T-hawk Plays Alpha Centauri

[Modo]

If boreholes weren't in the game, I would have developed my strategies without them for the last 18 years and be able to give you a better answer than I can in just a few minutes of speculation.

18 years? Now I know SMAC is high level if you'd need that much time.

But seriously, you can create rivers in this game? Holy [email=Q@#@@$@E]Q@#@@$@E[/email]#. Even if it's just for playing with the tiles.....

[T-hawk]

Thanks for the good words Erick, glad you enjoyed it.  I get that feeling... I've actually wished I wasn't so good a player so that I would have more time to see all the awesome endgame stuff play out.  But enacting variant rules to force that doesn't feel like the right way to go about it.  Fundamentally, underneath it all, the root problem is that techs increase in cost linearly over time but production increases exponentially (and it's a big exponent.)  Civ 3 and later fixed that of course.

The micromanagement felt surprisingly smooth to me, more than I remembered.  The big thing is the keyboard shortcuts for everything, even clicking on a unit doesn't require a mouse click (V into view mode, arrow keys to move to tile, A to bring up a menu to activate whichever unit.)  Also that the city screen is bold and clear with large icons showing what each tile is producing (I hate Civ 5's tiny icons and "lock" clicking.)

But seriously, you can create rivers in this game? Holy Q

Yes, Q is the keyboard shortcut for that.

[T-hawk]

And here concludes our tale.  I can't do justice in text to expressing the grandeur of the Transcendence ending; the experience of going through the several story interludes and project movies is spectacular.  Play the game to see it for yourself.

I left off where I did last time because I needed to work out the final beeline to avert missing-tech holes.  The final order goes as this:

The Will To Power
Nanometallurgy
Matter Compression
Super Tensile Solids
Matter Editation
Secrets of Creation
Matter Transmission
Eudaimonia
Temporal Mechanics
Threshold of Transcendence

Full disclosure, I hex-edited my 2219 save to change my current research to Will to Power instead of Nanometallurgy.  (Same would have been possible by reloading from 2218, or if I'd simply worked out that beeline beforehand, so this was the same result with the easiest effort.)  They had to go in that order; if Nanometallurgy came first, then in the next slot both Will to Power and Matter Compression would be blocked and I'd have no beeline choice.  Frictionless Surfaces would be available, but it is not needed for the transcendence victory.  There are a total of 7 nonrequired techs plus the repeatable placeholder Transcendent Thought which is equivalent to Civ's Future Tech.

It turns out that Threshold of Transcendence itself will be blocked in the slot that I need it in.  Obviously it's not possible to rearrange anything when there's only one tech left.  No matter what, Threshold has to be delayed by one slot somehow.  The easiest way to perturb the modulus is to finally steal one of those first-level techs that I left forever missing, either Applied Physics or Doctrine Mobility from Gaia or Morgan.

2220: Discover The Will To Power, Nanometallurgy, Matter Compression.  I don't need anything offered by these techs, just order up one Neutronium (8-armor) unit to prototype it for crawler upgrades.  Also I neglected to note that Self-Aware Machines on the previous turn enabled mineral satellites, but I don't really need those either.

The one halfway interesting thing going on is my formers constructing a mag-tube network between most of my cities.  This is mostly to facilitate moving around supply crawlers for the last few projects.  It's possible to upgrade and add a crawler in the same turn if the upgrade happens within the base.  To upgrade a unit requires all of its movement -- but that's still possible if it moved along a mag-tube for 0 cost.  So the right approach was this: for a crawler working in the field, build a mag-tube underneath it so it could then move out costlessly.

2221: Discover Super Tensile Solids, Matter Editation, Secrets of Creation, Matter Transmission (as Secrets freebie.)



My probe goes to steal a tech from Morgan (I'd rather deal with a vendetta in response from him than from Gaia, because his bases are generally farther away.)  But he opens communications, and surprisingly agrees to simply sell me Applied Physics.  Done!  I'm not sure to what degree (if at all) the AI personalities actually influence what they want in trades; there's no definition in the faction data files for Morgan to desire energy or University to desire techs or anything like that.

The Transcendence victory requires two secret projects.  Threshold of Transcendence tech enables the Voice of Planet for 600 minerals.  Once that is built, then all factions (regardless of tech) can construct the Ascent to Transcendence for 2000.  Discounted by Industry modifiers; I have none from SE now but still the Hive's native +1. If you're not doing what I'm about to do, it's common to switch from Cybernetic to Eudaimonic on the last turn since you don't need the research but to get the +2 Industry.



As in my speed transcend report, I set up to finish the game on the same turn as discovering the last tech.  In my second-to-last base in production order, I ordered up any secret project, and upgraded a hovertank crawler to put 450 minerals into it plus added one other regular crawler.  In my last base, I also ordered up any project, and now upgraded four rover or hovertank crawlers to 400+ minerals each and added them all to the project too.  Finally, I set up my third-to-last base to build anything just in order to get a popup for the UI to jump into the production sequence at the right time.

2222: Discover Eudaimonia, Temporal Mechanics, Threshold of Transcendence.

During upkeep processing, when base 21 builds its facility, I can use F4 to jump to base 22 and change its already-filled project to Voice of Planet.  Then when that completes, I use F4 again to jump to the last base and change its already-filled project to Ascent to Transcendence.



