Turns of SMAC succession game #2: Lal's World

[Qantaga]

Smack writes:

I left things beautifully set up for a totaly wiping out or submission of Santiago.

Yikes! Nothing like a little pressure!

I just got the turn. It will be a couple of hours before I can get to it, but I will post it a little later today.

[Avenoct]

Who said that?!? , oh me? Darn, what a jerk .

Approximate units in Hawk of Chiron:

5 8-1-11 Elite Chaos Choppers (ok, one or two are only commandos)
2 8-3-11 Elite Chopps with armor
2 8-1-11 Elite Noodles
2 8-1-9 Veteran Interceptor Noodles
3 8-1-2 drop rovers
2 1-3-1 drop police
2 2-3-1 AAA infantry
3 probe teams
1 6-1-2 artillery

something like that. I love the Cyborg Factory..Forgot to post that we built that in 2252 or so.

-Smack

[Scipio Centaurus]

A reminder to everyone. Morgan did build the HSA awhile back. You can check the F5 screen for a quick review of who's got what SPs.

- Scipio

PS. I think I will skip the plain vanilla succession games from here on out. I am in another MP game and signed up for 2 new MP games on Poly.

I am still very interested in challenge type games - succession or otherwise - so JDM, I'm still up for our 'probes only' challenge. I would also love to see that one done up with Data Angels (no AI Believers) in SMAX, but I know Smack doesn't have SMAX. BTW, have you actually ever tried this variant out in SP? Cause it sure sounds like it will be a 'canine of the female persuasion'!

PPS. Is anyone interested in a no-crawlers no-upgrades challenge variant? Succession or otherwise?

[Avenoct]

That's right, Morgan did build that for us...what a nice pactmate . Do you suppose he'd mind much if we invested heavily in Morgan properties, say, 95%?

BTW, I will PB our headquarters if all of you don't play Aldebaran at least once when it's finished.

[Scipio Centaurus]

I agree with the plan to secure the southern coastline of Santiago's island and then eradicate her or force her faction into submission... She's just too much of a direct threat to our mainland.

I don't see any compelling reason to arbitrarily conquer every faction on the planet, though. [Guess you can tell I'm a builder style player, eh?] If a faction attacks us... let's punish them for their temerity. Otherwise, I'm inclined to live and let live - especially if the faction is a proven loyal pactmate. As soon as some faction builds The Voice of Planet we'll be able to rush build the Ascent long before any AI faction can hope to do it. Besides if we continue running green and knowledge, it won't be long before Morgan gets upset with us...

- Scipio

PS. I'll play in an Aldeberaan challenge succession game whenever you have it ready. I'll also playtest it solo as agreed earlier.

I tried another mod called Harsh Planet. The designer removed the NUT bonus from forests. Made some mods to units, facilities, SPs, etc. but I never got that far in. Very nasty. I lost 3 times within the first 100 years and just gave up. I disagree with his thesis that forest would not come along till after years of farming. Trees are some of the hardiest forms of plant life and produce abundant nutrient resources plus providing fabulous amounts of greenage for photosynthesis. I think initial terraforming of nearly earthlike planets might well involve heavy forestation.

But... that's another thread topic I guess

[Qantaga]

Whew! I feel like I've been in a "war". Probably because I have.

First, one technical issue. I am not sure what was going on, but I got a LOT of terranx errors. They occurred most often at the end of the turn. I would choose "Turn Complete", the AI would start their moves and, bang, terranx error, program closed down. I don't know what the cause may be since I have played thousands of turns recently with no such error. I don't think the game file is corrupted, though, because it would reload with no problem (usually the first time, but once it did take two tries to get it to "take". Hopefully, this was just a quirk of my system today. I did take air units off alert, so it is not that particular bug. The game was playing cleanly by the end of my turns, so everything should be fine.

I am sorry to be posting so late in the day. I played the first ten turns this morning. Then, we had a family cookout that lasted much longer than I thought it would. When I finally got to the last 5 turns tonight, they were quite long.

On to the game.
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Report from Acting Brother Qantaga (or the Chronicles of the Spartan War):

As reported, Smack did leave quite a nice set-up for the looming war with the Spartans. However, Santiago and her followers were not about to roll over. They have not been eliminated nor have they submitted to our will (mainly because Sunspots have eliminated communication for the last 7 years), but it is all a formality now. Their research rate is at 9999 years and their remaining bases are running on a shoestring, but they will most certainly have a few surprises left for my predecessor.

