Alpha centauri thread?

Not sure what the fuck your point even is
Don't make threads if you're not gonna participate in them
But yes, I've totes been spamming your thread
Fuck me for giving a shit about this game

Pro
>mandatory spanking mortification

Cons

>(1)

The game is old enough to vote, I don't think it has achievements. Probably a good thing looking at the crapflood of pointless achievements in civ 5 that serve no purpose beyond letting firaxis track what players do.

Zak is an interesting guy but I think you're overselling his moral compass there.

You seriously misremember. It was Yang, not Zakharov, who had the quote about god and dice, and he was referencing Einstein who said "God does not play dice" as his rebuke of quantum mechanics. The in-game quote goes "Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." and it accompanies Probability Mechanics. And Miriam's own faction quote makes it clear that she isn't anti-science but rather opposed to the potential for immorality within science, so it isn't that much in the way of character development as much as it is a clear reflection of her character that comes increasingly to the fore as late-game techs become increasingly concerning in their potential.

Holy shit, we found someone who actually read the novel here? Last I checked no one cared about the novel. We don't really judge the cast by the shit that went on in the novels.

They also got killed off in the in-game lore. Deirdre wrecked their base with mindworms.

Deirdre is already top tier. If she could use Free Market economics with her massive efficiency bonus she'd be plain overpowered. If you want maximum bullshit go play cyborgs from the lousy expansion. They can run Free Market economics just fine. If you want to be a turbo-capitalist though just go Morgan. Funnily enough Morgan doesn't need Free Market since with his bonus econ he can just run Wealth and enjoy the +2 econ needed to get all his tiles producing extra energy. Since Morgan has shit population caps he's usually better off base-spamming with high efficiency (dem/green) while on wealth I think.

Might've been from the really early alpha centauri patches when there wasn't a capture limit on mind-worms, resulting in Deirdre destroying the world with her free mindworm army. It was ridiculously OP.

Pretty sure she's a raging protestant.

So, you're saying anal in not a sin and I should add all the cornbread one can eat under PROs? Excellent news my man.

How about the stories? I still preferred Saratov to Zakharov although I find the whole spartan infiltration rather naive. Santiago made sense as a mall cop drunk on her own power.

Where can I download Alpha Centauri novel e-books?

Don't know about PDF, but I read all three books when I was about 3rd year in middle school. Found them in the school library. Also would like PDF though, memory is fuzzy, but as I did said, after the book, I fucking hate Deirdre with all passion and fucking love Sister Miriam though she should go hatefuck with Zakharov, they are both too busy bickering (read:war) over the internet.

Fungal blooms only happen because of eco-damage thresholds and I think when you're rushing ascent. alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Ecology

The laziest way to avoid ecodamage is to create forests, which are a little too effective as tiles. Honestly the planet mechanic and ecodamage in alpha centauri needs a bit of reworking.

Anyone want to tier up SMAC factions? I think this list is about right.

Top tier: University, Gaians, Hive
Mid tier: Morganites, Believers, Peacekeepers
Bottom tier: Spartans

It's worth noting that the tiering thing isn't as big in Alpha Centauri (Spartans can totally demolish other factions early on with rover rushes, for instance), but overall I think as the game drags on it usually winds up progressing like this.

I could never understand why would anyone choose anyone except the Russian scientists.
Technology gives you control over everything, better weapons, better management of your cities, etc.

Okay.

She's not. Different eye colour

Someone post the peace meeting.

...

Only because of your dubs.

These hungry little mouths won't feed themselves.

(checked)
I don't even find it erotic, I just find the pajeet in the left corner fucking hilarious.

Ask nicely in a drawthread for a recolored version. Who knows, it might turn out erotic.

I find the pic related even funnier.

I just found out the other day fucking GOG has achievements now. Why didn't we dissent?

I fucking love editing that shit.

FUCK YEAH

like guilt-pleasure sinful sex isn't the best sex

She's Protestant, for sure.

Wow, really? I love the military bonuses with the Spartans. I usually stack of doom all over Planet with them.

Because I never give them time to pull so far ahead of me on the tech tree that it becomes enough of an advantage. 4-1-2 rovers march like motherfuckers, wreck the shit out of terraformers and any improvements to the land, and once I've got The Command Nexus? All I have to do is interrupt the largest faction from ballooning due to whatever initial conditions gave them an advantage. Base by base, their growth becomes my growth.
I could never understand why would anyone choose anyone except the Spartan military. Has anyone ever been able to finish a completely pacifist run of SMAC?

How appropriate. And call me when the Spartans manage to achieve over 200% attack modifier without the sensors or the gas, a free probe immunity and (half) a dozen free units per base.

It's also a PRO.

She's perfectly good for warfare, and the best faction for an early impact rover rush, but her lack of builder bonuses, -1 penalty to industry, and inability to run Wealth means that you're the slowest builder in the game. The AI is even worse because Santiago's AI loves the power value so AI Santiago basically cannot build for shit at -3 industry (-2 with planned economics). Her only bonus as a builder is a +1 police rating, which is nice, but it doesn't really do anything for you once you run Free Market. Santiago's only advantage as a builder is having tougher units to defend herself with, and even then she doesn't exactly get the bonus support rating to keep a large standing army like Miriam does. So Santiago's basic problem is that she tends to fall behind as the game progresses (unless she gets good secret projects or a solid conquest to give her advantages). Don't get me wrong, she's certainly not unplayable, but she is the least impressive faction out of all 7 unless you're rampaging all over the earlygame.

