AAR: Keeping the Peace between... aliens and Yang and Svensgaard? (Thinker mod)

[pblur]

Welcome to an After Action Report for Thinker mod! I've been playing SMAC and beating Transcend for many years, and recently installed Thinker AI. At first it absolutely stomped me, even on Thinker difficulty, but I slowly figured out what I was doing wrong and, after a half dozen games on Thinker, started actually beating it. I've won two games on Transcend difficulty so far, but the game is hard. Just how I like it!

I'm playing with the latest Develop build of Thinker

Differences from default settings:

• New world builder disabled
  I don't love the pangaea-ness of the maps it made on my first few tries.
• Rare pods disabled
• Nessus Canyon enabled
• Buff to Planet Cult
  +4 Planet instead of +2.
• Nerf to Usurpers/Caretakers
  -1 INDUSTRY and no recycling tanks

This is my first AAR, so let's see how it goes. First off, map is just Standard with middle of the road choices for all customizations. Transcend difficulty, blind research, no Unity Survey. All factions randomized. Looks like I rolled Lal!

Yay for less Drone micro!

Initial start is pretty decent, some nutrients, a river for a bit of early energy... it's no Monsoon Jungle, but it will do. Building right here, and then sending scout+colony pod west.

While I'm getting started, let's check who else is in the game:


Well, that's pretty scary. Lots of people who are rarely very friendly... I may have to bribe my way to peace in the early game.

[pblur]

All right, let's eXplore and eXpand!


Wow, I've never seen an AI this quickly on Thinker. Turn 8 Drones. At least it's not Aliens or Yang... He refuses to trade techs, and just wants a truce. Fine.

Best possible first tech! And I got a pod completion on recycling tanks in my capital, and a Battle Ogre.

And then I screwed up mind worm movement and lost my second city to a worm. I have two colony pods en route, so it's not impossible to recover, but that's a huge setback.

And then I lost my advance scout and artifact to a mind worm.

Here's my new 3-city empire:

I'm far enough behind that I think my only real play for relevance here is to bully domai with my battle ogre, so I march in that direction. At the other end of my exploration I run into the Usurpurs who immediately declare Vendetta on me...

I'm two bases into Drone territory, and facing a giant wave of scout patrols. Still, maybe I can get a pact out of him? I've heard good things about early submissive-pacted allies...

And the Usurpers show up to tell me I'm not the only one playing ogre games:

They wipe out two cities before I mob it down with scout patrols. Unless I get a submissive pact almost immediately, this game is done:

Yep, that didn't happen. I'm down to one scout patrol in my attack force, and Domai is trying to bully me. I got a bad roll vs a Usurper scout and lost ANOTHER city to them... GAME OVER.


I can't even blame Thinker AI too much for this loss. I think it's mostly just screwing up on losing that base early, and getting fairly unlucky with faction spawns.

I'll reroll again in this thread; no point making another for an attempt this short.

[DrazharLn]

Good luck! Looks like you're playing it a bit fast and loose with all of those undefended bases on transcend, but I guess with such aggressive neighbours you have to take some more risks.

[pblur]

Good luck! Looks like you're playing it a bit fast and loose with all of those undefended bases on transcend, but I guess with such aggressive neighbours you have to take some more risks.

Yeah, one of the things I'm still trying to balance is just how much I can sacrifice defenses for faster expansion early. In this case, I could have kept the base I lost by just buying the defender a turn earlier (and I'd seen the mind worm coming, so this was just a miscalculation.) Still, I usually lose a new base or two each game at this point.

[Buster's Uncle]

You never know when the worms won't bother - they do go the other way, some.

-I'm a big believer in risky fast early expansion, too.

[pblur]

Alright, new game, so new factions!



My first Pirates game under Thinker! My main lesson from Thinker in the past is just how critical FAST expansion early is. Pirates...struggle with this. -Effic, really expensive colony pods, etc. I'm going to try fast expansion to land as well; hopefully that will let me avoid the usual drudging start.

