my little war so far

[D4everman]

The AI came really close to making good decisions last night in a game I was playing. It was nowhere near as good as a human, but it didn't do anyhting outright stupid. I think this was one of the few games where I saw a lot of AI probes in use.

I was (am, ain't finished yet) the UoP. I was lucky enough to have a fairly good starting position near the Manifold Nexus on a random map. It seems I'm on a gigantic continent that I share with the drones, Morgan, the Hive and the Gaians. The only person close enough to be a problem was Morgan and he was easy to contain. I cut off his expansion with a few well placed bases. Somewhere out there was Cha Dawn and Miriam. Before I knew where they were they began fighting each other.

Anyhoo, I built the Empath Guild and elected myself governor. Meanwhile Yang begins whooping on Deidre, eventually conquering her. I knew Yang would be a problem at some point so and at this point in the game but I had built up a small army of about eight mindworms. By midgame half of them were demon boils. I found that morgan was crunched between me and Yang and depserately trying to expand. Heres where he did what always pisses me off....he built a base right next to the border, snatching away a few of my developed tiles. So I threatened him into giving me the base, and I dismantled it...then he sent two probe teams over to my side, mind controlled two impact rovers and attcked my border city! Cool! Stupid, but cool. My mind worms took care of them and my chaos needlejets killed every single soldier in his three puny bases. Morgan quickly surrendered. Then Yang requested a pact against the drones.

I didn't need any more wars. Though I was rarely attacked before then, I was already at war with Cha and Miriam. I refused and wouldn't give Yang nonlinear mathmatics. So he declared vendetta. Fine. I knew I had to take him out from the gitgo.

Meanwhile Domai sent a probe team over that mind controlled one of my units and attacked. Considering the distance between Domai and myself on the same land mass and the fungus in between, that must have taken some time for the probe to get there.

I didn't really want all of the Hives bases so I managed to free Deidre from Yang with a probe of my own. I gave back every former Gaian base that I took, even though deidre lost one to Yang five turns later causing me to free it again. Morgan, now my submissive threw at ton of probes at the Hive, subverting units and causing general chaos. (Yang tried to probe me but i rush built the HSA, since I couldn't keep Domai's probes off of my flank.)

As it ended up, the Hive was eradicated. Deidre is making a slow comeback since I gave her all of my tech. (She was listed in LEADING in tech after I did that.) I'm at a truce with Cha, but miriam decided to attack me again. She threw a bunch of probes at me too, but the AI does badly positioning them most times. She uses the probes last movement point to stand adjacent to a base. Then I just kill it. A little more finesse and she might have gotten into the base...(if I didn't own the HSA.)

Domai is still my bitter enemy. He's going to go down in flames. If Cha betrays me he gets killed too. Miriam will probably not surrender so I guess she;'ll have to go to. Domai's pissed me off to much so he'll recieve mercy only if he surrenders early.

[Blunderdog]

Just a question ... you had Chaos Needlejets and you were worried about giving the Hive Nonlinear Math? If that's all he wanted, shoot, I'd give it to him with my blessings. Here ya go, knock yourself out.

[Sprayber]

My current game is the closest I have come to loosing in some time. I am playing a custom faction based on the Pirates. I am playing with the original 7 minus Miriam. Santiago is running away with it. She is first in everything but wealth. Morgan has that, but I am planatary governor thanks to the Empath Guild and my steady friend Morgan. At one point I was fourth over all. Spartans, Hive, University, Me, and then Lal. The first thing the Spartans did was to go after the Gians. I gave Dee a base on a small island to keep from being overrun. But midway through the game I had to turn on Dee because of the Spartans were bulling me around. I have been at war with Yang for practically the whole game and I don't need Santiago pissed at me. She made me pay her a few times and I had to stab Dee in the back but as long as she leaves me alone I don't care. Thankfully I was pacted with Zak and we traded for lots of good tech. I just recently concluded a truce with Yang so I can consolidate my hold on some of his bases. He is at war with everyone except Dee. Thing is that now everyone is building Planet busters. I am 10 turns away, Yang is 11 turns away, Santiago is 25 turns away and Lal who is right next to Yang is 37 turns away from building one. Since I am an aquatic faction my important bases are way out of Yang's and Lal's range. But I am well within Santiago's range but we are at peace and I think she is starting to warm up to me. She will most likely use it on Dee. My only hope is to build transports and lots of fusion speeders. I have 4 seabases off of Yang's coast and one of Lal's old seabases that I took from the Hive. Yang's is on a long and twisting continent so I will use my neddle jets, interceptors and amphibious tacticts to finish him off. But I have a feeling that the busters are going to fly in the mean time.

