SFDebris' Review of Alpha Centauri (Plus History of Civ)

[Commodore]

And I'd love to play, need to find my CDs...

There's always Good Old Games if you'd rather spend the $6 than the time it'll take to excavate.

Found it. Between my Homeworld:Cataclysm and Imperium Galactica II cds and my Linkin Park/Breaking Benjamin/Crossfade.

[TheHumanHydra]

I'm going to watch this game with interest. Unfortunately, I can't really afford to play right now.

[Dark Savant]

Dp101 Wrote:
Is the game worth getting in this day and age? Will I be hopelessly lost if I haven't played much of the older civ games?

Honestly, I think it's worth playing for the story.  (bet you didn't know a 4X could have a compelling story!)  Even if you need to stick with easy-mode.

The main thing stopping a veteran Civ player from tearing apart the AI at the highest level is having to get to know some rather different game rules.  At least half of that amounts to "supply crawlers are awesome".

If you haven't played SMAC before, the AI seems incredibly weak.  That's because it basically plays by the same rules as the Civ 3 AI: it gets the one major cheat that it automatically knows where everything else is, but otherwise has to play by the rules, adjusted by difficulty level.  Like the Civ 3 AI, it even has to pay for maintenance 100% honestly.  (The Civ 1/2 AI pays NO maintenance on buildings, ever.  The Civ 4/5 AI gets a discount based on difficulty level -- well, in Civ 4 you pay for cities, not buildings.  SMAC/Civ 3 AIs pay full maintenance, always.)  

The AI is actually very good, taking into account all the cheats from Civ 2 it can no longer use.  Many of its biggest failings are because the designers themselves didn't understand the game.  The AI will, for instance, frequently build a farm, mine, and road on the same tile, which is a serious micro mistake that is only a good idea in a few very specific situations.

[Dp101]

Hate to derail the thread any further, but what's the best way to learn the game? Are there any good resources out there? Only report I have ever read of it was T-Hawk's fastest transcendence victory, which I doubt is an accurate representation of a game.

[Commodore]

Quick and dirty?
http://www.land-of-kain.de/docs/smac/
It's a pretty easy thing to pick up for a veteran.

[Dark Savant]

Hate to derail the thread any further, but what's the best way to learn the game? Are there any good resources out there? Only report I have ever read of it was T-Hawk's fastest transcendence victory, which I doubt is an accurate representation of a game.

That isn't really off-topic.

Honestly, a good way is to just bumble around at a low level of difficulty, and get used to social engineering (civics), what terraformers (workers) can do, and how the design workshop works. If you're new to the game, the Peacekeepers are the best faction -- mostly because they don't have a serious negative penalty; every other faction has at least one of those.

You likely already know that you need to get the snowball going ASAP, and to push out colony pods and terraformers right quick. Only build farms on already fertile tiles and sea tiles -- build lots of forests and some boreholes otherwise. Add condensers to farms on those green nutrient bonus tiles (those bonus tiles bypass the equivalent of the despotism penalty in Civ 1/2/3).

Secret Projects are a good deal stronger than Wonders in Civ 4/5 -- it isn't really a mistake to wonder-whore. The Weather Paradigm (Civ 5 Pyramids) is usually the best early-game choice.

If you want to read a lot, Velociryx's guide is pretty good -- it's hardly perfect but it beats the snot out of anything I've ever seen for Civ 1, 2, or 3.

T-Hawk's super quick transcend only works because of the abuses possible on an itty-bitty map. (And a jungle start -- the jungle is easily the strongest landmark on Planet.) I am actually toying with the possibility of beating his speed on a super-huge map. It's like how Master of Orion breaks on Small and Huge maps, except far more pronounced. This is a flaw of the game that's much less pronounced in later Civ games. The fix is easy -- don't play on either extreme of map size.

[T-hawk]

Yeah, don't go by my quick transcend report, that's not typical at all.  That's about abusing loopholes in the rules and interface (starting with the ultra-tiny map size itself), not playing a competitive game.

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?act...ew;down=91

That's the guide by Velocyrix that was everybody's standard back in the day.  From my POV it's actually at a fairly middling level of expertise, but it'll get you up off the ground.  The one big caveat is don't get distracted by the "momentum" vs "builder" talk, that's the equivalent of Civ 4's Cuban Isolationists religious hydra as a catchphrase to mislead newbies.  SMAC has military and economic subsystems like any other 4X but they're not pigeonholed by such labels, there's no either-or choice.

On terraforming: Build more terraformers than you think you need, then double that number again.  It's not like Civs 4/5 where 1-2 workers per city is enough, you want like 4+ terraformers per city or even more in heavy fungus.

Terraforming has a lot of newbie traps.  There's a lot of stuff you can do that looks super cool and hyped by the guides, but in game mechanical terms is really a waste of effort.  Farming is too weak except for nutrient-bonus squares, make forests instead.  Mines and solar panels are a waste of time, go straight to boreholes.  The "energy park" idea with stripes of echelon mirrors looks fantastic visually but is way more effort than you need compared to boreholes.  Raising terrain altitude to get rainy slopes and dry out somebody else downwind sounds awesomely cool, but doesn't really do much of anything in practice.  You get way more rain and food just by building condensers.

What does work: Boreholes are king, condensers are queen, forests are your bread and butter.  Build the Weather Paradigm to get access to them early, then beeline the techs that remove the caps on production.  Feed a city with crawlers on 1-2 condensers, then map out your borehole placement for maximum density (they can't be built adjacent or on slopes) and work them.  Spread forests on everything else without boreholes.  Scoff at the eco damage; you can learn how the eco-damage threshold works or just approximate it by building tree farms everywhere.  Keep empath rovers on hand to kill mind worms that spawn from the eco damage.

On economics: The "Green" stuff about population control is the wrong path, population is power like in all 4Xs.  Population-booming is powerful but is quite a bit harder than the guides make it sound to manage the food and happy necessary for it.  The "super science center" like the guides say is a real thing, put all the multipliers in one city. Build Genejack Factories as soon as you can, don't let the game distract you with morality preaching, in game terms they are massively strong. (Same idea as Civ 4's Bureaucracy in that +50% gross yield is actually more than +50% net after subtracting out expenses, in the form of mineral support for units.)

ICS is strong but not as broken as the guides make it sound.  You want a large quantity of bases, but density isn't a virtue in itself, just a side effect of planting them as fast as you can.  Build roads (build more formers) out to new base sites to give bases some room to breathe and more sites for boreholes and forests.  Do use the trick of building a sensor first (build more formers) on a base site before you plant the base there (the sensor stays under the base for a permanent defense bonus.)

Hmm, I am tempted to play through a game to write up and illustrate a reasonably accurate guide.  If I can restrain myself to some reasonable settings rather than degenerating into that artificial fastest-finish setup again.  No promises on getting to it anytime soon though.

[TheHumanHydra]

Hmm, I am tempted to play through a game to write up and illustrate a reasonably accurate guide.  If I can restrain myself to some reasonable settings rather than degenerating into that artificial fastest-finish setup again.  No promises on getting to it anytime soon though.

I would looove to see this, especially if it included a strong emphasis on the opening. Stuff like when to build formers versus colony pods, what your terraforming should look like before you have access to all those nifty techs, etc.

[T-hawk]

Yeah, I know. It takes effort and time to make those things, though. And I'm rusty and would need at least a practice game first. Have to assume some Let's Play videos exist somewhere at least, though they may be repeating the same mistakes I'm cautioning against.

[TheHumanHydra]

Definitely; no pressure. I've tried searching for some good Let's Plays, but I didn't find any from people who seemed to have mastered the game, unfortunately.