SMAC in review

[Archaic`]

Which faction were you using there, out of interest? I've just realized that you were using the Hive in your first post there. If you're still using them, then some of the strategies I gave you, while they'd work, aren't exactly best suited for the Hive. The ICS is of course perfect for Hive (more so than many other factions), but a focus on free market economy isn't as ideal.

[Enforcer Talen]

Drones! =D

[Red]

Enforcer Talen: My comp is broken, so using Red's quicklike.

Transcend

So. Huge map, 50-70 water, high worms, no pod scattering, high clouds, low mountains. Me as drones, Gaia, pirates, conscious, Morgan, lal, un.

It was an archipelago spread. I had a nice big blot in the south, Morgan had an island worth two cities, Gaia and pirates were west of me. I started with infinite city sprawl, and was feeble till turn 50 or so. I pacted Morgan, got comlinks from pirates, and spent most of the early game trading tech. My cities were only builidibg colony pods, formers, or supply crawlers, so my tech rate was horrific.

I ended up missing weather paradigm, human genome, and virtual world, but I insisted in getting the planetsry energy grid project. It's how I fund everything; lots of cheap cities with freebanks. My garrisons remained almost empty.

I kept a weave of truce/peace/war with Gaia and pirates; it was mostly tactical moves, 5 turns or so. They eventually got close enough to tag me with cruisers, so I surronded my island with bases that acted as floating fortresses. They exchanged hands a fair bit, but they kept the war off the mainland. Eventually, the industry was sufficient to maintain a cruiser or two in every offshore city, so I was doin good.

I had some sea colony pods left over, so I surronded Morgan. He had 2-3 projects I was interested in, so I was considering taking him out and heading on to conscious, who was working her way south. As it happened, I never had peace long enough with Gaia pirates to do it, so Morgan got let off. I lost prolly 10-15 pop1 cities during ghis time, mostly sea colonies.

I found a Gaian city in my southern tip, so I infiltrated her, stole a bunch of techs, and took over. She was pissed, but she ended up in a war with pirates, so I had time to put clean chaos choppers in all the offshore bases. No enemies made it through for at least a hundred turns.

Morgan was eventually weak man out, so I went planned, broke pact and allied with zak and the un. Zak didn't stay cuz I was wealth, but un was ok with me for a while. Meanwhile, conscious had worker her way south to the island above mine, so we pacted. She was potent, and I was supreme, and we did a ton of tech trades. Occasionally I would get a loan from Gaia during our truces to buy a tech from conscious. Most of the midgame projects went to me, the remainder went to her. I held the governor here, but lost it later.

End game is kind of interesting. Everyone except conscious declared war on me, and she declared on them. I lost a few offshore cities, but that's what they were there for, and conscious took them back. Sadly, Gaian and pirate bases had gotten close enough to launch choppers, and lal built 15 or so. They wiped out all my garrisons, crawlers and formers. No big loss, the continent was alrdy terraformed, the crawlers were less effecient then my pop16 cities, and my garrisons were leftovers. My only setback was when they destroyed my singularity nuke. I liked it ; ;

I've built voice of planet and started transcendenxe. I should have enough money to buy it in 4 turns, so Im not worried about the war overmuch. They haven't landed any troops, are just destroying sensors and whatnot. My comp has died tho, so I'm now trying to fix it.

I've decided I don't know how to play late game. I've never had ai that was so neck and neck; once I build the choppers, it's usually safe enough. Having the comp built planet busters before I did was humbling, but they haven't launched, thankgod. If I were them I'd launch at my mineral city and lab city.

If I were to replay, after the choppers, I'd start rushing aaa and trance garrisons in the seaboard, and put chopper interceptors on the mainland. The freemarket hates them though; i was building them in my inner cities and sending them to the outer, whose riots and starvation kept them at pop3 or below. I think next time I'll make a punish city and put all units based there.

[Enforcer Talen]

Finished that game, 634%. I beat transcend, so I'm feeling good

[Archaic`]

One interesting thing you seem to have touched on there is how having no garrisons keeps ones spot in the power graphs artificially low. That makes it easier to keep and maintain pacts, which will seriously help your economy. Sure, they'll threaten you and you'll have to pay them off with technology, but you'll be going so far ahead of them in tech that it doesn't really matter.

