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  • The Automation Challenge/Nightmare!

    Reading Velociryx's thread on striking out a new path for SMAC gameplay has inspired me! I too feel sometimes that all of this micromanagement and optimization may be undermining the creative aspect of playing the game. Therefore, I present a new challenge...(drumroll)...The Automation Challenge!

    Here are the rules:

    1. From the first turn of the game, until the last turn of the game, you must let the governor decide what to build in all of your cities, except in your HQ, where you are allowed full control. (Oh, the horror! ) - this will not only be challenging, but also more realistic. There's no way one person would be able to direct every single aspect of production across an entire empire. Even the Soviet Union had to have committees and such - and hence you have your governors. You can still set the priorities to explore, disc, etc.

    2. Blind research is on, although you may set priorities.

    3. You may control all formers whose home base is the HQ. All other formers must be automated in some way (such as automated roads, sensors, etc. You may rehome as many formers as you want to your HQ.

    4. Difficulty must be set at transcend, with all map conditions randomly generated with all standard or average conditions.

    5. All victory conditions are enabled, with coop victory on.

    6. No unity survey is on (world map is not visible).

    7. All other things are normal.

    I think this will do several things. It will make the game faster (less micromanaging), more creatively driven, more diplomacy driven (hopefully the AI will give you a run for your money this way, maybe), and overall, I think this could be a fun alternative for when you are tired of all of the micromanaging and optimization and such.

    I know you will all have a blast pulling your hair out as you stare hopelessly at your governors' incredibly idiotic decisions, probably uttering some sort of primordial "ARRRRRRRGH!" in the process.
    Civ IV is digital crack. If you are a college student in the middle of the semester, don't touch it with a 10-foot pole. I'm serious.

  • #2
    LOL, this challenge will probably be better at being what MoO 3 wanted to be than MoO 3 was.

    MoO 3 was pure horror, incidentally ... not to cast aspersions upon your challenge.

    Your challenge is ... an OCC with benefits.

    Comment


    • #3
      Hey! I did this - but you have to automate all the millitary units and probes too

      Are you the leader, or the ruddy general?

      -Jam
      1) The crappy metaspam is an affront to the true manner of the artform. - Dauphin
      That's like trying to overninja a ninja when you aren't a mammal. CAN'T BE DONE. - Kassi on doublecrossing Ljube-ljcvetko
      Check out the ALL NEW Galactic Overlord Website for v2.0 and the Napoleonic Overlord Website or even the Galactic Captians Website Thanks Geocities!
      Taht 'ventisular link be woo to clyck.

      Comment


      • #4
        Wow, I like this challenge, especially if you combine it with Vel's ideas about no base overlap. It really brings home Machiavelli's points about the best way to rule conquered territory is to move your capital there. I assume that you will be able to override your governor to move your capital?

        Comment


        • #5
          this idea kicks....added dash of realism (who HASN'T complained of the stupidity of local and regional politicians and their decisions?)....awesome!

          -=Vel=-
          The list of published books grows. If you're curious to see what sort of stories I weave out, head to Amazon.com and do an author search for "Christopher Hartpence." Help support Candle'Bre, a game created by gamers FOR gamers. All proceeds from my published works go directly to the project.

          Comment


          • #6
            You've gotta automate the millitary too though. Its hillarious.

            -Jam
            1) The crappy metaspam is an affront to the true manner of the artform. - Dauphin
            That's like trying to overninja a ninja when you aren't a mammal. CAN'T BE DONE. - Kassi on doublecrossing Ljube-ljcvetko
            Check out the ALL NEW Galactic Overlord Website for v2.0 and the Napoleonic Overlord Website or even the Galactic Captians Website Thanks Geocities!
            Taht 'ventisular link be woo to clyck.

            Comment


            • #7
              I don't know about automating my military. At that point, you may as well let the AI play the game for you.

              I've played a few early turns, and thus far, it's not too hard to get the AI governors to build what I want them to, and I think with some judicious pruning of the available units, there might be even more ability to constrain the Governors' ability to screw up.

              Comment


              • #8
                Okay, I've started a game as Zakharov. It's acually going pretty well. So far it hasn't been difficult to direct my production through the priorities, but I expect that to get harder as my build menu gets more crowded. My research is off on some wierd paths (I put my priorities on discover and build and I got applied physics - huh? ) but in the span of 20 minutes I'm already at MY 2140, something unheard of when I'm micromanaging.

                I figure that, if you can manage an OCC, you can definitely handle this - it's kind of an OCC + a bunch of mindless, governor controlled bases. You're sort of the commander-in-chief, managing the military and HQ while your incompetent beauracracies spend their days twiddling their thumbs and writing useless "memorandums" concerning how they could be doing a better job managing their cities if they weren't so darn busy making shady business deals with local corrupt business leaders.

                Whoa, automated military units?! I gotta try this...
                Civ IV is digital crack. If you are a college student in the middle of the semester, don't touch it with a 10-foot pole. I'm serious.

                Comment


                • #9
                  You could perhaps let your degree of control depend on your SE settings? For example -
                  -2 Support: You can fully control one military unit per base you have
                  +4 Efficiency: You can control the production of 4 other bases besides your HQ.
                  +1 Industry: You can fully control one crawler per base.
                  +2 Planet: You can fully control one former per base.
                  Etcetera...
                  Contraria sunt Complementa. -- Niels Bohr
                  Mods: SMAniaC (SMAC) & Planetfall (Civ4)

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Hey, Maniac's ideas are quite good. Flesh it out.