As for Miriam, she might have -2 to research, but at least she doesn't have an industry penalty, gets +2 support, and can run wealth on top of free market. The support rating cannot be underestimated, since she can spam formers without worrying about maintenance costs, letting her enjoy some extremely productive bases. If she's on fundamentalism, she still has monster probe teams and can just steal other factions' techs, so Miriam is a surprisingly potent builder. And she's also a more aggressive conqueror than Spartans throughout the game.

Also, are you playing Transcend with kyrub's AI patch (yitzi is a filthy liar when he claims he incorporated kyrub's patch into his work, btw)? Because the AI is a lot more of a hard-ass then.

It's almost like you can't appreciate free prototypes or into cruise missiles. As for Believers you're kinda preaching to the choir if you haven't gathered that already.

And probably if you're talking about something made before 2012ish but I haven't been around apolyton in more than long enough to stop remembering names.

There's no denying that Spartans are good at fighting. The problem is that Spartans are bad at keeping up with the tech and development race.

Nope. Here's kyrub's AI patch: alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=260

Enjoy, because the AI is much more dangerous in this patch.

If you want Zak to implode all you need to do is rush Virtual World. Zak's drones will ruin him without those free hologram theatres.

Fine, forget the Spartans, which factions should I play next? Believers?

I always chose university and techrushed. then I spammed secret projects and conquered anyone who didnt swear to serve me
hunter seeker algorithm top tier

I remember that the GURPS adaption of SMAC gave Aki Zeta-5 bad charisma rolls due to "poor body hygiene" as she no longer saw any need to wash herself.

If you want to do whatever, try Peacekeepers. They can be played any which way and their bonus talents can be used two ways. One is as free drone suppression, making it much easier to just build up bases, and another is to promote golden ages (+2 growth, +1 econ) in bases. With golden ages, a wealth value is all you need to get +2 econ in a base and thus +1 wealth per worked tile. It's basically Free Market without the drawbacks.

Lal's got 3 strengths: He can have larger bases, he gets double votes for planetary governorship (if you become governor you have free infiltrator status and +1 commerce in addition to the veto powers and ability to convene meetings every 10 years), and he gets extra talents. It's worth noting that with a planetary governorship and golden ages (+2 growth, +1 econ in you bases) Lal can make like Morgan's bigger cousin, and he should be able to easily maintain population booms (at +6 growth a base will grow 1 size every turn as long as there is food for it, it's extremely powerful) in his bases too.

Make sure to build up some bases so you can get that governorship. If you want golden ages, Human Genome Project is probably key, and Virtual World is a good idea too.

If you're curious about pop booming, there are 4 sources of growth in this game: Democratic politics (+2), Planned economics (+2), Children's Creche base facilities (+2), and golden ages (+2). (There is also the Eudaimonic future society, but that's too late to matter.) Once you have 6 growth you're in a population boom. Other than that obtaining the Cloning Vats will permanently put all your bases in a pop boom.

Dumb shit like this is why we don't take anything that was not part of the game proper seriously. To be fair, SMAX's in-game writing was pretty bad too. The classic was much better.

I always got the impression a lot of the leaders needed a good fucking.

After playing the game first as the Spartans, I completely understand how you feel. I also think that the - 1 to Industry is to ensure that the Spartans don't become OP, otherwise there would probably be very few reasons NOT to play them, as their military bonuses make them extremely powerful early game, and carry well through to the late game if you are doing reasonably well in the tech race.

Maybe next time i'll just play yang, even though I fucking hate him.

The following factions have problems with pop booms:

Human Hive (cannot run democracy)
Morganites (cannot run planned economics)

These factions need golden ages for population booms, in which case you probably want to allocate part of your economy to psych. Hive probably has it worse since his weak economy makes it harder to allocate economy to psych for population booms while Morgan is rolling in $$$. Although with a size 4 limit, the Planetary Transit System will work wonders for Morgan and make pop booms somewhat of a non-issue.

There are a lot of factions that can obliterate others by playing to their strengths though. Zak will destroy enemies with superior technology. Gaians can destroy enemies with free native life or the superior technology from a 100% tech allocation. Hive drowns enemies in endless waves of units. Lal has the benefit of larger bases so he might be able to build more aggressively and depending on how he built-up he could also out-tech enemies with strong income (planetary governorship and golden ages will do that). He should probably have a large pile of max population bases between his higher pop caps and easy population booms, so he has a bit of a hidden industry bonus there also, allowing him to crank out larger amounts of troops.

Morgan is bad at combat but with his fat money he can probably use his probe teams to subvert your units from under you unless you have hunter-seeker algorithm or you're Miriam in fundamentalism (+3 probe makes you immune to subversion), and he can generally rush-buy units to deal with enemies. Aside from that Morgan can also tech extremely explosively by allocating his monstrous income to research and thus field superior weaponry. His primary weakness is his inability to maintain a standing army and his smaller bases (with a planetary transit system and some base spamming though this is not a problem). Once he researches clean reactors, he can have a standing army as big as he likes, and once he gets hab complexes the base size penalty no longer hurts him so heavily, and if he gets the Ascetic Virtues then his size penalty nearly vanishes.

As much as I don't like deirdre, the spartans deserved everything they got and worse.

Full pic?

Out of all the factions in AC, I think the Spartans are most in need of a rebalance, cuz outside of early rover rushes, their destruction is all but guaranteed.

I need to think about this.

Well if you go Dem/Market/Knowledge, Spartans can still develop decently. They'll have a -1 to industry and no bonuses, but at least they get proper tech at +3 efficiency, +2 econ, and +2 research. You still have bad industry and no faction bonuses though, so you can still fall behind. The best advantages I can think of is to boost Santiago's income by aggressively popping mindworms for money and rushing out another fast rover for to get an early-game advantage with pod popping. The AI also messes up Spartans pretty badly because it's in love with the Power value with its crippling -2 industry penalty, so the Spartan AI implodes in peacetime at -3 industry, unless they have Cloning Vats.

