A civ vet explores Alpha Centauri (SMAC)

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Very helpful.

I did set the options to notify me of all the events like builds finishing and such. At least at first I want to know about everything; I can always turn off the ones that do not seem to be helpful later.

I will recheck the social engineering screen -- I thought I had looked at everything under the HQ menu, but apparently I was not careful enough.

I have not really thought about Secret Projects yet. Are these similar to early wonders in Civ, which tend to be big expense for potentially big gains? If I understand the manual correctly SPs are the one thing you can switch production into another SP without losing most of your invested production, so I guess if someone beats you to one you can try to switch to another. That might have some odd cascade effects with multiple factions all frantically trying to find another SP to dump their accumulated production into rather than losing most of it.

Knowing which SPs are worth the big investment and which are not is the kind of thing that is going to take some time and experience to learn. (Note to self, look up the Weather Paradigm.)

Lost my first unit to mind worms. Poor guy, died screaming.

[Fluffball]

I have not really thought about Secret Projects yet. Are these similar to early wonders in Civ, which tend to be big expense for potentially big gains? If I understand the manual correctly SPs are the one thing you can switch production into another SP without losing most of your invested production, so I guess if someone beats you to one you can try to switch to another. That might have some odd cascade effects with multiple factions all frantically trying to find another SP to dump their accumulated production into rather than losing most of it.

Knowing which SPs are worth the big investment and which are not is the kind of thing that is going to take some time and experience to learn. (Note to self, look up the Weather Paradigm.)

Yup, expensive, but many are more powerful than Civ4 wonders. The AI will pounce on them the second their tech becomes available, so you can get an idea of how everyone is teching.

A good rule of thumb is to just start building a project even if it's not one you want, because you can swap to one you do want when the tech becomes available and swap production at no (minor? I can't remember) penalty.

Many of the early projects will give you free facilities in every base, so it can be a real QoL boon.

[T-hawk]

Yes, you can swap production between different SPs at no penalty.

However, it's always better to build any SP by cashing in supply crawlers.  A supply crawler can be converted into minerals towards an SP.  You get its full mineral cost.  So it's strictly better to build crawlers instead of the SP, crawl minerals in the meantime, then convert them back when you have enough to complete the SP.  It's normal to surround a city with 5-6 supply crawlers that then all jump in together to insta-build an SP in one turn.

On top of that, there are tricks to increase the value of the crawler.  One is to upgrade it to an expensive armored version, which is almost always more efficient for energy:mineral ratio than directly rushing the SP.  The other trick is to swap around your Industry faction rating.  Build a crawler while in Planned+Wealth SE so the industry discounts make it cost 24 minerals.  When you cash it in, temporarily swap out of Planned+Wealth so it's worth 30, then swap back within the same turn at no cost.  Up to you if you consider that exploitive, but it works.

The AIs begin secret projects right away, but they don't do supply crawlers or any other tricks, so they take 30+ turns to complete any.

Supply crawlers require Industrial Automation, which is a third-level tech, and is the usual early-game beeline for both crawlers and the very good Wealth civic.

[haphazard1]

Apologies for the delay in updates. My turns came up in both the SGs I am playing, so I have been focused on those to keep the SGs moving along. If you enjoy MoO, check out OSG-33 The Beautiful brains in the MoO subforum (Psilons in a large galaxy, quite a tough game so far). Also our Civ IV SG as Toku fighting raging barbs on a highlands map (and various AIs, too, but mostly raging barbs ).

I will be back soon(-ish) with the Peacekeepers as we send out our first colony pod on this strange new world.

[Fluffball]

This thread has reignited my love for SMAC as I fired up a game and re-thought about why it was and still is one of the best games of all time, regardless of category. 

I thought some vets might enjoy this guy's writing on the legendary narrative of SMAC. He's a fantastic writer and has puts into words exactly why the quotes are so powerful. If you're not familiar with the "lore" of the game, you might want to skip it, as it could be seen as spoiler-y I suppose.

https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/first-time-here/

"It is occasionally claimed that SMAC has one of the best stories ever presented in a video game.  This is an especially impressive achievement given that it is a strategy game where the action takes place at civilization-wide scales.  How is it possible to craft a compelling narrative in an impersonal god-game?  After all, the game design does not allow the player to interact with any recognizable characters directly.  In the game, the player spends his time setting empire-wide policies, controlling city production, and moving abstracted, sizable military formations.  So if there aren’t any characters, and if the plot (as defined by what happens when) is largely determined by the player, where is the grist for narrative?"

