T-hawk Plays Alpha Centauri

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the detailed reporting, T-hawk. Very helpful and informative.

Lots to learn from here. I can see that my expansion was much too slow, and also that I did not build enough formers early. (Not really a surprise there, but still interesting to see the difference it makes.)

A question about your "Next Base" sign: was that added to the screenshot, or is there a way to place signs in-game?

[Modo]

T-hawk, would it be ok to upload the starting save for those of us that want to follow along? For that matter would it be acceptable to also upload 10 turn saves or smth like that? Even with your level of attention you can't document everything and seeing your decisions ingame can help a lot (at least someone that just gets into this game) to understand further your reports.

Also, will you add this to your site when it's over? The same applies for FTL, I can find some of your FTL stuff from time to time via Google but not on a section of it's own on your site.

Sorry for the storm of questions, I tried to limit myself to just 10% of what I wanted to know this time

[T-hawk]

Everything is making a difference on expansion speed: starting with the second colony pod, the Hive's faction bonus to growth and industry, starting with 2-food tiles at both bases, more formers, Police State's support for the formers, partial cash-rushing.  From here, Planned and Wealth will kick it up more notches too.

Shift-N to name a landmark in-game.  Ctrl-Shift-N to clear it.

Modo, yes this will go on my site; part of the reason for this is that the quick transcend writeup reads pretty fragmented and crappy by my standards.  The problems with that one: I played many games and didn't know which one would turn out best so didn't take detailed notes and screenshots; and also I wrote that report almost a year after playing so memory on details was fuzzy.

As for FTL, I didn't realize both that it wasn't linked and that anyone cared about finding it.  I'll patch that up.

Saves: I kept one every turn.  Just threw them here and will continue to do so.  http://dos486.com/alpha/hive/saves/  Just need to request, don't play ahead of me, both for leaking spoilers and for overshadowing my timeline with any other.

[haphazard1]

Thanks, T-hawk! Being able to note somethiing directly on the map is very handy.

[Modo]

Thank you, also, and don't worry about getting ahead of you....I fully expect to be constantly behind you, in fact, since I learn strategy games like analyzing chess variations and I'll use your report as the main variation and constantly diverge from it to learn why what you're choosing works better.

[Modo]

Holy, you can modify the terrain in so many ways....this game is huge.
T-hawk, you promised to showcase every feature and combination of features and permutations of combinations 

[haphazard1]

The terraforming possibilities are huge; I am still trying to get a better understanding of how best to make use of terrain. But with the amount of work for formers to do, I can now see why the Weather Paradigm is so desirable.

[T-hawk]

I want to showcase all the useful features.  Some aren't.  Classic example is elevating terrain to catch rainfall for yourself and dry out someone downwind.  That works in the sense that it does happen, but it's really not worth doing, you'll get more rainfall by building condensors; and if you want to deny someone food, go conquer them with impact rovers.  Also I won't get to showing much of any SE combinations, the Hive really only ever runs Police+Planned+Wealth and later Knowledge.

Played another session last night, here's the chronicles.

2126: South scout starts moving after healing, but his very first step finds another mind worm; he kills it but now he's heavily damaged all over again.

I tilt economy/labs to 30/70.  The Hive and Labor Network are each producing 4 energy, which this allocates as 1 energy/3 labs with no slider loss.  Improves Planetary Networks research from 9 years to 7.

2127: Hive finishes that replacement patrol for the one that went over to another base, starts another former.



Here's an interesting discovery.  I found a borehole!  That's part of the naturally occurring Borehole Cluster landmark.  They are not useful yet, limited to 0-2-2 production before Environmental Economics to lift the mineral restriction; but I will place bases to use them by that time.



And this is an interesting sequence of events.  My scout exploring through Morgan's territory is stuck.  He can't move north to keep going because of SMAC's zone-of-control rules; you can't move between any two squares that are adjacent to units belonging to a non-pacted faction.  I can't go the other way either; it looks like there is a land square southeast of Morgan Energy Monopoly, but that would incur the same ZOC-block trying to move from NE to SE of the base.

The best way out of this was to sign a Pact with Morgan, to allow movement through his units and base.  Fortunately Morgan was willing for the price of a tech, which was Doctrine Loyalty.



The big news is that the pact included Morgan giving me his map.  That included all the University's territory!

