The Giant Pirate Kingdom - 256x128 map

[bvanevery]

Details many missiles

many missiles

Deirdre hit me in the face with 4 Cruise Missiles, wiping out units that were about to take her city.  I retalliated by at least emptying her city, but I couldn't take it.  I sabotaged her production in the empty city, so she'll need to bring something else in if she wants to hold it.  The other city, my probe teams died yet again, so she'll be sending a Chaos Cruiser out to me next turn.  I guess we'll see if my armor holds up.

I've decided my citizens in various cities would be slightly happier if I gave them Clean Gatling Police as garrison units.  It's not really necessary, but it might put some cities into a Golden Age, and I really don't need more Super Formers.  The ones I've already got, just cover everything up and keep me from being able to see what I'm doing.  I can't tell where exactly I'm going to put the new cities, I just figure I'll terraform everything first and then decide.

Belatedly, I realize that the "T" key is for looking at terrain without all the stuff in the way.  Something I've almost never used, but helps with a vast fleet of too many Formers.

I'm experiencing serious "ship pushing fatigue".  They're starting to arrive and intervene, but Deirdre's building artillery, so they're not useful against her main island.  I suppose they will go after little sea bases and cut off her expansion.

Details foothold

foothold

In subsequent turns I did manage to take and hold her city.  However she peppered my sea base with Conventional Missiles, denuding it, and making it more difficult to reinforce.  I really am starting to wonder, why did I bother to invade her?  This has been piles upon piles of mouseclicks for not much result.

The game has been rather unsatisfying that way.  I build a "perfect" home base, but it still doesn't really have any power to do anything about another civilization, due to the vast distances involved.  I am beginning to think that only fast research and gaining The Space Elevator matters at this scale.  And what have I done that's actually Pirate-y?  Precious little.  I have a mostly land empire, and I find that raising land to make shallow water, doesn't result in much water remaining.  I could have done this with any other faction, and something quicker to Build at the beginning, would have had a better time with early Secret Projects.

[bvanevery]

Details end of the world as we know it

end of the world as we know it

You know what?  I've had enough.  BUncle is going to hate me for this, but I'm quitting.  This is way too many unsatisfying mouseclicks, for this "invasion".  I've been at it for a long time.  I have not played on a 4X Huge map for quite some time, and clearly I've underestimated the logistical problems involved.  Yeah I can think I'm going to push ships that far, but as I've observed in other games in the past, it's going to wear me out.

I want a new game with some things I'm going to put right:

• No Random Events
• get real land masses for the AIs
• put the capitol somewhere less labor intensive to make the circle
• somehow do better at early Secret Projects
• spend much more time researching, not so much Wealth
• no piling up money and doing nothing with it
• don't bother terraforming and crawling far out at sea
• don't push ships.  It's too much work.
• if I decide to invade someone, invade.  Otherwise don't.  It's too far away.

I'm not sure if I'm going to do the Pirates again.  If I do, I'll need to play them rather differently.  Like Pirates.  In the water, not all this landlubbering.  Maybe if I generated the rigth kind of map, the "big lake on an otherwise land world" that I had originally imagined, it could work.  I could sit in the middle of my lake... and eventually turn the world to water?

Or, I will forget the Pirates for now, having worn myself out with them, and pick a better research faction.

[Buster's Uncle]

[shrugs] Plenty good enough for the front page - a tangible improvement.  Cruising for at least a B+ until the last post, and I'll still give it a C.  Don't sweat it.

[bvanevery]

No A for effort?  I've been playing this game for 3 days!  C'mon, the writeup of what's there is better than a C.  I can understand a B overall.  It is 4X Huge.

[Buster's Uncle]

The management wishes to consider that asking nicely, and raises grade to B, because major progress counts, and that's averaging an A for effort in.

[bvanevery]

Thanks.  Wasn't a graded, for credit course anyways.  Been a long time since I've done one of those.

[Green1]

The designers knew that 4x games attract Min-Maxer type player that hate randomness messing with their builds. They also knew some players liked the random events because they threw a measure of uncertainty and excitement.
Personally, I refuse to play without random events. It makes the game less tedious.

