Chairman Mist of the Laconic Collective

[Mist]

As am I. Maybe we can get Mist to actually post a lot, eh?

Now this would be something to see

Anyhow, the spaceship some hapless BTS fool sent into space arrived at Alpha Centauri and got promptly sabotaged. I personally blame Morgan, he's not in this game. The escape pod landed and the terrain before our eyes was



Unappealing.

Nevertheless, there's a river, two sources of food, one commerce, plenty high production tiles and a bit of not-so-deep sea. We can work with this, so I settled in place.



Plenty of interesting stuff here. First let's tackle terrain - AlphaCentauri and Planetfall have three terrain attributes for each tile - Elevation ( Lowlands, Highlands, Ridge ), Rainfall ( Polar, Arid, Moist, Rainy ) and Surface ( Flat, Rocky ). You can't cross from one tile to another if it would take you over two elevation levels. You can't plant cities on Ridges. Attacking uphill gives attack strength nerf, attacking downhill gives a boost. Some terrain types, don't support certain improvements, certain improvements ( especially windmills and sun mirrors ) give wildly varying yields depending on terrain. And finally - Rocky surface offers, more production and defense boost, but is flattened by placing cities on it. Only not by Hive cities Thus I have a 2h capital with +100% defense bonus, half of which is terrain and can never be bombarded down Told you I'm not getting rushed

Now, I have to upgrade my Supply Pod and there are three options -
Worker ( here called Former )
UnityRover ( basic recon vehicle)
UnityFoil ( basic sea transport )
but of those, Rover is superior. Just look at this



2 moves. Combat 4! This unit is a perfect scout that murders early mindworms at will. You can quickly grab a feel for surrounding land and grab any nearby pods, while staying mostly out of trouble. And when you're done scouting there's nothing better to keep the worms at bay. Picking worker would be stupid right now, because there's only one tile it could upgrade right now and even that requires a border pop. All the rest will have to wait until I grab the tech opening mines. Picking the ship might seem attractive, but it would not live very long, it does not get combat bonuses and sea worms are stronger than land ones ( and move faster making them much harder to avoid ).

Then there's the tech choice. I have 10! early options. So let's go through them in order

• Infirmary is a health building that opens a specialist slot for Doctor (more health )
  
• Medic 1 is a normal unit promotion, Repair Bay is a special unit ability that acts like Medic. While promotions are bought with XP as normal, abilities are bought when the unit gets created if city creating them had buildings that unlock ability slots.
  

This is something I will eventually get, but not nearly an early priority.

• Allows Formers to build mines. Mine will be required to improve that Methane Ice source I have and they'll make all my Rocky tiles from x/2/x to x/4/x
  
• Unity Mining Laser is an early game wonder that gives +2h in city that builds it ( meh ) and +1h (!) from every mine, needles to say, I *want* Unity Mining Laser hard. This is one of the three best early wonders.
  

I'll be teching this second and only because most of my food is water based and I need to open the sea first.

• Can work water tiles
  
• Can travel over owned water without needing transport ships
  
• Sea Mill does not exist in the game any more
  
• Trade on rivers and faster movement along rivers
  
• Shows a hidden h/c resource
  
• Opens basic ship unit
  
• Hydro Plant gives fresh water to city that built it and +1c to all riverside tiles
  
• Allows teching Soil Enrichment which is a tech for farms and another very strong early wonder
  

I'll be teching this right away, both for opening water to work and for Hydro Plants which will make my river Rocky Mines 0/4/2

• Allows to cut fungus which is a pain in the ass and tends to come back if you're not "nice" to this mouldy rock of a planet. I am not going to be nice
  
• Flame Thrower is a basic infantry that's fairly decent against Mind Worms
  

Small little tech I'll get fairly soonish due to it's usefulness. How soon depends on how much the worms will be pestering me.

• Can build Rovers. Like UnityRover but without C4, which cuts usefulness down by a lot.
  
• Command center is an early source of culture and opens ability slot for infantry.
  

Fairly high priority, if you're not on talking terms with the planet culture is hard to come by and I need ability slots before Genejack Factories for Nerve Stapling.

• Opens Gold and Silver. They are visible before, but like with Copper in FFH you don't get the resource when mined until you tech this.
  
• Siege tank is an early collateral unit which is hopeless against mind worms.
  
• Maintenance Bay [strike]makes the Technician ( Citizen ) specialist a 3h proposition and[/strike] gives a free Citizen. Opens ability slot for Artillery type units.
  