And who are my lucky opposition?



Well. That's a lot of builders. Sounds like I may be able to expand in peace for a while at least. And Pirates really excel as the tech broker in times of peace. We'll see how much Thinker AI nerfed that strat.


This is on the first turn; I got a sonar beacon. One base is settled next to land, and the other I'll settle right where it is. Hopefully I can get land settlements going on both landmasses! That left one clearly has the Sunny Mesa on it, which is... fine. Never seems like that big of a deal to me.

If you look closely, you can see that my first base is already make a Transport. That's right; not a Transport Foil. This is a tech I saw a friend of mine do for land-adjacent sea bases. You can build an infantry-base transport to allow transportation of land units to the adjacent land mass. Consider the mineral cost in rows:

• 2: Infantry Transport
• 3: Transport Foil
• 3: Colony Pod
• 7: Sea Colony Pod

So I can get my first colony pod produced 20 minerals sooner than I could get a sea colony pod, and subsequent colony pods can be produced at the normal land pace. Great for the exponential scaling I need early game.

Eventually I'll upgrade these transports to have synth armor, and they'll be defenders+police units as well.

At least, that's the theory. I haven't TRIED this before for early game.

All right, gun foil is off and exploring, and my first land colony pod is rolling off. Exponential growth GET! Let's hope I don't meet Miriam waiting to whack me from the east...


First land base up and running, and I rushed my first sea colony pod on my second base. I now have a second land-adjacent base, which is building its own transport.

... It occurs to me that if I'd just built a foil transport, I could have just sailed it over here. I wonder if that would have been better.


I met the Believers far to the west and they're happy, for some reason? I traded a tech or two, and got them magnanimous and signed a treaty. I'm not going to pact the one warmonger around and potentially alienate all the builders.

I also met Morgan on the land immediately to my west, and he managed to get the land to the edge of the sea claimed before I could get a colony pod on it. I signed a pact with him though; should be getting some commerce before TOO long.


University next, and again, friends! I also got Deidre's number from Morgan, and Roze+Yang from Zak. Roze is power-leader, but far from me. She tried extorting Doctrine Flexibility, I refused, and she declared Vendetta. Good luck with that.

Overall Diplomacy


Good enough. Yang and Roze are pretty far from me. Time to ICS as well as I can...


Looks like my island to the east is small and all mine. EXCELLENT. Every Pirate needs an island hideout. And you know I'm metal 'cause my hideout has uranium.

(I'll show myself out)



Final state for this post. Expansion is going pretty well. I tried to get onshore and claim the Nexus, but lost that race too. If I'd built a transport foil first, I'd have made this one.

[DrazharLn]

I like your AAR style, thanks for writing

If you'd gone for a transport foil in the first base and then used it for shuttling pods then it or your base could also have just ended up eaten by an Isle of the deep. You never know what might happen.

Looks like a good start this time, and pirates are a strong faction.

[pblur]

I like your AAR style, thanks for writing

If you'd gone for a transport foil in the first base and then used it for shuttling pods then it or your base could also have just ended up eaten by an Isle of the deep. You never know what might happen.

Looks like a good start this time, and pirates are a strong faction.

Yeah, it's true. This is a really hard call, and it's not clear which option is best IMO.

I'm... less sure that the Pirates are a strong faction. I used to think that, but Thinker has forced me to reevaluate the value of FAST exponential growth early. Lots of potential in the midgame though!

[pblur]

All right, some more quiet expansion. Settling a deserted extension of the south pole, some one-tile islands, more sea bases...


I started trying to build the Weather Paradigm early, missed it, and subsequently converted that base to working on Human Genome Project, then The Virtual World, and lost all of those. Finally finished on the Command Nexus. Not bad, not great. Very bad success on secret projects this game.

