Border Pushing

[Bill Ramey]

Although there are borders in SMAC, the AI seems to use "border pushing" as a tactic; in other words, the AI builds cities in such a way to push my borders back and even steal some of the squares of my cities--even pact brothers will do this. Is this a bug or are borders more fluid than I realize? Are there any good techniques for keeping borders relatively static?

[cbn]

There is no way to set the borders permanently as the border will be 8 squares out or half the distance to the AI whichever is less. the only tactic I use is to border push myself. Build a base right at the border and watch your territory expand !!!

[Wiglaf]

Even building a base on the border tends to be worthless unless no one is around. A shrewd AI (an oxymoron if I've ever seen one) or human opponent will simply push your new territory back in an instant by using the same tactic. I always have a colony pod around to settle in the new territory and then ensuring my past land will stay mine. "Empty" territory is useless, its own borders must be guarded. By building a base on the edge of your land, you are merely protecting the land before the base, not after it.

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The fault lies not in our SMAC, but in our stars.
~ Vanguard, February 2, 2000.

[Archangel MasterBob]

If your not in treaty of pact, borders have no effect.

[The Mad Monk]

...but if you are in treaty or pact, it can mean a great deal...

I had been sharing a continent that was pinched nearly in half with Dee; the Ruins happened to be right on the 'pinch', and when I found it, just over Dee's border. I immediately sent a pod over to settle the Ruins, and was introduced to the 'no settling in another's territory' rule. I move the pod to just over my side of the border, and built a city.

Sure enough, the Ruins were no longer in Dee's territory...

[johndmuller]

This border thing is somewhat annoying if you're being a builder and wanting "nice" cities and/or following some preconceived spacing pattern.

It would be REALLY NICE if borders could be negotiated; it is no doubt too late for that to happen in SMAC/X, but we could lobby or at least hope for something in CIV3. It might be tricky to implement in some general way, but it seems to me that at a minimum, the two factions could agree to respect their current shared borders where defined, and where not defined (i.e. undeveloped or 3rd party territory) respect one another's current city radii such that no new cities would be built whose radius overlapped the other's current territory.

A way that this could be accomplished is for the program to save a mini-map for each of these treaties, which could add up to a significant amount of space, but I don't think that it would be prohibitive. I suppose a better method is possible, but if not then at a worst case each map could be saved as 2 bits per cell (coded perhaps as 0=neutral, 1=faction A, 2=faction B, 3=N/A). With that method, a map of 16K (huge?) squares would require 4K bytes to store the borders by this method. If you had deals with all the other 6 factions that would be 24K. If all the possible combinations of deals were present that would be 4K * (6+5+4+3+2+1) = 84K.

Presumably someone could think of more efficient ways to store this data but even if they couldn't, that would be no more than about 20% more space in the save files (keeping about 20% fewer game files on your disk would leave you even). I'm sure that this data could be compresed greatly by counting adjacent duplicates for example, but the added processing time to decompress all the tables each turn might be a bad trade off. If, as I think may be true, the game already keeps a separate map of the world from the perspective of each faction, then this information could be added to those maps less expensively where each square could have its ownership flagged as to whether it was a treaty square or not.

I find the offshore action a bit more annoying as in when an "ally" of yours puts down a sea base and starts producing from some sea squares you developed from a land city (at least you have some rights immediately adjacent to the land city).

The border action does have some game interest of its own in that one can nickel and dime the AI and get stuff from them too, although it tends to force one into having bases closer together than I would prefer. Then there is the bug that lets you change an infiltrated opponents labor allocation, which an exasperated human could use to make their own border deal with the AI.

If you're a more militant type, then the border game just gives you an excuse to start in on the interloper. One can usually get the AI to declare the vendetta if you probe them a few times - I'm not sure, but I don't think that probe actions hurt your reputation.

[It'sLikeThat]

Not really about borders, but about that infiltration bug, how come I can't do it? The worker allocation won't change?

Sorry for being a little off-topic.

I do have experience in sea bases where the AI stole my worked tiles by plunking a base next to my border. Spent the next 20 turns at war with her because of that. heheh..

[Blake]

To change an AI's workers go to base screen (F4) for the AI you want to manipulate.

Then right and left click on the faces to change workers to specialists and vice versa. That way you can turn the entire pop into specialists, to starve a city / steal tiles or change them all into workers to make drone riots. Ofcourse using it is a cheat.

[Aredhran]

quote: Originally posted by johndmuller on 03-12-2001 02:25 PM...as I think may be true, the game already keeps a separate map of the world from the perspective of each faction, ...

Actually, I don't think it's the case, and that's the reason why the AI is "all knowing" (eg, how the hell did Sven find my ship hiding in the fungus there ?).

[Shotgun]

What bothers me more than land border pushing is sea colonies that get placed way inside my borders. Sometimes they will even go into a "bay" past one of my cities if they are an brother and then "steal" my resourses. I wish there was a way to prevent it without destroying the pod and creating an enemy.

[KMadeleine]

Shotgun - you can try buying the sea colony pod with a probe foil. Of course, if you don't use it where the computer was going to build their city, they might just try the same tactic again and again...

[gwillybj]

quote: Originally posted by Shotgun on 03-15-2001 09:03 PM What bothers me more than land border pushing is sea colonies that get placed way inside my borders. Sometimes they will even go into a "bay" past one of my cities if they are an brother and then "steal" my resourses. I wish there was a way to prevent it without destroying the pod and creating an enemy.

This is probably not applicable to your situation, but hopefully it is a help anyway.
From the manual, page 131; Territory (italics added for emphasis):

"Any squares which are nearer to one of your bases than to any other faction's nase are considered your territory. Territory cannot extend more than seven squares out from a land base, or three squares out from sea bases, and must be on the same continent (or sea) as the base claiming it. Building a base close to another faction's territory may cause the boundaries to be re-drawn. It is entirely possible for bases from rival factions to be so close that the territorial boundary runs through both bases' production radii."

What this doesn't mention is that a land base on the coast extends its territory only three squares out to sea. So this can lead to situations where a bay has unclaimed squares where another faction can establish a sea base and thus push back the sea border of the land base. Since borders at sea are not always drawn very clearly, it can be easy to miss those unclaimed sea squares, leaving that opportunity open.
It also doesn't mention that a sea base adjacent to land does not claim seven squares inland; it claims only three.

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[This message has been edited by gwillybj (edited March 17, 2001).]