Classic strategy summaries.

[lumpenklompen]

So I'm new here, I've been playing SMAC forever. I remember when I bought it brand new, it cost the same as it does on Amazon right now. I payed less than $40 CAD at costco, and it had a mail in rebate for US money and it came out to about $20 canadian for me.

Anyway, onto my question. I was reading about the SMAniaC mod, and it mentions a bunch of strategies, "Chop and drop," "forest and forget" are the ones I remember. I believe I've figured these out on my own over my years of SMAC.

"Chop and Drop" is using choppers with their multiple attacks to take out the defences and then using arial incursions to capture the city. This is my favourtie strategy, it's fast and cheap.

"Forest and Forget" I believe I have used before, I assume you just plant forests at the beginning, let them spread and then upgrade the city with tree farms and the other forest upgrade to keep competitive. I enjoy micro managing my terraformers so I tend to build boreholes until the caps melt.

What were the other strategies? There is one about resource crawlers I believe... I'm really curious about this one, I have never used resource crawlers, I don't even know how, I assumed they were like caravans in civ (which I also never use but I've heard they help a lot).

-voila

[Lazerus]

Crawlers gather a single resource from a single square by pressing "o". Early game they are massively crucial, gathering minerals allows you to build more faster, then you can switch to what you like or cash them in to build secret projects in a single turn.
There are advanced strategies where you build only boreholes and farm+condensor+soil enricher so that you only need to work the boreholes whilst the crawlers gather all the nutrients you need to grow the base. This allows for masses of specialists

[Petek]

See here:

http://www.civgaming.net/smac/academy.shtml

for an article on crawlers, plus other strategy tips.

[Leon Trotsky]

Originally posted by Lazerus
Crawlers gather a single resource from a single square by pressing "o". Early game they are massively crucial

[SEMANTICS]According to my book, crawlers determine the end of early game.[/SEMANTICS]

[lumpenklompen]

Thank you very much.

I don't know why I didn't get that off google. At least I have an account here now.

[Lazerus]

Nah i base my early, mid, end game philosophy around wars rather then this peaceful stuff

[wgabrie]

Crawlers what crawlers? I think none of you can beat the A.I. on Librarian without your crawlers.

[lumpenklompen]

I can't remember beating Transcend, but I've beat every other difficulty level w/o crawlers. But now I intend to finish the job with them.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by wgabrie
Crawlers what crawlers? I think none of you can beat the A.I. on Librarian without your crawlers.

Bull****

[wgabrie]

Flubber I'd like to personaly congradulate you on your recent smac win without crawlers.

Those of us on the crawlers don't crawl streak know its never easy. Especially if you share borders with Yang and Miriam.

[Illuminatus]

I was used to winning over AI on Transcend without any use of Crawlers before I discovered Apolyton Civilization Site.

[Leon Trotsky]

Ditto.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by wgabrie
Flubber I'd like to personaly congradulate you on your recent smac win without crawlers.

Those of us on the crawlers don't crawl streak know its never easy. Especially if you share borders with Yang and Miriam.

I haven't done it recently but I did do it a few times and it wasn't that hard if you ICS and dense-pack a lot of bases

I actually think a harder game is the "switching sides" challenge-- trying to beat the super-strong empires that you yourself built up can be a challenge

[wgabrie]

Originally posted by Flubber

I actually think a harder game is the "switching sides" challenge-- trying to beat the super-strong empires that you yourself built up can be a challenge

How do you do that? When I do the swich sides/set view to *All*->Play sequencialy I always get locked into playing that way. I can't seem to get the AI back in control.

[Leon Trotsky]

You do deactivate the scenario editor, don't you?