>>2462073
Play deidre and sell bathwater. You'll be flush in no time.

>>2462073
Try and make early contact with everyone. Factions are usually more willing to sign treaties and pacts early on before SE and power differences really kick in. Make friends with peaceful factions that share your SE goals. Declare war on the asshole factions if they start to murder your allies. Rush planetary economics to unlock your victory condition and then just set yourself up to hoard energy credits till victory.

Above all don't wait around to corner the market, mind control costs get ridiculous in the late game even with more energy sources like satellites and transcendi. Also be careful about growing too large/powerful, other factions are fickle and may end up hating you if you or they skyrocket ahead in power ranking, even if you're friends.

MAKE
MORE
BOREHOLES

>>2462379
>spartans declare a surprise war
>needlejet blows up your former
>put AAA troop on next former
>finish borehole
>ecological damage: 85!!!
>18 mindworms appear
>colony destroyed

>>2462394
SUCKS
TO
SUCK

>>2462403
I haven't researched that technology

Is it a good idea to play with the Thinker mod if I've never played Alpha Centauri before?

>current year
>still no organic superlube

>>2462412
That mod sounds intriguing but play it vanilla first.

>>2462073
>Anyone have any advice on economic victory?
Secure the planetary governor position. It'll give you consistent extra income for your trade routes, and gives free view of everyone's bases.

>>2462201
Early tech trading is almost a game in of itself. Basic principle is that you start with tech A, can exchange with other faction that starts with B (so you both have A and B) but then you exchange with other faction that starts with C (so you have three techs while the AI factions have only two.)

This means the seemingly fraud AI offer to sell you some other faction's comm frequency can actually be a great deal because you can sell/flip stuff to them as well. Although there's a risk you run into their units the next turn anyway, I guess.

Since OP asked about economic victory, I'll mention this just in case: Morgan can seem extremely weak faction. At least I remember just looking the amount of numbers and not realizing that Economy is much more impactful than the other SE modifiers (or at least it gives flat yield increases that can be extremely powerful) and one of their main downsides is very punishing at lower difficulties (default city pop cap is 4 instead of 7) but becomes nearly irrelevant in higher difficulties where you actually don't want the cities to grow bigger than that (in the early game/if there's not enough happiness buildings yet) because of the drone penalties.

>>2462394
Was it true that because of the way ecological damage is modeled, you want to pollute as much as you can in the early game to get a bigger "quota" for the middle/late game?

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>>2462619
>Was it true that
According to the wiki's formula
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Ecological_damage_(SMAC)
... yes but no?
The short version is every attack gives you budget for 8 tile improvements, bearing in mind a citizen working a road + solar + farm counts for 6, unworked it'd be 3, and any budget excess spills over into a quota for minerals.
If you had, say, 3 tall cities with a tree farm and hybrid forest in each (all tile improvements will have zero impact), your quota would be 16 + attacks you suffered, which could afford all the minerals of those cities.
Offworld minerals apparently don't count.
Any preserves, temples and nanoreplicators effectively double, then triple, then quadruple, and so on, your quota.

... but antagonising the planet early would mean using Free Market, which -3 Planet score hurts your Psi Attack by -30%, doubles your eco damage
... you'll need either Morale for psi combat or Support to literally support a large if cheap army, so you'll be building a lot of uneconomical stuff and looking at social engineering
... you'll need to constantly reform tiles lost to fungus and walking into fungus occasionally spawns worms
... and very late on Green economics + Cybernetics you eliminate your eco damage entirely, which means even illegal ICBMs are A-Okay according to Planet if you're a vegetarian cyborg who composts his grandmother, recycles his refrigerator gases, drives a hybrid and offsets his needlejet air miles!

What this has taught me is I want to stop building roads everywhere, use rivers as roads, and to consider building road mines out of sight and out of mind because Planet can't connect the dots even if it can see the minerals, but you need to build and protect a supply convoy so it's not great.
Borehole spamming outside cities is probably not worth it for the time investment + global warming issue as you lose the dual income.
I'd build more condensers and mirrors outside my cities if the AI didn't found on borders.