[strike]It's not a no-brainer, but Maintenance Bay is a very strong early building, this tech is something to keep in mind.[/strike]

• Opens map trading
  
• Network Node gives 2 beakers in the city and opens a sort of spy-ish specialist slot ( Librarian +4esp/+1beak )
  

Honestly not something that's very good or useful, the beaker gain is negligible, specialist slot is poor and I don't look for map trades all that much.

• Enables all Algaes
  
• Enables Biodomed civic
  

I have white Algae, that's a health resource. Biodomed is a deceptively strong civic, it gives +1 food on Flat Arid and Flat Polar tiles which usually offer none. It gives +1c on Kelp which is strong and is good enough to ignore all other shallow sea improvements ( offers 3/0/1 and 2/0/3 tiles ). It also makes for no food riots, and that is key. You can grow your city as high as required on food tiles, and then swap it over to mines, commerce sources and specialists without worrying for any food riots. Remember, cities in planetfall don't starve, they just riot and go barb if there's not enough food! I will be running biodomed almost exclusively, the other two choices are not even nearly close enough to compete.

• Windmill is the first, and nearly sole early spamable commerce improvement
  
• Mount Planet is an unique feature I might or might not find
  
• Unity Observation Bay gives you the world map
  

I want this early on for windmills, possibly after Recycling Tanks



The make planet happy tech, ask Bob what it does Every single thing here serves to make planet like you more, on in my case hate me less. I might go here when I start drowning in Mind Worms.

[Mist]

T1

A border pop and a supply pod opened by the borders



I've got "Abundant Minerals" result, which made 0/1/1 base tile into a fantastic 0/3/1. This tile will also get +1f from Biodomed civic and +1c from Hydro Plant. And I can also improve it with a Greenhouse ( +1f ), Mine ( +1h, another +1 if I get the Mining Laser ) or Windmill ( +2c ). I really, really like this capital spot now.

Land to the east is all ridges and highlands which makes for a fantastic commerce territory and pretty strong defensive border. Two prospective expansion sites noted.

I also seem to be close to north pole.

[Brian Shanahan]

Nine...

I blame Mardoc

Anyhow. Seems that this time we're far away from normal territory. Even the icons changed

Yoink! I'm off with this pic.

I redownloaded the mod today, and am confused with the icon changes.

[Mist]

Those icons are directly lifted from Alpha Centauri, guess it gives extra layer of familiarity to people that picked up the mod because they loved that game. You can get used to them pretty fast.

While we're at it, there are three more concepts I have not explained yet



This describes how strong/frequent/aggressive the Mind Worms are, grows with fungus/hybrid forest spread and each time someone gets a Transcend ( great person from working empaths ). Bob will want to push this up, while people that don't play very planet friendly, like me, want to keep this down.



Each city has one of those. Unfavorable means threat of fungal blooms ( fungus growth on an tile inside BFC + a bunch of Mind Worms ) that get more frequent and stronger the more you go in the red. You get -1 for each pop, -0.5 for each mine, -0.5 for each fungus tile cleared, -1 to -2 for a farm depends on how developed they are. +values can be gained from some buildings, resources, empath specialist and Voice of Planet religion. I will probably mostly ignore this as long as I don't go much into the red because high powered blooms every few turns are not fun and hard to put down. That said, I do not expect to do well here, heavy Hive Genejack abuse requires big population values which are pretty hard to offset.



This is an average of every single city values for every single turn. This decides how good you personally are at fighting Mind Worms ( they can suck, but you can suck even more at fighting them ), how much they target you ( they go after people with low value here much more than those with high one ), how much free culture you get and how much clout you pull on their hippie Mind Worm hugging meetings called Concordat. I do not expect to do very well on this count either.

[Mist]

T2

No worms. Good. Little fungus. Better. Some resources to make green dot solid. Nice. Bob having insane hut luck. Bad.

[NobleHelium]

I'll dedlurk you for now Mist, despite the utter failure of our previous expedition.

[NobleHelium]

I don't really understand why they made that no starvation change. SMAC did not have that at all. Maybe it is to simulate the population boom strategy?

[Mist]

I don't really understand why they made that no starvation change. SMAC did not have that at all. Maybe it is to simulate the population boom strategy?

No idea either. There is a mechanic ( ultraponics food ) that makes you pay credits for any food shortfall that would make you starve ( 2 credits for each food you're short ), there's also the threat of food riots to mind ( two riots and city is going barb ). Overall I don't think it's a worse solution than BtS way of starving down, just different.

