Newbie PBEM wanted 4-1-2006

[Humphrey]

If you'd prefer 4 players mmontgomery can play instead of me, I'm fine with that.
If 5 players is OK I'd like Spartans.
btw, I've played a total of about 30 turns total in pbem games, I don't have very much experience.

[Lobo7922]

Do you realy like Spartans? i think they are hard if they dont find someone to fight very early in the game or if they dont have technological or ecnonomical backup from other faction, what its preety much the case in huge maps

[SebP]

Grandpa troll, my advice would be to play the peacekeepers, or maybe the gaians. especially the peacekeepers are the most "normal" faction in the game, that doesn't have any big advantages and no balancing disadvantages as most other factions. the others usually require a play style that very much fits their design (with partial exception of the gaians). another advantage in playing the PK, especially if you play your first game on transcend, would be that the drones don't kick in nearly as fast as with the other factions (usually the second citizens brings a base to riot an transcend level before any modifiers)

the gaians might be good too, they too are pretty much balanced. also, they can't choose the free market economy, (effects of which, before other choices in the SE and before faction modifiers, resemble to republic/democracy in civ1-civ3, so you get what it does, but the timing of when to use it and when to use planned economy instead may be a bit harder than choice between for example monarchy and republic in civ. since the gaians can't choose it anyways, but rely on other income sources, they may be simpler to play) otehr than that, they are pretty much standard.

if you are a builder, morgan may be good, too (however, in smac there's a lot of timing involved in rushbuying considering all the bugs=features and morgan does a lot of rushbuying.) . i wouldn't recommend university on transcend, it is drone madness

the other 3 factions (hive spartans, believers) are for warmongers. in short, think:
hive = [less commerce(or rather energy, in smac), more production] -> hordes of cheap units (in the most forward playstyle, anyways)
spartans [less production, elite troops] -> just that, elite troops
believers [slow tech, strong spying and attack bonus] -> very active playstyle

the hive may be the strongest here, but i have problems choosing the best of them for a learning experience. believers or maybe spartans i guess

[mmontgomery]

I think everyone has their favorite factions for various reasons. To balance SebP, I will give my opinions, which are based on my playstyle.

With my playstyle, I absolutely HATE playing Believers. Their tech disadvantage is crippling, in my opinion. Worst faction.

My favorite aspect of the Spartans is not so much the direct attack, but when you go to police state, give the Spartan initial police bonus, your police do double duty! This can really help keep down drone problems. But I still think the Spartans have a slight disadvantage on a large map, so I would not pick them.

Hive also has an early technology problem due to the commerce penalty, and tends to have drone problems with not much to offset them until you can get enough research to get either police state or recreation commons, so it is a bit hard to play. The key is to leverage the strengths, like the effeciency immunity.

Peacekeepers is OK, no big positives or negatives. The bonus talents are a big help with large bases, and allow you to grow large bases earlier than anyone. Fairly straightforward to play in my opinion.

Gaia will automatically capture the first native lifeform attacked, and has a 25% chance thereafter. Once you get green, that goes to 75% in theory. In practice, there are times that you never capture anything. Gaia is pretty easy to play, in my opinion.

Morgan with Freemarket/IA beeline and hurry builds can be very powerful, but very tricky, especially on transcend. Unless you have experience with this, I would not try it.

Saving the best for last, University is absolutely the easiest to play by far. You won't get into the probe disadvantage for quite some time, and it can be eliminated by a single secret project. Similarly, Virtual World SP can more than offset your drone problem, which does not kick in until a base gets size 4 anyway. Until then, just keep base size to 3. As to advantanges, University researches at amazing speed in the early game, more than double any other faction. More research = more techs = more options.

Anyway, that is my opinion, based on how I like to play. Your mileage will vary based on your own playstyle.

[mmontgomery]

Originally posted by Lobo7922
Looking at the post i have discovered something weird about switching production and deleting desing to acelerate the speed of building stuff, i consider this like cheating, are we going to allow this? i hope no

Perhaps the moderator can help with a list of allowed/disallowed activities. I agree with Lobo; I want to disallow any build queue / rushing / Stockpile energy exploits, among others.

The only technique I believe is in the spirit of the game is to build supply crawlers, upgrade them, and use them for secret projects or prototypes. And I would be fine with disallowing upgrading crawlers as well if you want.

[Chaunk]

So we have:

Grampa Troll: Gaians/Peacekeepers
Lobo7922: University
Humphrey: Spartans
mmontgomery: Hive
Chaunk: Morgan I guess, although I'm fine with believers too if you guys would prefer I play them.

I posted a link to some rules that I usually use to play by near the start of the thread. For convienience, I've listed them below too. There are certainly more comprehensive rulesets arround, but I feel that this covers the rules that are important.

CGN Tournament ruleset

Restrictions - general gameplay:
- A player may not restart a turn without good reason. The player should specify the reason in the game thread if he was not able to avoid reloading the turn. (Obviously, if a player has suffered some sort of crash during a turn, such a reload is unavoidable)

- A player is not permitted to establish contact with another faction prior to having met them in-game.

- If a player performs a probe team action other than to infiltrate against another player with whom (s)he is in a truce, treaty or pact, they must inform the probed player what it was they did and what they stole/sabotaged. They must also choose the 'declare vendetta/cancel pact' option when they perform the action.