I always liked Peacekeepers or Spartans, not because they were good but because they feel protagonisty in a world of loons that feel better as foils/antagonists.

I do like Alpha Centauri. What other games allow you to develop battletanks that can be dropped from the orbit, or allow you to rip continents apart with nukes so that you can build a canal for your carrier battlegroups.

Admitedly, the whole carrier battlegroup is sort of outdated once you are making canals with nukes but it's the thought that counts right?

Why the hate for Deidre?

I never understood why people liked AC. Civ games have had an increasing problem with late game sprawl and AC was possibly the worst offender out of all of them with the ability to build bases on water. You either finish before that point, play casually, or you end up with turns that take hours.

Huh, usually Spartans and Peacekeepers are the least played factions. People tend to consider them boring and underwhelming. They are pretty fun once you get good at them though.

Have you mastered terraforming yet? A lot of people get lazy and use forest tiles (because they're so fucking effective), but terraforming is practically a game unto itself and ecological warfare is surprisingly fun.

You can always have formers make a canal for you, among other things.

Partly the influx of Holla Forums, I reckon. Holla Forumstards hate treehuggers. The creepy shit with the mindworm rape can be off-putting though.

While SMAC does have some ICS (Infinite City Sprawl) issues, usually bureaucracy drones and inefficiency will cause your new bases to explode with drones and produce no income once you expand past a certain point, and the competition for tiles if you create bases too close to each other isn't too pretty either. You can definitely create a giant swarm of cities if you want but you generally have to do that as an intentional strategy.

Lategame you might have a dozen (or more, if you've been conquering) cities, but you can still manage that by swapping through the cities fairly quickly and giving them production orders that usually require multiple turns or just setting them to stockpile energy. And if you don't like that you can just use the city governors and let the AI manage your cities for you. You don't actually have to manage your cities yourself.

Building cities on water is pretty fun imo so I disagree with your complaint on that one. City sprawl issues are separate from whether or not you can build cities on water.

Huh. Might be interesting to hunt his crawlers for a merry change.

Mostly because she's a backstabbing bitch with a bad case of yeast infection both in and out of the game.

What late game sprawl? If you play tall - you're either burning spare bases left and right or you're founding smart and depending on several superbases. And if you're playing wide chances are there's no late game to speak off.

No. In that situation I was already with at war, or about to go to war with basically everyone but Deirdre, and the fungal infestation was starting to wreak havoc on my tiles. So, I just wiped off something like 70% of the landmass of the biggest continent on the planet, thus splitting the continent apart and nullifying any and all possible counter-attacks that might come after that.

Can't afford a prolonged war but sure as hell can start massing planet killers as a university from midgame onwards. After that it's just a matter of developing submarines that are capable of launching those ballistic missiles.

Lol, what? had it right: you either go wide and ROFL-stomp a stack of doom across Planet or you go tall and have a dozen or so super-bases. When I go wide, most bases are set to pump out military units and require little to no touching. When I go tall I'm micro-managing the shit out of my dozen bases, but I don't mind as I find min/max-ing enjoyable and I'm usually going to ascension or diplomacy.

More ideas on ecological warfare, please. I haven't played that style of SMAC before but fucking-a that sounds like fun.

Haha, I would love to have watched that play out. I might have to have a "FUCK PLANET FUCK YO' ECOSYSTEM" game for shits n giggles.

...

And which AI isn't backstabbing ingame? Only those openly hostile from the start, which isn't an improvement.

You can always drown or dry out your opponent bases with large scale terraforming, or raise the terrain west of his bases robbing them of any moisture. I don't know any more advanced tactics.

Wait, did Bunny Black get a sequel? Where is that image from?

Let me guess, you run Free Market from time to time and then you get surprised when Deirdre gets mad at you. Try not to set your social settings to a faction's aversion unless you want to piss them off.

What says. That and planting fungus and making land bridges to bring other factions together so they can get bogged down into murdering each other. Get Xenoempathy Dome and aggressive fungus planting is a ton of fun. If your enemies don't have pressure domes (if they have one, use a probe team to demolish it), you can annihilate their base by drowning it with a well-placed former. It can also help to resculpt terrain to cut off factions by water so they won't be as big of a threat to you.

All of them, if you get good at the diplomacy metagame. For the most part, if you take their preferred social policy they will like you.

Miriam -> Fundamentalism, Gaian -> Green, Morgan -> Free Market, Lal -> Democracy, Yang -> Police State, Spartan -> Power, University -> Knowledge

Just make sure to avoid their aversions (which you can probably guess based on their politics) and you can be amazingly good friends with a faction if you adopt their preferred social policy. The alliances your choice of social policy can open up can make it worthwhile to run policies you'd normally consider shit. But once you get a serious alliance going with the right AI faction the game can get too easy. Most bullshit example is playing Zak and making Miriam your alliance. You will be at war with the rest of the world but just keep gifting Miriam techs and money and she will kill everything else for you.

Oh, fuck off with the tooltip tier wisdom. Of course she and everyone else will be pissed if you run their aversion ethics but that doesn't change her personality parameters or her background material.

And there's two factors to that: first if you're running the opposite to their favourite shit democracy triggers Yang and second if their favourite shit is available but you don't adopt it: ie cybernetics for Aki. Besides, you can always bully them into surrendering and adopting your current ethics as their new core ethics

If you don't go out of your way to piss them off? I believe Aki, Zakharov and Santiago.

No, it got several sequels.

Nice, ty.

