I have no idea what I am doing!!!

[bigman2013]

I am brand new to this forum and this game.

I have always heard that this game was great and found Alpha Centauri for $4 at a video game store so I bought it.

I have tried to play this game for three days and have had no success at all.

I thought that Gaia's Stepdaughters looked cool so I have tried to be them and each time and it is not working. I tried using the tour and read everything that popped up but it doesn't really walk you through your first game.

Here we go:

1. Can someone please tell which faction is the easiest to use for a new player.

2. Can someone tell what planet options I should use to make my first games as easy as possible while I learn how to play.

3. Can someone give some sort of short walkthrough or maybe a build order or anything to help a clueless new player.

I appreciate any help I can get.

Thank you very much and I look forward to being a part of these forums.

[N35t0r]

The first time i played i used the university, but it really narrows down to your stile of play (or, how you feel like playing)

I also started on the map of Planet, which puts the 'peaceful' civs together on a continent... that should help a bit...

about the rest of the stuff, i don't know, just experiment... I only played a couple of times (and only one since i re installed the game a couple of weeks ago)

[Darsnan]

Heah Bigman2013,

well, posting in this forum is one of the best places to find out how to play SMAC, and by the end of the day you should have many replies on how to play this game, each player contributing his or her own experience and style as to how they play they game.
As for me, I play the Gaians quite a bit, so since I am a bit rushed right now, I'll give you a few hilightsfor the Gaians:

1. Start on Citizen level.

2. Build your cities on the nearest greenest square. The greener the square, the more nutrients your city will receive per turn. If there are two squares that are essentially the same level of green, and one of them has a river running thru it, plant your city
on the river square.

3. Because you have Centauri Ecology, you can immediately start building Formers. Crank out one Terraformer per base and start building forests and roads only, then switch to a Scout, then if you have 2 citizens in your city, crank out a Colony Pod and repeat the process. If you don't have 2 citizens in your city after building a Former and Scout, crank out another Terraformer and then switch to a Colony Pod.

3. Technology-wise, beeline towards Industrial Automation. Start by setting you Research rate to 80% (Economy 20%) and then choosnig the following techs in order as they are offered to you:
Ind Base
Ind Economics
Information Networks
Planetary Networks

You should get the option of Ind Auto shortly after that (and if you don't get one of the above techs in this line when offered what to research next, just wait and choose it the next time you research a tech). Once you have Ind Auto, start pumping out Crawlers and sucking nutrients from the nearby fungus (rocky fungus squares are best to crawl).

4. Send you scouts out patrolling, and pop pods (note: popping pods within a base radius is less likely to end up with worms or earthquakes) and search fungus for worms. Gaians get an automatic first worm capture, so you should shortly have a worm to start popping pods that are in deep fungus, or on rocky squares that won't allow your Speeder to move again after popping a pod.

Hope this helps! I could go more indepth, byut I think to a certain extent learning on your own is just as important. With the basics listed above, and playing on Citizen, you should do fairly well - just remember to play nice with the AI early and get a feel for them.


D

[bigman2013]

wow, thanks for the help. I will just jump in and keep playing until I get the hang of it.

Your suggestions are a great help.

[Minute Mirage]

Originally posted by bigman2013
wow, thanks for the help. I will just jump in and keep playing until I get the hang of it.

Your suggestions are a great help.

Have you played the Civilization games? Do you know what the nutrients, minerals and energy do?

Here are some answers to your questions:

1) I personally started out as the Gaians, but the University or the Peacekeepers might also be a good option.

2) Make a rainy map with lots of land and minimal native lifeforms. If the other factions are giving you trouble early, choose a larger sized map.

3) At the beginning, you should concentrate on building the following:
- Some scouts to explore the map and defend your bases
- Some formers to terraform the planet. You should concentrate on planting forests and building roads between your bases. If some of your bases don't have a tile that produces two nutrients (a rainy tile, or a tile with a nutrient bonus), you should build a farm on a moist rolling tile.
- Colony pods to make new bases. You should be careful to complete the colony pod only after your base has grown to size 2, otherwise the base will be disbanded (maybe not on the easiest difficulty level, though).

Don't build too many units per base at the beginning. Every unit after a certain limit (usually two initially), will require one mineral per turn as support. Thus, if your bases produces three minerals per turn and you have built three scouts, you are left with only two minerals per turn. If you build too many units you might find yourself in the situation that you have no minerals left to produce anything.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Darsnan



2. Build your cities on the nearest greenest square. The greener the square, the more nutrients your city will receive per turn. If there are two squares that are essentially the same level of green, and one of them has a river running thru it, plant your city
on the river square.