You can disable random events with the "Bell Curve" option in the custom rules menu when you set up the game.

[bvanevery]

Aha, the famous Green1 of the very long AARs.  Here's what I think of different random events:

• market crashes, network overloads, solar storms that destroy all satellites, asteroid hit that destroys a city - these are disproportionately and egregiously painful to the player.  No positive event remotely compensates for the damage these do.
• Prometheus virus which depopulates cities, Planet Blight which destroys farmland - these are acceptable.  The player can build The Human Genome Project or Research Hospitals to avoid the virus, and the damage it does is modest.  The blight can be avoided by building biology labs, or mitigated by planting more trees than farms.
• Sunspots - are tactically interesting, as they're both a benefit and a problem.  You can get away with political stuff during sunspots that you otherwise can't.  It's a pity that sunspots are held hostage to the other random events.
• crop failure, all solar collectors destroyed, atmospheric haze, industrial crash - these are slightly annoying and don't add anything to the game.  Typically I do nothing about them at all.  Some city is producing less for 10 years, whoop dee doo.
• industrial boom - this is like the only good event.  Having extra minerals in a larger city is helpful at a certain point in the game.  That said, it's also "thank you for the mindworm attack" at some points in the game.
• population boom - fine, grow a little faster, whatever, not that interesting.
• new resource discovered - not interesting.  Doesn't add anything to the game.
• market surge - I've received 50 credits so many times from this, that it's downright insulting.  And I've never gained remotely as much as I've lost.

I think events in games should be modeled after the Sunspots.  They should have an important but manageable effect on the game.  They should have benefits as well as liabilities.

[Green1]

At least none of those are as bad as one event in Civ 4 : Beyond the Sword that spawned a stack of axemen or spearmen early, early game when no one had anything to counter it! lol. That was game over. At least none of the events are game ending.

Well, if it is any consequence, the AI has to deal with the random events too. I guess that makes it fair unlike a game like Fallen Enchantress which stuff only happens to the player.

One of your problems is you are playing on too large of a map for your patience. There is a reason why the 4x designers of a lot of games recommend against it.

It's like playing 100th level 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons. Sounds epic, yes! There was even a book for it. But, once your character sheets were 15 to 20 pages long and you are doing college algebra to see if you even scraped Mr. 800 Hit Dice world eater that took the DM 5 hours to draw up... less so.

Ever tried small maps with intense rivalry and abundant native life?

[bvanevery]

At least none of those are as bad as one event in Civ 4 : Beyond the Sword that spawned a stack of axemen or spearmen early, early game when no one had anything to counter it! lol. That was game over. At least none of the events are game ending.

But it's also game replaying.  I do not think that was good game design, but you could learn how to prepare for and deal with that stack of inevitable units.  The regularity of the occurrence, as opposed to it being "random from nowhere WTF?" like in SMAC, meant you got a lot of practice with it.  It's like a much worse version of the Prometheus virus: you learn to build the facilities to stop it.  You are forced to plan your early game around it.

Barbarians and other civs have always "tested you" by sending 1 lone catapult or something to mess with your cities, to see if you're being cheap and not garrisoning them.  That was just a particularly powerful test.

Well, if it is any consequence, the AI has to deal with the random events too.

Not really.  I'm playing on Transcend and resource deprivation events hardly matter to the AI, as it's got so many bonuses.

One of your problems is you are playing on too large of a map for your patience.

Yes and no.  I cannot play on too small a map for the challenge.  There is nothing game mecahnically interesting about the smaller ones.  "Summarily execute your nearest enemy".  Wet, lather, rinse, repeat, game over. 

Ever tried small maps with intense rivalry and abundant native life?

"Ever?"  You surely missed somewhere in these posts that I'm a ~20 year veteran of the game.  Yes I have turned over that stone at some point.  I've also played thousands of games of Freeciv that prove a tactically satisfying game can be had in a 16x16 square, surrounding your 1 city.  In short, been there, done that.  Low level tactics aren't where it's at for me.  I play Huge or nowadays Giant maps because that creates a strategic challenge.