Xenoempathy Dome and fungus troll game sounds like a blast. I assume Deidre would be the best fit for this, yes? Planet-annoy the shit out of everyone, sink bases, lol.
Damn, I want to try that as well. I've never won a military victory indirectly.

Well you're definitely doing shit wrong dude because I can run alliances with all factions from start to finish if I want and make a joke out of the whole game doing it.

Deirdre is best for using native tiles although it doesn't make that much of a difference normally. A high planet rating does help you move through fungus faster but if you have Xenoempathy Dome it doesn't matter. The other benefits of fungus are that human units get a 50% bonus when defending from other human units (same as in rocky or forest terrain), but native life gets a +100% attack bonus in fungus (and humans get no defense bonus) so if you use mind worms as Gaians (or Cult in SMAX, but they're pretty damn shitty) to attack anything under fungus, it's probably gonna die. If you're running SMAX though, you can get the Manifold Harmonics secret project to make fungus tiles the best tiles in the game. SMAX also gives you fungal payload missiles.

kyrub's patch is for the base game though so if you wanted to check out the AI enhancements you'll have to run classic.

Bribe the everloving shit out of her (gifts are great), don't run Knowledge (Wealth is perfectly good anyway, especially with Free Market), and don't refuse her requests, although renegotiating should be fine. I think AIs might also get annoyed if you message them too frequently (and they definitely get annoyed if you ignore their comms).

Goddamn that's a hippie profile if ever I've seen it. I bet she graduated Valedictorian from Alpha Centauri U with a degree in Tree Hugging.

Is this what the board has come to?

But user you are a joke.

Also interesting:

Both of these games are so happening, Troll Deidre and Zak indirect conquest.

Where can I get more of this backstory/lore?

In order of relevance? In game bios, short stories, novels and GURPS supplements. First one is obvious, and the following two should come with either the gog version or one of the other bundles.

GOG comes with quick-sheet keyboard reference and game manuals (which I'm reading ATM).
Anyone got links for short stories, novels and GURPS supplements? >>>/pdf/ maybe?

I know I saw the short stories in one bundle or another, anyway, filedropper.com/gurps-alphacentauri as for the novels you'll have to hunt them down yourself as I got paperbacks.

Yup, still have them in my repack. filedropper.com/smac1journeytocentaurimichaelely filedropper.com/smac2centauriarrivalmichaelely

Oh yeah, and the game makes fun of her for it too, at least the factions that don't like her. All the factions have jabs at each other like that. Great faction though. The +effic is great and the +planet rating is a lovely help for soaking ecodamage when you're busy strip-mining the planet for those wonderful and oh-so-profitable boreholes, which you get to do it faster than anyone because you start with the prerequisite for the Weather Paradigm secret project (unlocks all terraformer actions except planting xenofungus, which you need Ecological Engineering for), so you should be able to build it before anyone else.

Also she rapes enemies with her mind worm armies, so that's always fun.

If you are going psi combat it's worth noting that you get a +10% bonus to psi attack for every point of planet rating you have (green economy rules), so the best psi-attacker in the game is… *drumroll* Miriam. Aside from that Deirdre gets a nifty +1 nutrient from fungus tiles that no one else does.

If you're looking for another board to ask about SMAC, it's definitely /tg/. Those books and supplements have worse writing than the game though.

Thanks, mates.

As it turns out, I did have the old save files, however, my memory had failed me, as it was not clearly the biggest continent around. I wanted to slap Miriam around a bit, so I did the most logical thing and created the most indirect route to her island like any good engineer or scientist would.

It did: the second one is translated and the third one is being translated as we speak.

LOL
Fucking awesome. God, I love this board.

I don't think you've played SMAC until you've dropped planet busters all over your enemies.

You can also drown out opponents' coastal bases by voting to melt polar caps.

I want to get into this but the interface is so clunky. Things like turn auto-ending on a unit move and cities always repeat building keep fucking me up

Game -> Preferences (CTRL+P)

Game -> Warning Preferences (CTRL+W)

Are there more efficient ways to expand the freshwater sea? Absolutely. But are there more fun ways? Not on your life

Try destroying their domes with your probe teams. :^) Hell, if you really want to talk tricks let's talk armored crawlers or using rivers over roads instead of this preschooler tier garbage. ib4 your next "tip" is: well, you don't have to put both armor and weapons on all of your units

TBH it was a lot like getting nukes in Civ. Fun the first couple times, but it wore off quickly to me. I prefer a campaign of marines, personally.

Let's! I'm all ears. :)
Can terraformers create rivers? I've never done the crawler abuse thing, it is "allowed" in the game but it seems to honestly break any semblance of balance the game has.

Of course. There's even a bug of sorts when you can create these rivers that continue into the sea when you drill in areas of extreme height difference. So, sunny messa, a valley down in the dunes and somehow a sea trench in between may result in these non-destroyable, eco-friendly, bonus energy highways that work with your amphibious units. As if a ton of regular rivers wasn't broken enough.

And it's not abuse, it's plain bullying as they project ZoC and pay for themselves. For truly broken bonus points try jet deployed crawlers boxing in his doomstacks aka if he doesn't have air superiority or stockpiled cruise missiles he's plain fucked.

It's not like submersible healing transports are expensive or not useful.

Yeah I like trying to take down the catholic city-continent with my motley crew of veteran forces late-game, the challenge makes it a more righteous struggle.

Fuck me, I'm glad I waited to start my Deidre troll game, this is gold. Plant fungus, bridge continents or ocean the world, dig rivers, ZoC shit with air drop armored crawlers. lol
Foil/Cruiser + Transport bay + clean reactor?

