Maps, Terraforming, Colony Pods, and ICS

[Darrell01]

I thought about making a custom map that was a checkerboard type thing with height 1 land followed by water, and then slid over one for the next row up and down and seeing how that game would turn out, Especially for someone like the Pirates. I also thought about taking the map that came with SMAC and SMACX and just filling it up with nutrients, energy, minerals or pods. I thought that might be fun. Any other wierd ideas for maps?

What are some strategies on using terraforming offensively and defensively? I heard about putting a ring of forests around your base so you have some buffer time if something comes up unexpecedly. Would you put one road going in and out with a bunker on it and 2 to 4 clean units to protect it? It would seem like it might slow down expansion. I've also killed boats by raising terrain and drowning cities by lowering terrain. Oddly enough, that's not considered an atrocity. I do build land bridges and magtube across them. I also magtube into enemy cities and take half their empire in a couple turns if I prepare correctly. I'd imagine there migh be implications in MP games if you had all your cities magtubed together for an enemy to walk in, hence my ring of forest thing above.

ICS, I look at it and think "Now that is UGLY!". Now I look at it and say, "Well, its ugly and beautiful at the same time." Just seems to me there should be some bad thing to happen if you have cities so close. Something like virtual minerals where any city harvesting on a tile that can be harvested by another has the pollution associated with it added on the ecodamage calculation for that city because they are so close.

Anyone else place a condenser down on a base location before placing a city if they can? If you have tree farms and Hybrid forests available, seems like a winning situation. However, I have never done the super crawl thing yet. I'm doing it with my Drones right now and it is very powerful. Harvesting food and minerals, leaving the rest to specialists...

On making bases in MP games, I heard that coastal cities are dangerous, because of easy invasion and a way to sit down some units as a land base for your enemy. I've only played SP, what are some of your philosophies on how many coastal cities to have? I like to make as many as a can and hopefully connect inner seas to the outside, so i can have even more coastal cities (kinda) so I can make a buncha boats if I want. I never really do tho except for transports.

Now, I've heard that you can add to a cities population by building a colony pod and building a base on the square. I've thought about building a colony pod to make the base grow a couple turns faster by triggering the base growth with the smaller nutrient requirement, then immediately building the colony pod onto the base. It'd be like building housing with the industrial output of the city for pure population growth, which you can do in MOO2. In Civilization, you could do this up to 7 or 9. Something after which you needed an aquaduct. Now, I just *assumed* you could only do that up to base size of 7, or whatever was the max for a hab complex or dome. Now, if there is no limit, why couldn't you just have a buncha cities build colony pods that are pop booming, and do it in such a way that they pop a colony pod every turn. Then every turn you magtub or send it to your super science city and just max it out at something outrageous, or even keep pumping nutrients into it with crawlers, effectively getting ot the ultimate max of 138 or whatever it is. Now that is sick.

Once, I was playing as CEO Morgan and my friend and I were talking about the game. Now we hadn't seen each other in a long time and we have differing points of view in some areas. When I think of CEO Morgan, I think of his monopolistic empire as this huge meritocracy where whoever can be the most productive with what they have is put into leadership position for him, thus creating the +1 energy and stuff. The side effect is that people who aren't up to snuff resent not being promoted and turn into drones, working till there are enough of them to riot, or waiting for the luxury energy to quell thier rebellious spirit and low station in life. If, however they decide to look at what they have, they might use the luxury energy to appease themselves, not causing any trouble (workers) or to actually go out and do something for the greater cause and help others (talents). Well I look at it as a struggle to greatness, so I see CEO Morgan as being a good guy, creating resources out of nothing and making things like the Merchant Exchange, Research Hospitals, Longetivity Vaccines, and Cybernetic Backbone. My buddy thinks of CEO Morgan as some evil man out to take your money and horde it, using the huge populace to feed his greed. Well he starts out at size 4 max, so he has no huge population. Anyway what're ya'lls thoughts on the subject?

On a side note, I love that CivAnon flik. "I said I didn't get up." "Once I was able to split the atom, I built me a bomb and I dropped it on every [Expletive Deleted] who got in my way!"

[Straybow]

Hey, there's room for both greed and doing good for the masses.

[Kataphraktoi]

Healthy greed=good for the masses. Havnt you heard of the invisible hand?

My buddy thinks of CEO Morgan as some evil man out to take your money and horde it, using the huge populace to feed his greed. Well he starts out at size 4 max, so he has no huge population

Does your buddy play hive?

[Darrell01]

I'm not sure what he plays. Anyway, I think he's catagorized the factions as "good" and "bad". For the life of me, I can't figure out how Morgan is "bad".

