How to make AC harder?

[cal_01]

Originally posted by #endgame
@cal_01: Even in arid squares a forest will take it from 0/0-1/0+ (depending on elevation, usually 1 for me since it's a low square and I'm in FM) into a 1/2/1 in the same time.

Yeah, I guess I should have mentioned arid squares too.

At first, I thought building infinite condensors and pop-booming early gave me a huge advantage, but I think the forest strategy fits my play style better, especially in the early game when I'm hurting for minerals. In fact, by the time I get tree farm/hybrid forest, I -never- use farms. Sure, I can pop-boom like crazy if I went the farm route, but the minerals sure are tasty.

[Senethro]

At the beginning of the game activate scenario editor and add the "Growth" priority to each faction's interest. Alter their personality and strategy to include lots of colony pods, lots of terraformers, not too aggressive or peaceful, add the "Build" priority and remove the "Conquer" priority at your discretion, play with the Hive/Uni/Drones/Morgan/Gaia/PKs/Cyborgs. I've had some quite good Builder CPUs with the above. The Hive and Drones are prone to going on mass aircraft rampages.

[Commy]

These...aircraft rampages...they wouldn't happen to include PBs, now would they?

[Senethro]

I've seen both the Hive and Believer strike first with planet busters. However, anyone struck with a planet buster will retaliate, even Morgan, even on a useless base that just happens to be in range.

[Commy]

I can understand Morgan using a PB, he's a capitalist who wants an economical way out of war...most leaders would...

It's when people like Lal and Dierdre, who are opposed to atrocities, start bombing your cities that you start to wonder...

[cal_01]

I once had Deidre VD me from the very start of the game. She's supposed to be a pacifist!

Then again, I think the game bugged up, because whenever I tried to talk to her, I couldn't get any conversation lines up from the start of the game.

Sometimes, for other factions, it'd sometimes skip to "in time you'll regret your arrogance" or something like that and I didn't even select a conversation path. Oh well.

[Commy]

That has happened to me before...also, sometimes a pop-up will appear three times in a row...even when you don't contact a leader...

[Straybow]

I disable PBs. They just snap my suspenders of disbelief. I also change Land improvement to (2 * *) as this helps the AI grow big bases more than it helps the human player. I also change armor values and costs to go up by twos, base defense to +50%.