Advice for SMANiaC Morgan

[Mart]

yes, you were playing Atlanteans.
but in my experience, rarely such old abandoned games continue. better to start a new one

[Hydro]

Sir Maniac,

I've always like blind research, but it is frustrating. Right now I'm set at Build tech, but what you get is a lotto. A while ago I was Build-Explore so I could have a better shot at formers (which took 3 tries). For SE, Plutocrat is a LONG way away, but Private/Protectionist (with its glorious +2 energy) could be my next tech. I've been hoping for that one for quite a while now - 40 years, as the game is now in 2148 (MB and I get several turns a day on weekends, which is good for a PBEM). Priv/Prot will likely kill me with its -1 talent, -1 support (-3 support! Ack!), and -1 industry, but I don't think there are better options. I suspect that size 2 bases will immediately go into revolt since my free Talent from frontier Unitary Demo will be nullified. I wonder if the extra energy will be offset by more drones/less tiles worked, the need to build rec commons, industry penalty (direct and via -3 support). If the penalty is too severe I'll have to wait with Priv/Prot until after I'm at 11 bases, then start building infrastructure.

Mart – I’m on 2148 and the rec commons has been built. I like the idea of your nearby base at the red X. I have to admit I hadn’t given the sea nutrient much thought. Moreover, there is so much fungus I really don’t know what is behind the Red Vail. My scout exploring there was killed long ago when it attacked a worm and failed (!!!).

So here’s the revised plan. Get a CP to the Red X (using the scout from MI to make sure it doesn’t stir up a worm), create a former and terraform one of the river squares and one of the non-river tiles (in your screeni, the rainy tile to the NW of MI), build Tanks, and then a few more formers. York will finish a former in the coming turn, which will move north to create a road and a forest. Hopefully the forests will sprread, and York still has 2 rainy tiles so growth won’t be hampered. The other rainy tile will get a solar collector, then the former moves SE toward Cairnes. Uranium Flats has HUGE potential since it has a few rainy tiles due to the river (rare – most of the time the Flats is rather arid). Loderitz will continue pumping CPs due to its high minerals and nutrient special. I’ll continue my colonization push north along the Pholus Ridge – another real good terrain feature for anyone, especially Morgan.

In the meantime I know my opponent is extorting energy (~200 to date) and tech from Briens and will shortly go on a war of conquest. Maybe I should post the dialog MB and I are doing for this PBEM? I’m leading in population, so that gives me some hope – I just need to expand very quickly to catch up.

By the way, your screenie looks real good. How do you do that? Whenever I do a screenshot it comes out grainy. What I do is:
• Screenshot, Alt-Tab out, paste to Paint. The image comes out inverted
• Exit AC, paste again to Paint
• Export to ImageShack. Cut link and paste.

Thx!
Hydro

[Mart]

Originally posted by Hydro
...

By the way, your screenie looks real good. How do you do that? Whenever I do a screenshot it comes out grainy. What I do is:
• Screenshot, Alt-Tab out, paste to Paint. The image comes out inverted
• Exit AC, paste again to Paint
• Export to ImageShack. Cut link and paste.

Thx!
Hydro

There is a problem with color palette as far as i remember. What solves it is turning off some DirectDraw option under
[Alpha Centauri]
add this line:
DirectDraw=0

it also changes screen rescaling, from readme txt:


DirectDraw=0
Settings this to 0 disables DirectDraw. This disables the automatic window
resolution resizing during program launch.


however some people reported this did not work very well for them. let's hope you can use it alright.
On monitors with resolutions like 1920x1200 this makes map visible with a lot of tiles, but if the size of pixel on a monitor is very small, this is very strenuous for eyes. I zoom sometimes few times from standard zoom (shift+z) using "z". On a laptop with pixel below 0.2 mm this looks ok.

[Mart]

another thing, i can paste screenshot without closing AC, on XP or vista you can open start menu, then alt+tab to new aplication, maybe this DirectDraw must be enabled, I'm not sure now.

I use Irfanview. save as bmp. then open in Paint, make drawings, open in Irfanview again and save as jpg this time, where i can choose quality. it has good algorithm, cause imageshack apparently does not do a good job.

Edit:
about switching between applications. I think the setting:
DirectDraw=0
maybe required for this.
The replacement of color palette is something that influences work of other apps, so disabling palette replacement seems necessary.

[Hydro]

Quick update.

It is 5152 and I've regained the population lead on Chiron. Yeh! Pop is king, especially before crawlers come around.

