Toughest SP game I ever played

[Tai Mai Shu]

Wow, I just played the hardest SP game I ever had the pleasure of playing. This was a game on a modified map of planet where I basically covered the entire world with forest+kelp farms to ensure the AI would have no problems with bad terraforming decisions and I also set all of my opponents on pacifist, build, discover, explore as priorities. I also gave them all 2 free terraformers along with clean reactors as their free ability. Also, I dipped into the alphax.txt file and modified it so that fundamentalism and power gave an extra +1 to police like what Ned suggested in another thread.

I chose to play the Gaians as that's my favorite faction, and played against the University, Morganites, Free Drones, Cyborgs, PeaceKeepers, and the Hive.

This basically was supposed to be a builder only game, but it sure didn't turn out that way. In the beginning I met up with the borgs, and the first thing they did when they met me was threaten me to pay them cash or else. Naturally I paid them off, being the lowest in the power charts right from the start of the game. With a few bribes and tech gifts later I managed to pact with the borgs and the game was off to a fairly decent start, that is until the early 2220's when all the early secret projects were built by the AI. They surprised the heck out of me with their blindingly fast research and build rates and the real nail in the coffin was when Lal built the planetary data links in the early 2230's. From there it was all downhill, most of the game I was playing catchup in infrastructure and research and I didn't snag any secret projects until I got hybrid farms and the ascetic virtues.

Later in the mid game I managed to rise up to 3rd place in the charts, and Lal the planetary governer (who happened to have the empath guild), was giving me the hairy eyeball. Diplomatic relations quickly went south even though I was constantly running Democracy and he declared war on me, and not a turn later the University does a sneak attack on me out of nowhere. The good news is that all my opponents are on different continents and are well out of reach for a serious attack, but the bad news is that #1 and #2 on the power charts are both Lal and the professor. Basically the entire game I was watching Lal and the professor outtech me at every turn and building secret projects in one or two turns. They were very monstrous in their industrial and scientific might.

The only saving grace was that I had more pop than they did and they were all engineers (went for the all specialist approach), and this managed to help me grab two big secret projects which they never bothered to research until later for some reason. I built the Cloudbase Academy and the Cyborg Factory within two turns of each other. Unfortunately though, by them Lal and the Professor already had D:AP and also had fusion power and plasma shards. To make it worse the Hive and the Morganites decided to join the fray and my only other ally was the Drones.

Basically the whole game I was trying to build infrastructure so that I could compete with their industrial might and their research rates and it was only until very very late game when I managed to catch up again and gain 1st place in the power charts that I managed to beat them, but not by conquest, it was by transcending. If it wasn't for the fact that the AI only finishes a secret project the turn after they finish building it then I definitely would have lost the game.

All in all, a very interesting SP experience, and I frequently got frustrated and had to turn the damn thing off because of all the setbacks I had to face and also kept getting stuck and not knowing what to do next but in the end it just made the victory all the more sweeter. I'd like to give a hearty thanks to Ned and crew for coming up with such an interesting scenario (preforested maps, pacifist AI + free formers)

[Tai Mai Shu]

Hm, just noticed I had some of the years mixed up, it should read early 2120's for the first one and not 2220's. Also, the AI built quite a few satelites and copters in the game, and sniped at my crawlers too. It was fighting almost semi-intelligently, which is pretty good for the AI

[Ned]

Tai Mai Shu, It is interesting, isn't it, that setting the AI to pacifist only seems to make the AI stronger due to more investment in infrastructure and commerce income with its own AI Pact Bros, but simultaneously it is not noticeably less beligerent to the human player?

Your experience is the same as mine. You really had to play the best you could for the whole game to stay competitive. Imagine, then, if you did not have transcend as a victory option? You would be faced with trying to conquer an AI that is equipped with hordes of stasis garrisons and sting disruptor copters with production to match yours. Welcome to the Nigthmare level!

Ned

[Iskandar Reza]

this did not accur to me, this setting the AI to pacifist. of course they'd be better, gaia and cyborgs are pacifist, and they always come out top (among the ai)

i guess i'll try this out. i've already given up playing SP, because the AI's too stupid for me to waste my time on.

[spartak]

I'm sorry if this is a stupid comment, but that looked really fun. Is there anywhere I could download a premade map to try this out on?

