Slowing Down SMAC

[Verrucosus]

Hello,

I've been attracted to the "Marathon" setting that was introduced to Civ4 with the last patch. Its effect is to greatly increase costs for all game items (techs, units (etc.) and development times (terraforming, border expansion). Movement and combat however are unaffected. This creates a much slower game with plenty of time to use units before they become obsolete. I have no idea how long it will last, but for the moment I really enjoy that setting.

It didn't take long for me to wonder whether this can be or even has been done in SMAC. Of course, I'm aware of the "tech stag" option included in the game, but that option only affects research and - in my games at least - allows you to build almost all the available infrastructure removing too much of the choice element from the game. I'd like to try a slow version of SMAC where both technology and production costs are inflated in the hope to see the tactical aspects of the game enhanced.

For a short moment, I thought this is just a question of changing cost values in the alpha.txt-file and even someone with no programming skills whatsoever (like me) can just try it. Then, caution set in and I decided to visit this to me somewhat scary place (it's a bit like one of Zakharov's secret labs where strange things can happen) and ask a few questions:

(1) Is it possible at all?
(2) How do I change unit costs across the board given SMAC's more sophisticated unit component system?
(3) Which values would need to be changed other than tech, building and unit costs?
(4) Are there any special features in SMAC (crawlers?) that would make "Marathon SMAC" something very different (and perhaps less desirable) from its Civ4 counterpart?
(5) Am I making a complete fool of myself, because this has already been done back in April 1999 and I just missed it?

That's all I can think of at the moment. Any advice (particularly an affirmative answer to question #5) will be much appreciated.

Verrucosus

[Darsnan]

Re: Slowing Down SMAC

Originally posted by Verrucosus
(1) Is it possible at all?

Yes.

Originally posted by Verrucosus
(2) How do I change unit costs across the board given SMAC's more sophisticated unit component system?

In the alpha(x).txt file there is a mineral cost associated with each production item. Simply multiply each of these items by a common numerator (i.e. 1.5, 2, 2.5, etc.) and substitute in the new number into each slot. For a guide on how to edit the alpha(x).txt file look here

Originally posted by Verrucosus
(3) Which values would need to be changed other than tech, building and unit costs?

see my reply above. Note that as I stated there is a mineral cost associated with each item, and since there are a significant amount of "items" in SMACX, then this would be a relatively tedious task.

Originally posted by Verrucosus
(4) Are there any special features in SMAC (crawlers?) that would make "Marathon SMAC" something very different (and perhaps less desirable) from its Civ4 counterpart?

You can inordinately increase the cost of crawlers to make them less of a game breaker, especially vs the AI.

Originally posted by Verrucosus
(5) Am I making a complete fool of myself, because this has already been done back in April 1999 and I just missed it?

I know that gwillybj has played around with increasing the cost of some SP's, especially the "Ascent to Transcendence". I've taken the opposite approach with some units, making them cheaper in order to induce the AI's to build them (example: submarines, which are a benefit to the AI's). Otherwise I don't recall anyone doing/ suggesting something of this nature.


D

[Senethro]

I'm not sure its possible to put chains on SMAC without it ceasing to be SMAC. The reason I love SMAC is the freedom and power given to the player. I've said this before, but its balanced high. Features like crawlers and boreholes mean incredible efficency of terrain usage giving awesome productivity.

If you slow down the tech then everyone will race to build energy parks and mineral parks. Huge mineral haulage will produce huge meatgrinders on faction borders. It will also exaggerate the difference between teh first and second person to get Air Power/MMI/Spaceflight.

Slower production will eventually be overcome with more crawlers.

Weakened/disabled crawlers will remove a lot of the variety of the game and eliminate a lot of factions from being competitive.

I think you're looking at a heavy redesign. Any ideas anyone?

[Verrucosus]

I've been quite overwhelmed by Darsnan's guide to the alpha.txt file. I'm certain it was celebrated when first released, but please allow me to add my thanks at this late stage.

