Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

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Even in SMAX they're not as good as ground bases, although Sven comes with a fucking ridiculous set of naval bonuses and since he's the starting naval faction he will simply expand unopposed and anyone who wants to fuck with him has to deal with the best fucking navy in the game which is part of what makes him such an overpowered shit unless he starts in some landlocked water-mass. SMAX really isn't as good as the base game. They dumped shitty aliens and shit all over the glorious core game and added some stupidly imba factions. I hear SMAX is solid enough if you just play it with the original factions but the new lore is still cancer compared to the glorious original and cloudbase academy is OP as as shit.

In the original naval bases do have it rougher. On the upside you can explore hard over the oceans if you're quick about it, but on the downside they're not very good bases and too many bases can fuck with your bureaucracy base limit and start earning you superdrones which get pretty annoying. I guess if you're on the supply crawler train (I try to play without those, since they make the game way too easy and are really degenerate when used right) you can always tool 100% specialist bases out of superdrones though.

As Yang you have no penalties from the number of cities, so go wild with them. And orbital installations built 60+ of each will win the lategame.

They're better in my experience. Plop a couple of crawler friendly boreholes and you get cities that straight up beat monsoon tiles. Freshwater start or bloody Sven is just broken. You're also forgetting how problematic the new native units end up for a early to mid game sea colony.

Very much so, although Aki Zeta a cute.

There's really nothing quite like the early game armored crawler rush.

How did she learn to make them? Threaten, cajole, steal or rob? Pick one, because she cannot do research for shit.

Talent get out of my way

You do. Yang is only immune to efficiency penalties on social engineering choices. He still eats normal efficiency penalties. However since your economy is total shit anyway and you're guaranteed to run a Police State (most likely with Ascetic Virtues giving you 3 police rating and amazing drone suppression), you will probably never notice the usual income problems and bureaucracy drones for having a massive empire.

Also I was kinda looking for an economic victory with Morganites.

Sven also gets bonus minerals from ocean tiles making him way the fuck stronger than a normal naval faction.

Crawlers are so abusable it's not even funny.

Are you on fucking drugs? Gaians are actually really good at research. With their efficiency rating they can and should tool their economy into a high research output. Even if you do something like Democracy/Planned/Knowledge you still have 3 efficiency and 2 research allowing you to dedicate most of your income to research and crank out very good tech. And if you have at least 4 efficiency you can just pour your 100% of your economy into research without any penalty. And if their empire is large Gaians get very strong income because inefficiency and bureaucracy drones aren't issues when you can swing around a 7 effic rating by going Dem/Green/Knowledge for instance. Gaians become much more powerful with large empires where that monster efficiency rating starts carrying weight.

Are you confusing Gaians for SMAX's Cha-Dawn?

I never built any. what exactly do they do?

You build one, plop it on a tile and pick what resource it will send back to it's city. So, each one would bring ~7 minerals per turn while costing maybe 1 in upkeep. You can also armor them and make some fairly effective early to mid game bunkers/area denials.

The lord provides.

Are you?

Also that moral, those marines, them early sea start…

They're like an extra worker that you make with production. Unit that works a tile that isn't otherwise worked, brings back one out of nutrients/minerals/energy output of the tile to its home city. Great booming potential especially once Clean Reactors come around.

Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit, right?

I don't usually bother with economic victory, but I would imagine it is pretty easy to do with gaians since they are made of money. Each time one of your units moves through fungus there is a change to spawn mind worms. Keep moving your units around in fungus as gains or cha dawn to encourage mind worms or isle of the deep to show up and you can catch them or kill them for money. It doesn't take long to make a ton of cash and get a big army. I always have a mountain of cash by doing that.

And on scant possibility that you are the original drawfag, she has green eyes, not blue.

Like so?

Actually crawlers don't have any upkeep or support costs (it's like a free clean reactor). Aside from crawling tiles like crazy, you can also cover your territory in an endless supply crawler defense grid with high defense armors to frustrate enemies since crawlers are cheap and don't cost support like that. You can also work all your tiles with crawlers and make your base 100% specialist (normally impossible because it would starve) which also allows you to ignore drones (because 100% specialist doesn't leave anyone to become a drone) and avoid riots. Also you can work distant tiles with crawlers homed to your HQ to avoid inefficiency penalties. Crawlers are ridiculously abusable.

