Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => The Theory of Everything => Topic started by: Kolbeg on February 18, 2018, 09:23:26 PM

Title: Return to Planet. Thoughts.
Post by: Kolbeg on February 18, 2018, 09:23:26 PM

Just came back to the game recently. I´m using PRACX video mod and latest YITZI´s patch.
I´m looking to play with the same conditions in every game, thus I play with normal map of planet every time. I like to do this in order to better compare my games. Could a huge map be better, other than just dragging the games out?
I´m willing to perhaps play with little bit different rules but ideally always the same(all victory, blind research and Ironman). Any suggestions here?
I started off by playing on Librarian, because I wanted the AI not to be boosted. I´m likely to up the difficulty, but would hate to have to use some tricks in order to compete while being handicapped. I also played with all random factions including myself.

So far I´ve completed 3 games under these conditions, won as a supreme leader as Rose just a few turns before the game would end (long game really high score). Then I won a quick domination victory as Yang (relatively quick, thus low score). Lastly I won as Caretakers with alien specific victory (relatively late and high score).

As Rose I mostly played builder, secured the central landmass and build a lot of SP. Was democratic, green, wealth and knowledge, cybernetic. My superiority came mostly from over all tech and infrastructure, being able to build SP and tech away in the end. Barely used probe teams (probably just my inexperience to realize its possibilities).

Yang was relatively straight forward, just like I remembered playing the Hive. A smooth sailing, cranking out units and just dominate by force as long as no one greatly out techs you. Police, Planned, knowledge and power, did not even get to future SE if I remember correctly. Dominated the rightmost landmass by subjugating my two close neighbors(University and Aki) really early on. From there I started to grab Pirate bases on the oceans, Sparta and Drones in the middle and finally Morgan at the left landmass. Of them all Pirates and Sparta gave the most resistance in the mid game.

As Caretakers(had never played them before) I started at the left most landmass, close to Sparta which I squeezed into submission and ultimately annihilation super fast. Colonized fast so I cut Roze off at Mount of Planet, she became submissive so I let her stay there as a "loyal" ally. Grab the rest of the landmass all the way up to ruins. Wanted to befriend Lal on the center landmass and forge a democratic alliance with him and my loyal subject Roze, but the whole game through Lal was just being annoying and difficult. Just did not like me I guess, Roze started to dislike me as the game continued as well. Something to do with being an alien race I think, they claim that I just wanted to purge the planet of their kind (fake news!). Democratic, planned into green, knowledge into power and cybernetic into thought control. The reason for the change was that late game I had to defend a lot from constant harassment from Usurpers who had the whole right landmass for themselves (strongest faction through most of the game), and Lal. As I was building my super continent and aiming for that Alien specific victory, I had to defend so I changed into power and thought contrl. Also in the last like 10 -15 turns before I won the planet got super annoyed and fungus and worms started popping up everywhere, but thanks to my defense bonus and morale, I manage to fend that of quite well, just so I could finish strong.

These moments super late game when Planet goes nuts, reminded me of moments many years ago, when my whole empire could just crumble in a few turns because of worm attacks. Horrible stuff, and I remember being so helpless against them. What is it that triggers it, is it just eco damage?

Anyways I just wanted to share my recent thoughts and games I´ve had. After reading some posts here on the forums I realize that I´m not taking full advantage of all the game mechanics, and frankly I´m not sure if I really want to micro manage everything excessively. I like the Roleplay aspect of the game as well as trying to be competent, without using some silly strategies like building cities on every other square or something. I want to try some Free market play through(Morgan and corner the market, or University and Transendence), and actually get to use some crawlers (something I´ve totally ignored so far).

Finally I always like to imagine what other human players would do and was hoping to find some "educational" videos on Youtube or Twitch by some really knowledgeble players, but have found NOTHING. Guess we are all oldies in this community. :D

Thats it for now.

Ps. really enjoyed reading Kurvivor´s thoughts and play challanges not to mention bvanevery´s posts on his games. Really informative and interesting. Would be even better if it could be on video form! :P

Title: Re: Return to Planet. Thoughts.
Post by: bvanevery on February 23, 2018, 05:18:23 PM

Quote from: Kolbeg on February 18, 2018, 09:23:26 PM

Just came back to the game recently. I´m using PRACX video mod and latest YITZI´s patch.
I´m looking to play with the same conditions in every game, thus I play with normal map of planet every time. I like to do this in order to better compare my games.

