Getting back into AC

[HaVoC]

Freeciv is hard, because it's actually meant for human multiplayer games and there's no, absolutely zero diplomacy with computer controlled civs.
Diplomacy only works with other human players, you're always in a state of war against the computer controlled civs. And believe me, that the AI does all it can to kick your butt, and it does this very well, without cheating. I think that freeciv is the only civ-game that has a really non-cheating AI.

Freeciv is actually fun to play singleplayer sometimes. You're goal won't be to win the game however, it most probably will be to survive the first 50 turns.

(Well, you can make it easier for you by reducing the number of civs, but I always like to play with all 30 of them on a big map)

apart from this, look it all up:

www.freeciv.org

[Mannamagnus]

Coming back from Civ3 to SMAC I realize it should be called BRAC!

[Alex]

It would be outstanding if we could have the best of both worlds: Brian Reynolds designing AC 2 and Soren Johnson programming the AI for the game.

[Archaic]

Problem with that. Unless Brian Reynolds comes back to Firaxis, even if he bought the rights, he's not allowed to make TBS by the contract he signed when he left.

[sevencubed]

Re: Civ3 vs AC

Originally posted by HaVoC


...But let's face it that Civ3 is far superior in certain issues like: ...

1. Balance of Power: I guess you mean this at Emperor/Deity level ('cause at monarch or less, my winning comes pretty much easily - and boring i might add). But then, do you have in mind the bonuses the AI gets at civ3 at those levels? Thats why you get a balance of power, at least in some part. In AC at level transcend, the Ai bonuses are not even half of those in civ3.

2. War: In Civ3, war is serious you say. Not always, and it is greatly affected by point 1. Have you tried the pref "Aggressive AI opponents" in AC ??

3. Special Resources: For the game concept of AC there is a pretty good justification for not having them : there is no need for them! a distant, future, much evolved civ, could not distinguish strategic resources like that. Check the tech tree: with such techs available, u probably won't need metal alloy resources, u make them! same for uranium or whatsoever, the future civ has the ability to use "minerals" (in a wide sense of the term) , transform them and make almost anything. And similarly, there is no need for luxuries. It is a fact (check sociology sciences) that the further and higher a civ has evolved, the less "luxuries" of any kind have an impact on the populace. Because they are just not a luxury anymore but an everyday thing.

[Alinestra Covelia]

I liked the idea in Civ3 of foreign nationals. They could seriously impede your momentum when you're trying to cut a swathe through your enemies' territories. They also worked quite well to force you to make peace with the enemy you've just fought. In SMAC you can see a vague nod towards that direction (Captured Base gives you an extra drone) but that doesn't really bring the same idea of a resisting public.

And the avatar is my cousin who lives in Hangzhou. She's so pretty... I wish I was just like her! ^_^

[CEO Aaron]

Re: Civ3 vs AC

Originally posted by HaVoC
But let's face it that Civ3 is far superior in certain issues like:

BAH!!

1) Balance of Power. It's hard to defend in CivIII because they got rid of Zones of Control, making it virtually impossible to exercise strategy in the deployment of your defenses, so you have to match produciton with an AI which, as Sevencubed points out, is getting inherent bonuses to the number of units it can produce.

2) War is serious in CivIII because you can't win. In another brilliant step backward from Civ2, units lost hit points as an inherent attribute, so once again we return to the halcyon days of Civ1, where my battleships are sunk by your phalanxes. To make matters worse, if you're lucky enough to take an important city from your enemy, you can either sit and get pounded by his counterattacks, or take your occupying forces elsewhere and watch the city and whatever garrison you leave behind spontaneously switch sides.

3) CivIII's treatment of unique resources is the WORST thing I've ever seen in a strategy game. In most Civ games, your map placement is usually more important than the difficulty you're playing in, but try starting next to another Civ that has Iron when you don't.

CivIII is a bad game, and a huge step backward for the Civilization series. Every successive iteration of the game has featured the addition of new, more detailed gameplay features, whereas 3 simply offers a watered down Civ experience for someone who didn't have the patience to understand the complexity and depth of Alpha Centauri. Why did this happen? Because SMAC did not do as well as CivII financially, and the marketing people blamed this on the complexity of the gameplay.

[HaVoC]

sevencubed:

I actually found the AI already pretty competitive at the normal level, without bonuses or handicaps. One of the main reasons for this is, that the AI knows how to play right, especially in the beginning of the game. As we all know, the first most important thing is to expand like hell, and the AI in Civ 3 does this very well, even providing his settlers with escorts.
In AC, I can't help but wondering why the AI so often sends his col. pods miles away from his other cities, all over fertile, unoccupied country, just to build a city in the middle of a desert. Or why he still only has three to six cities very late in the game, while I already have 20-30. About in the middle of an AC game, my power bar is usually 10 times that of the other factions, while in CIV 3 it's very hard to even keep up technologically with the other civs.
..... I would mention more, but my girlfried is urging me to come have breakfast....

