unity pods, earthquakes, and water

[trekfan_2000]

is there any way to get a unity pod to produce an earthquake in a water square on an all water map(basically the map you have when you start playing after clicking create scenario in the scenario menu)?

[trekfan_2000]

and on a different note, is there any way to expand territory without new bases?

[Flubber]

I don't know the answer to your first question but since earthquakes and volcanos are not the most prevalent pod results, it would not be something you could count on

IN practical terms the ONLY way to expand your territory is to build or conquer bases since your territory will be 8 squares IIRC out (on land) from your base or half the distance to an opposing base, whichever is less. A coastal land base seems to have a territory one tile out into the ocean from the base while sea bases seem to influence 3 squares around them. usually the way to grab the most territory on land is to build a base right up against your current border. It can be real sweet if this gives you control over terraformed lands or a sensor built by someone else.

Given these rules, you COULD expand your territory by raising land to create more land from what were sea squares. Areas that are not your territory when at sea could be considered part of your territory if land, without any more bases built or conquered.


But SMAX is unlike CIV3 in that no matter how powerful you become your territory will stay the same size forever unless someone (other parties builds could shrink your territory)builds bases OR the size/shape of the landmass changes

[Black Sunrise]

If you have the all water map, there's only two ways I know of to get any land at all.
Can't former it up.
Can't earthquake it up.
Can't missile it up.

Here's how to find the olive branch:
1) Eco Damage, Volcano!
2) Sea former to raise to shallow, then global shade to lower ocean, exposing land.


PS, I like 1.

Indra

[knowhow2]

IIRC, a water unity pod once did cause an earthquake that created land from water.

or was it a volcano?

[Earwicker]

Originally posted by knowhow2
IIRC, a water unity pod once did cause an earthquake that created land from water.

or was it a volcano?

I've never seen either from a sea-pod. And while the volcano wouldbe cool, it would bum me out to lose my ship!

I've only seen volcanos from ecodamage and random events.

[trekfan_2000]

Do either earthquakes or volcanoes happen without the aid of either unity pods or ecological damage? And has an asteroid ever hit the planet during a game???

[MariOne]

Originally posted by Flubber
... your territory will be 8 squares IIRC out (on land) from your base or half the distance to an opposing base, whichever is less...

To be exact, the distance of the border from your base is 7 tiles.
Not counting the base tile, which is the origin, i.e. 0-tile coordinate.
Maybe if you counted the basetile as 1, we were telling the same thing, cbn

Also, the game counts a diagonal distance as 1.5 per tile (2 tiles in diagonal = 3 distance, 3 tiles in diagonal = 4.5 distance, etc.

So, the land borders extend 7 tiles orthogonally and 5 tiles diagonally (you can draw your border outline with that rule, it's 7-0 7-1 6-2 6-3 5-4 5-5)

If you have an opposing base, you might also want to consider that tiles equidistant from the two bases go to the LAST one to build.

In the early game, seeing your borders drawn on land closer than as described above, is a sure indicator that you have a neighbor (in favorable cases it also lets you determine his base placement with error margin <= 1 tile), long before you even meet units or see redlined basezones.
___

True, CivIII introduced expanding borders (and offhand I'd say it's the only big novelty it introduced, and not a striking one - oh, yeah, I forgot, the other one it's resources).
But the basezones are fixed anyway, and you don't have crawlers there. So in CivIII you might control a lot of land which would be completely useless to you (except for score, and keeping away neighbors - peaceful neighbors, that is...) unless you place bases there anyway.

SMAC had the merit to introduce borders first. They're at fixed distance from a base, but at least you know that bases=land claim, that's a pretty straightforward concept.
Also, the territory you control starts out much bigger that in CivIII anyway and stays that way for long, and above all, you can extract resources from tiles outside your basezones, which you can't do in CivIII.

In general, in SMAC you can control more land and *exploit more tiles* with *less* bases than in CivIII.

So, the auto-expanding territory feature which you could miss if you come to SMAC from CivIII, it's actually only a tactical-political mechanism, having barely an influence over your actual *development*.