2256 - As our first act, we probed one of Santiago's bases and extracted 24 credits. We then framed Yang for the crime and Santiago immediately declared Vendetta against the Hive. We then probed another base to extract 14 credits and framed Miriam for that action. Santiago declared Vendetta on Miriam, so her old friends were alienated before we went after Corazon.

Holy Cow!!!! We notice that the Hive has 22 Needlejets sitting in Zak's Oceanographic Lab located right off our southern coast. We are going to have to be prepared for that. We also notice that the Spartans have a Planet Buster in a silo at Fort Superiority. That is rather frightening and must be dealt with quickly.

We begin the Empath Guild.

We then probe Santiago to get 20 credits. She captured the probe and declared Vendetta on us. This was the true purpose of the probe, so that we would be free to attack Santiago without a hit to our reputation.

Thanks to the legacy left by Brother Smack, the Spartan bases of Sparta Command, Parade Ground and Fort Survivalist were all liberated from the oppressive rule of the Spartans and enfolded into the enlightened empire of the Peacekeeping Forces!

2257 - Spartans launch retaliatory air strikes and take out a Crawler and a Former. We take out the offending planes.

Miriam launches a surprise attack, violating our Truce. She was able to destroy a Crawler and a Former, but four of her units were destroyed in return. Deirdre intervenes on our behalf and declares Vendetta on Miriam.

I switched temporarily to Power to improve our morale and our probe efforts.

Blast Rifle Crag captured. Defiance Freehold captured. Probe team disables Planet Buster in Fort Superiority.

2258 - Stole Organic Superlubricant from Santiago. Destroyed a ton of Spartan Infantry, Garrisons and Foils attempting to reclaim their fallen bases.

2259 - I started producing a lot of Conventional Missiles. They are now spread around our empire, but my predecessor may wish to use them to start taking out all of those Hive Needlejets in Oceanographic Lab. I am not sure what is going on there. In my 15 years, those planes took out one Probe Foil, but never made another move out of the base, either to come after us or after Deirdre who has a base right there. I don't know how Yang intends to use those planes. However, while I was focusing on Santiago, I didn't want to provoke Yang's wrath at the same time. Morgan must have been keeping Yang's attention drawn elsewhere. The strange thing is that Yang instigated Vendetta against us around 2263, but still has not mobilized these planes. Bizarre.

2260 - The Believers are targeting our Formers and Crawlers with air strikes. We don't have many SAM units, but we will have some soon. The Spartans are starting to destroy enhancements on their continent as we begin to move across it.

2261 - Discovered Centauri Meditation. Began working on Advanced Spaceflight. Fended off Believer and Spartan units.

2262 - Morgan transferred a Fusion Needlejet to our control and Deirdre gave us a Fusion Needlejet and a Shard Needlejet in the bases we captured in the old Spartan territory. It's nice to have friends.

2263 - Our Clean Skies units scramble to take out 3 Believer penetrators. We spent a little cash and captured a Spartan Fusion Marine.

Aaargh! Sunspots - no communication for the next 20 years. So much for trying to talk Yang or Miriam into a Truce. They are both starting to pepper our coasts with planes and transports intent on offloading units onto our precious soil. We now have a war going on against Santiago, Miriam and Yang.

We completed the Empath Guild.

2264 - Trying to sprinkle in some base facilities like Tree Farms and Labs, but we are primarily focused on military buildup and defense in these years. Hopefully, my predecessors will have times of peace to build some of the nicer facilities for our citizens.

Survival Base is captured.

Yang has a hoverboat to the south. We took out his two penetrators, but the boat was a little too strong for us at the moment.

2265 - Miriam is now bringing forces en masse. We are cutting them down as they come, but we are losing units in the process. Santiago is trying to build more Planet Busters, but we are hitting her with probes to stop their production. Morgan and Deirdre remain loyal allies. Yang now has 26 jets in Oceanographic Lab.

2267 - We now have a supply of Clean Fusion SAM 'Copters that are taking out Miriam's Fusion Penetrators and Missile Tacticals as they approach.

