Yeah I hate the sprawl so much. It's terrible and incredibly boring
I am not a mp player myself*, but my understanding is that ICS is either frowned on or completely banned in most people's games. I think just about everyone knows how to ICS if they really wanted to, but no one really wants to so it ends up being like mutual disarmament.
*but I've been reading forums full of their chit chat for years so feel like I've absorbed a decent amount
So, this thread inspired me to reinstall SMAC with the GOG version and install the yitzi's fan-patch. The immersion is as good as I remember, and the comlink communications have way more personality to them than the Civ V diplomacy. First other group I met was Miriam, who demanded all of my technology and energy and declared a vendetta when I didn't acquiesce to her demands.
It's been a long time, so I was wondering if people had some good advice on city placement and what improvements to create around a city when starting out, and what you might want to switch to later in the game.
You have come to the right thread. I have extensive teraforming experience.
When starting a new city the first most important tile requirement is at least one square that yields 2 (or more nutrients). Typically this means a moist tile with a farm built in it. Rainy tiles which yield 2 nutrients without improvements, monoliths, and nutrient resource bonus squares are given maximum priority as a city location.
A large part of the game for several of the factions is controlling growth so you don't get drone riots, however there are also factions which barely need to worry about this whether its because they grow so slow (Aki-Zeta 5) or because they have free drone management (Yang, Lal). So based on which faction you are playing you might want to leave a city with just one 2-nutrient square for the time being, so that it doesn't accidentally grow up before you are ready.
For the very earliest stages of the game you can ignore mines and just use forests for mineral needs. They are quick to plant and can spread on their own, even overtaking fungus.
Later on you will probably want to build road+mine on some rocky squares and then crawl minerals from that square with a crawler unit, but the teraforming investment to do that is substantial, and completely wasted at the start of the game.
Don't build many solar collectors early in the game, energy doesn't become very important until later and you must prioritize teraforming time for growth and road building.
Did I mention road-building? I did not. Make sure to have your teraformers build roads. The time it takes to build them will ultimately work out in your favor leading to faster sprawl.
This leads me to sprawl, which is a very deep game concern and there isn't necessarily a right answer. Conventional wisdom for people who play on transcend level is to sprawl infinitely, leaving minimal space between bases, and shit out scout patrols because this cheeses the AI into thinking you are strong and not steam-rolling you, while allowing you to circumvent the horrible inefficiency penalty at highest difficulties, because the center square of a base is always perfectly efficient. This strategy is effective and also ugly and dull and it's why I don't ever play this game on high difficulty levels.
On lower, less stupid difficulty levels you are not forced to sprawl like this, so don't. The game is more enjoyable when you spread your bases out 3-5 tiles and actually arrange them in something that looks nicer than a grid.
Once you enter the mid game it is time to consider advanced teraforming. Boreholes are nice as long as you have built up your clean mineral limit because pollution is not nice. Condensers are best used with a crawler, as they are mono-productive for food, yielding little if any energy or minerals. Echelon mirrors are very situational. They are useful if you are building an energy park, but otherwise they aren't usually very useful unless you have teraformers sitting around doing nothing.
Try not to waste too much time removing fungus with teraformers, in particular avoid the trap of wasting time on turning the annoying rocky+fungal squares into something useful. The overall time investment to go from rocky+fungus to something else is so steep you could have built a half new borehole instead.
And finally, in a multiplayer game you should resist the urge to build coastal cities. Your fellow players will not share the AI's inability to launch effective sea invasions, and one of the first harsh lessons new mp players learn is that trying to hold onto a coastal base against an enemy player who means business is nearly impossible.
Also making sea terraformers and dumping coastal cities into the water is hilarious, especially if they don't have a pressure dome.
So, this thread inspired me to reinstall SMAC with the GOG version and install the yitzi's fan-patch. The immersion is as good as I remember, and the comlink communications have way more personality to them than the Civ V diplomacy. First other group I met was Miriam, who demanded all of my technology and energy and declared a vendetta when I didn't acquiesce to her demands.
It's been a long time, so I was wondering if people had some good advice on city placement and what improvements to create around a city when starting out, and what you might want to switch to later in the game.
You have come to the right thread. I have extensive teraforming experience.
When starting a new city the first most important tile requirement is at least one square that yields 2 (or more nutrients). Typically this means a moist tile with a farm built in it. Rainy tiles which yield 2 nutrients without improvements, monoliths, and nutrient resource bonus squares are given maximum priority as a city location.
