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Santiago_Claus
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I haven't played SMAC in years, and I guess all the faction leaders decided to take their revenge for being stuck in a mouldering old shoe box all these years ...
Setup was SMAC-X with original factions, transcend difficulty, abundant life, blind research, look first, spoils of war, and intense competition.
I, as CEO Morgan, started next to a river which I greedily built my first base upon. My 2nd base had a mineral special, critical to building WP, my first SP.
Turn 5 -- that's right -- turn 5 -- there's Miriam. Jeez. Lots of 1-1-1 and 1-2-1 Infantry, and heavy losses find Miriam in an escape pod to Garland Crater on the far side of the map. No quick surrender, just "Die Heathen!" right to the bitter end. Everything hinged on a Monolith, rocky area, and 2 roads. She couldn't dislodge my 1-2-1's from the rock adjacent to her capital, whilst they could repair at the nearby monolith using the road she had built.
Morgan's starting armor tech may not seem like much, but 2 points of armor is DOUBLE everyone else's. Even the Believers can't cut through it with just a Scout. Combine that ability to survive with a nearby monolith and you've got a prickly problem.
Deidre is right behind her, has been expanding like crazy, and hates my guts. I stole Green from her and after some lucky trolling eventually hit her with worms to bolster my pathetic laser infantry hordes. Once again, after heavy losses I got her. That was unfortunate, because AI-Deidre is a natural ally of player-Morgan for all but the early game, but it had to be done. As consolation Gaia's Landing brought me Empath Guild and HGP.
Never underestimate the power of "Green". Mindworms are to early SMAC like horses to early humans, a source of speed, wealth, security, and exploration.
I had a huge continent all to myself, but had fallen way behind in tech. Base 2's mineral special and the bloody sacrifice of artifacts I'd have rather linked brought me WP and VW (barely), but Yang built CN and to my horror Zak got HSA. Lal got the Library, so that wouldn't bail me out, either. I was afraid I'd lose out on important SP's (those I hadn't lost already) if I stayed behind technologically, but luckily IA came early, and hordes of supply crawlers represent a kind of "just-in-time SP" which proved extremely valuable for sniping them the turn after a probe stole the prerequisite tech.
Sea probes are bad against AI before air cover because AI always knows where you are, but at the cost of grievous losses I finally achieved tech parity, plus a couple techs of my own. Then somebody discovered Spaceflight and shared it with everyone else but me, and prototype nukes start appearing all over the globe.
I've never had a game go so long with mineral & energy restrictions; I would eventually build a huge energy infrastructure, a line of fusion supply ships bringing back 2 energy to the Supercollider, and the higher the techs went, the more expensive they became, so that I was going bankrupt in a way; at 2 energy per tile there's no way to keep up with the progressive cost of techs, which stubbornly held at 8 turns per tech until the restrictions were finally cast off. (IIRC EE finally arrived via artifact.)
I was at war with all but Lal, of course, and had three TF's, one against the technologically pathetic Spartans to the East, one against the scattered, distant forces of Miriam to the West, and one against Yang to the Northeast.
The Spartan and Believer campaigns were long, slow, barely-fought affairs, for Yang was the main threat. Still I made steady progress and gave many conquered bases to Lal for the trade credits.
Beware Yang with missile tech. He had a bunch of sea bases, as sometimes the AI spews under some mysterious set of circumstances, but this time around I didn't mind so much, as they were the reason I gained tech parity at all. Now, though, I had to take every last one of them through a rain of conventional missiles. All the worms on trolling duty went in as reinforcements and still I was short on units. Finally I gained a beachhead, a big coastal city plus a small outpost on Mount Planet, and I knew it was all over for the sadistic Chairman.
Or maybe not ... I was so used to always having the HSA I was totally unprepared for probes. First Yang steals my tech, then he steals the base, which means another tech. Yang grabbed up the Plasma Shard, giving his fighter aircraft parity with mine, but worse he also got 8-res armor ... horrified, I watched as half his bases switched to building 8r AAA defenders.
Around this time global hell breaks loose. Miriam decides to kick off a nuclear war, starting with Zak. Yang nukes Lal, Lal nukes Miriam, and Miriam nukes everybody: Zak, Yang, Lal, and eventually me. All SP's owned by Lal, Zak, or Miriam are incinerated. Sister Armageddon didn't have any bases close enough to Yang or me to get ours. She would go on to use enough nerve gas on Zak to rack up 130 years of sanctions.
I was building conventional missiles, the first time in history I'd ever done that, scared to death of another faction, the first time in history post-Air Power that's ever happened, and thankful for the nuke Miriam dropped on Yang, another first.
It isn't often an AI opponent makes you respect it, but the AI's Yang fought with infuriating alacrity, building large numbers of fighters to thwart the textbook air cover tactics, lots of probes to throw at bases I captured, and there were roads everywhere, making ZoC tricks nigh impossible.
I finally beat the old bird, of course, but not before building a proper army to do it with, not some "two worms and a fusion chopper" half-measure. This was the best post-Air Power fight I've ever encountered.
It was also interesting from the standpoint of tech. I kept my tech priority locked on "Explore" after D:AP -- maybe that did it -- but somehow I beelined to Secrets of the Manifold, building Manifold Harmonics about as early as is possible to build it, way before supertensile solids, IIRC even before robotic assembly plants. MH, the Vats, and Teletubby Matrix made the power graph look as vertical as I've ever seen it -- flat during the energy restriction years, then suddenly straight up. Another first.
On balance I can see why I liked this game back in '98 ... all these years later it's still surprising me.
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Zeiter
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Whoa, that game sounds cool. I love it when games stay competitive for a long time. It would be really cool if you had got up to singularity lasers and it was still neck and neck, and you didn't have transcendence victory enabled. You'd have to win by a massive bloodbath of gravship, aircraft carrier, drop-pod, destroyer, hovertank, missle, and possibly mind worm or psi-tank attacks. That would be fun as heck!