Regarding unit components: If the cost formula in the datalinks is correct (maybe a naive assumption), the cost values are not additive. I'm afraid that, if I increase all values by some factor, the actual unit cost might increase by more than that factor. Could it be sufficient to change either the weapons/special items cost only or both the armor and movement costs?

Crawlers: I had a feeling that these might be a unique SMAC feature that can counter any attempt to slow down the game. Senethro is quite right. In SMAC, increased production and research costs simply mean that you need more crawlers. Inordinately increasing their cost, as Darsnan suggested, would probably draw a similar response, and effectively removing them would take away a characteristic SMAC feature. The game would still be "balanced high" and quite different from Civilization because of other powerful options that become available so early, but it wouldn't be quite the same.

Anyway, thank you for your helpful comments. Maybe my idea is a bit more than I can chew, so perhaps I should play a few more Marathon games in Civ4 first to see if the attraction of that setting isn't just temporary.

[gwillybj]

In alpha.txt and alphax.txt look at this line under #RULES:
10, ; Minerals cost multiplier

If you change that 10 to 11, ALL production will cost 110% of normal, before taking into account any factional or SE adjustments. If you change it to 12, the base will be 120% of normal, and so on.
Be careful! You might well be very unhappy with the results. Of course, you can always go in and change it back.

Then look at the next line:
100, ; Technology discovery rate as a percentage of standard

If you decrease the 100, you slow down the research rate. Do that in addition to using techstag in order to establish a research rate that will create a nice leisurely epic game.

I always use 50% research rate along with techstag, but I've not found it necessary to change the mineral costs multiplier.

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by gwillybj
In alpha.txt and alphax.txt look at this line under #RULES:
10, ; Minerals cost multiplier

You still Da Man gwillybj!


D

[Maniac]

Originally posted by gwillybj
In alpha.txt and alphax.txt look at this line under #RULES:
10, ; Minerals cost multiplier

If you change that 10 to 11, ALL production will cost 110% of normal, before taking into account any factional or SE adjustments. If you change it to 12, the base will be 120% of normal, and so on.

The effect of factional and SE adjustments can sometimes be annoying though. The problem is that if you change the standard mineral rows to 11, the effect of the Industry factor will also increase to 1,1 per value. And if the result of this is a # of minerals per row between two whole numbers, the result is rounded up. To clarify, having -1 SE Industry under a "11 minerals per row" system results in 12,1 minerals per row. This is then rounded up to 13. This can mess up your whole social engineering system and wreck the balance completely.

So if you want to use this mineral cost multiplier, I'd suggest making a big jump to 20 minerals per row immediately to avoid any side problems.

[Verrucosus]

Thank you so much! I will try this as soon as my current game is finished.

I intend to make a big jump. Civ4's Marathon setting doubles unit costs while tripling city growth, tech and building cost. This should be possible in SMAC by raising each individual facility's cost by 50 %, doubling the mineral cost multiplier, tripling the nutrient cost multiplier and reducing the research rate to 33 %.

For a start, though, I'll take Maniac's advice and just double all costs to see how it feels to play "Slow SMAC". Unless I'm overlooking something, the only values I'll have to change individually would be the terraforming times, but there are not too many of those. There is still the crawler issue, but I will force myself not to use them en masse.

gwillybj, if I understand your setup correctly, you have effectively quadrupled science costs without touching production cost. Doesn't this create the "problem" that - at least in terms of base facilities and projects - you don't really have to choose what to build because you have enough time to build just everything? I sometimes felt that way even with regular tech stag (which is still twice as fast as your research setting).

[Zoetrope]

In SP now, there's always time to build every facility.

A slow game in MP, particularly if air power were specially set back a long time, would resemble a WW1 war game: lots of units battling for territory in trench warfare, large fleets battling for supremacy at sea.

On my desktop at least, SMAC would indeed be slow (because of the many units' animation), but certainly epic.