A large part of the game for several of the factions is controlling growth so you don't get drone riots, however there are also factions which barely need to worry about this whether its because they grow so slow (Aki-Zeta 5) or because they have free drone management (Yang, Lal). So based on which faction you are playing you might want to leave a city with just one 2-nutrient square for the time being, so that it doesn't accidentally grow up before you are ready.
For the very earliest stages of the game you can ignore mines and just use forests for mineral needs. They are quick to plant and can spread on their own, even overtaking fungus.
Later on you will probably want to build road+mine on some rocky squares and then crawl minerals from that square with a crawler unit, but the teraforming investment to do that is substantial, and completely wasted at the start of the game.
Don't build many solar collectors early in the game, energy doesn't become very important until later and you must prioritize teraforming time for growth and road building.
Did I mention road-building? I did not. Make sure to have your teraformers build roads. The time it takes to build them will ultimately work out in your favor leading to faster sprawl.
This leads me to sprawl, which is a very deep game concern and there isn't necessarily a right answer. Conventional wisdom for people who play on transcend level is to sprawl infinitely, leaving minimal space between bases, and shit out scout patrols because this cheeses the AI into thinking you are strong and not steam-rolling you, while allowing you to circumvent the horrible inefficiency penalty at highest difficulties, because the center square of a base is always perfectly efficient. This strategy is effective and also ugly and dull and it's why I don't ever play this game on high difficulty levels.
On lower, less stupid difficulty levels you are not forced to sprawl like this, so don't. The game is more enjoyable when you spread your bases out 3-5 tiles and actually arrange them in something that looks nicer than a grid.
Once you enter the mid game it is time to consider advanced teraforming. Boreholes are nice as long as you have built up your clean mineral limit because pollution is not nice. Condensers are best used with a crawler, as they are mono-productive for food, yielding little if any energy or minerals. Echelon mirrors are very situational. They are useful if you are building an energy park, but otherwise they aren't usually very useful unless you have teraformers sitting around doing nothing.
Try not to waste too much time removing fungus with teraformers, in particular avoid the trap of wasting time on turning the annoying rocky+fungal squares into something useful. The overall time investment to go from rocky+fungus to something else is so steep you could have built a half new borehole instead.
And finally, in a multiplayer game you should resist the urge to build coastal cities. Your fellow players will not share the AI's inability to launch effective sea invasions, and one of the first harsh lessons new mp players learn is that trying to hold onto a coastal base against an enemy player who means business is nearly impossible.
Also making sea terraformers and dumping coastal cities into the water is hilarious, especially if they don't have a pressure dome.
It's totally worth doing this for giggles, but I eventually found that it was unfair against the AI because they don't respond appropriately to this threat*. It's totally legit if you can pull it off against a player though.
*The AI might make a couple half-hearted attempts to destroy your teraformers before they finish lowering the land, but in no way do they treat them as if they are as threatening as they actually are, then after you sink their city the AI acts as if there is global warming flooding and switches every coastal base in their empire over to building a pressure dome, even abandoning nearly completed secret projects or expensive units in order to do this. It ends up being excessively cheesy because the AI responds so poorly.
ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
I think I might have to reconsider playing as Yang. The penalty to economy might not seem like much, but that -1 energy per base is actually quite severe in the early game.
As far as tile improvements go, I think Regina pretty much said it all. The only thing I'll add is if you're going to put a road and forest in the same tile, build the road first. It's faster overall than forest and then road.
Sensor arrays are also hand to put in forests. Defense bonuses are always welcome!
Oh, I should have mentioned: For MP you really want to plant a sensor base in the tile where you are going to build a base, that way the sensor array can't be destroyed during an invasion.
This isn't particularly necessary in SP games, but it's very necessary in MP, other players will take the time to destroy your sensor arrays before attacking a base if there is a tech parity, because that 25% defense bonus on top of the 25% standard base defense bonus can make bases impossible to take unless you either have a literal horde, or out tech your opponent.
-edit-
Also should mention, don't count on ever having much of a tech advantage in MP. People make alliances and trade much more freely and tech steal like motherfuckers, and if you have an edge it will only last for so many turns so you really have to slingshot for a particular tech (impact guns, choppers, needlejets whatever) and then press the advantage immediately because if you wait then everyone will have it by the time you go to use it.
