25-05-2005 16:28	edit | quote	#1 | report |
SMAniaC Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

The overall goal of this modification pack is to widen the strategic choices available to the player. Over the years a number of ‘best strategies’ have been developed of which deviating can be lethal in a multiplayer game. Most of us here all know them: race to crawlers, tree farms and air power. Use chop&drop in combat as soon as available. Forest & Forget, or go advanced all the way, with no overall third terraforming strategy available… This leads to whole aspects of the game being unused as unprofitable, for example a fungal strategy to name just one. With six years of experience behind us, we can identify these forgotten aspects and try to rebalance them so they become a viable strategy next to the already familiar ones. This can only increase the fun of our beloved game! In this short description I’d like to sum up a few of the changes you can expect: A social engineering system and a tech tree with a wider variety of attractive choices. Strengthened naval and native life combat & terraforming. Weakened air power. And so on. Download SMAniaC and see for yourself!


The full version of SMAniaC consists of three parts:
1. the core SMAniaC download (~2.5 MB)
2. a set of seven new custom factions (~2.5 MB)
3. Boosted AI faction files (1 MB)

Or just download it all in one.

You can also find these links in my signature.

SMAniaC requires Alien Crossfire.

Extract SMAniaC into your main SMAC directory. Personally I have a special duplicate SMAC directory for SMAniaC besides the unmodified SMAC one. Others who don't have harddisk space to waste use ModMan.

Hydro has posted an excellent Excel file giving an overview of all the techs, SE, weapons, etc... Download it here!



I'll post the contents of the different readmefirst files here:

readmefirst.txt

Some similar questions or confusion about social engineering often returns, so I thought I'd provide some info about SE in this readmefirst.txt

1) The standard SE choices with which you start the game already have some effects. So when you first start up a SMAniaC game, check out the SE screen. For the full info you could also have a look in the in-game Datalinks or the modSE.txt in the documentation folder of this download.

2) The Talent SE factor is used in SMAniaC. This factor provides extra talents or drones. While the factor is still functional despite not being used in standard SMAC, the problem is no symbol shows up for the Talent factor in the SE screen. So the unsuspectin user might suddenly be faced with a whole bunch of drones and not know where they suddenly come from. Therefore: please read the Datalinks about social engineering. or modSE.txt!

In short Unitary Democracy (the SE choice you start with!) and Federal Democracy provide one extra talent. Private/Free Trade and Private/Protectionist economics give one extra drone. An Empath ruling elite gives two talents per base.


Another thing worth mentioning just in case: four AI units (AI Probe, AI Probe Foil, AI Formers, AI Sea Formers) have been added to the basic units list. These units are meant to improve AI performance and are not supposed to be built by you, the human player. I’d suggest to just make the designs obsolete, so they don’t clutter up your build option list. Of course don’t forget to design your own former now.


customfac readmefirst.txt

A new set of seven factions for SMAniaC!

I don't play single player that often anymore, so I haven't actually testplayed any of these factions. 8-) They were just put together based on my long experience with SMAC on what would in theory be balanced factions. Theory can always be wrong of course, and soon some of you will have much more experience with these factions than I, so I certainly appreciate your feedback about these factions. Perhaps they can be improved somewhere.

To get them to work:

Copy the contents of the seven folders into your main SMAC directory. Except for atlantis.mp3 and templar.mp3. Those should be put into the 'voices' directory.

Oh don't forget: you need to copy the alphax.txt included in this download over the standard SMAniaC one to be able to play these factions.


SAI readmefirst.txt

This file contains a set of faction files to create a more powerful AI.

Aldebaran also made some super AIs. That was done by creating seperate faction files, for example 'planetloverai' for the AI instead of 'planetlover' for the human player. You then had to dig into alphax.txt to add those AI factions to the custom faction list. This method seems rather annoying and time-consuming to me. Also it may form a barrier to people who aren't familiar with SMAC text file editing. Therefore I've taken a different approach...

Included in this download you find 23 zip archives.

'Original faction files' is a zip with all the unedited faction files.
'Super AI Files' is a zip containing all the boosted AIs.
Then there are the 21 others. Those contain 20 super AIs and one unedited normal faction file, indicated by the name of the zip file. Now if you want to play as the Gaians for instance and want some tougher opponents, you just need to extract the contents of the 'SAI Gaia player' archive into your main SMAC directory. You can then just start up a game as the Gaians, and select your AI opponents without restrictions. If you want to start a new game as eg the Conclave, just extract a different zip file. No need to ever dig into alphax.txt.


