21-06-2004 17:30									#1
	Solstice AI challenge Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

5 factions successfully landed from the Unity: Morgan and his cronies, Yang and his trusting laborers, Aki Zeta-5 and the remnants of the Unity research crew, Svensgaard and the remnants of the Spartans, and against all odds, Miriam and those in the damaged 7th landing pod.

Over the first twenty years on Planet, Morgan and Yang met and formed a business alliance, with Morgan carefully developing Yang's laborers' initiative without inducing any desire for freedom, and with Yang training Morgan's followers in asceticism.

Svensgaard claimed the infinite seas and started preying on Morgan's commercial transports. In return, Morgan has sent some decoy transports, rigged to explode when boarded.

Miriam has decided that Yang and Aki Zeta-5 are abominations for their inhumanity and must be wiped off the face of Eden. She's not too fond of Morgan, either, for being a demon's ally. Svensgaard has carefully avoided attacking Miriam's transports, content to not be a target of her fanaticism.

Aki Zeta-5 has more or less carved out a peaceful niche for herself and her followers, but now is threatened by Miriam. In response to that, she has allied with Yang, on the principle that her enemy's enemy is her friend.

In the year 2120, Foreman Domai in Laborer's Throng successfully revolted against Yang's rule and formed the Free Drone faction. Although the base was quickly reconquered, with nerve gas, Domai and his fellow laborers fled to a remote region of Planet to found Utopia.

Domai views Aki Zeta-5 as dangerous, with her conflicting notion of Utopia, but has found a friend in Svensgaard, a fellow freedom-lover.

Taking advantage of the disruption caused by Domai, Asa Wright, head of Quality Assurance in Morgan Industries, capitalized on a plan she had been working on since Planetfall. She and some fellow hackers stole all of Morgan's technology and incited drones throughout his empire, while smuggling out supplies with which to found a freer, more cooperative society.

Roze's actions of course made enemies of both Yang and Morgan, but her love of Democracy has drawn some of Miriam's wrath, as well.


You will play Roze, with the following turn order:
Miriam
Yang
Sven
Morgan
Aki
Domai
Roze


The modes of victory will be:
Transcendence (but only if the AI does not have the Voice of Planet - no stealing the win from the AI!)
Destroying what all of the other factions hold dear (this will be apparent in the scenario)
Diplomatic
Economic (but first you must crush Morgan)
Cooperative victory is disabled


Whenever you capture an enemy HQ, you have a choice:

1. Return it to its original owner, or
2. Let your probe teams go to town with mind control probes on the faction leader who lives there. Burn down the base to complete the ravaging of his mind. The victim will become unable to experience that which he loves. The faction will hate you for the rest of its life, but will (hopefully) fight less effectively from then on.


Thanks to Dilithium Dad for the Ultimate Builder Map which I tweaked for this scenario.


Other odd features:
The power graph is broken. You do have an aversion to power...
The AIs have new abilities, some secret, some not. Find out for yourself.

Edit: Updated challenge with fix to Roze's techshare ability and faction files.

Attachment: solsticeaichallenge.zip
This has been downloaded 27 time(s).

Last edited by Chaos Theory on 27-12-2004 at 04:11

	21-06-2004 17:37									#2
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So I'm fighting against 3 accelerated start factions with boosted starts and special abilities?

GREAT fun. Where's my nervestapler?

	21-06-2004 18:45									#3
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Special abbilities like increased fanatic bonus

	21-06-2004 19:09									#4
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The AI factions, while boosted, aren't superhuman. You should be able to beat them with effort, but they shouldn't roll over like the normal AI.

	21-06-2004 19:18									#5
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The last time I checked, Cyborgs -were- superhuman, CT.

	21-06-2004 19:32									#6
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Fine, but then you get to be superhuman, too, by playing a 1337 |-|4><0r, right?

	21-06-2004 19:54									#7
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Clue: leave them alone and they will leave you alone too (mostly). I like this.

