4X The Unsurpassed Brian Reynolds' Alpha Centauri thread

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Considering how SMAC is all the rage lately on the Codex with all the PBEM gaming going and the fact that since kyrub's fantastic work on the AI, the game was pretty much reborn, its very much natural that we get a proper SMAC thread.

It is time, men.

 

[Nevill]

Question: What's the usual settings you play with?

Map settings: Random maps, everything standart. I prefer less watery maps since naval combat in the game is retarded, naval travel is made almost completely irrelevant by air units, and naval bases can't really compete with land ones and are a pain to defend, which ensures that colonizing water is a fool's errand. On the other hand, water limits the ICSing, and that might be a welcome change sometimes.

Difficulty level is always Transcend, though it limits the successful strategies somewhat.

- Higher Goal: Yes (although while its story-line fascinating, I think Transcendence is the most boring way of winning - its pretty much rush-building the Ascent to Transcendence with the ridiculous amounts of energy you have in the end)

I am into micro-management. My energy reserves are empty 99% of the time because of all the other stuff I hurry. And since I am an ICSer, too, I never run out of stuff to hurry.

A victory of Transcendence is a necessity if one finds themselves in a stalemate with another superpower. On the other hand, there is no real 'Project race' to speak of, since the one to discover the final tech can usually build the Projects in 1 turn by that time with all the crawlers he has.

- Total War: Yes

Most of the games end this way.

- Peace in Our Time: Yes

For those games where I am too lazy to conquer every last thing.

- Mine, All Mine: Yes (never won a economic victory - anyone ever did?)

I managed to try and corner the market once when playing Morgan and getting something like 1000 credits per turn. The opponent surrendered, so I couldn't actually verify how it works.

- One For All: Yes

Don't see why not.

- Do or Die: Nope (don't wanna lose players to worms or early-game rushes)

Depends. One shouldn't really lose early to worms (there are safeguards against that in-game and if you do lose, that's on you and your reckless style), and if you are wiped out by an early game rush you are so far behind that you might as well be dead anyway. But I still have this on as a method to keep computer players in game.

- Look First: Used to play with this until I realized I was 'sperging and OCDing about the most optimal starting position, restarting over and over until I got THE PERFECT STARTING POSITIAN. Even today I still sperg a lot over optimal city placement - not a ICS sort of guy at all.

Obligatory for me. Even though more often than not it does not make a difference, it really pays off when it does.

- Tech Stagnation - Usually yes. Otherwise I think the game is over too quickly, by 2300s you're already transcending.

Indifferent about it. By 2300s the game is over one way or the other.

- Spoils of War - Used to, but I realized it was a lame and made aggressive strategies too strong

Lame. Espionage is gimped so that tech stealing and infiltration are the only viable options anyway, no need to make it completely redundant.

- Blind Research - Used to, but I think Blind Research, while a great and very logical idea, is sort of a raw mechanic.

The game is designed in a really stupid unfortunate way - some research paths give you power to tear the opposition down, and some give you squat. There are techs that don't give you anything except for a techpoint cost increase for the next research topic. The ones who make it first to Industrial Automation or Doctrine: Air Power gain an overwhelming advantage. This setting makes it worse.

However, if you rebalance the research tree with a mod so that more research paths are viable, it doesn't look so terrible anymore. As it is, though, it is just a challenge option for playing against AI or for fun.

- Intense Rivalry - Used to (no idea why). I think its absolutely unnecessary unless you want to have Vendettas with almost everyone - The AI is very aggressive as it is, especially the aggressive trio (Yang, Miriam, Santiago). Even the less aggressive factions can be rather violent when they want to - its always surreal to meet Morgan and have him declare his hate of you instantly.

It is a 'dogpile human player' option. Useful when you are playing a duel against another player and do not want AIs influencing the match too much.

- No Unity Survey - Does anybody plays with this? Seems to spoil all the fun imho.

Tried it a few times, didn't like it.

- No Unity Scattering - Never played with this, it does make sense on some levels, one might argue that Unity Pods unbalance the game towards the player because, unlike the AI, you're smart enough to start cranking transports once you're finished with all the pods on your continent. Result is you get dozens of alien artefacts and a lot of credits.

