=d

[Celaborn]

Why didn't any of you tell me how fun this game was

and here I was playing Civ4(and previously, Civ3, Civ2) with no knowledge of how good this game was.
(Note: Actually Civ4 is pretty fun, just a bit slow on my computer due to the graphics, which I've never thought needed improving since civ2. Even civ1's original DOS graphics worked extremely well.)


No, but seriously, I played non-stop last night, and didn't sleep until the Hive(me) had conquered the world. I was on a military conquest against the pirates who owned the entire sea(Sea cities? Wait, WHAT? That's new.) and nobody would join my cause, probably because the pirates were at the top of the "dominance" charts - either way, I naturally removed the decliners after I dealt with the pirates. I eventually won by voting myself the victor, namely because I couldn't figure out how to take out the last city of the Drones, which was in the water. The game kept telling me my water units couldn't take it over, even though they had already taken over all of the pirate water-cities.

It did almost feel like a cheap(and very enjoyable) victory though, because near the end I automated almost everything(since normally in Civ you can only auto-explore and whatnot, I wanted to see if the complete automate would make military units attack and take over cities). I also didn't understand a lot of what I was doing - namely with research, because I'm used to the easily-accessible "+" & "-" next to the science beakers on civ, and also a tech tree. So I didn't know how to manage my research at all, and every time the pop up came asking what I'd like to focus research on - I just left it on default, which I believe was Wealth and Military. I felt like a lot of the time I didn't know what was going on in my whole empire once it was getting bigger(in civ all of the advisors helped get a "big picture" of everything, which I found extremely useful).

Overall though, it looks like this game has a lot of features that are great, and, considering how old this game is - surprise me. I'm just not sure how to take advantage of all of them, as this game seems to have a lot of depth and game mechanics that I don't understand yet. The civ advisors, civopedia, and recommendations in civ are something that I think would make this game more playable, and less intimidating, to new players. The research also didn't make sense to me, you choose generally what you want to research, and a technology eventually gets researched based off those? The tech tree in civ was easy to understand, maybe I'm just missing something with this research system. Maybe there are features like this in the game though, and I just don't know about them.

Overall though, this game seems really fun, and I hope to learn more about it as I continue to play.

Just curious - is this the most active SMAC/SMAX messageboard? I know it's an old game, so I wouldn't expect it to be actively talked about, but I generally like to have somewhere to go to talk about a game, ask questions, and whatnot. Civ fanatics for civ definitely did that for that game.

[Leon Trotsky]

As a matter of fact, it is. Welcome to the machine.

[Dis]

great game. I'm a bit burned out at the moment. But I usually return once or twice a year for a couple of marathon sessions.

The tech tree is the hardest part of this game. It pays to have the poster handy. And in the case of SMAX which I don't have a poster, I wrote down the tech tree to get to orbital defense pods (which are near and dear to my heart ). Because you will get nuked (planet bustered) at some point. But rarely am I when I have ODP's up.

[Frankychan]

CONGRATULATIONS!!! For joining the Hive.

Haven't played cIV. I still play SMAC/X just cause the diplomacy is crazy fun. Its the only game where I can tell someone to go screw themselves, have the other guy tell me to p*ss off, then give me what I want. Good fun.

I think this is one of the most active SMAC boards I've seen. You got the tech crew, who know every friggin thing about the nuances of the game (Darsnan comes to mind ) for modding.

And you got the faction fanatics I happen to be one of them...

Welcome, now more posts from you!

[binTravkin]

It did almost feel like a cheap(and very enjoyable) victory though, because near the end I automated almost everything(since normally in Civ you can only auto-explore and whatnot, I wanted to see if the complete automate would make military units attack and take over cities). I also didn't understand a lot of what I was doing - namely with research, because I'm used to the easily-accessible "+" & "-" next to the science beakers on civ, and also a tech tree. So I didn't know how to manage my research at all, and every time the pop up came asking what I'd like to focus research on - I just left it on default, which I believe was Wealth and Military. I felt like a lot of the time I didn't know what was going on in my whole empire once it was getting bigger(in civ all of the advisors helped get a "big picture" of everything, which I found extremely useful).

Hit 'E' key (with caps lock off) - it opens you the S(ocial)E(ngineering) table, where you can change 'civics' of smac.
At the bottom of that table there's slider which you're searching for, you only need to click on arrows to slide it

Also, try playing with directed research next time (blind research off).

