A civ vet explores Alpha Centauri (SMAC)

[RFS-81]

Damn, I want to play this game again now. It's not as well designed as later civ games, but the fluff is so much better. The quotes from the faction leaders are so great, if often disturbing.

[Fluffball]

The quotes themselves are fun, and a secondary thing to pay attention to is that they tell an actual story of how the "game" played out. It's almost like a journal entry style book. You can piece together how each faction is doing, what victory conditions they're after and how close they got, and eventually who wins or survives and who is eliminated.

At least 5* of the 7 leaders are absolute monsters. They do a phenomenal job of defending their views, but they're all complete psychopaths with no regard for anyone but themselves and their closest followers. I think SMAC quotes would be a really great way to teach a high school debate team, because of all them make such good arguments. Yang sounds totally reasonable when he's talking about humans as though they're a broken bolt to be disposed of. And one of my favorite quotes is Morgan explaining in a perfectly logical quote that future generations have no right to inherit anything, and we should use all the resources immediately.

It's like a schizophrenic; once you accept their initial delusion, everything else is perfectly reasonable and logical. 


*Lal seems genuinely concerned for the welfare of humans, and Miriam I don't believe is a psychopath despite her AI. The actual Miriam has some humanizing quotes.

[haphazard1]

It's like a schizophrenic; once you accept their initial delusion, everything else is perfectly reasonable and logical. 

Each faction and its leader seems to represent an idea, and the setting of building a society from scratch on an alien world allows that idea to be taken to extremes. One of Morgan's quotes even mentions this indirectly, as he talks about building entirely new economic systems because there is no existing system to start from.

I will have to see about the story line aspect, and whether I can tell how the various factions did. Sort of a "this is what happened in the world the game designers imagined" and that is where the quotes come from, and individual games are just variations and alternate realities. That fits with the game being part of the Civ series, as really all games of Civ are essentially alternate histories of the world we know.

I hope to play some more turns later today, and get another update posted. No sign of any Spartan units coming my way yet. One of my naval explorers found a group of University rovers, but they were munched by mind worms while I was passing by. Too bad, Zakharov! Better you than me....

[Fluffball]

They're taken to an extreme for entertainment and philosophical purposes. There are better ways to respect alien life than unleashing mindworms on your rival's cities and better ways to encourage selfless behavior than slavery. 

If the factions had stayed united and used some of all of their ideas they'd have a better society and a boring game.

[haphazard1]

While exploring I have found a few natural landmarks. I have already mentioned the geothermal shallows, which are near my start. A couple others:

- Pholus Ridge
- Uranium Flats
- Manifold Nexus

The first two are mentioned in the manual as naturally occuring, but I have no idea what the last one might be. Any thoughts?

I also found a Unity pod, sitting unclaimed in some xenofungus not too far from Spartan territory. Since I had pod scattering off, that leads me to thinking one of the other factions started near by. But there does not seem to be anyone around the immediate area. Could a faction have been killed off by native life? I did select the "no automatic respawn" option or whatever it was called; if a faction was killed off, would I have been notified?

Another odd event: there is now a monolith near my border with the University, amidst a bunch of xenofungus. It was not there previously, at least I do not think it was. Or...hmmm, I did just build a sensor post nearby. Could this be part of the ring of monoliths landmark mentioned in the manual? It talks about "exceptionally thick xenofungus" and that certainly describes this area. I had not realized monoliths might be present but unseen.

[T-hawk]

Manifold Nexus grants +1 Planet to your SE rating while it is within your territorial borders.

That pod could indeed have been near a faction's start and they just never found it. The AI can and does lose bases to native life. If a mindworm enters an undefended base, the base reduces by 1 population, and is destroyed if that was its last population. What likely happened was that the faction started with two colony pods, lost the first base that way before it built any unit to defend, and the second pod survived to build elsewhere.

That monolith probably is the Ruins landmark and you just didn't notice it before.

[T-hawk]

It's like a schizophrenic; once you accept their initial delusion, everything else is perfectly reasonable and logical. 