Check out what's going on there.  This is the best non-jungle start I've ever seen an AI work.  In the Garland Crater landmark, the center 3x3 tiles each produce an extra mineral.  Usually the downside is that those tiles are arid, because the crater wall blocks moisture; but this time every one of those tiles is rolling-moist.  There is a ring of rainy squares just outside the crater too, plus that long river, and finally two nutrient and one mineral bonus.  Man, I could have done amazing things with that bounty.  The University is doing well with it too, but of course the problem is they lack any terraforming improvements.  I think they have Centauri Ecology tech since Zakharov never asked for it in trade; what probably happened was getting choked by support costs before getting formers out.

And finally, notice the odd contours of the University's southwest border.  That means there's yet another faction that way whose borders are pressing the Uni's.

The Morgan pact also resulted in a point of commerce for my first two bases.  Now they're producing 5 total, but if 70% slider assigns 4 to labs, one is lost to the inefficiency penalty.  I swap the one forest-river tile to The Hive so it produces 6 commerce and Leader's Horde produces 4, and set the slider to 60% labs.  That makes The Hive produce 2 energy/4 labs, and Leader's Horde produce 2 energy/2 labs, which is the biggest total of labs production I can get.  Although then Labor Network produces its colony pod and drops off one forest tile anyway.

2128: Labor Network produces colony pod, starts a former; because the next base is going to use the forest-nutrient tile for a while.



2129: Build my fifth base, Socialism Tunnels, within range of the borehole cluster.  This screenshot shows what it looks like when you're losing production to the tile caps.  This base won't actually work the borehole; instead it will borrow the forest-nutrient tile from Leader's Horde while a former defunguses the other nutrient bonus.  This arranges for both cities to accumulate food but neither to grow until after I adopt Planned Economics to shrink the food boxes.  As usual, Socialism Tunnels puts its free minerals towards a former, although I can't rush it in order to save the cash to adopt Planned.

2130: My scout at Morgan's base healed and sets off into the unknown again.

2131: Forest growth.



2132: At long last, Information Networks arrives and we eagerly adopt Planned Economics.  And we order Industrial Automation for the next research.  Once that is selected, the target and cost are locked in, and that opens the gates for trading techs.



The prize was Doctrine Flexibility from the University, in exchange for Doctrine Loyalty.  I ordered up a naval unit at The Hive to start exploring the seas and find more factions.  I made it a 1-2-4 Synthmetal Skimship, since it seemed like a good opportunity to get the prototype for synthmetal armor out of the way.

Morgan then traded me Social Psych too.  I don't need that right this minute, but it is part of the next beeline to the restriction-lifting techs, so may as well take it.

And I finally talked to the Peacekeepers.  Lal demanded Doc Flex to end the vendetta; of course I declined, and he had nothing else to say.  So there was no submissive pact in the offering, as I didn't want before but now did.

Also with Info Networks, I ordered up a probe team in my base closest to the rival factions, to go get going on infiltration.



2135: Build my sixth base, to work the energy bonus river tile to the south.  With that energy bonus being worked, I'm up to 15 labs/turn, nearly 4x what I had at the start of this turn set.  Why not build the base on the energy bonus, since it still functions that way?  Because a tile bonus has another important property: it lifts that production cap on that tile.  I intend to build a borehole there that will produce 8 energy even before the cap lifts at Planetary Economics.

That colony pod came from The Leader's Horde, which is ready to put out many more with its nutrient tile fully improved.  The optimal time to build each pod is at size 2 when two rows of the food box are full, since then the city immediately grows back to size 2 on the same turn it produces the pod.



My scout west of Morgan walked up next to a mind worm... but pulled off a miracle against the 3:2 psi attack to survive at 10% health!  And the secondary miracle was that I responded to snap that screenshot just in time.  (In Civ games, I frequently reload for situations like this to get an unexpected screenshot.  But SMAC has no preserve-random-seed option to get the same combat result again.)  Anyway, I decided to just risk continuing to move that scout to find that next neighbor rather than waiting forever to heal.

2136: The Hive finishes that skimship, and the popup tells me it is indeed the first naval unit on Planet.  It goes exploring.  I order up a second boat, although that build order would later change to a supply crawler instead.  Fellowship City finishes that probe team, starts a colony pod.



