the AI in this game is really weird. the further behind the AI is the dumber it plays. the further ahead it is the smarter it plays. I remember some multiplayer maps being designed where 4 human players could not beat 3 AI players if they AI players were given favorable landing locations(ie the hive started in the ruins and would turn into an invincible juggernaut)
the aliens pirates and cheese dong were kind of bleh. not the most balanced factions(in both spectrums, aliens op cult/pirate up). the other 3 were good I liked the cyborgs a lot too.
I remember the pirates being wildly overpowered on maps with the default amount of water, or more. They get to monopolize most of the map right off the bat.
I played one game as the University, on a sort-of-high difficulty level. Started out on what turned out to be a medium, lush island in the south-east corner of the map. There was enough ocean around me that nobody could easily attack, so I largely neglected my military except for a few naval ships. And then proceeded to build every single Secret Project.
Started to play again yesterday as the Gaians (my fav faction de facto, along with the University).
Oh boy. I'm just in the middle of the Spartans and the Peacekeepers, who are, of course, at war. And both wanting to become Pact Brothers if I declare vendetta on the other.
Fun times.
For now, my power is "formidable". Lal is unsurpassed, but I think I can get ahead of him peacefully.
Has anybody noticed how the Spartans tend to create their bases -really- close together?
I remember I would always just deal with the spartans by building domes in my cities, then flooding the planet. Their cities were too poor and underdeveloped to build any domes, so they would all drown. I dealt with the pirates the opposite way. Drained the oceans, since they were used to being water locked, they often didn't build much in the way of defenses.
Behumat on
0
DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
edited May 2011
Playing the Spartans usually means that I'm trying to sack The Believers/The Hive in rapid succession before I begin my midgame strategy. I'm going to have to fight them sooner or later so sooner is good as Spartans. This usually gives me plenty of territory to expand into as I try to get cozy with University and Gaians. Somewhere around this point a big war will erupt with either the Morganites or Peacekeepers. Morganites are usually not a big deal, Peacekeepers can make things a bit trickier with their politics but if I'm managing my relationship with the Gaians properly it's nothing that's too hard to handle. I do everything I can to stick to "conventional" warfare, no atrocities or disaster tech. Ok, I will terraform some ridge lines to destroy farms, but I tend to stay off the Planet Busters. With correct social engineering, Gaians can become your BFFs and this is a force that can dominate planet pretty handily.
Spartans end up becoming the military arm of a Utopian Green Futurist coalition, smacking down anyone who dares look sideways at the shared vision of Deirdre and Santiago. It's not really necessary to do it this way, I just have fun working the most militant faction with the hippiest faction.
So the war with the Spartans is horribly long. They have so much stupid bs bases that it's a chore to get them one by one...I'm starting to think we really should just raise the ocean's level and be done with it.
On the other hand, just finished The Planetary Energy Grid, which is awesome. A free Energy Bank on each base is just wow
EDIT: Forgot to mention: just signed a Pact with the Morganites. Playing as Gaians. Yeah. What? I need the money!
the aliens pirates and cheese dong were kind of bleh. not the most balanced factions(in both spectrums, aliens op cult/pirate up). the other 3 were good I liked the cyborgs a lot too.
I remember the pirates being wildly overpowered on maps with the default amount of water, or more. They get to monopolize most of the map right off the bat.
even if you made the map for them with like 70-90% water the cost to build their colony pods, formers, and crawlers was just too crippling. land factions would be way ahead of you 150 years in.
my usual early game strategy was to unlock crawlers and the mineral caps. each mine square provides 4 minerals and nothing else so having 5 crawlers crawling in minerals from mines effectively boosts your base population by 5(and brings in 20 minerals per turn)
It's been a long while since I played, but I think the idea was to stay in the water and build colonies until the cows come home. The colonies aren't that expensive, and basically no one can even try to take them from you for... I don't remember, about a hundred years?
The worst thing about Alpha Centauri is how it ruined Civilization for me.
Forever more, Civ will have to live up to the standard SMAC has set and it will always fail. SMAC is a thoughtful contemplation of what the future of humanity might be like and offers a number of different answers. Civ is just toying around in the sandbox of history. Which, while also fun, just can't compare.
Also, Secret Projects are far more impressive than Wonders, but only because nobody seems to be putting any real effort into Wonders any more.
I love Alpha Centauri, and I say that as someone who never really caught the Civilization bug. I think a lot of why I feel this way is summed up nicely by WotanAnubis a few posts up. It just has this amazing setting and emergent storyline that works out and manages to be at least a little resonant no matter how the game pans out.
I really wish they would just make SMAC as an expansion to, say, CIV 5, which would give you a few options.
