IP diplomacy hack?

[Hendrik]

Recently I played an IP game with a player who is... questionable. He is easily the most arrogant person I have ever met in an any online game. He gets ahead on the power graphs through various methods, usually very heavy expansion and the PTS. Only he NEVER gets in a vendetta with the AI. He was at one point twice as high on the power charts as any other player, and AI Yang and AI Miriam right next to him are treatied with him. He doesn't give them tech- neither of these factions has any tech. Nor does he give them energy- his energy reserves remain large. He might do some SE switching, but usually when you aren't expecting it an aggressive AI will contact you demanding tech or whatever, and if you are running a SE choice they don't like (this player was running demo, which both Miriam and Yang hate) then they will get angry.

Does anyone know of a way to screw around with the AI diplomacy, hack it, or somehow get results as described above? Other players who have played with this guy describe the same thing in every game he plays, even when he is way ahead on the power charts.

His strategy is pretty bizzarre... it incurs much more power chart growth than I have ever seen at an earlier point in the game, by sacrificing certain things most players take for granted to build.

[Main_Brain]

Nope I found teh same in my Games..
some Factions are more able to pull this than others though.
AI seems to check your Tech/UNITS/Pop/Land but mainly Units and even on me as Domai with 146 Synmetal&Plasma Garisons the AI seldom Attacks. Building is Power :=)
(AI doesnt seem to count Buildings in his personal Power-check though.. Bases=Pop/Garrisons/SP)

of course there is the old change SE before talking to AI cheat/bug/exploit/hans, but ruling teh Powerchart usually indicates Popbooming which can be utilized into ICS and nope not even Yang declares on you when you have 24 Defended bases and he has 4 ;=).
Of course if he hosts the Game he has the Possibility to edit his Money but generally I trust in the Good of Mankind(s SMAC- Players)

[MariOne]

Luckily I don't play IP but only PBEM...

Without any polemic intention, I'd like to point out something that (according to my own personal impression) I observed over the last years:

The wider Apolyton SMAC community has always been tendentially more dedicated to single player rather than MP.
I remember seeing many strategies were found and debated here, expressly tailored ONLY on the specific behavior of SMAC AI, and patently not applicable against smarter human opponents.

The smaller (but not less dedicated, competent or skilled in its top representants) ACOL SMAC community has always been almost exclusively dedicated to PBEM instead (until it lasted, as now it's only a ghost of what it had been).

This resulted in Apolytoners being undeniably smarter in handling with the AI, as a generalisation.

Why these introductory considerations?
Because I distinclty remember debating here about the opportunity of including AI factions in PBEM, vs. having someone setting up the game for you with the Scenario Editor, which allows to eliminate AI factions from the start and play a pbem with humans only - even if fewer than 7 (I don't know whether it's possible to start an IP game out of a scenario too...).

Apolytoners were generally more inclined to include AIs in their pbems, exactly because they "had spent so much effort in honing their skills for playing against the AI"... and they thought that exploiting a intervening AI on their way to beating a human opponent added variety to the game and allowed for proving a wider range of skills in the game field...
ACOLytes were generally more inclined to confront exclusively amongst humans.

I don't want to draw any conlcusion from this, I would only say that if you could play your IP games without AI factions, your problem would be solved....

Regarding shooting up in the power chart, I would tell something out of my experience:
in pbems against the top ranked players both here and at former ACOL, I have no problem to admit that I mostly lose.
But in many pbems I happened to find myself in against just average players, who eventually got good scores too in the Apolyton Tournament rankings, it was *usual* for me to have *at least* double the power in the chart within the first 100 turns, and without doing or aiming for anything special. And I'm NOT the best player around.
So, the fact that the AIs are friendly with him might be unusual, but this is not necessarily related with his ability to develop his faction. Maybe his powerchart shoots up just because he is... a better player, of another order/level/category of skill...

[Main_Brain]

Sidenote:
Of course its possible to play scenarios at IP :=)

[Hendrik]

Actually his powerchart shot up because he neglected a lot of stuff- most of his bases don't have formers, his 25+ base empire has maybe 6 formers. He hasn't made a single road, and only terraforms forests. He got the PTS, and thus has a gigantic pop. At this point in the game right now his lead is only due to tech, I would be at the same point as he is if I had the same tech level he does.

Observing his playstyle... he seems like someone who focuses entirely on doing one thing, and doesn't know how to do much else. He never rush buys, and just lets the cash accumulate in his bank, then uses the money to rush buy secret projects It is year 60, he has a huge number of productive bases, and he hasn't made a single probe team, he is gunning for a tree farm pop boom apparently. He calls supply crawlers "supply sh*ts"

Anyways I am going to declare war on the moron pretty soon.. and show him why an empire built using supply crawlers and rush building is superior to a sprawling, indefensible empire. Oh and I am beelining for MMI and fusion power with the other player in the game (UofP), who is highly pissed off at this guy for his constant demands for tech and energy.

It would be nice to play without any AIs at all... we plan on trying a game like that soon, it should make everything much more interesting.

[Archaic]

If I may ask, what praytell is the name of this arrogant player?

[Main_Brain]

I liek his playing style reminds me of me (except i refuse Crawlers)

[spartak]

Shouldn't this thread be in AC - Multiplaying?

[Hendrik]

Tlustoch is his ICQ name, his ingame name is usually CHII_XP.

[BustaMike]

I wouldn't worry about him cheating... he doesn't even sound very good.

I remember losing a game to a buddy of mine because he was able to manipulate the AI so badly that he won by co-op victory by around turn 40. I was winning, too. From that point on I refused to and still refuse to play with co-op victory enabled.

