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Have you ever had a SMAC game where things took a totally unexpected turn, and the game resolved in a way you could have never anticipated?
The flakiness of the AI is well documented, but even so it can pull a surprise on you. For me, such an experience was what I called the “Sneaky Sisterhood.”
In this game, I was playing the Believers, because sometimes it’s fun to play a raving lunatic. I was using one of the large official maps of planet, and I started on the eastern continent, not far from the Freshwater Sea and the Unity wreckage. Not a bad place to start! But it turned out that I was alone on that continent! By luck of the draw, all the other factions were scattered across the other landmasses. Playing the Believers as an isolationist faction is often risky, but I took the challenge anyway.
For most of the game, I was undisturbed. I had enough probe teams running around to have a general idea of what was going on elsewhere, but I was very careful not to anger anyone. I determined that the Hive was embarking on a war of conquest across the central continent, and had crushed at least one other faction by about turn 70. The Spartans were based on the island chain in the north, and seemed to have taken on a siege mentality versus the Hive. Again, I was careful not to get involved. I was content to let the other factions hack each other to pieces, so that when the day came where I was pulled into the fray, I would be the strongest faction on the block. (Onward Christian Soldiers!)
All the while I was expanding across the eastern continent, building up a strong military and a good infrastructure. It’s rare that Mirriam goes into builder mode, but I found that so long as I wasn’t disturbed the Believers are pretty good at it, even with the research penalty. I built an empire of about 50 bases, all connected with roads, and numerous supply crawlers trucking the goods from one end of the empire to the other. On the whole things were going well.
Then something unexpected happened: Yang attacked me without warning or provocation. His planes tried to bomb one of my cities, just south of the central continent. My planes caught him and drove him off (I *always* build my planes with AAA) before he could do any real damage, but I knew that my isolationist days were over. I quickly sent probe teams into Hive territory to see what he was capable of. Not surprisingly, I had superior numbers, but Yang had superior tech. In a sustained slam-bang I would have trouble. I was in a proverbial pickle.
But then another strange thing happened. In rapid succession I received two calls, one from Santiago and one from Deirdre. The short of it is that both of them asked for my help in dealing with Yang. Yang’s campaign of conquest had been quite successful; myself, the Spartans and the Gaians were the only ones left, and apparently the Spartans and the Gaians were against the proverbial wall. The Gaians were based on the long southern peninsula of the western continent, and were slowly losing ground. The Spartans were still on the island chain, but were loosing a long war of attrition. Neither one of them had the resources to launch an effective counter-attack.
I could see where this was going. Once Yang was finished with Deidre and Santiago, he was going to come after me. So I agreed to a triple alliance with the Spartans and the Gaians, because as both Machiavelli and Lau Tsu said: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Or at the very least, my ally.
Since I was out-teched, there wasn’t much I could do initially. What I did do was use my out of date planes and ships to wreak havoc with Yang’s infrastructure in his southern region. My hope was that by keeping him off balance, the other two factions could regroup enough to make an effective counterstrike.
Remember that I had a large, relatively undisturbed empire with a strong infrastructure and a high population. I may have been out-teched, but I did have abundant resources and manpower. The Spartans started trading me their military technology in exchange for energy credits. The Gaians did the same with their teraforming and research technology. Because of my large population base, I could raise large amounts of cash in a fairly short time, so I was able to do this several times. The influx of cash and minerals helped the Spartans and the Gaians get back on their feet, and they were now holding their own against Yang. They didn’t have the numbers to effectively strike back, but they were keeping the Hive contained.
The parallels between my Believers in this game, and the United States in World War II were staggering. But I digress.
Anyway, while the Spartans and the Gaians were short on numbers, I wasn’t. I put together a task force of roughly 20 highly trained ground units (the best I had), made landfall on the southern coast of the central continent, and proceeded to trash everything in my path. I didn’t attempt to capture or occupy cities, because holding them would have been a logistical problem. I just royally messed up the furniture by destroying roads, farms and mines (especially mines!). This put several of Yang’s cities into a tailspin, so he quickly turned his attention to me. I quickly pulled my troops out, leaving him with a lot of scorched earth to repair.
Oh yeah, one other thing. Deidre ceded me four missiles with fungus payloads, which I used to bog down the ports along Yang’s southern coast. With the regional land a mess and his coastal ports clogged with fungus, it was very difficult for him to retaliate. (Thank you, Deirdre!)
This gave Santiago and Deirdre the break they needed. Santiago invaded along his north shore, and slowly started to steamroll Yang’s empire. Deidre, meanwhile, did a blitzkrieg across the western continent, ultimately forcing Yang off. All the while, I continued to provide energy credits to both of my allies, while constantly hammering the Hive’s southern bases with air and (conventional) missile strikes. Once Santiago captured the Uranium Flats, the Hive started to crumble. In the end, Yang was reduced to one or two sea bases in the Geothermal Shallows, where Deirdre and I had him boxed in with ships.
At this point the game declared a co-operative victory for the triple alliance of the Spartans, the Gaians, and the Believers. I then imagined Santiago, Deirdre and Mirriam in the council hall wearing sunglasses, smoking cigarettes, and toasting with big goblets of Centaurian wine. All hail the Sneaky Sisterhood!