We used a probe team to Mind Control War Outpost. We inherited a Fusion Needlejet and a Fusion Marine in the process.

We discovered Advanced Spaceflight. We are now working on Advanced Ecological Engineering (very limited tech choices this time).

Miriam and Yang are coming at us hard along the length of our southwestern to western coasts. We have taken out several Transport Foils loaded with 4-8 units per Foil. Keep a very close eye on the waters. We can't afford a massive landing right now.

Miriam is also sending lots of Missile Cruisers, but they are going to the bottom of the sea as soon as they approach our coastline.

2268 - We completed The Longevity Vaccine.

Admirality Base (sea base) and Assassin's Redoubt captured.

A Believer and a Hive Transport were sunk.

With the discovery of Advanced Spaceflight, we designed a Clean Shard SAM 'Copter. The first few should come off the assembly line early in the next Brother's administration.

2269 - We launch the first satellite above Planet. The planetary map is revealed. Although the war against the Spartans has been bloody and costly, the coming storm against the Hive and the Believers is going to be a quite a challenge.

Fort Superiority and Gaia's Landing are captured. Deirdre's first base has been avenged although we will have to wait until the Sunspots recede to give her the good news.

2270 - We destroyed yet another Believer Transport loaded with 7 units coming to pay us a visit. Beware of these Transports. She is sending them regularly.

Our units on Santiago's continent are resting for their next push.

We are now running Demo/Green/Knowledge. Our SE settings are at 60/0/40. This is giving us 282 credits/turn and a tech discovery rate of 6 years. The Longevity Vaccine helped a little with the happiness of our people, even with some air units so far from home.

Santiago is down to her last 6-7 bases and it is really just a matter of time before we eliminate or submit her. Once she is out of the way, we will need to focus on terraforming and building to get that continent back up to speed after all the scorched earth caused by Santiago's forces upon their retreat.

Formally submitted with respect for your approval,
Brother Qantaga
2256-2270

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The file is attached. If someone does decide to bypass johndmuller, let's not go too far without him. We can then make sure he gets the first turn on Tuesday.

Scipio, I would be interested in a no crawler, no upgrade challenge.

[Avenoct]

Well, yes, those are off-topic, but I'm of the position that MP threads are like mini-forums just for us. Sure, if we have 6 pages it's harder to find pertinent (sp?) info, but it's our space.

Aldebaran is a pain to finish because of 3 things: 1. waiting for Kassiopeia with our pressuring him to finish the story up to the point where we can both use excerpts for the 'interludes.txt'. 2. Finishing the techlongs after having exhausted both of our favorite authors useful material. 3. Writing both the download instructions for dummies and the huge list of acknowledgements.

I'm historically bad at finishing open-ended projects, so knowing, I'm more anxious about finishing this one. But as much as I whine I realize that it's not much to finish up, that the hard part is over, and that I'm not under any real pressure (If I was, it'd be done ). At one point, I must admit, I imagined that the mod would snowball and that soon everyone would be playing it, but in reality, everyone will be playing Civ 3. This isn't at all a bad thing from my perspective. Basically, I've done 'it', 'it' being the journey.

I'm hashing out some things here that belong in the Aldeb thread, but oh well, it helps me to think out loud and hurts noone to skip a few lines. I learned so much from making Aldebaran. The main thing, not at all to be hokey, is that Apolyton sports some of the best minds on the net, that people like to work together on a project, and that I was darn lucky in finding good beta testers and a graphic artist and a published Sci-Fi writer to collaborate. Even if the game never got released, I'd feel satisfied with the experience of team effort, of manipulating 78 interdependent variables (the tech tree), of making a first step.

Getting silly. I'll refrain. Back to this game! I'm a hybrid player in general. I don't even know what our goal is with this game. Is it to win as quickly as possible, with as many points, to transcend? Whatever our goal, I do think we'll need to give Morgan some trimming, and probably Yang.

-Smack

[Qantaga]

You both were posting while I was writing my Lal's World treatise . A couple of responses to your posts:

Smack, I would love to try your Aldeberaan mod once you have it finished. Any news on Vel's Torture mod? (I guess I could just stroll over to the AC Creation forums and see for myself).

Scipio, I find that I am a builder/hybrid player myself. These 15 years were a challenge for me, since I usually tend to focus on building my empire and these 15 turns were almost totally military-minded. Although, I couldn't resist building two Secret Projects.