Obligatory for me. It was fun to 'check the huts' in single player, but in multi it often creates an unfair advantage for one player. One finds nutrient resourses and expands explosively, the other finds a can of worms.

It gets even worse in the expansion where 6-3-1 Ogres can be found in Pods from Turn 1. One of my games was a ~Turn 20 6-Orge-rush. The opponent had 4 bases with 1-1-1 Scouts.

- Bell Curve - Nah, I like random events (except the one that nukes your sattelites, that shit is just crap)

I like them too, and they provide a small incentive to develop infrastructure.

- Time Warp - Never played with it, but I hear its actually a very balanced option, especially if you can easly surpass the AI with your starting strategy alone.

Don't really use it. Some AI choices are beyond ridiculous, like never bothering to learn Centauri Ecology by 2150. And I think you start with a staggering techcost for some reason, so there is a chance you won't be able to.

- Iron Man - No.
- Randomize faction leader personalities - Anyone ever did this? I wonder if it works well, partly because the personalities are very condutive to their playstyles. Pacifist Believers or Spartans would't do well, I think.
- Randomize faction leader social agendas - I think I did this once, no idea what happened. Could be retarded fun, tho.

No.

House rules include not using Crawlers. Ever. I found my games much more interesting without them, be it against AI or human opponents.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Seconded on no crawlers. Managing those things is so damn time consuming and boring that no matter how much of an advantage they offer I can never be bothered.

 

[laclongquan]

Currently University Morgan
Map settings:
Huge Map, 50-70 water, no erosion but dense cloud cover. Huge Map of Planet

Game Rules:
- Higher Goal: Yes
- Total War: Yes
- Peace in Our Time: Yes
- Mine, All Mine: Yes.
- One For All: Yes
- Do or Die: Nope. I dont want to lose customers and/or pawns.
- Look First: Nope. To find better location I used restart, not this feature. need to have some fun exploring.
- Tech Stagnation - Usually yes.
- Spoils of War - Yes. It put heavy pressure on me to defend well, or pay for peace before loss.
- Blind Research - No. Never like that kind of shitty feature.
- Intense Rivalry - Yes. This will have strong effect on Morgan's trade policies which is unfortunate.
- No Unity Survey - Yes.
- No Unity Scattering - Cause the micromanagement of artifacts annoy me.
- Bell Curve - I like random events.
- Time Warp - Nope. Play a sucky position and sucky development just sucks~
- Iron Man - No.
- Randomize faction leader personalities - No. Cause it make for a consistent story.
- Randomize faction leader social agendas -No. See above.

Abandon the University game when my naval invasion captured Gaian Landings. Now it's a matter of moving infantry and calvary across the maps, ie logistic for that long campaign after a blitz. Meanwhile my feint upnorth tie up a lot of their jets and heli. That help my feint down south gained some real estates even though I dont plan for its success.
This Morgan game has me shared a continent with Peacekeeper. Lal could be a good customer if he can stand me.

 

[TripJack]

only homos turn off blind research

 

[Grotesque]

 

[The Great Deceiver]

Absolutely amazing game with an unparalleled atmosphere. I still remember The Dream Catcher secret project video (and The Self-Aware Colony). Just how many strategy games have this wonderful, and often uneasy, feeling of exploring the unknown? And it's not just the Planet that's fascinating - it's also the possible direction of human progress. I loved the story intersections too (even though I know them by heart by now unfortunately).

I remember enjoying the Journey to Centauri episodes a lot, even contemplated buying the books - did anyone read those?

P.S. Blind research or bust, earthzakharov.

 

[Renegen]

RESERVED

 

[laclongquan]

My Morgan share a continent with Peacekeeper and that fucker press me right from the start with Recon Rover upto Chaos Marines.

Thank God I keep him contain at the bottleneck, then taking his bottleneck city to rename approriately Toll Booth. This battlefield is bloody like WW1 with around 60+ dead units in total. Mostly Lal's because my Morganites aint gonna die stupidly like that.

It illustrate perfectly the failure of single stack. Once a stack get damaged 3-4 times, they are gone. Poof. Bam~ There goes 30 other units in the stack! So you should keep units in a tile down to no more than 4.

