Land Grab Strategy

[Hoek]

I found a very cool way to vastly expand your empire for minimal cost. The trick is to establish one small, ****ty base on poor land. Then, contact another faction leader that you have at least a truce with and trade your crappy city for one of their prize cities. They will almost always agree. Then, buy back your crappy city for a hundred credits or so. This trick is extremely useful. Once, I used this and took all of the Secret Projects this way. Very cool stuff.

[Simpson II]

I think that this is generally regarded as a cheat. I presume you don't have the Smac 4.0 patch, as this to some extent fixes the problem. The AI will only trade if your base is equal to or higher than the AI base in population (though not, sad to say, in SPs.)

For a decent challenge, try building all SPs without trading bases. That's a lot more fun.
[This message has been edited by Simpson II (edited August 22, 2000).]

[Adam_Smith]

Why not just go into the scenerio editor and officially cheat? Just kidding.

Seriously though. I thought that was fixed. I didn't know that the AI would give away it's SP. I tried to get Aki-Zeta to trade the Manifold Nexus to me and she told me to take a hike.

[Mars_Col_44]

Indeed. There are other threads on this; also, check out Vel's SMAX guide 3.0, also in these threads

[Garth Vader]

It's not fixed in 4.0, I tried it once after hearing about it to see if it worked. I traded a newly built base on a 3 square island for a 3SP base of Zaks in the ruins.

[RedFred]

I don't trade bases at all. Like the majority here I regard it as a cheat.

My understanding is that in SMAC the AI would accept any trade no matter how retarded. The patch for SMACX only seems to make things worse. The AI will only accept a trade if it is a bad deal for them and a good deal for you.

[DilithiumDad]

Are we playing the same game? The AI NEVER accepts trades in SMAC4 or SMAX2. They say something like "You would have me trade the guilded spires of Trash Heap City for that heap of rubble you call Mighty Metropolosis?" I can't even get them to trade me a smaller base for a larger one even if we have a pact.

I prefer to just give bases to the AI, since they never build enough on their own.

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Creator of the Ultimate Builder Map, based on the Huge Map of Planet

[Beör]

I consider base-trading dubious - if not outright cheating.

I couldn't care less what you do to the AI in singleplayer mode - it's your game, and if you want to exploit a blatant programming error go ahead. It can never be cheating - I mean who are you cheating anyway.

In multiplayer mode, however, base-trading is generally considered a cheat as I understand it. House rules should be made to regulate it's use. If house rules don't specifically allow it, I would refrain from it, since it is so obviuos unbalancing.