T-hawk Plays Alpha Centauri

[T-hawk]

Believe it or not, this isn't because of Haphazard's thread.  I was planning this since last year's Alpha Centauri thread, to do sometime after I finished with Civ 5.  Just a coincidence that Haphazard brought up the same game at the same time.

As the title says, I'll play Alpha Centauri.  This isn't going to be break-the-game shenanigans, but a normal (if highly skilled) tour to work through and show the mechanics in detail.  Relevant settings: Pod scattering off, directed research, Transcend (highest) difficulty, all win conditions enabled though I'll target winning by transcendence.  I'll go a few turns at a time, reporting along the way, starting tonight.  I did a couple 50-turn practice starts this week to refresh myself.  I intend to include all mechanics as fair game, although I'll leave out of bounds a few outright bugs like setting patrol points to make a unit elite.

First I'll offer a question as to which of two factions to play.  Eliminating the rest: the University is overpowered and boring, Morgan requires an extreme ICS style, Believers suck, Sparta sucks less but still doesn't do anything besides conquer with impact rovers.  The Peacekeepers could be in play, but Haphazard is doing them; and on the highest difficulty the extra talent does skew significantly for how you manage happiness.

That leaves Gaia's Stepdaughters or the Human Hive.  I think these are also the two most interesting factions to show as builders.  Lacking Free Market is the big swing.  Pretty much every faction that can usefully run FM is best off doing so, but because FM can't police drones, you expand out into endless bases all at size 1.  Gaia and Hive are the two that most lean away from ICS towards more interesting base development.

And I really can't pick between the two.  Gaia is more versatile across different SE choices (the +Efficiency matters a lot more than the +Planet.)  Hive is locked in to Police/Planned, but may have more interesting challenges in the lack of energy and pop-booming.  So what does my audience think?

For reference, as I play along, I'm keeping a save every turn and uploading them here. http://dos486.com/alpha/hive/saves/  Just this request: don't play ahead of me, both for leaking spoilers and for overshadowing my timeline with any other.

[Gavagai]

It is funny: those two are exactly the factions which I hate the most from ideological viewpoint. Would prefer a Hive game, will follow with interest anyway.

[haphazard1]

Will certainly follow with interest. Should be fun to see someone who actually knows what they are doing play the game. I think I am doing OK for a first attempt, but I know that I am very far from 'optimal' play.

On faction choice, I am curious to see what can be done with the Gaians.

[Fluffball]

I think the Gaians are pretty easy to 'builder' with and basically get a huge free military at the start of the game. So I'd vote for the Hive. Also you're Yang's spiritual adviser, so it would be fitting.

[Mardoc]

I'll toss in another vote for the Hive. Particularly if you're willing to report in character, or at least toss in a few of his quotes.

Plus, well, I may not like his vision in the real world but I can't deny he's right about a faction in SMAC - the whole society really is guided by a single intelligence

[Thoth]

Given the side discussion you were having in haphazard thread, Hive seems obligatory.

[yuris125]

Given the side discussion you were having in haphazard thread,   Hive seems obligatory.  

I have a soft spot for Gaians as I ended up playing them in my very first game many many years ago (for no particular reason, before I knew that University was op). Would love to see you play them at some point. But Hive has to be the choice right now

[T-hawk]

Alright, Hive it is.  I thought Gaia might be more interesting since they will change through different SE settings while Hive always locks in to Police/Planned/Wealth, but we'll go with it.  As for Gaia's "huge free military", Fluffball overstates that case; the first worm capture is automatic, but after that it's only 25% and you only find one every few turns.  It's possible to get ~3-4 worms in ~40 turns and conquer a faction with them, but that's just as possible with impact rovers anyway.

Afraid I really can't write in character though.  I've tried with other games but it just doesn't work to be talking in-voice about formulas and multipliers and turn counts and such.  Although Yang knowing SMAC's computer code to be the fundamental particles of his reality would be amazingly meta indeed.

So here's the plan for the Hive.  Besides Centauri Ecology for terraformers, my tech beeline will be to Industrial Automation.  This is the standard play and perhaps not all that interesting, but the Hive really needs this more than any other faction.  The Wealth policy almost entirely negates the Hive's faction penalty, going from -2 Economy (-1 energy every base) to -1 (-1 energy at just the HQ base, which is nothing.)  Wealth is the only good way in any reachable timeframe for the Hive to get its economy out of the crapper.  On top of that, Wealth's +Industry bonus stacks with the Hive's faction strength better than any other.  As I mentioned in Civ 5, a cost linearly discounted to X% is really a 1/X% multiplier.  Reducing mineral costs from -20% to -30% (with Planned economics) is an effective production modifier of 8/7 which is a bigger multiplier than any other faction for whom it would be 10/9 or 9/8.