Is that a hippie joke or are you actually serious? Because Gaians are good at going 100% research and just teching hard.

Yeah Sven is OP. Still, you can rush foils and go naval with any faction, but you wont get his ocean minerals.

I wouldn't be worried about the ecodamage from bonus minerals. Ecodamage can be controlled so many ways it's not even funny. For starters just planting forests reduces ecodamage. Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests also dramatically reduce a base's ecodamage. Aside from that a high planet rating increases your ecodamage threshold and controlled fungal blooms where you reduce ecodamage afterwards lets you raise your ecodamage caps.

If you can't tell the difference, Yang can't go negative on his efficiency rating from picking social engineering options (ie. planned and police state won't hurt him). That doesn't mean the inefficiency mechanics for income loss and bureaucracy drones for a large empire won't apply to him though. They do. But Yangs playstyle tends to naturally mitigate these problems.

Worm popping is highly profitable yes. It's also one of the reasons to intentionally trigger a fungal bloom with eco damage. Anyone can pop off worms though and a high planet rating decreases your odds of finding worms in the wild.

Like a heart attack. Scroll up nigga

I can live without minerals but those free naval yards and marines are something else.

Much better.

I was addressing Believers, not Gaians. Don't try to weasel out of your retardation.

My bad, I thought it was about Gaians from the start. Anyway, Believers can actually still tech pretty well by leaning on their monster support rating to crank out a solid swarm of formers to develop base tiles ridiculously fast while running, say Democracy, Free Market, and Wealth for the high income (which can be allocated to more research). Use pop booms to grow your bases and you can have very explosive base development as Miriam to put you ahead which lets you make up the shortfall in tech output.

Otherwise yes, they steal or trade for techs.

What's the latest unofficial patch?

You enjoy being raped by mindworms, don't you?

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Tall Miri isn't really a thing but she does excel as a hybrid.

Not enough eco damage early game to really hurt you. At worst you'll lose some formers and gain some pearlcreds.

Ecodamage can be handled so many ways (#1: just plant forests), and mind worms are practically free money once you pack a few dudes with Empath Song.

You can go tall too. No one ever does it since she's practically tailor-made for beating the shit out of people but Miriam has a surprisingly strong builder game thanks to her crazy support rating coupled with the ability to run free market + wealth. If it weren't for her research penalties she would be a monster builder overall.

Where could one obtain the linux version of this game?

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri [x86] [Native] [ENG]
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:48FDC06CF4FA471C14A2046E60069CBB1C5592E4&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fbt.t-ru.org%2Fann%3Fmagnet

Neat, thanks.

It's funnier when the planet gets mad at you for using nerve gas pods, which literally cannot hurt native lifeforms. I once decided to go nerve gas crazy until I got destroyed by mind worms.

Well shit, the game crashes after naming the first city. Time to try the windows version in wine.

Remember when they tried to recreate Alpha Centauri and called it Civilization Beyond Earth?

Remember how utterly they failed?

I see. I'll try next game

Windows version has the fanpatches anyway, including some much-needed bugfixes and (in the case of kyrub's vanilla patch) AI improvements.

They weren't trying to recreate Alpha Centauri. It was pretty terrible though, but I don't think anyone was expecting anything out of that one.

It was just Civilization: Kill Whitey.

Firaxis is now an SJW faggot nigger feminist company now.

If still wanna have it native -

Those links from thread on Rutracker, about same error

icculus.org/~msphil/loki/x86/loki_patch
swanson.ukfsn.org/loki/loki_compat_libs-1.5.tar.bz2
web.archive.org/web/20081005023935/http://lokifiles.tuxgames.com/updates/smac/

and instruction (roughly translated)
1. Download and install patch '''smac-6.0b-x86.run''' ''(fresh links all above)''2. In '''xorg.conf''' add lines in the end:Section "Extensions"Option "Composite" "Disable"EndSection3. Disable (turn off) Compize-s and such4. Download file '''loki_compat_libs-1.3.tar.bz2''' and extract it in game directory 5. Start Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri by command LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/games/smac/Loki_Compat/ /usr/local/games/smac/Loki_Compat/ld-linux.so.2 /usr/local/games/smac/smac.dynamic6. Start Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire by commandLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/games/smac/Loki_Compat/ /usr/local/games/smac/Loki_Compat/ld-linux.so.2 /usr/local/games/smac/smacx.dynamic
Remember to adjust path to yours, those are default

And if you are installing under AMD64, you need package (?) linux32 and go like this, as example
$linux32 sh setup.sh
and everything like that

and forgot link
rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=230822

Meh, I just got the gog version and ran it in wine. Music is buggy, but otherwise it works just fine.

