alpha centauri (part 2)

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2004-06-15 02:58pm

I was always a UN player myself. Just grow, grow, grow, smash.

The Prime Necromancer · Post by **The Prime Necromancer** » 2004-06-15 08:35pm

Strange. I just realized something that escaped my notice before. In all my games, for some reason I can't build the Temple of Planet enhancement, despite having all of the prerequisites. Anybody know what the problem could be?

Archaic` · Post by **Archaic`** » 2004-06-15 08:55pm

There's an undocumented requirement that you need to have built the Voice of Planet first before it becomes available.

The Prime Necromancer · Post by **The Prime Necromancer** » 2004-06-15 09:01pm

Archaic` wrote:There's an undocumented requirement that you need to have built the Voice of Planet first before it becomes available.

Ah. Thanks.

StarshipTitanic · Post by **StarshipTitanic** » 2004-06-16 02:22pm

Enforcer Talen wrote:mariam godwinson of the believers.

I routinely exterminate her. I dont even negotiate any more.

Ahh, thank you! I'd exterminate her, but I usually see her die in a war of her own making.

Who hates the Hive? My small, super-advanced faction can never overcome the horde he can raise from his massive industrial base. He always controls a fourth of the map. He's the only person to drive me to use planetbusters.

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2004-06-16 02:37pm

StarshipTitanic wrote:
Enforcer Talen wrote:mariam godwinson of the believers.

I routinely exterminate her. I dont even negotiate any more.
Ahh, thank you! I'd exterminate her, but I usually see her die in a war of her own making.

Who hates the Hive? My small, super-advanced faction can never overcome the horde he can raise from his massive industrial base. He always controls a fourth of the map. He's the only person to drive me to use planetbusters.

Tell me about in. In my last game as the Uni, the Hive owned the only continent on the map, controlled at least 80 percent on the resources, and had literally dozens of chaos squads, while I had a measly 3 (but elite

)
tachyon beam tanks. The Morganites and me ganged up on him, I landing my tanks on his northern shores while the morgans started grinding away at his eastern defenses. No sooner than I land do I face 6 chaos squads in rapid succession, which manage to kill off all my nice tanks. After fighting for another 45 minutes with no success, I just load up a few planetbusters.

Sadly, the 'busters managed to wipe out the resource rich continent, but oh well.

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2004-06-16 03:22pm

StarshipTitanic wrote:
Enforcer Talen wrote:mariam godwinson of the believers.

I routinely exterminate her. I dont even negotiate any more.
Ahh, thank you! I'd exterminate her, but I usually see her die in a war of her own making.

Who hates the Hive? My small, super-advanced faction can never overcome the horde he can raise from his massive industrial base. He always controls a fourth of the map. He's the only person to drive me to use planetbusters.

I dont have much trouble with them. I either annhilate them early on with rovers, or I disband the atrocity charter, load up 5 or 6 chaos choppers with a chaos drop troop, and obliterate a few cities. hes not nearly so dangerous when hes lost 80% of his populaiton.

StarshipTitanic · Post by **StarshipTitanic** » 2004-06-16 03:58pm

I'm to pacifistic to destroy another faction, except once when I was faced with the mighty, warmonging Peacekeepers

.

Does anyone collect Unity equipment and keep it safe in a protected city for the whole game?

I get pissed if someone beats me to the mining laser in the Unity wreakage. They are good to send wandering about the fungal fields, though, as they typically attain a very high level of morale if they're ancient enough.

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2004-06-16 04:32pm

I dotn even know what a mining laser is.

I expand as much as I can till I find another nation. I surprise attack with rovers until I own the continent. I set up trade if possible, and up my tech. I conquer a few more nations, and if I rememeber I keep one or two cities of un and iq and gaia, and share the spoils for trade.

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2004-06-16 05:43pm

StarshipTitanic wrote:
Enforcer Talen wrote:mariam godwinson of the believers.

I routinely exterminate her. I dont even negotiate any more.
Ahh, thank you! I'd exterminate her, but I usually see her die in a war of her own making.

Who hates the Hive? My small, super-advanced faction can never overcome the horde he can raise from his massive industrial base. He always controls a fourth of the map. He's the only person to drive me to use planetbusters.

I really like playing the Hive, they're my third favourite faction after the Nautilus pirates and the university.

And I usually win the game by annihilating each and every single city with planetbusters

Most games just end with waterworld...

Archaic` · Post by **Archaic`** » 2004-06-16 06:34pm

The Hive annoys me, not because of their actions in SP (Though I do find that they are one of the stronger AI factions most of the time), but simply because there's so many good Hive players out there in the PBEM community. Every game I've lost thusfar has been to a Hive player.

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2004-06-16 07:35pm

I like to play as the Uni or Morganites. I build up my navy, pick up all the island resources, then get the planetary council to raise sea levels.

I've only ever needed Busters against the Spartans, against the Hive I can usually prevail if I have some fast-moving forces and air power.

Thirdfain · Post by **Thirdfain** » 2004-06-16 07:42pm

What unit designs does everyone use? As the Spartans, I build 2 rover designs- Destriers, with max attack and 1 defense, and Dragoons, with 1 attack and max defense, plus max attack/defend helicopters. The air units pouind cities to dust, Dragoons take and garrison cities, and Destriers hit enemy units in the open. It's remarkably effective, and the two roveers are both cheap as dirt.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2004-06-16 08:17pm

I generally work on similar lines, high attack low defence shock troops and then high defence garrison troops.

