SMAC Down: 2250

[Tokamak]

:edit:

The third version has been put out. if you're about to start a new game, go ahead and download the new zip archive.



It's done.

As fun as it's all been, I'm sure glad to be finished.

Actually, that's not quite true. This is very much a 'beta' release, and I'm sure there will be plenty of bugs to be squashed.

Ahh.... I'm just going to go out, enjoy my birthday, and not even THINK about Alpha Centauri for awhile

[Tokamak]

Here's the non-X version. It has some pretty annoying bugs, which are discussed in the readme. I'll squash them later. I'm not going to do anymore work on this project today. Time to relax...

[Avenoct]

Congrats Toka, on your birthday and your incredibly fast release of the beta.2 version!

-Smack (who just rewrote the techtree, ouch!)

[JustinSane]

This scenario far surpasses the original. You've clearly put a huge amount of time and effort into it. It's also insanely difficult. I've already lost three times I'm slowly getting the idea that rushing a faction with a +2 defensive morale bonus with native life forms might not be the best idea in the world.. Especially since I've been going with a straight doc: mobility-doc: flexibility beeline, saving even centuari ecology for later. This means no shot at the empath guild. It's gonna be fun trying to find a way to survive this one..

[mark13]

Dammit - and I thought I was doing well having transcended in the first one! If anyone's interested, I've attached the file - 2212 transcendence in the end.

I'll have to have a crack at this one at some undetermined point in the future - promises to be a lot tougher....

Oh - and happy birthday!

[Flo]

Congratulations on your birthday and this very interesting scenario.

Since its a beta, a bug repoort: 2 minor bugs in the beginning. The starting year is 2101 (tiny worms), the Uni does not receive its extra tech.

[Tokamak]

HUGE MAJOR BUGFIX!

Turns out that in my sleep-deprived, zombie-like state, I accidentaly uploaded the non-X version twice! D'oh! I stronglt reccommend you download the new file. The game will run MUCH better now.

I also fixed some bugs. The title of the scenario has been changed to SMAC Down: 2251 to indicate the next version.

The fixed non-X version is coming soon...

[Tokamak]

Hey all!

I just finished my first real playtest of SMAC Down. While I haven't played all the way through, I got far enough to identitfy some issues.

It was my intent to make just barely possible for the player to sange one of the early-game projects, if he made it a priority. This seemes both fair and reasonable. However, this simply wasn't the case. Despite my best efforts, I watched helplessly as the computer grabbed every project from the Human Genome Project all the way to the planetary Energy Grids.

To make things a little more level, I added a mineral resource to University Base's square, and switched out a few nutrient resources with minerals. This is a fairly substantial change, and I'm a little concerned that it may be too much. However, I had fun playing it, so it can't be all bad.

It is now just within the realm of possiblilty for the player to get the Virtual World. If two or more bases pool their resources (via crawlers) from the moment IndAuto comes out, you might make it.

If you want a stronger chance, send a trio of probe teams into Yang's territory and try to sabotage a project. The setback should give you a clean shot at the Virtual World. If you can get three probes deep within his territory, the odds of success are actually quite high. This is a 60 mineral investment, so it's best to build these probes before IndAuto comes out (otherwise, they'd be better spent on 2 crawlers).

Some general tips:

Be efficient! Don't waste anything! Make it a habit to buy the tail end of most of your builds. Two ec's per mineral is a great deal.

Think several turns ahead on your builds. Don't you just hate when you end up just one mineral short of finishing something in one turn? You could buy that last mineral, but it would cost you 8 ecs! It's even worse when you are two or three short. That's 16 to 32 ecs! But if you don't buy those last few minerals, most of the 20+ minerals your base will produce next turn will be wasted overkill. What if you had purchased those minerals last turn, when they only cost 2-3 ecs each?

Invest "diagonally." Once you are happy with your expansion ("horizontal" investment), and are ready to start building infrastructure ("going vertical," as I call it), dont'! Instead, crank out enough crawlers that your base is producing one a turn. Send these extra crawlers over to the neighbooring base. Use the "Crawler Crawl" to elimnate lost harvesting oppurtunites while the cralwers are in transit. Once the neighboor can make a cralwer a turn on its own (a status that I refer to as "self-igniting"), have it help its neighboor out, and so on! Instead of each base investing in itself, it is investing in other bases' ability to invest in themselves, hence the term "diagonal investment."