D

Sorry Darsnan but while the rest of your advice is excellent, your advice on the raininess of the base square is incorrect. A base square production will be the same regardless of raininess and whether the base is located on flat or rolling terrain-- so on these factors you are better off to plant your base on the ARID and flat square to get the benefits of WORKING the better squares.

This is DIFFERENT than the CIV2 model I was accustomed to and it took a bit of rethinking to realize bases should go on the worst square in the area.

Note that a river or any of the special features like monsoon jungle or uranium flats or any energy, nutrient or minerasl special WILL increase the production on the base square. Note that there are mixed views on planting a base on an energy, nutrient or mineral special as it is possible to get a greater quantity of the special resource by terraforming. For example I think a nutrient special will increase base square production by 2 nutrients while a farm and condensor combo means that square will yield 7 nutients.

[Flubber]

Other tips

1. Use formers to make roads in the directions you want to build new cities. This avoids having colonies spend substantial time in transit. The quicker they get planted and producing resources, the better. Don't worry about placing bases closer together so radii overlap a bit-- A base cannot work all of its radii with citizens for a long long time

2. Sensors are great-- they prevent mindworms or enemies from sneaking into your empire and also provide a military bonus to your units in range. If you place a sensor on a tile before building a base there, the sensor cannot be destroyed

3. As the gaians, explore that fungus hard. Attacking a mindworm, a land unit has a 3 to 2 advantage ( adjusted by the respective morales/lifecycles) and the gaians get an inherent Planet bonus.

4. know the benefits of childrens creches in combination with running a demo-planned government. This combination yields a +6 growth and every base in this situation will grow by one citizen per year as long as there is food to feed them and subject to population limits ( size 7 until you build a hab complex)

5 . the gaians have higher efficiency than most factions which means you lose less by going to more extreme allocations ( as between cash and labs)

6. As all factions engineer a probeship as soon as possible and get out there infiltrating your opponents

7. If you go to war, war decisively-- Don't dribble units -- concentrate them, hit them hard-- Remember to bring probes along so the enemy doesn't just buy back a recently captured base with half your attack force along with it-- Its awful to attack a low tech neighbor and then see them turn your army back on you.

8. Use crawlers to collect resources from farm/condensor combos and mines on rocky squares. Citizens should be working boreholes, forests and some rainy rolling squares ( and the other types until you get crawlers out there).

Put mines only on ROCKY squares-- forest is a better quicker choice on all other terrains and will yield 1 food, 2 minerals and 1 energy initially and these amounts increase when you build a treefarm and a hybrid forest

Thats it for now

[Minute Mirage]

Originally posted by Flubber
Other tips

All excellent advice, but I'd say that's rather advanced. I mean, I played the game happily for about a year when the game came out without knowing just about any of these tips. It was only this summer when I decided on a whim to go see some strategies in the internet that I stumbled upon Vel's guide and saw the light. Boy, has my playing changed during the last five months.

Speaking of Velociryx's guide it's available here. There are heaps of useful stuff there, but I'd say it's not for a total beginner.

[Jamski]

Most important : build LOTS of bases. If you think you have too many base, build some more And turn on directed research, not random research.

-Jam

[CEO Aaron]

Jam, you don't need ICS to win the game at the more basic difficutly levels, and I don't think such a strategy would improve one's understanding of the game.

On the other hand, building too few bases can definitely get you in trouble, so keep planting them until at least the second bureaucracy warning.

[johndmuller]

Welcome Bigman2113,
I think that Minute Mirage is right; most of this advice is way too hardcore SMAChead for a real beginner. It's nice to be able to optimize things in the game, but a more laid back approach can lead to a more fun experience, especially when in the first flush of discovering what a great game this is. A lot of the discussion in this forum is about somewhat esoteric parts of the game, rather than the fundamentals, but periodically someone like yourself emerges and people will generally be happy to offer advice and information, and to answer even the most rudimentary questions, so feel free to ask away. Here's my attempt at some basic advice:

Think Balance and Moderation; start at one of the lower levels and don't try to conquer the world overnight. Don't go overboard with any one thing, build just one or two units in each base for a while and don't build all the available facilities just because you can; try to produce some of each of the 3 resources, don't zone in on any one of them in particular as shortages of any of them can stagnate your development. In many respects, this is an economic game (at least until you master that phase). Let the population in each base grow until it starts to become inefficient (ideally, a little before that point), like if it is outgrowing its food supply, or if you have to produce from unimproved tiles or start getting drones; at first, this would be just a couple or three people per base, but as you get a few key facilities and can terraform the surrounding area, you can let them grow larger. There are various limits and disincentives for growth in base size, but it is by no means all bad.