	21-06-2004 20:00									#8
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Well, I didn't like that feature, so from your feedback and my testing, I pointed the AI more at the player

Also, I'll be making a vanilla SMAC version of this, but I'm also lazy and have been putting that off.

	21-06-2004 20:14									#9
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I will have to replay it again. Also, it was tricky, but possible to completely outran AI in techs.

	21-06-2004 20:36									#10
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Pssht.
Infiltrate everyone and sell out the commlinks, then sit back and let the tech roll in.

	21-06-2004 20:37									#11
	Full PM-box? Change here!

That only works if they like you well enough to talk to you.

	21-06-2004 21:58									#12
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Oh my god, you didn't set them -all- to attrocity vendetta, did you?

	21-06-2004 22:58									#13
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No, absolutely not. That would be unfair to the player, since diplomacy is part of the game. However, in some testing, I did have trouble getting some of the AIs to respond on the commlink.

	22-06-2004 16:41									#14
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Optional faction files attached, for the datalinks entries. Don't peek at them or you'll spoil some surprises!

Edit: attachment deleted - the faction files are in the attachment in the first post

Last edited by Chaos Theory on 27-12-2004 at 04:12

	17-12-2004 03:47									#15
	Got spare money?

I can't get anywhere with this game. Miriam always comes over and smashes me with about a thousand units. Anyone else care to take a look in these holidays?

Hobbes

	17-12-2004 05:13									#16
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I didn't think I made it that hard, but I have a hard time gauging its difficulty when I made it. I'm happy to see this hasn't been forgotten, though.

	17-12-2004 07:29									#17
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I feel like some challenge. I'll try it

	17-12-2004 22:49									#18
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Another one for the beaten and broken.

What rules have you changed? The lack of techshare with infiltration was very upsetting.

Also, forgot to use the rusty old stapler. Very poor show.

	18-12-2004 06:29									#19
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Game starts in a quite interesting way. Terrain is wonderful, if only that was inuf for those energy fattened AIs. I sense some locked conflicts, Svensgard is very much sure he is not going to sign peace with some other factions. Domai refuses to trade Biogen...
Has anyone won this one yet? I haven't seen any victory reports here

	18-12-2004 10:23									#20
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quote: Originally posted by Senethro What rules have you changed? The lack of techshare with infiltration was very upsetting.

What do you mean by that? Did you need to infiltrate to get tech sharing, or were you completely unable to share in the AI's techs? This mechanism has never worked as advertised for me. In unmodded SMAX, Roze appears to need infiltration to share techs, despite not having such an entry in angels.txt

	18-12-2004 13:35									#21
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quote: Originally posted by Chaos Theory Did you need to infiltrate to get tech sharing, or were you completely unable to share in the AI's techs? This mechanism has never worked as advertised for me. In unmodded SMAX, Roze appears to need infiltration to share techs, despite not having such an entry in angels.txt

In the SMAX manual it states that the "Angels gain any technology known to 3 other infiltrated Factions".
In the angels.txt file it states "techshare, 3". Looking the "TECHSHARE" parameter up in the "SPECIAL RULES" Section of the alphax.txt file it states, "TECHSHARE = When used with SHARETECH, requires one to be spying on the other factions (by probe, Empath Guild, Governor, or Pact). Parameter is ignored.". Since that makes things as clear as a Progenitor's opening comments, why I looked up the SHARETECH rule, which states as follows: "SHARETECH = Gain any technology known to # other players", which I think means that a Faction endowed with this feature would automatically get any tech known to "x" number of players, without having to infiltrate, have Empath Guild, be Governor, etc... Or to phrase slightly differently: if someone were to create a Faction with the feature "sharetech, 4", then I'd assume that such a Faction would then automatically get any tech simultaneously known to 4 other Factions, regardless of infiltration, Empath Guild, etc. Extrapolating on that then if a Faction were given a parameter "techshare, 4", then instead of just getting the techs for free (as is the case for the "sharetech" parameter) why now the player must go out and gain infiltration in some fashion in order to receive the specified techs.
My take on the subject.
Anyways, one of my upcoming Challenges will star the Angels, so if anyone is interested, they can play that Challenge as well and see how the Angels special features come into play.
My $0.02.