The best time to get your crawler suites out is before Environmental Econmics. After that, you really want to be building TReefarms so that you can pop-boom. Wouldn't it be great if ALL of your bases had the ability to pop out a treefarm within two turns, as soon as they become available? If you invest diagonally, they can!

This works because every mineral you spend in the early game is being used to generate more minerals. The cumulative effect of this, especially in the early game, is staggering. More than ever, I think that Planned is the way to go for the, all the way up to EnvEco (possibly sooner, if you get the Planetary E-Grid).

I'd go on, talking about some of the finer manipulations of the building queue, but I think you get the idea. You start out smaller than the bad guys, so you can't afford any waste.

Instead of playing 50 turns in one night, play 10, but try to do every thing perfectly. For me, the fun isn't in winning the game, but in playing my best.

Anyways, the newest version is now up (re-named 2252). The much-improved non-X version should be up either tonight or sometime tomorrow.

Man, I hate how uploading a new version resets the download counter to zero! For some reson, that bothers me. That's pretty silly of me, I guess

[JustinSane]

I've not tried the new, mineral-enhanced version yet, but I have got a pretty decent game going in the smax version, having failed in my first three tries all at the smac release. I used the Planet Cult each time, and have attempted to rush the Spartans using a combination of gun foils and captured IOD's. This time though, I captured two amazingly engineered mindworms. I won't give away exactly what they are capable of, as I'm sure that Tokamak wants everyone to be surprised. Suffice it to say that they are incredibly powerful in a worm rush. I've conquered all Spartan Sea bases in the area, and made nice inroads on their starting island, having captured a base and eliminated all but two of the enemy's. There is still a strong spartan land force though, it's just a bit mis-placed at the moment. I was fortunate enough to capture the guild in admiralty base and build the Neural Amp, but everything else has gone to the bad guys in the way of SP's. Yang is huge and won the election santiago called after building the guild, but he hasn't bothered me too much yet. Miriam is starting to attack, but it's still a trickle and I've been able to handle it pretty easily by ambushing her from the fungus with captured worms. The year is somewhere around 2300; I forgot to check when I exited. Looking good, as long as yang doesn't steam roll me

[Tokamak]

Eeeep! I didn't think those things were capturable. Oh, well. I hope you took substantial causalties herding those things

Has anyone seen the name "Kyo-kami-hei" turn up yet?

[Avenoct]

Toka, I'm consistently amazed at your prolific game postings! Wow, I've only taken a wee glance at the scenario this time around, and almost needless to say, got my behind kicked. Now get over there and do some betatesting for me!

-Smack

[Tokamak]

"While I search for a new quote, I'll name a landmark for you in the new game Aldebaran if you can figure this out. 1/5th the earth's freshwater is in the Great Lakes, 1/5 in the Amazon, 1/5 in random (atmospheric, underground, etc.) sources, 1/5 in all the other lakes and streams, except, Where is the final 1/5th?"

Hmmm... is locked away as glacial ice? Or does that count as "random sources?"

[JustinSane]

Tokamak: Actually, I think that the super-worms don't attack normal mindworms, even if human controlled. So actually, I used my first worm to troll the fungus and didn't lose any units collecting their artificially enhanced bretheren.
Smack: I know exactly which lake it is, but I forgot the name. It's in Russia, and it's ridiculously deep and vast. I believe the name is something close to "Bakul", but as I said, I can't remember. Close enough?

[mark13]

Heh - got to 2270, and decided it might be a good idea to post a log.

SMACdown 2252 - playing on librarian level, as UoP, everything else default:

The story so far is that, quite simply, I ICSed it from the start in a fairly big way, and in 2270, have 8 bases. Thanks to the fairly luscious terrain, I managed to throw up a few bases in fairly short order.