[Leon Trotsky]

Some civilian workers got in among the research patients today and
became so hysterical I felt compelled to have them nerve stapled.
The consequence, of course, will be another public relations nightmare,
but I was severely shaken by the extent of their revulsion towards a
project so vital to our survival.
^
^ -- CEO Nwabudike Morgan,
^ The Personal Diaries

Of course we'll bundle our MorganNet software with the new
network nodes; our customers expect no less of us. We have never
sought to become a monopoly. Our products are simply so good that
no one feels the need to compete with us.
^
^ -- CEO Nwabudike Morgan,
^ Morgan Data Systems press release

[Darrell01]

Those two statements seem positive to me. One, he's probably trying to figure out how mindworms live, something they gotta do, and 2, if you've taken economics, it is possible to have what is called, a "natural" monopoly. Typically the state will own a lot of these. These include, roads, railroads, airspace, land ownership, national defense, police, fire fighting, labor (in the form of minimum wage), environmental issues, and things like these that the public uses. I see Morgan, because he is motivated by "positive" greed, he sets up his government and businesses to aquire and maintain natural monopolies. That is what I see in the second quote. To lead, you must serve, so he is serving his customers with the best software he can produce.

[Hydro]

‘Good’ depends on one’s perspectives and goals. For instance, if your goal is technological research then sacrificing a few drones to medical experimentation is ‘good’. Of course, the thousands put to the knife might object, but it is all for the ‘good’, right? Perhaps you may recall a certain WWII faction that had that very thought.

Also, consider a Gaian’s perspective of the Morganites rampant ecodamage, ‘raping’ the land for short term profit – all ‘evil’ in their eyes. Then those same Gaians might unleash their MW hordes to shatter the minds of Morganite citizens, implant their nasty eggs…. Well, you get the picture. This might be ‘good’ for the Gaians. The Morganites would consider the Gaians rather unenlightened, backward, and good fodder for their shard cannons. Eliminating the competition is ‘good’ – think of it as a hostile takeover.

Even the blighted Yang can consider his goals ‘good’ when viewed as part of the survival of humanity and striving toward a greater goal. If all of your citizens are foot soldiers for the path for enlightenment, then what is wrong if some are sacrificed? They are, after all, merely cogs in the machine and no more important than sloughed skin cells.

In the end that is why I really like SMAC. Each faction has it sympathies and no faction is really ‘good’ or ‘evil’. Well, some are less attuned to Western values than others, but all have their distinct and dynamic point of view. I’ve played all the factions but the Believers (ick!) and can put myself in their mindset pretty easily. Now that is fun…

Hydro

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by Hydro
Also, consider a Gaian’s perspective of the Morganites rampant ecodamage, ‘raping’ the land for short term profit – all ‘evil’ in their eyes. Then those same Gaians might unleash their MW hordes to shatter the minds of Morganite citizens, implant their nasty eggs…. Well, you get the picture.

I totally agree with this approach - Morgan and all of his planet-raping minions can choke on their own recycled waste!

Woops - sorry. Natural reflexive response there.... Heh Heh.....

Anyways, where were we? Oh yes:

Originally posted by Hydro
In the end that is why I really like SMAC. Each faction has it sympathies and no faction is really ‘good’ or ‘evil’.

After 8 years I've yet to find another game that rivals SMAC(X)!

Originally posted by Hydro
I’ve played all the factions but the Believers (ick!) and can put myself in their mindset pretty easily. Now that is fun…

So how do you RP the Usurpers? I kind of lean towards the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy during WW2. Or perhaps the Nazis and their approach to Eastern Europe and Russia during WW2 (i.e. the "Fascist struggle against the Bolshevik Revolution" being replaced by the intractable differences between the Usurpers and the Caretakers).



D

[Hydro]

The aliens are mostly different from the human factions. I think of the Caretakers as alien Gaians. Manifold 6 is, after all, their planet – or it was when their ancestors created it 500M years or more ago, and they will do what they can to preserve what is left of their (almost) failed project. I pattern them loosely after the Gaians but without the baggage of Western values. They see all others as trespassers that must be eliminated as a threat to the Manifold, and humans as little more than vermin.

The Usurpers are exactly that – a militaristic opposition to that is relatively new to the Progentor’s ethos – e.g. not more than 100M years old or so. They are still ossified in human terms, but are trying to wrest this prize away from the blind relics of a failed faction (e.g. Caretakers). They also see humans as vermin and Caretakers as targets.

So, yes you can role play the aliens and I had fun with them with Vel and Googlie on the Progenitors project and also in Spartan Chronicles.