Transport Cruiser + Deep Pressure Hull + Repair Bay. Also if the game runs that long it works wonders with X Blink Displacer crew for the added benefit of someone expecting drop assaults suddenly shitting bricks.

So water units run "underwater" and are invisible until you try to move into their square? Am I getting that correct?

Why not try it out? :^) Hell, why not try making a sub carrier?

Yeah I already mentioned that.

Crawler defense grids are cheap as hell. I kinda view that as an exploit, since you're abusing the free clean reactors that this non-combat unit gets in order to create a ridiculous defensive array. Usually you dot all your squares in those crawlers once you go down that route.

And my next tip just for you is this: Try making bunkers with terraformers when invading. Your units don't take stack damage in bunkers.

Yep. If you have carriers and you want to drown bases with Formers getting a Super Former Carrier with a Deep Pressure Hull is probably a solid idea. They won't even know what hit 'em. Weather Paradigm always helps too.

Also, have a wiki: alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Unit

Holla Forums is that-a-way. I'm even sure they'll like your approach of roleplaying competence via quoting fucking manual wiki tips. And you're going on about prepwork for former drowning and melting caps, something that's likely to take 10-20ish turns and more. The former thing an automatic vendetta even if you manage to sneak one close enough. What I'm suggesting is something much faster else entirely.

As for some of the shit you already said it's just that, shit. For example Miriam doesn't get the believer attack bonus in psi-combat and her high native +support and -planet make her one of the worst if not the worst "psi-attacker" out there. Psi attack humans included.

Now, someone who knew what they're talking about could've shared a tip in how green Santiago can comb the local fungus patch for those delicious free upkeep worms or free energy, how her morale does work on lifeforms or how their constant cost doesn't scale with any industry penalties.

Only if you're high on fungus and don't remember that formers and transports are two different (and exclusive) main modules.

Oh, so you're a butthurt Holla Forumstard. That explains a lot.

Hm, noted. I'd looked it up and it kept saying she just get +25% to attack without specifying caveats or limitations, but I guess it doesn't apply to psi combat. More's the pity. I never really go native as Miriam so I hadn't noticed.

-planet would make her awful, but +support has no real bearing on how good or bad of a psi-attacker she would be. If anything it helps her with worm upkeep costs.

Kek, you accuse me of manual/wiki tips and then you suggest something as blatantly obvious as "Green economics helps you convert mindworms." Also, they're only free upkeep while on xenofungus squares. Since usually you're going to scout with native life and thus end up leaving the xenofungus squares, you actually will eat upkeep costs from time to time.

Yeah I already mentioned that.

Nope. SE morale works with human psi attackers, but not mind worms. Unless you mean that morale helps her kill mind worms you're pretty mistaken.

Deep Pressure Hull isn't an ability exclusive to transports, kiddo. You can put it on formers just fine. Feel free to check out the wiki or test it in-game.

Captured mindworms have no upkeep, dipshit. And I'm not accusing you of anything, rather, I'm straight telling you to take your low effort copypaste wiki shitck and shove it up your newfag ass. Seriously, you can't relay even that information correctly.

And what's boil size mechanically if not morale? If you really want your mind blown try revoking the UN charter and see how even the planet barbarian faction stops caring for planetbusters apart from their eco damage.

And so we're clear since you apparently need spoonfeeding on just about everything - the Holla Forums bunker is a joke, and a tired, beaten, stale joke at that. For fucks sake user.

That depends on whether or not the captured mindworm is an independent unit (ie. no home base) or not. Usually they should be independent but from what I've heard sometimes they do get assigned home bases, in which case they have upkeep unless they end their turn on a fungus tile. Might've been an old patch though.

I recommend you stop bullshitting and just test it out. Native life is not affected by SE morale.

Yes, and if you spam nerve gas pods planet while the charter is in effect, planet will rip you a new one even though those things are useless on native life.

If you want a fun trick, try making high morale units then upgrading them into other units. They keep the morale score. Morgan especially loves to have a standing army of cheap high morale clean reactor units then upgrading them the instant he's under attack. Speaking of which, your starting unit and any rovers you recover from pods will also stay independent if you upgrade them, so that's also worth keeping in mind.

I don't keep up with Holla Forums or Holla Forums so I wouldn't know.

Wait, you heard about it? Where? The wiki talk page? Please, tell me more about testing things for myself. :^)

I'd offer to settle this over a friendly game but frankly interacting with you seems like a case of stepping in dogshit. For best results keep the time spent scraping it off to a minimum, ignore the flies and move on with your life. That one faggot can stay this smug despite spouting mostly misquotes and even plain bullshit is mind boggling.

What is the general consensus on that AC clone overhaul mod for CIV?

The things really get interesting once you introduce morale 3+, planet 3+ or some of the other possible modifiers but that only dilutes the question of whether MORALE has any effect on psi-combat. So for the sake of easily reproducible experiment all eco damage is 0, the ethics or defensive buildings are not a factor, and there's no year, moon, planet rage or any other modifier.

And yes, I am this petty/autistic whateverthefuckyouplease about this game but at least I'm not a lying sack of shit badly parroting a wiki.

It's nice but doesn't really simulate some of the mechanics like unit design, some of the combat mechanics or the terraforming nuances. Rainfall, height and such.

Maybe try the dune mod?

Um, look, I'm not sure how new you are to the game, but I've been playing this game for 20 years, so if you want me to cite sources for shit I've heard over the years, you might be on drugs.

Right back atcha.

I meant Cruiser, whatever.

What patch are you on and just how new are you? Because the Children's Creche morale bonus is infamously bugged. I think some fanpatches tried to fix it but I'm not entirely sure about the latest state of the bug. Anyhow, take one faction, switch around your morale SE, see if it changes the damage your worms do. (It doesn't.)

