Question from a relative SMAC Newbie too lazy to do an extensive search

[Ken Hinds]

Problem: I'm a builder not a fighter in temperment when it comes to these types of games. In CIV II my preference was to try the AC win as opposed to killing off everyone and I have problems with Historical scenarios for just that reason. Mongols getting overrun and wiped out by the Christians, etc.

In theory SMAC should be more in my line. Diplo, economic, trascendance are all victory goals. However, it seems that whenever I chose the faction with the weaker military starting position, Deidre, Morgan, Lal, especially Lal, I get stuck with Miriam, Santiago, and/or Yang on my doorstep. This also seems to happen if I try playing Yang, Santiago, or Miriam in a softer mode than standard. I have found some relief, but not much, by customizing the random map to Earth normal water coverage, weak erosion, with dense cloud cover on a huge world.

The AI seems to have more problems with the higher terrain slowing them down. Is this situation normal or am I just "blessed".

If I do manage to get in an isolated area where I can develop for 50 turns or so then I tend to do alright and even managed to transcend with a fundy Miriam, as I posted to the Miriam thread. Mostly I just get squashed like a bug.

Ken

[Avenoct]

Ken, I'm not sure that higher elevations will slow down the AI, but the corresponding rockiness certainly will. Even moreso, lots of native life tends to hamper them quite a bit. Combine this with an easy change to the faction texts (ie Morgan.txt, etc.) to make all the factions passive builders and you should be able to play the game you describe.

See the other posts where we discuss editing the faction text. Its quite simple to do.

-Smack