Which faction did you play when you first installed SMAC

[Enigma_Nova]

I admit, I played the Uni because I liked the Ideology.

[Xiab'ed]

Gaian,
1) for the ideology
2) yes, yes, for the pretty girl too (I was young and single at this time )

[Hydro]

Gaians. They are best aligned with my personal ethics. In my opinion they are the second 'deepest' faction after The Hive, based on quotes from Datalinks.

While I am fascinated and repulsed by The Hive, I can't stop thinking about the quote from 1984, where Orwell said the State would stomp on the face of humanity forever. **shudder**

Gaians think in a long and holistic way. Millions or billions of years are not mind numbing concepts for them. Moreover, they view the systems that surround us (ecological, economic, social) as a whole. I can relate to this.

Hydro

[Commy]

Had the Angels been on the Original, I would have played them first. I like their style, and there way of doing things. Same reason I play morgan. Who cares about military...probe raping is fun...

[CEO Aaron]

EN: The key to successfully wresting out your commerce income as Morgan is to conquer your trading partners. Gunboat diplomacy is a wonderful thing.

[Frankychan]

Just opened up a very old turn file while cleaning up my comp.

apparently I didn't even beat the game my first time around on CITIZEN level. I look back on it and think....

(what the heck was I DOING?)

[Zeiter]

Me too, Frankychan. I don't have the sav file of it anymore, but I remember it. I tried to conquer Yang and Santiago with a rinky dink transport foil of impact troops. They wiped them off of the face of the planet with their missle troops, counterattacked, and managed to capture one of my cities. That's when I gave up on that game and tried another one. At least I managed to win the second time around. That's when I finally figured out how support worked. Although at that point I would still build gatling troops when I had missle weapons because I thought the gatling lasers would get multiple attacks per turn! Clearly I still had a lot of learning to do.

[Andemagne]

Spartans, of course. why? well, their ideology is closest to my own. and I too prefer quality over quantity.

[Enigma_Nova]

Ah, the noob experiences.
Such lovely memories of myself beelining to Knowledge and running Dem/Green/Knowledge, oblivious of pop booms and oblivious of crawlers and oblivious of industry.

Now look at us! We are GODLIKE, only some of us are more GODLIKE than others.

CEO Aaron: Submissive pacts?
Yes, but that doesn't work in Multiplayer.

[Commy]

University was my second choice, and for a while, I played them. After about 4 months, I switched to Morgan, liked the energy, wondered why I ever did a planned economy with Zak, and went full for energy. It was then I realized the value of crawlers and advanced terraforming, and eco-damage. Then when I got crossfire, did morgan strategy with Roze. But tonight, after much thinking, I decided to set things straight and play who I am most comfortable with, the old buddy Zak...

Now I combine Morgan strategy with probe raping AND technology...

[Aedan]

I played as the Gains for the first time, and still prefers them today. The idea of preserving planet on the expense on human development really applied to me.. i agree on everything the dear lady has to say ^^

[EternalSpark]

Hive.

The reasoning is the same as it was back then - being able to make colony pads quickly, combined with the fact that you can make people before they are built.

I occasionally go back to the PKs, but the Hive is where I began and where I usually end up.

[Mead]

I am still having problems in voting in polls so please add 1 to Sparta.

[I initially posted this about a year ago, but it gives some background on why I chose Sparta and how skilled I was at the time]

I've only been playing SMAC for about six to nine months. I know it can't have been more than nine months ago but can't remember exactly when I started. I didn't even mean to buy the game. It came in a multipack game (I bought the multipack to get the Axis and Allies game in it a couple of years ago, because I liked the Axis and Allies Board game).

After playing Axis and Allies for a while, out of curiosity I put the SMAC cd in. There were no printed manuals, but I followed the tutorial on the game.

After reviewing the seven choices of factions, I figured, well, since I don't know how to play this game it probably would be a good idea to at least be well armed. I choose Spartan and the Citizen difficulty level for my first game. I took a while but despite my best efforts at watching the forests in my part of the world grow, the AI finally got around to annihilating me (and I was trying so hard to be nice to it).

Lessons learned the hard way in that game and the games that followed.

You can build units.

When someone offers a treaty accept it.

Trying to place a research hospital in, every one of your bases, before you make your first impact rover, generally leads to a short game if your empire is in the same solar system as Miriam.

Miriam - she's not to be trusted.

Finally, although you can do a lot of things with the free units you get when you pop a pod, different units are good for different purposes. It appears using an Alien Artifacts to explore unknown terrain is not the best use of the unit. Nor is sending Alien Artifacts towards those units that don't seem to respond to your efforts to direct them and look kind of like yours except for that strange orange or bluish tinge.

Mead

[gwillybj]

After playing the tutorial (which I don't count as a first real game) with the Gaians and blasting to transcendence on the backs of worms and locusts, I played my first real game as the Believers, specifically because of their -1Planet. I didn't want a bunch of native lifeforms and I hoped to avoid transcendence. I accomplished the first part, but did transcend to become the Goddess of a scarred and seared planet smoking and stinking from all manner of nastiness.

[Commy]

Eloquent. Thoughtful.