                    Who would guess that a bunch of micromanagemnt-o-philes would have a good laugh at NOT micromanaging?

                    More ideas:

                    Option one: your governors must all be on the same priority at any given time (ouch). This doesn't mean they'll all build the same things, but they'll have to flip-flop like the AI. This represents 'Um, the Dictator just issued a memo: "To WAR!"', etc...

                    Option two: governors can vary in their settings, but changes only every X years, or after an SP is finished, or after the local build is finished. What do you think? If we can change the governors priority anytime, it's too much control IMO.

                    Automate Probe Teams, but not military. This is really amusing and infuriating! Only exception is to put a probe, just built, onto a ship, or to garrison. Otherwise they are flying solo, in search of.........anything!

                    Formers: After Clean reactors, it's too easy to just re-home all the formers to the HQ, so I suggest HQ may only have 3x the number of formers as the national average (use the F7 key to figure this out).

                    -Smack
                    Aldebaran 2.1 for Smax is in Beta Testing. Join us for our first Succession Game

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Automated millitary are hillarious. I'm laughing till it hurts as my forces actually capture a Morganite base...

                      But the best yet...

                      AUTOMATED COLONY PODS!!! OMFG!!!

                      -Jam
                      1) The crappy metaspam is an affront to the true manner of the artform. - Dauphin
                      That's like trying to overninja a ninja when you aren't a mammal. CAN'T BE DONE. - Kassi on doublecrossing Ljube-ljcvetko
                      Check out the ALL NEW Galactic Overlord Website for v2.0 and the Napoleonic Overlord Website or even the Galactic Captians Website Thanks Geocities!
                      Taht 'ventisular link be woo to clyck.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        1-2 tiles separation, Jamski?
                        He who knows others is wise.
                        He who knows himself is enlightened.
                        -- Lao Tsu

                        SMAC(X) Marsscenario

                        Comment


                        • #13

                          I'm playing Yang (go go gadget supportbonus),
                          I'm LMAO at what my satellite bases are doing.

                          I presume that I can manually control the Crawlers/Formers of my HQ, so I'm going up the tech chart pretty fast.
                          Mind you, nothing is quite as funny (and annoying) as seeing my 1-3-2 go one way and my 4-1-2 go another, leading the former to be probestolen and the latter to be attacked and killed.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            1-2 tiles separation, Jamski?


                            No, they try and "home in" on the nearest landmark and go racing over the horizon *giggles*

                            -Jam
                            1) The crappy metaspam is an affront to the true manner of the artform. - Dauphin
                            That's like trying to overninja a ninja when you aren't a mammal. CAN'T BE DONE. - Kassi on doublecrossing Ljube-ljcvetko
                            Check out the ALL NEW Galactic Overlord Website for v2.0 and the Napoleonic Overlord Website or even the Galactic Captians Website Thanks Geocities!
                            Taht 'ventisular link be woo to clyck.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Heheh, I went back to one of my old games as Yang, and automated all of my units. I'm so proud! Three of my automated drop shard squads teamed up together to empty and capture a Spartan base!

                              But those poor automated probes were a mess! They kept on trying to subvert Believing units, but couldn't because the units were immune, so they just stopped right there, and then got slaughtered the next turn. Although I did get one to successfully link into a Gaian base. I don't think I'd automate probes anyway, because covert operations seem like something that the leader would have to authorize and oversee. Can you imagine probe teams running around, trying to frame a bunch of factions, getting your faction into a 1 vs. 6 world war!? "Oops! Sorry, commander. We just wanted to have a little fun. We didn't mean to start WW3! Honest!"

                              We've got a lot of good ideas here!

                              Maybe with research, if you had <0 research SE setting, then you couldn't use research priorities. With 0, you could select 1 research priority. With >1, you could select as many research priorities as you wanted.

                              I think there should be some sort of limit as far as how often you can change the governor settings. The purpose of automating the base is so that the base runs itself, and you don't have to check what's going on each turn. Maybe every 10 years you should be able to change build priorities. It could sort of like a big committee meeting at the HQ each decade to report to the dictator how things are running, and ask for instructions for the next "10 year plan", so to speak.

                              The former limit for the HQ is definitely an option, although even without the limit it is still going to take time to direct your formers from the outlying provinces to your HQ to be rehomed, and then back again. Besides, if you've made it to clean reactors, perhaps you need a little reward for putting up with those incompetent governors for all those years.

                              Maniac's SE options sound like they would be fun to use.

                              Also, some things occured to me while playing:

                              1. Forests aren't going to be as useful if you can't get your governors to build tree farms, so maybe you shouldn't sweat it when you see your automated formers building a bunch of farm-solar-roads and such.

                              2. The beeline to AI isn't going to be quite as overpowering because it is likely that you'll mostly be able to build crawlers in the just the HQ base anways.

                              Automated colony pods? Yikes!
                              Civ IV is digital crack. If you are a college student in the middle of the semester, don't touch it with a 10-foot pole. I'm serious.

                              Comment

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