T-hawk Plays Alpha Centauri

[T-hawk]

Fluffball, you can post whatever you want, I'll just call you out on overhyperbolizing.  Yes, Gaia can get worms exponentially, but the exponent is small.  It takes long enough that it's not a reason against choosing the faction, anything you can conquer with worms can be done with impact rovers instead.  The 1/3 chance is for a never-visited fungus square; it's estimated to be 1/9 when trawling back and forth, and less near a base or sensor.  And you have to attack and kill and spend time healing from the 75% you don't capture.  And the worms come scattered around, not clustered near a desirable target.  It works with enough time, but it's not breaking the game.

Are you using "break the game" when you really just mean "little or no strategic downside"?  That's what it seems to be across everything we keep discussing, crawlers and everything else.  Sure saving support on the mind worms is good -- but then Police State is double broken for saving more support than that anyway.  If you keep calling everything broken so lightly, how are you going to describe things that are actually malfunctional?

Haphazard, yes managing support costs is a top concern for quite a while.  The AI's biggest flaw is crippling itself with unit support, particularly Lal (who goes right to Democracy) and Morgan (faction penalty); conversely the Hive (starts with Police State) and Believers (faction bonus) are usually the strongest AIs.  Police State is the strongest solution; I think the inefficiency and icky morality makes players overlook it for non-Hive factions, but it really is the only way to support 3+ formers per base.  The other answers are supply crawlers to produce more minerals, or ICSing to spread the support cost as thin as you can, and eventually boreholes and genejacks to overwhelm the cost.

[Gavagai]

T-Hawk, it is all very interesting. Can you list what you believe to be optimal civic choices for all other factions? With short explanations in non-trivial cases.

[T-hawk]

Back to the Hive.  I started with two colony pods, which is typical on Transcend difficulty.  I saw an explanation somewhere long ago, that the game gives you a second colony pod if it thinks your start is bad enough to warrant it, and somehow the difficulty factors in so that everything on Transcend is considered bad enough.



I put the two bases here.  Each built a scout patrol first to explore.  Then they each started another scout as a fake placeholder build order, since they'd accumulate 8 minerals each by the time Centauri Ecology finished, which would then be switched onto terraformers instead.  (You pay no penalty for switching build orders if you currently have 10 minerals or less.)

I renamed each base with the numbers in front of its name.  Reason is that SMAC scrolls through the bases with the arrow keys in alphabetical order, rather than the order founded.  I like to keep that in order and the numbers do that, making the founding sequence equivalent to alphabetical.  I apologize that the blue Hive text is nearly unreadable, but hey, you guys picked it.






Thanks to both city centers and both worked tiles being on the river, the bases are producing 3 and 2 energy.  By going to 80% labs production, all 2 energy at the second base goes to labs, giving me 4 total which will reach the Centauri Ecology tech in 4 turns.  Without the river or any energy tile bonus, I'd have no more than 1 lab per turn and this would take 14 turns!



Labor Network's scout found an interesting tile within the city's reach, a rocky-arid-nutrient bonus, 2-1-0 productivity.  I kept Labor Network on the 1-1-1 river tile for one more turn then switched to the 2-1-0, because that arrangement would slow neither Centauri Ecology (getting the 14 labs in four turns of 4+4+3+3) nor the city's growth (now with an even number of food remaining.)




Year 2106: Centauri Ecology finished and both bases switched build orders to formers.  Next research is Information Networks, due in 5 turns.

At the northwestern scout, notice the blue dashed line indicating the Hive's border -- that's not where it should be, that's much closer than 8 tiles to my base, which means there's a neighbor in that direction and quite close.

Year 2107: I could rush the former build at one of the bases this turn.  The builds are at 10/18 minerals and I have 15 energy.  It costs 19 to rush those 8 minerals fully, but spending the 15 would get 15/19*8 = 6 minerals which plus the 2 normal production is still enough to finish the former this turn.  I decide not to, though, since I'll need the money to get into Police State instead, which will shortly save more on support.  The bases can wait just a moment for terraforming, since each does have a decent tile to work right now.