For future reference, early land tile improvements



+1c
+1c from Highland or Ridge
+1c from Coast
+1c from Rocky



+1h
+1h on Rocky
+0.5 planet hate



+1f on Moist, Arid or Polar



+1f on irrigated Flat Moist or Flat Rainy
+0.5 planet hate
grows to give more food and planet hate

[Mist]

Ok, the turn was boring, so lets talk techs a bit more

The tree is much more open than in BtS or even FFH. In addition to multitude of arrows, there are no AND prereqs, instead those serve as another OR gate. This means for example that knowing Doctrine: Mobility I can tech Archeology without bothering with Xeobiology. I'm not entirely sure if prereq bonus gets applied in jumps like this, wouldn't be surprised if it did.

So look at the screen again. I marked basic techs I need to know for running an empire in red. The techs I'll need due to map circumstances are in yellow. The big fat tech goal is in colors of rainbow.

Now, I can get there either through Environmental Economics or through Industrial Automation. EE has absolutely nothing to offer for me, Biodomed prevents me from planting forests, I will not use big numbers of farms, so irrigation spreads are worthless and I have no idea why would I want Centauri Preserve. IA on the other hand gives a fun civic ( Planned, +10% food in all bases, +35%h in capital, +35%c! in capital ) and always useful Perimeter Defense. IA on the other hand can be either gotten through Industrial Base ( meh ) or Polymorphic Software ( also meh, but deep radar and unlocking crystals is good enough I guess ). So that looks like a plan, I'll also tech Information Networks to open Biogenetics and give another prereq bonus to PS and we're pretty much home.

Now I need to figure out Datajack's and Doctor's bulbing lists, to see if and which one would be useful to get.

[Mist]

[SIZE="4"]Bulbing lists[/SIZE]

Datajack

• Artificial Sentience
  
• Cybernetics
  
• Mind-Machine Interface
  
• Nonlinear Mathematics
  
• Planetary Networks
  
• Holographics
  
• Polymorphic Software
  
• Social Psych
  
• Factionalism
  
• Memetics
  
• Molectronics
  
• Information Networks
  
• Personality Transcription
  

Doctor

• Biomachinery
  
• Cloning
  
• Cryogenics
  
• Gene Splicing
  
• Memetics
  
• Personality Transcription
  
• Retroviral Engineering
  
• Bio-Engineering
  
• Artificial Sentience
  
• Factionalism
  
• Molectronics
  
• Biogenetics
  

Mogul/Engineer ( surprisingly, they bulb the same stuff )

• Nanites
  
• Nanoconstruction
  
• Nanominiaturization
  
• Photonics
  
• Industrial Automation
  
• Industrial Base
  
• Doctrine: Air Power
  
• Doctrine: Initiative
  
• Fluid Dynamics
  
• Kinematics
  
• Robotics
  
• Centauri Geology
  
• Retroviral Engineering
  

Psych Chaplain

• Atmospherics
  
• Biofuel
  
• Ecological Engineering
  
• Weather Paradigm
  
• Terraforming
  
• Enviromental Economics
  
• Soil Enrichment
  
• Defense Logistics
  
• Bio-Engineering
  

Scientist

• Fusion Power
  
• Gravitonics
  
• High Energy Chemistry
  
• High Intensity Lasers
  
• Magnetic Propulsion
  
• Mass Driver
  
• Monopole Magnets
  
• Nanotube Mass Production
  
• Neutronium
  
• Probability Mechanics
  
• Quantum Mechanics
  
• Singularity Mechanics
  
• Superstring Theory
  
• Temporal Mechanics
  
• Superconductor
  
• Nuclear Physics
  
• Renewable Energy
  

Transcend

• Affinity Gene
  
• Centauri Ecology
  
• Centauri Empathy
  
• Field Modulation
  
• Hybrid Ecology
  
• Personality Transcription
  
• Pholus Mutagen
  
• Psionics
  
• Secret of the Manifolds
  
• Secrets of Alpha Centauri
  
• Centauri Meditation
  
• Eudamonia
  
• Archeology
  
• Bioadaptive Resonance
  
• Enviromental Economics
  
• Xenobiology
  
• Doctrine: Mobility
  

Now out of all that there's no early slots for Scientist or Mogul/Engineer. Transcend bulbs are for worm huggers and Psych Chaplain bulbs are for hardcore terraformers, I'm not going to do either. Out of two remaining Datajack list is very spy focused with slight teching shade, but Doctor is surprisingly up my alley. I might actually try to open as many doctor slots as possible.

Any lurker questions about stuff I did not talk about / did not think to talk about?