Razing captured bases and 2 other questions

[Tovarich]

After breaking my leg and digging through my old games, I figured I'd load SMAC up again. I had forgotten how fun this game was! After playing Civ 3 for the last few weeks, I am shocked that all the innovations in SMAC didn't make it to Civ 3. I'd say Civ 3 is a step down in comparison... but on to my question.

Playing as the Hive, I recently reached my optimum city limit simply by expanding and the unfortunate need to assimilate Morgan Industries into my empire. I am a couple cities over now, and Santiago decided that a vendetta against my might would be a good idea. After transporting several of my elite units to her continent, and many, many over-sea air raids by my shard penetrators, her cities have begun to fall to me one by one. Unfortunately, I have no use or desire for her cities. Is there a way to raze them as I take them over, or maybe get rid of them some other way? I couldn't figure it out right off, but I might be missing something obvious...

My other questions are fairly simple:

1. Is Alien Crossfire still available for the PC? I can't buy it off the Firaxis site, and I can't find any vendors in a google search for it. If someone could direct me to a place to purchase it I would be eternally gratefull. (It's not on ebgames.com or amazon.com...)

2. Are there plans to release a SMAC 2? I noticed another thread on the subject, but everyone seemed to think it was up in the air.

[Darius]

You can obliterate a base after you take it over. It's an option on the action menu for a unit inside a base. However, be aware that obliterating bases is an atrocity.

There are usually a few copies of SMAX available on ebay. This question comes up fairly often, and usually a few people will chime in with different sites where they have seen it. Just a few days ago someone mentioned www.softwarefirst.com or something like that.

[Tovarich]

There it is, and only 5 pounds! Thanks a lot

Too bad the base obliteration option is an atrocity, maybe it's time for me to stray to the dark side though... I would really like to crush those wussy Peacekeepers while I'm at it

[GeneralTacticus]

If you don't like base obliteration being an atrocity, you can turn it off in the alphax.txt and then commit facticide to your heart's content. Look doen the Rules part of it, there should be a line that says 'if non-zero, base obliteration is an atrocity.'

[Flubber]

Aside from razing bases, you can always gift them to some other friendly faction, Do you have any submissives? because if you do you can gift bases to a submissive to increase trade and to increase the chance they might actually resarch fast enough to be useful.

More rarely, I will even gift a particularly useless base to some other faction which has been friendly. The AI is so grateful that you might get a pact out of it or at minimum, better possibilities for trade.

As the Hive, giving away bases is very rare for me as I find that police is such an effective means of drone control that there is no real problem. In the time frame you are talking, the drones at the captured base are dealt with by making ALL the people specialists. Its sort of a slow "raze" in that the base contributes energy and research as it starves down to size 1. By the time you have shard weapons, drones should be easily dealt with in your homeland so a few extra b drones from exceeding base limits is manageable

[Killjoy]

Another way to get rid of unwanted bases, without razing the base and commiting an atrocity, is to starve the unwanted base down to size 1 (as Flubber mentioned) and have it build a colony pod at the same time. Maintain that base at size 1 until the colony pod is complete.

Once complete a dialogue box will appear asking if you want to disband the base in favour of the colony pod. Click OK and viola! One less captured, unwanted, enemy base to worry about. And no atrocity was commited.

Send the new colony pod off to another of your bases, disband it there, and add its minerals to your production queue! Or send it to better strategic location you'd like to control (as the AI tends to build bases haphazardly) and build a new base there, completely loyal to your faction (none of this 50 years until the captured base displays your factions architecture crap).

Neat and tidy!

It can be a time consuming process though, but at least no atrocities are commited. This means you still have the chance of getting the offending faction to surrender eventually (which is nice if it happens...)

And if you play with a focus towards energy, you can use some of those excess energy credits to buy the new colony pods a turn or two after you initially capture the base, in order to speed up the 'assimilation' process a bit!

Cheers

[johndmuller]

Personally, I don't really mind getting extra bases; what puzzles me is why so many people seem to want to get rid of them.

So as a public service, I will accept your unwanted bases; just Send your unwanted bases here .

When I see the number-of-bases warnings, I just try to watch out from then on and do whatever it is that needs to be done to keep things OK. Perhaps it helps that I don't have a scripted master plan that I'm trying to follow, although sometimes in MP I've watched pactmates coordinate the development of a half dozen bases or more at the same time and it is very impressive to watch. Nor am I that concerned if the former AI base is not in exactly the right spot; most of my bases aren't in the perfect spot either , my borehole patterns clash when they meet and I sometimes leave undeveloped spaces lying around .

However, I do take very good care of captured bases.

[Shai-Hulud]

I like to keep conquered bases, after all the trouble I've had conquering them. I rarely turn bases to AI if I'm not in the middle of a very serious drone problem. Invaison is a very efficient way to "grow holistically" and if I'm really into conquering most of my empire might consist of conquered bases, that's if I'm going to take over the world.

Starving bases is not only terribly cruel ...but it takes time and attention from something more useful. Even though I realize the benefit of limited number of bases I find it hard to believe that any empire would benefit more from mass destruction of conquered population than using it for production and research...or maybe I'm just being an optimist?

[Sikander]

I usually specialize the captured base and build colony pods until it disappears through pod builds and starvation. I like to keep my empire cohesive, and I tend to use fairly strict base placement and terraforming regimens, so the AI bases are usually more trouble than they are worth. I will keep SPs though, and just grow my empire around them if necessary.

[Blake]

I generally just keep the captured bases and basically let them stagment, getting a bit of income, and a bit of production, basically I update there queue when they run out, but rarely bother to rush buy anything. (In contrast, I rushbuy everything at my main bases)

So, they arent terribly productive, but better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. They also provide a buffer against enemy attacks, or staging points for my own offensives.

If I have a submissive and more power than god then I just gift the bases to the submissive, altough generally I can make better use of the base than my submissive. (So, basically I only give it away if I REALLY dont care about the production).
OTOH, I'm much more liable to give away bases if commerce is significant, because both you and your submissive gain.

[The Mad Monk]

I used to just give them away if I didn't want them. Then I'd watch as my submissive would just let them sit there. Very dissatisfying. So now, I put at least a 'basic package' in the base (creche, tree farm, maybe a few others) before letting them go.

Sometimes, I do this and give the bases over to a bunch of rival factions, just to watch the fireworks.

So much more fun then Civ III-style razing.