If you really wanna knock him down a notch I know there's still some good players lurking around here. I would be happy to thrash him, but I'm way too busy with school right now. Maybe PM me in a week or so. I haven't played in about a year, but I might not mind tryin' it again.

[Hendrik]

Bustamike-
My ICQ is 56192410, I would love to play an IP game with you in it, there are few experienced gamers currently in the IP circuit.

I think I can take conquer him in this current game, he is used to playing with very unaggressive players. The fact that he systematically alienates every player he plays with should make it easy to get cooperation with the other (university) player in the aforementioned game. It is one thing to be a bit boastful, but this guy is just plain hubristic- he thinks he is the best player at every faction ever to exist. After I finish this current game I might never want to see him again (then again, aggressive players sometimes make for more fun in games)

Incidentally, I don't know if you would remember me but I used to post under the name Enigma here. I have become re-active in SMAC/X only in the past couple of months.

[MariOne]

Enigma - you convinced me, I was just wild-guessing and inviting you to consider a different PoV...

Now, knowing a bit more details, he doesn't indeed look to have mastered all the aspects of the game in a flexible way...
Yet, his bad attitude apart, you say that nevertheless he HAS lots of productive cities thanks to relentless expansion, you say that if it weren't for his tech lead you'd be level with him on the chart, but earlier you also say that he has a gigantic pop...
So, may I infer that actually he succeded in being:
- more advanced in tech than you
- bigger than you in both in population & bases #
- more productive than you
I don't get if you mean that he actually also has lots of crawlers of whether he instead despises them...
...but this definitely sounds as a solid advantage! Only flaw would be that he's too poorly defended, and can't deploy units freshly built in emergency due to lack of roads (but also harder for invaders to raid&sweep thru his territory unchecked, many players advise the no-roads defensive approach, personally I prefer to HAVE Roads AND bunkers/chokepoints if really necessary)

Some details tell the he doesn't exploit some musts of superior micromanagement, like rushing units or never directly rushing a project, and this should tell against his skill level....
...but yet it could be possible that he had tested different and more variegated strategies, and then willingly chose to restrain himself and stick to a simpler one, maybe more effective from his PoV or more interesting to try for THAT game in his eyes...
I'm not an expert in "niche" strategies as I'm more a FlexibilityFirst (the approach, not the tech) Jack-of-all-trades style player, but what you describe sounds to me a perfectly legitimate approach.
Neglecting infrastructure as trade off for sheer numbers, Johnny Appleseed forest-and-forget low investment terraforming approach, each base is just an expendable/replaceable small component of a big indistincted mass, this sounds to me very much like the famous Borg Strategy, but I leave to the experts in that field to shed light on it.

For sure it should be interesting confronting with that strategy, aiming to exploit it weaknesses while trying to face and withstand its undeniable strengths.
And a double pleasure in winning (or double hurt in losing) if his attitude is "not the most amicable" and makes you itch to bust him...

Originally posted by Taz
Shouldn't this thread be in AC - Multiplaying?

Taz, you prove my point about Apolytoners attitude regarding Multiplaying...
Multiplaying Forum should of course be for ORGANISING multiplaying and its logistics.
With all the turn-tracking threads there, you can't expect to discuss technical or strategical issues like these in THAT forum... I would have for instance NEVER been able to contribute to this thread, had it been confined and sunk in the Multiplaying Forum...

[Hendrik]

We just continued the game, and I was ahead on the power charts before he quit. We were at treaty but both probably knew that war was inevitable- but he still neglected to make ANY probe teams

He ended a captured IoD's turn outside of one of my bases, which was unoccupied. I then moved a unit into that base (we were playing simul turns) and he left. I haven't spoken with him since.

Note as far as production goes I had easily 4-5 times as many formers as him, and that investment was just starting to pay off. I had several bases producing 16+ minerals, and a bunch of bases above ten. So I basically had the same amount of mineral production in a smaller number of queues. At 50/50 I was making something like 170 tech a turn and 150 energy, he was at 30/70 in order to rush buy defenses at his western bases which were under attack by Yang, he had to rush buy mindworms there.

As far as pop he had roughly 50% more pop than me, I had the empath guild and barely had more votes than him.

He didn't have SFF or airpower, I had MMI and was researching towards fusion with the Uni player. He would have probably tried using worm defense since he built the neural amp- but green economics + empath song > worms. My tech lead was the only reason I was ahead on the power charts, otherwise we would have been about equal.

I think his strategy could have proven really powerful if he just utilized the energy he had in a different way than rush buying SPs. If he had rush bought facilities the savings he could have made would generate enough turn advantage for him to make some formers and connect his bases.

Anyways I will never get to finish that game, and I believe he has put me on ignore on ICQ, so I will never talk to him again. Oh well.

[BustaMike]

Ah, how's it going Enigma. Makes me wonder if there are other people still lurking around here under different names.

BTW... this person you were playing with... His ICQ name isn't Richard Tater (like dictator, haha ) is it? I remember playing with this guy a looooong time ago and all he ever said was how invincible he was. He built tons of bases without facilities, just like the player you describe.

It would be really funny if it was him. I played him before I was any good. He beat me the first game because he chose the Caretakers and started right next to me (I was dead in 15 turns). The next game I was killing him, but never got a chance to finish it.

[Hendrik]

Actually he does build facilities, everything you need for a pop boom: rec commons, children's creches, holo theaters, tree farms, and some net nodes. He appeared to be gearing up for a pop boom before the game was discontinued. He built a couple of network nodes too.

His ICQ name is Tlustoch and he is a Czech, I don't know if he has any relationship to this Richard Tater. Kinda lame playing as the progenitors though... the alien factions are totally unbalanced until at least the midgame, usually longer.