how to loose?

[Pocus]

It has nothing to do with boasting, as many here are far more good at smac than me, but any simple modding ideas, not completely absurd, so that the game is more challenging on transcend?
I would like ideally to not have to constrain myself with houserules....

So I was thinking some adjustements along the lines of:

- doubling the cost of supply crawler
- doubling the cost of aerial chassis
- adding +2 efficiency to all factions but the one I play.
etc.

[Flubber]

I use houserules to make the game harder as I haven't gotten into modding but I am thinking if you played a faction with minus 1 economy, industry and growth that could be a decent challenge. If thats too easy, try minus 2 growth etc etc

[Chaos Theory]

[pimp]You could play my Solstice AI challenge, which is against pumped-up AI, but imposes minimal restrictions on the player[/pimp]

Apart from that, try giving all enemy factions the free ability clean reactor, the ability "TALENT, 1", immunity to mind control, or other extreme measures that you can't exploit yourself (such as granting advanced tech or piles of ECs).

[Pocus]

yup, I have downloaded your scenario. Do you think its worth the try

[Blake]

Theres no way you can make equal changes to all factions and expect the human to ever lose with any consistency - I mean short of rigging it so all psi combat is hopelessly in favor of Psi, thus ensuring Planet wipes everyone out...

So you have to play the challenge scenarios against pumped AI's, or play against "cheating" AI factions with extra bonuses.

To make AI's more competitive the following bonuses are great, and the effects of the following are not large early in the game, they aim to prevent mid game crippling:

Free Clean Reactors / Huge Support Bonus: AI's have massive support problems, it's not unusual seeing 100% of an AI's sea bases minerals going to support.... even if the AI wants to be flexible, it can't, because all it's support is tied up.
Immunity Police / Huge police bonus: AI's have massive drone problems when they try to run FM. Give +3 to +8 Police to encourage them to run FM and not screw up by getting in the airpower death trap (often involving 50+% pysch spending and rampant switching between planned and FM). A nice bonus of ensuring they always have +3 police is that the drivel of units they keep in their bases actually do something...
Free Former at start of game: The AI will not always research Cent.Eco first, sometimes Miriam will take 70 or more turns to get it. The free Former can do quite a lot of good (worst case is it gets killed by a worm, but as long as it plants atleast one forest, the forest should spread).
Give the AI BUILD and/or EXPLORE priorities: If an AI has neither it neglects basic infrastructure.
Make the AI less hostile: Once the AI goes to war, it stops building altogether. Making all the AI's less hostile will increase the building up period before full scale war erupts - in particular you will enjoy a less hostile Miriam.

Note the human player has a massive arsenal of tricks to avoid support, police, terraforming and diplomacy problems... the last 2 changes can even be done to all factions, because they only effect AI behaivour.

For more Cheaty bonuses:
Free facility with tech (or without) rec tanks, tree farms, hybrid forests, energy banks, bioE centers, creches... Try to theme it to the faction and time it for when the AI needs a boost. Like you might perfer free hybrids to free tree farms, for a later game, but more significant boost.
Bigger SE boosts I suggest not giving Industry and Growth bonuses because the AI gets those in spades. Instead try research, economy, effic, morale boosts.
Immunity to their favorite or oft run SE (Fundie for Miriam, Market for Morgan, Green for Dee)

[Pocus]

that a nice bunch of tricks! I like particularly the idea of bonuses that take their full importance in the mid game, to preserve challenge throughout the game.

I have read that editing a faction file with the notepad can screw it, any advice on modding factions easily?

immunity to a SE means that the adverse effects are ignored I suppose?

can the AI access dynamicaly the value of the various SE, or is it somehow hardcoded? I would like to rework SE, but dont want to screw the IA.

[Lazerus]

Pact/submissive all the AI, set them to atrocity against you, don't do anything for 50years and THEN try to beat them

[livid imp]

You want a challenge, play Cult of Planet. Ick!

Other than that, if you really want a challenge, you have to take on another human. Think about it, our best hardware/software in the world can barely beat a guy playing chess. A game with very defined, unchanging parameters. A half-a$$ed AI system in a game as dynamic as SMAC is, doesn't stand a chance against human adaptablity.

For myself, I play SMAC in a similiar way you would play Sim City. Just to accomplish personal goals within the game.

[Pocus]

Culf of Planet? why not
I dont want to play SMAC against another player, because the game is too slow for this. But I'm a big PBEM'er aside that: played stars! quite a lot, and I'm deeply addicted into Dominions (1 then 2)... an awesome 16 players heroic fantasy game with parallel turn processing (thats the future of turn based strategy game).