To get to Industrial Automation, I have the entire tech sequence planned out.  SMAC has a "missing-techs" mechanic, where every time you choose your next research goal, 1/3 of the possible techs are unavailable.  It is deterministic which techs this affects, based on which faction you are, the number of techs you possess, and each tech's position as defined in the game data in alpha.txt.  The required sequence comes to this:

(Doctrine Loyalty) - Centauri Ecology - Information Networks - Industrial Base - Industrial Economics - Planetary Networks - Industrial Automation

I'd like Planetary Networks to come sooner in that list, for Planned economics.  But the limiting factor is that Industrial Economics would be disallowed as the 6th tech, so the only other tech that can be sequenced there is Ind Auto's other prerequisite.  Getting Planetary Networks any earlier would mean delaying Ind Econ one slot and Ind Auto by two (instead of the 7th slot, it becomes unavailable as the 8th, pushed to the 9th tech), which would mean like twenty turns on the Hive's weak economy.  Also, I must not trade for techs outside this beeline until Ind Auto itself is selected for research.  (Once a tech is selected, it stays selected even if acquiring another tech bumps your selected tech into the missing-tech hole.  It will be unavailable if you click to change research on the F2 screen, so don't do that.)  Although the jackpot would be to encounter Morgan who always researches Industrial Economics and usually trades it, which would allow skipping Industrial Base entirely.



So here we go with the Hive.  Map settings: standard size, low ocean for more room, standard erosion and rainfall and native life.  Game settings: all victory conditions, no pod scattering, no respawning (Do or Die on), no random events, directed research.



This was about the fifth map roll, after the first few didn't look good for this exercise (mostly too much ocean) and one was drastically overly-fertile (several rainy tiles and multiple nutrient bonuses.)  This looks quite plain, with no tile bonuses at all.  But the river matters quite a bit for the Hive to get some energy; I can get both starting bases on it.  And there is one rolling-rainy tile, south-southwest.  Enough to work with while being sufficiently typically representative of SMAC games.




And the overview seems to be about what I'm looking for.  You can see most of the land contours from the elevation indicators.  Looks like there's a good amount of land in several directions where I should have neighbors rather than isolation.

So I'll play a handful of turns now tonight and see when it looks like a good time to break and report.

[Fluffball]

As for Gaia's "huge free military", Fluffball overstates that case; the first worm capture is automatic, but after that it's only 25% and you only find one every few turns.  It's possible to get ~3-4 worms in ~40 turns and conquer a faction with them, but that's just as possible with impact rovers anyway.

1) You do that while playing a farmer's gambit. Zero investment in military will almost always get you to the #1 power slot on the planet as Deidre. If you're NOT #1 in power even as a 100% peaceful builder, you're very cramped for space indeed.

2) If you have enough room, many of those will cost nothing in support.

3) It increases exponentially. The more mindworms you find, the more mindworms you capture. IIRC you have a ~1/3 chance to trigger a mindworm each trip into fungus, so it's pretty easy to collect a lot of them. And it lasts indefinitely into the game, especially in the sea. I often ONLY maintain a huge support-free military as a builder Gaia, spending next to nothing on actual "real" military. 1 base defender and then a fleet of IoD and mindworms running amok around the planet.

As I said in the other thread, this game is ludicrously easy to break. You really have to try not to.  

Edit: Actually I wonder if I should probably just not post in this thread to prevent non-stop "bickering" between T-Hawk and I and ruining it for everyone. He's very "confident" in his opinions.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for explaining your plans and thought process, T-hawk. Very helpful.

Things like the tech sequencing...knowing that kind of detail is obviously playing at a completely different level. I am mostly still blundering around the tech tree going for whatever looks shiny at the moment.

I knew that the Gaians (or I guess anyone with sufficient planet rating, but for the early game that means the Gaians) could capture mind worms. I had not realized those captured units do not require support. That is a pretty substantial advantage. I am still trying to get a handle on the best way to set up my military without strangling my production with support costs.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing how this goes. Should be entertaining and informative.