Worst experiences

[Mr. President]

Anybody feel like sharing their most embarrassing, humbling, or downright soul-destroying Alpha Centauri moments? I'll get the ball rolling:

There are two incidents that come to mind. The first occurred in my second ever game. I was Morgan, playing on the Map of Planet, with my headquarters on the northwest coast of the eastern continent. In a conflict with Miriam, I managed to capture a couple of major population centers and was feeling rather proud of myself. (As someone who never finished WarCraft II without cheats, I had spent what seemed a lifetime looking for a game that was playable without tinkering with the programming.) Until I started building Hab Complexes to get past the size 4 base limit. Hostilities broke out on the Believing front, my population shot through the roof, the Free Market caused drones to spring up on every corner and my headquarters to be worm-raped, and the Planetary Governor, Deidre, turned decidedly hostile. My splendid army marched south, but were assailed on the flanks by angry worms. Behind them, drone riots paralyzed my economy, and Believer probes snuck up the uninhabited east coast and applied powerful mind control techniques. After about fifteen turns I had only three cities left, yellow islands in a sea of orange, and my hubris had subsided somewhat. (Footnote: This mangling so traumatized me that the next time I played as Morgan was several months later!)

The second was the first time I suffered attack by planet busters. Two of them, launched by Miriam, dropped on my two most productive cities, one of which contained the Human Genome Project, the Ascetic Virtues, and the Cloning Vats (the third of which I needed to use Thought Control). I was so angry, desiring massive, brutal retaliation in kind, but my entire stock of fusion planet busters had been wiped out in the attack. It taught me two hard lessons: one, never to put all one's eggs in one basket; and two, to kill anyone who stands in one's way.

[Wiglaf]

Anybody feel like sharing their most embarrassing, humbling, or downright soul-destroying Alpha Centauri moments?

On one unfortunate occasion, my friend altered the faction.txt files to inform the AI of some pretty nasty, biting phrases. That's more or less the first time the computer actually got to me personally. I even thought of emailing firaxis until I figured it was a prank.

[D4everman]

I've mentioned it before but there was a game where I as the UoP decided Morgan had lived entirely too long. I went after him with several transports loaded with my best troops. (we had a land bridge between us, but I wanted to pop out right at his coast near morgan Industries and whoop him.) This was one of my first games and I wasn't ready for Morgan's typical response.

He bought them. Almost every single troop. He probed them, destroyed the ones he couldn't bbecause they were stacked and sent them back after me. To make it worse, we were even in weapons tech and he stormed over my bases, buying some conquering other. I quit before I was put in the punishment sphere. Embarrassing.

Actually, its like one of my first games of Civ 2. The mongols wanted something or another and I told them to get bent with that old response "Consequences, Shmonsequences..."

They killed me. I told one of my privates about it and for months afterward when I asked him to do something he'd laugh and say 'Sarge...consequences, shmonsequences.".

(He'd still do it, though)