1. Just play SMAC on a new engine.
2. Do a crossover game where you start normally with Civ 5, but with alpha centuari social engineering improvements and whatnot. The only end goal is to launch of the mission to Alpha Centauri by 2050, and then play through a smac game building off of that, where your social engineering determines your faction in SMAC.
3. Just play CIV 5 but have the technology keep going all the way to transcendence.
4. Play a game of civilization: but this time you start on the hostile world of Planet (Ugh, I hated that name. Just call it Chiron and be done with it.) Try to get animal husbandry with those mind worms suckers!
I've taken part of a AC PBM game here on the boards. It lasted a while before petering out. Succession games seem to work better because they don't have end when a person or two drop out. Also there are a lot fewer handoffs.
lowlylowlycook on
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
But that's not the context it's used in the game. "Planet' is used as the Planet's name, hence the capital P.
Just one of those really really non-an-issue things that bugs the crap out of me
No the planet is called Chiron. "Planet" is the sentient entity that resides in its biosystem.
True. That's what it calls itself anyway, if I remember correctly.
Synthesis on
0
38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
edited May 2011
This game caused so many nights of "one more turn and oops its 3 hours later". I loved how much you could customize the map. One time I made a map 512x512 and that game went for a while. I was playing as the Hive and had an insane amount of bases.
I would love to get in on a Play By Email game, but would prefer to play the original. The new factions added were very unbalanced. Especially the pirates. What was their skill? They could capture other people's ships and all passangers/artifacts/etc 25% of the time?
They could build in ocean tiles, capture ships, and got free shipyards or whatever their equivalent was.
I generally play SMAX with the SMAC factions. The new Secret Projects, techs, etc balanced the game a lot.
My idea is to start a game via IP, and in turn 200 or whatever turn it into a PBEM, maybe even writting some RP in the forums about the game: "You goddamned tree-huggers will suffer the wrath of my new and shiny chaos gun!" etc.
If memory serves, Pirates got extra minerals in shallow water and could terraform the deep sea squares once they got the tech. Plus they start in the water, which is pretty huge against the computer.
Their basic units also cost 3 times as much to build on a faction that struggles to get high mineral production. They're not the worst faction(planet cult), but a land faction will out expand and out crawl you with minimal effort. they can't population boom either.
the aliens are a bit overpowered, but atrocities don't count on them. nerve gas away!
Just started playing this; from what I've played (a couple short games as the Gaians) it's pretty damn awesome. I'm afraid that the awesomeness of commanding an army of psychic worms may stop me from trying the other factions though, as tempting as Zakharov and Morgan look.
Reading the manual (well, a pdf of the manual) reminds me of way back when manuals were more than just a dozen pages of installation instructions and controls.
Reading the manual (well, a pdf of the manual) reminds me of way back when manuals were more than just a dozen pages of installation instructions and controls.
Their basic units also cost 3 times as much to build on a faction that struggles to get high mineral production. They're not the worst faction(planet cult), but a land faction will out expand and out crawl you with minimal effort. they can't population boom either.
This was never my experience with using them. Sea bases with kelp farms produce a healthy amount of food, and no one else is building in the water for like a hundred years. The other factions put together were never able to out-expand the pirates. If they didn't have the growth penalty they'd take over the map by the time the second or third wonder got built.
Minerals are scarce in the water, but the sheer volume of bases makes up for it.
Orogogus on
0
mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
edited May 2011
I really liked the Gaians just because their initial planet rating made it easy to build an army right away by capturing mindworms.
Depends on what difficulty you're playing, and if it's only AI or with humans too.
I don't find them specially overpowered, but I do like the pirates as a faction.
if you make the world 70-90% water sure, but that would be about as fair in a multiplayer game as playing the spartans on a tiny map. Since a land faction can produce colony pods at three times the rate you shouldn't be ahead in base count. doctrine:flexibility is a very early tech but there isn't really any reason to go into the water aside from popping unity pods.
If memory serves, Pirates got extra minerals in shallow water and could terraform the deep sea squares once they got the tech. Plus they start in the water, which is pretty huge against the computer.
Yes, my impression was always on maps with a lot of water they are pretty rad. I mean: naval tech for free! Yes, expensive but you won't compete for terrain, you are pretty much disconnected, PLUS you get everyweres super fast PLUS deep sea terraforming - and lets face it... the ocean is a good source of wealth and add to that the Unity's pods... and pretty much no drawback.
Gaia/Cult can also be pretty devastating as you snatch up mind worms and isles of the deep they can occasionally even put the pirates on the defensive.
However i fell in love with the Morganites. Yes, small citys, big drawback... but the cash keeps flowing. Usually i would go for green economy and grow a lot of forests creating a little paradise (except for the one or other borehole ^^)... well armed since i invested a lot of research going for aircraft and later planet busters. Usually my fellow opponents were just building a strong army but the tech advantage kept them from attacking and then when i finally was producing planet busters i would go for cornering the energy market. As they realized they would be on the short end of the stick they always mounted a desperate attack resulting in an all out nuclear war. At some point the pole caps would melt but i had prepared because to get bigger citys i had built city domes in any case. Pretty apocalyptic but great fun.