And there we go.



No longer mere earthbeings and planetbeings are we, but bright children of the stars.



Here are some numbers that are certainly numbers.  That weird "0 Objectives Achieved" score is a bonus for speed to winning, which is the default objective when you're not playing a premade scenario.



Turns out that's my highest population score ever at 566.  (My hall of fame has actually remained intact through copying among several computers ever since I started playing the game.)  Not that that really means I played better, just put more effort into building/conquering more bases and booming all the way.  Could have gone higher with needlejet colony pods and drop formers to all the nearby islands, but none of that would have made a difference on the research rate; even capturing eight Spartan bases was only a couple hundred labs out of the 10k.

My final labs count was 11,100, which could have been slightly higher by rushing more nanohospitals in the last two turns, but that wasn't needed (could not have saved a turn.)  There's also one more labs multiplier among the nonrequired techs.  Even from here, the labs count could have more than doubled again with hab domes to remove the population cap: then hybrid forests and more food satellites could have raised each base's population over 30, and all that population would be transcends.  The ultimate possibility is to make every square a condensor, to boom every base to the maximum allowed by the program of size 127, but that's going to take 111 more turns to do the booming and I'm not doing that.

[T-hawk]

And one last crazy-go-large overview, click to expand. Thanks for reading along, and of course I'm perfectly happy to continue the conversation with anything else anyone would like to bring up about the game.

[Modo]

Yes, Q is the keyboard shortcut for that.

"Q the miserable. Q the desperate"

A fitting end for both the game and your playtrough "I have 10k labs while X and Y have around 100 and then...I end the game"

Gotta say, being able to both research and complete two big projects in the same turn feels very good for gameplay as opposed to waiting ten turns for a spaceship to reach..well, Alpha Centauri.
Thank you again, it was an eye opener...and only 111 turns to hit the program limit you say?

[haphazard1]

That is quite the research rate, going through techs at the end of the tree at 3 and 4 techs per turn.

Thanks for sharing this game with all of us, T-hawk. It has been a fun read, and very informative about the game. I will eventually finish my game, although it is probably going to have to be after I finish my move and am settled in my new place.

[Modo]

Ok, now back to the drill
On turn 1 you said you pay no penalty for switching build orders if you currently have 10 minerals or less and I can't find how much the penalty is if you do so. Also, is there a time when you'd eat the penalty? Aside from some emergency build, that is.

I'm now remembering all the things I didn't get to before so more additional comments / questions:

1) Love that you can rename bases like this without losing the order, always tried that in Civ4 for various reasons and once you change the name of the current city the next one picks it back up again so you end up with 01London then London again. I wonder how come it works in SMAC and not elsewhere.

2) The river makes a big difference, assuming a normal game would not start you near one would you go looking for one before putting down the base?

3) Can you play a sandbox game without any other factions? Looked in the options but maybe there's other ways that I don't see.

[T-hawk]

With more than 10 minerals in the box, you pay a penalty of half the excess beyond 10 to switch production.  There is no penalty for switching from one secret project to another.  The penalty applies only once per turn (switching multiple times doesn't penalize you again), and gets refunded if you switch back to what you originally switched away from.  Sometimes I'll eat a small penalty to switch to an important build item when it comes available, that happened in this game for Fusion Labs, but there's no situation where I'd systematically intentionally do so.

SMAC remembers internally which base names have been used, because it picks names randomly from the list after the HQ; the Civ games go down each civ's list in order.

I wouldn't go looking for a river, no.  For any sort of speed attempt, I'll restart until I get one.

I don't know if you can play a solo sandbox, never tried.

[Modo]

I'm going to make several assumptions here:

1) The easiest way to get control of each base before the turn is completly processed is to set a one turn item to be produced in the first base, this way you can F4 your way into every base, is this correct?

2) The penalty to switch production applies only after the turn is processed otherwise you wouldn't get refunded if switching back and the refund applies only if you switch back during the same turn.

3) Rush buying an item to completion finishes it but you don't actually get it until the next turn.

4) You can queue items to produce based on 3 much like you can place an item in Civ4 ahead of another one you just whiped so the game stores the completed item and gives you the overflow for it whenever you choose to complete it.

If these assumptions are correct can you build an expensive iterm to near completion, then switch to another one that's either less then half the value of the first one and rush buying it to completion if not (eating the penalty during this phase) then use 1 to get back to the same base and queue the inital item back ahead of the second one to refund the penalty? Then you'd still have this placeholder item with the full production invested into it and the second one to complete after the first one is done?

[T-hawk]

1 is correct, but 2 is wrong. The penalty comes out of the production box as soon as you click to switch. The game remembers your original item and the amount of the penalty so it can refund the penalty if you switch back (which also happens right away.)

There's one loophole associated with this. Start a turn with a facility as the current build order. Switch to a project. Add a supply crawler. Switch back. There is no penalty for switching back, so you effectively applied the crawler towards the facility. I forgot about this when I was listing possibly-bugs early in the the thread. That's strictly worth doing if you also flip SE along the way to increase the crawler's value. Upgrading the crawler for this trick can also be more efficient than rushing the facility directly, though most facilities aren't expensive enough for the upgrade to gain much if any.