I still have 6 bases, but will set up #7 (where Mart suggested) in the coming turn. Another CP is trudging its way through the fungus to the north on Pholus Ridge. It has a scout escort. Chiron is a dangerous place - a few more scouts have gotten munched by worms since my last post. boo...hisss. I’m sorry, but the fungus just has to go. Formers are a priority.

I also found a nutrient special by a river system in wet/rainy area of the Uranium Flats. **gasp!** FOOD! BUKU ENERGY! I almost creamed myself. The nearest base that has 10 mins gets a CP rushed!!!

I also got Industrial Base, which removes mineral restrictions (!!!), allows mine to be constructed, and allows Private/Protectionist (-1 support, +3 eco, +1 research, -1 industry, -1 talent). I played with my SE to see what would happen. My support went to -3, so every unit required support. The -1 talent meant that all my bases rioted except Morgan Industries. Keeping the drones under control and the -3 support penalty completely crashed my industry into the negative. Conclusion: I have to have rec commons up or Priv/Prot simply will not work. But gee...my science rate went from 9 turns to 5!! And my energy went through the roof with an eco of +4. The only small determent is that Pholus Ridge and Uranium Flats (which give +1 energy/sector) are less valuable once I get +2 eco since energy caps are still in place. Ah, well.

My (blind) research stays on Build and I'll add Discover. I want energy restrictions removed when I get Zero Point Energy (D4). I just hope no Bad Guys show up or I’m toast.

So - the plan is to get to 11 bases (all CPs are either on the way or in production), have bases build a former, then build Rec Commons - then go Priv/Prot ASAP.

Hydro

[Hydro]

Bad news. In 2156 the Templars (being run by MasterBuilder) have conquered the Republic, have gotten all their tech and energy, and have demanded their largest base.

I just lost my second former in two turns to worms, so now I have one former left. This is tough since formers are so expensive for Morgan to build. I've lost about 6 scouts to worms in the last few decades, so units are being destroyed faster than they can be built with my very modest industrial ability. The worm that destroyed my latest former is now at the doorstep of Morgan Industries and I can't do anything about it. Another worm will advance such that at least I'll get to attack it first (although I've lost a few of the times I've attacked, much to my sorrow). Pretty grim overall.

I also made an error in calculating the number of bases since with the establishment of my 9th base (instead of 12th) I got an efficiency warning. I must have the wrong world size. So, no more bases for me and one size 2 base is in riot.

There's not much I can do but stick to plan: build rec commons, switch to Private/Protectionist, suffer industrial collapse and population loss in my cities that do not have rec commons, and do my best to pull through. Clearly I will not have any significant minerals in most of my bases so I'll have to rely in energy.

Looks like MB is going to run away with PBEM16. I've run Morgan in our PBEMs before, and all I have to say is that the SMANiaC Morgan runs VERY differently than what I'm used to.

Hydro

P.S. - one of the techs I got a while back was Doct:Flex. Maybe I should build a 1-1-5 sea foil to try to find the other factions? Morgan thrives on commerce and a few trade deals and exchanged techs might make the investment worthwhile.

[Mart]

where do you play the pbem? apolyton or some other site, who is MasterBuilder?

[Hydro]

MB is a good friend I've had for 25 years (since high school). We've been doing PBEMs since 2001 or so. We just e-mail the turns to each other. Never saw much need to use the Multiplayer forum since it is just the two of us.

We also exchange dialog with each turn. I used to post the dialog in the Fiction Forum but have been lazy, I guess. The PBEM stories are great fun (the real reason we do the PBEM) and usually run hundreds of pages. Perhaps I should post our current dialog? As of Turn 58 of PBEM 16 we are on page 92 in Word.

Hydro

[Hydro]

Update.

It is now 2163. I migrated to Private/Protectionist (-1 talent, +2 eco, -1 support, -1 industry). This has crippled my industry (-3 support means my small bases produce between zero and 2 and maybe 3 mins a turn) and riot at size 2, but my breakthrough rate is 6 years (very good for this early in the game). Rec commons and recycling tanks are a must, to be sure.

The good news is that I took a chance and launched a foil and almost immediately met the Ghosts, exchanged some tech, bought the comm. channels for Yang and my opponent the Templar. Both the Ghosts and Yang gave me a friendship treaty – that high commerce rating (Morgan and +3 eco) will get me lots of energy! Or so I hope.

