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Yes, its time for another SMAC thread, since I just reloaded the game and am playing with lots of enthusiasm.

When we last left off, I was winning at Transcend with only a fair amount of difficulty, but that was 2 yrs ago. With that in mind, I loaded the 3rd easiest difficulty, and began to run amok; pressing buttons at random and trying to remember what my strategies were.

I got stomped. Hard.

Looking through my old games and journals, I found out that I had completely forgotten about collectors. I played through the 1st and 2nd level of difficulty, doing some wondermongering and rover rushes, until I got to the 3rd level again.

Now, Im trying to focus on terraforming skills; Im decent at building cities, and roverrushes have been done to death. So Im mostly chilling back with my 10 cities, and trying to be left alone.

With that in mind, I rapid built 8 cities in 40 turns, along with a dozen formers, and started my little cluster of happytreefriends. To my south is Zak, who I make a treaty with, to my north is Sparta, who I get a truce with, and to my east is Miriam, who I get a truce with.

I handed out some tech bribes to make friends with everybody, and later on believers declared war on me. So I hired my pactbrother zak to attack her, made a truce with her, used spies to provoke a war between her and sparta, and then sparta called me up to ask for pactbrother against Miriam. I accept, and then I swear truce against her.

When the truce ends, I use my half dozen spies to practice inciting riots, and then I make a truce again, and use my commando spies to encourage Sparta and Zak to keep attacking believers. I also give away tech to people on other islands so Im elected governor with treaties with 5 factions. When my pact brothers call me up to fight Miriam, I either accept and just hold rovers on my border, or give them tech so they arent unhappy with me. From time to time, I advance rovers into Miriam's newer cities and conquer them for the horde.

Yeah. I like this way of playing

;_; Sorry, folks. I kinda encouraged this in him. Gawds help us all if he starts rambling about possible mods to the factions and social engineering table...

Meanwhile, I too just recently took this up, and I have discovered the power of the Clean Reactor (no mineral support required) ability in my troops. As a result, each of my city now sports 9 defensive garrison units, all 1-X-1 and with Clean Reactor.... 3 with +defense PSI, 3 with ECM against Fast Units, and 3 with AAA against Air attacks.

-_- Screw conquering. All I have to do is terraform my life away and hand out money from my tens-of-thousands reserves to keep people happy.

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Notes

-) Hive and Believers need to die. Always. It's IMPOSSIBLE to keep them happy, even if you use their social model. ><

-) Morgan is just one step down from those two

-) Sparta requires a bit of wooing, but it's nice to have her as a friend when you can pull it off

-) University and Peacekeepers are always my friends, though Zak requires wooing if I'm a Power Value faction. I remember Gaia also being easy to woo with Green, but for some reason she's always mad at me these past few games Q_Q

-) Clean reactors for everyone. E V E R Y O N E.

-) I love the silliness in the early game, with Green Econ... rush bio labs and centauri preserves (etc) that give +lifecycle to your units. Then spam the world with mind worms and watch them all FALL before you.

-) Forests Forests Forests Forests Forests Forests Forests Forests

See, he likes wicked big garrisons. I prefer 1-2 garrison units, and the threat of PlanetBusters. Call me TBO SMAC edition.

I am using a mod for this game, just cuz I like using a stable freemarket. It can be found on the apolyton website.

The lessons Im learning from this game include the following:

S.O.Ps: Always kill miriam and hive, dont try to buy of
Dont rover rush before habs are built
Dont automate anything
Trade tech for commerce
Early game rushes are important: cities, formers, and collectors
Make everything clean as soon as possible.

SMAC is the greatest game ever.

SO DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE TROUBLE PLAYING MULTI-PLAYER BEHIND ROUTERS?

I use caps for emphasis, because caps lock is like cruise control for Awesome!
But yeah, multi-player on SMAC is a ho to try to make work. Talen and I have been trying for some time, but my Linksys and his School refuse to talk to one another, not even locating games. Port forwarding information is remarkably hard to come by on the InterWebz...

Red wrote:SO DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE TROUBLE PLAYING MULTI-PLAYER BEHIND ROUTERS?

Please do not yell.

I use caps for emphasis, because caps lock is like cruise control for Awesome!

No, caps lock is signpost to the land of stupidity.

But yeah, multi-player on SMAC is a ho to try to make work. Talen and I have been trying for some time, but my Linksys and his School refuse to talk to one another, not even locating games. Port forwarding information is remarkably hard to come by on the InterWebz...

Forward ports 2300-2400 and 47624.