About that bug: alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Morale_(Advanced)

It's not a proper clone. Props for the attempt, but it's not the same as the real game.

Technically 18, since it was released in 1999.

Even if it was, and mind you IF it was it's not, and you're talking shit but what else is new that doesn't relate to Spartan mindworms in this instance having higher base power than even the Gaian mindworms with no other modifier than the starting ones. Why? Because morale among other things also impacts defensive combat up to a point. Coincidentally something anyone can test in five minutes or less.

No, I'm sure it's 25. Wait it's closer to 50. Even 100?

But yeah, last (You) you're getting. Go fuck yourself.

For the sake of clarity to anyone else related is what we're arguing about, or more concretely whether said bonus applies to worms and other lifeforms. It does Spartans have inherit +1 Morale (+2 on defense) which equals to +2 (+3 on defense) with creche (or fundamentalism if you're silly). Both very easy and very quick to get with no downsides what so ever and unlike Believers very appropriate for "psi attackers" psi defenders or anything psi in between.

Also when in doubt super former carriers are a solid idea. :^)

That bug is practically part of game strategy now. It makes running wealth stupidly good for fighting defensive wars.

But it's not when you got two exact same units with no other modifiers or ranks as opposed to -5 Morale Morganite elites. It's also a convenient way to show how pure SE Morale can in fact impact lifeforms.

...

Any git gud tips? Any git gud tips for The Hive?

WHAT THE FUCK. Dubs say we will nuke Japan (again)

I'm just gonna drop this here.

yeah, they were still limited by the engine, so stuff like unit design and terraform was let out, an I'm not sure but I even think they did terrain height

oh yeah, good call, remember looking that mod but never actually trying it (or maybe I did and forgot), anything special?

lol… wtf…. was the guy masturbating to the toy porn?

Ghost bump.

All I'm hearing is what I experience in-game: the morale boost with the Spartans has real effect. It's right there in the numbers.
I don't just like this quote as in-game lore, I honestly believe it as IRL military tactic. I think it reflects Sun Tzu, and the U.S. Military (especially the special forces, Rangers, Seals, etc.). See attached. Spartans rule, Zakharov drools

There are no Catholics in SMAC, though.

boy I got a huge nostalgic boner right now, plus original voice files

Feel free to try it out in-game then, but you will be disappointed. Swap around your morale and your mind worms will all do the exact same damage. The only exception is the children's creche morale bug. That's why he's using mind worms in base as his example. Mind worms do not get morale bonuses. They only get planet bonuses and facility/project bonuses. Go ahead, attack shit with mind worms, switch your morale SE around, and you will see it does the exact same damage. Switch your planet rating around and you will find yourself doing more damage.

Unless you're using human psi-attackers, morale has no bearing on psi-combat.

alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Morale

alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Morale_(Basic)

alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Native_life_forms

It's important for human units in psi-combat, because it's the primary psi-combat bonus they can get, since weapons and armor do absolutely nothing for improving human psi combat (unless you're playing expansion pack and using overpriced resonance shit). The only other ways to improve psi combat score are SE planet score (10% to psi attack per rating), using the special ability slot to put empath song (+50% psi-attack) / hypnotic trance (+50% psi-defense) on your unit, and secret projects like neural amplifier (+50% psi-defense on everything) and dream twister (+50% psi-attack on everything). Typically morale is the deciding factor for humans in psi-combat unless you're cranking out trance/song units, so that's why it's stressed as important. It also helps that things like perimeter defenses and tachyon fields are utterly useless against mind worms.

SE morale is irrelevant to native life forms in open combat. Go ahead and test it. SE morale makes zero difference in your mind worm's combat strength. Native life forms don't care about human morale and if they did Gaians wouldn't be so dangerous with mind worms, since Gaians have a morale penalty.

...

Oh this is cute. This guy actually thinks he has a point. You're misreading the page though. It's explaining the morale mechanic, which is different from the morale SE setting (which only applies to humans), and even then it assumes you are creating human units (which is why it's mentioning stuff like command centers which also do not work on mind worms). Mind worms have a completely different set of morale-boosting facilities, aside from the bio-enhancement center.

The reason why native life is described as having a lifecycle bonus instead of a morale bonus is to make it clear that morale bonuses don't apply to them and they need lifecycle bonuses, but the mechanic works the same way.

...

First and foremost, the higher the setting, the more fungus you will have to content with, which will slow your development as your scouts and colony pods will either have to spend several turns going through or around all the fungus, and your formers will need to spend several turns per square just clearing the fungus to make use of the underlying terrain.

Second, more fungus = more chances to run into worms (and by extension, more chances of seeing those fungal towers). While running into worms can be a great way to generate extra cash, a sudden, large influx of native life at the wrong time can really hamper your progress unless you’re playing the Gaians or the Cult with their inherent ability to capture worms. On the other hand, if you are Morgan, intent on running an early game Market Economy, this could have some pretty serious implications for your game (Note—If you’re playing for score, then use Abundant Native Life forms, as you will
receive a 25% bonus to your score).

Third, the delays mentioned above have a strange effect on the game as a whole. It tends to work against both “Builder” and “Momentum” strategies, making the former harder due to the fact that it takes so long to get decent production geared up (time spent clearing the fungus), and it makes the latter more difficult
because oftentimes attacks must be delayed when a horde of worms suddenly appears to be dealt with. About the only factions it makes life easier for are the Gaians and Cult, again, because of their ability to capture worms.

Alternatively, you a dumb nigger that covers not knowing how base defense works with prattle.

user… No one's arguing that morale doesn't help you fend off worms. The argument was about if morale bonuses make your own worms better. They don't.