Oh, I should have mentioned: For MP you really want to plant a sensor base in the tile where you are going to build a base, that way the sensor array can't be destroyed during an invasion.
This isn't particularly necessary in SP games, but it's very necessary in MP, other players will take the time to destroy your sensor arrays before attacking a base if there is a tech parity, because that 25% defense bonus on top of the 25% standard base defense bonus can make bases impossible to take unless you either have a literal horde, or out tech your opponent.
So, the improvement is not replaced by the city and can't be removed once a city has been placed? Does that work for any of the other improvements or just the sensor array?
Oh hey, as far as preferences for factions, I'll go for Spartans or Data Angels. Gaians are nice, but I've been a fan of Santiago since the web storyline kicked off.
And the Angels are just too much fun for fucking everyone over, even if they aren't great.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
0
ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
That's useful. I just assumed any improvements would disappear when a base was built on top.
Regarding my Yang expansion woes, I think I'm just trying to build too wide when I should be getting my core cities larger to take advantage of the growth and industry boosts I get.
Oh, I should have mentioned: For MP you really want to plant a sensor base in the tile where you are going to build a base, that way the sensor array can't be destroyed during an invasion.
This isn't particularly necessary in SP games, but it's very necessary in MP, other players will take the time to destroy your sensor arrays before attacking a base if there is a tech parity, because that 25% defense bonus on top of the 25% standard base defense bonus can make bases impossible to take unless you either have a literal horde, or out tech your opponent.
So, the improvement is not replaced by the city and can't be removed once a city has been placed? Does that work for any of the other improvements or just the sensor array?
It works for any improvement, but only sensors, forests, condensors, and echelon mirrors have any effect. Sensors still grant the 2-tile radius defense bonus, forests still grant an ecology boost and can spread to adjacent tiles, condensors still increase moisture in adjacent tiles, and echelon mirrors still increase energy output from solar panels in adjacent tiles.
Farms, mines, boreholes have no effect because they do not effect adjacent tiles.
The prevailing logic is to build your bases on a forested sensor tile for the defense bonus, eco boost, and forest spreading. Additionally, the base tile is still considered forested for purposes of movement, so any ground unit entering the base tile (not on a road) uses two movement points. This doesn't matter often, but when it does it tends to hurt invaders, and it will probably never hurt you.
Personally I like to keep bases surrounded by forests as much as possible, to help prevent enemy probe teams from being able to attack a base from two tiles away. I also tend to plant fungus when I am forced to share a border with an AI neighbor as it keeps them from encroaching (this won't be effective against a player however, if they want to encroach they aren't going to do it by building annoyingly placed bases, they will invade instead).
Noted, @Rainfall. I'll add it tomorrow. Right now I'm reading you guys through a tablet, while trying to fall asleep.
Abuse the Efficiency impunity with Yang, Shimshai.
Yeah what's the deal with the efficiency, is it impossible to go negative, or is that a bug?
Or is it a Yang thang?
You can go negative in any of the ratings, but Yang has a special ability where his is locked at 0 and can neither go up nor down.
The specific ability is "Immunity: Efficiency"
Contrast with "Impunity" which means the faction leader cannot be affected by negative ratings, but can still get positive ones. Much more powerful. I'm not sure off hand if anyone has an impunity in the base game, it does exist as a possibility for custom factions though.
ShimshaiFlush with Success!Isle of EmeraldRegistered Userregular
Police State, Planned and Wealth is a pretty strong combination as it turns out.
I was going to take a screenshot but it just comes out as a black screen though. Is there any way to do it in-game?
Steam/Origin: Shimshai
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
I don't remember all my social choices, but my highest scoring game ever was on a 512x512 planet as yang with infintety billion bases. Not in eachother's zones but just everywhere. It was a big map.
I don't remember all my social choices, but my highest scoring game ever was on a 512x512 planet as yang with infintety billion bases. Not in eachother's zones but just everywhere. It was a big map.
The two ways to get insanely high scores that I know of are to either play on a small map and go for an immediate conquest, or to play on a very large map and build bases and run the game way way past end game while accumulating hundreds of transcendent thought. I'm a builder myself, so my highest scoring game was similar to yours (large map, painted with bases, ran the game late as hell, inflated my base sizes to 90+ each by crawling sea fungus with gravship crawlers).
