brainygamer
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Posted 05/22/09 at 07:09 PM
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#1
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You've been playing for awhile, but you're nowhere near finishing. Describe your progress, discoveries, changes in strategy, etc. here.
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davidcarlton
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Registered: 07/15/08
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Posted 05/24/09 at 01:54 PM
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#2
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One thing that I started wondering about as the game went on: how should I be managing my cities, especially the captured ones? Earlier in the game, I was building new cities; I'd usually populate them with a queue of a defensive unit, a former, and a colony pod, with the goal of expanding as quickly as possible. (I was playing on the easiest setting, I'm sure I'll have to be less expansion-biased on subsequent playthroughs on higher settings.) And then I usually kind of forgot about the cities until a city decided to produce a unit that I thought was particularly out-of-place.
Once the game went on, though, I realized that my lack of attention to the mechanics of cities was hurting me; maybe it's my imagination, but I also think those mechanics are less transparent than in Civ games. (It's been ages since I played Civ II, though, which I guess is the proper comparison for SMAC, so I could be wrong about this.) I started to add in more city improvements, but it was more from a feeling that it was the right thing to do than a feeling that it was necessary. (I'm sure it would be necessary on harder settings.)
And then I started running into cities with unhappy people, especially captured ones, and I wasn't sure what to do about that. I wanted to produce improvements to make people happy, but I couldn't produce anything at all while people were unhappy, which is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. The game suggested that I put the cities under governor control, which I did (though that was annoying since it removed the queues that I'd set up), but it's not at all clear to me that that helped. I'm pretty sure I missed something basic there - is there some city-specific slider that I missed when poking through the UI? Or is there some society-wide slider that I didn't bother to tweak? (My guess is the latter - other Civ games have them, after all.)
So I'm pretty sure I missed out on some basic mechanics; I'll want to understand what my options are a lot better on subsequent playthroughs.
Speaking of governors: I usually tried not to use them. (And I wish that I'd gotten an explicit heads-up when my queue emptied out!) But the one place where I did use them was when I decided to go on the offensive: I picked a few of my cities and told them to get combat-oriented. And that ended up working pretty well - I got a reasonably steady stream of fighting units without having to worry myself too much about the details. I imagine a time will come when I will have to worry about the details, but for now getting myself X% devoted to combat by putting combat governors in X% of my cities gave me a nice amount of control over that without requiring me to micromanage.
Oh, one other thing about the middle game: that's when I started expanding into the oceans, though I never did that too seriously. Were the ocean building options available from the start? No reason why they shouldn't be, given that we came here in a spaceship; I can't remember whether I didn't have any cities on the water early on or just wasn't paying close attention. I'll go look that up in the manual / tech tree. I'm pretty sure air units weren't available from the start.
I'll also want to pay a lot more attention to probe units in subsequent playthroughs, both defending against them and using them myself.
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peterb
Registered: 05/24/09
Posts: 4
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Posted 05/24/09 at 04:16 PM
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#3
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My problem with the Alpha Centauri midgame was always that game mechanics that worked well in small territories (eg, formers and terrain management) became a complete nightmare in the mid-game. Consider the formers:
(1) You can't not have them, or you're not exploiting your territory.
(2) You can't leave them on autopilot, or they do stupid things and undo each others' work
(3) You can't (or at least I can't) manage them by hand, because then I'm contemplating what improvements to make on each of the several thousand hexes you control, which quickly overwhelms my tiny simian brain.
Most of my games of Alpha Centauri ended not in victory or loss, but with me giving up when the empire got so large that playing the game felt more like work than play.
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cameleon
Registered: 05/12/09
Posts: 10
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Posted 05/25/09 at 10:36 AM
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#4
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Quote: Originally Posted by davidcarlton
And then I started running into cities with unhappy people, especially captured ones, and I wasn't sure what to do about that. I wanted to produce improvements to make people happy, but I couldn't produce anything at all while people were unhappy, which is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. The game suggested that I put the cities under governor control, which I did (though that was annoying since it removed the queues that I'd set up), but it's not at all clear to me that that helped. I'm pretty sure I missed something basic there - is there some city-specific slider that I missed when poking through the UI? Or is there some society-wide slider that I didn't bother to tweak? (My guess is the latter - other Civ games have them, after all.)
You can remove one of your inhabitants from a production square. You'll have less food/production/energy, but you'll have a happy citizen, which cancels out the unhappy one. This brings your city out of riot, allowing you to build an improvement or unit to cancel the unhappiness. Another thing you can do is increase the global psych rate at the cost of research or energy. This will also produce more happy citizens. You can also nerve-staple, but that is considered an atrocity.
