SMAC2 on gameshout interview

[Darkstar]

The Diplomat, yes. Yes I am.

I hated the great leaders/heroes in MoO2. Why? Because that aspect turned a fair portion of the game into leader management. Rotating my Civil leaders through my stars, to maximize effect. I also hated rotating my War leaders through my fleet to keep them on the best ships.

I find them worthless in Civ3.

Now, Civ4 is going to have them? That's not going to add historical flavor. That's just going to be one more exploit.

Bleah!

Yes, the factions could split apart. Isn't that the origin of most of the secondary factions in SMACX?

I don't see how adding in a civil war system would add to the fun of SMAC, but I don't see how it would take away from the fun. So, how do you see this making the game more fun?

[hemsedal]

I meet Brian Raynolds at the Games Developers congress in San Diego back in 2002 and I've asked him if he was considering a Smac 2. He did at the time tell me that BGH did not have the rights too AC and therefore he would not consider it at the present time.

[binTravkin]

I haven't been using betas, just proven stable vanilla official releases. Just getting informed and keeping up to date with the betas requires a lot of time, and I often don't play EU for months at a time. Generally I've been happy enough with EU's official versions to not be tempted to try the AGCEEP etc. CK was a disappointment though, and I'm not sure whether it can be saved with betas or not.

Sikander, your beta and mod ignoring policy is what stabs you in the back!

Betas are not only stable for all Pradox Games, they add much more balance and flavour (as well as mods)!
CK betas for example were able to load even corrupt vanilla files normally!

I suggest you get the betas ASAP and try again - you'll be surprised about the rare crashes, easier GUI (more tooltips!) and more historical accuracy.

Barely anyone actually uses vanilla for CK, MPers do it for EU, HoI and Vicky as there vanilla seems to be a little more stable for MP.

My average crush rate for CK (the most CTDing game of the Pardox ones) is 1 per 20 yrs or so and that's not anything extreme as autosaves are always properly saved.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by binTravkin


Sikander, your beta and mod ignoring policy is what stabs you in the back!

Betas are not only stable for all Pradox Games, they add much more balance and flavour (as well as mods)!
CK betas for example were able to load even corrupt vanilla files normally!

I suggest you get the betas ASAP and try again - you'll be surprised about the rare crashes, easier GUI (more tooltips!) and more historical accuracy.

Barely anyone actually uses vanilla for CK, MPers do it for EU, HoI and Vicky as there vanilla seems to be a little more stable for MP.

My average crush rate for CK (the most CTDing game of the Pardox ones) is 1 per 20 yrs or so and that's not anything extreme as autosaves are always properly saved.

Maybe I'll give CK another try then. Which mods do you recommend for CK?

[vishniac]

If you could also tell me whether there is some mod or AI enhancing for EU...

Yes, I never played EU2, I'm just happy playing the first EU (version 1.10 is the last one I think).

And do you know where to find the program allowing you to play any nation in EU? A friend sent it to me a long time ago but it was bugged and finally crashed my computer!

[Sikander]

Originally posted by vishniac
If you could also tell me whether there is some mod or AI enhancing for EU...

Yes, I never played EU2, I'm just happy playing the first EU (version 1.10 is the last one I think).

And do you know where to find the program allowing you to play any nation in EU? A friend sent it to me a long time ago but it was bugged and finally crashed my computer!

EU2 allows you to play any state, and is cheap as hell now with many improvements over EU1.

[binTravkin]

And do you know where to find the program allowing you to play any nation in EU? A friend sent it to me a long time ago but it was bugged and finally crashed my computer!

It can be done without a program, just open the save file and search for your name in-game, delete it where you don't want to play anymore and put it in country which you'd like to.
And yes, EU2 is way better and is really cheap and has the mod 'EP' where AI kicks newbie ass and average players are fighting it as almost equal.

Which mods do you recommend for CK?

If you have CK+1.04a+3rd june beta+15th aug beta+17th aug minifix (remeber this order, sounds complicated but the result is very satisfying), you're good to play as-is.
If you want some more interesting and country-specific (Byzantium) events, use SMACK addon (very light and changes nothing in game, just adds a couple of events), not owerwriting any of default files, if you want more, see BOPACK (also only an addon, thus only some more events).
The last one I installed above all others was Totomodv2Eng which has some interesting (sometimes annoying in their realism) events as well as medieval art as graphics for those events.

You can also try various graphics mods which only improve how the game looks by changing shield and some other element appearance.