Customizing a good and long game! Help

[TheCabal]

Hello,

installed AC+CF recently. I noticed that things were going much too fast, especially secret projects.

Want to customize a game which takes a bit more time to complete.

After setting randomized HUGE MAP, what to turn on/off in the game rulez?

What about Tech Stagnation or things like Do-or-Die. Plz help! Want an enjoyable long nice game!

Greetz,
Cab

[Darsnan]

Re: Customizing a good and long game! Help

Originally posted by TheCabal
Hello,

installed AC+CF recently. I noticed that things were going much too fast, especially secret projects.

Want to customize a game which takes a bit more time to complete.

After setting randomized HUGE MAP, what to turn on/off in the game rulez?

What about Tech Stagnation or things like Do-or-Die. Plz help! Want an enjoyable long nice game!

Greetz,
Cab

Hi TheCabal,

several options here. First you can play some of the "Single Player Challenges" (or "SP Challenges") over at Civgaming . These games are specifically designed to be a tougher match against the AI's.

Chaos Theory also posted here at 'poly a very interesting Solstice Challenge that should give you a good run for you money.

Finally, as far as just selecting options in the base game is concerned: dense cloud cover seems to help the AI's the most, as well as 50% water/ land mix. And be sure to have Yang as one of the AI's - not that this AI is better than the others, but that its just more fun to beat him up....


FYI and hope this helps!


D

[NanoDingo]

If you put Tech Stagnation on, make sure you edit the alpha.txt (and/or alphax.txt) to make the obligatory retirement year later than the default 2500/2600.

[binTravkin]

Not necessarily. One can transcend on transcend difficulty, blind research and all other hardest options on before 2300.
Without blind you can do it at early 23th century.

[Petek]

Hi TheCabal,

Turning on TechStag will make the game last longer, especially if combined with playing on a larger map. Instead of playing on a HUGE map, you can select CUSTOM SIZE in the startup options. Then type in your own map sixe. A HUGE map is generally 128x64. You can go as high as 256x256. Turning on Blind Research also will increase the length of the game.

I think that using the above three options will have the greatest effect on game length. You also may wish to try setting ocean coverage at 70-90%, native life forms to abundant and cloud cover to sparse.

Hope this helps and welcome to the forum!

[GeoModder]

And blind research will lenghten the game as well, since no easy beeline to Industrial Automation can be done.

[Senethro]

I have nothing to say except that the merits of long games are dubious at best. They get old fast.

I wish I knew what year I transcend in. I know its never before 2250 anyway...

[TheCabal]

Damn... didn't have expected that much answers from you guys in such a short time! Thanks a lot!! As you might know it's not that easy to decide with what (game rules, planet options) to play a new long game, such as what faction you are going to spend your time with.

Does the option BLIND RESEARCH belong to the realistic category?

Thx again for your helpful answers!

Greetings,
Cab

[Senethro]

Haha, I have a special opinion of options which increase realism at the cost of fun. Am I correctly interpreting your wording that you do as well?

I never play with Blind Research. If I was more patient I might do tech stagnation though.

[Darsnan]

Another thing you can do is add a Probe Cruiser to the game, making it available with the discovery of Doc: Init. Essentially do the following:

1. In your main SMAC(X) subdirectory open up the alpha.txt file (or alphax.txt file for SMAX) using a text editor program such as MS Notepad.

2. In the Text Editor do a search for #UNITS. This will place you in the area of the file where all of the default units for the game are listed.

3. Right below the #UNITS line there is a number. Increment this by one (this number reflects the number of default units in this area).

4. At the bottom of the list of default units copy and paste in the following line:

Probe Cruiser, Cruiser, Probe Team, Scout, 11, 0, 0, DocInit, -1, 00000000000000000000000000


5. Save off the file (did I mention you should probably make a backup of your alpha.txt and alphax.txt file before trying to edit them? ).

6. Start a new game (note: it has to be a new game, as the #UNITS section of the alpha(x).txt file is imprinted onto a game at startup).

This will then enable to AI's to build probe cruisers upon the discovery of Doc:Init, bringing an added element of aquatic stealth to the game. FYI and enjoy!


D

[Kataphraktoi]

you could try my own scen i havnt uploaded it has boosted AI's that play like nuts...its 2189 and i am researching secrets of alpha centauri with 3000 lab\turn(at 40% only) and lal\uni is still 2 techs ahead of me! not to mention they have 90% of SP including uni with VW and HSA and lal has 700 pop...he has been pop booming since 2130, but size limits of slowed him a bit... i call it cataphract difficulty

of course youll need to use crawlers pretty well

[binTravkin]

IMHO both blind research and tech stagnation belong to "realistic" cathegories.

1.The realism of blind research was brilliantly proved by Shawnmmcc half a year ago - he gave both theoretical and practical aspects of what is "blind" and "what's" not and I was convinced of the fact even before that.
A discussion regarding this might break out here now, but I think majority of intelligent people, especially those who actually work in research, agree that it's blind in RL.

2.Tech is coming in just too fast for a skilled player, especially if he's Uni.

[Kataphraktoi]

i disagree 100%. if humans had the ability to send a ship,they had at least tech 6 lvl on earth. those techs like bio,doc, plan econ,etc etc etc,are all known and the techs description indicates this.its a rediscovery and knowing the techs,which they do,and using and having practical application,is 2 different things

if i can check unity logs and see we had 4 wheeled driving machines using gas,why the heck couldnt i direct engineers and researchers toward building it. now some techs like prog psych,yes, those are real techs. but random discoveries? thats a big realistic

i also think the uni tech speed is OK. i have 2 pbems im in,one i started now and one i took from sebed. the uni is not that far ahead in either,by more than a few techs.in fact sebed has somehow left research costs almost twice as high as the next guy,while leaving me with not quite 2x as many research

imho

[NanoDingo]

Originally posted by binTravkin
IMHO both blind research and tech stagnation belong to "realistic" cathegories.

1.The realism of blind research was brilliantly proved by Shawnmmcc half a year ago - he gave both theoretical and practical aspects of what is "blind" and "what's" not and I was convinced of the fact even before that.
A discussion regarding this might break out here now, but I think majority of intelligent people, especially those who actually work in research, agree that it's blind in RL.

I originally thought Blind Research was the most "realistic" option, but now I'm not so sure. The main factor, in my opinion, is whether the Techs are discovered or invented, the difference between "Eureka!" and "Let's set out to solve this problem," - I think there's a mix of both. However, the "discovered" Techs are still somewhat directed - for instance, "Centauri Ecology" is not invented in the strictest definition, but it can be argued that scientists choose to set-out to find out about the ecology of Planet, hence it is directed research. In a similar way, Fusion Power is already postulated; therefore its discovery can be worked towards i.e. directed.

The very fact that Sid Meier has come up with a future tech tree can be used to argue that the future of technology is no longer about finding new things out, but merely applying what we already know in different ways - humanity has moved beyond discovering physical phenomena and then explaining them to predicting phenomena and the finding them.

Although, I prefer to play with Blind Research, if only because it stops bee-lining. Tech Stagnation can't really be argued for or against realism, since it's only scaling a variable, it doesn't really change anything.

[binTravkin]

Well, probably you haven't taken them from the most skilled Uni players..

In CGN 19 (Archaic can approve) I had MMI and Env Econ while the opponents had HEC and GeneSplicing at best.
I had more than 2 times more tech than anyone else from quite an early game up till 2170.
But the other players where not the best ones around, be it Buster, KK, CT or some other really good ones, I'd struggling to keep their probes off.