Also, is the expansion like a separate game or something?

Uses a separate .exe.

There are three exes.

terran.exe, which starts the Classic game.
terranx.exe, which starts Alien Crossfire.
axstart.exe, which starts a menu letting you pick either one.

If you haven't played Alpha Centauri before, I'd strongly recommend you play it on Classic mode first since Alien Crossfire really ruins a lot of the science fiction (and balance) of the setting. The original is legitimately good science fiction that compares with the classics while the xpac turns it into some pulp shit.

In Alien Crossfire, that gets fucked over by Dissociative Wave.

I had to resort to using a AI patch mod from Kyrub, I believe? Since whenever I discovered Air Power, it would get far too one-sided for me. Lots more anti-air defenses for the enemy from that point onwards, a bigger threat as well.

I like putting up custom sized worlds, like 90x120 or 100x120 or so, put difficulty on maximum, intense rivalry, slowed research, only Total War victory allowed.

Sounds like kyrub's AI patch alright. Making enemies mass up on anti-air is one of many things that patch does to increase the challenge.

never used that

I always see people complain about it, I understand how the aliens are dumb but if you just play with only the base leaders it shouldn't matter if they are there just as if you were playing the base game. Did the significantly change the descriptions of stuff and the quotes and shit in the expansion? Is whatever the expansion adds other then the leaders fluff breaking ?

Changes to the original units, secret projects, etc. ruins the balance from what I hear

Yes. Alpha Centauri has lots of techs, wonders, facilities, etc. with their own quotes and secret project videos, plus the interludes with planet. That's how the setting is sold, and it's pretty sweet. But Alien Crossfire adds retarded little space aliens and the most bullshit half-baked sci-fi tech ("resonance fields!11"), buildings, projects, etc. with all these inane faction quotes all over it. The only faction from Alien Crossfire that looks like it could fit in with the original 7 was the Free Drones. Data Angels wouldn't be so bad if their MO wasn't "lol information is just ones and zeros, the important part is thrill-seeking and acting cool."

Going from Alpha Centauri to Alien Crossfire is like going from Frank Herbert's Dune to Brian Herbert's Dune. You are moving from something that stands up with the classics of science fiction to pulp trash pretending it's more of the same.

It's better to play Alpha Centauri (Classic) first so you can experience the original game and move on to Alien Crossfire once you feel a need for extra content. If you start on Alien Crossfire you're probably going to write-off all the writing as dumb shit and that disinclination can stick with you even if you go back to the classic.

These new factions wouldn't be that bad if they sprung only after an original one gets eliminated. It makes no sense to have them right from the moment of planetfall, and them being OP would be somewhat countered by lagged start.

I remember Pandora: First Contact. While not utter shit, it was far less engrossing than SMAC or SMAX. On the positive side it had a hex based map and more slick looking UI, and that's it.

I admit that Pandora screenshot looks uninspiring.

At least you can tell who most of the factions are.
Pandora does have a few interesting ideas of its own that don't really amount to much, like the randomized tech tree or the resources you can stockpile or mine in one city and use in another. Still feels like alpha centauris little brother though.

Proofs or you're talking outta your ass.

I can't seem to stop playing Santiago.. There doesn't really seem like any other choice as your bound to get at least ONE warmonger asshole YANG in your game who desperately needs destroying. I also seem to have usually have best science as Santiago for some reason.

Huh. Santiago is usually one of the least popular factions for a long game because she has an industry penalty and can't even run wealth, which makes her builder game weak and puts her at serious risk of falling behind as the game advances.

What happens when you play other factions?

It's the one (of the few) 4x game(s) that handled mining (and specialized bases in general) well.

Roverrush

And that's countered by preemptive cruise missiles and cheap infantry stuck behind a Aerospace Complex :^)

Reading comprehension is not your strong suit, is it?