I've also been struggling with the micromanagement vs. stupid autopilot issue. I've never put my cities on governor (yet), but I did put my formers on autopilot. I was unfamiliar with the large range of improvements they could build, and decided I would put off learning them. My cities are doing well, so I guess the auto setting is not that bad. Later on, when you can raise and lower terrain, managing the formers gets even harder, since that is supposed to alter the nutrient-levels in strange ways, I think.
As for the cities, the improvements seem less straightforward than in Civ (i.e. you need a granary -- there is no SMAC equivalent, I think). There are more things to improve: regular combat, psi combat, nutrients, energy, psych, happiness, as well as several other aspects. This sometimes makes it hard to decide what to build, but also gives more variation and depth to pick strategies and follow them through.
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davidcarlton
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Registered: 07/15/08
Posts: 548
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Posted 05/25/09 at 05:01 PM
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#5
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Quote: Originally Posted by cameleonQuote: Originally Posted by davidcarlton
And then I started running into cities with unhappy people, especially captured ones, and I wasn't sure what to do about that.
You can remove one of your inhabitants from a production square. You'll have less food/production/energy, but you'll have a happy citizen, which cancels out the unhappy one. This brings your city out of riot, allowing you to build an improvement or unit to cancel the unhappiness.
Ah, gotcha, that's what I should have been doing. (Well, that plus the global slider, as you also mentioned.)
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crimsonclone
Registered: 09/02/08
Posts: 156
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Posted 05/25/09 at 11:32 PM
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#6
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In defense of micromanagement there is something to be said about the amount of power available just in terrain deformation alone. A city is stuck in a dry arid region? Build a river and install a few condensers. Need more energy? Build a mountain and put solar collectors on it. While location matters, its nice to know I can modify a location as needed to correct weaknesses in the local geography.
As pointed out though, the AI just isn't up to the task of automating economic development. Case in point, I had one base that thanks to the obsession with forests was unable to grow do to lack of excess nutrients. The former assigned to improve the base after planting said forest decided what that base needed was a road linking it to another base half a continent away.
Other initial notes:
Supply Crawlers: The game makes no real effort to explain what these can do when you get them. They allow you to transfer one type of resource back to their home city. What this means is find some flat territory going to waste, build a few boreholes, and send that mineral production back to primary production centers. Or do something similar for whichever resource is lacking.
On warfare: I enjoy the flexibility provided by the unit creator but the improved reactor types to allow you to practically build some of the designs that can be created means over half the game is fought between fast but brittle speeders, slow but durable infantry, and the occasional mindworm. Some of the cool things that can be done, like create a combat former with anti-air abilities, cost almost as much as a secret project. This does deter 'super-units' (give a speeder the best guns, armor, and a special ability) but given the power available in the unit creator I would like some more freedom in making design decisions relative to what can be built.
On diplomacy: Multilateral talks would be nice to try to correct the constant situation of two allies being at war and wanting me to pick sides. Especially when both sides owe me money that won't be repaid until 100 turns from now. Other than that the AI works fine as 'machine logic' AI where a strong faction is more likely to break a treaty to gain an advantage then a weak faction.
Quote: Originally Posted by davidcarlton
And then I started running into cities with unhappy people, especially captured ones, and I wasn't sure what to do about that. I wanted to produce improvements to make people happy, but I couldn't produce anything at all while people were unhappy, which is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.
In addition to the methods suggested, focus on building the Human Genome project early on. For the University in particular this is almost a requirement to deal with the extra drones they recieve in larger bases.
Quote: Originally Posted by davidcarlton
Oh, one other thing about the middle game: that's when I started expanding into the oceans, though I never did that too seriously. Were the ocean building options available from the start?
Its a second tier Discover technology, I think. I'm not sure if the game explains why things like boats and aircraft are 'lost' on landing beyond game balance reasons. Space flight I can understand because the technology to discover that implies space travel is now 'practical' on a day to day basis but why it takes so long to read a aerodynamics textbook to build a basic aircraft is beyond me.
Quote: Originally Posted by peterb
(3) You can't (or at least I can't) manage them by hand, because then I'm contemplating what improvements to make on each of the several thousand hexes you control, which quickly overwhelms my tiny simian brain.
My recommendation for controlling complexity is play for the immediate moment and not think about the future. For example, if a city needs more food build a farm, more energy solar collectors, etc. The goal is try not to think what your entire faction will need in the future just think what one base needs at the moment. Perhaps not optimal but it pares down the decision tree considerably.