Trading with the other factions is a good way to get technology. Early in the game, the computer players (often referred to as the "AI") will be happy to trade with you and you can easily get more tech than you can properly take advantage of. It is a good idea have a unit wandering around exploring, in part to check out possible new base sites and find especially rewarding areas, but also to meet your neighbors so that you can trade with them. Sometimes you will encounter dubious welcomes or they will threaten you and make demands - Occasionally they are bluffing (and sometimes they will fall for your bluffs as well), but for the most part, if you wimp out with the bullies rather than try to out-macho them, you will survive longer and learn more. Once you get better, you will be able to kick their butts any time you want to, so just take their names - payback will be enjoyable.

There is some kind of automatic tutorial advice generator at the lowest level (and it can also be turned on manually in the "Preferences" (MENU/GAME/PREFERENCES/Tutorial Messages)); I haven't used it in a long time, but I think it reminds you of some of the basics and points out other moments in the game where you need to watch out or think about what you are doing.

Good luck and have fun.

[bigman2013]

This is a lot of info and I appreciate it very much.

I am playing a game now on the easiest level and have knocked out one faction.

I have put all formers and governors on auto.

My question: how do I know what to research and how do I know what each research does before I research it?

Thanks for all the great help!

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by bigman2013
I have put all formers and governors on auto.

My question: how do I know what to research and how do I know what each research does before I research it?

Thanks for all the great help!

Your Governors are incompetent and your Automated Formers will build things you don't need. You need to retain a tight control over every aspect of the game, a la Chairman Yang. This especially becomes improtant on the higher levels of the game, as well as being a good learning tool for you now as far as the various info windows you can access to address the needs of your cities.
As far as research is concerned: on smaller worlds, weapons become more of a need, so its good to beeline towards Nonlinear Mathematics and build several Impact weapons based units. On larger maps, sometimes going for a more research asbed optopn is better. On water worlds, Doc: Init is a must and building the Maritime Control Center is a priority.
BTW did you get a tech chart when you bought the game? If not, then I'm sure someone has a link to Helium Ponds teenie tiny tech chart, which you can print out locally (or view on your computer). It makes things so much easier to view all of the techs as far as how they relate to each other, and eases your decision process in what to beeline towards.


D

[johndmuller]

Originally posted by bigman2013
... My question: how do I know what to research and how do I know what each research does before I research it?...

There is a substantial amount of in-game help, most of which is pretty good, despite some imperfections. The most generic version is pointed at by MENU/HELP, but F1 will give you a direct access into the Tech info you specifically ask about.

As is often the case with SMAC, the answer to your question would start off with "it depends"; the various factions have certain unique advantages and disadvantages which can be exploited and/or mitigated by other aspects of the game, such as the techs, so some factions want/need certain techs more or less than others.

Centauri Ecology is a pretty important tech to get - very many, if not all, would go for that tech first, as it is the prerequisite for Formers, without which it is hard to get anything going, unless you have unusually rich terrain. After that, it really does depend on what you want to do (or have to do, if events are being thrust upon you). Just try out the ones that are available, and see what works for you. Once you get a feel for what you get out of each tech, you will be able to see what you are missing when you don't have it; some techs make their absence felt pretty obviously, like if you don't have any formers, your base soon stagnates due to lack of resources; if some aggressive neighbor arrives and knocks your block off, you would have been better off with weapons (Applied Physics) and/or armor (Industrial Base).

Early in the game, some things are more or less useful than others, and while they may sound good enough to want to get them right away, they don't really deliver the goods until your faction has grown. For example, Network Nodes (Infomation Networks) and Energy Banks (Industrial Economics) boost your research and economy respectively, but in addition to being built (at the expense of what you might otherwise have done), the facilities themselves have to be maintained out of your cash flow, so they may not be cost effective until you have generated enough income to more than cover their maintenance costs, as well as enough profit to make the investment worthwhile. Recycling Tanks, on the other hand, have no maintenance costs and boost the output of the base (or all three resources) by a fixed, flat amount, independent of how little you are producing.

Most people steer their early research toward Industrial Automation, as it is a powerful tech, and the Crawlers it allows can be used to significantly augment a base's resource production and history out of the shortages that were crimping your style. Some players feel that crawlers are a little too good, especially as the AI rarely uses them in this fashion, much to it's detriment. As much fun as it is, I think it would be more valuable for you overall to learn how to deal with the shortages without this crutch, as it will greatly help your play in the early game, and the effects of what happens in the early game are magnified by all those compounding effects of time.