In other words you're entering normal aerial combat.

Probably a Tachyon Field too, I reckon, but add Blink Displacer on top of Dissociative Wave and all your base defenses are useless too.

No user, it's just that we have a very different definition for what constitutes a long game. And correct me if I'm wrong but to enter end or even mid game of any definition you must survive early game. And that same Santiago can do some serious damage to slow you down while muh free prototypes and normal research (and all that prime territory) definitely help if the game drags on.

Economics are not your strong suit, are they? :^)

What's the cost of a single cruise missile? Now what's the cost of a Dissociative Wave jet stacked with weapons, xp and god knows what else? How about those five other units my two missiles destroyed? What's faster to rebuild?

Sure, ultimately you've got an answer to anything but that's the point you've got an answer to anything

Yeah Santiago typically stays ahead by keeping everyone else down.

I can't take this game seriously anymore after learning the earth is flat.

Learn to sage when shitposting too.

Yeah. Personally I always proffered playing the true peacekeepers,

I wasn't shitposting, you might be confusing me with yourself.

I like Gaians. You can rush enemies with free mindworms.

Tried Aki zeta 9 once and she seemed cool but I was disappointed with the lack of military presence, and the whole map was just stringy islands with like 2 continents so I dropped that game.

is alpha centauri better than Beyond Earth/

Yea

I was just reading the SCP called "the virtual world" what a coincidinc

What are some ground rules or tips I should abide to in order to know what is going on?

Are you fucking retarded? Comparing a masterpiece like Alpha Centauri to the abomination that is Beyond Earth? Easiest fucking question. Alpha Centauri is much, much better.

I don't even play either of the games and I know Alpha Centauri is better.

Good god. Tfw you hit that sweetspot where everyone is running free market but don't have any PSI defenses and shit.
The only real problem with boils is how you're feeding your enemies energy every time you lose a unit, and how it's not that hard for a established player to churn out a bunch of trance scouts to kill your momentum.

What's the problem?

Just make your mindworms go on a demolition spree blowing up tile improvements and targeting formers. Also try to hit and run with fungus. Mind worms cost no upkeep when in fungus tiles and you get a defensive bonus there. If you want to be an ass you can also keep capturing mind worms and releasing them into the wild near enemies. That way you don't have to worry about your capture limit while drowning an enemy in a tidal wave of mindworms. Probably works better if you're willing to use a monolith to upgrade all your captured worms.

Why did you play on a random map? Huge map of Planet is the best.

Alpha Centauri graphics are ofcourse very dated but the background story, factions and gameplay blow all the other Civ games to smithereens.

— Lady Deirdre Skye, "Conversations With Planet"

One thing I never understood about Alpha Centauri and that is why the lack of lewds?

You're still feeding them energy and veterancy. And if it's not a SMAX game you probably don't have a reliable way to quickly spread the fungus or deal with sensor grids. Using +probe and trance probe teams to bypass the moral/planet penalty can also fuck with your plans.

Can't you destroy the sensor grids with mind worms though?

Not if you build a base on top of them you can't. :^)

Do you know the drawing this reaction is a part of?

Doesn't that destroy the improvement?

Nope. The only way to get rid of it is to either torch the base or hope a spore launcher spawns nearby and targets it specifically.

wtf I'm going to have to remember that trick.

OK, how about this one: what's the best way to drain the forces of any AI (and some paranoid players) without even pronouncing vendetta? armored probe teams

You can also cap & release mindworms near them if they don't have trance yet. Your mindworms will beat the shit out of them without you ever declaring vendetta.

So lazy in your search for r#34. What a disappointment.

aki a cute

Who drew these things? the faces are familiar but for some reason i feel it's something i forgot on purpose. Sauce?

If given the chance, the UN would control everything. at least nations on AC fought for sovereignty.

Trance is overrated. All the cool kids use believing empath scout rovers and intentional eco damage for that pearl farming anyway. :^)

That's way too fucking vague. People can't help you if they don't even know what you're asking.

Trance though doesn't give a shit about your nega-planet rating just because you're running Free Market economics, especially if you're maxing out on the money-grubbing because you ran a Wealth social value alongside it. But yes, pearl-farming is really underrated.