T-hawk Plays Alpha Centauri

[haphazard1]

Thanks, T-hawk. Hmmm, will have to think about this some more. So far I am still not used to the tech tree enough to really be planning that far ahead on research, so I have just been picking what seems most useful each time I get a new set of choices. Sort of "oooh, shiny!" as far as picking techs.

I have been meaning to get back to my play through and update, but have been busy with moving. Everything must go into a box! Maybe once I get settled in my new place....

[T-hawk]

Lee was struggling with that too, how to grasp the entirety of the tech tree.  The missing-tech mechanic is a small concern compared to that so I haven't been stressing it.  It's quite challenging for a newcomer: you don't know what effects exist, let alone what's important, and doubly never mind how to visualize getting to them.  The game has poor documentation on the first and no overall overview at all, and even outside overviews aren't that great since the highly interconnected graph is such a mess.

I've been sequentially going through each of the most common specific beelines here: supply crawlers, restriction lifting, genejacks, fusion power, satellites.  You can't go wrong by following that general order, and it matters little if it shifts a bit with the missing techs.  But I don't know how to communicate how to derive your own beelines.

http://dos486.com/alpha/horz-tech.png  The best I did was this visual overview in the style of Civ 4+, though it only helps if you already know what's at each tech.  I could go back and add the data in mouseovers for everything, and clickable beelines like in Civ, though that'd be a lot of work.

[haphazard1]

Your discussions in the thread have helped highlight some of the key techs, and the big effects that are worth aiming for. Lifting tile yield restrictions, unlocking new unit types (formers, naval, air, probe teams, etc.), supply crawlers.... It will certainly take more than one game to really start putting everything together so as to make informed decisions. Browsing through the datalinks helps with understanding some of what is possible, but it does not help all that much with visualizing how you progress through the overall tree.

Following your game, I think the biggest thing that strikes me is the speed with which everything happens. Techs coming much more rapidly, development, city growth with pop booms, expansion -- everything happens so much faster. That is exeperience at work, obviously, and is necessary to play at the higher difficulty levels and have any chance of winning. Just as well I am not at that high a difficulty -- I am having enough trouble dealing with everything as it is.

[TheHumanHydra]

I just play with random tech. 

[Modo]

Oh boy, T-Hawk snowballing the thread as well so a lot to take in.


"Right now I can't build boats to deal with a sea base, since none of my bases are coastal, because I've been raising land around them."

What happens to a city that starts coastal and then becomes non-coastal, any building effects that it still retains for example? Can a coastal one become a water base also?


"I'll just toss this to the audience as to whether you want to see me exit that way or carry it through to transcendence."

Well, when reaching this point the rest is academic but that's what you're here for
And transcendence was the designated goal too.


"The upgrade price depends on the cost of the resulting unit but NOT on the precursor unit's cost or the difference."

Interesting, so you can feasibly upgrade even the oldest units to the cutting edge level? Assuming you'd ever need it


"Rec-tanks are inferior to crawlers as long as there are tiles to crawl, but now I have no more land."

Given this is it still worth it to cram cities instead of giving them all their tiles? I understood your initial analysis for the early game but given how fast you can snowball would it be worth it to actually space out cities so that each has all it's tiles available?


"With Fusion Power, every mature base starts a Fusion Lab.  I have to be careful with energy this turn: with each base starting that facility but none finishing it, I will get little from the Stockpile bug, so for this one turn I have to back off the labs slider down to 70% to stay solvent the honest way."

Doing it the honest way is such a rare occurence that it deserves a mention of it's own. But no hope for you still, Efficiency is the name of the Particulars God.


"While zoomed-to-base 03, I can press F4 and click on the next base 04.  I change its build order to a food satellite, and use that energy to rush it (partially, as usual, just so the base's normal production will complete it.)"

Don't think I know of any other game that allows partial rushing, cool to have. Does SMAC allow for production overflow (with or without restrictions)? I'm wondering you're making sure the natural production complets it.