But the highest score I know of was a guy who played on a custom small map, much smaller than tiny such that most of the seven factions didn't spawn, and then won a conquest victory in a ridiculously short number of turns. Kind of interesting how he planned it out to conquer in such minimal time, but also doesn't sound like any fun to play at all and fairly cheesy.
Ok folks, @Shimshai and I just finished a test using Hamachi and it works.
So. The game, as I've said before, will be SMAX, not SMAC, and it will be played real-time, not PBEM. Everybody who can confirm his/her interest in playing please do so.
Now we need to confirm an actual date, hours, planetary settings, etc.
Mentioning everybody just in case you miss this post: @Vic, @Phyphor. @Sheez, @Rainfall, @jdarksun.
Apparently Hamachi only supports up to 5 people in the same network if you're not paying, so if there's more people interested than that number, we'll go for plans B and C (GameRanger, straight up IP game) or even plan D, which is the desperate option of a PBEM game.
I am not sure if you guys are playing the game yet, but I would seriously consider banning the University and Miriam from being player choices.
I played so many hotseat games with my friends in highschool and University is just *too* good. If you build your cities to make people, you can hit a tech speed singularity in boreholes and man made fossil fuels (the missile tech) and he is unstoppable because he can research new tech almost every 6 or 7 turns, then in about 30ish turns after that, its a new tech every 4 turns. He can literally out tech any problem he comes across. Everyone else is teching around 10-13 turns.
Miriam is just no fun, unless you rush 2-3 laser troopers. That's your only option for winning with her because, again, she will be out-teched by every other faction in a few quick turns. You can't even choose the knowledge option to offset her knowledge penalty because of the ''ideology clash''
Aki-zeta is balanced, because the growth penalty is enough to counter the knowledge bonus.
I am not sure if you guys are playing the game yet, but I would seriously consider banning the University and Miriam from being player choices.
I played so many hotseat games with my friends in highschool and University is just *too* good. If you build your cities to make people, you can hit a tech speed singularity in boreholes and man made fossil fuels (the missile tech) and he is unstoppable because he can research new tech almost every 6 or 7 turns, then in about 30ish turns after that, its a new tech every 4 turns. He can literally out tech any problem he comes across. Everyone else is teching around 10-13 turns.
Miriam is just no fun, unless you rush 2-3 laser troopers. That's your only option for winning with her because, again, she will be out-teched by every other faction in a few quick turns. You can't even choose the knowledge option to offset her knowledge penalty because of the ''ideology clash''
Aki-zeta is balanced, because the growth penalty is enough to counter the knowledge bonus.
The collective MP wisdom holds the seven original factions as being fairly balanced, and the expansion factions as being wildly unbalanced.
Aside from the aliens, Aki-zeta Five and Roze are typically considered the most wildly overpowered, while Cha Dawn is considered much weaker than one of the original factions, almost like a penalty mode.
-edit-
It's easy enough to population bloom with Aki-Zeta which completely eliminates the growth penalty FYI. You just need democracy/planned, a child creche, and then bump up psi enough to trigger a golden age and you have pop blooms. Do that for a few turns every once in a while and she becomes a super faction with no actual drawbacks and ridiculous benefits.
Well, that's it then. Hoping for a SMAC2 to play some MP someday, cuz it's clear that here I won't.
Thread closed afaic.
Thanks for tuning in, folks! See you in Chiron.
Aw, I'm sorry Megamaniaco, this game completely slipped my mind.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
@Megamaniaco I'm sorry it didn't work out, and I really wish I had time to play a MP game of SMAC, it really is one of my all time favorite games. If you ever want to do a PBEM I'm down.
@Regina Fong For the late game, once you get Centauri Psi and beyond, what do you tend to do for optimizing teraforming. I've noticed that for a bunch of sea-based upgrades you need to plant the sea fungus before you can add a kelp farm/tidal turbine/offshore platform because if you go the other way it destroys the improvement.
@Regina Fong For the late game, once you get Centauri Psi and beyond, what do you tend to do for optimizing teraforming. I've noticed that for a bunch of sea-based upgrades you need to plant the sea fungus before you can add a kelp farm/tidal turbine/offshore platform because if you go the other way it destroys the improvement.
Fungus squares shouldn't be improved by the presence of any tile improvement. If a tidal harness or mining platform is actually working for you in a sea fungal square, that's neat, but also a bug.
