Phases of the game

[Skanderbeg]

Speaking of the phases of the game, most people talk about early, mid and late game.
But it seems to me that there were more phases of the game. (Maybe this is only valid for single player blind search game as I always play):

1. Phase: The start
simple tactic: build as many bases as possible, claim your territory and get as many of the early SP's as you can get (I know, there are some guys who claim they will ALL the early SP's, but I haver never seen them posting how to do this without cheating. I am glad in most games if I can get two of them).

2. Phase: Making friends and enemies
At the beginning of this phase, normally around 2160-2180, the early SP's (WP, ME, Command Nexus, HG, VW) are gone. It's the time to meet your neighbours
(and normally not all are friendly). On transcendent level, one (or more) of the AI factions will run away in tech, so you need to have good luck to get one of the SP's, perhaps the defense perimeter SP or the empath guild, but in most cases, you will miss ALL the SP's in this phase. It ends when the empath guild was build and all factions have contact.

3. Phase: Survive!
It is the most dangerous phase of the game (and this phase can of course begin earlier if you start next to a warmonger). You have enemies which want to conquer your bases, and you are behind in tech. In around 60% of my games, this is still the last phase for me!
In this difficult times, there is only one target: to survive until you get "Industrial Automatization", that gives You the ability to build crawlers!

4. Phase: The Crawler Rush
Bring out the crawlers and rush up your production. That will give you the ability to build the science enhancements to keep up in the tech race, the military units to secure your borders, and not to forget the probes and probe ships to steal the missing techs. It may take some time, but sooner or later You will be the first who get's a secret project tech. And with all your crawlers, you have the production to build it fast. In many cases, this first of the non-early SP's will be the juicy HSA!

5. Phase: Get the tech lead!
OK, you are back in the tech race, it's time to play your strength. Time to build tree-farms/hybrid-forests/borehols.
Enhance your science and become the leader in tech graph. Grabbing the secret projects will give You the power to get number 1 in power graph, and you will be the first who discovers MMI.

6. Phase: the Chopper Rush
If you are the first who discovers MMI, you tast the first smell of victory. It's one of the most importanst techs (next to IndAuto) of the game, for for reasons:
a) Choppers
b) Drop Pods
c) Cloudbase academy
d) the bioenhancement center secret project
Let this four work together, and you are unbeatable. Now it's the time to meet your special friends frome phase 3 again, but this time under different circumstances.

7. Phase: The finish:
Clone vets, flechette, def orbs - say I more? All You still have to do is to win, wether by conquer or by ascendence to transcedence. If you like to play around a little with things before you destroy them, you can show Morgan what a singularity PB is.

[grimreap]

The way to get ALL the SP's (for me anyway) is to play UoP on Talent or less.
Get each base to found one or two new bases, then improve itself with a former unit and recycling tanks.
Quite easy to do.
Any difficulty higher than Talent and this might be a problem tho.

[Skanderbeg]

quote: Originally posted by grimreap on 01-03-2001 06:07 AM The way to get ALL the SP's (for me anyway) is to play UoP on Talent or less. Any difficulty higher than Talent and this might be a problem tho.

No complaints, but of course I was speaking of TRANSCENDENT level. On the lower levels it is no difficulty to get all SP's

[grimreap]

I thought so

[Xarathas]

I've never come close to getting all the SPs on transcend but I did manage to get all but 1 SP in a Thinker game with CC(damn Yang got the Command Nexus before I even got the tech, was playing blind research). I think the amount of SPs you get on transcend really, really depends on what race you're up against. It's really hard to beat the Hive to the Nexus and hard to beat the University to Virtual world, and just plain hard to beat the drones if they get a head start(considering you are playing blind research of course). Just for the record, has anyone ever gotten all the SPs in transcend with blind research on?

[hellrazor]

My normal style of play is geared toward getting all or almost all of the SP's. It's obviously easiest with the reseach factions like University and the Cyborgs and almost impossible with factions like the Drones and the Believers.

I've never quite got all the SP's on transcend, although I came very close with the Cyborgs (all but one). I'm now playing Morgan, who is a pretty good early researcher as well. In my current game I've got the HGP, WP, and ME so far and am building two more. I don't have the tech yet for CDF so hopefully Yang won't beat me to that.

[Garth Vader]

I believe I have got them all on thinker as the Hive. The secret to this is just luck, if the AI's are fighting and don't start them soon enough you can get them all. But there is usually at least one faction that will get the merchant exchange or the planetary datalinks, or other low priority projects.

[grimreap]

Just saw Garth describe the planetary datalinks as low priority, I just thought that it is interesting cos I think he's right.
(Why is that interesting I hear you ask).
My reason for saying that it is interesting is that the planetary datalinks are the SMAC equivalent of the great library, which, IMO, was a must in Civ2.