What is the recommended process to patch a fresh GOG install these days?

From what I can gather (mostly from reading alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Installation), for just SMAC you can install kyrub's patch,Datalinks upgrade and sound fix.

For SMAX there's kyrub's patch, plus Yitzi's, the sound fix, and a newer patch by Dio. Presumably you can just throw all of those together. Did I miss anything?

Is this your first day here?

I have no idea what Dio's patch is. I don't use it.

Normally you do kyrub's for SMAC (vanilla) and yitzi's for SMAX (expansion). You might also install PRACX if the thing isn't starting (yitzi's already has pracx I think, so you'd just install it on kyrub's). PRACX adds high-res support and usually fixes any compatibility issues you might have had (if it starts, you don't need PRACX unless you want high-res).

yeah PRACX is included with yitzi's patch, as for the Dio patch:

v1.0

v1.1

Sounds like a minor rebalancing patch. SMAC players typically avoid those.

Ok lads, I started my Deidre troll game last night but I realized I'm having a tough time getting started with her. Any tips as to how I can get a good early lead with Deidre? What is the best use of my formers early game? Should I be planting fungus assuming I'll get the right secret projects later on? Go with forests anyways?

Build several 1-1-1 cheapest infantry (later rovers or hovertanks) doing nothing but farming fungus squares for planetpearls. Do the same with captured mindworm units that aren't scouting your borders.

You can troll even your allies with amassing captured mindworm units near their borders and then releasing all of them 'into the wild' in a single turn. Works best if you embark them on a sea transport to a distant location you don't plan to capture in near future - why vandalize what you intend to capture?

Before researching the Hybrid Forest facility plant forests only to lower the ecological damage, after HF you can run automated formers doing nothing but planting forests all day erryday.

Deirdre is tha best!

So I never actually played SMAC and just got into it. Seems like a fairly straightforward 4X game with a good degree of customization, but I still feel like I'm missing something. I want to like the game more than I currently do but it's just not grabbing me yet.

Two things some more experienced players might be able to answer: the game tells me that cultivating a farm adds +1 nutrients to a tile. So I look at a tile and see that it already produces +2, and think "hey making that a +3 would be great." But when my former finishes the farm and I plant a worker on it, it's STILL only a +2. Why? The only difference is that the +2 apple icon now has an outline around it and is slightly larger than other native, naturally occurring +2s on other tiles. Do farms take time to produce food or something? The game hasn't said anything about them other than it adds +1 to a tile which it is NOT currently doing.

Secondly, how exactly can I pump up my pop as fast as possible? (I'm playing Spartans if that matters). As per previous issue, the highest value I get on a tile for food is +2. Because of this, I'm perpetually barely over breaking-even when it comes to surplus food. Each worker consumes two food, but they each also produce two food, so my growth in population comes solely from the fucking base tile itself.

Explain to me what I'm missing here because even with the ingame help files and tours SMAC is being retarded about being specific and explaining shit.

At the start of the game, tiles are limited to only producing 2 yield max of any type, unless it's a resource tile (in which case that tile is uncapped). That outline means you would be getting more resources if you weren't capped at a 2 tile yield. Dropping a borehole on a mineral resource is incredibly powerful for instance. You need to research techs to allow normal tiles to get more than 2 of a single yield.

Gene Splicing lifts the nutrient limit, Ecological Engineering lifts the mineral limit, and Environmental Economics lifts the energy limit.

Pop booming is the fastest way to pump up your population. Once you get 6 or more growth in a base, it will have a population boom and gain 1 population per turn as long as there is food to support it. This is incredibly powerful and an integral part of high-level play. Usually you go democracy & planned on your social engineering screen and put a children's creche in a base for 6 growth. Some factions can't do that, so they also need to make their base hit a golden age (which gives a base +2 growth and +1 econ).

Also just read this guide:

There's a rainfall/sunshine system that you need to understand to optimize food or energy gains. High, dry, east slopes and or wide flat areas have higher credit yields while rolling, west slopes and humid produce more food. Bonus minerals come from rocky. Also research limiters.

For growth stack nutrients (crawlers) and GROWTH or psych.

Wasn't it 3+ before lifting restrictions?

Nope, it's 2, which is the big reason why The Merchant Exchange is actually better for factions who have trouble getting +2 economy (Yang, Deirdre), because they will cap out their energy per tile without the Merchant Exchange anyway, making it a very wasteful project on the whole.

Go figure. I suppose a refresher and focusing on something other than abundants wouldn't do me any harm. As for secret projects I rarely bother unless it's really really important or I can cuck someone who really really needed it.

I mean if you have +2 economy, you get +1 energy per tile, which means you will already have +2 energy per tile very easily, so getting the Merchant Exchange is very unrewarding unless you're not getting 2 economy early on, but Free Market is incredibly powerful (since your energy income not only lets you rush production but also boosts your research speeds).

If you can screw University out of Virtual World and Human Genome Project, Zak's drone problems will ruin his chances of becoming relevant, plus both of those projects play very well to a golden age strategy (Lal being the easiest candidate for this), so it's a lot of fun screwing factions out of their must-have projects. Come to think of it Lal can make decent use of the giant base size advantage Ascetic Virtues gets him too, so he can probably cuck Yang out of a desirable project too.

Dammit, now I want to play a troll Lal game.

And it's pointless if you don't build The Weather Paradigm as her. You know the sensor array on the base tile trick, don't you? Other than that, with TWP you can make one borehole per base and then crank out colony pods with population boom going simultaneously (if you switch from green to planned) to sprawl as wide as possible. Her efficiency bonus helps with managing lots of bases.