It was one of the most unexpected and intriguing SMAC games I’ve every played.
The flakiness of the AI is well documented, but even so it can pull a surprise on you. For me, such an experience was what I called the “Sneaky Sisterhood.”
In this game, I was playing the Believers, because sometimes it’s fun to play a raving lunatic. I was using one of the large official maps of planet, and I started on the eastern continent, not far from the Freshwater Sea and the Unity wreckage. Not a bad place to start! But it turned out that I was alone on that continent! By luck of the draw, all the other factions were scattered across the other landmasses. Playing the Believers as an isolationist faction is often risky, but I took the challenge anyway.
For most of the game, I was undisturbed. I had enough probe teams running around to have a general idea of what was going on elsewhere, but I was very careful not to anger anyone. I determined that the Hive was embarking on a war of conquest across the central continent, and had crushed at least one other faction by about turn 70. The Spartans were based on the island chain in the north, and seemed to have taken on a siege mentality versus the Hive. Again, I was careful not to get involved. I was content to let the other factions hack each other to pieces, so that when the day came where I was pulled into the fray, I would be the strongest faction on the block. (Onward Christian Soldiers!)
All the while I was expanding across the eastern continent, building up a strong military and a good infrastructure. It’s rare that Mirriam goes into builder mode, but I found that so long as I wasn’t disturbed the Believers are pretty good at it, even with the research penalty. I built an empire of about 50 bases, all connected with roads, and numerous supply crawlers trucking the goods from one end of the empire to the other. On the whole things were going well.
Then something unexpected happened: Yang attacked me without warning or provocation. His planes tried to bomb one of my cities, just south of the central continent. My planes caught him and drove him off (I *always* build my planes with AAA) before he could do any real damage, but I knew that my isolationist days were over. I quickly sent probe teams into Hive territory to see what he was capable of. Not surprisingly, I had superior numbers, but Yang had superior tech. In a sustained slam-bang I would have trouble. I was in a proverbial pickle.
But then another strange thing happened. In rapid succession I received two calls, one from Santiago and one from Deirdre. The short of it is that both of them asked for my help in dealing with Yang. Yang’s campaign of conquest had been quite successful; myself, the Spartans and the Gaians were the only ones left, and apparently the Spartans and the Gaians were against the proverbial wall. The Gaians were based on the long southern peninsula of the western continent, and were slowly losing ground. The Spartans were still on the island chain, but were loosing a long war of attrition. Neither one of them had the resources to launch an effective counter-attack.
I could see where this was going. Once Yang was finished with Deidre and Santiago, he was going to come after me. So I agreed to a triple alliance with the Spartans and the Gaians, because as both Machiavelli and Lau Tsu said: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Or at the very least, my ally.
Since I was out-teched, there wasn’t much I could do initially. What I did do was use my out of date planes and ships to wreak havoc with Yang’s infrastructure in his southern region. My hope was that by keeping him off balance, the other two factions could regroup enough to make an effective counterstrike.
Remember that I had a large, relatively undisturbed empire with a strong infrastructure and a high population. I may have been out-teched, but I did have abundant resources and manpower. The Spartans started trading me their military technology in exchange for energy credits. The Gaians did the same with their teraforming and research technology. Because of my large population base, I could raise large amounts of cash in a fairly short time, so I was able to do this several times. The influx of cash and minerals helped the Spartans and the Gaians get back on their feet, and they were now holding their own against Yang. They didn’t have the numbers to effectively strike back, but they were keeping the Hive contained.
The parallels between my Believers in this game, and the United States in World War II were staggering. But I digress.
Anyway, while the Spartans and the Gaians were short on numbers, I wasn’t. I put together a task force of roughly 20 highly trained ground units (the best I had), made landfall on the southern coast of the central continent, and proceeded to trash everything in my path. I didn’t attempt to capture or occupy cities, because holding them would have been a logistical problem. I just royally messed up the furniture by destroying roads, farms and mines (especially mines!). This put several of Yang’s cities into a tailspin, so he quickly turned his attention to me. I quickly pulled my troops out, leaving him with a lot of scorched earth to repair.
Oh yeah, one other thing. Deidre ceded me four missiles with fungus payloads, which I used to bog down the ports along Yang’s southern coast. With the regional land a mess and his coastal ports clogged with fungus, it was very difficult for him to retaliate. (Thank you, Deirdre!)
This gave Santiago and Deirdre the break they needed. Santiago invaded along his north shore, and slowly started to steamroll Yang’s empire. Deidre, meanwhile, did a blitzkrieg across the western continent, ultimately forcing Yang off. All the while, I continued to provide energy credits to both of my allies, while constantly hammering the Hive’s southern bases with air and (conventional) missile strikes. Once Santiago captured the Uranium Flats, the Hive started to crumble. In the end, Yang was reduced to one or two sea bases in the Geothermal Shallows, where Deirdre and I had him boxed in with ships.
At this point the game declared a co-operative victory for the triple alliance of the Spartans, the Gaians, and the Believers. I then imagined Santiago, Deirdre and Mirriam in the council hall wearing sunglasses, smoking cigarettes, and toasting with big goblets of Centaurian wine. All hail the Sneaky Sisterhood!
It was one of the most unexpected and intriguing SMAC games I’ve every played.
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