[Verrucosus]

Regarding Zoetrope's comments, I have to say that my experience is limited to single player games where, without tech stag or excessive use of crawlers, I'm unable to build every facility in every base. Maybe I need to play more efficiently, but I like it when I have to make choices.

In an attempt to get an idea of what "slow SMAC" might be like, I have changed the alpha.txt file doubling nutrient, mineral and tech costs as well as terraforming times and started a Peacekeeper game. To keep things as "normal" as possible, I selected the Map of Planet on Librarian level with standard rules.

I've played up to MY 2250. I have to say that the game plays out even more slowly than I had expected.

Planetfall was made on the west coast of the central continent. Early expansion was significantly slowed by the loss of the first colony pod to mindworms. Luckily - in that respect - I was alone on the continent. Late in the 22nd century I met Morgan who had crossed from the Monsoon Jungle by a land bridge (probably created by an earthquake). This gave me contacts to Zakharov, Santiago and Yang and triggered the first big round of tech trading.

At this point, I only have four reasonably developed bases in the north of my continent. Two more (escorted!) colony pods were lost in the fungus en route to Garland Crater. Tech wise, I'm somewhere in the middle between levels 2 and 3. (I have Centauri Empathy, but still lack Ethical Calculus.) In the charts, Zak is in the lead, followed closely by Deidre, Morgan, Santiago and myself. Miriam follows with some distance and Yang is dead last. (The poor fellow was crushed by Santiago in the 22nd century and escaped to the southern peninsula of the eastern continent.)

There are a few observations I'd like to make:

- The fact that it takes a relatively long time to get that first colony pod out means that by the time the early expansion is underway, mindworms are stronger than we are used to during the corresponding stage in a regular game. (I could still kick myself for sending that first pod unguarded, but the two that were lost later (during perihelion) were escorted.)

- The natural spreading of forests makes them more valuable when the speed of man-made terraforming is slowed down.

- With increased tech costs, the energy demanded for techs in diplomatic negotiations are much too low.

- I probably should have thought of this before, but, given the slower population growth of bases, pop-booming (which I couldn't do so far without Democracy and creches) might be too strong an option with this setting. (In my game, it's even worse because of the PK talent bonus.)

- With the increased production costs, Unity pods completing a base facility are a huge bonus (well, unless you pop them with 90 % of the production completed, but that's not a new aspect).

- The tactical aspect, so far, has not been as strong as I had expected. That is partly because my isolated start has tempted be to focus more on infrastructure than I would have with closer opponents. Also, with every unit and facility taking so long to produce, I feel reluctant to go too far beyond my free support.

So far, I'm enjoying myself, but I can tell this kind of game is not everyone's cup of tea.

[Zoetrope]

To me a slow game would be slow tech, but regular (or even increased) production, so that competition for space would become intense at low tech levels.

Barring that, I would settle for a long delay in (or even abolition of) air power, missiles, drop technology and satellites. I'd like land and sea units to be the military focus for most (or all) of the game.

OTOH a SMAC in which each turn is very slow (because of large numbers of stacked units) is not fun. One big omission from the design is integration of units into armies and fleets.

I like to micromanage, but I wouldn't if the game rewarded high level tactical deployment. For example, I'd often like to stack about 8 formers together with a bunch of military units and probe teams. The pain is that (a) I have to individually select units in the stack to give orders; (b) when I need to move the stack, I have to move each unit separately.

What should happen is that a terraform order should apply to all formers in the stack, military readiness commands should apply to all military units in the stack, and movement commands should apply to the whole stack which will move at the speed of the slowest unit in it.

Incidentally, I told Brian Reynolds this (as he was very responsive when AC was being designed), but it seems he didn't quite get it, as his stack commands treat stacked units separately. Consequently, when we instruct a whole stack to move, we have to wait while each of its units crosses the screen in turn.