[Scipio Centaurus]

How do you 'force' a faction to submit? I vaguely remember a game from about 6 months back where I captured all but 3 of Yang's bases and he called me and surrendered to me. Is that faction submission? I got the feeling that it was more or less just a pact by any other name - in other words, if he got big again he might turn on me. Anyway, I've never come close to forcing any other faction to 'surrender' to me since then, though I have eradicated a few factions since that time.

Usually, when I am in vendetta with another faction they simply refuse to take my calls, and rarely call me to do anything except to demand that I give them some tech in return for an end to the vendetta. A yes response either leads to a truce or treaty or a demand for an additional tech with the dire warning that my bases are at their mercy - whether the bases are vulnerable or not. If I refuse to cough up either tech, the vendetta just proceeds apace.

BTW, Quantaga, I think you did great. Looked like classic chop 'n' drop conguest. [is that my original AAA/SAM missile rover still hangin' around on Spartan soil? Have they shot down any NJs?]

The chop 'n' drop is something that I have rarely seen the AI pull off - which is why I am not too worried about the outcome of this game. I would like to see us get The Space Elevator, though... just in case the AI gets smart on us.

As far as new factions to conquer, Miriam has broken 2 truces and 1 very expensive treaty with us, so at our leisure, I have no problems with our taking her out. Yang has been suspiciously quiet, though from the sounds of things that might be changing. Morgan has been an exemplary pactmate as far as I know. Dierdre as well. Zak I do not understand. For a man of science and reason, he sure seems to have made some boneheaded decisions.

Speaking of 26 NJs in a coastal seabase, I'm noticing a sizeable herd of completely undefended crawlers grazing right there on that very shoreline. I think the next SP we start in a base down that way might get a Yang response, if we haven't dealt with the problem by then.

- Scipio

[Avenoct]

Well, it's not a sure thing, faction submission, as some factions will fight to the death, sometimes. But yes, basically it's just a very good pact.

The message when you get a faction to submit (let's call it a vassal state) is to the effect of 'Oh great Scipio, I surrender, please don't kill the rest of us! I give you all my weapons and tech and am you vassal forever'. Now it's not quite true that it's forever, but it's a lot more stable that a gentlemen's agreement....this is surrender.

You can 'force' a faction to submit if you keep your reputation decent and reduce the faction to weakling, or sometimes just threaten to crush them. A vassal state is a million times better than wiping out the enemy, and about 100 times better than a regular pactmate.

In our game for instance, Morgan has been a decent pactmate, but he won't just give us any tech he discovers, he charges for it. A Vassal wouldn't usually do that. Instead, you can expect the vassal to actually call you up and say 'Hey, I just discovered Singularities, here you go, have some!' However, you must keep your vassal happy, giving techs, bases, whatever, occassionally. Just check their opinion of you in the right-click menu of the comm-link.

I find your reasoning for which factions to attack or not interesting Scipio. It seems like you are thinking of them as old friends you'd hate to have to kill in battle. Miriam, we gave her a chance, but she bit us, so it's not are fault we have to put her down, and Morgan, he's done nothing wrong yet, so we shouldn't attack him....From my viewpoint, we don't owe any of them anything because they are AI, rather than human, and because it's a narrow strategy game rather than real life. Maybe I'm missing the point.........

Here's my thinking, to reveal my logic:

1. Are we in danger of losing anything? If not, are we threatenened in any way?
2. Are we in any vendettas? How might we end those vendettas to get back to peace-time production.
3. Are we currently researching, or about to be researching techs that other factions might have?
4. Which of our neighbors is the biggest threat/stress?
5. Can we expect neighbor X to cause us more grief over the next 20 years (or so) than we would incurr in taking the battle to them?
6. What action can we take to reduce the stress of potential threats by our neighbors? Does this action justify in a cost/effect sense?
7. What action can we take to maximize our infrasturctural advantages?

And so on. The point is that all neighbors are potential threats, and must be adressed. While we have powerful neighbors we must always maintain a huge military to be prepared for the worst. It doesn't matter if our neighbor is in vendetta or pact with us, the threat is still potential .

Thus, it follows that we should:
A. Stand defensively : if we cannot respond, or if we answer no to #1 and #5.