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10rdBen
Registered: 07/15/08
Posts: 79
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Posted 05/26/09 at 12:06 AM
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#7
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Oh my god - I got to a point in my most recent game where (as the University) I had about 5-10 bases all with 10-18 population and drone riots EVERYWHERE. I was tempted to have them all nerve stapled... 
But I resisted and through a combination of turning resource workers into empath's as well as spending about 1.5K credits buying expensive Psych base improvements, kept the drone number in check.
Still... mighty tempting to go turn into a Police state (via the Menu>HQ>Social Engineering, I should add for David and others still learning the game) except that not being whatever I was before (either wealth or planned) put seriously destroyed my credit income... such a drag those drones!
The price we pay for extreme colonial success...
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crimsonclone
Registered: 09/02/08
Posts: 156
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Posted 05/28/09 at 11:42 PM
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#8
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An interesting situation happens near the end of the mid game when planet busters come into play. Specifically the AI makes a point to construct at least 3-4 of them, usually split between fission and fusion as the appropriate technologies are researched (I've noticed the AI makes aggressive attempts to obtain technologies unlocking the latest in unit types and weapon strength but makes no real attempts to obtain technologies that have primarily domestic applications). I see this build up as an attempt to maintain parity with other factions but the twist is the prisoner's dilemma breaks once a faction starts building orbital defense pods. The planet buster as a unit quickly becomes useless unless a given faction is willing to match orbital combat potential to negate this preventive measure or attempt to mass produce enough planet busters to break through the defense pods. Neither solution is particularly cost effect and all in all the planet buster is a waste of resources unless used during a narrow time period.
In effect, especially the more aggressive factions that neglect their infrastructure end up spending a good deal of time and resources to develop units that are worthless against significant potential threats in the world (aka anyone with enough industry to dominate the orbital arena).
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vyeh
Registered: 05/25/09
Posts: 26
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Posted 05/29/09 at 03:46 PM
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#9
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Dealing with unhappiness requires strategy.
Unhappiness occurs when the drones outnumber the talents.
If you change a drone to a specialist, you reduce the number of drones by 1 (but you lose whatever nutrients, minerals and energy the drone was producing).
Certain facilities and secret projects decrease the number of drones or increase the number of talents.
If you change the drone to a doctor/empath/transcendi, you increase the number of psych units. 2 psych units turns one drone into a worker.
You can also increase psych units by allocating part of your energy income into producing psych and building certain facilities.
As far as expanding into the ocean, you need to have research a level 2 tech, Doctrine:Flexibility, before you can do so. Until you have fusion power, it is generally more cost effective to expand on land. Finally, sea bases are good for producing energy but not so good for producing minerals. In the early game, minerals tend to be more important.
Concerning too many formers, if you are following a native strategy or a forest strategy, you don't need too many formers. In any case, examine the options for automating formers. You can often strike a balance in formers management by selecting "build road to" and other specific task. Also note that in preferences you can dictate what automated formers can do and what they can't do.
While there is no SMAC equivalent to a granary, consider the children's creche which reduces the number of nutrients necessary to grow a base, and the recycling tanks which increase the production of nutrients by one.
Supply crawlers happens to be an app killer. Ignoring for the moment exploits (you will have to visit my forum and ask me there -- this bulletin board has such a tiny font), there are three ways supply crawlers can make improve your game.
(1) Bases can pool their mineral production to build secret projects. Set Base A to build a secret project. Base B builds a supply crawler. When the supply crawler reaches Base A, all of the minerals that went into building the supply crawler can be applied to the secret project.
(2) Supply crawlers can increase the nutrient, mineral or energy production of their base. Let's say you have some forests that aren't being worked (I think someone in an earlier thread said he went forest crazy). Put a crawler on the square and harvest 2 minerals per turn for the base. Now the next crawler can be produced even quicker. In short time, the base is producing as many minerals as it can without creating pollution.
(3) Supply crawlers can convey one nutrient, one mineral or one energy from its home base to another base. In a military campaign, bring some crawlers from bases with excess nutrients and you can turn every drone in a captured base into a specialist and have a lot of minerals to produce drone controlling facilities.
On the unit design workshop: play around. You'll discover that in some cases, defensive units can go from guns to lasers at no additional cost. When you discover fusion, you will find that a unit with a fusion reactor cost less than a unit with a fission reactor. If you want some super units, you can have them but you can't have as many as if you built cheap units. This is game balance. If you want a lot of super units, go into the scenario editor and give yourself a lot of energy credits.
On diplomacy: You can ask one of your warring parties to end a vendetta. You may have to pay. If the warring party accepts, both allies will be at peace (they may not stay at peace).
There is a window when planetbusters do not have a counter. It is a good idea not to put all your eggs in one basket. Remember planetbusters cannot go through units. If your bases are surrounded by crawlers, you will lose some replaceable units rather than your base.
