them at all, the way the AI spams seabases that can never go beyond 3 workers...For the University the Virtual World should probably be even more useful than the HGP...
Thing is, again, I play against the AI. I dont need any crawlers, its enough to simply start building the project early enough
That also frees me of the need to concentrate on reaching Industrial Automation in science. But I see your point and concede once again that playing against the AI has made me weak, heh.So... it comes down to crawlers yet again
Hm. It still seems like a waste in rainy territory (because Gene Splicing is only a level 3 tech, so thats 3 nutrients with farm then), but I guess I see your point about moist territory. But yes, I do like conventional growth, as popbooming requires social engineering decisions I dont like (that is, Planned Economy). ...I see
Of course if theres no moralising AI around, planetbusters can be used with impunity, though I wonder if not the players themselves should in that case behave like the moralising AI. I mean, planet buster craters simply look UGLY.
(Though I must say I was surprised that one time the AI actually acted clever and erased the base I intended as launching pad for an invasion with a buster, killing half my military. Wouldnt have thought the AI capable for rationalising the advantages and disadvantages of that, heh)
IIRC (and that might not be), she is the first to start the factional chaos, but Garlands actual assassins remain a mystery...
Hm. Yes, yes, that sounds odd indeed. Radicalisation over time, perhaps? Because her later datalink quotes ARE rather luddite in the end, after all.
Oh, that. Yes, another thing I didnt consider
Well, no. Im pretty sure that a probe bribing an unit enters that units field, and that it doesnt even end the probe teams turn. Of course I currently play SMAC at an early version (similar story to yours - I have the CD, but my CD drive is broken, so I play a dled version, meaning its not properly registered and hence cant be updated), so that might have been changed in the upgrades.
Right. And those arent even really mid/late. Theyre a pain in the butt, too (since usually my offensive ground forces are all rovers). Hm. So yes, you could be right... well, you probably are by experience, heh.
Heh, and as said, copter interceptors, too...
Well, unless you are Miriam or have the Living Refinery, going Democracy means no more free minerals when you set up a base. I suppose it's not really that much of a biggie, but I like rushing recycling tanks first thing when settling, so I generally switch to Democracy only when my empire is mostly set. (except for Miram, the freedom loving fundamentalist, of course) Then there's Green, which rules out FM, which is really valuable to everyone except the Gaians who can't use it, and Morgan (ha!). And then, there's knowledge, which you have to be real careful in using, since it leaves you open to massive probing. Running knowledge while Miriam is nearby really is just asking for it. In other words, I find it really hard to get up to +5 Efficiency while still expanding.
Err... yes
Which shows that the Cloudbase Academy is a bad idea!
Heh, this trick works even better at sea. Automatic pressure domes means you don't even need to bother building recycling tanks, and if you strategically plant some kelp farms early, but the time you get around to doing this, the worthless ocean is covered with kelp for you to trawl. I think I got my all time high score once when doing this. I even used formers to raise the ocean bottom so I have more space to spam empty specialist bases. With the Cloning Vats or Eudaimonia, you don't even need a children's creche to boom these bases up to size 9.
And you thought Miriam was stupid for covering the ocean with seabases...So... it comes down to crawlers yet again
Hey, like I said, this game revolves around crawlers. The only things more important than crawlers, are formers. And there's a funny trick (well not even a trick really, since while powerful, it's costly) when you don't like popbooming, or can't for whatever reason. I mainly use it for Yang and Morgan since they can't popboom conventionally. A colony pod costs 30 minerals and citypop*10 nutrients base, and can either found a new base, or increase an existing base pop by 1. So you set up a size 2 base somewhere out of the way, with 1 police scout, recycling tanks, and children's creche, and attach enough crawlers to both build a colony pod (thus shrinking the base to size 1), and regrow the base to size 2 in one turn. As Morgan, running Dem/Green/Wealth, and so with +2 Growth from the Creche and +1 Industry from Wealth, it takes 16 surplus nutrients (+4 to feed the 2 citizens) and 27 minerals per turn to do this, which roughly runs to 3 condenser farm crawlers, 5 mine crawlers, and 2 kelp farm/mining platform tiles worked by the citizens. Once set up, it will continue producing 1 pod per turn without any further input from the player. Now, what do you do with this continuous stream of free pods? Well, you can use it to infinite city spam, of course, but you can also use it to grow your existing bases a lot faster than they would do so naturally. It costs 88 nutrients to grow from size 10 to size 11, and 112 to do so from size 13 to size 14 assuming just +2 growth from a children's creche. Trading 27 minerals for 68 or 92 nutrients is a pretty good deal, isn't it? Even better, growing cities in this way completely bypasses hab complex or habdome limitations, which is potentially huge for Morgan, and not bad for anyone else, either. Want your HQ/SSC working a full 20 tiles, running 16 engineers/Thinkers, or both, long before Hab domes, and without even paying maintainance for a hab complex? Well, here you are.