D

	18-12-2004 21:36									#22
	Inflate your Upload Space

My problem with the techshare was that having infiltrated 5 other factions (the cyborgs acquired HSA and locked me out), no tech was being share with me. This led to the Buh-lee-vurs walking over me with chop'n'drop.

	18-12-2004 23:50									#23
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My intent was to allow techshare, but only with infiltration. I'll see what I can do to actually enable that.

	20-12-2004 22:45									#24
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how is the vinalla smac version comeing might be interesting to try this!

	21-12-2004 20:14									#25
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Why canīt you just use the stupidity of the AI to your advantage?

	22-12-2004 10:42									#26
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quote: Originally posted by dacole how is the vinalla smac version comeing might be interesting to try this!

Ready in time for the other solstice! I *think* it works...

Edit: glitch in scenario fixed

	24-12-2004 02:59									#27
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

If these scenarios are too difficult because Miriam swarms you, there's a simple change I can make to delay her attack significantly. If some of you want this, I can post these alternative scenarios.

	26-12-2004 09:40									#28
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I'm trying this challenge (the SMAX one). It's pretty cool, I got both VW and WP, and after miriam got the empath guild and won the election Aki offered me a pact vs Miriam for tech and heaps of energy.

I tried getting cheeky and founding bases on Morgans land, but he kicked me off pretty promptly (but not before I probed an impact rover). I do have a base in Domai land.

Then Miriam showed up with probes, and a bit later elite x impact rovers...

I think I'll start over. I hadn't played SMAX in ages, and at the start didn't bother to assess my available tech (like I didn't realise you start bee-lined to ind.auto, heh.)

	26-12-2004 13:56									#29
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Okay second try, at 2154 the state of the game was thus:
At the start I switched to Planned then Wealth, and expanded to 9 bases, at which point I started building crawlers. Then I built/rushed the WP, VW and CN - the latter two built in the same turn. This trio of SP's should be very useful.

Swen offered an Alliance versus Morgan, and I took it. I had a probe in morgan lands (on a road near the magtubes) and took a magtube to one of his bases and yoinked non-linear mathematics.

The elections were called much earlier this game, and Morgan won them.

Some time later, Aki offered me a pact, the condition being declaring vendetta on Domai. I agreed, as The Drones have some tech I would like.. eco.eng and so on. This game I teched to int.int in order to get police and thus reduce drone control costs. With CN and police scout infantry I can slap down a new base and start pumping out artillery infantry and junk like that.

At 2180 the Data Angels became Fundamentalists, utterly convicted of their need to stop the Lords Believers from gassing everyone off the face of planet - by any means nessecary (except actually resorting to gassing too). The new SE being the somewhat powerful Fundie/Planned/Wealth - with Creches nearly standard the morale penalty is negated, +2 industry and +3 probe provide for excellent military production.

I buy D:AP from Sven as one of our last friendly communications. The Infamous Freedom Flitters immediately go into production, these skittery flying contraptions armed with an impact weapon (quite possible duct taped on) arrive just in time to thwart a prong of the Believer impact rover attack.

The Believers mount a massive invasion, halted at two chokes only by the use of freedom flitter ZoC blocking, their main thrust must go through Coder's Pit, which is crammed to the gills with impact rovers and missile artillery.

In 2194 Aki gifts fusion tech (after gifting Eco.Eng and Env.Eco). In 2195 Miriam builds the CBA, looks like Domai will get the CF. Miriam gasses one of my bases of the map, I'll probably need to remove all the garrisons. If i had AMA I would switch to FM and institute a punishing regime in a hearthbeat...

Last edited by Blake on 26-12-2004 at 15:09

	27-12-2004 04:15									#30
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I edited in a fix to the scenario in the first post's attachment that (hopefully) allows Roze to techshare as intended. To implement this in a scenario already in play, you need to start the scenario editor (Ctrl-K), reload the Angel faction file with the provided one, and of course exit the scenario editor.