hidden paralles of civ2 and AC

VoodooChild · November 9, 2000, 14:20

quote:

Originally posted by weird god on 11-09-2000 12:17 PM
1)in civ2 the more techs you have, the longer it takes to gain another, depending on the NUMBER of techs you actually have, and not on the kind of techs. if you get certain key-techs it´s a waste to invent techs which lead to them most of the time.

Correct in that the cost increase by number. Depending on the situation at hand different techs can prove more or less important than other games. If you trade for a tech, but still don't have the prerequists, it is up to you if you want to research those techs based on their value to you, or you could continue trading or purchasing the prerecs from the other faction.

quote:

Originally posted by weird god on 11-09-2000 12:17 PM2)in civ2 the number of cities you have influences riots. i already noticed that this does exist in AC too. any idea of the numbers depending on map-size and level?

The numbers are based on the map size and your current efficentcy rating. Check the data links for the formula.

quote:

Originally posted by weird god on 11-09-2000 12:17 PM3)the cost for bribing a city in civ2 does depend on many factors: MONEY/type of government of your opponent, distance of the diplomate to the enemies capital, who originally built the city, unit in city,...

Not sure about this, the key factors I look at are population, distance from capital, and if the base is rioting. I know the cost are halved if under a riot.

quote:

Originally posted by weird god on 11-09-2000 12:17 PM4)the AI in civ2 seems to prefer building wonders you also try to build. it helps a lot to switch just before you finish it.

I havn't noticed this, they seem to start building when they get to a certain size and based on what techs they have on hand. Each faction has priorities, and I suspect that a SP that can be build with a tech from their priority may built sooner. Like I said just a therory.

quote:

Originally posted by weird god on 11-09-2000 12:17 PM5)barbarians, the "civ2-mind-worms", tend to raise stronger in certain regions, especially the poles. certain techs cause to raise stronger barbarians.

haven't noticed this. I believe at different years in the game you will see a stronger version of native life forms and of Unity units from remaining pods

quote:

Originally posted by weird god on 11-09-2000 12:17 PM6)if you are the strongest civ and no betrayer the AI kisses your feet and gives you a lot of money and techs for peace until mid-game, especially on deity (highest) level. else it shows no mercy. in mid-game the AIs almost everytime sign pacts against you no matter if you betrayed them.

The Dipolmacy engine is a complex system. The #1 and #2 faction are programed not to get allong (rivalry) The other factions will tend to try ally with one of the other to increase their own importance. Also which SE settings you are running can influcence how the other factions treat you. At the start of the game it is real easy to set up treaties since most everyone has the same SE settings. If you are WAY ahead onh the power bar, then it is likely that the other factions will ban together to bring you down.

quote:

Originally posted by weird god on 11-09-2000 12:17 PM7)connecting your cities to a road does increase trade-routes with other cities.

no energy bonus for working a square with a road or a mag tube. mines will generate an extra mineral if it has a road to it. Other than that they are just a means to move around.

quote:

Originally posted by weird god on 11-09-2000 12:17 PM8)caravans could be used to support wonder-building at there full costs. deleting units in cities count half of there production-costs to the new production. is there something caravan-like in AC too?

crawlers will also put their full value to a prototyping project. They can also caravan resources from one of your bases to another one of your bases, but they take two and only deliver one.

Crawlers can go to any square and bring back one type of resource from that square to the base that is its home.

now dont send your crawlers out to other faction' bases. SMACx uses a differnt system. There is a post running here about the returns from treaties and pacts that have nothing to do with crawlers.

quote:

Originally posted by weird god on 11-09-2000 12:17 PM9)it´s VERY important to play different styles: at the start exploring has absolute priority (you may find advanced tirbes, units or settlers). then it´s important to gain as much cities as you can - production rules. later on military or techs/gold and wonders have priority depending on your situation. in midgame it helps a lot to pop-boom. from now on gold/techs rule - military is primary for defence, gold for offence.

It is very important to be flexible with each game and do what is needed for the best result. Also different factions have different atvantages and disadvantages so you can be limited in the number of options you have to play with.

No advanced tribes and no settlers will be gotten from poping pods. It is good to go out an explore, but it is more important to expand as much as you can in the early game. Techs are ALWAYS important, money will be important throughout the game. Pop booming is important to wait untill your ready for it. Military is used for both as is money. Rush build defensive structures, Upgrade units, Bribe enemy units, Subvert Enemy bases, even bribe Faction leaders for peace or votes.

quote:

Originally posted by weird god on 11-09-2000 12:17 PM10)if you play on highest level you´ll soon need to spend trade on luxury to keep your people happy. useful percentages are 40, 60 or even 80%. 10%-30% wont help a lot and 50% don´t really show a difference.

depends again on which faction your playing. Also it is debated wheather you should or shouldn't. I will at different times run it at 10%. There are other times in which I may have it higher for a turn to get my bases to have a "We love the () day". It all depends on the situation and you playing style

quote:

Originally posted by weird god on 11-09-2000 12:17 PM11)if you build a settler and you have only one city it doesn´t disappear even if it is only at size one. furthermore you can keep all your accumulated food.