Hydro

[Darrell01]

Sister Miriam... I need to preface my statements here. I've had many years in college and have taken classes on science, philosophy, politics, and economics. I am also a heavy reader. I have also had the privilage to listen to many great orators in many religeous, philosophical, economical, and political venues. I also have never viewed people who express their faith and letting me know how wonderful it is and how it changed their lives as being somehow so annoying as to be bad, which is sometimes refered to as "bible-thumping", "holy rollering", and "cramming religeon down my throat". Ok. To me, the way Sister Miriam acts in the game and it extremely aggresive and technologically shy seems more like a militant luddite or aggressively militant amish than the average Christian sect. It is also hard for me to play RP her as well. I haven't read the entire official storyline. I got sidetracked in the middle of it. Perhaps she is modeled after some strict nun with a large ruler. Maybe that's the best way to RP her. However, if she does make it to the endgame, she does have the highest attack rating with +25%. Unfortunately, the -20% technology combined with her penchant for Fundamentalism makes the endgame research points lose a bunch of that future technology points. I think she should have gotten Robust Science to even her out with only -10% tech. -40% just makes her get steamrolled if she can't get to you in 100 turns, if that.

[Kataphraktoi]

I cant RP with her as well-the idea of a christian civilization is ludicrous(as well as saying miriam is christian). However on gameplay terms, miriam is terrible only because everyone plays builder games with zak\uni\pk\hive\drone which means militant factions get screwed...

I totally agree with this approach - Morgan and all of his planet-raping minions can choke on their own recycled waste!

There are plenty of planets to live on, no problems if a few get messed up along the way. Protecting useless fungus would just drain resources anyway and risk human lives for red stuff. What if the MWs go wild?? Better to stomp the stuff out and plant forests.


The alien factions are cheat factions introduced by firaxis in the xpack to give the human something tough to beat.

[Chaos Theory]

Miriam's faction is not terrible because it's great at fielding armies of terraformers. The catch is the long delay in getting the first few crucial builder techs. The larger part of the -2 research penalty is the ten turns of stagnation at the beginning. As helpful as +2 support is, though, Domai's +2 industry blows it away. Miriam's only hope for parity with Domai is to exploit the fanatic bonus and selective immunity to mind control.

[Kataphraktoi]

In a MP game the other factions will establish such a cumulative tech lead that miriam cannot catch up without either 1. massive industry(again, must get tech though) and probing or 2. allying with univ\someone before the game. Even in darsnan's challenge, you can look at my believers game there, i transcended, but even though my econ\pop was so huge it took something like 150 turns to transcend. The -2 research was a constant bottleneck even with cybernetics\transcends.

By itself +2 support isnt making up for -2 research. IMHO anyway

[CEO Aaron]

You know what would make me happy? Breaking this hydra of a thread up into separate topics.

The relative political merits of each faction frequently come up on these boards, with each of their values superimposed on real-world situations. The problem I see is that the factions are designed to be absolutists, so as to promote conflict in gameplay. In other words, their aims are skewed to as to ensure that they'll be mutually irreconcilable. If that weren't enough to skewer any moralistic debate on the relative merits of each faction, there's also the fact that the game has been designed in such a way as each choice is a viable alternative to the others. What really makes one policy better or worse than another is to compare its costs with its benefits. In the real world, they are often very, very different. In the game, they're balanced to a nicety.

Just a few examples:

In SMAX, ecodamage at nearly any level is manageable at a fraction of the amount of income it provides to the player causing it. From planetpearl rebates from spawned worms to the low cost of raising land out of the reach of sea level rises, to the ease with which spawned fungus is replaced by terraformed improvements, nearly every aspect of ecodamage is merely a challenge to a player's planning skills, nothing more.

In the real world, pollution and habitat loss wreak damage that cannot be repaired at any cost, and for the damage than can be repaired, the cost is often completely beyond the scale of the profits reaped by the polluters.

In game, a player running an oppressive police state can maintain a robust economy while preventing all kinds of social unrest through the application of military force.

In the real world, while all regimes harbor a certain amount of corruption, history has routinely shown authoritarian states to be the most rife with waste and corruption, often teetering on the edge of economic collapse, while at the same time barely containing the upswellings of civil unrest, born of the thwarted desires of their shackled subjects.

And I won't even go into the differences between the religious agenda promoted by Miriam to the aims of fundamentalists religious extremists of varying sects in the real world.

[CEO Aaron]

Reply number 2:

On the topic of ICS, aesthetics is NOT numbered among its merits. It's used because it is effective, plain and simple. True, tightly packed bases do make for a more tempting planetbuster target, but a proper ICSer will all but certainly be the first to discovery planetbusting technology, to say nothing of their countermeasures, and if both parties indulge in ICS, then their weakness to PBs is shared, isnt' it?

At the end of the day, ICS is about turn-advantage, plain and simple. A landmass more tightly packed with bases makes better use of limited terrain sooner. To be sure, a more measured empire will eventually have more productive bases, but so long as the ICSer continues to reinvest his turn-advantage dividends into more growth, his advantage will be maintained. Also, it's worth mentioning that the population hard cap (Hab Domes, or lack thereof) and the mineral soft cap (Eco-damage) both encourage having a larger number of smaller bases, and the mechanics encouraging sparser empires (bureaucracy drones, inefficiency) are really quite simple to bypass. (specialists, creches, SE effects).