Partially, this is because the AIs have really lucked into a good beeline, and they're researching a lot faster than me. I have a lot of friends I can buy techs off of, so I'm doing pretty great too:


Boreholes and supply crawlers. The foundations of success. I self-researched Adaptive Economics, and managed to rush the Planetary Energy Grid using artifacts before the Gaians could finish it. That's a legitimately good SP in my view, so at least one solid:

Sadly no drone control SPs. That's really rough.

The Gaians and Believers are the two power leaders, and the Gaians particularly are running away with the secret projects. Fortunately for the rest of us, they're adjacent and at war. I'm in a treaty of friendship with each of them, and I'm paying the believers occaisionally for the privilege of staying that way.

The Morgans and University went to war. Morgan broke off our pact over this, and the University extorted credits from me to keep the pact. Fine. I asked him to call off the war against Morgan and he did. Hopefully that won't come back to bite me.


More expansion is more better! Morgan, for some reason, raised the terrain under The Anchorage so it's now on land. That's actually GREAT for me, since I now get to use the monolith square. But I don't know if it's a precursor to war or not. Someday I'll go source-diving in Thinker and understand these things. For now, time to prototype synth garrisons there and get a probe team up.

[pblur]

All right, another session. I'm lagging really hard in just about everything but base count, which makes sense since I have Transcend drone problems. Eventually I should be able to catch up on pops and tech as I get my infrastructure and probe teams goi--

Well crap. I'm miles from that. I'm currently researching either Doctrine:Initiative or Synthetic Fossil Fuels; either of those would be good deterrence if I need to stall out an attack. Time to call around and see what tech trades I can get from my loyal allies.

Advanced Military Algorithms, Intellectual Integrity, and Synth Fossil Fuels! And that switched my current tech to a low-cost conquer one. Maybe impact weapons, if I'm lucky. I also reinstated my pact with Morgan.

Current Tech:


Turns out it wasn't impact weapons, but rather Field Modulation. I guess that might maybe be useful someday when I start fighting fungal pops or Deidre.

Diplomacy is still going pretty well. Lots of people are now working on Hunter-seeker, and I'm still miles from it. Better to focus solely on Explore techs; either Doctrine: Initiative or Doctrine: Air Power is possible, and they're both great for me.



All right, researched this myself! Now... I actually have the industrial base to rush the Maritime Control Center pretty easily (assuming the Gaian's don't finish it more quickly... but I'll really just be building supply crawlers and cashing them in, so I won't waste production in that case.) MCC isn't GREAT on pirates on paper, since you don't get Naval Yards. But... it seems to me that it's still kind of valuable. First, I actually use boats all the time, so that movement is a big deal. And second, it's a bit of a block pick.

I think I'll go for it!

In the mean time, Morgan is willing to give me Air Power, and I unlock impact weapons. Needlejet time! I can now efficiently wage war if needed.

Just in time too, because Miriam asks me to vendetta Roze, and when I refuse Vendetta's me. Oh well. She's on the other side of the map aside from a single transport which is currently adjacent to my only combat ship on the entire Planet. I take the free kills, and start building aerospace centers in my good production cities on Metal Island.



Alright, Morgan ended up with it. Better than Deidre probably, since she's been the tech leader most of the game, but still scary. Especially since Thinker allows him to actually swap out of Free Market for wars.

He's also got a mega-terraforming project rolling:


I... don't know how he sees this working out in his favor. Sure, he may connect to my bit of polar continent down there, but I already have it claimed. He's going to convert one of my sea cities to a land city, and then I'll have territory over most of that land bridge. Guess I'll start building a colony pod in that city so I can rush-expand on the new land.

And hey! It's more ocean shelf, for more Pirate minerals!

I choose to believe he's doing this out of an effort at solidarity and unity with his pact brother, and he doesn't care about the fact that I gain more than he does.

Finally, I'm beginning to put together an invasion force for Yang. I've been at war with him almost the entire game, but we've done nothing to each other. He's by far the worst on the power graph though, and I'm betting that some marines+needle jets will clear him right out.

