Nomads GotM - deadline December 20th

[t_ras]

I gave up. I'm plating for almost ten hour in all and still have more cities to conquer. Yet, it was one fun scenario.

[Kirov]

Do you like some reading? Because I did some thinking, and then some playing, and then some writing. Please bear with me, what comes is a marathon of posts, don’t nerve staple me if it’s too long.

I wondered how to put it, because I wanted to avoid two things: 1) sounding like “oh, look I’m so tough”, 2) sounding like I didn’t like your scenario. So let’s get it out of the way right now: 1) let’s just say I’m kinda masochist 2) I thoroughly enjoyed your scenario.

I really did. I like the faction, the new graphics, it really shows devotion and attention to details. the fact that you did posters and banners, that’s just – wow. It’s really cool and don’t you think that nobody cares. Because I do and I appreciate this kind of devotion to SMAX. I also liked the setting for AI, how they’re balanced, how it’s quite tough to infiltrate Morgan and Sparta because of their garrison probe teams, how Morgan behaves in the lategame. Cool! 

So at first I played some, defeated Uni and well, left the game. It’s only when Earthmichael published AAR that I got to wonder why I hadn’t participate fully, like submit a game, discuss his strategy and stuff like that. And the reason is quite simple – there is little challenge here. I mean, it’s a great idea that you can’t build bases, but once you win several One City Challenges, being limited to five bases is not that a big deal.

You see, I love predesigned scenarios, their background stories, interesting settings, new units and so on, but I guess what I’m really looking for in them is challenge. I enjoyed Darsnan’s scenarios, what with new units and so on, but the best scenario I’ve ever played was definitely the “Things that Go Thump in the Night” by Blake, when you played Deirdre. The listed difficulty is “unholy hard”, and my God, was it hard.

http://www.weplayciv.com/forums/showthread.php?6606-Altera-Centauri-The-SMAC-X-Scenario-Repository-development-thread&p=213731&viewfull=1#post214198

In this scenario, Earth map, a ridiculously powerful Miriam sends your way waves of units, you have like maybe one tenth of her resources, so you have to very precisely place and use your units, and any mistake could result in death. I played that scenario when it was published, in 2005, spent like several evenings trying to beat it (reloaded many times), and when I finally did, it turned out to be one of my most satisfying and memorable single player experience ever. In TTGTITN a wrong choice between a farm and a sensor could cost you dearly. This is precisely why I loved it.

But I only mention it as a reference point, let’s move on to the Nomads scenario.

[Kirov]

So I decided to play the Nomads with some self-imposed rule, to look for what kind of increased difficulty I’m interested in. This was never meant to be submitted, I just wanted to push the limits so I could say “I want to play like Nomads, but with this and this changed.” So I started with one city start – I razed all my bases bar HQ and played from there, all other rules unchanged.

I struggled for a while, as Santiago and Zak would shake me down for techs, usually two at the time, but when I finally got air, the tables turned. I took one Santiago’s base, refurbished it as 1pop FM military-base and started to progress. I stopped in 2261 when I broke the neck of both Sparta and Uni. I managed to build Supercollider and I secured HGP, PTS, HSA and Living Refinery. With 13-1-12*2 Choppers, I don't think the game can be lost from here.

[Kirov]

OK, so that was not that tough. Then I decided to up the ante – not only I start with one base, but at the end of each turn I can still have only one base. What I conquer I must trade away (for free, not to break the house rule) or obliterate. Of course, it’s quite hard to achieve a Conquest victory like that, but I kinda assumed that the cooperative victory is on and I can trade all conquered bases to a pactmate (I already knew that Morgan is a good candidate) and win as pact brothers.

This challenge proved much more difficult than the previous one. I was forced to build a punishment sphere, otherwise I couldn’t make any progress under FM. And whenever I trade away a base, any garrison units are transferred to the recipient, and any assault units (and air) are sent back to my nearest base (i.e. my HQ). So I take a Santiago’s base, trade it to Morgan, my units are sent home, the base is emptied, Santiago takes it back, repeat ad infinitum. Times were rough, some bases changed hands between Sparta, Uni and Morgan many times, until I got MMI, when I simply started to cleanse this continent of ours. Soon Morgan could take empty bases, he killed Uni and Deirdre (the latter on his own), Lal killed off Miriam, I forced Santiago into submission. In 2327 I decided to save.

[Kirov]

OK, so I thought that if the cooperative victory is on, then this challenge is still not difficult enough. Basically, I need to finish Lal and we’re done with Morgan. But what if the coop is off? Morgan was already very strong. So I decided to up the ante even more and turn against Morgan. I put him on the throne, I figure I can take him down.

