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Hello Apolyton. A post in two parts.
I've bumped into this site on and off over the years, and was recently inspired to register by the giddying promise of scient's unofficial patch.
I've played SMAC/X on and off (much more off, it must be said) since I was 13, and must have run the demo 50 times before it came out. My dad and I embarked together upon the epic voyage of discovery that is Civ1 when I was just 7 or 8. I still consider Civ2 to be one of the greatest games ever made.
I recently picked up SMAX again after many years, and after a few trips to Apolyton was gobsmacked to learn how utterly, utterly rubbish I was. Though I'd never actually lost a game to the AI at any difficulty, I'd always suspected I'd be hopeless against a human player. It had honestly never occurred to me to abuse crawlers (I thought they were pretty useless actually - I was obviously too young to understand), I never built all that many satellites, and ICSing had not even crossed my mind (I used to hate it when any of my cities had more than a 3 square overlap total, and I hated the AI for its close placement of cities sometimes).
Unfortunately I was heavily guilty of abusing pod-popping, which I've now curbed somewhat with Iron Man (though crl-l still calls to me), and playing without cheating to see what’s going on now and again causes me to fair much worse against the AI. I want to be better.
I've tried to play hotseat multiplayer with my sister's boyfriend (a fellow geek), but hell, we're all old now and we have jobs and suchlike, and we live miles apart. I've tried and failed to get a tcp/ip game going with him; there do not appear to be any really clear instructions anywhere! I did manage to find a post here (somewhere) about which ports require forwarding, but still couldn't get it to work (might have been crappy modem, since replaced). Even when we do play, I feel somewhat...unchallenged (I had to stop him levelling rolling squares "to build farms" last time).
What I'm really asking is: does anyone who knows what they're doing fancy utterly crushing me in a tcp/ip game in the hope that I might learn something from the experience? It probably wouldn't take long (I'm astonished at the speed you guys are moving in the ACDG6), and I'm uncertain about PBEM at my skill level (unless you'd recommend that as a better course of action, or I am unable to get tcp/ip working even with your help).
***
I mentioned at the top that this was a post in two parts, the second relates to modding.
I had initially intended to add it here as I didn’t have that many questions, but since it basically grew into a change log for my ongoing modding project, I’ve put it in AC Creation. You can find it here.
I've bumped into this site on and off over the years, and was recently inspired to register by the giddying promise of scient's unofficial patch.
I've played SMAC/X on and off (much more off, it must be said) since I was 13, and must have run the demo 50 times before it came out. My dad and I embarked together upon the epic voyage of discovery that is Civ1 when I was just 7 or 8. I still consider Civ2 to be one of the greatest games ever made.
I recently picked up SMAX again after many years, and after a few trips to Apolyton was gobsmacked to learn how utterly, utterly rubbish I was. Though I'd never actually lost a game to the AI at any difficulty, I'd always suspected I'd be hopeless against a human player. It had honestly never occurred to me to abuse crawlers (I thought they were pretty useless actually - I was obviously too young to understand), I never built all that many satellites, and ICSing had not even crossed my mind (I used to hate it when any of my cities had more than a 3 square overlap total, and I hated the AI for its close placement of cities sometimes).
Unfortunately I was heavily guilty of abusing pod-popping, which I've now curbed somewhat with Iron Man (though crl-l still calls to me), and playing without cheating to see what’s going on now and again causes me to fair much worse against the AI. I want to be better.
I've tried to play hotseat multiplayer with my sister's boyfriend (a fellow geek), but hell, we're all old now and we have jobs and suchlike, and we live miles apart. I've tried and failed to get a tcp/ip game going with him; there do not appear to be any really clear instructions anywhere! I did manage to find a post here (somewhere) about which ports require forwarding, but still couldn't get it to work (might have been crappy modem, since replaced). Even when we do play, I feel somewhat...unchallenged (I had to stop him levelling rolling squares "to build farms" last time).
What I'm really asking is: does anyone who knows what they're doing fancy utterly crushing me in a tcp/ip game in the hope that I might learn something from the experience? It probably wouldn't take long (I'm astonished at the speed you guys are moving in the ACDG6), and I'm uncertain about PBEM at my skill level (unless you'd recommend that as a better course of action, or I am unable to get tcp/ip working even with your help).
***
I mentioned at the top that this was a post in two parts, the second relates to modding.
I had initially intended to add it here as I didn’t have that many questions, but since it basically grew into a change log for my ongoing modding project, I’ve put it in AC Creation. You can find it here.
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