With some luck, try to find a bottleneck you can sink to isolate your territory from other factions early, for example if you start near Freshwater Sea on a huge map of Planet then you can become the sole ruler of the vertical continent around it if you cut out the narrow land bridge to the lower right next to your neighbor.

Later in the game, with mostly forest/fungus covered territory you have no real downside to lowering sea levels worldwide to regain land access to your neighbors when you achieve military superiority. You can then crowd them out with lots of new bases at their borders, provoking them to war in the process.

RIP SECAZZ

Workers' revolution faction is SMAX's Free Drones though.

Yep. It's the "drill to aquifer" command.

Crawler abuse can really mess with the game. Aside from that you can also use colony pods to add +1 population to a base at max population to break the population cap.

bump

Got a high-res version of that?

Damn, I have no idea what happened to my SMAC tech tree map. Shit, for all I know it's buried in a drawer somewhere.
My Deidre troll game has gotten off to a rocky start, I had to eliminate Lal. Just had to. But it leaves me on the center oval island alone, ready to send my shit storm out over the rest of planet!

Speaking of shit stop pushing forced shit memes.How the fuck can one even "troll" an AI? You're at best playing with your food As for DeeDee troubles I'm in the middle of a huge planetmap campaign where I'm stuck in a WW1 meatgrinder situation against Yang over the monsoon jungle. I've got the freshwater continent with puppet Zakharov, there's Santiago holding the center nexus continent forcing me to keep shitty POWER or she'll cancel muh pact and there's a Miriam up top taking potshots at both me and the chink.

Got any suggestions other than block the chink advance with a throng of fliers? Drowning the little shit is not an option and the eastern front barely a thing at this point. And no I don't have the sufficient planetbuster stockpile although I've got the tech.

If you're attacking Yang's bases, either get Blink Displacer on your units or use psi attackers. If you have the secret project boosting your psi attack you might as well go psi to screw over Yang. Either way you'll want to bypass his base defenses. Deirdre is probably the best faction to defeat Yang early on because her mind worms don't care about perimeter defenses and they're free.

It's still at least 30% planet vs 25% base and 50% trance. And I think I missed my chance for worm anything vs Yang seeing he's got more launchers and worms than me. As for Blink Displacer that's a fine idea but I don't have the tech yet.I'm mostly depending on 1/3p AAA clean infantry, upgraded spartan 10/1 clean GAS jets and some worms and a couple 10/3p marine skimships. His swarm is mostly 8/1 gun, 6r/3r and 8/1 trained rovers, 1/4 ECM and 8/4 AAA infantry I'm seriously tempted to drown my own jungle bases and peace out but I'm sure that without me bullying his expansion he'll completely spiral out of control. On the other hand he probably won't upgrade his troops as fast as he's replacing them.

You don't have a Dream Twister as Deirdre? If you have the morale facilities and SE, an elite human psi attacker with soporific gas pods works pretty well.

Your main options are to hold out for blink displacer or try for another win-con, like supreme leader, transcend, or cornering the global energy market (if you have eudaimonia). I guess you could always go run fundamentalism and probe the shit out of Yang.

Cut Miriam from your landmass by sinking the border isthmus in two with formers.

Not in what I'd consider early game, I don't. Besides I'm more of a morganite and playing the worm bitch with this custom AI shit and blind research is definitely what you'd call outside of my comfort zone.

What do you mean?

If you have the planetbuster tech you've left the earlygame dude. Also, the AI shit is in kyrub's patch, which doesn't work with the expansion (yitzi hardly incorporated any of kyrub's AI improvements). Since you're talking about pulse and resonance gear, you're playing alien crossfire instead of the classic.

And I think he was talking about using sea formers to lower terrain into the water so you can split the believer base from the gaian mainland.

Reminder that SMAC in the SMAX engine with the new bullshit disabled is available:
alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=17869.0

Kyrub's AI patch works on terran.exe, so if you like intelligent AI on SMAC you're still better off not using that.

Yang metagame is too strong

Just upgrade the shitty units you get from Yang and run over your enemies. You should have great income as Morgan anyway. Or you can just decompose them in bases for half their minerals I guess.

Just a lucky draw on blind research. What I don't get is where does the Isle of Deianira have a land connection to any continent in that map? Believers are orange, naturally.

Besides if you're curious I ended up abandoning and flooding the jungle after Yang pulled some four dozen jets on me. Thankfully Zakharov came and gifted me copter tech just in time, and those things rip thru bombers like wet tissue.

Anyway two things I got from that game are: always bully Zakh into surrendering and Spartan allies ain't worth shit.

Don't grind. The AI is much more effective at replacing units then upgrading them and if he started with synthmetal shit that got bombed or rolled over you can bet he'll go plasma+ ECM or AAA in the next batch.

Well you're at least into the midgame. And if you have that option so early you could just planet buster your enemies into oblivion.

Top left corner, I think.

Their industry rating is absolute cancer. They get a -1 industry penalty and they love to run the Power value on top of that which gives another -2 industry. The result is a Spartan AI that gets a disgusting -3 industry so you can just imagine how ineffective Spartans are at building units or anything. At least they have +4 morale on their units I guess. If the Spartan AI has a Cloning Vats (and only then) they'll do great though, since it wipes out the Power penalty and gives them population booms in all their bases. You can always gift Spartans units to take advantage of the Spartans' morale bonuses though (or you can gift them the base with Cloning Vats if you're planning on having a joint victory with them).

Spartan AIs regularly implode as the game drags on though. The industry penalty is simply too crippling. At least human players know better than to run the Power value 24-7.

Yeah Spartan AI is pretty much Cloning Vats or bust. Human players should just use Knowledge value and probably go worm-popping to convert her morale bonus into an income boost.