[UrchinStar47]

I recently started making forests wherever I can, however, my roads and magtubes are inland to deny their use to enemies, and enable my own troops to handle them with good mobility. As I have few high quality troops, I can't really afford to keep them on defense. My strategy is based on hitting enemies as far from my main bases as possible. I play huge maps exclusively.

[Red]

A post from Enforcer Talen, while his computer is in the shop:

Popboom

So. My current early game is a mess of formers, colony pods, and crawlers. (ics) My tech goes for those units first, obviously, and I don't really build a base facility till turn 40 or so. I think I can get mid 20s or higher for number of bases, and the forests are doing a good job of spreading by this point.

So, where does a popboom fit in? I've seen some strats have them as early as turn 30. My current method is somewhat ad hoc. "do i have tech for planned demo? Do I have a childrens crèche in most of my cities? Off I go then."

In general, this results in about a third of my cities popbooming. The rest are at 1 nut or no crèche or both, and just chill. I'm pondering next game switching all my crawlers to nuts when I'm ready for the boom, although I've read sone people wait for tree farms.

I'm a big fan of ics, and putting a popboom on top of it is delicious. Having a population in the low hundreds in 2150 is just silly, and i want to see how I can do it. With the cities so close, they'll be 75% specialist, but I'm worried about the resulant famines.

[Archaic`]

Wait for tree farms at a minimum to boom. Getting the tech to life nut resource limits is also necessary. You will need to crawl at least some nuts at each base without having a nut bonus tile, or a lot of rainy tiles with farm(+condensor). Don't worry if some bases do starve. You'll still have boomed the others up to where they need to be.

Remember also, you don't need Demo/Planned + CC for a boom. You can have Demo + CC + Golden Age. A Golden Age is achieved on a per-base basis when the number of talents at the base is equal or greater than 50% of the population. The easiest way to achieve this is to go Free Market, set your social engineering sliders to 40% Econ, 20% Psych, 40% Labs, and use psych specialists to make up the difference. You'll need to make sure you've got all your drone reducing facilities down in the base as well. Golden Ages significantly boost Econ and Labs at that base, and by continuing to apply the right amount of Psych to them, they can effectively go on permanently.

[Enforcer Talen]

So I decided on a bit more of an aggressive game. Only victory condition allowed was economic, and it was me, pirates, cult, sparta, univ, lal, and believers. I didn't meet anyone till turn 50, and that was pirates, who refused to trade anything. I forgot the route to crawlers, and ended up getting tree farms first. I used occasional popbooms in my core cities, and actually had so many citizens I didn't need crawlers. I've built human genome, weather paradigm, ascetic virtues, planetary energy grid, citizens defense force, and when I got empath guild, everyone declared war on me. Lal got the governorship first time, and I got it the second.

My zone looks like the Philippines. Archipelago surrounded by a smaller archipelago. I've made a ring of floating fortresses about 80% around, starting from the west (I'm at the north pole). Cult and pirates have snuck through that way, and I rushbuilt defenders and bribed any stand alone troops. I've been flying demo freemarket wealth most of the game, and my build tech tree is very nice. However, zak is doing flyovers near me with needlejets, and pirates are using 6 damage cruisers to destroy my patrols of laser foils. So it's time to go to war footing.

Oddly, I'm still in a strong first place, even with no military. My population must be so huge in comparison that other factions can't deal. I think my next move is building a mess of disciplined laser foils, clear the local area, and then start looking for some meat.

[Enforcer Talen]

That was up to about turn 100 or so. Zak mostly stuck on his island, playing Russia to my USA. North hemisphere et al. He would send a new prototype out now and again and I would blow it up. No worries. Believers would send in a transport from the east, same thing. The un on my southeast corner made a truce, so I lined up armadas of laser, impact, and chaos foils, and marched them into the pirates. He had just stolen governor and I was annoyed. I took 5 cities, but he had rows of cruisers coming up, and the un attacked me then. I gave the pirates back one city every 20 turns or so, and we stayed truced.

