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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:35
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I generally trail the Ai in the early game by most powergraph measures. In fact it is part of the strategy. The AI is nicer to you when you are in the middle of the pack. I try to time a pop-boom with acquiring a bunch of techs-- trade, then steal then cash some AAs.
Before the AI is even aware I am a threat, my empire has probably doubled in size, I have gotten a tech lead to acquire some key SPs or weapons or facilities. Suddenly the AI may hate me but they will take a few turns to do something about it and if I have timed things right I will be the first to missiles and airpower by a wide margin so there is little they can do about it
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Santiago_Claus
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I always play Transcend level, Abundant lifeforms, and I usually play as Morgan.
I'm generally behind industrially until maybe 12 turns into IA.
I shoot ahead in energy reserves when I get "Green" -- sooner if I begin the game with Manifold Nexus. (It takes some time at 10% Planet rating to capture enough worms to make much money trolling fungus, but if you're lucky enough to start w/ MN you'll have a cottage planetpearl industry well before you ever go "Green".)
Technologically I will barely maintain parity using probes until EnvEco, after which the AI's terraforming skill gap leaves it hopelessly outclassed.
Militarily, Doctrine: Air Power is definitely the turning point, but some of my highest-scoring games came about as a result of early base captures and submissive pacts achieved in the "Rover Age". Every game I ever lost was also decided in that era.
I can't recall ever losing a game after D:AP, except once when I got it just as Santiago overran my last 2 bases, so I had pretty much already lost that game before D:AP came into the picture.
Since the uncertainty is pretty much gone at D:AP that would have to be the answer you're looking for, but if D:AP is a turning point, IA is an inflection point. In the Rover Age IA will save your life.
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Santiago_Claus
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SMAC-X is too easy because of bad AI? You want really bad AI, look at the original Civ. True, Civ was much harder than SMAC-X, but only because the AI cheated so much.
I lost interest in Civ when I realized after a few games that the "race to Sufferage" was a crap shoot. SMAC-X allows a better player to do better in the game, but in Civ it was pure luck.
You could expand and terraform and spy and research and keep your citizens happy in an ancient peacetime Republic whilst struggling to explore the world in sailboats that caused unrest as soon as they left port and skip the Horseback Riding tech branch just to claw your way to industrialization that much sooner. You could micromanage to the nth degree, do EVERYTHING right, and it didn't mean sh*t. If the AI was feeling generous that day, it might just hand Sufferage to the Babylonians. One might as well devote oneself to working out a system to beat a slot machine.
No wonder the Trailer Park Chariot Rush was so popular: like a system that really would beat a slot machine, it was an exploit against a rigged game.
SMAC-X may have grown too easy to beat, but even so it's still interesting to play. That in itself represents a huge accomplishment in game AI. Rejoice, gamers: be thankful that "AI" has advanced beyond the capricious random number generator.
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Sikander
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Boulder, Colorado, United Snakes of America
Jan 2000
time: 22:35
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The reason that we don't have great AI in SMAC is that it is simply beyond the capabilities of our society and our tech at this point. A simple example would be to compare chess, a simple game that only recently and with large computing and programming resources has become a challenge for great players to beat the AI. SMAC is many orders of magnitude more complicated than chess. The board is much larger, the terrain is variable and can change as the game goes on. Instead of alternating movements of one piece, players instead can move all their pieces in the same turn, and in some cases move a piece, move another and then move the original piece again. Combat is not a known quantity, so one has to play the odds rather than simply moving somewhere and capturing a piece. Pieces can be manufactured during the game. The map is unknown at the beginning of the game and throughout the game large portions of it are unknown as far as what units may be occupying a square. The rules also change as the game moves on, as new techs are researched, SPs built etc.
So a true chess like AI isn't going to be a reality for a game like SMAC for a very long time. Instead we have scripts which are damned good for what they are, but repetitive predictable and uncreative.
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12-04-2004 23:10
Be unpredictable. 
That is the key to your victory. 
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