After Centauri Psi I replace coastal sea squares with straight fungus, as it's more productive than sea squares. I don't make sea bases anymore (I've edited my .ini to make sea colony pods unbuildable by the AI) but in a true sea base with the bonus minerals and the fact that you probably built the sea facilities to improve food/energy/minerals it's probably a waste to go through and replace all your stuff with fungus.
To answer my own question, it appears at the end game it is all fungus everywhere with some forests thrown in for ecology. Also, that Transcendent victory is quite the rush with the planet blooming, fungus overrunning things, and mindworms all over the place. The payoff is pretty great as well, in showing that despite the rather horrid conditions on planet (I went for a utopia, but they give you some really dark options), in the end it can turn out really well for all involved.
I find it interesting that this game had the "one more turn" effect magnified by the story and wanting to see how things turn out. I can confirm that this game is still something special.
That said, the voice acting/story-telling sections related to Alien Crossfire were weaker, but the actual mechanical upgrades were appreciated. None of the new factions or characters had anywhere the same resonance as the originals and the VA was much weaker.
Posts
I am not a mp player myself*, but my understanding is that ICS is either frowned on or completely banned in most people's games. I think just about everyone knows how to ICS if they really wanted to, but no one really wants to so it ends up being like mutual disarmament.
*but I've been reading forums full of their chit chat for years so feel like I've absorbed a decent amount
Also making sea terraformers and dumping coastal cities into the water is hilarious, especially if they don't have a pressure dome.
It's totally worth doing this for giggles, but I eventually found that it was unfair against the AI because they don't respond appropriately to this threat*. It's totally legit if you can pull it off against a player though.
*The AI might make a couple half-hearted attempts to destroy your teraformers before they finish lowering the land, but in no way do they treat them as if they are as threatening as they actually are, then after you sink their city the AI acts as if there is global warming flooding and switches every coastal base in their empire over to building a pressure dome, even abandoning nearly completed secret projects or expensive units in order to do this. It ends up being excessively cheesy because the AI responds so poorly.
As far as tile improvements go, I think Regina pretty much said it all. The only thing I'll add is if you're going to put a road and forest in the same tile, build the road first. It's faster overall than forest and then road.
Sensor arrays are also hand to put in forests. Defense bonuses are always welcome!
This isn't particularly necessary in SP games, but it's very necessary in MP, other players will take the time to destroy your sensor arrays before attacking a base if there is a tech parity, because that 25% defense bonus on top of the 25% standard base defense bonus can make bases impossible to take unless you either have a literal horde, or out tech your opponent.
-edit-
Also should mention, don't count on ever having much of a tech advantage in MP. People make alliances and trade much more freely and tech steal like motherfuckers, and if you have an edge it will only last for so many turns so you really have to slingshot for a particular tech (impact guns, choppers, needlejets whatever) and then press the advantage immediately because if you wait then everyone will have it by the time you go to use it.
So, the improvement is not replaced by the city and can't be removed once a city has been placed? Does that work for any of the other improvements or just the sensor array?
And the Angels are just too much fun for fucking everyone over, even if they aren't great.
And yes, as I said in the initial post, fuck ICS.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
Regarding my Yang expansion woes, I think I'm just trying to build too wide when I should be getting my core cities larger to take advantage of the growth and industry boosts I get.
It works for any improvement, but only sensors, forests, condensors, and echelon mirrors have any effect. Sensors still grant the 2-tile radius defense bonus, forests still grant an ecology boost and can spread to adjacent tiles, condensors still increase moisture in adjacent tiles, and echelon mirrors still increase energy output from solar panels in adjacent tiles.
Farms, mines, boreholes have no effect because they do not effect adjacent tiles.
The prevailing logic is to build your bases on a forested sensor tile for the defense bonus, eco boost, and forest spreading. Additionally, the base tile is still considered forested for purposes of movement, so any ground unit entering the base tile (not on a road) uses two movement points. This doesn't matter often, but when it does it tends to hurt invaders, and it will probably never hurt you.
Personally I like to keep bases surrounded by forests as much as possible, to help prevent enemy probe teams from being able to attack a base from two tiles away. I also tend to plant fungus when I am forced to share a border with an AI neighbor as it keeps them from encroaching (this won't be effective against a player however, if they want to encroach they aren't going to do it by building annoyingly placed bases, they will invade instead).