- A player is not permitted to make more than one social engineering change per line, per turn. For instance, one is not permitted to start the turn in wealth, switch to power mid-turn for the extra disbanded minerals, and then switch back to wealth that same turn, getting the refund.

- A player is not permitted to use the 'demand withdrawal' feature against another player, leaving the AI the decision of whether to withdraw or not.

- A player may not accept a bribe from another player's AI during council sessions.

- A player may not perform multiple airdrops in a single turn with the same unit using the right-click menu.

- A player may not use the F4 screen when infiltrated to change an opponent's workers to specialists.

Contentious issues

- A player may not insert stockpile energy into the build queue after the production of a military unit. Due to a bug in the game, should you put stockpile energy into the queue, you will get the benefit of the extra energy on the same turn as production of your military unit.

- If a player declares vendetta upon another player, either directly or indirectly, they must not accept a pending diplomatic agreement between the two factions in the same turn.

- A player may not upgrade a particular type of unit using the design workshop, and then attack with that unit in the same turn.

- A player may not make air drops using the right click "air drop to" function, when it is not possible to do so with the "i" button, ie. after already having moved or made a drop.

- A player may not use build queue manipulation or other loopholes to hurry production at a cost that would be lower than directly hurrying the item that one intends to build.

- A player may not use build queue manipulation or other loopholes to build something you could not directly add to the build queue.

[Lobo7922]

Me gustan mucho estas reglas y pienso que ya estamos listos para jugar ¿que nos faltarÃa?
Una pregunta, ¿por que es necesario explicarle al otro jugador lo que hemos obtenido con la probe team? esa parte no la entiendo
Yo estoy listo, preparado y ansionso

[mmontgomery]

Chaunk, you missed the rule and Lobo and I were talking about.

- A player may not use build queue manipulation or other loopholes to hurry production at a cost that would be lower than directly hurrying the item that one intends to build.

- A player may not use build queue manipulation or other loopholes to build something you could not directly add to the build queue.


I think it is important to include these limitations, especially with Maniac's recent articles on Hurrying, since he suggests several things that I think are clearly exploiting programming loopholes and should be disallowed.

[Lobo7922]

hahahahahahaha im so anxious that i writed in spanish


i like this rules i think we are ready to play ¿are we missing something?
A last question, why is required explain to the other player what we have achieved whit our probe team? this rule i dont understand

im ready prepared and anxious

[Chaunk]

In SMAC PBEM there is a bug where if you probe someone, for any reason other than infiltration, the player doing the probing is asked if they want to declare vendetta instead of the player probed. Hence, the rule that you must declare vendetta upon yourself, and say to the person probed what you did. Obviously, if two players agree that they won't declare vendetta on each other - for example pact mates in sunspots - then probe away.

I've editted the rules to reflect mmontgomery's suggestions.

We still need Gramps to definatly choose his faction, and then Senethro to make the scenario before we can start.

We also need email adresses from all players. Beware of spam bots, so say your email adress in a non linked form. Mine is:

mj DOT blakemore AT gmail DOT com

[Lobo7922]

Ok, thanks for the explanation, think i understand now.

i also was sondering why everybody used to write the email that funny way

My email is: vladimir DOT vasquez AT gmail DOT com

So Gramps, hurry buddy

[Grandpa Troll]

I only have Alpha Centaurai

Do I need to go buy the X-Pansion?

I will take the Gaians then

Ok

where do I go for any patches?

(here??)

Let me know

Gramps

[Chaunk]

This is SMAC 4.0 (Which is the latest version). Install this, and then the winXP patch from here.

You may, if you have a P4 or AMD64 processor, also need to slightly modify the alphacentauri.ini file. Goto the SMACX FAQ and question 34 tells you how.

This game will be SMAC only, so you won't need to buy the expansion. I'd recommend that you do though, but only if you can find it at a reasonable price. I got mine when it first came out, but I think copies are going on ebay for $100 or more last I heard. It is getting quite hard to find. I seem to recall that the site of the lower canines had it to download, but last time I checked, their site was down so it may be hard to go there...

[Senethro]

Could I just get a statement of all the map settings in one post please, there are some contradictions that go on in the thread and I don't want to make a mistake.

I'm also suggesting that you do not play on a Huge map, you'll be lucky to ever meet each other. Large size would be better. If you don't play with AIs, standard would be fine also. I can space you so that you're all as far from each other as possible.

Suggested starting units: One size 3 city with rec comms/recycling tanks. 2 colony pods. 2 scouts.

Modifications: I perceive the Gaians/Spartans/hypothetical believers to be at a slight disadvantage.
Gaians: I'd like to give them a free mindworm.
Spartans: I'd like to bump the morale of their free rover to elite.
Believers: Free Probe team.

Personally, I think a free Biology Lab, Command Centre and Childrens Creche respectively at the size 3 base wouldn't go amiss, but I imagine there will be objections to that.

Don't forget to patch your game. If unpatched, be sure to see what new features the Hive gains in the patch.

Regarding lower canines, email me at
senethro at gmail

[Humphrey]

When you say 2 scouts for suggested starting units, for spartans I assume that is 1 scout + 1 rover?

I've not played non-expansion for ages, be nice to have no fungal towers for once!