Transcend Difficulty and Stagnant Research is so slow, especially for a non-University.

 

[Agesilaus]

Never played it, should I bother? Or is this game cruising by on nostalgia alone at this point? It doesn't look all that interesting.

 

[mastroego]

Never played it, should I bother? Or is this game cruising by on nostalgia alone at this point? It doesn't look all that interesting.

I think the Codex might view it as "the Jagged Alliance 2" of 4x strategy games.
(I never played JA2 but I know the Codex's consensus about it).

It does a few things no other 4x game ever did, and it does other things with a depth no other 4x ever did - or did since, either.
The UI is outdated, and that might be discouraging to new players.
It is to me as well, sometimes.
But there's no other 4x like SMAC, no matter how or where you go searching.

 

[Grotesque]

The UI is outdated

Oh, but please do educate us how the UI is outdated!

 

[lemon-lime]

Oh, but please do educate us how the UI is outdated!

No mouse-over tooltips. In-game datalinks tech tree is functional but very uncomfortable to navigate. Scrolling through your unit designs in the workshop ...

Never played it, should I bother? Or is this game cruising by on nostalgia alone at this point? It doesn't look all that interesting.

If you like to play a Civilization style game in a sci-fi setting, then SMAC is still worth it. The setting is well thought out and the presentation is very atmospheric.
Here is some beginner advise: In addition to The Brazilian Slaughter's tips (Kyrub's patch etc.) don't bother with the lower difficulty settings. The "Librarian" setting is where you should start. The lower difficulties tend to teach you to do dumb stuff. (They certainly did to me.)
There is a better way to give you some edge for your first game. Play as Gaians on a customized map that plays to that factions strengths: Sparse cloud cover, abundant native life, sparse minerals. Those are basically the most hostile map conditions, making the game generally harder, for every faction that isn't the Gaians. It'll give you a head-start.
If you play with Kyrub's patch (which you should), using the custom rule Tech Stagnation is also very advisable.

It's generally a good idea to look through all the options in the preferences, turn on detailed menus, and the look through them to see what actions are at your disposal.
Also important for your enjoyment of SMAC: Turn off the fucking annoyances! I used to hate SMAC's unit editor, until I disabled auto-designing new units in the preferences - you can keep auto-obsolete on. Design and update your handful of unit types by hand. It sounds like more hassle than the automatic way, but ultimately it isn't. Also turn off the in-game tutorial messages in the same preferences menu. Read the manual instead.

 

[Nevill]

Query: Anyone knows a good balance mod for SMAC?

I was going to make one. I still have the alphax file somewhere on my PC. It mostly amounts to juggling some values around and making the research in multiple directions viable.

It doesn't change the game all that much, except for some of the more questionable alterations. I guess I can list some of those that I found working well.

- Anyone knows if you can give foils and cruisers the ability to retreat to a adjacent square, like rovers and hovertanks do?

They already do. If you attack a cruiser with a foil (a slower unit), it will retreat. Not that it matters, as you can bombard it and it won't budge as per the retarded rules of artillery combat.

- Any idea on how to change mag tube's bonus? I think infinite movement rate is too cheesy (especially in a Pangea map, like the one I just downloaded and plan to play soon), I was thinking of 10 or 12.

No way that I am aware of.

- Thinking about taking out the Hybrid Forest's bonus. Forests are too powerful. I think 3-3-2 is too powerful, 2-2-2 is already fantastic.

Hybrids are very expensive, as you would quickly find in multiplayer games. However, that's hardly a counter-argument, as it serves to make the ones that are already ahead climb the power graph up even faster. But maybe making forests 1-1-1 and removing the penalty from farming in a mine square would solve your problem?

Mines and boreholes would still be your go-to strategy for minerals, and farm+condenser combos will be better for food. Late game (~Centauri Psi) you can use fungus to get ~2-2-2 without any buildings.

Instead of taking away the bonus consider moving it farther up the research tree if you find it too strong. Many of the perceived imbalanses are due to you receiving the technology too early where there aren't comparable solutions in other tech branches.

- Thinking about putting fungus bonuses earlier, as it is by the time fungus becomes useful, you have scrubbed all that crap from your territory and put some nice forests in its place. May copy some mods.

