Best way to increase difficulty?

[Kahryl]

After making some modifications to make the game a little more balanced and playable (no sea bases, no crawlers, needlejet nerfs, much later choppers, earlier hovertanks, no monsoon jungle, no clean units or blink displacers, nerf to forest productivity, no pop booms except with Cloning Vats, personal rule not to overlap bases) I've been having a huge amount of fun with SMAC, but I'm getting to the point where I can beat Transcend about 75% of the time, and I'd like it to be more 50/50. What is the easiest and smoothest way to increase the difficulty? Whether it being the introduction of restrictions on behavior or editing files. The best I can come up with is adding random penalties to the social bonuses of the faction I'm playing, but I'll have to do that every time I start a game..

[gwillybj]

One possibility is to add "TECHCOST, nnn" to the parameters in your faction.txt.
"nnn" can be any number and represents the percent cost to your faction.
So the result of "TECHCOST, 125" would be your faction paying 125% of the normal tech research cost while the AI factions research at the normal rate.
This can make those early Projects a bit difficult to get.
Try 125. If it's still too easy, bump it to 150, and so on.

[Kahryl]

While this is a good idea and one option I wasn't aware of, it isn't really a "smooth" increase in difficulty, because it will affect some factions a lot more than others. I would be crippled as Zakharov, because this takes away his one shining advantage that he uses to leverage all the others. Meanwhile, if I played Miriam I would hardly notice, because she sucks at doing research anyway - I get my tech in other sources.

[ReconRoverRush]

I've been playing Alien Crossfire, still learning the lingo here, but I think SMAC stands for Sid Mierer's Alien Crossfire. I honestly can't even beat transcendent once, mostly because the game crashes, I sure I would have won. Even now I'm playing the Pirates and having a tough battle against the caretakers. They are about 3 squares from a lot of my sea bases. So, they can produce a naval unit and take my base the same turn or in two turns. Also, they are wrecking havoc on my sea formers. This is only difficulty 4/6 or librarian. So maybe you could share some tips.

As for difficulty I've found the Monsoon jungle makes the game much more difficult. The believers started in the Monsoon Jungle and basically swept like a riptide over the other AI and nearly me. I play a game called Moo3 and the game is hardest when one of the AI gets off to an incrediably unfair start. The equivalent of starting at the Moonsoon jungle and Garland crater in one and next to the ruins etc. Sure, if you start out near the ideal position its an easy game, but considering you are one out of 7. This should only happen one out of 7 times. Same goes for Moo2, one AI just gets super lucky due to random events and map placement then proceeds to grow like Kudzu.

In brief, make the Moonsoon jungle more powerful, instead of +1 food, make it +3/+3/+3 food/minerals/energy. Then, take out all the other landmarks. That way whoever controls the Moonsoon jungle controls the game. Add in more random events. Make it possible to lose on the 2nd turn like you can in Moo3. Add randomness and chaos in general. Random events is what makes an easy boring game into a nigh impossible fun game.

[gwillybj]

Just to clarify the mnemonics: SMAC = Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri; SMAX = Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire.

@RRR: Do you experience a lot of crashes? Do you have the latest official patch (the XP patch)? That fixes a few things that led to crashes.

[Kahryl]

Well, to be honest, I don't want to have the monsoon jungle at all, because it gives only ONE faction a huge unfair start. IMO one of the big flaws of this game and one that I mitigated by eliminating the jungle, is that there are very few sessions where all or most of the 7 factions are active and viable, pretty soon all but two or three become vestigial or eliminated. The fewer the relevant factions, the less interesting the game is.

Part of the problem is that the starting locations seem to be totally random, instead of keyed to give everyone as much land as possible.. for example, the Hive started on a continent with like 50 squares, while Lal started on a tiny island of 7 squares.. the game should have just put them both on the continent and split it 25/25.

[Kahryl]

Hmm, browsing the forums, here's an ancient post that says will improve the A.I., which will certainly increase difficulty in a smooth way:

When you start up a new game, press Ctrl-K and open up the scenario editor.

Alter the AIs in the following ways.

Add Explore and Build to their priorities, but remove Discover. Leave conquer in at your own discretion.
Turn off Pacifist and Aggressive, except for some war factions.

In Faction Strategy, turn on "Build lots of colony pods" and "build lots of terraformers". Turn off most other things.

If prevented from contacting each other for 60 years and given good conditions the AIs can now build their way to Air Power in a similar time frame to a human player, unless the human player sows discord among them or probe rapes them.


Most of the problem for both of you is that you are much better than you used to be. I reloaded saves where I remember the AI having done exceptionally well and found that the dates on most of them were post-2300. (i.e. I was still a noob)

Having said that, I was once owned hard by a Morgan AI in the Monsoon jungle who cornered the Global energy market in 2205

Anyone tried this? Making opponents smarter is probably the best way of hiking challenge.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

You might also try kyrub's SMAC patch, which is aimed at AI enhancement:

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=107

[551262]

If you have issues with Growth, like the Pirates, then the MJ can help you keep pace with everybody else.

Sure they can populate the ocean, but ocean shelf squares are the only really profitable ones. Oceanic squares are real good for nutrients and energy, but ... meh for minerals.

I don't know about everybody else but I find Yang usually gets the MJ. Add his +2 Growth, +1 Industry, Perimeter Defense every base and an ill temper and you can see why I will never again make peace with the Chairman. When I decide that his hourglass has run out of sand and it's time for an invasion I always bring about 8-10 probe teams to take out his Perimeter Defenses. Goes a lot easier if you get him early, but if you're looking for a challenge, leave him alone and make war on everybody else.

Since I usually play as Sparta, I can match the Chairman's progress, but spawning next to him as some other faction gives me the willies.

[Kahryl]

Ooh. I found another thread with suggestions. One I really like is giving the enemies sattelites at the start of the game. Go to this thread because it won't let me post links:

154438-Removing-AI-weaknesses

[Aeson]

Good find Kahryl. Here's the link:

http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/154438-Removing-AI-weaknesses

[Kahryl]

..but what I *don't* like about the satellite solution is that it benefits the "winning" faction the most, and factions that tend to sprawl (Yang) over those who got land-screwed or prefer to make fewer, larger cities (Morgan). The latter need more help. I want all enemy factions to be strong, not just the winning ones.

[Kahryl]

Screw it. I'll just go with the "random penalties to my faction" solution. With proper scripting it should be easy to do each game!

[Droom]

A suggestion, why not try the scenarios? The game of the Month? I guarantee they will test your abilities.

[551262]

Are the Windows scenarios playable on a Mac? I've played the Borehole one, that was hard, but I usually play on Talent.

I'm also probably the only SMAC Mac player around. Actually I've packed up playing SMAC...