To each their own, but I will point out, there's something significant you're not testing that way.  How does a faction perform in the face of the unknown?  You have extensive foreknowledge of the game.  You have a little bit of unknown in the form of where you land on Planet and who else ends up in the game.

On the other hand, if one plays an Alien faction, they start with a map of the whole planet.  Quite a bit less unknown.  I'd just be concerned with SMAC turning into something like a FPS deathmatch where people know where all the "spawns" are and head immediately to get this or that bennie.

Quote

Could a huge map be better, other than just dragging the games out?

As an experienced player who has played Transcend for almost 2 decades, I need the Huge map to give me any kind of a challenge.  Otherwise there just aren't much in the way of strategic decisions to win the game.  On a Standard map, conquer the 1st faction next to you.  Wet, lather, rinse, repeat.  On a Huge map, there may not even be a faction next to you.  You have to balance whether you set out to attack people or build up your own empire.  You can stagnate in a No Contact situation.

Quote

I´m willing to perhaps play with little bit different rules but ideally always the same(all victory, blind research and Ironman). Any suggestions here?

I don't personally see a point in Ironman and have almost never done it.  If my hand slips on the keyboard, I don't think I should be stuck with an early bad move.  I rarely save scum things in my games, but if I've invested countless hours of real time only to have something daft and random happen to me, I reserve the right to refuse it.  I played games with No Random Events for awhile because I thought the worst events were so obnoxious, and so disproportionately penalizing compared to the good events.  Nowadays I do receive random events.  They are usually a lot less obnoxious than I remember them in the past.  I'm not sure why that is; I am guessing that my play style has changed somehow, so that I'm not vulnerable to certain horrors like your bank account vaporizing.  I did lose all my research in some recent game though, and that reminded me of the pointless griefing no-fun nature of various events.

It's like the game designers were bored and thought, "Let's just muck things up some!"  I mean why not just have things randomly kill you in combat for no reason while you're at it?  Why have a combat system or a economics system if the system is totally unpredictable?  That's not a system, that's just One Damn Thing After Another that you can't predict or control.  There's a point at which if the player has no agency, why are they even playing?  They could watch the computer randomly roll dice about stuff.

Quote

As Rose I mostly played builder, secured the central landmass and build a lot of SP. Was democratic, green, wealth and knowledge, cybernetic. My superiority came mostly from over all tech and infrastructure, being able to build SP and tech away in the end. Barely used probe teams (probably just my inexperience to realize its possibilities).

I hope you at least infiltrated all the factions somehow?  Roze has to do that to get her version of The Planetary Datalinks.

Quote

These moments super late game when Planet goes nuts, reminded me of moments many years ago, when my whole empire could just crumble in a few turns because of worm attacks. Horrible stuff, and I remember being so helpless against them. What is it that triggers it, is it just eco damage?

It took me a long time to learn how to handle that, because I'd quit many games for other reasons, way before getting to that point in the game.  Consequently I wouldn't necessarily have experience fighting big piles of mindworms, and they'd tend to catch me flat footed.  The main thing is you need Trance defensive units.  Also you need reserves of speeders to go attack the mindworms if they show up.  Eventually in my play style it became standard drill to equip every base with some kind of speeder.  Until I have rails in which case it's more possible to redistribute units as needed.

Yes they show up due to eco-damage.  There's basically 2 ways to do eco-damage: excessive minerals production and nukeing people.  I don't typically do the latter because I terraform every square by hand and don't want the floods messing up my many hours of work.  Minerals, you build tree farms, hybrid forests, and centauri preserves to raise the number of minerals you can have before doing eco-damage.  Becoming more planet-friendly also helps.  Every time a fungus pops, the minerals tolerance goes up, so surviving all the mindworm attacks helps too.  Some combo of "the popcorn is going off" and building the needed facilities, usually gets me to a point of stability where I'm not being attacked anymore.

Generally speaking, identify the big stack of mindworms that has lots of them in 1 square.  Attack that first and immediately.  That saves you a lot of trouble, as opposed to having a base get hit by 16 mindworms in a row.  Particularly tough Trance 3-Res units can stand up to a lot, but if the stacks are big enough they can eventually grind you down.

Quote

without using some silly strategies like building cities on every other square or something.

Personally I think that's completely ridiculous and have never played SMAC that way.  I have done FreeCiv that way, so I'm quite familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of "Smallpox" strategies.  Having explored what happens, I just think it's a misfeature of civ-style games that people can do this.  If I someday succeed at designing a SMAC-like from scratch, I will make sure it's not possible to do that.  Probably that would mean treating urban areas as multi-hex affairs, and removing individual city improvement decisions from the hands of the player.  Game decisions would be much more National in scope.