Are we talking SMAC vanilla, or with the expansion? I've got vanilla, and would love to play with some real people.

I just wish I could get SMAC running on XP.

I get the "processor not supported" error or somthing. Havent tried to run it in to years so my memory about the error is a bit fuzzy.

HSRTG wrote:Are we talking SMAC vanilla, or with the expansion? I've got vanilla, and would love to play with some real people.

We are using vanilla with a cherry on top; ie, some revisions to the rules.txt, but thats it.

What faction you go for?

phongn wrote:

Red wrote:SO DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE TROUBLE PLAYING MULTI-PLAYER BEHIND ROUTERS?

Please do not yell.

I use caps for emphasis, because caps lock is like cruise control for Awesome!

No, caps lock is signpost to the land of stupidity.

Agreed caps makes it a pain to read the posts.

phongn wrote:No, caps lock is signpost to the land of stupidity.
Forward ports 2300-2400 and 47624.

Awesome must hide itself as Stupidity, lest the masses rush in and lower property values for all.

I'll try playing with port numbers again. I got those values (among others), but gave up when my Linksys setup wouldn't allow me to use more than one set of port forwarding ranges.

Of course, the optional solution is to deny my mate and her brother internet for 5 hours while I bypass the modem.

I love screwing around with terraforming in SMAC. I once trapped a massive navy inside an inlet by raising the mouth of the bay. They were PISSED.

Red wrote:Awesome must hide itself as Stupidity, lest the masses rush in and lower property values for all.

Anyone speaking about himself in 3rd person is delusional or borderline.

Watch it, sd.net do not play nice if you screw up.

phongn wrote:Check the fixes here

Danke, will try it tomorrow.

CaptainChewbacca wrote:I love screwing around with terraforming in SMAC. I once trapped a massive navy inside an inlet by raising the mouth of the bay. They were PISSED.

I didn't know you could do that. Dang.. it's been ages since I played that game, though I have a habit of cheating

Enforcer Talen wrote:

HSRTG wrote:Are we talking SMAC vanilla, or with the expansion? I've got vanilla, and would love to play with some real people.

We are using vanilla with a cherry on top; ie, some revisions to the rules.txt, but thats it.

What faction you go for?

I usually go for Morgan. I like having cash. I warn you, I'm casual player. Moderate difficulty is the highest I've gone to. Don't expect too much challenge from moi.

EDIT: I've been reading your old SMAC topics, very entertaining.

EDIT the Second: Or Gaians, Always did like having nigh-immunity from Planet's inevitable pissiness that I blew large chunks out of it.

I like the University. Reasearch is often king in the game and they give you a major advantage in that.

Red wrote: -) Hive and Believers need to die. Always. It's IMPOSSIBLE to keep them happy, even if you use their social model. ><

The Believers need to die on principle. It doesn't matter what their particular transgressions against sense are this game, they need to die because they are fundie scum.

OK, I've reinstalled SMAC, upgraded to 4.0, and am basically good to go. I'm gonna play a couple of single-player games to get back in the swing, it's been a couple years since I've played.

The sea is the true calling, though harder to defend properly.

Started a game at Specialist, and wound up wiping out Miriam, and the Hive. They both decided that despite my better guns, and maneuverable speeders that they should attack me. I blitzed them both, and now have another half continent to colonize. Good times.

EDIT: I'm Morgan.

I hate games with such retarded AI: it's one of the big reasons I can't play 90's 4X games anymore. MoO1 and MoO2 are even worse - yeah declare war on me so I can effortlessly defeat you. Thanks for thinking about it, AI idiot.

I dragged my SMAC out, but I'm a bit confused about versioning. Mine is '1.03XP', but there are patches available up to '4.0'. I've got the crazy addon pack, so I'm not sure if I should be patching.

Install SMAC, install SMAX, then install the XP compatibility patch. That'll set you up properly.

I haven't played SMAC/X in years now, simply from a lack of time. Playing against the AI got boring once I got to the point where I was beating the game by Transcendence, on the Transcend difficulty, before the turn of the century. PBEM's were always fun, but the level of commitment required from them, with turns often taking 2-3 hours to complete in the late game, was simply too much for me to juggle with work and university commitments.

I always enjoyed the Believers. All that free support and probe team goodness. Sure, they weren't the brightest but with an excess of terraformers and probe teams out 'spreading the good word' Sister Miriam always got to vote herself sexiest love goddess of Planet.

Voting incorrectly of course could earn you a session in the Purification Spheres .