We met that neighbor in 2110 -- and that's not just any neighbor, that's Chairman Yang's archenemy, Pravin Lal of the Peacekeepers!  He refused to trade any techs, but he probably didn't have anything we want anyway, since trading for his starting Biogenetics would upset my planned beeline to Industrial Automation.

This is the place to stop for this session, since here's one heck of a major decision.  My scout is standing next to the undefended UN Headquarters base!  Does the audience want to see me make this attack, or let my neighbor follow a normal course of development?

Notes: UN Headquarters is at size 1 and would be automatically destroyed; I won't get to keep it so the move doesn't do anything productive for me.  It would not eliminate the faction - he has another base, notice the northwesternmost red line near my scout, that is the outline of the base radius of another base.  Lal doesn't automatically hate Yang and doesn't just yet, although he will once I get into Police State.

[haphazard1]

Peacekeepers right there, and UN Headquarters totally undefended. Wow. Lal certainly deserves to lose his HQ for playing that stupidly.

[Trasson]

Always vote for blood.

Or, put another way:

If Lal can't be bothered to defend his own bases, then it's simply the rational choice for the future of the species to eliminate those bases in order to better enable the propagation of your superior methodology.

[T-hawk]

T-Hawk, it is all very interesting. Can you list what you believe to be optimal civic choices for all other factions? With short explanations in non-trivial cases.

Gaia: should run Police + Planned for a good while, tolerating the inefficiency.  Democratic later for pop-booming.  Green only if you're going for mindworm conquest, or late after the Cloning Vats or Eudaimonia.

Hive: Police + Planned ASAP and forever.

Morgan: This is the most complicated one.  Early on, Free Market + Wealth for +4 energy per base and ICS to the max.  Police State to make up for the support penalty (can't use the actual police in Free Market).  Avoid Democratic longer than you think, the 10 free minerals per new base is more important.  Eventually do go Democratic to pop-boom (after a hab complex in your big science city; requires Golden Age since can't go Planned.)  After booming, Democratic + GREEN + Wealth and the efficiency enables 100% labs.  That last is really Morgan's special power, he is the only faction that can get to +2 Economy on Wealth alone without Free Market's downsides, and Green's efficiency eventually beats Free Market's per-base bonus.

University, Believers, Sparta, Peacekeepers: These are all about the same.  Free Market as soon as you can.  Police State can help in the early stages, though it's possible that the tech path to Doctrine Loyalty will keep falling behind other priorities until you're covering support with crawlers and boreholes instead.  (The ideal way to get Doctrine Loyalty is find Yang who starts with it and trade for or steal it, skipping its prerequisites.)  Eventually go Democratic + Planned to pop boom, then back to Free Market, perhaps Green late if you get so big the efficiency is more profitable than the economy.

Every faction should run Wealth ASAP, switch to Knowledge sometime in the middle game (except Morgan staying in Wealth+Green), and never run Power except when it will go all the way to finishing up a conquest.  Power and Fundamentalism are each only worthwhile when you manage to get set up to directly produce elite units; elites get an extra move which is huge but morale steps below that don't do much.

Ignore Probe modifiers; it's usually easy enough to get the tactical first strike against AI probe teams, plus of course there's the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm.  Fundamentalism is almost never worth the research loss, although it can be fun to get the probe mission discount when you have a lot of energy.

[Gavagai]

Thanks! I always found it rather hilarious that in usual circumstances Morgan is pretty much the only faction which does not want to run free market as an ultimate civic
With Peacekeepers I vote for letting them be, otherwise you are going to make your game way too easy.

[yuris125]

Please make whatever the optimal play is (which I imagine is taking the base )

[LKendter]

I have to get a laugh that T-hawk started this. I actually pulled out my old CDs to install the game. Was thinking about a LK goes back to SMAC thread. Not sure if we need three.

[TheHumanHydra]

This looks really informative and fun, really like playthroughs with this level of detail. I'd say blow up the Peacekeeper base.