Fusion Power Is NOW!

[Vishniac]

After downloading/installing 3.5 and 3.5d, the game says it's version 3.5c
Error in patch or error in Vishniac, could someone confirm?

[Mart]

After downloading/installing 3.5 and 3.5d, the game says it's version 3.5c
Error in patch or error in Vishniac, could someone confirm?

I have the same, 3.5c when I use 3.5d exe file.
I haven't asked Yitzi about it, but most likely he forgot to replace the version number.

[Vishniac]

Good. I'm ready to start then.
I won't read what people post except the number of turns: Kirov put the bar at 103. 

I'm happy we could allow for several tries because, from what I've seen, this faction's current situation is not only far from how I usually play but also as far as I can imagine from how Roze should be played.
So, assessing and revamping, or thinking outside the box? Fortunately we have time for options, even if they eventually reveal as fool's errands.

[Vishniac]

The Gaians have initiated the Ascent To Transcendence."

God; this, finally.  "Where?"

"Seems to triangulate on Gaia's Landing, Datajack.

Another question with a slight spoiler

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I thought the game had been tweaked so the Gaians had begun the Ascent to Transcendance and I have to stop it among other things but that's not the case. Gaia's Landing is building...something else  and no base is on Ascent to Transcendance.
So, did I thought wrong or is the story misleading?

[Kirov]

Another question with a slight spoiler

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Yeah, I guess the story can be interpreted as somewhat misleading, I too thought she's just commenced the ATT. Maybe we can assume that Deedee was just thinking aloud in a local cafeteria about transcending at some point in the future. But everything becomes clear when you open the file, the goal is to prevent her from getting around to start the Ascent.

[Buster's Uncle]

MY take?

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I bet the game starts with ATT going at Gaia's Landing, I got that idea from Mart in the first place, though I chose the capitol, but you both know well how the AI is...  I don't actually know that there's a way to lock production for a scenario, is there?

[Mart]

Gaians will most likely start Ascent to Transcendence, as soon as they research appropriate technologies. The story is somewhere in the future from 2300 year perspective. It shows the intent of DA, as they are not going to win by transcendence, but prevent it.
It would be for the player to "write" the actual ending. The condition for the contest is to acquire Transcendent thought 1, in order for Roze to undermine the Planet uplink.


That's true, good players would research fast enough to have TT1 before Gaians would have Voice of Planet, or other faction. But I think some players would actually see AtT initialization in their games.

[Mart]

= = =
[Edit]
Added version for unmodified alphax.txt, which should work with Firaxis patched exe files, and any version, that did not modify alphax.txt file
patches by: scient, kyrub. Also official, like Planetary Pack, GoG, etc.
GOTM1804[UA]


UA stands for Unmodified Alphax.txt
Installation and checking is the same.
= = =

[bvanevery]

The game fiction threw me for a loop once I actually started playing.  I thought I was going to be fighting the Gaians who are about to Transcend, with my lowly Fusion powered hacker faction.  That is not actually the case.  Rather, the story is flavor for the actual goal, "get to Transcendent Thought 1".  All factions start at roughly the same tech level, nobody is about to Transcend.  I see no possibility that they ever will.  They are way too incompetent to compete with the likes of me.

I kept "Democratic Free Market".  I immediately decided upon a "Wealth first" strategy.  I reshuffled and disbanded garrison units to more reasonable proportions.  I made Cruiser Probe Teams and infiltrated everyone.  Even Morgan, by way of the expensive Empath Guild.  I embarked on a massive campaign of fungus clearing, turning this into "proper" land.  Invasions from other factions were light and I repelled them easily.  I found barrages of conventional missiles to be highly annoying and lost some sea bases because of that.  Other sea bases, I managed to raise up to land, figuring they're much easier to defend and reinforce when connected by land. 

I'm at MY 2359.  Technologically I'm in the lead, even though my choice is Wealth.  I'm only slightly ahead on tech though, and that's pretty much deliberate.  Roze is supposed to be a tech poacher, not a tech powerhouse.  I intend to rapidly overtake everyone with tech when I'm good and ready to.

I am about to finish Hybrid Forests everywhere.  Labs all got built already.  I have Super Formers and a full rail network.  I will switch to Knowledge and start mildly muscling my way outwards in Free Market fashion pretty soon now.  I have already taken a couple of Pirate bases adjacent to my shores, which sorta makes up for the ones I lost.  I've raised land to get next to other Pirate bases, and writing this up, I just remembered I've got Shard weapons I haven't even prototyped.  Easy to get distracted when "fixing someone else's empire".  Got Tachyon weapons ready, prototyping Photon armor.

In the Secret Projects dept. I've managed The Empath Guild, The Xenoempathy Dome, The Theory of Everything in my capitol, and The Living Refinery.  Morgan is building The Longevity Vaccine in 4 different cities and I can't steal that tech from him as he's got the HSA.