In my first attempt, I decided to go full berserk - nerve gas and base obliteration. This, however, proved to be disastrous. In no time I racked up humungous ecodamage, everyone hates me, I’m starting to get flooded. As if it wasn’t enough, Morgan actually used his choppers to attack my base tile! Under such circumstances, this can only end in one way. I lost.

Reload from the 2327 save. This time I decided to do standard expansion. I take bases from Morgan without gas, I trade them to Santiago. However, Morgan proved too strong at this moment and Santiago was too stupid. Also, Morgan again started to use the “chop&drop” strategy, I honest to God saw him cleaning a base with choppers and dropping an airborne unit there. Just like humans do!  Soon Santiago got eradicated and I was left with Lal, who didn’t want to pact me even as I gift him with bases. I had no outpost for further military actions, so I considered it a fail.

Third attempt from 2327. This time I’m thinking maybe I should bid my time and not assault Morgan too early. I figured I should get massive ecodamage and drown the everloving poop out of the AI, then finish what’s left with navy. I crawl several boreholes under FM, sure enough mind worms start to pop up, sea level rises, soon I have more than 1k+ ecodamage. But then something strange started to happen – not anymore eco-damage-related sea rise. I get fungal bloom every turn, but mind worms don’t appear anymore, nothing else happens. On the top on that, they outvoted me to increase the shades. Darn…

All right, I think I have the ultimate response for solar shades – planet buster. With great mineral output, I start to crank out singularity PBs (one every 3 turns, then every 2 turns). I felt that the final hour is nearing, so I decided to save. 2398 reflects how much time I spent in my failed attempt to drown the planet. But at least I have all the mineral-enhancing staff.

[Kirov]

So I keep building nukes. I have 12 when Morgan renounces our pact of brotherhood. At this moment he’s got bases like 35 pop, with 200-400 mineral output, altogether more than a hundred satellites, most Projects in the game. Funny thing – I tried to bribe him into attacking Lal, and he demanded… 174’987’425 ec. LOL. But he’s got only 3 ODPs. So here I made my biggest mistake – I decided to wait until my currently built nuke completes, then I will strike. But the very next turn, Morgan builds 17 ODPs and my nukes are useless. Failed again.

OK, let’s get back to the 2398 save. Again, I keep building nukes and again Morgan renounces our pact some time later. Obviously this time I launch a full-scale attack, taking down most of his SP bases, and many other for good measure. See the save attached.

After I exploded like 10 nukes, I honestly start to think that I have chances to win. I conquered two nearby bases, started to build 24-1-14*4 gravships with Empath and Blink (Morgan had tons of MW and tachyon everywhere), and then… I got nuked. He destroyed my ODPs with his and nuked me. In OCC it’s bye-bye. I actually got to see the “you lose” movie, when you are captured and interrogated! Haven’t seen that one in ages. All right, I have enough for now, time to wrap up conclusions a little.

[Kirov]

All in all, I really enjoyed those games even though I lost. I honestly believe that the Nomads can be won as One City Challenge, but it would take ages to finish (OCC is not really carved up for the conquest victory, right?  Basically you aim for transcend).

The tricky part is to repeal the charter so that you can obliterate smoothly, and Lal of course gets elected and vetoes this proposal. Here’s what I would do:

-   Pact with Morgan and feed him bases, but try to beat Zak into submission
-   If you did that, beat Santiago and give her bases to Zak
-   Use Morgan bases as outposts to beat Lal and maybe Deirdre (if Morgan doesn’t do that)
-   Get the election right so that neither Lal or Deirdre wins; Miriam and Santiago support repealing the charter, Uni is your slave, so you need to bribe Morgan and the charter is repealed
-   Finish Lal, Deirdre and Miriam, this time trade away some and obliterate most bases
-   When you’re down to Zak and Morgan, kill Morgan with Zak
-   Now it’s really tricky – prepare your gravships to assault Zak; demand as many bases from him as you can (he won’t give up all of them); use the units in transferred bases to obliterate them, renounce the pact, move in to take Zak’s bases, obliterate, end the game with only your HQ on the Planet.

Of course as I said, OCC is not meant to played by conquest. It would take many hours between the time the game is decided and when it’s actually finished. And all the time there are factors beyond your control and not dependent on your skills, like you get nuked before ODP and it’s end of story. But still, I believe it’s doable.