Regarding the boosted AIs themselves... They should perform better than the unedited factions, but as always there's a lot of variance in AI success. Some games they have only 10 pops by MY 2150. Other times three times as many. I was also restricted by the limit of eight boni or penalties for certain stuff. So I wasn't fully able to do what I wanted, and I'm not entirely satisfied by the result. So I definitely appreciate feedback about your experience with these AIs. Perhaps something can be done to improve them.

That's more or less what I wanted to say.
Have fun! :-)

Maniac

Last edited by Maniac on 12-05-2007 at 00:24

02-06-2005 12:56	edit | quote	#2 | report |
Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

For history's sake (and for anyone wanting to read the guidelines of the new tech tree) my original post:

***

To prevent of hostile takeover of this forum by Senethro I'll post the beginnings of a mod I've been working on (very) casually. While I'm pretty happy with the way the biotech & Planettech side of the tech tree is shaping up (though of course nothing is yet set in stone), I'm kinda stuck on the other side of the tree due to my limited knowledge. I could use lots of help for the computer, physics and materials technologies!

The overall goal of this modification pack would be to widen the strategic choices available to the player. Over the years a number of ‘best strategies’ have been developed of which deviating can be lethal in a multiplayer game. Most of us here all know them: race to crawlers, tree farms and air power. Use chop&drop in combat as soon as available. Forest & Forget, or go advanced all the way, with no overall third terraforming strategy available… This leads to whole aspects of the game being unused as unprofitable, for example a fungal strategy to name just one. With six years of experience behind us, we can identify these forgotten aspects and try to rebalance them so they become a viable strategy next to the already familiar ones. This can only increase the fun of our beloved game! For example I intend to make native life cheaper to breed, and Centauri techs will make fungus more productive earlier. Air power less attractive, naval power more attractive etc...

Regarding the tech tree in general, I'd like it to make more sense, ie as much as possible more logical connections between the techs, the various benefits (abilities, base facilities...) being related to techs making more sense. (In standard SMAC one can very often wonder why the hell a tech would give a certain benefit.)

Regarding the names of the technologies, personally I'd like to minimize the following categories as much as possible:

• 'Doctrine' techs. Rename them all! Even if it is just by changing 'Doctrine' into 'Know-how', to indicate that the inhabitants of Chiron aren't reinventing the hot water strategy-wise, but that it were the technical skills that were lacking.
  
• Ideological techs. Cyberethics, Intellectual Integrity, The Will To Power... There is Social Engineering for a reason. Personally I don't want to be forced to 'research' a certain ideology to complete the tech tree.
  
• 'Advanced' techs. If one has to use the word 'Advanced' in a tech name, I'd say it's a sign of lack of inspiration.
  
• Meaningless tech names. Super Tensile Solids. That can be anything. Pre-Sentient Algorithms: that tech simply says something has NOT yet been developed.
  
• Generally weird stuff. For example Synthetic Fossil Fuels. Perhaps it's just me, but I consider it a rather absurd idea to create fossil fuels, especially since there are other energy sources available. Also eg Planetary Networks. When that is discovered, usually one hasn't yet met any other faction, so it's a little early to speak of 'Planetary' Networks.

Anyway, I've attached some of the tech stuff I've already written down. I've also included the social engineering system I'd like to use. Of course most factions would have to be redesigned to work with this system.

I hope you'll find it interesting, and perhaps post some ideas.

Last edited by Maniac on 26-02-2006 at 21:38

02-06-2005 14:30	edit | quote	#4 | report |
Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

code:
#UNITS
25
...
Mind Worms,             Infantry, Psi,          Psi,        1, 5, 0, CentEmp,  3, 00000000000000000000000000
Isle of the Deep,       Foil,     Psi,          Psi,        7, 8, 4, CentMed, -1, 00000000000000000000000000
Locusts of Chiron,      Gravship, Psi,          Psi,        4,10, 0, CentGen, -1, 00000000000000000000100000
...
Sealurk,                Foil,     Psi,          Psi,        6, 6, 0, CentPsi,  4, 00000000000000000001000000
Spore Launcher,         Infantry, Psi,          Psi,        0, 5, 0, Bioadap,  5, 00000000001000000000000000
...

code:
#UNITS
25
...
Mind Worms,             Infantry, Psi,          Psi,        1, 2, 0, CentEmp,  3, 00000000000000000000000000
Isle of the Deep,       Foil,     Psi,          Psi,        7, 5, 4, CentMed, -1, 00000000000000000000000000
Locusts of Chiron,      Gravship, Psi,          Psi,        4, 8, 0, CentGen, -1, 00000000000000000000100000
...
Sealurk,                Foil,     Psi,          Psi,        6, 4, 0, CentPsi,  4, 00000000000000000001000000
Spore Launcher,         Infantry, Psi,          Psi,        0, 2, 0, Bioadap,  5, 00000000001000000000000000
...