[Skanderbeg]

I momentarily have the closest end game I ever had.
The reason is easy: I played against random AI factions, and I got five builder factions and the pirates as AI factions, on a random map with around 60% water and a lot of medium-sized islands.
I am playing Lal, against: Aki, Zak, Morgan, two custom faction both with science bonus, and Sven.
No land-based warmongers, and Svens ships ruled the seas, so there were no much land wars and invasions, nearly all wars were about sea-bases.
So the whole game was a tech race.
Without the warmongers, all AI factions developed very well, especially the Cyborgs, who were in tech lead most of the time. But all other factions were only close behind. Because of that, we have all nearly equal military technology, what makes warfare even more difficult.
I had a bad start on a island consisting of the Unitiy wreckage and nothing more. That gave me some starting goodies (the units and the bucks), but beside that, it was a hell of a start position, all dry land and no room to expand. Luckily, I got WP and raised sea to land to build a fashionable continent to settle on.
I growed slow, and because of this, I missed all other early and early mid game SP's except Planetary Traffic.
I decided to play this strength and found a lot of new bases one smaller islands, one in the ruins and on on the Manifolid nexus (yum!).
I pacted with Aki and Zak, and also Morgan, but Morgan revoke the pact because of me running green. Vendetta with the rest.
As I said, Aki was leading in the tech rest, but I was close behind, and my larger cities have better production, so I grabbed away some SP's she began to build before me (ascetic virtues [allowing to grow my bases to size 18!], cyborg factory, cloudbase academy,
and finally, one turn before Aki completed it, the Clone Vets). The Clone Vets seem to be the breakthrough, the pop boom brings me ahead in tech, and I got the network backbone.

I think there is no possibility to win this game in a military way (perhaps with gravships, but the others are close behind in tech, and there are so many bases to take), so it must be won by transcendence.
I am just building armoured crawlers as a savings bank for the moment someone (I hope it's me) builds the Voice of planet.

[D4everman]

Blunderdog, I'm hesitant about giving Yang anything. I always have to fight him at some point and it turns out he developed Non linear Maths a few turns after our war started. I knew I'd end up fighting Yang so I didn't see the need to give him any kind of advantage.

In one of my first games of SMAC before I knew much about the faction's attitudes I gave Yang D:AP. A few turns later he started bombing the crap outta me.

D4

[Sindai]

quote: Originally posted by DogberryMan on 01-22-2001 12:07 PM Two questions. First how do you free a faction leader from someone else,

Send a probe team to the HQ of the faction that eradicated them. You should be able to "free faction leader" there. This restarts that faction as your submissive with one base somewhere. Though this is only available in SMACX

quote: and secondly, do the cloning vats give you all of the advantages of a golden age, or just the pop growth every turn?

Cloning Vats has nothing to do with Golden Ages. I have no idea where you got that from.

All Cloning Vats really does is "freezes" your Growth at +6 (though it doesn't show this in the SE window), meaning all your bases will grow every turn if they have the housing and nutrients for it.

A Golden Age gives you +2 Growth and +1 Econ at that base. So they become partially pointless after you build the vats, since the Growth bonus no longer really applies....

[Chowlett]

I freed Roze just a few hours ago. She's started on an island connected to the only one I've colonised (I'm playing Pirates, and I usually try to stick to the faction mentality) and founded three bases. This is just as well, since I'm at war with practically everyone else!

[DogberryMan]

Two questions. First how do you free a faction leader from someone else, and secondly, do the cloning vats give you all of the advantages of a golden age, or just the pop growth every turn?

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"Are you good men and true?" Much Ado About Nothing, Act III, Scene III