[Nubclear]

Darsnan....I played for months on citizen beating the fish out of all the factions....Without even using formers It was improved when I used automated formers, and even more improved when I took tight control.

But one doesn't have to have tight control form the get go...

[Petek]

Originally posted by bigman2013

I have put all formers and governors on auto.

As others have pointed out, you will eventually have to take control of your bases and formers to win at the higher levels. Here's a suggestion to get started in that direction: Take control of one base and one former. In other words, turn off the governor at one base and don't automate one former. That way the micromanagement won't overwhelm you. You can then automate less and less as you get more comfortable with the game.

[Minute Mirage]

Originally posted by bigman2013


My question: how do I know what to research and how do I know what each research does before I research it?

I may understand your question wrong, but do you have blind research on or off in your game settings? If you have blind research on, you can only select a broad category for what kind of technologies you would want. I would recommend setting blind research off, in which case you can choose the exact technology you want. In this "directed research" mode the game offers you a selection of technologies every time you finish researching one. As for knowing what the technologies do, you should probably take a look at the datalinks (press F1) and browse through the various technologies. The benefits of all the technologies are explained there.

As far as the automated formers and governors go, I'd say it is quite OK to use them in the beginning. When you get more comfortable with the game, you can start guiding the formers and the bases manually.

[gwillybj]

I have no idea what I am doing!!!

Neither do any of the rest of us. We just fake it, with varying degrees of success. Welcome to Alpha Centauri. Have A Nice Day

[Tommara]

If you're the builder type, play University, it's the easiest for builders.

I dunno nothing about combat types, not my style.

[Tommara]

Oh, but, hey, don't let "builder" sound like a wimp. Once we get established, it's pretty tough to knock us out.

[Jamski]

Builder is the easiest to start with, and you get to see all the techs, if you can stay alive to the end of the game that is.

Auto-formers are OK for beginners, they'll just be as poor as the AI's formers are, which isn't soooooo bad when you're just starting and don't know what's good or bad.

Auto-govenors are a BIG no-no though.

-Jam

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Main concept is always growth.

Be it through plopping out bases, pop booming (adding a population point per turn), conquest etc.

Play a few times then refer to the aforementioned Vel guide.

Also some good info over at www.civgaming.net and the associated SMAC Academy

[Minute Mirage]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe


Also some good info over at www.civgaming.net and the associated SMAC Academy

Indeed. The builder's prime guide helped my early game tremendously. Thank you Ogie.

[SynthetGod8]

personally, I let my formers be automated for most of the game. I know they build stupid things sometimes, but I keep an eye on them. Like everyone keeps saying, growth is good, so if they build a farm and collector on wet land, then by all means, I can use the extra 3 food to grow the base. And yes, once I get Tree Farms and Hybrids, I start replacing them all with forests. Personally, I had looking after terraformers.
As for goveners, I usually set up a nice queue on a new base and leave it to the govener. I just keep an eye on them. if I need something, I built it. otherwise, why should I care what it builds? I usually fiddle with the govener options so that they don't build useless military units (just the ones I want, when I want it).
Again, I don't have the tolerance to baby-sit 50 queues and constantly updating them so that they don't revert to Stockpile. I tend to watch and maintain the top 10 mineral-producing bases and a small cadre of fusion terraformers. Every other govener and former can do what they want.
Maybe I'm just used to have turns take 10 minutes to finish when I had my slow Mac, so I didn't want to spend 30 minutes messing with queues and Former orders when it took bloody forever for them to compute.
that's my 2 cents

[bigman2013]

Ah, I have the blind research on. That could explain part of the problem.

I think I will take the suggestion about overseeing one governor and one former at first and then doing more from there.

F1 has been very helpful.

I did not get a tech chart when I bought the game.

Any link to this chart would be great.

Thanks.

[Minute Mirage]

Originally posted by bigman2013
I did not get a tech chart when I bought the game.

Any link to this chart would be great.

A custom made Word tech chart is available here.

[dhik]

I have some technology advice.

1. Get Industrial Base unless you play as the Morganties. They start out with this technology.

2. Get Secrets of the Human Brain. You can get a free advance if you discover this first.

3. Get Centuari Ecology as soonas you can unless playing the Gaians, they start out with this advance.

[gwillybj]

Governors are tolerable if you think of them like the advisors in SimCity. Use the Explore-Discover-Build-Conquer settings along with the list of what they can/can't do, and they'll do a decent job of making relevant suggestions. You can easily override their choices and do something else.