BTW I don't believe in abundant native life because it cripples the AI players.

[Green1]

Personal preference...

Did not mean to insult your play experience. I have had spurts of the game on and off. But, there are some settings even I have not tried. Even after all these years.

As far as cripple AI, not necessarily. Deidre, Cha Dawn, the Caretakers, and the Anti Mind do very well. Of course non natives will have issues. Only thing is that AI spore launcher bug.

[Buster's Uncle]

-He brings up something I'd been meaning to suggest, bringing up the  Anti Mind; you might find playing with or against custom factions to make your SMACX experience fresh again.

I didn't get Crossfire until '08, and that lame new set freshened my play so much that it's what got me digging around the nets for custom factions, and into modding, and ultimately got me to join the online community.  You might consider looking around the custom factions section in Downloads...

[bvanevery]

As far as cripple AI, not necessarily. Deidre, Cha Dawn, the Caretakers, and the Anti Mind do very well. Of course non natives will have issues.

Well of the official factions, that's only 3 that could be expected to thrive in a bed of fungus.  If they even do, which I have my doubts.  They need to eat and grow, same as I do.  So let's say I'm player #4, that means factions #5 #6 #7 are going to be DOA.  Unless I doubled up those 3 factions that can actually handle it.  If they can.  Sounds like a pretty artificial game, one where one's only interested in fungus for some reason.  I'm inclined to stand by my claim that excessive fungus is bad for the AI players.  I've certainly seen enough games where it crippled them.

I have resisted modded factions for 2 reasons.

1) the fear that from a game design / balance standpoint, someone will have done something really goofy.  The 14 official factions are not all balanced, but they are the official factions and I know them well.  Other people's mods, I have to sort through them and gain experience with them, to tell if they are "worth it" or not.  I've played a gazillion third party things in the Wesnoth community, and I definitely have some opinions on the overall dynamics and discipline of modding communities.  And, I would add, I worked on a "top of the heap" campaign back in the day.  Lord knows if it gets any notoriety now.  Maintenance, archiving, and bitrot are serious problems.

2) When in the business of writing AARs for the nominal purpose of increasing traffic, I think writing about the standard game is a better public pitch.  If more of an ecology surrounded SMAC, I'd feel differently.  I'd also feel differently if someone explicitly requested I play a certain kind of game, but so far no one has.  Whether modded factions or otherwise.  I guess I'd call that a "demo" game.

Finding something in the game I haven't done in SMAC, or didn't know about, is pretty rare for me but occasionally happens.

Oddly enough, I've owned the SMACX expansion since forever, but I only played it a lot, relatively recently.  It definitely happened sometime after I started living out of my car.  Maybe 6 years ago?  I made up for lost time though because I had a few gazillion hours of free time available to play it.  The benefit of a no job, no wife, no kids, no rent existence.

I think going back to SMACX, in this period, is an artifact of "what you do once Civ IV lets you down".  I snapped that DVD in half, same as many games before, including Civ III, SMAC, Civ II, and Call To Power 2.  I've deleted Emperor of the Fading Suns repeatedly and have never finished a game of it.  I tried the Civ V demo but it didn't fix Civ IV's problems and added new ones.  That is the point at which I stopped expecting anything out of the Civ franchise.  I demoed Beyond Earth but found it very lame compared to SMAC.  Not even gonna bother with Civ VI.  I can't run it on my 10 year old laptops anyways.

[Green1]

Ah...

But there is a market for you to be the guinea pig. Lots of folks are in the same boat. They want to spice up their game, but dwant to see whatever mod/faction/whatever in action beforehand. Balance be darned.

[Buster's Uncle]

Tough to NOT notice that Green's AARs were in what our circle came to call "monsters" - ridiculously OP custom factions as opponents for a challenge.  A rough sort of balance if you're playing a monster, too.  A quick easy game to refresh the pallet -that has a place- if you are and the opponents are only the usual suspects.