That probe team makes quite a discovery: Lal has a 2-2-1 laser infantry headed my direction.  It's no threat to my base (can upgrade the police scout to 1-2-1 synthmetal.)  But it could annoy my terraformers, and will kill the probe team.  The cost to bribe mind-control the unit is 87, which is infeasible.  I decide that settling a truce with Lal is practical enough now, even at the cost of giving him his demand of Planetary Networks, in order to keep my probe moving.  Although then Lal had a rover that hit and interrogated my probe to bounce it back to my headquarters.

2138: Nice, two forest growths this turn.



West Scout contacts Lady Deirdre of the Gaians.  She offers 20 credits to buy Morgan's comm frequency, and I happily accept that since they're so close they'll find each other soon enough.  She offers to trade me Doctrine Mobility, though I decline for the moment.  We sign a Treaty of Friendship, although she warns me she knows how I backstabbed Lal (really odd that she cares but no other faction mentioned it?)  The next time I chatted with Morgan, he gave me a map of Gaian territory; they must have traded maps when I wasn't looking.



Turns out I would have had the Gaia contact anyway from this unit -- but why the %&#@ is a Gaian colony pod coming all the way over here?!

2139: Industrial Automation has arrived.



And we adopted Wealth as promised.  So there are the social engineering choices that we will use for a very long time.  I was able to take advantage of Wealth on the same turn the tech was researched.  In SMAC, research is processed base-by-base, and in this case it was my second base whose labs triggered the tech.  The game immediately gives a popup offering to switch to the new SE choice, which I did, which meant all the bases later in turn order got the benefit of Wealth this very same turn, including immediately saving a turn on one colony pod with the industry boost.  This is why I number my bases in order, so I know exactly how things like this will get processed, when some global modifier happens during upkeep.  The same sort of thing will happen later with the restriction-lifting techs; the lift will kick in that same turn for bases downstream from the one that finishes the tech.

My next target is Gene Splicing, so I set my research to Biogenetics, although I'm hoping to trade or steal for that before it finishes.  Although that screen says 6 turns to research, it's actually due in 12.  This screen was still in the middle of upkeep processing, so what happened was the tech cost hadn't yet updated to include the ones I got by trade, plus also one city went down a size by building the colony pod.

I order up supply crawlers at two bases, though others are more busy on colony pods instead.



Overview of my area.  I have six bases and two colony pods on the move.

I don't have much to show in the terraforming department just yet.  Mostly forest, a few farm+solars on tiles that are at least moist and preferably at 1000m+ altitude.  I guess the most interesting bit is the sensor array by Fellowship City; there is a lot of fungus in that area so I want to spot mindworms and also get warning and defense against potential Peacekeeper units.




And overview of the world.  Catching up to the University on that power graph.  Gaia's borders extend the full 8 tiles to her west, so I know there's not yet another neighbor close by that direction.  My scout will go south from Gaia after healing, looks like there might be more land that way, although I'm counting on my exploring skimship (south of Morgan Biochemical) to find the last two factions.  We already had five factions on this one continent, so the missing Spartans and Believers must have some space somewhere.

[Modo]

In SMAC, research is processed base-by-base, and in this case it was my second base whose labs triggered the tech.  The game immediately gives a popup offering to switch to the new SE choice, which I did, which meant all the bases later in turn order got the benefit of Wealth this very same turn, including immediately saving a turn on one colony pod with the industry boost.  This is why I number my bases in order, so I know exactly how things like this will get processed, when some global modifier happens during upkeep.  The same sort of thing will happen later with the restriction-lifting techs; the lift will kick in that same turn for bases downstream from the one that finishes the tech.

Is there a way to influence where the tech triggers? Obviously, it will be most beneficial if the first base gets it but I assume you'd be all over it if it was actually possible.

[T-hawk]

The game goes through each base one-by-one for production and upkeep processing.  Each base adds its labs to your current total.  Whichever base makes that total exceed the cost is when it triggers.  You can't choose directly; the way to influence it indirectly is to assign energy tiles and science specialists to bases earlier in the list.  I didn't do anything to influence it here (and don't think I had any relevant means to), just knew how to take slight advantage when it did happen.

Don't worry too much about this; it's super micromanagey with little real consequence, even when used to the maximum of completing a secret project in the same turn as discovering its tech.  That I will do and show when it becomes possible, but it's not at all necessary for competent gameplay.  I think Civs 1 and 2 behave the same way; Civs 3+ all avoid this effect by handling research as a separate step after processing all the cities.