Thanks

[Ned]

Iskandar, Making them pacifist is only one element in making the AI stronger. Giving them terraformers and preseeding the map with forests is another. Adding police to fundy and power reduces the negative police of FM, which is the almost exclusive setting of AI.

I personally have not gone so far as adding clean b/c with the above settings, the AI does not seem to overbuild units. It rather invests in infrastructure.

Setting the research goals to everything but conquer has some very interesting side effects. Defense is generally equal to or ahead of offense for most of the game. One can see still laser weapons long into the game!

Ned

[Ned]

Andye, As to the map, use the SE to create it. It may take a few minutes to learn the interface, but it is worth it. You get to the SE from the main menu (START, LOAD, etc.) by clicking SCENARIO. After you have a map to your liking, spot seed it with forests. Save it. Then load the map when you start your game.

You have to edit the Alphax.txt to add police to fundy and power. Once you open this file in edit mode, it will be obvious how to do this.

You have to edit each faction's profile to change them to pacifist, and one or more terraformers, and change their research goals. Try using the faction editor.

Ned

[spartak]

Thank you.

I am afraid I have always been a bit shy of the SE. I will need to give it a go.

Andy

[Avenoct]

I've suspected the same thing about the pacifist AI for awhile, and it's good to see I'm not alone in this crazy counterintuitive judgement. I usually set my factions for random personality and SE objectives b/c every other game I get a really interesting faction that is much tougher than usual. Miriam seems to win this lottery of Personality more often than chance alone would dictate. She seems to usually be nearby and pumping out colonists faster than Centaurian Rabbits on Easter. Anyways, this is beside the point. I'm delving into Alpha text and had a question... I see where to change the SE goals and prohibited selections, etc....but where the heck is personality? I'm going straight back to find it, and by the time anyone replies to this I'll probably have it, but maybe someone will have an insight before I'm able to figure it out. Oh, and don't tell me to use a PC faction editor...I need the line b/c I'm on a Mac and I don't think we have any handy apps to use in editing SMAC. The fact that the rules and factions are in text files is absolutely brilliant. Heaping praise to Firaxis for that....if I could only find the personality line so I could make some all-pacifist factions...I can't wait.

-Smack

[Basil]

The personality line is in the faction files, not alphax.txt: it's the first line with all the 0's and 1's. In the "Gaians.txt" file, for instance, it's the line starting with Gaia's Stepdaughters.

You can find the details of how the faction files are set up in the faction.txt file.

To set the factions up the way Ned is talking about, give them
-1, 0, 1, 1, 1

The first -1 makes them pacifist (1 would be aggressive), the 0 makes them uninterested in conquest technologies and builds, and the three 1's make them interested in tech (discover), wealth (build, yellow stuff), and growth (explore, green stuff) respectively.

To give them terraformers, add ",UNIT, 1" to the end of the line with their bonus techs in it. Caution: the computer only pays attention to the first 8 items in this line (each item consists of a pair of comma-separated fields), and will ignore excess items. Some factions (Usurpers, Cult) already have 8 items.

[Avenoct]