Quote

I want to try some Free market play through(Morgan and corner the market, or University and Transendence), and actually get to use some crawlers (something I´ve totally ignored so far).

Crawlers are useful for hurrying Secret Projects along, but parking them on Mines can get really boring.  I haven't done that much lately.  I tend to plant lots of trees early game for the minerals, and end up building Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests midgame.  The extra food and safety from eco-damage, generally allows all the Mines within reach of a city to be automatically mined.  I think that's more convenient than bothering with supply crawlers.  Also I don't want to goose my minerals production too high as that just causes mindworm attacks and floods.  What tends to happen in practice, is if I overproduce crawlers for some Secret Project I'm working on, I send the extras somewhere to work some unexploited Mine.  Then when a new Secret Project becomes available, I send them to that project.

If I've got 20+ minerals in a city midgame, with tree farms and hybrid forests, I'm pretty happy with that.  Cities of that size get useful things done.  Some cities end up with 30+ minerals if they had a lot of Mines in their radius.  Those can become the polluters, although once one builds enough hybrid forests, the problem goes away.  I don't bother with any kind of factories if I've got enough minerals.  Especially, I don't bother with Genejack Factories because they create unhappiness.  I'm usually pretty lean on the amount of happiness I'm providing, just enough to keep everyone working.  I call that being efficient.

Quote

Finally I always like to imagine what other human players would do and was hoping to find some "educational" videos on Youtube or Twitch by some really knowledgeble players, but have found NOTHING. Guess we are all oldies in this community. :D

I personally think that would be a complete waste of time, because I can't stand sitting around listening to people talk slowly and futz on clicking stuff.  In contrast, I write huge, detailed After Action Reports in that subforum.  It seems you have discovered those.  My older ones require a bit of imagination as they're all text, but there's probably still valuable stuff in them, for a player wondering about what to do.  My recent ones have screenshots for every post.  I created a nice message icon to denote that the screenshots are available, and BUncle got it working great.  Just remember as you peruse such things that Chairman Yang is watching you.

Quote

Would be even better if it could be on video form! :P

No, it would completly suck and would bore you to death.  Do you have any idea how many hours have been put into those AAR games?  Even the games I prematurely quit, most of them had many many hours of wall clock play time.  So be careful what you wish for.

Title: Re: Return to Planet. Thoughts.
Post by: Kolbeg on February 25, 2018, 06:39:29 PM

Thanks a lot for your comments bvanevery. Much appreciated.

You have convincing arguments and I will reevaluate some ideas I had before, with regards to maps and rules.

Most interesting is your comments on Crawlers and terraforming. After reading guides on the site, it was my understanding that the most competitive players were all about crawlers and loads of them.

Is my understanding right, that you mainly plant forests on all tiles? If not, what is your general terra-forming strategy? So far I have my formers automated, I like to automate as much as possible if its not to costly.

Title: Re: Return to Planet. Thoughts.
Post by: bvanevery on February 26, 2018, 03:30:27 AM

Quote from: Kolbeg on February 25, 2018, 06:39:29 PM

After reading guides on the site, it was my understanding that the most competitive players were all about crawlers and loads of them.

Competing against whom though?  Other humans, or AIs?  I can't comment againt humans, maybe it's a great idea, maybe it's not so great and more like a religious belief.  You'd have to peruse the archives of multiplayer veterans and try to get a sense of who really knows how to beat other humans.  Even then, it can be the accident of one person's play style vs. another.  Or the habits of the community they regularly play in.  In the martial arts, that's called dojo syndrome.

If I was faced with someone crawler obsessive and they were remotely within striking distance of me, I'd flood 'em with Recon Rovers.  Crawlers would die instantly, and large numbers of rovers would create chaos in their lands, pillaging and so forth.  Of course every strategy has a counter-strategy, ultimately resulting in mixed forces to prevail.  But I bet you they'd have to stop doing quite so many crawlers, to deal with my rovers.

Now against AIs on Transcend, I know what I'm talking about.  I've got almost 20 years into this.  Supply Crawlers are a tool, but one needn't obsess about them.  They are not a "fast path" through the game.  All these 20 years, I've been looking for "fast paths" through the game, that are not cheating.  Supply Crawlers simply aren't one of them.  That's because Tree Farms followed by Hybrid Forests perform very well.  You get a lot of minerals that way, definitely enough minerals.  And they are sustainable minerals, both in the sense of lowering eco-damage, and in the sense of how much of your goddamn time you have to waste clicking on things to get a result.  The forests don't take a lot out of you as a player.  But pushing all those Formers to make Mines, and then putting crawlers on them, it takes more out of you.  I've done plenty of games that way.  Dozens upon dozens.  Over time, I just haven't seen the point, as it doesn't get me any farther along than forests.  Once you've got Hybrid Forests and enough trees, your bases are just going to work all those Mines within range anyways.