I took this time to build up cyborg factory and cloudbase academy, and a lot of chaos copters. My troops swung back and smashed up the un ocean cities. and found the cult about halfway in. So I started taking out their cities too, and eventually got a truce with lal.

I took out most of the cults; I did a long column to the center of the map. East was truced lal, west was truce pirates, south was Sparta. The believers were using pirates as launch points for missiles and birds, and Sparta had been saving up the entire game. It took far too many troops to break Spartas corner node, but I did it, and started sweeping up cult and Sparta both.

Picture another archipelago. Land cities, sea cities, big navies, missile spam, lots of spies. Drones, pirates, believers, cult, and spartans, *all at war with each other*. I've never seen anything like it, one faction would crack open a city, another faction would take it, and a third would attack it. My industry was pretty good however; I crippled cult and Sparta, and believers were on the south pole. At the far end of the archipelago, I decided that's as far as I needed to go. My supply lines reversed directions, and my boats that were at sparta made another stem of the U. It went through pirate territory, and they felt threatened and declared war. I didn't even notice till I had started attacking zaks outermost city and found myself blowing up pirate planes.

So both stems of the U splintered outwards, taking multiple pirate cities and destroying dozens of garrisons. I had no expectation of holding any territory, just wanted him focused there and not on my home continent. All the units were out of date, so I didn't feel bad spending them. I also rushbuilt garrisons in all the Sparta cities I had taken.

About two thirds of the armada made it to zakk, and took two cities. I took pleasure in seeing misalloxated resources; he changed some projects to garrisons. Meanwhile, my new shard choppers starting arriving. The year is 2300 or so. I'm at war with pirates and zak, and plan to put 90% of my effort on zak.

University... Is a bastard. He has ten cities, all with sensors, perimeter, tachyon defense, aerospace complex, air superiority fighters, aaa and trance troops, and the anti probe project. My usual routine is at a loss. We both have about equal tech, but his defenses are very good. I have shipboard artillery attacking his coastal cities while i ponder. I'd use nerve gas or planetbusters, but he and pirates have them too, and it would get unpleasant. I definitely want zak though; those ten cities have the most projects aside from myself.

[Enforcer Talen]

'm a very bad man.

I spent about ten years throwing choppers and drop troops into the meat grinder. I grabbed his next two weakest cities, but couldn't expand at all. My leftover forces, meanwhile, were having a field day, taking multiple pirate cities and one major peacekeeper. Sparta was using probes to slowly take back her territory, so I hit the big one.

3 planetbusters were launched at zak. One was launched at lal. Altogether, I prolly took out 10 wonders. I scorched all the cities of Sparta I had, as well as some of lal and zak. Lals return fire destroyed two of my projects. The Geneva hasn't been dropped, so everyone is pretty much at war with everyone. I tried to lower the seas, but the council refused, so we can expect a lot of cities to be flooded. The worms are coming out in force too.

Overall, I've been trying to prevent the ascension of serious rivals, which has been going nicely. One more nuke should get zak out of the running; I've stolen all his tech, so no worries there. My choppers have been able to dispose of most attacking enemy forces; I just need to build garrisons against worms, and start working on infrastructure. Few bases are above tree farms. Tech wise, I need nuke defense asap, my cities are clustered too tightly to handle many more.

[Stofsk]

How nuke happy is the AI? Do they only nuke you if you nuke them or have proven you would nuke them (ie by nuking another AI faction)?

Or do they proactively nuke you as soon as they build a planet buster?

[Enforcer Talen]

So far, I launched 3 at zak and 1 at lal before lal responded. My choppers are pretty good, and I killed 2 nukes in their enemy bases. They didnt launch till I did, and even then they waited a bit. They didnt want to break geneva.

In this game, I also launched 2 more at zak. The oceans are rising every round, so I need to rush pressure domes everywhere. I shifted from a warfooting to a research/build, and then a panicked water rising game. Everyones lost a dozen cities though, and the pirates are blazing up to first place. I actually went from 91% to 74% due to the famines/flooding.