B. Make peace at some cost: if we cannot defend, or if the price of one peace allows us victory and a second peace, or if making peace satisfies #6 above.

C. Abandon or dampen our building focus for military preparations and action: if the answer to 1,2,3, and/or 5 is yes and if the answer to 6 is 'Limited War'.

D. Make only one war at a time, if possible. See, #6. Make all wars as short and decicive as possible.

E. Attack faction X where X is the faction most threatening/stressful to our empire and X is still within the range of total victory for our military.

F. If we cannot do E, we should attack faction X where X is the faction that we can possibly defeat totally, or X is the faction that we can make a limited war with successfully.

Ok, there are lots of holes in that, but it's just a sketch. This is why though, I think Morgan will have to be dealt with in a militaristic way. We need him away from the Garland Crater area permanently or we will always have to maintain a largish army near there in case he turns on us. Secondly, if we probe him for tech to start the war, we gain much needed tech the easy way. Thirdly, everyone hates Morgan at this point, so we aren't going to lose a pactmate (we can tell Santiago to fight Morgan). Hopefully we can fight a limited war against Morgan, ending it by giving him some nice bases or tech, or something! Morgan might not be the most direct threat, but he's the biggest.

Just some thoughts,

Smack

[Scipio Centaurus]

Originally posted by Qantaga
...I got a LOT of terranx errors. They occurred most often at the end of the turn. I would choose "Turn Complete", the AI would start their moves and, bang, terranx error, program closed down...

I may try to play a few years in from Smack's final turn SAV file to see if I get the same problem. Look for something on that later today.

The file is attached. If someone does decide to bypass johndmuller, let's not go too far without him. We can then make sure he gets the first turn on Tuesday.

I'm whichever way we decide to play it.

Scipio, I would be interested in a no crawler, no upgrade challenge.

Thanks. Now if I can browbeat JDM, Smack and Arima into playing...

[Scipio Centaurus]

Originally posted by Smack
I find your reasoning for which factions to attack or not interesting Scipio...Miriam, we gave her a chance, but she bit us, so it's not are fault we have to put her down...

That plus the fact that we are presently under heavy attack by her military forces. Not so with Morgan. So why create another battle when we're already fighting 3 factions? Can we at least be a little picky about the time and place of the battles we initiate...

...Morgan, he's done nothing wrong yet, so we shouldn't attack him....

From my viewpoint, we don't owe any of them anything because they are AI, rather than human, and because it's a narrow strategy game rather than real life. Maybe I'm missing the point.........

Ooops! You lost me. Sounds like it comes down to play style, though. It would be interesting to see how a pure momentum player and a pure builder player would interact in a team succession game. I guess the momentum player would have the advantage as he could easily start a war with any faction at any time and the builder player would then be forced to 'waste' many turns of his administration trying to patch things up with formerly friendly factions and then recover from the damage, with the momo player waiting in the wings licking his chops... Perhaps this is a fatal flaw in the succession game concept? i.e. Teams are wonderful... as long as [substitute own name here] is calling all the shots.

I think Morgan will have to be dealt with in a militaristic way. We need him away from the Garland Crater area permanently or we will always have to maintain a largish army near there in case he turns on us.

Like a lot of elbow room at the dinner table, eh? Obviously then, expansion by us or any other faction towards each other must inevitably lead to conflict since the AI faction will eventually encroach into our neutral zone - whether by their own expansion or by ours, or the combination?

Secondly, if we probe him for tech to start the war, we gain much needed tech the easy way.

HSA. We'll need to capture Morgan Industries first, then we can steal techs from him. Or is probe team algorithmic enhancement available in SMAC? I thought that was in SMAX only.

Thirdly, everyone hates Morgan at this point, so we aren't going to lose a pactmate...

Hopefully we can fight a limited war against Morgan, ending it by giving him some nice bases or tech, or something! Morgan might not be the most direct threat, but he's the biggest.

Are you at least amenable to the idea of waiting until we've settle a couple of our other wars, before engaging Morgan?

- Scipio

[Avenoct]

Er, I should have indicated I was paraphrasing you when I was first talking about your reasoning for fighting Miriam and not Morgan. It seemed to me you were humanizing them. This is great for the role-play value, but hard on the pure strategist value. I do enjoy both, which is why I brought it up again. It's quite fun to role-play our Stewardship over the Peacekeepers, like we are a family of Oligarchs or something. Speaking hypothetically, it almost seems that we could have one thread for just the turn-posts and one thread for strategies and chat.