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crimsonclone
Registered: 09/02/08
Posts: 156
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Posted 05/31/09 at 10:34 PM
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#10
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Quote: Originally Posted by vyeh
On diplomacy: You can ask one of your warring parties to end a vendetta. You may have to pay. If the warring party accepts, both allies will be at peace (they may not stay at peace).
Thanks, I couldn't figure out if this was even an option.
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vyeh
Registered: 05/25/09
Posts: 26
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Posted 06/01/09 at 02:50 PM
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#11
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I believe once you contact another faction and have gone through the initial dialog, you get a window that asks if you have further business. You click yes. Then click I have a proposal for you in response to the prompt. At that point, there is an option, please end your vendetta against my friend ...
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crimsonclone
Registered: 09/02/08
Posts: 156
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Posted 06/03/09 at 01:35 AM
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#12
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Some thoughts on force projection via aircraft carriers (at least I think it is a midgame tech that unlocks them).
I built carrier fleets to give myself force projection to counter the Hive and Spartans especially after needlejets became common. Each fleet represented about 5-10 turns of production out of 7 bases (1 carrier, 4 needlejets, 1 AAA foil, 1 Isle of the Deep) so losing a fleet is a pain to replace. It also meant abandoning plans to built a heavy ground force of drop shock troopers and drop hovertanks, which translated to a policy of containing hostile factions as opposed to securing their territory.
This worked, until the University realigned themselves with the Spartans and launched a massive attack against one of my carrier fleets, eventually destroying the carrier and her escorts and leaving the air wing stranded. In the overall view this action cost the University more then it did me. Not only did they lose a good number of air and psionic assets in the attack a good number of poorly defended bases were located close to my territory and were easily overrun. However, the loss of that carrier fleet made it impossible to contain the Spartans leading to constant incursions by Spartan needlejets and considerable losses of utility units.
The lesson is while a carrier is cool idea (submersible carriers are even better) I somewhat question the investment. Given how many units are lost if a carrier goes down I wonder if a better strategy would be to use a cheap transport and a few good quality marines to secure a hostile faction base and then use that as a staging ground for needlejets. Probably would cost the same only if the operation fails you don't lose everything. Or just deploy massive waves of drop shock troopers to drop into the middle of another faction and secure their production centers.
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vyeh
Registered: 05/25/09
Posts: 26
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Posted 06/03/09 at 01:35 PM
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#13
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Obviously, what is best depends on the tactical situation. A carrier and air wing allows you to launch an attack in the enemies rear and establish an operating base.
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sparky
Registered: 07/14/08
Posts: 167
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Posted 06/04/09 at 09:41 AM
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#14
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The terrain-altering capabilities offer some unique strategic options. Playing as the Spartans, I had managed to overrun my co-continental power, the Peacekeepers, with a massive land attack. Since I was going for the conquest victory, I meant to move on to the Believers, who were situated on a different continent, separated from mine by a mere three tiles of water. My first thought was to insert my drop tanks on top of one of their cities, build a psi gate, and start shuttling my troops through. However, Miriam had been diligent about creating aerospace complexes, so this was impossible. Rather than waste the turns to build a fleet of transports (I'd neglected my non-combat navy), I sent my flock o' formers to raise the land and make me a bridge.
A few turns later, my huge army of tanks and rovers rolled over Believer territory in a wave of fire and death, sweeping Miriam's overmatched army and absurd society away in a period of about six turns. I imagine Santiago would open her interrogation of Miriam with a quote from Isaiah: "Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low..."
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brainygamer
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Registered: 07/13/08
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Posted 06/04/09 at 09:41 PM
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#15
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Apologies for repeating what I already posted in the "Factions" thread, but I think my comments probably belong here more than there.
I have to confess that SMAC just isn't grabbing me. I've started and restarted 3 times since we began the playthrough, and every time I reach the mid-game phase I lose interest. It all begins to feel like a chore to me, and the game doesn't impart enough rewards or vary its challenges enough to keep me motivated to play.
I'm not suggesting the game is the problem. I honestly think it's me. What I'm discovering is that my tastes have changed as I've gotten older, and my patience for grinding through repetitive tasks has grown shorter. Maybe it's having a busier life than I did when games like Civ II owned my free time. Maybe it's playing a lot of other games in the last decade that have shifted my gaming sensibilities. I don't know.
What I do know is that I'm really struggling to continue playing Alpha Centauri, and I'm surprised I'm responding this way.
Has anyone else experienced a similar reaction? I earnestly hope the answer is no.