Basil,

Thanks for the pointer. After avoiding the Alphatext and factiontext for a couple months I took the plunge after writing my question above and was instantly gratified. Tai Mai Shu's game sounded too fun to pass up. I was very pleasantly surprised that none of my tweaks crashed or compromised the game, and I took all the advice I found here and in the older thread about rebalancing SMAX factions. Adding +1 Police power to Fundy and Power SE choices, gifting all factions a free former, and changing the line you mention to add 'Build' (like Morgan) and make all factions pacifist in disposition. I just added the build "1" to whatever other dispositions they already had. Morgan is the only natural plain vanilla builder. Adding the Terraformer is as easy as extending the following line in the factionfile that describes the factions special benefits. Just put a ", UNIT, 1" .
I'm including this info in the hope of encouraging others to modify the text files. It took me about 15 minutes to learn and apply this stuff, and I immediately ran two test scenarios where all the factions were computer controlled on a standard map at Thinker Level (so they wouldn't have too many advantages at Transcend Level). It was terribly fun to watch them all plant forest (because I changed mines to need EnvEc before they can be built). Lal experienced heavy minerals-related ecodamage in two of his cities, but then again he had half the SP's. By 2200 The map was entirely filled with AI builder bases.
Storytime...:
I was eager to join in. so started my own game as Zak on a large map. Interestingly enough Miriam has been the only faction to initiate war, both in the test scenarios and in my own game...I think this is because I left her previous dispositions toward power and merely added build. So far it's 2147 and the Spartans were ahead in tech and Population but Morgan of all people just gave me gene splicing when I threatened to kick his money-grubbing capitalists back into the stone age. It's Transcend difficulty, but I think I'll do fine this time as I have the sweetest starting point I think I've ever had. I'm practically centered on the Uranium Flats, which for Zak is like the bubble-library of tech. Secondly, I was started practically next to Yang, who, when quickly disabused of his expansionist ideas is quite a handy lap dog...and in this case a buffer between myself and the Spartans who are to the south in the Monsoon Jungle. Though Miriam built a base closeby in a nice spot I'd hoped to colonize myself, she made the large mistake of telling me I was not only not worth her time, but would soon have my own chapter in her conquest bible. I didn't even have to probe her to get her mad, I think she stole nonlinear math from Yang and that got her confidence up.
Well, I'm guessing this military action to turn Miriams bases into Yangs bases might take 5 turns. I finally got Industrial Auto early again after several games of not having it come up (grrrrr!!!!!) and now all 8 of my bases are prodicing 12-16 minerals a turn which means 4 combat units a turn or 4 whatever a turn (more crawlers!). I had the forethought to build roads toward my target citybuilding spot so it's no trouble at all to ferry them across the gulf or drive them up the Eisenhower military highway (yes, America's highways were sponsored by the government to speed troop redeployment should we ever be invaded...obviously the post-WWII federal government was not controlled by the SMAC AI). I can't wait to see how the other factions look. It was really something to have Morgan develop genesplicing so early, but he's the only faction playing like he always has...maybe he feels less threatened? My only beef so far is that Yang was way too easy as he only had one garrison unit in each of his bases instead of the usual hoardes. I suspect the main advantage to the AI with the pacifist strategy is on larger maps without an immediate chance for the human player to conquer three or four factions and turn the AI into a techhouse....which brings me to my last comment.
A good AI strategy is one that works simply and effectively in most situations (because all situations is too much to shoot for). We see AI seabases making sea colony pods in a tiny lake and can chalk that up to a good strategy in a bad situation. One can observe the AI military trapped by a coastline (presumably waiting for a transport) when the enemy could be reached the long way around. There are many instances of forgiveable idiocy in the AI, times when the idea is good, but the implementation is circumstantially impossible. There are countless things that could be done to beef up the AI's strategy and tactics, and only be really studying a complete list could a person come up with the three or four things that would be most important to change. Right now though I'm thinking of this one...shouldn't AI strategy change with the size of the map? I'm sure it does change as the AI relates to neighboring factions..only slightly, but it does. Build sensors toward the enemy, attack in that direction, etc.. but what about just some fundamental strategic differences for different map sizes? On a huge map it's unlikely to conquer a faction early on with a bunch of rovers, so have the AI take on an expansionist-builder strategy on big maps..untill key techs or neighbors are encountered. Changes like that would seem easy enough to implement, as they always do here on virtual paper. I'm heading over to the 'what would you like to see in SMAC2?' thread if it still exists. Someone recently pointed out that it's the AI that needs to be the biggest focus for future game development and I think all die-hard strategy gamers would agree, perhaps followed by complexity and then by panache. SMAC broke new ground in all these areas..what a great, tight storyline and aesthetic! And of course it's far superior in complexity (just the unit designs are a vast leap above anything else recently). And the AI is good, really good, for a cheater. Sequels are scary beasts though...anyone ever play both Pax Imperia and Pax Imperia II? Pax I had the greatest custom unit system ever! Combat stank, strategy was not super, but no game was ever the same because the units were never the same. Pax II is an atrocious copy of Masters of Orion II, which also sacrificed quite a few things to turn out a decent but not groundbreaking game. Let's all hope that if and when a SMAC II comes about that it gets really lucky and is an 'Empire Strikes Back' to a 'Star Wars' of games (and please not a Chapter 1, whatever the heck that puke movie was called). G'night!
-Smack, the Ashevillian who lives also on Alpha CentauriBig Hey

[Ned]

Smack, Very good post. You are probably right about map size and initial conditions. A small map and close neighbors makes an early war strategy an excellent choice. But on a larger map, a builder strategy is preferred.

You may want to try the game on with these settings on a 140 x 100 map, which is what I normally use. Eliminate Transendance as a victory option. See how you do.

Ned