Also Morgan is my ally and I'm not sure I'd steal from him anyways.  Domai is still allied.  Miriam got sick of my Democracy awhile ago.  Most folks are fighting with each other, as my Interceptor defenses have been decent and I wasn't fun to go after.  I got the Governorship awhile ago, a few turns late because I spaced out from some Benadryl and people interrupting me at the park.  Think Gaians and Spartans are still allied, but really who cares.  The AIs are all stupid and they'll all die.  It's just a question of whether "Wealth first" turns out to be faster than other contestant's strategies or not.

[bvanevery]

MY 2363.  I switch to Knowledge, obtaining a modest 1 tech per 10 turns.  Budget is 40-20-40.  I could shift more to Labs and get 1 tech per 8 turns, but with an efficiency penalty, so I don't.  Income is 360 credits/turn.  Not sure what I'll do with so much cash.  Insta-build Secret Projects if I get access to something, or buy cities I suppose.

I begin a military campaign.  Objectives are to take 3 sea bases touching my land, 2 of which were mine at the beginning of the game.  Slightly stalled by needing to repel a small invasion force.  Built rails to some of the bases, using Amphibious AAA Photon units as cover for Formers.  Giant mass of Gas Shard Marines outbound next turn.

At this rate I'm not understanding how I'd Transcend in 40 turns to match Kirov's score, but I will play on.  My bases are rather large... I'm wondering why anyone else's bases would be large, without doing what I've had to do.  Fungus has to be cleared to be large. 

If all these games are really just about crawling a tech researching capitol, then I just won't bother with competitions anymore.  That ability is overpowered.  I don't like the idea that I've built every piece of infrastructure possible for research and it still could be not worth as much as piles of crawlers.

If the answer is really don't bother to build infrastructure, just conquer everyone and get research on sheer mass of cities, then I won't feel so bad.  It's a different strategy than what I chose, but valid.

I think tweaking citizens is a pretty stupid, micromanagerial way to go about any of the Civ-like games, but I may have to resort to it.  Noted for complete removal in any 4X TBS I ever author.

[bvanevery]

It is still MY 2363.  After a night's sleep, I changed my budget to 30-40-40.  My goal is to put every one of my developed cities into a Golden Age.  I went to my size 16 cities and un-worked up to 8 tiles, since they can't grow anymore and only need maintenance food.  I changed those workers into Librarians.  For cities less than size 16, I un-worked my Mines, as I need the food for further growth.  I turned those into Librarians.

I find it a bit odd that Drones can be replaced with Librarians, and get a Golden Age, as long as you're willing to un-work tiles.  Granted, I did shift my budget to make this possible.  I just think all of this "optimality" should be automatically computed as one makes a budget, in some ideal 4X TBS game, rather than this futzy per-base micromanagerial tweaking.  At a higher level, I should be able to say "I want more research, subject to the following constraints" and the system should just respond.

These changes reduced my income to 45 credits/turn, which is fine as I certainly didn't need 360 credits/turn.  Now I discover 1 tech every 6 turns.  I've changed my research focus to Discover.  I really need Digital Sentience to get Cybernetic society, Thinkers, and the Network Backbone.  If I get it soon, then perhaps I can pull this off.

I reduced my allocation of forces for military expansion, restricting myself to only those 3 sea bases touching my land.  I'm making Supply Crawlers for the size 16 cities and AAA units to cover them.  I figure I will crawl all of my cities, not just my capitol as I consider that an overpowered exploit.  I might be production limited by how safe that is in practice though.

A number of my Formers have been beaten to a pulp by conventional missiles.  That's ok as I sent my ordinary Formers to do those jobs, keeping my Super Formers mostly out of reach.  Some Formers also got destroyed trying to improve a river system next to the Garland Crater.  It flooded, thanks to Domai, and now it's a 40 meter land of death for any terraformer that tries to improve anything.  Oddly the river changed course at one point and some of those tiles, I was able to work.  I raised some land to try to make the change permanent.  However some further climate change subsequently flattened the rivers back down again, causing hunger in some nearby cities.

The main job of my remaining Formers will be to plant trees.  I've got Hybrid Forests everywhere now, and trees are now more valuable than the cropland I made earlier.  Making too much cropland, I consider to have been a significant mistake in this game.

[bvanevery]

After writing the above, I changed to Conquer because I realized that MMI was one of the prereqs for Digital Sentience.  I got Retroviral Engineering which wasn't helpful for anything.  No aliens to commit "free pass" genetic atrocities on.

MY 2375.  I finally got MMI.  I forgot that MMI gives the Thinker citizen.  Suddenly my Librarians all become Thinkers and my research rate jumps to 1 tech every 2 turns!  Not sure how many techs I have to go through to win, but this is starting to seem "possible".