Final map for this session:

[pblur]

OK, Hive Extermination time!



Indeed, a handful of impact penetrators and one transport of marines makes short work of The Hive. They have a small handful of 3-defense defenders, and tons of scout patrols and recon rovers.  It takes a little while to chew through, but I don't lose much doing it.

BTW, might be worth noting that yes, I'm using impact aircraft instead of missile aircraft. The cost/effectiveness ratio is much better:

• 4/1/8: 3 rows
• 6/1/8: 5 rows

The extra attack just isn't worth the extra cost this early on. I always rush impact needlejets if I get a fast Air Power, and it pays off like this. Of course, this math completely changes when I get



I have to say, I approve of Deidre's grand planetary vision. With fusion reactors, missile needlejets are also 3-rows and a no-brainer.

Unfortunately, the next turn I get


Well, no wonder she was so willing to part with Fusion Power. She's just way ahead of me in tech. I always REALLY hate losing Cloudbase Academy. My secret projects this game aren't really the ones I want, outside of PEG.


At least my war continues apace. Having 5 movement on my transport instead of 3 is really helpful; glad I got the MCC.


Morgan's Mega-engineering finally hit the land-border distance, and I immediately sail a colony pod over. Time to claim some freshly-raised land.


Oooof. And the Gaians have hit one of the key inflection points sooner than me. I feel so far behind on tech.

Though, now that I look at it:

I'm actually only one tech off from Orbital spaceflight. And I'm researching a Discover tech. If I'm really lucky...


OK. Time to stop building aircraft in my 3 aerospace center cities. I crank back labs to 50% with econ at 50%, and start just rushing satellites every turn for a couple turns. I can easily out-strip the Gaian's in DEPLOYING satellites; she's still only launched one!



The university swept in and captured a base my aircraft had cleared out. Annoying. Oh well, I need to move fast and take the rest of the cities before they do.


Man the Gaians are running away with the secret projects. I'm shooting for Mind/Machine Interface, but it's 2 techs away. I still don't have energy uncapped either, which is a REAL problem for seabases and boreholes.

And my war with the Hive ends in a submissive pact!




I really am keeping the peace this game pretty well . Some people like Yang just need beaten into the ground to accept it.

I'm really tempted to go after the university now. I just got fusion lasers, so I have really solid offensive tech, and they're only Friends with everyone. I guess the question is whether I trust my building to be more efficient than his... and how quickly I think I can roll him up. I'm interested in advice on this.

For reference, I currently produce about half the tech per turn of Deidre and Morgan. I really might be able to close that just by getting energy uncapped and building some infrastructure.

Final Map:

[pblur]

OK, time for another session of peaceful piracy while the Gaians make me green with envy...


OOF these guys... they're permanently seething at me, and only friends with the entire world. I could maybe war them... but unlike the Hive, he has a production base and peerish production. I'd probably grind for too long and Deidre would win.

Fortunately though, my next tech is Advanced Spaceflight, and I can rush secret projects so much better than AI Zac. +2 Support get! Democracy is so much less painful, and if I ever have to go hard-war, police state will get me full base-size support. Perfect. Now to rush Orbital Power Transmitters...

And then sunspots. I couldn't ask for better timing. 20 turns to build out infrastructure, energy satellites, etc. 20 turns to pull ahead on non-diedre people without pissing anyone off and getting in a war.

Oh, and all my citizens are soooo peaceful now:

I think they must really love sunspots. It's the only explanation. Please ignore the nerve stapler I'm hiding behind my back. (Thinker AI taught me this trick, and now I will ensure my citizens learn to love the sunspot too!)


Finally. I don't know if I've ever had Advanced Spaceflight without uncapped energy before. MAybe I should have focused this earlier instead of, say, Cyborg Factory. Hard to say. But I've really hurt for not having tree farms as well.


This is getting REALLY scary though. I need to scale my lab output hard, AND setup for better long term growth. That means more bases and cranking back labs to 50%. I'm raking in 700+ energy per turn, which is a lot of network nodes.