No, you base will uproot. If you build the colony pod before you reach a population of 2, you will be given the option to wait or to uproot the base. So plan ahead.

quote:

Originally posted by weird god on 11-09-2000 12:17 PM12)if you build a city on a square which wouldn´t produce food at all, you get one "extra" food.

Reguardless of what terrain you settle, you will get 2 nuteriants, 2 minerals, and 2 energy. If you settle on a special resorce or a river you will recieve the normal bonuses. Also there are geological areas with other bonus or penalties.

quote:

Originally posted by weird god on 11-09-2000 12:17 PM13)having diplomats in cities should help to prevent enemy-spy-operations. but it seems it only shows effect in cities of the AI.

Probes of any faction in any base will protect that base from any sort of probe activity. The two units will actualy fight a combat.

big_canuk · November 9, 2000, 14:24

I'll leave it to one of the experts to answer your points one by one. I have bumped vel's guide thread. The address for the "new" guide is at the end. It will answer most of your questions, and around 100 you haven't thought of yet.

And... lo and behold, an experts post and mine crossed. Whew! Good thing I didn't do all that work.

[This message has been edited by big_canuk (edited November 09, 2000).]

cbn · November 9, 2000, 14:29

Probe teams stationed in a base will "fight" an encroaching enemy probe team before there can be any techsteals or base bribes. This has always worked correctly for me in AC. If you want to bribe a base with a probe team in it you have to send enough probe teams to kill it before a bribe is possible. The defender can complicate the matter with a high Probe rating or the Hunter Special project making bribes impossible (unless you have SMAX and Alg. Enhancements.)

cbn

VoodooChild · November 9, 2000, 14:46

wg:

a link to Vel's 3.0 guide cam be found in his posts named "Signed, Sealed, and Delivered.....". It shouldn't be too far down the board.

cbn:

I find AC far more challenging. The differences in the factions, SE choices, and extra unit abilites all make for a FAR more complex game. Learning how to play effectivly has taken me far longer than in Civ2. So might say I am still learning.

Simpson II · November 9, 2000, 15:12

WG,

It doesn't take a great deal of subtlety to beat the SMAC AI, so it's probably just some habits you've carried over. Most of this is in Vel's guide, but I'll put it down anyway. They're all things I had to learn or un-learn when I started in Smac.

When I first started playing SMAC the thing that caused me the most trouble was expansion. I kept up the Civ2 habit of just churning out colony pods for the first part of the game, but this doesn't really work in SMAC. Usually, the first thing any base builds should be a former.

Don't farm/solar every square in sight, forest is often better. If you do build solar collectors, do it on high ground (or raise the ground) and have lots of echelon mirrors around so that you get 5/6 energy per square.

Don't save your money like you did in Civ, bribery is too expensive for you to need the reserve. Instead build the first ten minerals of a recycling tanks and then rush-buy them every time you get 60 ec. This does amazing things to your productivity!

Stack your bases closer than in Civ, with 2 squares in between them unless you are playing the PKs. There's no such thing as double production, so you don't need to control the special resources so badly, and your bases will get to size 13 with only 8 squares of forest being worked. You can't get past 14 for most of the game, so just crawl in an extra nutrient or two.

Use crawlers. Enhance your productivity until eco-damage kicks in. Industrial Automation should be your first target in a builder-style game.

The nut/min/energy restrictions are even more crippling than despotism, so you need to get to the lifting techs fairly quickly if you want to play for the long term.

Air power is all important, and if you get to it before someone else who is close by then you can virtually always blow them away in just a few turns. Nerve-gas choppers are the SMAC equivalent of nukes!

Anyway, I hope that some of this is of help. Of course there are some interesting subtleties, just like in Civ... a fair few have not yet been mentioned on the forum, but I'm sure you will have fun finding them.

[This message has been edited by Simpson II (edited November 09, 2000).]

cbn · November 9, 2000, 16:50

Voodoochild

Sorry I if I wasn't clear in my earlier post. I find AC to be a richer, more complex game than CIV and I have so so much to learn. I am constantly amazed at the detailed knowledge and involved strategies that are exhibited on this board. My comment was meant merely to indicate that I did not find it any harder to beat the AI in AC than in CIV. In fact I think it might be even easier since AC provides many more avenues for the creative use of human ingenuity.

cbn

weird god · November 10, 2000, 01:17

as some of you may have noticed i´m an addicted civer and dare to say i know almost everything about this wonderful game (the AI is no prob and i´m currently in the first spot of gameleague) - on the other hand i still have problems winning AC even i don´t play trancendent level. i´m wondering because civ2 and AC are very simliar....
civ2 has a lot of secrets which only show up very subtile but have great influence on the game. i now need your AC-knowledge to detect parallels which i guess would help a lot...

