A civ vet explores Alpha Centauri (SMAC)

[Fluffball]

SMAC gives you huge amounts of freedom so it's easy to break if you follow a guide. I.e., you may want to make self enforced rules like no ICS.

I find not using ICS and not using crawlers makes the game a lot more fun. There are a lot of ways to break the game because it's old and designers hadn't learned how to stamp out all fun from a game to prevent players from breaking it, but removing them from my play basically turns the game into a more sandbox-y Civ4. That's perfect for me; no need to make variants like automating workers, which for me would make the game a lot less fun. I like driving workers!

I don't want to be an AI, I want to use the same rules as them.    (And I do realize the AI uses ICS, but their bases are so haphazardly placed that's almost by accident!)

[LKendter]

Your are making me tempted to dig the game out.

[haphazard1]

Glad to be (re-)sparking some interest in this classic game.

Another update, along with another question or three.

- My first naval units have been out exploring the oceans of Planet. There are some tempting islands out there with some decent land; I am going to need to build a transport or two and claim some of them.
- They have also found Chairman Yang and his Hive. We exchanged some techs, and I also got the comm frquency for the Gaians.
- Back on land I have established another base, with a couple more colony pods on the move for futher expansion.
- More mind worms have shown up. A couple patrol units lost, but mostly they have not been too difficult to defeat.

Questions:

- How far can mind worms move in a turn? I had not thought they were fast, but it looks like that may have been wrong. I need to be more careful about guarding my formers; have not lost any yet, but my assumptions of relative safety may have been too optimistic.
- Tech trading: good idea or not? Yang proposed a couple of trades I rejected because he wanted level 2 techs for level 1 techs, but he seemed happy enough to take my counter-proposals of equal level trades.
- I got a notification that Yang started a secret project; not all that secret, apparently. I assume that I only get such notifications for factions I have met?
- Planting bases in water tiles: this is only in shallow water, correct? The sea colony pod is more expensive; I assume this represents the infrastructure to establish the base under water. I need to think more about locations and spacing -- my Civ-trained eye is used to seeing only the land tiles as possible locations for settlement.
- Probe teams: will be able to build these soon, but am still not sure just what they can do. They have their own serparate combat mechanic, correct? And they can perform infiltration of other factions. But I don't know exactly what that means or what it will do to relations with those factions. (I assume bad things if you get caught.)

[Quagma Blast]

Questions:

- How far can mind worms move in a turn? I had not thought they were fast, but it looks like that may have been wrong. I need to be more careful about guarding my formers; have not lost any yet, but my assumptions of relative safety may have been too optimistic.

If I remember correctly, they move 1 tile per turn but treat xenofungus as roads (1/3 mp per)

- Planting bases in water tiles: this is only in shallow water, correct? The sea colony pod is more expensive; I assume this represents the infrastructure to establish the base under water. I need to think more about locations and spacing -- my Civ-trained eye is used to seeing only the land tiles as possible locations for settlement.

Sea colony pods are more expensive because the Foil chassis is more expensive than the Infantry chassis. You can also workshop up Rover Colony Pods or Armored Colony Pods or whatever, and they'll be expensive too. You might even be able to make airplane colony pods if you want to be really extravagant. But aquatic colonies do come with a free Pressure Dome, which lets a city survive in ocean tiles (which might otherwise happen due to Global Warming) and also acts as a Recycling Tank if you don't have one yet.

- Probe teams: will be able to build these soon, but am still not sure just what they can do. They have their own serparate combat mechanic, correct? And they can perform infiltration of other factions. But I don't know exactly what that means or what it will do to relations with those factions. (I assume bad things if you get caught.)

If you're familiar with Civ 1/2 diplomats, it's like that. Move into an enemy city or unit, and you can spend energy for a variety of effects - steal the unit or base, cause Drone Riots, destroying a base facility, steal techs, or establish a data tap that lets you see a bunch of their demographics. Getting caught degrades relations and might cause the enemy to declare war.

[Fluffball]

IIRC (I'm going to be typing that a lot in this thread) you can plant sea bases in deep water, but since you can't improve deep ocean it's not going to be a good base. You'd need to terraform the ocean up to be able to plant kelp and build mining platforms or tidal harnesses.

Sea colonies are kind of like founding in a jungle in civ4. Takes some effort to get it up and running, little to no production, but lots of money.

Quagma explained probes, but their "special combat" is that they fight each other even if you're not at wa. You can send a probe into a neighbor's base, and if they have a probe in there, they'll duke it out based on experience level and probe rating in the civics menu. You'll eventually want probes in all of your bases exposed to the AI, because that's largely how they compete with humans (stealing your stuff and tech.)