"Of course I anticipated this and set up each base with +1 food surplus knowing that the one more was coming."

That one makes me think of you like a snake eating it's own tail. A skill worthy of mastering...planning ahead, I mean, not the snake part.


"I had previously launched 9 food satellites, which seemed like about enough (9 food with an aerospace complex, 5 without) to boom everything to max size, so now switched over to building all energy satellites instead."

This is yet another cool mechanic, so many alternatives to obtain stuff in this game altough obviously some work better than others. You really get the feeling the dev knew what they were aiming for (for the most parts) and how they intended the game to progress.


"A super former could drill a second for a difference of 6 energy/turn"

A basic question here cuz I've searched for this and not found a clear answer, I take it that the super former ability doubles their build improvments speed?


"my science rate has smashed past one turn per tech and will keep on going"

Any limitation to beaker overflow in SMAC? Or in theory you could get how many techs your labs afford? And if so, can you actually switch techs after the first one is dicovered? I didn't see a queue mechanism in SMAC so far when it comes to teching.


By the way, is there a way to mod the Datalinks? I would very much include this thread so that I have it ingame at all times

[T-hawk]

Following your game, I think the biggest thing that strikes me is the speed with which everything happens. Techs coming much more rapidly, development, city growth with pop booms, expansion -- everything happens so much faster. That is exeperience at work, obviously, and is necessary to play at the higher difficulty levels and have any chance of winning.

Yes, it's about the speed.  The fundamental currency is time.  Anyone can build anything to any degree given enough time.  The win conditions are ultimately about doing in less time than the other guys.  I think I mentioned upthread that I have the experience of a dozen speed-transcend games before the one writeup that's on my website.  And if you think the speed has been impressive so far, take a look at the next eight or so turns.

The core driver of that speed is the population boom.  The pop-boom cuts the cost of growth from something like 40 food to 2.  That's a +2,000% multiplier, unfathomable compared to anything else you find in this game or any other Civs.  Everything else operates in service or exploitation of that: expand to cities that will pop-boom, let them stay small at first (put out more colony pods) because they will later pop-boom, build creches to enable the pop-boom itself, build condensors and tree farms to feed it, build boreholes because that's the best way to increase productivity once at the first size cap and to provide the minerals to build the hab complex.

The Realms Beyond response to that is, okay, how about a variant of no booming.  Problem is, that leads to nothing but ICS.  Why pay 40-50 food to grow one size when you can have a whole new base for 40-50 units of food/minerals?  Booming is actually the only pull against ICS.

Okay, how about variant rules against both booming and ICS, maybe something like forbidding bureaucracy superdrones so you have to stop at 2x the b-limit.  Well, if you're going to impose a restrictive cap like that... you may as well just go play Civ 5 instead.  The extreme geometrical inflation is the hallmark of SMAC and what projects it so out-there from regular Civilization.

That all said, you don't have to pop-boom or ICS to win on high difficulty.  Just doing a bit better than the AI is enough, and really if you just build three formers per base and use them wisely, that's enough too.

"The upgrade price depends on the cost of the resulting unit but NOT on the precursor unit's cost or the difference."

Interesting, so you can feasibly upgrade even the oldest units to the cutting edge level? Assuming you'd ever need it

Yes, upgrading anything to anything is quite feasible, and you don't have to go through any intermediate steps like in the later Civs.  You don't pay based on the mineral difference, but there is a component based on the weapon and armor difference.  That can make upgrading attack units too costly to be worthwhile, but has minimal impact on what I've done with crawlers, at most I've paid 20 for the difference between 1-armor and 3-armor.

Given this is it still worth it to cram cities instead of giving them all their tiles? I understood your initial analysis for the early game but given how fast you can snowball would it be worth it to actually space out cities so that each has all it's tiles available?

No: there is never any point in the game where a city needs more than about 10 workable tiles.