Regarding tech tree:
You can look up which tech leads to which by opening F2 (hit the F2 key) screen and clicking on 'requires' or 'leads' to techs thus navigating the tech tree.

Hint:
The most valuable technologies in SMAC are:
C(entauri)E(cology) which is E(xplore)1(means level 1) tech
and
I(ndustrial)A(utomation) which is B(build or what you call 'wealth')3 tech

Now go navigate and find out the prerequisities for IA (CE has none)!

Also the most usable SE settings for Hive are:
Police State (requires Doctrine:Loyalty)
Planned (requires Planetary Networks, is a prerequisite for IA)
Wealth (requires IA)

And the last note for startings:
former
crawler
remember and use those two, they are the essence of your economy (together with Colony Pod of course ).
You can find their available actions thru right clicking on active unit (for former it's 'terraform' group, for crawler it's 'convoy').

Just curious - is this the most active SMAC/SMAX messageboard? I know it's an old game, so I wouldn't expect it to be actively talked about, but I generally like to have somewhere to go to talk about a game, ask questions, and whatnot.

You've come to the right place.
You can ask whatever you want.
99.99% of existing knowledge about SMACX can be found here either put down in posts or in someone's brain.

game kept telling me my water units couldn't take it over

Right click on the square on which drone city stands and go 'info about square'.
It will tell you the city is actually on land (small small island)..

If you ever wish to try out your hand against human opponent, go AC Multiplaying in this same forum group (AC).

Welcome to the community!

[Flubber]

Itsounds like you were playing blind research which is a bigger challenge but a little more trying. . .

Oh and for info on techs just hit F1 for the help screen. In fact I recommend playing around with all the function screens to watch the info they give.

As for water base you couldn't capture, it MIGHT have been a base on a small i.e. one tile island in which case a ship can't capture it and you would need a ground troop. Note that a ground troop wityh amphibious ability can be used to capture both types.

Biggest piece of advice is formers formers formers.

Second piece of advice is that forget the Civ model for base resources . In smax you get the same resources from the base tile regadless of raininess or elevation ( but specials do give extra and a river tile will give an additional energy. But absent thise factors, yoyu are better to place your base on that flat arid tile instead of the roling rainy one

[Flubber]

Oh ya and welcome

Feel free to ask me anything and I promise to answer.

Some of the answers may even be correct

[Kataphraktoi]

The tech tree in civ was easy to understand, maybe I'm just missing something with this research system. Maybe there are features like this in the game though, and I just don't know about them.

may i recommend nethog's tech tree? i couldnt make heads or tails out of things till i saw this. and be sure and turn off blind research before the game. and head for that tech called Industrial Automation.

Powerpoint
PDF

[smacksim]

Its like Christmas morning when someone discovers this game. Clear your schedule, get a hot mug of Joe and read the forums in between playing. It does take awhile to master this game and once you do the game does lose a little of its fun, but there should be 100s of hours of gameplay before that happens.

The big question: Learn strategies and tricks from others and master the game quickly or learn on your own and possibly never learn the most important things for a human player?

To that end I won't give any strategy advice but just interface advice:

1. You can right-click on many things. Be sure to use Ctrl-P to set your preferences to allow detailed right-click menus. A very important and non-obvious thing to r-click on are the factions in the commlink panel on your right (once you've met them). This will give you a profile, and, if you've infiltrated them (with a probe team), will even nicely star the techs they have that you don't, etc..

2. The F1 - F10 keys are your friend.

3. Be sure to learn about bureacracy drones, specialists, talents, and super-drones before you tackle any of the higher levels.

4. If planet is getting angry at you ("Sea levels rising!") be sure to understand the classic article by Ned, Blake, and Fitz on Ecodamage. It works a little differently than one would expect.

5. O.k., 2 strategy tips: Formers and Crawlers. They are the strongest units in the game, but the AI doesn't terraform that well or use crawlers hardly at all, so you'll have to learn what's what through experiment or reading around here.

Welcome to Poly!

[BlackCat]

Yet another helpless soul catched by this evil game - welcome - oh, and escape isn't possible

Besides what earlier mentioned, I hope you have checked F1 to F12 (minus F11) - not all are equally interesting and some first later in the game.

Probes and The Empath Guild - they give you info of your enemies and you never goes to war without . If you haven't EG/didn't got it, then infiltrate datalinks with probe teams. After that a right clik on an enemy base will show what units you are facing.