1)in civ2 the more techs you have, the longer it takes to gain another, depending on the NUMBER of techs you actually have, and not on the kind of techs. if you get certain key-techs it´s a waste to invent techs which lead to them most of the time.

2)in civ2 the number of cities you have influences riots. i already noticed that this does exist in AC too. any idea of the numbers depending on map-size and level?

3)the cost for bribing a city in civ2 does depend on many factors: MONEY/type of government of your opponent, distance of the diplomate to the enemies capital, who originally built the city, unit in city,...

4)the AI in civ2 seems to prefer building wonders you also try to build. it helps a lot to switch just before you finish it.

5)barbarians, the "civ2-mind-worms", tend to raise stronger in certain regions, especially the poles. certain techs cause to raise stronger barbarians.

6)if you are the strongest civ and no betrayer the AI kisses your feet and gives you a lot of money and techs for peace until mid-game, especially on deity (highest) level. else it shows no mercy. in mid-game the AIs almost everytime sign pacts against you no matter if you betrayed them.

7)connecting your cities to a road does increase trade-routes with other cities.

8)caravans could be used to support wonder-building at there full costs. deleting units in cities count half of there production-costs to the new production. is there something caravan-like in AC too?

9)it´s VERY important to play different styles: at the start exploring has absolute priority (you may find advanced tirbes, units or settlers). then it´s important to gain as much cities as you can - production rules. later on military or techs/gold and wonders have priority depending on your situation. in midgame it helps a lot to pop-boom. from now on gold/techs rule - military is primary for defence, gold for offence.

10)if you play on highest level you´ll soon need to spend trade on luxury to keep your people happy. useful percentages are 40, 60 or even 80%. 10%-30% wont help a lot and 50% don´t really show a difference.

11)if you build a settler and you have only one city it doesn´t disappear even if it is only at size one. furthermore you can keep all your accumulated food.

12)if you build a city on a square which wouldn´t produce food at all, you get one "extra" food.

13)having diplomats in cities should help to prevent enemy-spy-operations. but it seems it only shows effect in cities of the AI.

i guess this is enough for now, thx for your help!

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mankind made alcohol, god made weed.....whom do you trust?

weird god, chief of EUROPA

cbn · November 10, 2000, 01:59

A quick scan of the archives will find very detailed threads on most of these points. You are quite correct to point out parallels to Civ but I am sure you are finding tons of differences

- Trade routes are not created by anything like a caravan but spring up "automatically" between paired cities of factions that have good relations. there was a recent thread that outlined the formula (which made my head hurt)

- The caravans replacement is crawlers (sort of)-- like in Civ wwhen people advise to build caravans-- in AC build crawlers-- These units can work a square for one rescource type to great effect (they also serve as early warning scouts of approaching units/probes and can be armoured through upgrades to be more defensible). You can have large cities with no drones if you crawler enough nuts mins and energy to make sufficient numbers specialists. These crawlers are also caravan-like in that they can be cashed in toward secret projects (extra effective if upgraded first)-- Crawlers can also convoy resources between cities but I have not found a use for this as I can usually find lots of unused resources.

- The crawler approach often means that you never need psych allocation unless going for a Golden Age. Citizens that could be drones are instead specialists. The extra cash not "wasted " on psych allocation can be used to rush build items.

Formers are huge-- they can do so much more than settlers/engineers in CIV -- A particular favorite is boreholes although raising terrain is also a lot of fun.

Given your stated success at Civ I would think that AC would not pose any greater challenge in single player, although I do think that it has more variables/complexities. I also win deity CIV regularly in SP and find the same now with transcend SMAC/SMAX. If I were you I would peruse these threads until Vels strategy guide 3.0 is located. That will answer many of your questions as it explains many game features better than game documentation

Hope this helps.

CBN

weird god · November 19, 2000, 23:03

first of all thx for your answers. after getting more into AC it really seems to be more different to civ2 than i thought on the first look. even though gameplay is all in all the same, the complexity of this game is not in any way comparable with civ2 and adds another depht to this wonderful game. it may be true that this makes the AI weak to the skilled player, but i guess this will take me some more time.

vel´s strat-guide is amazing. what an emotion, what an expression - it´s really exciting to read and helped me a lot to get rid of the basic probs. great!

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mankind made alcohol, god made weed.....whom do you trust?

[wi:d] god, chief of EUROPA