Obviously it doesn't need more while at the size 7 pre-hab-complex cap.  Not even to crawl, really; once a city has three or so crawlers, it can put out colony pods as fast as it can grow and should do that instead, or else more formers.  Post-hab-complex and tree farm, with a condensor or two, a city only needs about those same 10 tiles to boom up to the next size limit, with orbital food satellites filling in any gaps.  Population past 10 won't need to work food, and then you want to make them Engineer specialists which yield more economy per citizen than working anything other than a borehole.

The habitation dome (unlimited population cap) comes so late, 5 turns or less from the end, that it hardly matters.  Even if you build them, you'd still rather the added population be specialists rather than work tiles.

Doing it the honest way is such a rare occurence that it deserves a mention of it's own. But no hope for you still, Efficiency is the name of the Particulars God.

This particular game maximized the Stockpile bug more than I've ever seen before.  It was all about the beeline to Genejacks.  With those minerals, I'm both building 50% more facilities and getting 50% more yield from the bug on each one.

Don't think I know of any other game that allows partial rushing, cool to have.

I want to say it came into SMAC from Civ 2, though I may misremember.

Does SMAC allow for production overflow (with or without restrictions)? I'm wondering you're making sure the natural production complets it.

It allows overflow to a max of 10 minerals.  Occasionally I over-partial-rush to account for those 10 minerals as well, if I anticipate rushing something on that base's next turn too.  That's rare though.

I take it that the super former ability doubles their build improvments speed?

Yes.  (That's in the in-game datalinks easily enough. )

Any limitation to beaker overflow in SMAC? Or in theory you could get how many techs your labs afford? And if so, can you actually switch techs after the first one is dicovered? I didn't see a queue mechanism in SMAC so far when it comes to teching.

Research is processed base-by-base.  When your total adds up to the cost of the tech, you get that tech.  Right in the middle of the production cycle, you get a popup to select your next tech.  This can happen any number of times in the same turn as long as your labs keep adding up to afford more techs.

There is no overflow because it's not necessary; tech is checked for every base, not just once per turn as in all the later Civs.

By the way, is there a way to mod the Datalinks? I would very much include this thread so that I have it ingame at all times

Actually yes, it's all just editable text files in the game folder.

[Modo]

[quote pid='678486' dateline='1529724566']
The extreme geometrical inflation is the hallmark of SMAC and what projects it so out-there from regular Civilization.

[/quote]

A great point and that leads to my next question because your playthrough here makes quite a solid argument for SMAC.
If you were to devise a "training ladder" for strategy games for taking a player from 0 to the most complex that is currently available what would each rung contain? And I'm not talking about Civ franchise alone, any strategy game. So starting with the most friendly one and ending with the most involved one.

I know there are many differences and balancing issues and such but you've made a habit of managing to compare all sorts of things with all sorts of other things so any way you'd like to structure it is fine, I'm just curious how you envision this.

[Kofiman]

Civ 2 didn't have partial rush-buying. It did let you change projects after rushing in a process called Incremental Rush Buying, but that's not the same. To my knowledge it is a capability unique to SMAC.

[T-hawk]

If you were to devise a "training ladder" for strategy games for taking a player from 0 to the most complex that is currently available what would each rung contain? And I'm not talking about Civ franchise alone, any strategy game. So starting with the most friendly one and ending with the most involved one.

I don't have the breadth of experience to do that.  I have deep expertise with the Civ franchise of course, but outside of that and HOMM, I really haven't played much else.  Never did MOO, Gal Civ, Crusader Kings, Wesnoth, SimCity, or any RTS.

Civ 5 by itself is a fine training ladder and can probably get you from 0 to like 75%.

[Modo]

Ha, the completionist in you...but as I said any way to structure it was fine and obviously it can only be based on your own experience.
Granted for Civ5, how about above 75? Because tbh after seeing SMAC showcased like this it is a prety strong candidate to my eyes.
And how come there's no HOMM reporting on your site?