Early Lessons from Early Games

[Mead]

I've only been playing SMAC for about six to nine months. I know it can't have been more than nine months ago but can't remember exactly when I started. I didn't even mean to buy the game. It came in a multipack game (I bought the multipack to get the Axis and Allies game in it a couple of years ago, because I liked the Axis and Allies Board game).

After playing Axis and Allies for a while, out of curiosity I put the SMAC cd in. There were no printed manuals, but I followed the tutorial on the game.

After reviewing the seven choices of factions, I figured, well, since I don't know how to play this game it probably would be a good idea to at least be well armed. I choose Spartan and the Citizen difficulty level for my first game. I took a while but despite my best efforts at watching the forests in my part of the world grow, the AI finally got around to annihilating me (and I was trying so hard to be nice to it).

Lessons learned the hard way in that game and the games that followed.

You can build units.

When someone offers a treaty accept it.

Trying to place a research hospital in, every one of your bases, before you make your first impact rover, generally leads to a short game if your empire is in the same solar system as Miriam.

Miriam - she's not to be trusted.

Finally, although you can do a lot of things with the free units you get when you pop a pod, different units are good for different purposes. It appears using an Alien Artifacts to explore unknown terrain is not the best use of the unit. Nor is sending Alien Artifacts towards those units that don't seem to respond to your efforts to direct them and look kind of like yours except for that strange orange or bluish tinge.




I've learned how to play the game a little bit better since then, but would be interested if anyone has any similar early learning tidbits they can pass on.


Mead

P.S.
The more entertaining and embarrassing the better.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Mead



It appears using an Alien Artifacts to explore unknown terrain is not the best use of the unit. Nor is sending Alien Artifacts towards those units that don't seem to respond to your efforts to direct them and look kind of like yours except for that strange orange or bluish tinge.

Your early foibles are definitely entertaining

I found out early that an AA should not be used as a pod popper even if you gave a rover with it. The darn AA has a habit of just disappearing

[Pandir]

Heh when I first got the game I was useing the arrow keys to move my units it took me a while to figure out I can move diagonal.

[Googlie]

In one of my early games, after I got the Space Elevator, i went pod-popping with a couple of drop troops (this before the days when continuous right clicking was deemed a cheat)

On a humungous map I popped maybe 60 pods, about half mind worms (so I just zoomed away again in the SE ) and maybe about 15 were AA's

Needless to say I had no means of getting these back to my territory - but the AI had - so I just gave them about five techs each to 3 factions due to my ineptitude

(I did get whupped in that early game - Lal transcended but I was pacted so I got the "Go back to Earth as our emissary" movie ending - neat

G.

[Lazerus]

"Go back to Earth as our emissary"

i've never seen that

I used to just leave every former on fully automate
Supply crawlers looked inefficient compared to something that will give me 2 more lab points !
I once left just an AA defending a rather large base ....
Nerve staples were the key to winning ! 6000yr+ sanctions