T-hawk Plays Alpha Centauri

[Modo]

Yes, the reporting is not properly optimized to multiplicatively multiply the speed of the readers; we need repeated attempts to improve on this aspect.
And Happy Holidays, T-hawk, catch you in the new year.

[Modo]

Well, that didn't take long but something dawned on me and I didn't want to forget about it.
Before Civ5 your site was not as focused on showcasing mechanics to the same depth. Using them was always there and there are Civ4 reports and articles that are the precursors but not to the level of Civ5; paradoxically, I remember you saying in one of the earlier Civ5 reports that this is a good achievement based game then went on a smaller cultural win spree and then the magnus opus Civ5 scientific runs.
Now you're revisiting SMAC in the same fashion somewhat so how about revisiting Civ4 in this new format at some point? I dare say that overall there's more variety in Civ4 then in either Civ5 or SMAC and Civ6 doesn't seem to move to a better place although it's still quite interesting to some extent (even more so seeing how you'd break it) so would Civ4 be on your radar?
Or even Civ3 for that matter.

[Modo]

And another question. SMAC has pop booming and Civ4 has slavery. They apply to different parts of the respective games but they both are a powerful shortcut in the normal accumulation of food / production, what would you consider the equivalent in Civ5 if any?
Somehow I feel starvation settlers has to be it but that should surely be a bug...probably never to be fixed.

[T-hawk]

The material on my site is different because for Civ 4 I was always playing the RB events, while in Civ 5 I struck out on my own to focus on whatever I felt like. I don't have any desire to revisit Civ 4. It feels outdated compared to Civ 5 (somehow, SMAC doesn't.) And there's been plenty of others around CFC doing what I would, like this: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/5...12.468582/

Production shortcuts in Civ 5: Desert Folklore is the biggest one, into Pagodas and Jesuit Education. Maritime city-state food. Ancient ruins, particularly on the lowest difficulty with Shoshone or luck abuse. Spain finding natural wonders or anyone finding El Dorado.

[Kofiman]

More great writeups. Thank you for putting everything down, T-Hawk.

[T-hawk]

Is it me or are you trying to find excuses to showcase all the factions? Not that I'm complaining but it will be somewhat of a challenge for Sparta I guess.

Yeah, here's two more reports to complete the roster of seven.

http://dos486.com/alpha/believers/

http://dos486.com/alpha/sparta/

[Modo]

Two? Ok, gimme a couple of weeks

[Modo]

A few things stand out more than others so far:

1) Would you consider the Believers penalties too harsh? I mean a proficient player knows how to mitigate them and make full use of the factions benefits but I don't know of any game where not being able to research properly (or at all) at the start of the game is a thing and I wonder (aside from lore) why the devs went this way with this faction.

2) Rehoming crawlers to move production around has no penalty at all? Aside from the potential support cost I mean.

3) Beating the Gaia to Weather Paradigm by one turn - is there any C&D that cone be done in this game to deduce how fast the other factions bases are building stuff or what are they building or any other info like that? I seem to recall from your previous reports that there are some infiltration missions or smth like that that provide intel but I 'm referring to turn by turn tracking.

[T-hawk]

There's nothing inherently wrong with the delayed and slow research.  Factions are supposed to have a downside, and it works as it's supposed to (unlike the University's downsides.)  The harsh part is the second-order effect that the Believers get formers ~15 turns later than everyone else (including the undocumented double-cost penalty for the first few techs.)  It doesn't really matter for beating AIs, but yes I think that's sufficiently harsh that the Believers are never picked for multiplayer.  But some faction has to be the worst.  Remember how old SMAC is, in 1998 the Civ franchise hadn't even had faction-specific powers at all before.  (Wow: I just realized that SMAC is now closer in time to Space Invaders than to today.)

The only cost for rehoming a crawler is the movement consumed to do it.  It has to visit the city it wants to rehome to, which might mean it's not crawling its best tile for a turn or two.  (Crawlers don't cost support.)  You might be confusing this with the alternate use of supply crawlers, which is to transfer production (subtracting it) from its home base to another, but nobody ever does that instead of crawling a tile.

The in-game infiltration lets you directly click on any base to fully see everything in it.  The screenshot of the Weather Paradigm came from that.  There are three ways to get infiltration: one is a probe mission at a base of the target faction, and once you have infiltration that way it remains permanent throughout the game.  The other ways are the Empath Guild secret project or planetary governorship, which each allow infiltration on all factions as long as you possess it.  Besides the bases, infiltration also lets you see all of that faction's info on each of the summary screens (F2 for research, etc, which I was watching closely in the Sparta game.)  There's not really any other indicators besides official infiltration, only the obvious secret project alerts that will tell you about tech.  Also whatever you can figure out from their willingness to offer in diplomatic talks (techs, cash, bases), though each AI will only allow so many conversations before declining to talk.

[Modo]

That's an interesting mechanic with the crawler having to visit a base before rehoming. I'm assuming it can do it at any point in time, do you ever path them through other bases in anticipation of a potential future rehoming?