Hardest Presets

[Nightlifter]

Wow. im back again, seems like every few months, and the forum isnt deadyet. joy!

I wanted to raise a question about the hardest games presets. obviously, you start with Transcend + Abundant fungus + tech stagnation + aggressive opponents.

in all of your experience (which is no doubt greater than mine) what would u set the rest? ex. Strong erosion, 90% ocean, small vs. Large planet. I know that an experienced player with mop the floor with the transcendi AI, but what presets make a single player game the most challenging?

any other thoughts, like modding alpha.txt to add challenge?
and while ur hear, is there a way to make planet busters(or just atrocities period) legal from the get go?

even better idea, is there a way to up the blast radius past the maximum of 4 for singularity?

thanks to everyone still here lookin forward to Smac2 hopefully

[Whoha]

That is not the hardest, it hurts the ai far more then the player to have arid fungused over terrain. for the hardest give them lots of productive terrain, the support bonus,etc. Also changing the ai priorities can have an effect. There are plenty of threads and hopefully someone else can just cut and paste a bunch of links.

[Kirov]

Re: Hardest Presets

Originally posted by Nightlifter
Wow. im back again, seems like every few months, and the forum isnt deadyet. joy!

Isn't it?

I wanted to raise a question about the hardest games presets. obviously, you start with Transcend + Abundant fungus + tech stagnation + aggressive opponents.

in all of your experience (which is no doubt greater than mine) what would u set the rest? ex. Strong erosion, 90% ocean, small vs. Large planet. I know that an experienced player with mop the floor with the transcendi AI, but what presets make a single player game the most challenging?

Weak erosion and dense cloud cover actually help AI, for reasons mentioned by Whoha (AI simply love farms and mines). TinypPlanet as well if you are a compulsive builder. I remember that before I learned of challenges I was trying myself to find the hardest presets one can make without changing any files. I think the hardest you can get is playing Morgan (faction the least suitable for a war) against 6 aliens or other warmonging factions (HIV, Sparta, Miriam etc) on a tiny planet with the least water coverage. A setting that will quickly cure one of perfectionism along the lines of "just one more tree farm".

Oh, and unity pods help human players more than AIs.

any other thoughts, like modding alpha.txt to add challenge?

You can boost anything you know that AI abuse and humans avoid and vice versa. Decreasing the output of forests, increasing the cost of choppers, decreasing the cost of resonance 3 armour etc.

and while ur hear, is there a way to make planet busters(or just atrocities period) legal from the get go?

even better idea, is there a way to up the blast radius past the maximum of 4 for singularity?

I'm 99.9% sure it can't be modified.

Other ways to increase the difficulty are:

1) Playing challenges, of which my favs are "switching sides" (once you're unsurpassed, you switch to the weakest faction and play it until it's unsurpassed) and "one city challenge". In short, most challenges are self-limiting (no terraforming, no crawlers etc) except for "switching sides" where you basically play against yourself and "all SPs" when you try to get all SPs in the game (quite hard if you play the Believers).

2) playing scenarios; scenarios by Darsnan have great background and well boosted AIs, but the hardest one I've ever played was called "Things that go thump in the night" created by Blake. I think it can pose a challenge for a very experienced player.

3) modyfing the faction files; simply set for all AIs "Wealth" as their preferred SE and Explore as their priority; makes quite a big difference for Miriam, Sparta and the like

4) using map pre-made by yourself; a patch of forest and a few boreholes can do wonders for AI, esp in terms of the turn advantage.

If I recall anything else (I was concerned with this topic as well), I'll post it later.

[CEO Aaron]

The hotseat challenge, where you build a faction to supremacy then take the weakest faction over, can be BRUTALLY difficult, and it will also make you cry when you see the AI wipe out your painstaking borehole paradise with farms, mines and solar panels. That said, it really is a tough challenge for a good builder, because you're effectively fighting yourself.

[MoNoLitH]

Try refusing to give in whenever the AI asks for tech and money. On Transcend level you'll quickly end up at war with everybody, even without Intense Rivalry. It's even worse if you're like me and absolutely hate taking casualties before reaching the end of the tech tree - there's nothing like seeing "Synthmetal Sentinels - 1 lost" on your security report nexus FOR THE REST OF THE GAME.

The One city challenge sounds pretty neat too, but I have yet to try it.

[Nightlifter]

Re: Re: Hardest Presets

Originally posted by Kirov

A setting that will quickly cure one of perfectionism along the lines of "just one more tree farm".

haha! guilty as charged. unfortunately last game they all voted to melt the polar caps and drown me, so setting all of my decent number of bases to conquer was in vain ;( I obliterated all of my three non coastline bases out of frustration...

I'm 99.9% sure it can't be modified.

yeah, changing reactor strenght in alpha.txt did nothing. my solution: build more planet busters.

a nice side effect of that solution being that they will sometimes fire back at you. personally, I enjoy a game where bases start blowing up, its much more exciting than having to capture every base that doesnt have a secret project.

EDIT:

btw, ive now been on apolyton for 1 year!

[Straybow]

I disable PBs. Weapons bigger than the KT impactor: just plain silly.

[Verrucosus]

What about "Time Warp"? I don't use it much because I like those early turns when the world is fresh, everything seems possible and I lay the foundation for my future empire. Turning over control during this important period to the AI should level the playing field quite a bit.

Verrucosus

[Hydro]

Time warp does help level the playing field against the AI since the early SPs are split up among the players, and the human can't hog all the good ones (or all of them!). You can cheese and restart until you get a 'good' SP, but you still only get one.

You also have to suffer with insufferable terraforming, and it takes a while to fix it. You have to make hard decisions: fix your miserable infrastructure, or expand. Frequently your citizens will starve at your capital, so emergency action is required.

Another strong argument is that human players do a much better job in the initial expansion, so that takes an edge off, too. Humans are much better than the AI at mini-maxing.

You'll also find some unusual tech choices, especially if you get an 80 year time warp since the AI follows the Explore/Conquer/Build/Discover faction pre-set tech lines. For instance, the Gaians may be well along to E5 techs, but have no conquer techs at all - and that's a bit of a problem if you're by Yang or Santiago. Your tech rate will be 1 tech in 100 years, so no new techs will be forthcoming any time soon (unless you cash an artifact or trade). That said, the Gaians will start with LOTS of worms (all conveniently and uselessly at their home bases). It can be an interesting scenario. I think of it as a change in management with a new faction leader.

Hydro

[mike2R]

Interesting thread. I'm just going through a SMAC binge, and a competitive single player game has always been my holy grail so I thought I'd share my thoughts. They're not presets, but some minor edits that I enjoy.


Borehole scattering:

Making a map liberally sprinkled with boreholes does wonders for the AI, especially once mineral and energy restrictions come off. I've also edited boreholes to produce 3 nutrients so the AI always works them, although this probably isn't essential.

Unless you make sure your own starting position is borehole free it does make the early game a bit dull, but I've still had some good games this way.


Editing Faction Personalities:

When making a scenario, choosing Scenario > Edit Faction Personalities and removing the conquer flag from those factions who have it (Spartans etc) stops the AI drowning itself in obsolete units. I generally give all factions the build flag as well.

Just with these changes, my current game has all 6 enemy factions with > 25 cities, mostly producing in the range of 20 - 25 free minerals per turn, and researching so hard that I'm having to probe to keep up. Satellites are coming soon and I know from past experience that the AI will blitz these when it has this kind of production.

I do think it's necessary to make these kind of minor changes - the AI will never build it's own boreholes so to get any sort of competitive game you either have to forswear them yourself, or give them to the AI.