I've not looked at our current situation, but I do generally agree with the principle: fight one war at a time. All I'm saying is that Morgan's history of friendliness isn't a good reason to not attack him in and of itself .

You make a good point though that with this size map, proximity to our neighbors is inevitable (as long as we have neighbors ). My preference is that as many of those borders are covered with our Vassal-States as possible. Also, I did once again forget the HSA.

To take this to the extreme, imagine that militarily, we can only make Santiago submit. We somehow take all those disturbing seabases on our southern flank (Zak, Yang, Morgan). They in turn border Yang's empire. Hmm. The way I look at things, we give those bases to Santiago, despite that they are half a world away from her homeland. This way we have some buffer between the superpowers, the Transcendent-trigger-happy superpowers .

The Problem With Morgan (a new B-movie): We won't be able to win a war against Morgan anytime soon, yet, if he initiates, he's in great position to rattle our cage. We'd be paralyzed. I certainly suggest securing our easier and yet riskier flanks first, but ideally we could find some reason to take Morgans nearby bases and give them to a submissive soon. The problem with Morgan is that he's our worst potential enemy. By fighting his enemies, we are helping him, until we can make them submit and then sick them on his other flanks.

Strategies for Miriam? I suggest getting Yang or Miriam into a Treaty, if at all possible. Fighting both is going to be too hard. That'll be tough, but if we can, I'd suggest taking the other one out in much the same way we did the Spartans. With two out of six neighbors nuetralized, 2 more too weak to matter, it should be a nice long downhill to the end of the game, however we want to win. If we can't hold off Yang or Miriam in a truce or treaty, I'd strongly suggest thumping Zak and/or Deirdre. Make them submit and then start giving them bases to protect our empire.

Really, I'm a builder at heart! but this is a tough game with tough neighbors, and the best busineses have subsidiaries (vassal states).

I thought we were fairly decided that we'd play through and JDM can have whatever turn is up when he returns?

Ramble ramble,

Smack

[Scipio Centaurus]

We could trade one of our conquered Spartan bases for Morgan Industries while we still have a Pact. That would give us Morgan's HQ and the HSA. I hear the AI is just clever enough to fall for something like that. Actually I predict Morgan will break our Pact in less than 10 years if we contiinue to run green and anything but wealth. Then in another 10 to 20 years you should have your Morgan Wars and we should have long since settled up with Santiago and be well on our way to taking out Miriam.

We could try to call Yang and give him whatever tech he wants for a truce. I told him no last time he called us, but he may still be open to the deal. We've already tried peace with Miriam too many times to count, but 10 years of peace with any of our hostile neighbors is probably worth a tech (or two) or a couple hundred ec.

- Scipio

PS. To Quantaga. I played several turns from Smack's last SAV file and encountered no terranx crashes.

[Qantaga]

Smack and Scipio,

I have been at some Labor Day and birthday gatherings today, so have not had a chance to post. I have had a great time reading your ongoing discussion.

Scipio, thanks for testing out Smack's save file. I suspect that I may have just had my computer up too long, playing too many SMACX games without restarting. That happened to me a long time ago and then I just got in the habit of restarting my system regularly. I guess I forgot that lesson yesterday. It was just a little strange that it was happening as the AI was moving at the end of the turn. After getting burned once, I got in the habit of saving right before I hit turn complete, so nothing was lost. I have played a couple dozen MP and SP turns tonight without a single terranx error. It may be time for a new computer. Wonder if I can talk my wife into that one?

Also, Scipio, that is indeed your original, AAA SAM Rover up in Spartan territory. It did not take out any NJs in my reign, but it did single-handedly liberate the good citizens of at least three different Spartan bases.

Smack, I think it would be fine to go ahead and skip johnd this turn, since we won't be getting too far ahead by Tuesday, anyway. It looks like Arima may be off for the weekend, too, so Scipio can grab the turn and play if the SMACX spirit moves him.

Keep in mind that we will not be in position to negotiate any treaties or truces until approximately 2283 when the sunspots recede. That also means that Santiago will not be able to "submit" until that time either.