If you find Civ3 as easy to win as AC, it's probably due to your excellent strategic civ3-skills....


okay, back. As for the agressive opponents option in AC, it just makes them more moody and thereby declare war to you more often, but it doesn't really make them rally their forces and start an all-out onslaught, like in Civ3.
I would see no problem with special resources in AC... for fusion reactor units, you would need uranium or plutonium, for special weapons of some kind, some other resource, etc... there would be lots of possibilities, especially with new, "alien" resources. Where's the problem with that? Nanotechnology, with wich you could theoretically replicate any resource you need, comes very late in an AC game, and even then, there may be some resources the nanites aren't able to reproduce.

CEO Aaron:

I didn't like the new way of handling ZOC in Civ3 either, you`re right that this is a setback, but the rules always apply both ways. So if the AI can get past your defences or on very rare occations, your damaged battleship gets beaten by a phalanx, you can do the same things with the AI. Saying that you can`t win isn't true, it's just finally more realistic and more difficuilt than before. You can't just send 2 transports loaded with superior combat units into enemy territory and expect to conquer half his cities, like in AC or Civ2. You have to make a coordinated assault and make good use of artillery units, something that most people don't play attention to.
I already mentioned that resources are a bit overpowered, so I also agree with you on that, but I think that the general idea is still good.

[zsozso]

Not that my opinion count too much as I haven't played any other TBS (apart from a quick try-out of FreeCiv), but I will say that SMAC(X) is the best game! I have considered a few times to have a look at other TBS games, but before jumping in a read about them on forums like this and each time I decided that it is not worth wasting my time, I rather played another SMAX game...

[sevencubed]

HaVoC,

you are right about the expansion phase, in Civ3 the AI handles it much better, and since it can achieve that, then the rest of the game is in favor of the AI and thats all there is to it, imho. This is proven by the fact that by the end of industrial age, it gets pretty much off-balanced in favor of the human player, because there is no more expansion to do.
The AI's expansion rate is boosted because for the first few turns it builds nothing else than settlers! From the start it gets free additional defensive units (2 for Monarch, 4 for Emperor, 8 for Deity) - so here is the escort, free offensive (2 Monarch, 4 Deity), free worker and settler in deity. None of these happens in SMAC.

A thing we should always keep in mind, is that there is a 2 year gap in the development of the the 2 games, and it is quite obvious that the CIV3 AI will have certain improvements in the way it handles. Yet again, I've seen some pretty smart moves in SMAC - that i could never have thought of, and some stupid moves in civ3 (a whole banch of 70 tanks, stacked together and marching to conquer a far remote, lonely, city that was defended by a couple of pikemen)

By the way, i honestly don't think that my strategic skills are that excellent. (maybe we should meet in a PBEM...)

A final word on special resources: fusion reactor units, do need plutonium as it is stated in the manual. So someone will have to asume that plutonium might be found in the minerals in some content. For all of us fans of sci-fi, there is info in the manual of SMAC regarding the acive medium of weapons or the fuel source of reactors. There we can see that in most cases the "resource" that is required is derived by pure hydrogen or a certain form of energy fields. (ehhh, was that too much??

[vee4473]

Originally posted by zsozso
Not that my opinion count too much as I haven't played any other TBS (apart from a quick try-out of FreeCiv), but I will say that SMAC(X) is the best game! I have considered a few times to have a look at other TBS games, but before jumping in a read about them on forums like this and each time I decided that it is not worth wasting my time, I rather played another SMAX game...

not a bad decision really

[Mr. Harley]

One other thing for SMAC/X - if somebody sets up the AI on a jungle area, it actually does very well (so does a human) . Stick the AI on the jungle, seed some rain forests and kelp around it, maybe even a borehole or two if you want to offset crawlers, and it will be very dangerous on transcend. Of course on a big enough map the AI almost always loses due to the poor management by the AI on unit production/maintenance and infrastruture developement, but at least this way you have to be careful. Maybe some of our European friends could disassemble the AI code (it's illegal now here in the states) . Then we could work on a better AI. I recently started a thread on it, then emailed Firaxis - no response

[Mannamagnus]

A final word on special resources: fusion reactor units, do need plutonium as it is stated in the manual. So someone will have to asume that plutonium might be found in the minerals in some content.

Mindworms s**t plutonium. That's what makes them so dangerous.

[sevencubed]