The real strenght of this game is that is a really good, really deep multiplayer game well suited for hoseat sessions with one computer.
University for life. Although being able to steal a tech on base capture always made me think a strong war faction like the Spartans were probably the superior choice. I also liked Gaia for the reasons already mentioned, but I hated their stupid hippie lifestyles.
I always played Lal, and true to his faction's name I'd do my best to stop all the fighting. It'd always fail in the end usually thanks to Yang or that bitch Miriam.
I remember some interesting events in my very first game of AC. I didn't meet Diedre and Zakharov for an extremely long time (I think they were on their own island). When I met them they suddenly gave me lots of free tech. Ever since they've always been in my good books, even in future games. I eventually went for a diplomatic victory, and everyone united behind me except Miriam. So my allies decided she needed to go and declared vendetta on her.
I really loved the diplomacy in this game, and all the interesting quotes from research and secret projects.
I also liked Gaia for the reasons already mentioned, but I hated their stupid hippie lifestyles.
I liked their hippie lifestyles. However, actually having a planet where all life is literally interconnected makes it far more palatable than in real life, where all life is pretty much trying to end you if it can.
I usually played the Gaians, because I liked the cognitive dissonance between their hippie rhetoric and me attacking everyone with armies of mindworms. It was all, "Peace... peace... EAT YOUR BRAINS!"
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I liked their ideals of caring for the environment and all that jazz. Just, you know it's possible to be super pro-environment/sentient planet and still take regular baths/refrain from actual physical intimacy with trees.
I liked their ideals of caring for the environment and all that jazz. Just, you know it's possible to be super pro-environment/sentient planet and still take regular baths/refrain from actual physical intimacy with trees.
Not if you were the Gaians.
I actually didn't mind the "Hippie" trait involved--my only real dislike of the Gaians comes from my generally hatred of mindworms. Don't get me wrong, they're a great strategic edge if you can capture them, but every description of them in the games not from the Gaians basically paints them as the most horrific product of evolution ever. Burrowing through every crevice and crack, using psionics to terrify their victims into pacification, gnawing into their craniums and laying eggs in there....
I understand that humans are the invaders here, but yeah, I have no intention of working with those horrors. Being a greater part of an interconnected organism doesn't really change the fact that they're here to literally rape your brains and your mind. It's kind of telling that Zakharov is the one who gives the quote for the "last ditch measure" to keep Planet from standing by as its 'children' skullrape every last human alive...by doing something very similar, albeit with the Planetary Datalinks and every fusion reactor on planet.
Plus, if you kill them, you get money. It's like the game is telling me, "Hunt down all these brainrapping tapeworms. Trust me."
Posts
I remember the pirates being wildly overpowered on maps with the default amount of water, or more. They get to monopolize most of the map right off the bat.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
Oh boy. I'm just in the middle of the Spartans and the Peacekeepers, who are, of course, at war. And both wanting to become Pact Brothers if I declare vendetta on the other.
Fun times.
For now, my power is "formidable". Lal is unsurpassed, but I think I can get ahead of him peacefully.
Has anybody noticed how the Spartans tend to create their bases -really- close together?
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
Spartans end up becoming the military arm of a Utopian Green Futurist coalition, smacking down anyone who dares look sideways at the shared vision of Deirdre and Santiago. It's not really necessary to do it this way, I just have fun working the most militant faction with the hippiest faction.
On the other hand, just finished The Planetary Energy Grid, which is awesome. A free Energy Bank on each base is just wow
EDIT: Forgot to mention: just signed a Pact with the Morganites. Playing as Gaians. Yeah. What? I need the money!
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
even if you made the map for them with like 70-90% water the cost to build their colony pods, formers, and crawlers was just too crippling. land factions would be way ahead of you 150 years in.
my usual early game strategy was to unlock crawlers and the mineral caps. each mine square provides 4 minerals and nothing else so having 5 crawlers crawling in minerals from mines effectively boosts your base population by 5(and brings in 20 minerals per turn)
T/F?
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Partially, primarily, or exclusively?
Important question here.
Why I fear the ocean.
Forever more, Civ will have to live up to the standard SMAC has set and it will always fail. SMAC is a thoughtful contemplation of what the future of humanity might be like and offers a number of different answers. Civ is just toying around in the sandbox of history. Which, while also fun, just can't compare.