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ILR
Registered: 08/27/08
Posts: 140
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Posted 06/05/09 at 04:06 AM
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#16
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I think that's a relatively common problem people keep having with Civ games and it's almost like a built-in feature of the game system. The main reason for this is that the game mechanics do just not scale that well. The simple recon rover and a few terraformers in the early part of the game are much easier to operate ideally enough. As the game progresses, the larger amount of units and cities makes the game harder to optimize.
That's not necessarily a slight of the game engine. For example, Civ 2 had some modern age scenarios such as a 50-turn World War 2 map that started in a full-bore standoff with enormous armies on all sides. That didn't bother me in the slightest, it was almost like playing one of SSI's mid 90's hex-map strategy games. What then does make the change of focus from the slick early game to the tedious and overwhelming late game such a grind?
I'm not sure if this is even possible to reconcile. Can the early game exploration and late game standoffs be actually depicted on the same game system? Do you need to go to the Will Wright school of design and build a different system for every era?
I wouldn't have much perspective on this. For example, Civ IV does a phenomenal job on keeping the mid-game sprawl under control by dissociating unit support and building maintenance from individual cities, removing the binary revolts, and so on. Guess what, I absolutely hated all of those 'improvements' when I first read of them. "What sense could possibly be in removing building upkeep? How am I supposed to fight with units that don't have separate attack & defense values? etc." I was hilariously wrong in the end, of course.
So yes, streamlining can be an option. I'm too much of an optimizer for my own good to notice when I've crossed the point of diminishing returns. When I'm transferring a defensive rover to get it's upkeep from another base for five turns in order to complete a hybrid farm one turn sooner, that point was left behind a long time ago. Sometimes a player needs to be reined in from his own impulses a bit.
That being said, there is a group of players that are like a fish in water in this kind of environment, where there are numerous possibilities to gain minuscule advantages over time that add up to make the difference between victory and defeat in the end.
Perhaps the game's scale should gain distance from the grassroots level of the budding empire as time progresses. When I have 50 bases, I'm not too eager to tweak every single one of them whether an Energy Bank or Network Node needs to be built first. In the first few cities, that makes a significant difference. In the next 20 ones, not so much. I seriously need to try out the governors and automated workers extensively at some point. Relinquishing control can't be that hard.
On the other hand, the AI in this game doesn't really shine in any single aspect. I don't want to end up with a 4:1 ratio of artillery to common units due to impressionistic governors.
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vyeh
Registered: 05/25/09
Posts: 26
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Posted 06/05/09 at 08:19 AM
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#17
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I believe there are things that could be done to make it easier. For instance, being able to move stacks as a whole and also being able to order a terraformer stack to do a terraforming task.
There was an attempt with the groups command, but it wasn't well thought out.
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davidcarlton
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Posted 06/06/09 at 01:12 AM
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#18
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Quote: Originally Posted by brainygamer
What I'm discovering is that my tastes have changed as I've gotten older, and my patience for grinding through repetitive tasks has grown shorter. Maybe it's having a busier life than I did when games like Civ II owned my free time. Maybe it's playing a lot of other games in the last decade that have shifted my gaming sensibilities. I don't know.
I certainly feel this way in general, though not so much with SMAC - I rather like micromanaging cities, so as repetitive tasks go, this game is pretty good for me. (I far prefer it to, for example, JRPG random battles.)
As I'm growing older, the primary constraint on my game playing has shifted very much from money to time. When I was in grad school, nothing would make me happier than a well-done 40-hour game; these days, I would almost always prefer a well-done 8-hour game to that. Though I'm still not finding the 8-hour games that I like: if I'm starting from, say, a 40-hour JRPG as an example, what I really want is for them to cut out 95% of the combat, tighten up the cut scenes, but leave all the narrative structure and cities in place; instead, shorter games tend to leave the same proportions in place and uniformly give less of everything. (Except polygons - always more polygons. Sigh.) Even so, though, I still prefer the 8-hour game that's 1/5 of a 40-hour game, because I'll get more out of playing five such 8-hour games than I will out of the one 40-hour game.
It's amusing to read my twitter feed and see people talking about how they can't resist buying games for sale on Steam - I can't imagine having the time to play all those games! (Well, I can, but it's not realistic for me right now, and it's not important enough to me to make a serious effort for it to become realistic.) The last thing I need is to feel that I can't resist picking up a game because of its price...
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vyeh
Registered: 05/25/09
Posts: 26
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Posted 06/06/09 at 08:21 AM
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#19
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What do you mean by JRPG?
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davidcarlton
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Posted 06/06/09 at 11:18 AM
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#20
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Japanese Role Playing Game. E.g. one of the Final Fantasy games.
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