>>2462796
oh and as a further point to make,
Each forest within an early game base effectively provides budget for 1 tile improvement, or more realistically 6 forests are needed for a rolling mine farm. Wow that's not efficient at all especially in time taken to plant it! A tree farm, which would be post-mineral limit tech, would probably mean a rolling road mine farm needs 7 forests to counteract entirely, maybe 6 for a rocky road mine? But then again you're not supposed to be immune. Oh and there's also the negative that you need these forests in your polluting bases, Planet does care about pollution density.

>>2462796
>https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Ecological_damage_(SMAC)
Btw I generally recommend https://alphacentauri.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page

It's an older and fuller wiki.

>>2462882
>exact same text
I miss when games only had one wiki and the layout wasn't terrible, but at least adblockers solve the worst problem.
There is less information on this one such as differentiating between if you have the expansion or not as to mines reducing nutrients, but then I don't know if it has things the other doesn't.

>>2462619
In addition to halving eco-damage from terraformed squares, each tree farm increases by one the number of 'clean' minerals bases can make without causing eco-damage. But this only happens after your first fungal pop (square explodes with fungus and you get a story popup). So the strategy used to be redline eco-damage until the pop before building tree farms. Thinker mod removes this check so you can build tree farms whenever.
>>2462796
What is this schizo nonsense?

General terraforming advice is to build ~2 boreholes and 1 condenser for mature bases, then forest every other tile. Forests plus tree farms have decent yields and reduce eco-damage. If you have rocky squares and want extra minerals then build mines and use crawlers on them. That should be more than enough production for normal play, and if you bump up against the eco-damage limit just build some Centauri preserves or hybrid forests to tamp it down again.

>>2463478
>What is this schizo nonsense?
Anon asked if you frack the planet early on to get fewer worm incursions later... which is unnecessary like you said, forests, tree farms, and one centauri preserve are how you dip under the threshold.
>tree farms give you clean minerals
...? There are clean minerals besides orbital mines?

>>2463800
>There are clean minerals besides orbital mines?
Yeah, it's the amount of minerals you can take in before causing any eco-damage. The default is 16 but goes up with every tree farm, preserve, temple, etc.
https://alphacentauri.miraheze.org/wiki/Ecology_(Revised)
This page makes it clearer.

>>2463893
This is extremely different to the usual formula.
How do people find these formulae?

>>2463962
It's the same formula as in the above wiki pages, just restated more clearly.
Probably datamined from the game files, if it isn't in the configs in plaintext.

>>2464137
>It's the same formula
It has at least one difference.
The normal formula considers each base to only mitigate its own damage and if an arbitrary limit (16 + blooms) is not exceeded, that gives you free minerals.
The revised formula does not consider trees to be local.
It also points out that planet cannot be below 1, which I wish was said elsewhere.

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>>2464225
Well it is the 'revised' eco-damage formula after all.
Most of the info on this game was written 20+ years ago and is probably wrong in places.

>>2462931
>I miss when games only had one wiki
it makes me laugh every time i find out there's more than one wiki for a videogame
fucking autists

>>2462073
>the unit designer is a chore
heresy

>>2466028
It sucks once you realize the designer is smushing chassis, weapon and addons together and they all clip horribly.

After finishing several playthroughs of both civ1 and civ2, I'm thinking it's time to get into SMAC. Anything I should know? I don't know anything about this game. Is it the usual "rapid expansion into military and just steamroll everyone" like civ 1 and 2?

>>2467089
Infinite city sprawl is still the strategy of choice for peaceful expansion. For aggression, the choice is mostly between early rushes with 4-attack rovers, or waiting for the advent of air power.

Your formers should be planting forests (and you should have a lot of formers). Forests produce 1/2/2 in the early game when your technology caps production at 2/2/2, making them hard to beat; as a bonus, they will randomly spread to adjacent unimproved squares.

If you are playing the Gaians (or otherwise have a +planet rating), go walking around in the fungus looking for worms. Other factions can splatter them for credits, but you can capture them and build up an early psionic army for free.