Quote

Is my understanding right, that you mainly plant forests on all tiles?

No.  I plant forests on all flat tiles, that are Arid or Moist.  That turns them into minerals producing tiles and doesn't waste potential food from a Rainy tile.  Tiles that already have a mineral from rolling terrain, I turn into farms with solar collectors.  I never ever build mines on farms.  There has to be a balance of energy production, and there's a convenience reason to do this too.  When I click in the center of the city popup, to reallocate what tiles the workers will work, I want it to do something sane that has reasonable production and growth.  All of my terraformed tiles (except mines) have food-minerals-energy production.  That makes them look like fairly sane choices to the tile allocator and doesn't result in stupid stuff.  I rarely want to be in the business of allocating tiles manually.  There are too many cities to do that for, and I'm only going to do it for a few cities at the beginning of the game.  Generally speaking the UI of this game doesn't scale to piles and piles of cities, it's a disaster.

Because Formers aren't an infinite resource, some of those trees spread to non-flat tiles.  If they spread to a Rainy Rolling tile, I might turn that into a farm at some point.  You get 5 minerals added to production for harvesting your forest within a city radius, so it's not a complete loss.  Some people do heavy early game exploit of forests that way, but I think it's too much work and almost never bother.  It's a trick I might pull out of my ass if something was trying to PWN me, but that never happens, so I forget about it.  Anyways, when trees spread to Rolling, Moist or Rolling, Arid land, I typically leave them be nowadays.  Tree Farms come in the game tech soon enough, and at that point a farmed tree than a farmed farm.  My feeling about a lot of things is that techs kinda whiz by, so it's best not to dwell or get fixated on the early era stuff.  I might feel differently if I was playing a Tech Stagnation game, but I rarely do that.

Trees also help with too much fungus.  They won't completely cure fungus by themselves, you do need Formers to snip snip snip.  But I've often been working a fungus tile, with a forest next to it, and on completing the fungus removal it doesn't just become bare terrain.  Often it instantly turns into forest.  Sometimes before I've even finished.  Sometimes I have to interrupt my "F" order to the Former, so it doesn't start removing the forest it wasn't expecting to be there.

Because I allow my trees to spread, I often have pretty big forests by midgame.  To a fault really: I'll have inland cities that didn't get moisture, got a lot of forests, and didn't grow much for lack of farms.  But boy they will sure pop big once one starts throwing the Tree Farms on them!  And there's money in Tree Farms, you'll have money, so you can buy more Tree Farms and convert lots of stuff.  Pretty soon you've got a hopping population with a lot of minerals.  Tree Farms are powerful, their main liability is they take until midgame to get.

Unless you're an Alien.  Then you can direct your research.  They have a lot of options for trying out various "fast paths" that humans don't have.  But, this ability of theirs also turns SMAC into a sort of "baby game".  Like I get to win easily, all the time, bwaaah!  I often play Marr if my question is, "Who can stomp everyone else the fastest, militarily?"  Like if I wanted to figure out how fast I can win the game, militarily, on a Huge map, I'd choose Marr.  H'minee does work too, in some ways better because she can choose Democracy to grow and keep cities efficient.  Neither one is a challenge, they are exercises in stomping things, if one is in the mood for that.

I think the Aliens are a great way to explore what tech approaches are possible, for a less experienced player, because you can choose what you're doing and see how things work out.  But there comes a point at which you "get it", and then they're just cakewalk factions.

Quote

So far I have my formers automated, I like to automate as much as possible if its not to costly.

I think manually terraforming at least at the beginning of the game is a fast path, and I think many veterans will agree with me on this.  Forests definitely help you make Colony Pods faster at the beginning.  They enable Secret Projects if you have enough food, like if your city is sitting on a nutrient resource on flat terrain.

Midgame, my jury's out.  I don't like the AI making stupid decisions about this, and I enjoy manually terraforming to a point.  In mid to late game I am mainly enjoying making my rail lines and raising land masses and so forth.  One could try to tweak the very limited number of terraforming options in the game preferences.  There aren't enough options, I'd need a lot more circumstantial control to be happy about it.