If you're at war, you can just smash the probes with ordinary military. Although you could if you wanted armor your probes.

Post some pics if it's not a huge hassle with the old game, I'd love to see what you've been accomplishing and the lay of the land!

[T-hawk]

The other answers were correct.  Nobody answered on tech trading: that's pretty much always good.  All techs cost the same; the cost depends on how many total techs you have, not the level.  I almost never hold back on trading.  One interesting bit is that it's possible to trade for techs even if you don't have the prerequisites.

Sea colonies aren't all that great, because colony pods and sea formers cost more but sea tiles yield no minerals to build anything.  It's a fun novelty but not really anything you have to do.  Most useful as a strategic outpost to repair and rush-buy ships (and later jets) offshore from someone you intend to conquer.

Probe teams are spy units.  Move a probe into an opposing base and you'll get the menu for everything they do.  Infiltrate Datalinks is usually the first action.  Once you get infiltration on a faction (there are other ways to get it, but a probe is the easiest and earliest), you can see literally everything about them.  You can click on any base and see everything, and the advisor screens for research/military/etc also have icons to click on any infiltrated faction to see that information for them. Infiltration has no effect on relations, but other missions do if you get caught. Besides infiltrating, the most important probe actions are Steal Tech and Mind Control, which is to take over an entire base including its units by paying enough money.

If an opposing base or unit stack has a probe team in it, instead of getting the menu for probe actions, that probe team will fight yours (probes defend against other probes before they can do something nasty.)  It's a special kind of combat, although not really all that special, just in that no other combat modifiers apply except the morale level of the probe units.

Also you can make sea probe teams, those can be quite useful with the high mobility.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the comments, everyone.

Civ 1/2 diplomats...that brings back some memories. Walking around with a big pile of cash and just buying your rivals' units right out from under them. It sounds like having infiltration on your rivals is very useful just to keep up with what they are doing. Also, having probe teams in my own bases for defense will be important. More units to support, chewing up my production.

Tech costs -- that all costs are based purely on how many techs you already know had not registered. OK, that changes a lot of things. And makes tech trading much more valuable, as every tech cleared would be costly. No going back for cheap techs later after a beeline.

I will have to think about water cities. I do have that geothermal shallows region; I could put a city or two there to collect a fair bit of energy. Hmmm, maybe after I grab a couple more sites on land.

I will grab some screenshots for the next update; the process is a bit roundabout but I did get it working finally.

[T-hawk]

Probe teams don't cost support, same as supply crawlers. And you don't really need them for probe defense; you can counter with military. You'll almost always get a turn to see a probe and respond after the AI moves it towards your base. A military unit can walk into an opposing probe in your territory and send it home (or kill it if at war.) Also there's the Hunter-Seeker secret project for probe immunity.

The geothermal shallows aren't all that exciting either; each is only as much energy as a river on land.

[Fluffball]

I would personally stick a city in the geothermal shallows. I believe every tile it has would be pulling in 5 energy with a tidal harness. You'd need to rush buy pretty much all of it's base facilities, but it would pay off in the long run. 115 energy or whatever the total is run through the modifiers (plus lots of food for specialists)... the basic buildings don't cost much to buy once the first 10 minerals are into its production. Plus long term there are hi-tech methods of getting lots of production into it to get the fancier base facilities, assuming the game is still going. Alternatively, if your dot map allows, just stick one on land near them of course.

I'm not sure if you've looked at victory conditions yet, but there is an economic one. It's ~ the cost of buying all the cities on the entire planet via probes plus a couple other minor factors. It's the Morganites' AI default method of trying to win the game. There is a 20 turn grace period after it happens where the world can "respond" so don't worry about losing the game out of nowhere.

Oh one other point on probes, they can't steal units if there are at least 2 units in the same tile. For example, you move a single unit up to attack an enemy base, AI probe steals your unit and moves a second unit on top of it. Now you can't steal it back with your probe.

Edit: Actually one more point on probes. All units can use any road or magtube (railroad) so I still recommend probe teams in exposed cities. Also fungus hides enemy units so it can be tough to keep track of where things are even if you know they're there. Many of the probe actions are enraging enough you're not going to want a single one to slip through.

[T-hawk]

The AI seldom moves units through fungus when there are other tiles available. But the way to guard against that anyway is to build sensors. They show everything within 2 tiles and give +25% defense within that range (not to probe combat but everything else including mind worms.) Sensors can coexist in forest tiles so that's the best place to build them. Cheap at just 4 terraformer turns.