The end game is going to be all boats. Me in the north, pirates in the middle, believers in the south. Everyone else is down to a skeleton from nukes, war, and floods. It looks like the end game will be about launching satellites and having a huge navy/chopper fleet. I plan to finish my pressure domes, get a sufficient force to defend from pirates, and then finish the tech tree (Im at 3 turn per). Then itll be the pirates skill at sea vs my industry bonus.

[DudeGuyMan]

I always did what Sketchbook talked about: University, kiss ass as you race to missiles, then throw off the mask of diplomacy and cackle maniacally while nuking everyone.

[Archaic`]

Honestly, if you want to run a momentum game, you're probably better off doing so in the mid-game, well before PB's. Get to MMI, build Genejacks, and then Chop & Drop.

[Guardsman Bass]

How nuke happy is the AI? Do they only nuke you if you nuke them or have proven you would nuke them (ie by nuking another AI faction)?

Or do they proactively nuke you as soon as they build a planet buster?

It really depends on the faction. Usually, the AI won't lob planet-busters around unless you revoke the UN Charter, but I've seen certain factions, namely Yang, use them without its revocation on the higher difficulty levels. *

* That had been a very fun Morgan game up until that point, on a map that was mostly ocean but with scattered, very dry (most of the terrain was desert) islands. Of course, once he started using planet-busters, we got mass ecological damage, major rises in sea level, and the swamping of most of my forests (the other factions voted down the Mirror Shade proposal).

[Enforcer Talen]

Took a break for some refresher games. Played twice, and on turn 80 or so, lost one of my cities to drones. Both times.

-_- I'm going to read a book.

[Enforcer Talen]

Smac

This gand was one of the more instructive. Me, zak, Morgan, gaia, lal, data, and cyber. Tiny map. I started in the south, on one side of mount planet. I built up 4 cities immediately, peaked the mountain, and saw Morgans two colony pods. We swore treaty, and my rover followed him to see where he would go. I ended up trapping him between me and a fungal artillery. It was amusing watching him get pounded while I colonized the rest of the mountain. 

Zak found me really early on, and demanded two techs everytimr he talked to me. He was playing a momentum game, so I couldn't resist much. I crossed a landbridge, planted a city, and started terraforming mount planet. Through more accident then design, I build a mineral supercity. Ten crawlers, on every mine on the mountain. I tried to expand east, but the fungus was too thick. My infantry and formers got destroyed everytime. So my mineral city was my eastmost.

I eventually pacted Morgan, and he started looking for a place to build a base. I felt sad for him, he ended up on the southpole and at turn 80 was asking me with sad face for former tech. He stuck to his one city most of the game. 

Zak hated me cuz I was wealth; I simply couldn't afford knowledge. I decided war was inevitable, starting building my 1-2-1s. I hadn't discovered rovers yet, and zak had 8-3-2s. My formers had found him three squares above my most northern city, so I started building sensors, bioenhancemt sensors, and researching particle impactors. I timed it almost right; zak declared war and took my nothern most city as my army reinforced the chokepoint.

I got to 8-2-2s pretty quick, once I started researching that tree. It was a surprisingly even match, and felt like fighting a human player. I couldn't probe him, but he bought off any isolated units. He started pounding me with arty, so I rush built arty units. 
We had about the same number of cities, and produced at the same rate (him being on transcend, me being drones). He also talked to the people across the fungus, and lal, and cyber declared war on me. They didn't send attackers, just probes, and I had to leave stronger garrisons to go probe hunting.

In the end, my saving grace was that I had saved over two thousand credits. Every turn, I would rushbuild 2-3 infantry, 30-50 gold each. I was also able to buy fusion tech and a map from the data angels. My defenses held for a while, then I pushed one square out, and then they broke. I destroyed their field army, took their newest city to the west, and drove into the center of their territory. I took the hunter seeker.

I think this is where I made my first mistake. Zak offered submission pact, including twelve tech. He had 2-3 secret projects left, and I figured I could get submission after I took them. I was wrong, and zak died with them.