In the meantime, the Templars are going to take out the Hive, which has 2 bases. It may not be much of a fight since the Templars are huge now (10+ or so base)

My strategy is to goose energy/tech rate, drive to additional energy SE (Private/Free Trade and Plutocrat), go Green, and see what happens. Maybe an all economy/energy and Go Native strategy will work? The Templars seem to be pretty good against Native, but with an energy focus I can’t see going toe to toe with my (non-existent) military. Plus, natives in fungus are support free (a huge problem for me), get PlanetPearls, find new (free!) friends to join the cause, and in SMAniaC mindworms are VERY cheap to build.

There is an irony here – Morgan going Green and All Native!

I sure hope I get the tech to try it out before the Templars come knocking with their Junta-goosed infantry.

Hydro

[Maniac]

LOL that's indeed original. Before you have Fungal Gin Breweries it's probably too hard to popboom (with Anthropocentric) anyway.


Btw, do you think it would be an improvement if the Fungal Gin Brewery (renamed to something else Virtual World related) was moved to Optical Computers? The explore techs already have more than enough builder benefits I guess.

[Hydro]

Maniac,

Sorry, but Morgan still can't pop boom (easily) since he can't run Planned. Of course, if I manage to get GA+creche+antro I could get +6 growth, but the chance of that is pretty small. I certainly won't get there using energy-intensive SE (private/protectionist or private/free trade) due to the -1 talent that comes with them. Nasty drones! You should LOVE ME when I exploit you!

Now there are no hab limits for SMAniaC Morgan, so my bases can grow to above size 4. Of course, that is assuming I can get above size 2 or 3 to get to 4...

Not sure about about VW. It is such a powerful SP that it is better to leave it to early or mid mid game. Optical Computers in SMAniaC is a D5 tech (as I recall it is more of a D3 in SMAC/X), which is pretty far down the pike. So it is a Discover, and the flavor seems to be more Discover than anything else. Of course, with a name like Fungal Gin Factory it belongs in Explore!

Hydro

[Hydro]

Oh, and for those that are interested my 2163 turn is attached. My secret codes is 'money'.

Move the foil north and you'll find the Ghosts. I managed to get a treaty, Info Networks, and Yang's comm frequency from the Ghosts and a treaty and Silvara's (MasterBuilder) from Yang. Frankly, I was thrilled they didn't declare war on me...

Hydro

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Hydro
Not sure about about VW. It is such a powerful SP that it is better to leave it to early or mid mid game. Optical Computers in SMAniaC is a D5 tech (as I recall it is more of a D3 in SMAC/X), which is pretty far down the pike. So it is a Discover, and the flavor seems to be more Discover than anything else. Of course, with a name like Fungal Gin Factory it belongs in Explore!

I mean renaming the Fungal Gin Brewery to something else, and move it to Optical Computers.

[Mart]

Originally posted by Hydro
... I managed to get a treaty, Info Networks, and Yang's comm frequency from the Ghosts and a treaty and Silvara's (MasterBuilder) from Yang. Frankly, I was thrilled they didn't declare war on me...

Hydro

I saw the save. How did you managed to get all those things from Ghosts? You are good in AI diplomacy.

[Hydro]

Mart,

No idea. The Ghosts were slightly hostile when I first contacted them, but then immediately asked to trade Centauri Ecology (as I recall) for Info Networks (sure!!). That bumped his attitude to neutral, but he wouldn't trade any more tech. He wanted a gift tech, which I declined. I asked and got a friendship treaty. I suspect the fact he's at war with the Hive and Templars and I'm #2 or 3 on the power chart gave me a few points in my favor. Then I bought the Hive's comm frequency for 25 megacredits. That was VERY fortunate since I asked for a couple of other faction's frequency, which he didn't have. At any time he could have told me he had no more time and cut me off. In past SManiaC games the Ghosts have gone hostile very quickly.

The Hive wouldn't trade tech (to keep the Command Nexus out of my hands), but did sell me Silvara's frequency. He wanted me to declare war on the Ghosts, which I declined. He did agree to a friendship treaty. The Templars will be erradicating the Hive, so it won't profit me much.

I haven't seen any Commerse energy from the treaties but perhaps it will kick in next turn. A careful inspection will allow me to determine the number of Ghost and Hive cities, and get a general idea of relative size/economic power.

Overall I was pretty lucky. But the Ghosts are very aggressive, and if I'm not careful I'll set them off. I'm getting my foil out of his territory ASAP.

Hydro