Economy +2 is THE major social engineering breaking point, as it grants +1 energy in every square. Before late-game, most factions require Free Market to do this, which has major downsides (basically it's the SMAC equivalent to Civ Republic/Democracy). The Human Hive starts with -2 and can't get there at all. Morgan Industries doesn't need Free Market at all since it starts at +1 and can use Wealth for the second +1; paradoxically enough they're usually better off going Green.

The unit designer is a cute gimmick, but it's not really important. The basic units work just fine.

Beyond that, it's all basically science fiction Civ 2, you should find it very familiar. Do go for a transcendence victory at least once so you can get the full storyline -- yes, this is a 4X with a story -- and enjoy all of the technology quotes, they are very good.

>>2462073
Wasn't there a book based on this game?

>>2467151
There were three and they aren’t bad. If you liked the Journey to Centauri short story you will enjoy them since it’s written by the same guy.

It gives you more insight into how the tech in the game actually works, what talents are and what drones are, how nerve stapling actually works, how the faction leaders are living forever, and more of an insight deeper into their mind beyond the tech quotes. It also goes more into Lal and his family which in the game IIRC is only mentioned in a tech quote.

>>2467166
Also Michael Ely doesn’t get enough credit imo for his contributions to SMAC. He directed the beloved project videos for the game. It’s not like the Halo books where the guy who wrote them had very little connection to the actual making of the game.

>>2467148
Oh, this thing has a story? Guess I'll just vibe it out so I don't spoil myself. This first playthrough I'm just gonna do my usual world domination stuff as Spartans on librarian difficulty.

Also, why do I have to hold shift to use the numpad for movement? Is that an option somewhere?

>>2467212
Well, I might not want to overstate the "story" thing too hard, but there is some important world-building that gets revealed over the course of the game.

Have fun, Spartans are a good and flexible choice. One useful thing to know, elite units get +1 movement, and it's pretty easy for a Spartan unit to get there with a Command Center and a nearby monolith (they grant a free morale level to visiting units). Another useful thing, psionic warfare is purely morale-based and ignores weapons and armour, so your naturally elite troops will do well against worms and things.

>>2467270
Oh, so the stats of my troops don't matter against worms? Is that why the worms have question marks instead of attack/defense numbers?

>>2467277
Yup. It just takes a few seconds with a flamethrower to burn out a worm mass, and no amount of armour is going to keep them out, so it's all a matter of your troops actually doing that and not curling up into a ball screaming instead. There are some building quotes that talk about it. Also note that the attacker gets a bonus, so you want to pre-emptively strike if you can.

>unlock boreholes
>description says they give 6 prod 6 energy
>hell yea, start making a bunch
>they only give 2 prod 2 energy
y u lie to me, game?

>>2467455
With the exceptions of base squares and bonus-resource squares, each square's production is capped at 2/2/2 until you research the technologies to remove those limitations. You normally unlock boreholes with the technology that unlocks unlimited mineral production; presumably you built the Weather Paradigm, which unlocked your booby prize earlier than you could profitably use it.

>>2467212
Don't take it seriously, the so-called "story" is a bunch of tech quotes that someone (peantosmac.com) hallucinated a storyline out of.

>>2467476
Yea, the weather paradigm seemed neat so I went for it. But wait, that means I could have made the borehole at the mineral deposit outside my base and still get the full benefit? I'm actually considering reloading an older save and doing that now...

>>2467478
Heh, I see.

There is a story, and it is more than just tech quotes.
You'll get short story segments that popup at certain events.

>>2467594
Oh, the Weather Paradigm is very good. Doubling terraforming speed on its own is justification enough. And if the boreholes aren't giving you full value now, well, they will be the moment those limiters are removed. (But watch out: 'full value' from a large number of boreholes may provoke, ah, 'ecological damage'.)

The mineral deposit would ignore the mineral limit, but not the energy limit, so it would generate 0/8/2... I think that's how it works, not certain. That is huge, but I'd just play on; the limit-removing technologies aren't that high in the tech tree.

>>2467600
Yea, I just kept going. I did make a new borehole on the deposit and you are right, it only uncaps the minerals. Which is still huge.