[v8mark]

Thanks for the link, Fluffball. That site is excellent. A lot of the quotes I still remember vividly more than a decade after playing, and the author does a good job explaining why. For me, the thing that most recently illuminated the excellence of the SMAC narrative was the vapid, platitudinous writing in Beyond Earth.

I wonder if that was why the BE team openly disavowed any comparison with SMAC -- because they knew it was too high a bar to reach.

[Brian Shanahan]

Thanks for the link, Fluffball. That site is excellent. A lot of the quotes I still remember vividly more than a decade after playing, and the author does a good job explaining why. For me, the thing that most recently illuminated the excellence of the SMAC narrative was the vapid, platitudinous writing in Beyond Earth.

I wonder if that was why the BE team openly disavowed any comparison with SMAC -- because they knew it was too high a bar to reach.

No it was a commercial decision. SMAC is owned by EA, and they protect their copyrighs religiously.

[haphazard1]

Finally an update. My peacekeepers have expanded and now have 4 bases, with formers planting some forests and improving a few tiles. The 'units cost production to support' aspect is taking some adjustment; it is very easy to strangle your production.

I have had a few battles with mind worms on land, and am now building my first naval units to get some additional exploration going. A couple naval formers are being planned to take advantage of the Geothermal Shallows tiles.

In global developments, I have met other survivors of the Unity. Provost Zakharov and his University faction are my neighbors to the west. So far relations are positive, mainly because our borders have not spread enough to really clash. He did try to demand I hand over my technological secrets, which I rejected. The accomplishments list (not sure if there if an official name for it, the graphic with depictions of key events in the history of my faction) indicates that the University founded the first colony in 2104, so they either got a bonus colony pod for having a bad start or popped one from a Unity pod (if that is possible). So they apparently got off to a faster start than I did, but I seem to be catching up now that I have some expansion going.

A couple questions:

- I found where I can adjust my energy allocations (thanks for the pointers earlier!). I see that if I move them off 50/50 energy/labs that I incur efficiency penalties. Is this always true, or does it depend on my efficiency rating? Tech? Other? As the UN I do have an efficiency penalty and am -1 in that area at the moment.
- Zakharov proposed signing a treaty of friendship. What exactly does this do?
- How big is a standard size map in SMAC? I really have no idea how much exploration I need to do, or how big/small a portion of Planet I have revealed.

Thanks!

[v8mark]

For the first two questions:

- yes, energy allocation can be adjusted with less penalty with a higher efficiency rating. (There is no penalty at +4 efficiency, IIRC.)
- diplomatic relations go vendetta, truce, treaty, pact -- in ascending order of closeness. Treaties give each faction some amount of trade with each other (more for Morgan; also scaling with tech and base size). It's not a full alliance (Pact of Brother/Sisterhood) though.

Not much idea on the size question... 'about the size of a standard map' is all I have to go on. I would think there's not a huge amount of difference between SMAC and Civ4 map sizes, but I might be wildly misremembering there.

It seems like you have a good handle on the mechanics; in terms of terraforming, forests are the keys to the kingdom. At 1/2/1 they limit base sizes in the early game to manageable levels, and give you max pre-restriction minerals and 1 energy each. Rushing to lift the restrictions (Gene Splicing/Ecological Engineering/Environmental Economics) is the main early-mid game economic beeline. It also gives you tree farms, a base facility which turns forests into 2/2/1 tiles.

Also, as T-Hawk has explained already, supply crawlers are absurdly, absurdly broken. Use and abuse them wherever possible. Upgrading supply crawlers to more expensive versions of themselves (with armor and/or special abilities) is also a ridiculously efficient way of converting energy to minerals.

[Fluffball]

SMAC maps are not that huge by default. I think standard is a rectangle about 80x40 IIRC. If you make a custom map it recommends not going larger than 128ish for performance reasons (again IIRC.) However that warning is from the 90s. I've made some pretty enormous maps and not had any noticeable problems other than tedium.

One thing that makes maps feel a little larger though is you can found cities in shallow waters with the right tech.

The AI doesn't use supply crawlers at all or at least in extremely limited manner, which is another good reason to just pretend they don't exist. This is late 90s AI we're talking about, not nearly as sophisticated as even Civ4 (although hysterically FAR more competent than the more recent Civ AIs.)