It becomes a very different game if everybody agrees not to use Planetbusters. For one, ICS becomes a lot less powerful when compared with fewer, highly developed cities including a SSC. For another, turtling becomes alot more viable, and a player on his own continent/island, with an interlinked defense with picket crawlers/trawlers, SAM rovers on magtubes, and interceptors can make attacking him near impossible. I've seen players cover their entire coastline/border with armored crawlers, making a landing by ground troops outright impossible, with sufficient interceptors to rule out air attack also, leaving just the possibility of a mass drop, which is insanely vulnerable to counterattack in the first turn, and can itself be ruled out by tightly spaced bases and enough aerospace complexes.
Wow! That sounds really overpowered. In SMAX, conducting a probe operation sends the probe back to base. (nearest I think, though I'm not sure, anyone?)
Heh, then there's AAA tracking, giving +100% against air. Going air heavy, then finding every enemy unit sporting AAA is a real kick to the gonads. Even copters only stay overpowered because they can attack and run. (It's a pretty good idea actually, to reduce copter movement to 6, some even say 4.) AAA/ECM units sitting in a base with perimeter defence, tachyon field, sensor, and survey pod become practically impossible to displace (without Planetbusters) until the very endgame when you can bring out blink, DWave, and the insane String Disrupter. Of course, AC being the superbly balanced game that it is, you can always get around this by boosting up your planet rating, then going in with mindworms.
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Susano
Banned
Well, Dem/Green/Knowledge is my usual social setup. Which even fits lorewise, since I usually play Zakharov (somewhere in the manual or data files or somewhat theres a -1 Industry mentioned for the University, I think thats a good way to nerf them against the AI) , Lal or Deirdre
But yes, that +5 Efficiency is simply helpful if you spam bases, and the -2 growth of Green is so nicely compensated by the +2 Growth of Dem... But again the issue seems to be I only play against the AI, heh. And I guess one can simply spam probe teams to be safe against enemy probe teams. That should be easier then cordoning off areas with armorued crawlers, too, but of course it doesnt help against conventional units an ddoesnt produce ressources... sure, if you have -2 (or -4 with university) PROBE, then theyll lose most of the time in probe-combat, but combat definitly ends the term for probeteams... I usually do that, though sending along probe teams with invasion armies can be annoying at times...Yes, yes, I thought so!Heh, this trick works even better at sea. Automatic pressure domes means you don't even need to bother building recycling tanks, and if you strategically plant some kelp farms early, but the time you get around to doing this, the worthless ocean is covered with kelp for you to trawl. I think I got my all time high score once when doing this. I even used formers to raise the ocean bottom so I have more space to spam empty specialist bases. With the Cloning Vats or Eudaimonia, you don't even need a children's creche to boom these bases up to size 9.
But of course, Miriam doesnt use those tactics , and since when does kelp grow outside of shelf? Is that SMAX again?I... I only understood half of that, and more to the point, Im also somewhat sure that you cannot expand a city beyond a certain size with colony pods. Of course, might be I confuse that with CIV, but Im somewhat sure thats so in SMAC, too...
Well then, may the first Transcendant win!
Its always nearest with proboing cities, at least. Well, nearest in a straight line - sometimes that can be over the ocean at the other side of the continent...
Oh, btw there is a way around that problem, of course: Putting two crawlers on the field. I dont know if thats still so in SMAX, but in SMAC (and I think also in SMAC 4.0) at least it means the probe team cant do shit. Of course that requires doubling the output of armoured crawlers...
The +100% bonus of Aerospace Complexes is also quite enough. Coupled with AAA you can practically disband your airforce for all the good it does, yes. Same with Defense Perimeter (or Tachyon Defense)/ECM, of course, so I guess youre right and am happy that the AI never turtles so extremly
Yes, yes, I thought so!
That might be SMAX. The Pirates can build kelp outside of shelf, while for everyone else, kelp planted on the shelf can spread out.
Nope, infinite growth is possible with colony pods, even bypassing the rule that says bases can only grow by 1 per turn, and bypassing any population limits. Obviously, you'll need to control the drones somehow as well as feed all those people without the lategame facilities, SEs, or terraforming, but that's the only limit on big you can get your cities. And the rest is just a matter of getting the most pods for the least cost.
Well then, may the first Transcendant win!
Now that's an oddity, with the way Secret projects depend on stockpiling enough crawlers to finish an SP in one turn, and with Transcendance being being a 2 step process, you get some wierd results. Some players stockpile enough crawlers to build Voice of Planet and Ascent the next turn, but there's the problem of dealing with other players who only stockpile enough to finish Transcendance while waiting for someone else to build Voice, though that's normally dealt with by everyone agreeing that you must have built Voice or capture it in order to build Ascent. Then there are those that invest in enough missiles to blast a hole in any defence, and enough troops to smash through that hole, or sometimes a group will instead decide to share victory by allying, then electing one of their number to Governor. It can get really confusing unless everybody agrees ahead of time on allowed victory conditions and just how many people can ally for a shared victory, or if shared victories are allowed.
The +100% bonus of Aerospace Complexes is also quite enough. Coupled with AAA you can practically disband your airforce for all the good it does, yes. Same with Defense Perimeter (or Tachyon Defense)/ECM, of course, so I guess youre right and am happy that the AI never turtles so extremly
It can get pretty heated, with worms beating high tech entrenchments, empath units beating worms, tech troops beating empaths, all while aircraft dodge around fortified bases to pick off crawlers, formers, terrain enhancements, or any units without AAA.