My Name Is Sprayber And I'm A Control Freak!!

[Clear Skies]

I use Governors on a reasonably large scale, but I do check up on them periodically to see if they're doing anything dumb - like the Conquer 'vers building useless Artillery...

I never ever ever automate untis though. The AI is so dumb in that respect - I've seen Morgan, for example, moving Colony Pods back and forth along the same stretch of Mag Tube time and time again, or Dee patrolling the same stretch of land with a scout rover again and again. Dumb. I never want that to happen to me.

[death_head]

When I run governors, I just do a quick run through the Function keys to get a quick status report of base building each turn. I can quickly scan for Punishment Spheres, etc. It's quick and easy, and saves me lots of time.

[Kassiopeia]

Oh, would'cha look at that... According to the Firaxis site, the newest update fixes the "Governors messing about with Punishment Spheres" -problem.

[death_head]

Thats what you get for trusting Firaxis...

[curtadams]

I cheerfully use the AI for long-distance movement. Yeah, now and again a unit takes a turn or two extra (especially air units) but - so what? Auto-remove fungus works nice and saves a lot of work. Beyond that - no way, Jose.

In the "boy is the AI hopeless" department : I have been testing some mods and was checking on how the AI responded. Checked in on a Spartan base, size 2, that was building a Rec Commons. Why? Weeeelll, Santiago was running FM and that city was supporting a gunship scout...

[Ken Hinds]

I'm sorry folks, but if my empire is going to be run into the ground then I will do it myself, thank you very much. For CIV II the only automation I used was if I needed a isolated plains or grassland square irrigated, then since Irrigating Mountains took so damn long I would plop an engineer or settler on the correct square and give it the K command since the AI and hence my unit now AI controled didn't need water to irrigate.

In SMAC the only way I use the automation features is to Hold down the mouse button on a distant square when I want a unit to travel there. I've also tried the / (auto explore) on a few ships, but I'm not sure it is worth the effort.

I create my own build queues and redesign any AI suggested units as I see fit.

Ken

[Blake]

WARNING! maths follows, apoligies in advance

Does anyone actually move every single unit with keys? Just, erm, wondering

No automation. But I do use time-saving techniques; I move formers in big clusters to finish stuff really fast. Sound strategy, also very very lazy. Heh.

This comment amused me (no offense ), if you do the maths it is a lot less work to get every former to work on it's own task.
The maths of drilling 16 boreholes (with the WP):
Gang of 16 formers, complete one borehole in one turn, this requires the gang to be moved 16 times, involving 16 moves per former, for a grand total of 256 moves.
16 seperate formers, (each) complete a borehole in 16 turns, thus a grand total of 16 moves.
And, the nice comprimise:
4 gangs of 4 formers, drill a borehole in 4 turns, 4 moves per gang, for a total of 64 moves.

Each "move" requires one mouse click+hold, and one shift-b, then an additional confirmation if drilling on forest. For either 2 or 3 discrete actions. (more if moving using keys).

Clearly, a massive "real time" advantage is gained by not ganging your formers. The in-game advantage is fairly large for ganging however.
One gang of 16 formers:
720 minerals, 720 energy (multiplied to about 2000 net energy).
Which is something like 2 medium sized SP's, and a few techs

4x4 formers:
576 minerals, 576 energy (somewhere about 1500 net)

16 individual formers:
no advantage

What can I say, I'm a maths geek

[death_head]

And your point is...

Are you saying that people should take the extra time in r/l to save time in the game?

Personally, I get sick of moving all those formers, but that's just me. What there needs to be is a que, so you could select all 16, and hold some button and que up all the boreholes at once. Then you wouldn't have to worry for the next 16 years! (or whatever)

[Kassiopeia]

The AI flaws and lackings are a Red Conspiracy to spoil the youth of the Western world More time spent on the PC instead of fighting the Red Invasion

[Blake]

No point Isn't that always the case with maths?

It's just another interesting example of how spending real life time, directely results in greater virtual game resources. The crawler crawl is an even better exampe.

IMO, game designers should avoid this sort of thing, because quite frankly it's a horrible tradeoff, and doesn't put players on an equal playing field. (basically people who have a life, cant do as well as those which dont ).

One of SMAC's downfalls is that the bean counters get such a tangiable benefit from extreme micro managment. Hopefully this "problem" will be fixed in Civ3. Dont get me wrong - I like a healthy amount of resource managment in a game, but some micromangment can be removed with NO negative impact on playability. (I'm thinking the ability to do crawler crawl).

Another horrible tradeoff that evil game designers can do (but thankfully rarely) is "The faster you click the mouse button, the faster you do something (ie fire)". Clicking fast and often can even result in various injuries, so the tradeoff becomes your own physical well being for virtual in-game resources or increased abilities. (being turnbased this is one thing the Civ series cant suffer from).

[Fitz]

So here is the challenge for all of you Control Freaks:

The Govorner Challenge

Random (no control of specific random attributes) Huge planet, Trancend, Blind research, must use govorners, automated formers, and faction research priority. No Spoils of War. Any other settings as you feel like it.

Can only change SE & Govorner priorities every ten years. Must use faction's preferred SE choice or none on that row.

Cannot use Advanced Govorner settings (all on), but may use any combination (including none) of the four basic priorities. Use all terraform settings (all on). Automate all terraformers use any automate command you care to.

You may use the design workshop as you see fit to limit/expand the disigns the govorners may build.

Choose any faction. Each base may have multiple priorities, or none, and each base can have seperate priorities. However, you may only change the base priorities on a Misson Year multiple of ten.


The exceptions are:

You may set a Social Engineering choice the year you discover the tech that allows you to use it, provided you are not running a different SE choice on that same line. If you don't have the money to turn it on that year TOO BAD.

When you found a base, you have the option to build a garrison and a former (any order), but that is it. After the pop-up window for the base informs you the second item is finished, you must enter the base screen and turn on the govorner.



This challenge basically concentrates on overall mission parameters (Social Engineering & govorner priorities) and waging war. You'll probably find the turns go fairly quickly.

In addition (and this is the part that makes it very hard) I bet the govorner almost never builds crawlers.

[death_head]

Hmm, I don't think this would be very hard...that is basically what the AI does but you have the advantage of being a good micromanager. Of course I haven't actually tried it yet...

[Ned]

Fitz, I think you hit the nail on the head. Micromanaging aside, the most important distinguishing factor that separates humans from the AI is the use of crawlers. Ned

[Sprayber]

Might be fun. A little frustrating, but fun. I'll try it tonight.

[Velociryx]

LOL….hadn’t read this thread in a few days….that was a good one, Kass! And, you’re welcome…yes, truly one of the most massive flubs of recent ‘net history….it still cracks me up….oh, and the best part was a couple months ago, CGW actually had the quote running along the top of their front cover….

-=Vel=-