Yes. That is one of the changes I did, and though Green still does not compare with Free Market economically, it becomes a viable alternative.

Centauri Ecology (+1 food) - Empathy (+1 mineral) - Meditation (+1 energy) - already as good as an unmodified forest.

Genetics (+1 food) - Psi (+1 mineral) - 2-2-1 fungus with no modifiers, 3-2-1 for Gaians.

One can add something to Ecological Engeneering or Advanced Ecological Engineering to make it even better.

 

[laclongquan]

Here is some beginner advise: In addition to The Brazilian Slaughter's tips (Kyrub's patch etc.) don't bother with the lower difficulty settings. The "Librarian" setting is where you should start. The lower difficulties tend to teach you to do dumb stuff. (They certainly did to me.)
There is a better way to give you some edge for your first game. Play as Gaians on a customized map that plays to that factions strengths: Sparse cloud cover, abundant native life, sparse minerals. Those are basically the most hostile map conditions, making the game generally harder, for every faction that isn't the Gaians. It'll give you a head-start.

This. Basically, native life and sparse cloud is designed for Gaia. Add in the option that make factions NOT aggressive will afford you a very long time of peace, enough to advance to powerful. That is basically the tutorial scenario for beginner.

For storyfags, either play University or Gaia. gaia is more atmospheric, but University is more detailed~

EDIT: On another note...

I basically leave other factions in other continents alone to concentrate on Peacekeepers and internal development. My guesstimate is when I finally reduce Lal to a subordinate position I would occupy most of the central continent and develop them to a faretheewell.

Morgan is certainly a different beast compared to Gaia or University. The enforced small size pre-habitation dome ensure that you really should build cities near each other, as we will play with max 11+2 peep/city for most of the game. It is certainly an anathema to others' big cities approach. The slow growth doesnt help either.

It is so bad that I have to do this kind of trick: build a new city. Due to a secret project it up to 3 peep instantly. Use that kind of labour to build more pods and close up that city to finally rebuild it

 

[Grotesque]

No mouse-over tooltips

I recommend using the in-depth manual that this exquisite game comes with.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, the game from a time where reading paper was considered cool!

In-game datalinks tech tree is functional but very uncomfortable to navigate

Also the game comes with a big ass tech paper map which you can use to tuck in bed our kids with, hide their bodies or cover up that prison escape tunnel entrance.

Scrolling through your unit designs in the workshop

finicalities!
(obsolete button is king)


P.S. : are you a douchebag pirate like me and you don't have access to all the memorabilia the gamebox came with???

 

[laclongquan]

Dont navigate your Workshop design. Navigate through the building interface.

Click on a city. Press Build or Queue. The items to choose are sorted into infantry, vehicle, noncombat, building... Navigate that way is easier than the Design Workshop interface.

That Vehicle Preset should have a been a series of buttons that allow us to jump between design.

Like: Click on Chopper and it jump between designs using chopper chassis.

 

[Nevill]

Morgan is certainly a different beast compared to Gaia or University. The enforced small size pre-habitation dome ensure that you really should build cities near each other

Spoiler

Once you discover the wonders sheer brokenness of ICSing, they all look the same.

 

[lemon-lime]

I recommend using the in-depth manual that this exquisite game comes with.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, the game from a time where reading paper was considered cool!


Also the game comes with a big ass tech paper map which you can use to tuck in bed our kids with, hide their bodies or cover up that prison escape tunnel entrance.

finicalities!
(obsolete button is king)


P.S. : are you a douchebag pirate like me and you don't have access to all the memorabilia the gamebox came with???

Sometimes you want to retire obsolete designs and as far as I know you can only do that in the workshop. And you gotta scroll from the right all the way to the left. And for every of the obsolete designs again, because after deletion, it jumps back to end of the list. That is the incredibly annoying part of the workshop UI.

I did buy SMAC back in 2000. But it's the low-budget German re-release, which comes in a fucking DVD case, with PDF manual on CD-ROM. For the English version that I am playing now, I have sailed the seven seas. I wish I had the original US release of SMAC though. I remember trying to get one several years ago, but no success. Its rare and expensive now.