I rerouted my army to the southeast. I was safe from probe teams, so stripped my bases of their spy hunters abd brought them along with. My formers had finally cleared all the fungus, so I rolled over cyber. Stole some techs on the way, and accidentally truced them. Angels declared war right around then, and spent a lot of time bombarding roads and sensors on my west coast.

 My army was there anyway, so I provoked Gaia. Told her I would crush her like a bug. She declared war, and I rolled her, got a pact. Lal was behind her with one city, so I took him out too. Angels used marines and took my capital. This had more of an impact then you might think. It had my human genome, so all my bases started rioting. I shifted to specialists, and lost one or two dozen units cuz of support.  I took the city back within two turns, but it caused my second mistake. I decided to do a war to the knife, and marched all my units to the northwest. The power graph actually showed me skydiving before building up again,  

My formers went with the army. there were two landbridges I needed. One went north, five spaces, and one went west, one space. I stacked all my units there. I started getting flood warnings as my units marched north, and lost 3 minor cities. Fungus started creeping towards my mineral city again, and artilery destroyed roads and sensors near there. On the west coast, I rushbuilt probe foils, and stole ten or so techs from the angels. Then I infiltrated datalinks, bought their cruisers, bought one of their cities with marines, and used it to take another. When the western landbridge was done, I took four angel cities. They offered truce several times, and i refused. My army was fairly substantial, so I told all bases to build facilities. 

My mineral base was sexy awesome. It had every facility I knew how to build, half s dozen secret projects, and the queue was cloudbase 5 turns, cyborg 6 turns, cloning vats 7, planet buster 10. My plan was build a chopper army, finish off cyber, and prolly get a cooperative victory. The city got to the turn before completion of cloudbase, and then I realized my third mistake. The fungus should be treated as the eighth player.

They had encircled my base. They had moved up reinforcements. They had cut off support. And now they attacked. I lost the garrison and moved in supply crawlers. I rust build garrisons in nearby cities; even emptied them, told then to defend mineral city. With the roads gone, they couldn't make it. The city died under waves of fungus, all the projects gone. I quit the game.

It wasn't a catastrophic loss; a mineral city could be rebuild in a few turns by moving crawlers. I just didn't want to play. I wasn't losing by any means, I had been unsurpassed and held the governorship the entire game. But those three mistakes would have been game enders against human players.

Lessons learned? Never stop terraforming. Don't forget your garrisons. Upgrade your army, clean tech in particular. And know why you are at war, and when to stop.

Overall, I liked tiny map. It was a good, quick series of things to remember.     

[Stofsk]

I may have missed where you said this Talen, but what faction do you play?

EDIT - wait are you drones?

[Enforcer Talen]

I was drones that game, yes.

[Stofsk]

I was drones that game, yes.

Ah cool. I've played SMAX but I don't actually own it. I only have SMAC. I don't remember much about the SMAX factions.

Still, the expansion's not necessary to enjoy this game.

[Red]

know why you are at war, and when to stop.

:x more than an Alpha Centauri quote

[Samuel]

I was drones that game, yes.

Ah cool. I've played SMAX but I don't actually own it. I only have SMAC. I don't remember much about the SMAX factions.

Still, the expansion's not necessary to enjoy this game.

I never got it, but I can fill you in.

Free Drones- Communists.
Cyborg Consciousness- Vulcans.
Cult of the Planet- Cult.
Nautilus Pirates- Pirates.
Aliens- Aliens.

Details for each faction here
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sid_Meier' ... i/Factions

[SCVN 2812]

Any tips for getting this running on 7 Home Premium (ie without Windows XP mode)? I looked at the instructions for getting the game to run on Vista that were posted online elsewhere and the amount of file tinkering was intimidating to say the least. Is there a strategy for getting the game to run that doesn't involve a lot of fiddling with files?

[Ryan Thunder]

Any tips for getting this running on 7 Home Premium (ie without Windows XP mode)? I looked at the instructions for getting the game to run on Vista that were posted online elsewhere and the amount of file tinkering was intimidating to say the least. Is there a strategy for getting the game to run that doesn't involve a lot of fiddling with files?

You don't need to tinker with anything in Vista, just tell it to run in successively older compatibility modes until it works.

... Unless you find something like that intimidating, I guess...