[grimreap]

Just saw Garth describe the planetary datalinks as low priority, I just thought that it is interesting cos I think he's right.
(Why is that interesting I hear you ask).
My reason for saying that it is interesting is that the planetary datalinks are the SMAC equivalent of the great library, which, IMO, was a must in Civ2.

edit: sorry this came up twice, my PC disconnected from the net at a real bad time
[This message has been edited by grimreap (edited January 03, 2001).]

[Xarathas]

Well, actually, if the datalinks is the same as the great library then I'd actually consider it a mid-high priority. The one in civ is 2 other factions while the datalinks is 3, which makes it near worthless in SP since *very* rarely there's more than 2 other factions other than you in the tech race.

[This message has been edited by Xarathas (edited January 03, 2001).]

[Sindai]

Xarathas is right, the Datalinks aren't much of a priority unless you are way far behind in the tech race. In which case you probably won't be able to build it first anyways, so it becomes a moot point.

[Garth Vader]

The other reason why it is a low priority is that it doesn't give you techs that other factions have when you build the SP. Only techs that are researched after it's built.

[Killjoy]

Although, building the Planetary Datalinks could be considered as part of a denial/paranoid strategy. Why allow some other faction to build it and get free techs...techs you've had to work hard to get.

By building it you can maintain your technological strangle hold.

I agree. It's not TOP priority, but it should be considered — depending on the current situatiions in your game and your ultimate goal.

[Sikander]

I have managed to get all of the SPs recently in two games (Transcend) and I'm here to tell you how:

To Start Choose:

Huge Planet (Obvious)

Low Erosion (for more rocky terrain)

High Rainfall (Helps the AI, but it helps you too!)

Average Native life (for the score I guess)

Play the University. In my games I played agsainst all the original Smac factions.

I play directed research, all victory conditions, no tech steal on base conquest, pods on, look first. Took Centauri Empathy as my free tech.

You have an excellent chance to start on your own medium sized continent with these settings, which I managed to do. In both games I had a mineral special either in the radius of my first base, or my third base. In both games I blew two to three turns just moving to my first base sites.

Built formers first. In both games my scout managed to uncover rovers / clones of himself. In this situation I build two formers instead of a former and a garrison, and used the free unit for a garrison instead.

After the formers, I built two colony pods in each of the first two bases. Beeline for crawler tech (industrial automation). Formers are building roads and forests. As both of the first two bases built two formers, each one sends one of their formers to build road to new base sites. I place my bases on the coast, about two or sometimes three spaces apart. This makes my continent easier to defend, as between 1/2 and 1/3 of the possible landing sites are covered by bases. Eventually all of the landing sites are covered by bases or units (crawlers or Armored Probe Teams) , forcing a marine landing (something I have still not seen by the AI), but that is a quite a bit in the future yet.

Once the first two bases have cranked out their colony pods, they start building either recycling tanks or recreation commons (usually tanks, but it depends on which tech choice I had when I was forced to make a slight detour on my way to Ind. Auto.). It varies due to popped pod techs etc. Eventually both facilities will be built.

I switch to planned as soon as possible for the growth and industry bonuses. This helps me build everything faster. When I get to 9 bases, I quit expanding. Every base has at least one former building roads and forests in it's immediate area. Later bases are behind, but following the same pattern as the earlier ones.

Industrial Auto! Now it's time to kick some industrial butt. Switch to wealth for the additional industry bonus, and the energy. Next tech beeline - Secrets of the Human Brain. All bases which have built tanks start cranking out crawlers. These crawlers go to a forest square (usually there is a lot of this by now) or barring that perch themselves on a rocky square. In either event, they crawl minerals back to the home base until that base produces 15 or 16 minerals. Now they produce a crawler every other turn.

Once the first bases finish getting their minerals up to snuff, they help out the bases next to them by building crawlers which are re-homed in those bases, and then sent to gather minerals. My first two central bases will now be producing 15+ minerals, as will the bases next to them. Now they will start hoarding crawlers for SPs.

Tactics to deny the AI SPs:

Don't start tying up resources in an SP early on. The sooner you start building SPs the more likely the AI will react and start his. Hoard enough crawlers that you can crank out that SP in one turn. If the AI is building an SP, build it first (duh) and keep the pressure on by building the SP that he switched his production to next. Eventually he will run out of options and give up. Build crawlers for two SPs at once if possible, so that you can react to the AI switch. This technique (two at once) is good for me, since my bases are more or less in a line, so movement restrictions tend to force me to create two focus bases where the production of four bases can arrive within a turn or two of production.

If the AI starts building an SP which you don't have the tech for yet, don't sweat it too much, you are the University, and he isn't getting the production you are. If the SP is vital to you don't be afraid to alter your reseach plan in order to get that tech. Keep building crawlers, and wait for that tech. The race is between his single base's industry and your entire faction's research capacity.