Technologically, I reached IndAuto in 2265 (running planned) but thanks to my fairly rudimentary infrastructural development, am struggling to a) get forests down, and b) build crawlers to work them. The +2 Industry of Planned/Wealth certainly helps, but my economy isn't what it should be at this stage. Have also built a probe to explore (clean & quick)

2270 - Biogenetics - no decent tech option take Applied Physics (hey - if I'm gonna get half a dozen recon rovers coming my way, I want to be able to attack them with something!)
2271 - Meet Miriam with probe - she offers peace (?!) I refuse - she offers 50 credits for peace (WTF?) - not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I accept
I infiltrate anyway - interesting. She has 11 bases (compared to my 8) not to mention a whole horde of tech I don't.
Planning to switch to Market at some point - possibly after my SP completes.
2272 - Miriam one turn from HGP - I'll live with myself should I miss it
Hive one turn from WP - I'm 2 turns from it and will rush next turn
Believers build HGP
2274 - Weather Paradigm builds at University Base
Hive builds ME and CN in same turn
2275 - Switch to Market - tech now every 3
2276 - Applied Physics, take Social Psych (heading for Centauri Empathy)
2278 - Synth armor prototyped
Social Psych - take SotHB
2280 - Koppernigk Observatory founded in (almost) unchartered territory - worms creating havoc, still one turn from trance
2281 - SotHB no Centauri Empathy take EthCalc
2283 - Base founded toward the Daphne River
2284 - EthCalc, take CentEmp
Base founded on nut special four squares southwest of monolith
2285 - Centauri Empathy take Gene Splicing - now headed for restrictions
Commoderecker and Justin'sBane sighted two squares from Southeasternmost base

Dammit! Terranx crash when I decided to check the Believers' F7 screen - just praying I had autosave on....phew! I'd remembered to activate it
Mental note to self (and anyone else who might be playing) - do not touch the Believers' F7 screen - prolly thanks to the custom units that it crashed....oh well. On with the game:

2286 - Handed IndAuto to Miriam to keep her pacified. It'll be a small price to pay in the long run....
2287 - Empath Guild completes (two SPs!!!!! Woohoo!! ) Wish me luck
Hmm. Dee traded two techs (I presume I'm not allowed Adiabatic Chambers), namely Doc: Mobility and Doc: Loyalty but won't sign a treaty (are we sure this is right?)
Lal declares Vendetta. Some alliance.
Morgan gifts me Adiabatic Chambers. Bang goes that - not going to build clean though.
2289 - Gene Splicing. Wouldn't have minded going for HEC - but it doesn't come up, and I head further down the restriction path.

Hmmm. That was hard work - time for a report, methinks:

13 bases
25 pop
16 techs (Coalition has 20)
Hive has CN & ME
Believers have HGP
University have WP & EG

Running Frontier/FM/Wealth at 50/0/50
Income +61/yr
Tech every 5 turns (next in 4, EcoEng)
Vendettas with Yang, Santi, Lal
Truce with Dee
Treaty with Miriam
Pact with Morgan

Security: (active/prod/lost)
Scout Infantry (1-1-1) - 4/0/0
Trance Scout Infantry (1-1t-1) - 7/1/0
Synth Garrison (1-2-1) - 1/0/0
Formers - 11/2/2
Colony Pod - 1/1/0
Probe Team - 2/0/0
Supply Crawler - 16/8/0

Summary of first 40 years:

Satisfactory. Was able to skimp slightly on defense early on, with the relatively sparse native life - whilst the numerous nut bonuses made expansion a brisk process. Managed to nab the WP as well as the EG, which is certainly a boost - the focus will now be on continuing the expansion in a more controlled and less frenzied manner, whilst prepping the main bases for a pop boom.

Diplomatically, I have some concerns - namely Lal and Dee. IIRC, this was meant to be an alliance - still, you play with the cards you're dealt, and it seems the chips have fallen in a rather unfortunate manner. So, the focus will be on keeping the peace with Miriam, whilst sharing tech with Morgan.

[Tokamak]

Yeah, for some reason, some of the Allies aren't behaving well this time around. I'll patch it up next time I get a new release out.

Also, Yang keeps wasting all his energy attacking the Fukai. It's really annoying. He has a 50+ unit army, all marching on Lake Sheol. I thought that the AI would avoid the Fukai (they normally try to dodge fungus), but it seems to sense the denizens there and decides it wants blood.

Any suggestions on fixing this?