 

[laclongquan]

ICS look horrendous~ Since I have a bit of graphicwhore in me, I just refuse to do that shit. I can do the tricks if they look beautiful, but spare me for ugly shit like that~

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

ICS needs to be purged with Fire.

 

[Johannes]

Didn't like these mods much, so I have taken upon myself to do some homebrewing. I know, I know, SMAC is sacred, but does the sacred brook no improvement?


Some things I wanted to do:
- Anyone knows if you can give foils and cruisers the ability to retreat to a adjacent square, like rovers and hovertanks do?
- Any idea on how to change mag tube's bonus? I think infinite movement rate is too cheesy (especially in a Pangea map, like the one I just downloaded and plan to play soon), I was thinking of 10 or 12.
- Thinking about taking out the Hybrid Forest's bonus. Forests are too powerful. I think 3-3-2 is too powerful, 2-2-2 is already fantastic.
- Thinking about putting fungus bonuses earlier, as it is by the time fungus becomes useful, you have scrubbed all that crap from your territory and put some nice forests in its place. May copy some mods.

Thinking about buffing Spartans and Morganites a bit - I think they're the weakest factions in the game, Spartan AI usually becomes mega-powerful early on (early-game conquest spree or Moonsoon jungle) or remains a middling power, while Morganites have a rough start and I only saw them doing fantastic in a game, like, once (in the Naval Action map, Morganites were rich and pwning the Spartans in a never-ending war, lol. Probes, I think.).

Morganites are not weak. Or for the AI's hands they probably are, but that's it.

First I'd look into a solution that'd indeed make that ICS spam less optimal. Would colony pod price increase actually do much? Or is there a more elegant solution?

Then I'd make Needlejets and Choppers a bit worse, if I were making a mod.

Hybrid Forest gives forests +1N and +1E, right? Could remove either of those bonuses, but taking away both would be going overboard I think.

Then you could tweak the tech tree but that's risky territory if you're not superb at the game.

 

[Nevill]

Would colony pod price increase actually do much?

Not a lot, actually. You will give an unfair advantage to any faction that starts near a rocky mineral tile (7 minerals with a mine) - they will be able to produce them at twice the normal speed.

And with crawlers anyone could print colony pods by the dozens, no matter the cost.

ICS gives you too many advantages in terms of energy (research), support and production early in the game. However, later on it falls flat on its face because of all modifiers from the buildings that small bases often can't afford.

What can be done to lessen the impact of ICSing (all learned in the process of making the mod):

- Remove 1 extra mineral from base tile (SMANIAC solution) - you have to rely less on raw base production and more on terraforming. The more pop you have, the less this mineral matters.
- Make forests produce 1 mineral less - forests are very cheap and universal, and once the base hits 2 pop I switch it to foresting duty immediately, which nets me at least 5 minerals and allows to build CP in 6 turns tops. Without an extra mineral and with forests made less attractive I would only get 2 minerals from such an arrangement. To really build anything I'll have to rely either on bonuses (which are limited), or on mines (which are harder to terraform and therefore can't be spammed).
- Ban crawlers. If the base can only be as productive as its pop allows, it diminishes the beauty of 100+ 2-pop bases severely.
- Make buildings cheaper, but also make their maintenance higher. maintenance can eat an ICSer's budget really fast. Make tree farms cost 10 energy per turn. A few bases with 7 pop could afford them (as they give some bonuses to Econ which help offset the cost), but several 3-size bases will run the economy into the ground if you try and build them everywhere.
- Solve the early SUPPORT problem. ICSing is extremely effective in part because of the mechanics where the more bases you have, the more units you can build. Make it so that you aren't limited that heavily. Make Scout patrols (base guards) clean. In fact, make clean reactor free for defender units. You would still need to pay SUPPORT to maintain an army to attack, but not for defense. Make Police State more viable, or add a few more SUPPORT solutions.
- Remove Population Booms except for ones that rely on Golden Ages and their +2 GROWTH bonus. ICSing means bureaucracy. Bureaucracy means super-drones which you won't notice if you are playing on Transcend anyway. The Democracy+Planned+Children's Creches combo allows almost anyone to PopBoom with ease and triple their powerbase in 10 years. But what if you reduce GROWTH bonuses so that reaching +6 is not trivial anymore? Well, now you can only reach +6 with Golden Age, and that can only be achieved with Talents. Are you ICSing? You have superdrones and you can't have Talents, so you can't PopBoom. Enjoy your 70 bases stuck at pop 4 or 5 and underdeveloped due to high maintenance while your opponent has only 20, but they are all 16 pop ones with top infrastructure, and he is outproducing and outresearching you.