And a little weird advice - treat your current PC nice - you don't know if the next version of MS can run the program or for that matter the HW you can get five years in the future

[smacksim]

I second what Flubber said as well: Turn on directed research (turn off blind research) to better learn the tech tree. Blind is considered advanced. It is a nice feature and feels more realistic but is damned confusing if you don't even grasp the tech tree yet.

[Littiz]

True. I found it frustrating and disorienting at first.

The last game was truly revealing, direct research helped me a lot understanding the game better.

Maybe it's a mistake from designers' part, since the default is Blind Research for ALL levels of difficulty...
Because of that turning it off still seems a bit like cheating to me.

[NanoDingo]

Hey Celaborn; welcome to Poly.
-

Tip: Colonies experience a Pop-Boom when they have a net 6+ in the Growth Social Factor; during a Pop-Boom a Colony will grow by 1 each turn, provided it is supplied with enough nutrients and the relevant Facilities (Hab Complex/Habitation Dome) to support a Population of that size. A good way to get 6+ Growth is by running Democracy (+2) and Planned (+2) and by building Children's Creches (+2). However, this isn't possible for the Hive and Morgan because they cannot run Democracy and Planned respectively, although the Hive does have an inherent Growth bonus and Morgan has an inherent restriction on Colony size anyway.

Whatever strategy you use, just have fun!
-

[Kirov]

I don't get you, people. The guy is already done, he'll soon leave his family, and you congratulate him on that?

Celaborn, stop playing SMAC before it's too late. Although it's truly the best game in the world, your RL is just not worth it. Try heroine, it's much safer, but quit Alpha Centauri!

But if it's already too late, welcome aboard!

[Celaborn]

Wow, a lot of replies to look at

Yes, after customizing the rules, I realize I was playing with blind research. Strange that that's the default(even on the easiest setting I was playing on), maybe for more realism and difficulty. I'm not sure about that Drone city, because I dont' have the save but I do believe I remember there being nothing but coastal tiles around it, but I thought that's because it was between two pieces of land to begin with. Either way, I'm sure it was on a small island and I just didn't realize it. Next time you won't be so fortunate, Drones.

Thank you for all the menu shortcuts and whatnot, these are exactly what I was looking for. I didn't even realize civics were in this game, and I shortly realized after testing one out, that your "friends" may not like you because of your civic choices.

Now, a lot of you are talking about formers and crawlers. I used formers in my first game - they seem like the equivalent of a worker in Civ3/4, which are absolutely necessary to improve tiles. I don't really understand the "army of formers" concept though, because most cities don't have to work many tiles, I don't find a need for very many(a few to work tiles, a few to get rid of the...pink stuff, its name slipped my mind). Also, I don't understand the exact point of crawlers. It seems to me like they just provide extra resources to the city closest to where they're gathering - but when I tried to use one for nutrients, it was only gathering one. Do tile improvements work for crawlers as well?(if I had farmed that tile, would the crawler be providing more nutrients to the city?). Also, cities still have to pay support for crawler units, yes? So, is it even worth the sacrifice of the cost to keep them, for the resources they provide?

I was also testing out a bit of stuff in a short game as the Pirates faction today, and I noticed for each of the civics I could change to, I got such a big penalty in certain areas, that it seemed to be not worth it at all to change. I forgot which one I was looking to change to, but it brought me down to -3 growth I believe, saying I would get practically no growth. Do certain factions have certain civics(err, social engineering settings?) that are more compatible with their starting stats?(like how some factions have +1 efficiency and whatnot). Just like how binTravkin is saying Police State, Planned, and Wealth are the best for Hive. Is this pretty much fact, or just personal preference?

I also seem to always have big problems with Drone riots unless I build every possible drone reducing building and wonder. I noticed another message kept popping up in a lot of my cities, I can't think of what it said now... something about energy I believe.. I'll have to check next time.(I haven't managed to really play a real game since my first one, just a few quick test-games here and there that I have to quit due to that thing... oh what's it called... real life? Bah, petty distractions - can't it see that conquering the world can't wait? I also feel almost guilty quitting when the game tells me to please not leave, and that the drones look up to me.)

Thanks for the responses though, much more than I was expecting. This forum is much more active than I thought, maybe I'll head over to the multiplayer area... well, maybe once I've played a bit more, and learned a lot more. I have a few warmonger tendancies, though I'm sure the more experienced players would gladly show me how horrible I am at it.