Also, Secret Projects are far more impressive than Wonders, but only because nobody seems to be putting any real effort into Wonders any more.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
1. Just play SMAC on a new engine.
2. Do a crossover game where you start normally with Civ 5, but with alpha centuari social engineering improvements and whatnot. The only end goal is to launch of the mission to Alpha Centauri by 2050, and then play through a smac game building off of that, where your social engineering determines your faction in SMAC.
3. Just play CIV 5 but have the technology keep going all the way to transcendence.
4. Play a game of civilization: but this time you start on the hostile world of Planet (Ugh, I hated that name. Just call it Chiron and be done with it.) Try to get animal husbandry with those mind worms suckers!
Frankly, Alpha Centauri isn't Alpha Centauri without the rising and falling terrain that you don't find in Civ games.
"Planet" also works, because it's used in the same context as the word "world"--that is, it's a weird word. "Worldwide", "Planetwide".
Just one of those really really non-an-issue things that bugs the crap out of me
Also, still wondering exactly how hard would it be to get you folks in a MP game :P
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
No the planet is called Chiron. "Planet" is the sentient entity that resides in its biosystem.
True. That's what it calls itself anyway, if I remember correctly.
I would love to get in on a Play By Email game, but would prefer to play the original. The new factions added were very unbalanced. Especially the pirates. What was their skill? They could capture other people's ships and all passangers/artifacts/etc 25% of the time?
I generally play SMAX with the SMAC factions. The new Secret Projects, techs, etc balanced the game a lot.
My idea is to start a game via IP, and in turn 200 or whatever turn it into a PBEM, maybe even writting some RP in the forums about the game: "You goddamned tree-huggers will suffer the wrath of my new and shiny chaos gun!" etc.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
the aliens are a bit overpowered, but atrocities don't count on them. nerve gas away!
Reading the manual (well, a pdf of the manual) reminds me of way back when manuals were more than just a dozen pages of installation instructions and controls.
^^^^
This a thousand fucking times.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
This was never my experience with using them. Sea bases with kelp farms produce a healthy amount of food, and no one else is building in the water for like a hundred years. The other factions put together were never able to out-expand the pirates. If they didn't have the growth penalty they'd take over the map by the time the second or third wonder got built.
Minerals are scarce in the water, but the sheer volume of bases makes up for it.
I don't find them specially overpowered, but I do like the pirates as a faction.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
Yes, my impression was always on maps with a lot of water they are pretty rad. I mean: naval tech for free! Yes, expensive but you won't compete for terrain, you are pretty much disconnected, PLUS you get everyweres super fast PLUS deep sea terraforming - and lets face it... the ocean is a good source of wealth and add to that the Unity's pods... and pretty much no drawback.
Gaia/Cult can also be pretty devastating as you snatch up mind worms and isles of the deep they can occasionally even put the pirates on the defensive.
However i fell in love with the Morganites. Yes, small citys, big drawback... but the cash keeps flowing. Usually i would go for green economy and grow a lot of forests creating a little paradise (except for the one or other borehole ^^)... well armed since i invested a lot of research going for aircraft and later planet busters. Usually my fellow opponents were just building a strong army but the tech advantage kept them from attacking and then when i finally was producing planet busters i would go for cornering the energy market. As they realized they would be on the short end of the stick they always mounted a desperate attack resulting in an all out nuclear war. At some point the pole caps would melt but i had prepared because to get bigger citys i had built city domes in any case. Pretty apocalyptic but great fun.
The real strenght of this game is that is a really good, really deep multiplayer game well suited for hoseat sessions with one computer.
I remember some interesting events in my very first game of AC. I didn't meet Diedre and Zakharov for an extremely long time (I think they were on their own island). When I met them they suddenly gave me lots of free tech. Ever since they've always been in my good books, even in future games. I eventually went for a diplomatic victory, and everyone united behind me except Miriam. So my allies decided she needed to go and declared vendetta on her.
I really loved the diplomacy in this game, and all the interesting quotes from research and secret projects.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Not if you were the Gaians.
I actually didn't mind the "Hippie" trait involved--my only real dislike of the Gaians comes from my generally hatred of mindworms. Don't get me wrong, they're a great strategic edge if you can capture them, but every description of them in the games not from the Gaians basically paints them as the most horrific product of evolution ever. Burrowing through every crevice and crack, using psionics to terrify their victims into pacification, gnawing into their craniums and laying eggs in there....
I understand that humans are the invaders here, but yeah, I have no intention of working with those horrors. Being a greater part of an interconnected organism doesn't really change the fact that they're here to literally rape your brains and your mind. It's kind of telling that Zakharov is the one who gives the quote for the "last ditch measure" to keep Planet from standing by as its 'children' skullrape every last human alive...by doing something very similar, albeit with the Planetary Datalinks and every fusion reactor on planet.
Plus, if you kill them, you get money. It's like the game is telling me, "Hunt down all these brainrapping tapeworms. Trust me."