Then I'd make Needlejets and Choppers a bit worse, if I were making a mod.

Increase armor efficiency and remove drop pods from combat units (Chop&Drop is the cheapest trick that exists in the game). Make interceptors dirt cheap. Choppers aren't that scary if they can't punch through advanced armor - which they always can in vanilla.

Hybrid Forest gives forests +1N and +1E, right? Could remove either of those bonuses, but taking away both would be going overboard I think.

I think they are hard-coded.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Chiron Pangea (Panchiron?) is started, for now I just put the eastern continent mashed into the center one in photoshop and it already produced interesting results.

Anyone ever tried a One-Colony Challenge? I just did one with the Gaians. Its weird, crawlers everywhere, I polluted a lot due to crawlers mining, trying to get 1 turn production on all things, I have been fighting the Believers for two decades using fusion missile needlejets and so I'm doing quite well killing their stuff (Fusion Missile Needlejets vs non-AAA plasma steel fission units ends badly), but I can't get U.N Charter out because Lal is the Planetary Governor, so I can't simply gas and raze the Believers to the death. It got a bit silly, so maybe tomorrow.

Nevill
- How about taking out the forest nutrient, making them 0-2-1? That would make them 1-2-1 with Tree Farm, and 2-3-2 with Hybrid Forest - quite respectable, but if you really need food you go farm + solar then Enhanced Farm + solar. Forest early on would be something you put on crap land like arid terrain and flat moist. The bad side is that it would make forest into a superior, early mine (through that's already true - mines are already crap until mineral limits are lifted - although I do wonder who the fuck put pops on mines rather than crawling them, so the solution here may be getting rid of farm + mine nutrient penalty, which would make them attractive. Making forest 1-1-1 might also work, but they would be 2-2-2 and nearly indistinguishable from modded fungus.

- I don't think crawlers are the problem here. Without crawlers, ICS would still be possible, if harder.

- Seems to be a elegant solution. I suggest stuff that ICS bases require.

- Clean reactors to Scout Patrols is a bit weird, but might work (inb4 Scout Patrol rush). Clean reactors to general defenders would be a bit more silly. Wish we could make SMAC adopt a cIV-style unit support system where the support comes out of money, not base production. Making Police State viable is not a bad idea, its pretty much Hive and Spartan-only civic, because the support bonus is quite weak until you hit +3, the Police bonus is not bad but that effic bonus hurts bad and it simply pales to the superiority of Democracy. One simple way of boosting Police State might be giving it a -1 EFFIC penalty rather than -2, it also doesn't boost the Hive because it doesn't care anyway.

- Good idea and I have heard it elsewhere. But say, did they fix the bug in SMAC where Golden Ages didn't give the extra growth? I know last official SMAX patch fixed it, but not idea if someone fixed it in SMAC. Also makes popbooming a bit harder.

- I've seen range-decreasing solutions and I think making interceptors a bit cheaper and armor better would work. Its too easy to get Fusion Lasers and Shard Copters killing plasma steel garrisons. Chop 'n drop is more of an AI problem tho, human players can simply build Aerospace Complexes and AAA defenses, unless the armor/weapon difference is too big or gas/cannon fodder wave is used, chop 'n drop doesn't work as well.

 

[Nevill]

- How about taking out the forest nutrient, making them 0-2-1? That would make them 1-2-1 with Tree Farm, and 2-3-2 with Hybrid Forest - quite respectable, but if you really need food you go farm + solar then Enhanced Farm + solar.

I suppose that would work, but you mostly use forests as cheap crawler fodder. 2 minerals for 4 terraforming turns are too good.

1-1-1 and 0-2-1 serve the same purpose - to cover shit land like arid or flat squares where building a mine+road+farm is a waste of time.

so the solution here may be getting rid of farm + mine nutrient penalty, which would make them attractive.