Abuse the Efficiency impunity with Yang, Shimshai.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
Or is it a Yang thang?
You can go negative in any of the ratings, but Yang has a special ability where his is locked at 0 and can neither go up nor down.
The specific ability is "Immunity: Efficiency"
Contrast with "Impunity" which means the faction leader cannot be affected by negative ratings, but can still get positive ones. Much more powerful. I'm not sure off hand if anyone has an impunity in the base game, it does exist as a possibility for custom factions though.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
Yeah, Yang should always run police state, and planned as soon as you get it.
I was going to take a screenshot but it just comes out as a black screen though. Is there any way to do it in-game?
The two ways to get insanely high scores that I know of are to either play on a small map and go for an immediate conquest, or to play on a very large map and build bases and run the game way way past end game while accumulating hundreds of transcendent thought. I'm a builder myself, so my highest scoring game was similar to yours (large map, painted with bases, ran the game late as hell, inflated my base sizes to 90+ each by crawling sea fungus with gravship crawlers).
But the highest score I know of was a guy who played on a custom small map, much smaller than tiny such that most of the seven factions didn't spawn, and then won a conquest victory in a ridiculously short number of turns. Kind of interesting how he planned it out to conquer in such minimal time, but also doesn't sound like any fun to play at all and fairly cheesy.
So. The game, as I've said before, will be SMAX, not SMAC, and it will be played real-time, not PBEM. Everybody who can confirm his/her interest in playing please do so.
Now we need to confirm an actual date, hours, planetary settings, etc.
Mentioning everybody just in case you miss this post: @Vic, @Phyphor. @Sheez, @Rainfall, @jdarksun.
Apparently Hamachi only supports up to 5 people in the same network if you're not paying, so if there's more people interested than that number, we'll go for plans B and C (GameRanger, straight up IP game) or even plan D, which is the desperate option of a PBEM game.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Not sure what times I'll be available just yet, but I'll try to let you all know as soon as I can.
I'm at GMT time so it might be awkward for some of us to coordinate, but I guess we can all work something out.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
I played so many hotseat games with my friends in highschool and University is just *too* good. If you build your cities to make people, you can hit a tech speed singularity in boreholes and man made fossil fuels (the missile tech) and he is unstoppable because he can research new tech almost every 6 or 7 turns, then in about 30ish turns after that, its a new tech every 4 turns. He can literally out tech any problem he comes across. Everyone else is teching around 10-13 turns.
Miriam is just no fun, unless you rush 2-3 laser troopers. That's your only option for winning with her because, again, she will be out-teched by every other faction in a few quick turns. You can't even choose the knowledge option to offset her knowledge penalty because of the ''ideology clash''
Aki-zeta is balanced, because the growth penalty is enough to counter the knowledge bonus.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
The collective MP wisdom holds the seven original factions as being fairly balanced, and the expansion factions as being wildly unbalanced.
Aside from the aliens, Aki-zeta Five and Roze are typically considered the most wildly overpowered, while Cha Dawn is considered much weaker than one of the original factions, almost like a penalty mode.
-edit-
It's easy enough to population bloom with Aki-Zeta which completely eliminates the growth penalty FYI. You just need democracy/planned, a child creche, and then bump up psi enough to trigger a golden age and you have pop blooms. Do that for a few turns every once in a while and she becomes a super faction with no actual drawbacks and ridiculous benefits.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
Thread closed afaic.
Thanks for tuning in, folks! See you in Chiron.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
Fungus squares shouldn't be improved by the presence of any tile improvement. If a tidal harness or mining platform is actually working for you in a sea fungal square, that's neat, but also a bug.
After Centauri Psi I replace coastal sea squares with straight fungus, as it's more productive than sea squares. I don't make sea bases anymore (I've edited my .ini to make sea colony pods unbuildable by the AI) but in a true sea base with the bonus minerals and the fact that you probably built the sea facilities to improve food/energy/minerals it's probably a waste to go through and replace all your stuff with fungus.
I find it interesting that this game had the "one more turn" effect magnified by the story and wanting to see how things turn out. I can confirm that this game is still something special.
That said, the voice acting/story-telling sections related to Alien Crossfire were weaker, but the actual mechanical upgrades were appreciated. None of the new factions or characters had anywhere the same resonance as the originals and the VA was much weaker.