For some reason, nooone has settled this area, and there's even a small area of unclaimed territory for a land base. Time to plant a neighborhood sea base, build a transport, rush a colony pod, and start expanding. I'm also close to Adv. Environmental Engineering, at which point deep sea bases get good, and mining platforms get GREAT for me. Another reason I should maybe have chased build techs instead of cyborg factory. But... I mean, I'm probably going to HAVE to fight Deidre to win at some point, and if she had Cyborg AND Cloudbase that would get really rough.

Also, while I'm thinking about Deidre, time to block off some of her commerce, and split her focus between Miriam and someone else. I can turn out elite sea probes with a covert ops center; that's really good odds for provoking a war. Let's do university, since they're being annoying! Success! AND I got Retroviral Engineering (presumably from the academician's private residence, if the datalinks are anything to go by.) Mineral multiplier get! Let's scale up infrastructure even faster.


Meanwhile, spamming some deep sea bases. Need to tile this area, so I have more satellite fuel.

And when you have Genejack factories everywhere before getting tons of tree farms (and when you're the pirates, who don't love tree farms as much as most people), you get:

That's a LOT of sea level rise. I'm the pirates. You might think I'd love this. I... don't. See, this is the south pole:

I call it Global Warming Central. See, the poles are ALL rocky (that produces 3 minerals with a mine on it for some reason instead of 4.) And it's all 10 m elevation. NO FLOODING OUT MY SOUTH POLE MINERAL EXTRACTION CENTER!

Fortunately, the sunspots end about now and I call for a solar shade. I'm the deciding vote, and I go Yes.

Next, I start gearing up the world for war against Deidre. She boots me out of a pact randomly. I incite war between her and morgan with a probe team. I give free techs to University to prosecute their war more efficiently.

But when I talk to the Hive, who are in a SUBMISSIVE pact, I get them instantly declaring Vendetta? What the actual what??

And... they still have units IN MY CITY? While we're at war?

@Induktio, is it possible that this is a bug in your code? Or is there some vanilla bug I don't know about? I haven't done a single atrocity outside of sunspots. No idea why or how they could cancel a submissive pact, let alone not return their units.


Doing well here. This should hurt her science, and prevent her from stomping anybody too quickly. That said, I should really start prepping for war. I prototype Gas Shard needlejets, and upgrade all my dozen missile needlejets to shard ones for 2k energy. I should probably go to war within 20 turns or so. But first, I need drop troops, aircraft, a swarm of probes to catch up on tech (they have 8-res, which is pretty ouch!)

Final map!

[DrazharLn]

I'm really interested.to hear if provoking war between these factions actually leads to them pressuring Deirdre. In the base game the AI is quite bad at fighting wars, so it doesn't matter much.

Also interested to see how the combat rules work. Thi ker changes some of the rules (inspired by will to power, I think), but it still offers near guaranteed wins to units that are twice as strong as their opponent and artillery isn't that great.

[pblur]

Yeah, AI factions are FAR more capable of prosecuting wars. Diedre is currently conquering 2-3 bases per turn from the believers. They also are very good at doing combined forces between defenders, attackers, aircraft, ship bombardment and probes. Tactically I still am much better, but they're competent enough. I've repeatedly had Thinker AI drop 3-4 transports full of troops, probes, etc. on the back side of my empire in a single turn, often temporarily losing a city or two.

But above all else, they're industrially competent. Thinker AI easily produces 4x as many minerals as vanilla AI at this stage of the game, so even when their tactics or strategy sucks they can still make up for it with sheer quantity.

[pblur]

Also interested to see how the combat rules work. Thi ker changes some of the rules (inspired by will to power, I think), but it still offers near guaranteed wins to units that are twice as strong as their opponent and artillery isn't that great.

Oh, and I believe the only major change here is that reactor isn't a combat modifier any more. Fusion reactor units are cheaper, but no stronger than fission, etc.