Yes, it is necessary. Bear in mind that farm+mine is still ~10 terraforming turns against 4 for a forest. You might want to address this, too.

Making forest 1-1-1 might also work, but they would be 2-2-2 and nearly indistinguishable from modded fungus.

First, it would make them into 3-1-2 which is pretty distinguishable from a mineral-heavy fungus.

Second, this is how it is supposed to be. Terraformers who don't give a damn about PLANET rating go forests, boreholes and stuff. Planet-lovers go fungus. Remember the -1 resourse penalty for each negative PLANET score, you can't use fungus while on Free Market. And I also added a -1 PLANET penalty to Wealth because the setting is too good with its +1 ECON +1 INDUSTRY. Anything with +1 INDUSTRY is crazy good already.

- I don't think crawlers are the problem here. Without crawlers, ICS would still be possible, if harder.

They are a part of the problem, and a major one at that. With crawlers, a base can boost its production very high, which leads to ICSers gaining a huge early advantage and lets them crank units (formers) by the dozens, terraforming more land for crawlers while it doesn't matter where they put their actual bases - since they will only rely on crawlers anyway.

And SMAC is all about snowballing.

Clean reactors to Scout Patrols is a bit weird, but might work (inb4 Scout Patrol rush).

How do you rush with Scout Patrols if your opponent can crank them out indefinitely, too, because they are free?

Clean reactors to general defenders would be a bit more silly.

Nah. It works. Make all defense free and make it so that there is no SUPPORT penalty for defending your bases heavily. It is a part of solving the inefficiency of defense, too.

You are still penalized for not putting all those minerals towards infrastructure.

Half of a new base's SUPPORT is wasted on the defending unit, so one has to build more and more bases to afford formers without penalties.

Making Police State viable is not a bad idea, its pretty much Hive and Spartan-only civic

Make it 'Hive and Gaian only'. Sparta would have to be pretty dumb to use it, those -2 EFFIC are killers.

In my mod, I've done away with -EFFIC civics altogether. They are just traps that you can't use without another +EFFIC civics to compensate. But that might seem too bold for you.

One simple way of boosting Police State might be giving it a -1 EFFIC penalty rather than -2

I have removed -EFFIC completely and gave it -2 TALENT. I also gave Fundamentalism +1 INDUSTRY, fanatics are cheap workforce and all.

It works in that you usually sit on PS if you want a lot of units, you switch to Fundy if you want a lot of buildings or better units, and you switch to Democracy if you want a lot of energy (through EFFIC).

Police State is a phase every faction goes through now in the early game, to help them with the starting SUPPORT problems, but most grow out of it eventually. Hive and Sparta, however, might keep it until endgame because the bonuses are just too good for them.

But say, did they fix the bug in SMAC where Golden Ages didn't give the extra growth?

When I mentioned it to kyrub he denied there was a bug at all.

There were several annoying bugs that were fixed only in SMAX. For example, the maintenance cost for buildings on higher difficulty levels was supposed to be lower for AI, but this was mistakingly applied to the player as well. Or the bug when +2 GROWTH provided by a Golden Age combined with +4 gained by other means sometimes did not trigger a population boom in the base - this was critical for factions that could not achieve +6 GROWTH by means other than Golden Age.

Not true.

So either it was fixed, or he is not aware of it. The worst part is that the bug is inconsistent and only shows up from time to time.

I have made my mod for SMAX which doesn't have that problem, so I can't verify.

Chop 'n drop is more of an AI problem tho, human players can simply build Aerospace Complexes and AAA defenses, unless the armor/weapon difference is too big or gas/cannon fodder wave is used, chop 'n drop doesn't work as well.

But the armor/weapon difference is too big, and you can't afford too many defenders because of support issues.

Let's say you have 4 choppers that have the range to attack 4 enemy bases. Let's say that 1 defender can potentially handle 1 chopper. To fully protect yourself you have to build 16 defenders, 4 for each base. 16 defenders vs 4 choppers - the cost is simply ridiculous. And you need also to build aerospace complexes everywhere, too, and those things are expensive.

Defenders need to be made way more effective and way more cheap for bunkering down to become viable.