I was thinking in bed last night about a followup post on Yang, and this hits the nail on the head.  Yang starts from his stated first principles: "life is chemical processes and nothing more", "life's only purpose is life itself".  Everything else follows from that: "does the genetic code brook no improvement?" and up to the Genejacks.  Personally, I've come to believe he's right in those principles: we are all merely aggregates of atoms, behaving deterministically by physical laws, free will is an illusion.  That's not a popular opinion societally and it's actually refreshing to see Yang openly advocating it.

Lal seems genuinely concerned for the welfare of humans, and Miriam I don't believe is a psychopath despite her AI. The actual Miriam has some humanizing quotes.

What sets apart these two is that they're the ones that are reactionary.  Lal and Miriam are the two leaders who want to enforce their ideology on the other factions.  Lal is determined to stop what he sees as the evil of the Hive and University and Sparta, and Miriam wants everyone to stop deconstructing reality lest they anger God.  The other leaders don't do that.  The others simply want to run their own faction, not dominate the rest.  Yang, Morgan, and Zakharov each think their rivals are weak for unnecessarily imposing restrictions on themselves, but they don't need to forcibly dominate them, they'll just ignore and outperform them.  Even Gaia just wants Morgan to stop abusing Planet, but she doesn't need to eliminate his faction, she's not against the idea of economics.  Lal is the one who actually wants to take other factions off the map, which is quite a tension against his dreams of peace.

The weakest of the seven ideologically is Sparta.  It's never quite clear if she wants to conquer the other factions, or merely to get everyone trained to survive against the mind worms.  "Winning battles" isn't an ideology, everyone wants to do that, so Sparta is arguing not for principle but merely the methods.

And that's what's wrong with the expansion factions and why I hate them; they're about methodology rather than principle.  Pirates isn't an ideology.  Hacking isn't an ideology.  Cha'Dawn is Gaia except creepy instead of noble.  These and the aliens are all designed for game mechanical niche rather than from personality.  The only one that feels like it might belong among the original factions is Domai: "hard work can overcome lack of talent and do anything" is a believable principle and not represented in the first seven.

As for the plot quotes, some of the important ones are tied to base facilities that you might never build, or secret projects that you might not get, so they can be missed.  The text for all is available in the datalinks, although of course they're much more impactful when conveyed by the voices.  They're all .mp3 files under the game folder that you can play, though the filenames are just numeric and don't say which is which.

[LKendter]

I forget how much the game played on competing philosophy.

Morgan's attitude IIRC makes him a big mind worm target.

Gaia was so nice as the mind worms tending to ignore them. Liked by the planet goes a long way. Get Manifold Nexus with them, and the planet loves you.
Was so perverse playing Gaia and creating a Borehole.

[haphazard1]

Lots of fun discussion. This game certainly makes an impression on people.

I have planted base number eight, and have another colony pod in production. Lost a couple battles with mind worms, so I have had to produce some additional units. Created some psi trance units to hopefully help against the native life.

My first sea formers are planting kelp in the geothermal shallows, should make for some pretty decent tiles.

And I initiated my first secret project. I do not really expect to succeed in getting it (Human Genome Project) as several AIs are also working on projects. But with half a dozen or so available with my current tech, I should get A secret project. They all look to be useful, just some more than others, so it seemed worth making the attempt. And UN Headquarters has grown enough to have fair production, at least compared to my other bases. I am sure it is unimpressive by borehole/supply crawler boosted base standards, but for this point in the game it will have to do.

I am starting to see losses to inefficiency; being the Peacekeepers does not help here. I do not see much I can do about it in the short term; perhaps later there will be more ways to deal with inefficiency.

[Fluffball]

Created some psi trance units to hopefully help against the native life.

If you've got fungus-roads leading to vulnerable units or cities, trance will help. But ideally you're using empath units to attack the native life before they get to you (and it also provides you a marginal amount of credits for killing them.) Edit: Just realized you may not have discovered the tech yet that lets you design units with bonus to psy combat.

All the various penalties and bonuses can be messed around with in the civics menu, if not now then when you unlock new civics. There are bonuses and negatives to every category. Inefficiency is just something Lal has to deal with.