More Questions about S.M.A.C.

666'srevenge · February 17, 2002, 16:18

Yes, Yes I Tyler666 after having this game for god only knows how long,have a question.

Currently im looking to play a game in which there is little or no War and I can try and win by transcendence....

What faction,tech pattern, and policy do you suggest.

Sorry if I'm a little to general

Rember to check out www.anarchistfaq.com for all your question about libertarian theroies and

s

Adalbertus · February 17, 2002, 19:38

A game with little or no war seems to be hardly possible. If you own SMAX (Alien Crossfire) you can try to choose pacifist factions, but this usually will defer war to later times, not avoid it. Playing on huge maps, Deirde very often comes out as one of the best AI factions, so I nearly never was able to avoid war with her.

As faction you might try University, Cybernetic Consciousness (Research factions), but also Peacekeepers, Gaians, Morgan Industries (maybe difficult for beginners), or even Human Hive (I think he is extremely easy to play in builder-style, but I think there are also other experiences). Data Angels is letting the others do the job for you. Probably difficult is to play Spartans (although the quickest Trancendence victories were done with the Spartans -- by some specialists here on the forum, not me

) certainly Believers. I don't know the other SMAX factions well enough to say something about them.

You will probably want to build a Super Science City (SSC) with Merchant Exchange, Supercollider, and Theory of everything, and then have lots (lots!) of crawlers crawling energy for this city.

Hope that helps

Googlie · February 18, 2002, 01:02

Firstly, you want to make sure that you have turned off the custom rules choice "intense rivalry" as well as the "Total War - Victory by Conquest" options.

Next, choose a huge map - or if you have the processing power, custom size and take 256(vertical) x 128(horizontal), 50% to 70% water, dense clouds, rare wildlife

If SMAC, take the PKs, for the automatic Talent and the extra two pops before Hab Complexes. Avoid the difficult pop-booming ones like the Hive and Morgan, and avoid Zak unless you are playing at a lower level and can avoid the drone problems.

Gaians and Sparta would be the next choices. Believers only if you want the Mother of all Challenges (not impossible to Transcend with them, though)

If SMAX, avoid the Borgs (who can't pop-boom very well) and (obviously) the Caretakers (who can't transcend). Drones are a good faction for this, Angels not bad, Pirates can do it but playing as the Cult needs Believer-like skills. Usurpers are a cinch as long as there are no human players who would just nerve-gas you out of existence (and if the U's - beeline for nervegas yourself to take out the Caretakers)

Also, if SMAX, choose your AI factions carefully, to get the peaceful ones in the game (Gaians, Morgan and Borgs), with the erratic ones making up the numbers (Angels, Drones, Pirates, PKs, Sparta and University)

Be friends with everyone, even at the cost of giving tech if anyone tries to bully you, and as said earlier, try to snag in your HQ the Merchant Exchange, Supercollider, Theory of Everything and the Network Backbone.

And above all, have fun !!!

G.

Mavfin · February 18, 2002, 11:28

Well, you can't transcend, but you can do about the same thing with the Subspace Generators...if you're not big enough to build them all within a couple of turns once they're available, you weren't going to win anyway....

666'srevenge · February 18, 2002, 17:07

Thanks for you advice

Alas, I do not have SMAX

I have started a game as the Hive (Which I renamed Loco de Loupus; Roughly translated as The Insanity of the Wolf)

I am on my own contient all by myself with no one near enough on land or sea to give me any trouble; I have bulit The Weather Paridgim SP and currently I'm just getting to the prototyping of synth sentinels as I was misserably defeated in the race for secrets of the human brain

My plan is to go quickly for clean reactor and also non-leathal methods and run Police State/Green/Knowledge or maybye Fundy/Green/Knowledge whichever works better at the tech level.

Do you have any more major pointers?

Sikander · February 19, 2002, 00:01

Playing as the Hive in a builder game I wouldn't rush immediately toward clean reactors or SotHB. Instead I would go for Formers and the Weather Paradigm (nice work with this) and then for crawlers, SotHB, and then for all of the restriction lifting techs.

Running Police State you get four free units per base. Build two garrisons (non-lethal methods is nice here, but not critical) and two formers. You will be able to really go to town with the terraforming. Concentrate on condensor / farms (worth 4 nuts even before nut restrictions are lifted) and minerals (boreholes and mine / roads on rocky squares). Use crawlers (when you get them) on everything but the boreholes, and turn all of your other population into specialists.

I would run Police State / Planned / Wealth. This will give you an excellent industry (+3) and growth rate (+3), and reduce your -2 econ to -1 econ, which means that you lose a grand total of 1 energy. It's tricky, but you can popboom with Yang, though it will only work in SMAX IIRC. You need to pod boom instead in SMAC. A real help here is the Planetary Transit system (which starts all you bases at pop 3). If you can't get this, just lay down special bases (with crawlers feeding and giving them minerals if necessary) which only crank out colony pods when they reach population 2+. Use these colony pods to build the population of you central core of bases up. You want 5 or more population in these bases so that you can use Librarians etc. for your specialists.

Once you build up a decent number of bases, each with several to many librarians, you should have a large amount of science coming in. The nice thing about using many or even all specialists is that you can build a lot of bases without B-drones throwing them into riots.

Ogie Oglethorpe · February 19, 2002, 17:47

Yang Spin 2

Planetary Transit pod Booming

This gambit is especially useful for pop Booming impaired factions (i.e. Yang)

Establish a feeder base (once you have PTS):

At this base you will want a minimum of 2 boreholes or 2 rocky roaded mines and one condensor/farm. Crawler all three squares for mins and nuts respectively (if drones are not an issue you can of course work the boreholes to allow some energy influx). Set production to colony pods. Establish workers as drones permit if drones are a problem you can have all three pop points as doctors and still have no issues. Produce colony pods and send them to target specialist bases as Sik describes above. If you are required to specialize all three citizens to avoid drone issues every third pod will be set down at the same exact base site. You then rehome your crawlers to that base site and begin again.

Depending on how many mins you have crawlered in you can pump out a colony pod every 1-2 turns.

Whats more if you have no qualms with the ethics it allows you to excede the hab dome limits.

Og

Flubber · February 19, 2002, 22:07

No war??

Sounds like a one city challenge to me. I've done it a couple of times as Zak and its pretty easy to stay relatively peaceful if you suck up enough to your neighbors. I usually would be somewhat surrounded by a pact friend and even though I might be technically at war with someone, battles were infrequent since my pact friend served as a barrier and my tech gifts kept him happy and strong enough to protect me

GeneralTacticus · February 20, 2002, 03:15

Quote:

Usurpers are a cinch as long as there are no human players who would just nerve-gas you out of existence (and if the U's - beeline for nervegas yourself to take out the Caretakers)

There is just one (actually two) problems with the Usurpers: first up, you will generally get so powerful everyone will be declaring war on you, and secondly, when you play the aliens Intense Rivalry is always turned on. Don't ask me why. In addition the aliens have no commerce so there's less incentive for the others to remain at peace with you.