Alpha Centauri Mod: Nuclear Gandhi

[WingsofMemory]

I made this Nuclear Gandhi mod quickly as a joke for the game "Sid Meiers: Alpha Centauri" which is a (legally distinct) sequel to Civilization 2.

This forum doesn't have a section for Alpha Centauri so I thought that I would post it here. If it's against forum protocol, then please feel free to remove this post and let me know.

If there are any Alpha Centauri players out there, give it a whirl! Hopefully you can get a chuckle or two outta' it.


  Gandhi.zip (Size: 291.29 KB / Downloads: 1)

[T-hawk]

No worries, it's fine here.

Typo in the readme: "You will now [know] it is the correct folder"

Also I'm not sure if those city names will work, because of the lengths, the max length might be shorter than those.

[WingsofMemory]

No worries, it's fine here.

Typo in the readme: "You will now [know] it is the correct folder"

Also I'm not sure if those city names will work, because of the lengths, the max length might be shorter than those.

Oh dang, thanks dude.

I did lots of modding for Alpha Centauri years ago, and I think really long base names like that actually worked. I could be wrong, it's been a while, like 10 years or something lol.

If anyone wants to play test it and let me know that'd be appreciated. My version of Alpha Centauri doesn't work on my current computer, so I can't really do it myself. I just made it since I was watching someone stream Alpha Centauri and they made a joke that they're glad that Gandhi from the old civs didn't make it to space and that the faction leaders presented were less dystopian by comparison or something. So I did it as a joke.

Well, thanks for getting back to me!

[LKendter]

Steam has a 2024 planetary pack with Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire. It is real cheap.

Seeing this thread got me to purchase that pack, and fooling around with again.
I forgot how much factions hate each other. It is impossible to get through a game without multiple vendettas.
Recalling how some factions are so much stronger. Gaia with Green capture an absurd amount of independent mind worms. University is hyper fast with science. They get the extra bonus of plenty of places to attack alien artifacts. OTOH going to need to complete several games to figure out how to win with the Hive. Starting with free perimeter defense is really weak.

[WingsofMemory]

Steam has a 2024 planetary pack with Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire.  It is real cheap.

Seeing this thread got me to purchase that pack, and fooling around with again.
I forgot how much factions hate each other. It is impossible to get through a game without multiple vendettas.
Recalling how some factions are so much stronger.  Gaia with Green capture an absurd amount of independent mind worms.  University is hyper fast with science. They get the extra bonus of plenty of places to attack alien artifacts. OTOH going to need to complete several games to figure out how to win with the Hive. Starting with free perimeter defense is really weak.

I don't have the free time or money play to computer/video games anymore unfortunately, my IRL is very tight, I am looking after family. Making the Evil Gandhi faction was very quick and easy since I used to make custom factions all the time like a decade ago. Some of my old Photoshop workstation files still worked after dusting them off and running them in GIMP!

Certain factions will hate each other no matter what because they have no common ground. The main thing to remember with diplomacy is what the factions core principle is. If you want to make BFFs with a faction set your social engineering to match what they want even if it disadvantages you, and it usually works. Lal loves Democracy. Miriam loves Fundamentalism, Yang loves Police States, Deidre loves Green Economies, Morgan loves either Free Markets or Wealth (I can't remember), Santiago loves Power, and Zakharov loves Knowledge. Making a BFF can be really useful because of the 1) the energy produced from trade and 2) The AI tends to produce more combat units then it can maintain, and if your are pact brothers/sisters with them they would rather give you free units then disband them to fix their economy.

The balance is decent but not amazing in the base game, and in the expansion it's horrible. Although the expansion factions/lore is pretty horrible for the most part in my opinion. The only one that kinda fits the base game factions is Foreman Domai's Free Drones or whatever they were called, since they were the most serious/realistic ideology, populist socialism. And the Pirates were fun/funny.

University is the easiest/strongest, followed by the Hive/Gaians. At least that has been my experience, and the experience of most people seem to agree with that. The Hive is really really powerful based on their impunity to inefficiency and strong industry. The problem with the Hive is that since you won't have any cash to speed build things, you have a hard time bailing yourself out of problems. So you have to really plan and think ahead with them. Also since there is little to no reason not to run  the "Police State+Planned Economy" combo as them, it's really really hard to makes friends as them. But with your industry and support so high you can crank out strong bases and military's like crazy and overwhelm your opposition. I see some people really struggle with the Hive, and there are others who find them the easiest hands down. Depends more on instincts I guess as to whether or not you find them easy. The free perimeter defence honestly is just icing on their other really nasty abilities.

The real question I have is can you defeat Nuclear Gandhi? Totally not just saying that because I want someone to playtest it... : P

[T-hawk]

Hive is average overall but easy to play. Beeline Industrial Automation, adopt Police/Planned/Wealth, use the support and industry to field lots of terraformers, terraform with forest, ICS plenty, build Human Genome and police units for drone control, ramp up with recycling tanks and eventually boreholes. Hive's upside is less than University/Morgan/UN running Free Market, but it has a solid floor that you can't go too badly wrong with drone or planet problems or the penalties of the bad factions (Sparta industry, Believers research) or getting attacked (perimeter defenses, industry to get out counterattackers.)

Agree that Free Drones are the only worthwhile faction in the expansion. And yeah the Pirates are entertaining, and easy because the AI can't manage to attack you.

[darrelljs]

Agree that Free Drones are the only worthwhile faction in the expansion.

Cybernetic Consciousness?

Edit: Forgot they can't pop boom with just Democracy/Planned.

Darrell

[T-hawk]

I mean worthwhile in terms of interesting enough both to want to play and to care about the ideology. Cybernetic is a worse University on both counts.

[Thoth]

The Cybernetic tech steal on base capture is a nice equalizer if you're playing a momentum game. 


I've been messing around with a few runs with Thinker mod recently.  Vast improvement on the AI vs stock in terms of expansion and terraforming.  Still dumb as a stump when it comes to warfare but it is just an AI after all.

[WingsofMemory]

Agree that Free Drones are the only worthwhile faction in the expansion.

Cybernetic Consciousness?

Edit: Forgot they can't pop boom with just Democracy/Planned.

Darrell

I remember the Cybernetic Consciousness being really powerful, if not the most powerful faction from the expansion. I just don't think that they mesh well with the original factions in the sense of flavour/story.

The factions from the original game were all based on realistic, if not commonplace beliefs that people hold just taken to an extreme. There are a lot less pro-cybernetic-transhumanist-collectivists-utopians out there than there are hardcore-athiest-science-lovers. The Free Drones do reflect a more realistic and commonplace belief-set that doesn't clash too hard with the original factions, populist-socialism. Although, again I still prefer the original factions.

There was an old website that I can't find anymore that I used to balance custom factions as they assigned point values to each bonus/flaw. If I recall correctly using their system each of the original factions were anywhere from 4 to 6 points. And the expansion factions were 7 to 14 points. The expansion factions were all twice as strong as the base game ones according to that sites formula, and I tended to agree with that since playing games with mixed expansion and base game factions usually led to the base game ones getting stomped heartily unless they had a great start.