Save those alien artifacts to use as production points for SPs early on. Cashing them for tech will likely interfere with your tech beeline, and make Industrial Auto that much further away.

Back to the narrative. By this time I have put away all of the SPs which were on my original research path (WP, HG, VW, ME, PTS). Usually I had to race Morgan and Lal for some of these. I try to keep focus on my long term research goals, and only break from this to race the AI to an SP they have started. This is critical, as my research path will keep me in a substantial tech lead, while if I try to anticipate the AI, I will start to lose momentum. Thus, I only react to the AI starting a project that is not part of my tech strategy. Here is my beeline list after SotHB.

1)Lift production restictions. When finished build Tree-Farms and Hab Domes, switch to Democracy and pop boom away. Formers build mines and Farm/Condensor squares and mineral production is steadily switched from forests to mines. Crawlers are shifted to the rocky/roaded/mine squares for minerals, or the Condensor/Farm squares for nutrients. New population is shifted to librarians once the base grows to size 5. (No drone trouble with the Rec. Commons / HGP / VW).

2) Get the PEG to fund all of the facilities which are necessary to make the most of my growing bases.

3)Clean Reactors, and then another wave of formers, and upgrades for the rest.

3) Start heading toward Fusion Power. Ideally this would be a beeline, but inevitably there are other concerns usually involving the AI starting a project that I really want, or really want to deny them, or contact with a neighbor who will probably be back in force. Fortunately there are a lot of good military techs on the Fusion pathway, and very often the AI is racing me for them and those military SPs that go with them. At this point crawler production has slowed to a crawl and facilities are the order of the day. Bases which are caught up with their facility builds crank out Armored Probe Teams, which blanket my coastline and any other likely routes of advance into my very busy urban areas. I try not to build any military units, as I am still running Demo/Planned/Wealth (for the Industry and Pop boom), and I'd like to wait until I get the Command Center & Bioenhancement Center SPs built, and I am no longer running Wealth.

Once my bases have more or less maxed their population (16), I will tend to switch to Demo/Green/Knowledge to keep my tech rate up. This also allows me the luxury of building some more bases without triggering any bureaucracy drones, and finally allows me to switch my economy allocations to whatever level I see fit. My formers are still all quite busy building condensor/farms and boreholes along the coast, and some mines in the hinterland to replace the mins lost by the conversion of forests to farms.

Finally the Golden Day when Fusion Power arrives! The game is mine at this point. With 10-11 Engineers in each city, boosted by all the facilities including the new fusion labs, unmatched military tech (including the new fusion reactors) I can win this game any way I want. I usually want to win by transcendance, which means that I will only need a moderately sized strike force to deal with any AI who get rude. Everything else is about maintaining the lead, and pulling away if possible. With all of the SPs under my belt, and loads of cash and tecdh rolling in it is a lot easier now to beat the AI to the punch for SPs. The sense of urgency about SPs is gone as the AI too late tries to challenge my technological and population hegemony with vain military adventures.

Getting all of the SPs requires luck, no doubt. In both games there were times where I was sure that the AI would beat me to the Empath Guild, or the Citizen's Defense Force or whatever. But the improvements in my play (Thanks to Vel and Ogie) kept me one step ahead of the game.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Sik,

Kudos my friend. Your play instruction is THE formula if I were to outline it. Beeline IA, Restricition lifting, fusion and upward and onward. Perfect for SP play (as opposed to MP) and SP aquisition.

Thank you for the praise (being mentioned in the same breath with the Master Vel is humbling). Truth be told though you and Bondetampe amongst others were instrumental in crafting specialist strategems. I was merely a voice (albeit a long winded one).

Finally, as I have yet to build all the SPs (I always seem to fall short somewhere about the Citizens Defense or the Empath Guild), now it appears the teacher is the student. Grasshopper can you snatch all the SP's from my hand??

One problem I seem to have is that the early SPs can be achieved relatively easily say 6 out of 10 times(as long as Domai isn't in play at least). As UoP though 9 chances out of 10 you've shot up the power graph to the point that the other factions are allied 'gainst you and more to the point once Empath guild is built trading techs amongst each other. Thereby making more likely the ability for some faction to get one of the middle rung of SP's before you can get to it. Normally I would assign, Ascetic Virtues, Planetary Datalinks, Citizen Defense, Neural Amp, and Longevity Sp's to this middle rung. Problem is whilst attempting the run to fusion your bypassing some of the techs required for these SPs thereby allowing that scum AI block of factions the ability to gang research those techs. However, your stuck on that 'barren' tech tree that ultimately leads to the holy grail called fusion power. I suppose its only fitting that the one tech that holds so much fruit is supported by a tech tree that holds so little benefit (comparitively speaking
that is).

Regards

Og