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

[Gavagai]

Nerve gas definitely should be banned in MP, as I recall it only gives an irrelevant diplo penalty which I ignored even against AI. I would be up for SMAC PBEM.

[Commodore]

Nerve gas definitely should be banned in MP, as I recall it only gives an irrelevant diplo penalty which I ignored even against AI. I would be up for SMAC PBEM.

One would almost say "UN charter enforced" by default, as mass nerve stapling makes for trivial drone control.

[T-hawk]

Planet Busters are clearly unfun as well (are they anything like BtS Nukes?)

Way beyond any nukes in any Civs.  A planet buster completely erases every city in its blast radius instantly.

The lore says somewhere that they're nuclear bombs accelerated to relativistic speeds, so that the blast yield is multiplied by the relativistic increase to the mass.

[Bacchus]

May be of interest, rules from another apparently keen SMAC community: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=1519.0

You can promote units by setting them on a four-point patrol route, who would have thought.

[Dark Savant]

Planet Busters are clearly unfun as well (are they anything like BtS Nukes?)

Way beyond any nukes in any Civs.  A planet buster completely erases every city in its blast radius instantly.

The lore says somewhere that they're nuclear bombs accelerated to relativistic speeds, so that the blast yield is multiplied by the relativistic increase to the mass.

There is also, in principle, a way to defend against them, and you can get it to be ~100% reliable.  It's just that it's significantly higher up the tech tree.  Well, that, and the weirdness that results once people start researching 2-3 techs/turn, which should happen once you can build Planet Busters.

I don't think you would want to ban probe teams -- probe teams are easier to defend against than Civ 4 spies, though some people might want to ban probe teams that aren't land-based.  You might want to ban the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm, even with the expansion, because that makes probe team defense too easy.

For other SPs: I don't get why you think the Xenoempathy Dome is potentially unfun?  It's not like it's difficult to get rid of fungus by the time that's available, even if your forests haven't yet devoured it.

You may want to ban popping a supply crawler from a pod, since there's no cap on the cost of the crawler so produced.  (For those of you unfamiliar with SMAC: this is the equivalent of popping Wonders of the World from huts.)  It's probably best to ban wide pod distribution altogether, since it's too easy to pop units and rush someone else with them.

You'd probably want to disable random events, because they're much more unfun and unbalancing than Civ 4's, and people here dislike Civ 4's enough.

More than 1 set of social engineering changes per turn should be banned.  (For those of you unfamiliar with SMAC: you can effectively flop around civics all you want during a turn, and you don't even have to pay for more than one set of changes.)

I'd certainly ban human-controlled alien factions.

You might want to remove the Jungle from the game.  That's one heck of an advantage if you start there.

Amphibious assaults are harder to defend against than in Civ 4.  I don't think it's actually unbalancing or unfun, but I can guarantee people will complain (because I've personally seen it happen).

[antisocialmunky]

Should we start getting signups for a SMAC PBEM and then the players can start figuring out the rules?

[Dark Savant]

Should we start getting signups for a SMAC PBEM and then the players can start figuring out the rules?

I would say so.  PBEM is good compared to trying to arrange sessions where everyone can play at once (because that doesn't work well in my experience).  And we certainly don't need the full 7 human players.

I think we should mostly use agreed-upon standard rules to start with (the version posted earlier here), though I'd prefer adding the rule that you can't use an alien faction.

For game options, I'd prefer no blind research.  (In other words, you can choose research as in all 6 Civ games.  Blind research was added for realism, but isn't actually fun, especially in MP.)  For Unity pods, I'd prefer either setting the option so they don't appear all over Planet, or specifically banning popping supply crawlers and offensive use of Ogres (which are the two worst abuses).

I'm also very much interested in playing, if that weren't clear.

[Dp101]

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?

[Commodore]

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?

Yes, and definitely not.

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

[Mardoc]

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.

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.