Entering fungus or rocky terrain often slows single units, but with a stack the game should simulate the benefit of numbers of units working together and make the chance of entering the square significantly greater than that of every single unit, in order to encourage stacking.

Then the game will definitely run much faster. (TBSes really need this!)

[stuntman19]

Well...crawlers are awesome, but they really do ruin the SP game once one becomes a decent player. The AI just doesn't know how to use them, so once the player gets to Ind Auto the game is really over.

I would say just play double blind research, tech stag, no crawlers allowed and no offensive use of probes. I have had a few better and longer lasting games with even some ODP battles by doing this.

Another thing to do is let the AI have some or all of the Sec Projects by just not building any yourself.

[Zoetrope]

I've experienced a series of awesome battles against an AI Morgan that used probe teams aggressively to buy back conquered bases (and my units).

In general, the AI probes quite aggressively. Morgan indicates that any AI that can afford to steal bases, will.

So it's only fair that we do the same.

If it's felt that we manage our money much better, then maybe give the AI 20% interest or something equally frightening.

I'm assuming that the AI has saving habits (e.g. for probe teams and for the economic win). Does the AI spend ASAP as we often do?

Random events must hurt the AI. Market crashes (if going for a big spend), loss of farms, forests, satellites, even the asteroid, I can scramble to recover from. But how quickly can the AI recover from such events? So do Darsnan et alia turn random events off for their challenge games?

As for crawlers, can we delete from the constructible units? That would yield a more traditional Civ-like game.

[Verrucosus]

Zoetrope, slow tech with regular production ... isn't that what the tech stag option gives you or were you thinking of something more dramatic?

I've finally finished my "slow SMAC" game and I am a little less enthusiastic about it by now.

Both Yang and Deidre were eliminated in the late 2200s and I was left with the rare situation of five almost equally strong powers. Miriam had a serious tech problem at first, but was helped by establishing a lot of sea bases around Deianira. I fought one low-tech war against Morgan with both of us using gatling weapons. I found myself taking more care than usual to preserve my troops because they were so expensive to replace. In the end, I took Morgan's core bases in the Monsoon Jungle, pushing him more or less out of the game. Even after that war, I didn't have a large lead, because Santiago was in control of the L-shaped continent and expanding rapidly.

Because of blind research, Industrial Automation arrived rather late, but when it did the feel of the game changed dramatically. Interestingly, this was less because of crawlers than hab complexes. Once I had built or bought them in almost all bases, I did a short pop-boom and was leagues ahead of the rest. It would take them ages to catch me by conventional growth. At that point, the game became unbalanced, so I took the short route to an economic victory.

The main lesson is probably that some SMAC features (notably crawlers and pop-booming) are strong enough to overcome an attempt to slow down the game by simply increasing production and tech costs. If "Epic" or "Marathon" SMAC is possible at all, it requires more subtle changes than those that I have made in my little experiment (which was still fun).

Anyway, thanks for your friendly advice. I have taken the opportunity to look around on this forum. The Civ4-AC project is very impressive and, although I have not enough time or talent to contribute, I wish you all the best.

[gwillybj]

Verrucosus wants to know...
gwillybj, if I understand your setup correctly, you have effectively quadrupled science costs without touching production cost. Doesn't this create the "problem" that - at least in terms of base facilities and projects - you don't really have to choose what to build because you have enough time to build just everything? I sometimes felt that way even with regular tech stag (which is still twice as fast as your research setting).

I have no complaints about how the game plays out.
With the slowed progress you have to be a lot more in tune with your citizens - they seem to me to get restive more frequently (maybe it's an illusion?).
Your diplomacy needs careful attention, too, because there seems to be more likelihood that even your closest most trusted ally gets antsy over the tiniest irritation.
With the slowed progress due to your increased production costs, I suspect you will need to pay even more attention to such things.
I, myself, find the whole thing far more enjoyable slowed down in ways like these, since I have time to try out various adjustments.