Until I am great in might, and need a laugh as I pound my cowering opponents, at which point I go all out and build monster infantries with ultra high attack and defence, and perform mass orbital insertions.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2004-06-17 07:00am

Incidentally, alpha.txt enables SMAC to be easily moddable. Does anyone take advantage of this function?

I like to give most units an extra movement increase, particularly Infantry which gets 2 instead of the default 1. I also increase the road movements as well, as waiting for maglevs takes awhile.

So does anyone tinker with the game settings, or leave it as is?

Archaic` · Post by **Archaic`** » 2004-06-17 07:45am

I mainly leave it as it is, if only so I don't pick up bad habits for PBEM.

With my units, I rarely find myself building any, unless attacked (You'd be amazed how much friendlier everyone becomes when you have no standing army, including garrisons. Much easier to manipulate in diplo.). When I do, I try to fiddle as much as possible. At each reactor level, and with each subsequent discovery, some things become cheaper than they were before. It's a fairly frequent occurance because of the reactor levels in particular that you might find a 1-4-1*2 costs exactly the same as a 2-4-1*2, or something similar. If they're going to cost the same price, then why waste the opportunity.

When I go on the attack, I rarely build any offensive drop troops. No real need. Simply high defense garrisons, and high power choppers, with some interceptors for support (Longer range on them than on air superiority choppers. Those are only really useful to mop up after an opponent's attack leaves a bunch of damaged air units around, and really, you never want to be in that situation.)

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2004-06-17 08:57am

Archaic` wrote:With my units, I rarely find myself building any, unless attacked.

I take it you play on maps with low native life form abundance?

Archaic` · Post by **Archaic`** » 2004-06-17 06:06pm

Actually, I tend to just use standard levels of native life. Usually, the units I started the game with, along with any rover's I've popped, upgraded to trance and empath respectivly, are more than enough to deal with both moving worms and the worm pops I'll get later due to my extensive ecodamage.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-06-17 06:17pm

Ok, I've dled the demo version and I'm confused. Any help for the newbie?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2004-06-17 06:22pm

fgalkin wrote:Ok, I've dled the demo version and I'm confused. Any help for the newbie?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

What parts of the game are you having trouble with? Base-building, terraforming, fighting, etc?

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2004-06-17 08:02pm

fgalkin wrote:Ok, I've dled the demo version and I'm confused. Any help for the newbie?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

To move units, use the keypad.

It comes with a pretty extensive help menu, which covers most of the topics which you'll probably need help with.

There are 3 resources: Nutrients (food), Minerals (production), and Energy (money). All three can be harvested through terraforming - farms produce food, mines produce minerals, solar collectors produce energy. Forests can be planted and they provide all three.

Food feeds your colonists (duh). Minerals help you make units and facilities. Energy helps you research and boosts your economy. You'll probably notice the different squares - different squares give different bonuses.

That is just the basic shit. What specific help do you need? (note I'm more or less a newbie, I've only recently returned to this game after a long interval, and have forgotten what I've learned)

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2004-06-17 08:04pm

The Hive is annoying, but they're not so tough in the face of round-the-clock nerve gas attacks on their units and cities.

Yeah, I love nerve gas. The only problem with it is, if you use it on someone, it's a fight to the death. So I only use it when I know I'm in a war of extermination.

By the way, I usually play as the Spartans.

StarshipTitanic · Post by **StarshipTitanic** » 2004-06-17 08:17pm

Enforcer Talen wrote:I dotn even know what a mining laser is.

I expand as much as I can till I find another nation. I surprise attack with rovers until I own the continent. I set up trade if possible, and up my tech. I conquer a few more nations, and if I rememeber I keep one or two cities of un and iq and gaia, and share the spoils for trade.

It's an infantryman with a laser that is found in the UNS Unity Wreakage site, on the large L shaped continent if you play the standard Planet map. I rarely see it on random maps.

I really love the way I can name all the points of interest. I can't believe they didn't carry this nice feature over to CivIII....

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-06-17 08:29pm

Any tips on what units to build in whay order (so I don't get assraped brutally by some other factions)

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2004-06-17 08:34pm

fgalkin wrote:Any tips on what units to build in whay order (so I don't get assraped brutally by some other factions)

At the start your options will be severely limited to a mere Scout Patrol. Of the non-combat units to build, Formers and Supply Crawlers are essential.

[EDIT] Formers require Centauri Ecology, a level 1 tech. Supply Crawlers require 4 prerequisite techs to get the 5th one, Industrial Automation. Crawlers are essential because they're like mobile miners. If you play any faction other than University and maybe Peacekeepers, you should go for Centauri Ecology first (for the formers) then the first 2 Build and Discover techs (I forget the names - but there's only one of each available anyway).

For offensive units, design a rover chassis with the best weapon you can put on it, and maybe the best armour as well. It will be the fastest thing you've got, and will hit the hardest as well. Infantry should be kept as garrison units only, meaning they should have the best armour but the lowest weapon (I think it decreases cost).

As for other combos, research is the answer. You get new and different chassis with new toys to put on 'em. I don't know what limits the demo imposes, but it would be a damn shame if you can't progress to naval and aerial units. But in the early game, rovers will be your main assault weapon.

Question for those more knowledgable than I: When do resource restrictions get lifted? What tech, in particular facilitates this?