A civ vet explores Alpha Centauri (SMAC)

[T-hawk]

If you already have the forests, yeah keep them and just build tree farms, put the formers to boreholes instead.

Being locked out of this SE setting or that is one of the more significant effects of choosing a faction, really.

Right.  We talk about the factions as narratives, but the SE effects are bigger mechanically.  Anybody running Green is more planety than a default Gaia; anybody running Free Market is wealthier than a default Morgan; anybody running Police State has more police than a default Hive.  In many cases the SE effects stack with faction abilities to favorable extremes, but not always.  Morgan in particular has a major exception: he's often better off running Green/Wealth than Free Market, since +2 economy is the magic number which he can reach with Wealth alone, so he can take the efficiency of Green and avoid the negatives of Free Market. And Gaia is often better using her efficiency to compensate for Planned rather than stack with Green.

[Fluffball]

But Morgan is showing up on the comparative graphs, so I guess he exists somewhere.

All the factions have a spot on the graph even if they're dead. If everyone else has high enough bars it can be hard to tell if his is at 0 or just minuscule, but if there is anything thickness to it at all, he's out there.

It's not bizarrely rare for someone to spawn on a small island and then not have enough research power to get off it. Not common, but it happens frequently enough. Those are the most fun for humans though! 

Morgan's crap troops with bad planet rating definitely don't help his AI even on continents. He's fun if he can get out of the early game with some decent expansion.

[Dark Savant]

Yang never really talks about authoritarianism.  He never says anything about forcibly controlling or suppressing his workers.

Playing a bit more, in a diplomacy talk with Yang he mentioned that servants should never be allowed to question their rulers and I need to institute a police state or something along those lines, because I was running democracy. I should have screenshot it in hindsight. It's not one of the read quotes so I couldn't immediately find it on the wiki.

If you have enough energy to switch one SE choice once, you can swap out of Democracy or Fundamentalism before talking to Yang.  He'll be a lot less hostile.  You can then swap back to Democracy or Fundamentalism on the same turn, and since it was on the same turn it won't actually cost anything.

The important part is the rival faction's favorite SE choice.  Morgan doesn't like Planned or Green, Zakharov doesn't like Power or Wealth, etc.  Banned SE choices don't actually matter -- Zakharov doesn't care if you're in Fundamentalism.

Technically, any faction with a favorite SE choice of Police State will say what Yang said to you -- but in an unmodded game (either SMAC or SMAX), the Hive is the only faction that favors Police State.

This is another reason why swapping SE choices more than once per turn is often considered an exploit.

[Fluffball]

If you have enough energy to switch one SE choice once, you can swap out of Democracy or Fundamentalism before talking to Yang.  He'll be a lot less hostile.  You can then swap back to Democracy or Fundamentalism on the same turn, and since it was on the same turn it won't actually cost anything.

The important part is the rival faction's favorite SE choice.  Morgan doesn't like Planned or Green, Zakharov doesn't like Power or Wealth, etc.  Banned SE choices don't actually matter -- Zakharov doesn't care if you're in Fundamentalism.

Technically, any faction with a favorite SE choice of Police State will say what Yang said to you -- but in an unmodded game (either SMAC or SMAX), the Hive is the only faction that favors Police State.

This is another reason why swapping SE choices more than once per turn is often considered an exploit.

I don't do any of those type of things; I just play the game naturally. I'm going to be at war with Yang sooner or later 

[haphazard1]

Finally found some time to play a bit more SMAC, after family activities over the long weekend.

- Constructed the Virtual World secret project.
- Finally found Morgan, or at least a Morganite unit, in the remote south.
- Infiltrated the University with a probe team. Suprising how much data you can then access about the other faction. Certainly useful.
- Fought some mind worms, drilled some bore holes, cleared more fungus, etc.

