Now this is interesting.

[Docfeelgood]

For the first time I have expericed an AI (Yang) actually use the terraform-up to build a land-bridge across a body of water to git at my cities.

So Cool!

Hey this is totally new for me
I am so excited!
Never seen it done before.
I hope this was not just a fluke.

Anybody ever seen this done?

[RedFred]

Yeah, it happens occasionally. Kind of an eye-opener. Just like the ODP wars.

I would landbridge myself to the AI but it always costs an outrageous amount.

[MariOne]

now that would be interesting, someone reverse engineering the altitude terraforming cost, providing us with a formula...

Closeness to your bases is usually a major factor. It can be worth to plop a temporary base near the tile to be raised...

[cbn]

I think someone already figured out the formula and the two big factors were closeness to your base and Planet rating. It can often be worth it to plunk down a base to reduce the cost down. I will take another look through the older threads to see if I can find it.

The last SP game I lost was one where i got stuck on an island for 100 turns and blind research would not give me a boat. next thing I knew , the Spartans land bridged to me and just rolled over me. A real eye-opener-- so now I always try to get the WP so I will have the ability to land-bridge regardless of tech.

[icevic]

what?? You can build bridges? My old trusty terra-former couldn't do that. I don't recall seeing that in the options thou... I guess I wasn't looking when the former is near water.

Vic

[Chowlett]

You wouldn't have seen it - the specific option "Raise Land Bridge" doesn't exist. You just Raise Land next to an ocean square, this will pull the ocean out of the water and make it land, as SMAC doesn't allow more than 1000m difference between adjacent tiles. This therefore allows you to connect two unconnected bits of land if you terraform up enough times.

[Ned]

I've played some games on small islands separated by vast seas, ala, Waterworld. If you find yourself in such a predicament, it is absolutely essential to get the Weather SP and expand your central island(s) by terraforming up. The alternative is placing bases on islands far from home. Losses due to inefficiency are unacceptable. Ned

[knowhow2]

AI occasionally raises land when I'm close enough.

[Blake]

Once my dear pact sister Roze decided to raise all of my sea terraforming out of the sea. I was Ursuper too (In one game I see the AI use terraforming offensivly, against it's pact brother, and I was an alien faction and actually HAD a pact sister, wow). The really annoying thing was that if I try the same thing I'm not allowed to. She also cut off the waterway between the two sides of my rather large continent, and turned ALL of my coastal bases into land bases. The little wench.... if it wasn't for the fact that I was overjoyed at actually HAVING an ally she would have got her arse kicked as punishment. And suddenly having my productive kelp farms turned into wasteland kinda added an interesting challenge...

Also once I had a bored army and an obnoxious Domai on a nearby island. He had the WP and raised a landbridge. Boy did he regret that, about a dozen turns later he was my dog.

I've also seen AI's raise land if they have bases on small islands. Sometimes they raise it just for the hell of it. Atleast twice I've seen them raise 3000 ft mountains (Roze destroying my terraforming was one case, the other H'mniee had the WP, raised a mountain, built 2 adjacant boreholes, and several condensors downwind of her mountain, Wow)

In virtually every raise-terrain case the AI has the WP.

[Sprayber]

quote: Originally posted by cbn on 04-28-2001 05:15 PM I think someone already figured out the formula and the two big factors were closeness to your base and Planet rating. It can often be worth it to plunk down a base to reduce the cost down. I will take another look through the older threads to see if I can find it. The last SP game I lost was one where i got stuck on an island for 100 turns and blind research would not give me a boat. next thing I knew , the Spartans land bridged to me and just rolled over me. A real eye-opener-- so now I always try to get the WP so I will have the ability to land-bridge regardless of tech.

It difintly cost less if you have a city near by. I once went on a former rampage drowning Yang's coastal cities. I had to plunk a few sea bases down to reduce the costs. In a recent game, two of forward bases were on the same continent as Yang. I went out towards the bottleneck that connected us and used three seaformers to do the deed. He came in and took one out but my interceptors soon reached the scene to provide air cover.

[Method]

yang raised land near me once and had about a gazillion chaos rovers waiting for the former to finish. but i just called him up, gave him a wad of techs until he was so happy that he signed a pact. yay for me! the same game i crossed a huge ocean(i was rich) to finish off morgan(i'm way too lazy to build boats). besides why build a boat when i can just send in my graviton behemoth to take all their bases at once?(he only had plasma steel for some reason)