What was your most enjoyable game of Smac?

[Geardy]

I just finished playing another long game of Alpha Centauri. This game was unbeatable. I produced Lady Deirdres’ evil twin sister Queen Carsy. Changed some of the settings and played her against Deirdre, Morgan, Peacekeepers, University, Consciousness and Data Angles. Heavy into Military and making money. I won everything. All Techs, All Secret Projects. Ended up amassing a grand total of 46,550 energy credits. Nothing was unattainable in this game, I dominated in all categories. Never once had to conquer another faction, they were scared to death to try anything. Interesting game indeed.

[Chowlett]

What are the stats of the "Evil Dierdre" faction?

[Provost Harrison]

Hey, I've had a great game as Morgan once, had everything. Nearly 1.9 million energy credits, and Morgan Industries was pumping out nearly 10000 lab points per turn at size 92!!! Pretty good game!

[Helium Pond]

Hm. It sounds like the definition of an enjoyable game being developed in this thread is one where you win massively by huge amounts. I think most people in these forums would call an enjoyable game one in which they just barely win.

[utopia]

Yes, how boring a game must be when you are winning by enormous margins. A challenging game is the best game.

[Misotu]

Without a doubt, my most enjoyable and challenging games have been those I've played in the tournament moderated by Tau Ceti here. If you haven't tried multi-player yet, give it a whirl ... it's completely different from SP. You can check out the game threads on the Multiplaying board - some of them are quite entertaining

[WhiteElephants]

I've gotta agree with Helium Pond and Misotu. Multiplayer is great because I'm not running everyone over and those darned humans can be so willy! Looking forward to the next turn guys.

[Simpson II]

I have to agree with Misotu about MP. Great games are easy to come by; I could break the Smac high-score next week if I wanted to. Anyone could.

But I've got a 1v1 going with Paul at the moment, and that is a fantastic game. It is just past 2200, and he is miles ahead of me! This looks like being my first ever Smac defeat, and I'm loving every turn. My tournament games are not so advanced, but eventually the faster ones will become very interesting indeed.

Smac SP is awful because it just isn't possible to loose.. however mediocre a game you play, you will beat the AI. In MP you live by your wits, always playing as hard as you can.

Try it.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

While I agree that MP has it's own unique flavor and is richly rewarding there have been a few SP games that I found immmensely fun.

A few that occur to me.

1) Attempted fastest transcend game as Spartans (never even got close to Zsozso or David Byron's mark. Couldn't break the 2200 mark.

2) Finished the no conquering base buidler game in HUge tech stag blind research game as Miriam

3) Finshed the no former challenge game as a builder using Gaians. Loads of fun.

All in all tho' it takes extra restrictions in order to make the game more challenging. Ohh well, it's still fun even in SP mode.

[stuntman19]

O squared

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Z's fastest record attained with the use of base trading and other methods
considered cheats by most diehard smacers?

[Simpson II]

Stuntman19,

The base-trading done in the fast-transcend games was done in order to even out the number of AI bases and to make sure the human had bases close at hand after the conquest games, not to give the human a huge advantage over the AI. Given that the AIs were all submissives and Zsozso could have demanded their bases be gifted to him, it could hardly be considered unfair.
And anyway, the fast-transcend challenge is to transcend ASAP without actually cheating, i.e. no reloads or use of the scenario editor. He could hardly be cheating us honest Smacers if those are the standards of the challenge, and the same for everyone.

Ogie,

Er, how do you win a transcendent victory (builder style, yes?) as the Gaians without using formers? Surely you could never get the nutrients together? Or was the map just one big, white blob of crawlers?

I never got into the fast-transcend challenge. I'm always vaguely depressed at the end of a game, and I got that feeling whenever I conquered the world.. I never seemed to get back the enthusiasm to take it one stage further. OCC was kind of fun the first few times, but too easy - I beat my fastest transcend record in my first OCC game. Maybe I'll try the Miriam challenge.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Stunt 19,

Z's fastest transcend employed base gifting not necessarily trading in order to even out bases amongst submissives. So the old "I'll trade you a crappy size 2 base for your size 20 base with 3 Sp's" tactic was not applied. Most of what I recall Zso doing was completely above board unless you count base gifting as a dubious practice.

Simpson II,

No formers was a hoot. I'll see if I can bump the thread over in the strat section. At the end I tired of the game so opted for a conquer finish, If I had the patience I could have transcended probably 5-7 turns later.

Og

[stuntman19]

Thanx for the clarification fellas. It was not my intent to diminish the record, as it is an amazing accomplishment at that early a date. I guess I have always self imposed these rules for my SP to make it a little more challenging.

1)No base trading, gifting or receiving
2)Must disband any gifted military units immediately

I do concur that if everyone has same options open its an incredible record that will probably stand for awhile.

[mark13]

I always find the best games are those in which you can't declare war until, say, 2200. This makes it impossible for you to totally overrun a faction early on and end up with two big chunks of land instead of one. This is quite easily achieved in any normal game as the AI pays so little attention to military forces that you can take an entire faction over with two 4-1-2 units quite easily, thus ending up with a game in which you have a massive advantage and romping to a conquer victory by 2250.

Although it is still not impossible to romp through another faction's territory, it becomes much harder to achieve, due to the outbreak of defensive structures, such as Perimeter Defenses and the like.

Also, some of the most enjoyable games have been those in which I have given my faction a slight disadvantage, maybe a negative social engineering value or two.

[telepath]

My most enjoyable game was when I was launching a massive amphibius assault on an entrenched Hive. The Hive was way more powerful than I was, so I had to go by superior tech and morale (I was Spartans in a tech-stag game. The first time I've ever described Chaos weapons as superior :-). The fight went on for something like 70-80 turns. Before and after that is sort of a blur. Anyway, It ended by my nervegasing of one of the three last remaining Hive bases, and their subsequent surrender.

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