Perhaps I could try to design a scenario like that...it would take some time, but man, it would be cool.
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Santiago_Claus
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8-res armor is about as close to "invincible" as it gets, at least in base defenders.
The missile unit allows you to trade the guaranteed loss of a unit for guaranteed damage, and its mere existence is a huge argument in favor of having large numbers of bases amassing large quantities of minerals, efficiency be damned.
2-techs-per-turn, of course, is a huge argument in favor of efficiency, but I digress ...
I eventually got the string gun, of course, but by that time the only relevant weapons were of the res+empath variety.
CEO Aaron, we all have our preferred playing styles. I can't imagine a game in which I didn't have at least a chance of gaining new tech from taking over an enemy base, a fundamentalist religion of mine ever since Master of Orion, but "directed research" takes the replayability away for me, since I know exactly which tech is the "good stuff" -- let's see, should I choose Environmental Economics? -- and I invariably make the same choices every game.
Tech steal is considered "non-standard" and blind research is considered "standard", so obviously I'm no purist. To each our own!
Anyway, back to this game: in the past I always hit my AI opponent with a tiny squad consisting of 3 fighter planes plus a handful of lightly-defended attackers, and maybe a chopper or 2, and the AI always buckled. This time, though, I couldn't build up the tech advantage I had become so used to, because of turn after turn languishing under energy restrictions; meanwhile Yang was building all the "right" things: fighter planes, probes, fighter planes, roads, and most importantly more fighter planes.
Instead of my tiny, technologically superior force using textbook air-cover tactics to pin a hapless low-tech foe to the mat, my air force was met with double its number of technological near-equals.
Imagine my surprise when Yang traded me fighter for fighter with planes to spare. The AI never builds enough fighter planes, but it did this time. Zoikes.
Without air cover to lock down ZoC's and provide that sweet attack immunity to the ground troops it's back to the stone-age tactics of the Impact Rover days, which sadly I had not prepared for, assuming that air superiority was a given as it always had been in the past.
I'm *so* not used to fighting without air superiority ... air cover may be the end-all be-all of AC warfare, but that also makes it a terrible crutch ...
"Another testament to SMAC being the best [strategy] game ever."
You said it! (Except the [strategy] part)
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Santiago_Claus
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This game I captured a ton of spore launchers, which I mostly used to defend coastline improvements (sensors in particular) and bases.
Spore launchers may be second-rate artillery, but they defend just as any other native lifeform, and can give those coastal raiders enough pain to send them home for repairs.
I also learned that if a fungal bloom includes spore launchers that if you win the artillery duel the whole bloom goes down -- even locusts. Sweet!
Most importantly artillery devastates unarmored probe teams on transports, so they can't disembark and probe in the same turn.
As for your artillery suggestion ... yeah, I wish I'd done that. :P
Doctrine: Achilles seems to have a single point of failure somewhere near the back of the foot ...
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TheProvost
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quote:
Originally posted by Frankychan
 Excellent testimony to SMAC's greatness!
I have NEVER heard of the AI going that crazy with the planet busters. Everyone must have been royally pissed at everyone else to start lighting the nukes up like that. |
This suprised me as well. I’ve been trying to get the AI to play viciously in the late game, but I’ve avoided using intense competition because I like having allies as well as enemies. What I’d really like is some pacifist-alliance (Morgans/Gaian/PKs etc) against the militant crazies, with the latter going nuts with nerve-gas and nukes – but I’ve never had it come to pass  It seems that, by the late game, the AI are either so tech-barren, militarily impotent or generally peaceable as to be, well, boring.
So I’m curious, does using intense rivalry make the AI more likely to use the more exotic weaponry, as opposed to just bitter and stingy?
I just want to play a late game in which I desperately try to survive Armageddon – is that too much to ask!?
(EDIT: aww crap, I just bumped a month old thread - sorry about that; that's what I get for hunting around in the archives...)
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Zeiter
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So, you want an armageddon game, eh? Well, I have a mind worm armageddon game that you might enjoy. I think I included a link to it in a thread called "mind worm armageddon." The thread is probably just a few pages down. See if you can survive the swarms!!!!!! Mwhahahah!!!!
I'm also developing an Earth-based scenario that takes place about 2080 or so. All of the factions are quite advanced, all possessing multiple nukes from the start, as well as a healthy regiment of nerve gas troops. Infrastructure is well developed. I've edited some of the factions personalities to be extremely agressive, and willing to commit atrocities wantonly. This game could possibly be an armageddon of sorts. I'm eager to finish it so that I can test it, but I still have quite a bit of work to do. When I finish it, I'll post it in a thread.
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Zeiter
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Ah, yes. Builder vs. momentum games are quite fun. There's a good scenario that comes with SMAC that demonstrates a "seige/ivory tower" game, as you call it. Just go to play scenario, select vs., then select the Spartans vs. Peacekeepers game. If you play as the Spartans, you have to conquer Lal quickly before he gets well defended and builds up an overwhelming tech lead. If you play as Lal, you have to hold off the Spartan invasion until you can get yourself defensively secure and get an overwhelming tech lead. This one is quite fun. The University vs. Believers and the Gaians vs. Morganites ones are also very good.
Of course, I can always design another scenario as you described above. When I get some time off from all of my obligations, I'll give it a shot.
BTW, in my saves, the AI factions are actually pretty weak. The problem is that the mind worms usually rip apart my empire so bad that it almost forces me to start back at their level. The main thing was having my secret project cities devoured by hordes of locusts. If you can figure out a way to protect those cities, do so at all costs!
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24-03-2004 05:32
Sounds familiar.
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