Today's questions:

- I had a probe team in rival territory, and suddenly the next turn it was in my capital. No message or update of any kind, just suddenly it was moved. Was it detected? I did not get any kind of diplomatic mesage about removing my units from their territory. (However, see next question.)
- I get a message that I can not currently convene the council or communicate with other leaders due to heavy sunspot activity. How long is this likely to last? I remember getting an event message about the sunspots, but that was quite some time ago.
- After founding my tenth base, I got a message about my expanding settlements causing more drones. How big of an effect is this?
- I got an 'interlude' discussing how mind worm boils are a reaction to planetary damage. I am assuming this is the warning/message that was mentioned earlier in the thread?

[Fluffball]

- I had a probe team in rival territory, and suddenly the next turn it was in my capital. No message or update of any kind, just suddenly it was moved. Was it detected? I did not get any kind of diplomatic mesage about removing my units from their territory. (However, see next question.)
- I get a message that I can not currently convene the council or communicate with other leaders due to heavy sunspot activity. How long is this likely to last? I remember getting an event message about the sunspots, but that was quite some time ago.
- After founding my tenth base, I got a message about my expanding settlements causing more drones. How big of an effect is this?
- I got an 'interlude' discussing how mind worm boils are a reaction to planetary damage. I am assuming this is the warning/message that was mentioned earlier in the thread?

1) I think enemy AI units can bounce you out by moving into your square.
2) 20 turns if I remember right??? By the way your reputation doesn't take a hit during those years since info can't spread, so if you want to be a monster now is the time. The are varying levels of that, from breaking treaties all the way up to planet busters ("nukes". Also save your game and launch a nuke when you get the first tech level of planet buster so you can enjoy the animation.)
3) Every new base will give you 1 drone in a random base. Just be aware of new drones popping up and it's no big deal at all.
4) Yes. The initial one is set to trigger almost immediately after you first get eco-damage. Further pops will happen with a percentage chance.

[haphazard1]

Thanks, Fluffball!

On #1, that might have been it. The AI did have a scout rover moving around that area.

For #4, it was pretty much immediately after UN Headquarters went to Eco damage of 1 (my first base to register any). Although as bore holes finish, I expect that to climb at many of my bases. I am preparing with some extra defenders in case of mind worm eruptions, although the tree farms i am constructing may help mitigate somewhat.

[Fluffball]

[quote pid='676141' dateline='1527813593']
I am preparing with some extra defenders
[/quote]

Make sure you have some rovers handy. Native life can spawn in colossal stacks in the late game, but if you can get a unit to hit them you can kill them all. If you give them time to attack you, they can easily chew through many dozens of (literal) defenders. I remember having a size 40-something base burned down in one of my early games. 

I like to keep empath rovers scattered strategically around my territory to hit eco-damage life as well as just the normal random life coming from fungus or the sea.

[T-hawk]

1. A probe team can be kicked out by a non-hostile military unit.  (A hostile one will kill it instead.)  There is a message for this: "[Faction] has interrogated our probe team and returned it unharmed", but it's easy to miss, it's not a popup dialog, it appears quickly in yellow text overlaid near the bottom of the map.

2. Yes, sunspots last 20 turns. The atrocity you might find useful is nerve stapling (however out of character that might be for the Peacekeepers). I think it still counts against Planet as eco-damage even if the other factions can't learn of it.

3. http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Bureaucracy , although it's not exactly correct.  The procedure works out that on average each additional base adds two separate drones, not one.  At N bases, you have no drones.  At 2N bases, you have one per base, or 2N drones.  Therefore each base between N and 2N added two drones.  It's also not uniform, it's not always two every time you found a base, but it does always work out to exactly that by the time you reach 2N.  Anyway, just be careful about checking for riots in the advisor screen (it's F3 or F4 then click Citizens, a base that would currently riot is shown in red.)  It's only a small deal when you're not on the top difficulty or spamming bases like crazy.

4. Yes, eco-damage, as Fluffball says.  When it happened, one of that base's tiles became covered in fungus.  Starting with the third instance, those fungal pops spawn mind worms.  And yes, you don't want defense, you want rovers to counterattack the worms.  With the Empath special ability if you've got the tech, but the 3:2 psi attacker advantage is usually enough even without.

[LKendter]

Wonder if we need another thread for the philosophical discussion tripped by this thread.
Having a hard time sorting through game, and philosophy posts.