All of my core cities have been size 16 for awhile due to the Golden Ages.  I am crawling from my capitol, but most of my other crawlers are to buff up the minerals outputs of cities that cut workers in favor of Librarians / Thinkers.  Now I need to build The Cloudbase Academy and The Cyborg Factory quickly, so a lot of those crawlers will get put to immediate use.  It's not a vast number of crawlers, it's modest.  I have enough to insta-complete The Cloudbase Academy this turn, but The Cyborg Factory will be a multi-turn project.

I haven't been able to afford to provide my crawlers any special protection either.  Rather, nobody's been flying air missions at me lately.  My air defenses aren't that great, as I've moved all my injured Interceptors to the 1 Aerospace Complex I built.  They keep shooting at this Fusion Silksteel Transport spam that Deirdre is forever throwing at my shores.  The ships are usually empty, but they get in the way and sometimes disrupt my food supply.  Any infantry that actually lands, I kill immediately, that's not a problem.  The problem is not making my citizens unhappy, which means I can't readily intervene at sea.

The Formers have done much of their forest planting job.  I don't have any resource problems in my core cities.  My recently conquered cities, however, have not been much developed.  Budget is still 30-40-40 but income has risen to ~160 credits/turn.  I'm still stabilizing and garrisoning the conquests.

Now changing research focus to Build as Industrial Nanorobotics is the next prereq for Digital Sentience.

Hey wait a minute... Librarians gave me +6 Labs.  Thinkers give me +1 Psych +3 Labs.  My research should be going down!  Did I improve my research rate already and not realize it?  I confess I don't know what's going on.  But I needed MMI to get Digital Sentience, so whatever.

[Mart]

Librarians, Thinkers, Transcendi form a chain of specialists, so the subsequent ones should not give lower yields. They all have lab points increased to 6. This way it helps in early game and not much in late game. They are increasing psych and economy only.
If you check, Thinkers give +1 psych, +6 labs.

[bvanevery]

Well the Thinkers didn't say that in the selection dialog box, so I'm guessing there's some text that didn't get changed.

MY 2379.  I research Digital Sentience.  I switch my research focus to Explore as picking up the Universal Translator is worth a 2 turn tech jump.  I go Cybernetic, which does not actually improve my research rate of 1 tech per 2 turns.  However it does allow me to switch my budget to 40-30-30 and maintain the same research rate.  Now I get 400 credits/turn, which will help with city improvements and the backlog of Secret Projects I need to complete.  I need to build the Network Backbone, the Cloning Vats, and the Nano Factory.  Morgan has started to build the latter and I'd like to block him from doing so, but the Network Backbone is top priority.  I suspect that as my prodigious rate of research continues, lagging on the completion of Secret Projects will continue to be a problem.  Most of my bases are building Fusion Speeder Supply Crawlers.

MY 2380.  With the extra cash, the Network Backbone will be completed next turn.  Fiddling with my budget, it seems that 20-30-50 will now get me 1 tech per turn!  Income is reduced to 51 credits/turn.

MY 2403.  What a groaner.  I've tied for 1st place!  The intervening years were a whole pile of micromanaging my budget, to extract the most cash while still maintaining 1 tech per turn.  Towards the end I did nothing but produce various kinds of supply crawlers.  I made them in 30, 40, 50, and 60 mineral denominations so as not to waste production.  I've built a lot of Secret Projects, and indeed I think I can finish them all this turn, except for the Voice and the Ascent of course.  I haven't actually played this year and am submitting my results at the beginning of my turn.  This is for people's curiosity, and in case anyone decides upon a method to resolve a tie.  In which event, I'll finish my turn by completing whatever Secret Projects I can, but I want y'all to admire my army of Supply Crawlers.

I'd be happy to share 1st place if nobody does any better.  I definitely won't play the scenario again, so if someone is motivated enough to play again to beat 2403, so be it.  I have proven that "Wealth first" is at least as good as whatever Kyrub did.  Which I'm wondering, was what exactly?

[Mart]

bvanevery, there is indication in the sav file, that it was not playing with correct alphax.txt, when you were ending the game.
Check your research cost, it should be around 22-23 thousands, not around 4400.

What might have happened is that, you started the game in the folder:
"C:\GOG Games\SMAC Yitzi 35d\"
but later you changed gaming folder to:
"C:\GOG Games\SMAC Yitzi 3_5d\"
and the initial folder could not be found by the game, like you renamed it.
This will make the game to use default alphax.txt file. This is why we ask in the GOTM prep post, something, that may escape the reader:

Code: [Select]

- Do not change folder name of GOTM1804 to any other, or change the structure of the folders/files inside after you start the scenario, and
- Do not remove the folder GOTM1804 from scenarios after you started to play. That would screw up the game.
However, I see now, that does not cover all the cases.

Probably, it happened around the time you did not see, that your thinkers were giving +6 labs.
You probably can find the last save, that was with correct alphax.txt.