[Kirov]

So finally we get to my request, because all the above was basically just a long introduction. I see that there is another GotM coming up soon, “Old Mistakes” and I noticed you always make a version for Librarian and Transcend. I was wondering if the scenario’s author, sisko or BUncle, could prepare an “Insane Transcend” version. Like you know, really tough. Like Nomads under One City Challenge, this kind of tough. I can’t stress it enough – I don’t mean a game for very good players. I mean a game for very good players to suffer; frustrating and painful. A game which is not winnable in the first attempt, because you carefully analyze the situation, craft your strategy, execute it and then you see it’s not enough, you need to try something else. Where small mistakes can have disastrous consquences. You know… tough.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who would play it. Right, guys? Right?   

THE END. Please comment and don’t hate me for spam.

[Buster's Uncle]

There's definitely an audience for killer hell scenarios.  We'll see what we can do.

Thanks for letting us know you care.

[Earthmichael]

Kirov, I think some of the challange I see in these scenarios is not whether I can win them or not, but the competition with the other players.  Yes, I won, but did another player win 5 years sooner?  If so, what can I do to tighten up my strategy?  So with this in mind, Kirov, you should play the original scenario as described with no extra limitations, to see if you beat my time.

I was hoping to see someone else submit an entry that beat the time I submitted, hopefully while I still had time to give it another try.  This would motivate me to see if I can play a little bit faster.

As it is, I am not sure if there is any submission (other than mine) to this scenario.  BUncle, has anyone else submitted a completed scenario?  If someone is going to submit, I hope that they do not wait until the last minute (like an ebay snipe bid), so that I do not have time to see if I can do better.  So please submit soon, so that we can have an actual competition, instead of a sealed bid type scenario.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm not aware of any submissions outside this thread.

[Kirov]

Kirov, I think some of the challange I see in these scenarios is not whether I can win them or not, but the competition with the other players.  Yes, I won, but did another player win 5 years sooner?  If so, what can I do to tighten up my strategy?  So with this in mind, Kirov, you should play the original scenario as described with no extra limitations, to see if you beat my time.

I was hoping to see someone else submit an entry that beat the time I submitted, hopefully while I still had time to give it another try.  This would motivate me to see if I can play a little bit faster.

I don't know, Earthmichael... I'm not sure if I can meet the deadline, and you probably wouldn't be able to meet it afterwards (of course assuming I can beat your time). Maybe if we could postpone it? Even then, I can't promise I can get myself to finish the game. I haven't seen the end credits for ages, I always quit when the game is decided.

I think it would be much more fun to compare notes and discuss strategy if it was not race against time, but rather survival horror.

"- Dude, you done?
- Nah, still trying to figure it out.
- Me, too. I think I'll start with attacking Santiago this time.
- Don't. I did that yesterday and Hive came from the other side and beat me.
- Oh.
- Yeah. Right now I'm trying to get elite probe teams to do total thought control of that Zak's base with VW. Long shot, but what you can do.
- Ok. So I'll try running Green just to get Deirdre into a war with Morgan. Who knows, maybe I'll capture some MW in the process."

You know, more or less this kind of stuff. A scenario which keeps you on your toes and forces you to think outside of the box.

[Kirov]

Hello, I'd like to submit a game. The year is 2234, empty Gaia's Landing awaits you. That was fun!   

I let Morgan live too long and didn't monitor him, that was my biggest mistake. But I'll share my thoughts later, now it's time to sleep (it's actually 7 AM here).

[Kirov]

I'm really going to bed, just one important thing, I have reasons to believe this doesn't work exactly as the creators planned (otherwise they could've just given the relevant techs to the player):

I noticed that Earthmichael mentions in his AAR how he gets several techs through Planetary Datalinks, EnvEcon among them. Actually, there is no need to do that. Just start the scenario and before you do any movements at all, talk first to Sparta, then to Morgan. You get ca 10 techs, among them SFF, EcoEng, EnvEcon or Ethical Calculus. Also you can get maps from Santiago and Morgan, but don't do that with Morgan. At the end of the trade, ask him for a pact, he agrees for a tech, you get his maps.

Thus you can start to build your boreholes in turn 1 and you're already working on D:AP.

EDIT: I did just that and Planetary Datalinks was actually of little use to me.

[Kirov]

I would like to report somewhat buggy, or at least weird thing. When you start the scenario, the SE choice is already set to Wealth. However, if you open the SE screen in the turn 1, you have to actually pay for Wealth. If you ignore it and open on day 2, Wealth comes for free. I don't really know how it works, but I do recall vaguely that setting SE in the editor can be quirky.