>>2467289
>There are some building quotes that talk about it.
Citizen's Defense Force - secret project.
May or may not be obvious, but Deidre isn't talking about a Gaian base being attacked by wild worms - but some other faction's base being swarmed by Gaian-bred worms!
(most likely Spartan or Hive, I've seen conflicting reports that both are the only faction that was canonically killed off because everyone else agreed they wanted them gone.)
(even if it's not a deliberate thing designers intended, you can breed worms and release them near a rival faction so you're not **technically** attacking them with worms, and sounds something the Gaians were canonically doing)

I'm a little sad that taking over colonies doesn't steal tech in this game, but I'm glad to see I can successfully extort my good neighbor Zakharov for free knowledge. Nice to see diplomacy actually working as you'd expect for once. The ai in civ2 had no fear or sense of self-preservation, in my experience.

>>2467623
The original Civ2 had working diplomacy, similar or even the same as Alpha Centauri. Later versions of Civ2 (Multiplayer Gold Edition, Test of Time) for some reason tweaked the AI to be an aggressive retard who gradually hates you over time and will eventually go to war if you don't placate them with gifts even if you are vastly stronger. If you didn't play the original Civ2 back then, then MGE/ToT would be the version you played, but I think there's a mod somewhere that returns the AI to how it should be.

>>2467623
>I'm a little sad that taking over colonies doesn't steal tech in this game
Isn't that the special ability of the Cyborg faction?
>inb4 an expansion faction
Yea...

>>2467647
General trend across the entire Civ series is that AI is less complex. Even much of the "dumbing-down" can be explained, at least in part, through the goal of making the game easier for AI to play.
I haven't really played Civ3, but based on your posts and what I've heard, it's safe to say diplomacy was gutted rather than make the AI competent at it.
Civ4: things like unit maintenance deducted from the entire Civ's income instead of shields on per-city basis (don't need to optimize the AI to not waste shields on unit upkeep)
Civ5: producing science directly instead of having a slider for it (even less things for AI to manage/screw over)

TLDR: if you think/read that SMAC has bad AI, the newer games don't have any better AI, the games have just been made easier and/or streamlined, making AI less bad at playing them.

Whoa, just had Zakh surrender to me. I assume that means the University is like my vassal now? Are they considered to be eliminated for the purpose of conquest victory?

>>2467671
Yeah, they'll stay pactmates forever now unless you do something awful like commit a bunch of atrocities. Forcing everyone on Planet into a submissive pact counts as a conquest victory.

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i plan to live forever, of course. but barring that i'd settle for a couple thousand years. EVEN 500 WOULD BE PRETTY NICE.

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SMAC is otherwise a quite serious game, but Yang is probably the closest it gets to being goofy.

Is there a canonical outcome of the game?

>>2467785
Only in so far as people reading between the lines when putting a lot of the tech quotes together.
>santiago, despite efforts to develop anti-psychic tech, is wiped out by deirdre's psionics and mindworms
>miriam has her followers walk through a psi gate to their deaths
>yang's fate is unclear but he vanishes at some point and most assume that lal persuaded everyone else to unite in eradicating yang
>lal seems to fall behind ideologically and become someone's vassal
>zakharov develops the device to communicate with planet and dumps every piece of datalink information into it
>morgan almost finishes cornering the energy market to secure economic victory, but is narrowly beaten by
>deirdre builds and activates the ascent to transcendence

>>2467796
Was a fusion buster canonically used?

>>2467647
>I think there's a mod somewhere that returns the AI to how it should be.
https://github.com/FoxAhead/Civ2-UI-Additions

>>2467796
Its a civ game, the tech quotes are one possible outcome. There is no canon end.

I'm going down to South Planet gonna have myself a time.
Friendly factions everywhere, humble drones without temptation.
Going down to South Planet gonna leave my worms behind.
Ample magtubes left or right, talents shouting "Howdy Leader!"
Heading on up to South Planet gonna see if I can't unwind.
*mumbles of a nerve stapled drone named Kenny*
So come on down to South Planet and meet some friends of mine

>>2467785
There's the books, it's the closest we'll get to real canon but everybody pretends it doesn't exist because everybody dies.

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I did it! The earlygame was much scarier compared to civ2, but once I got my bearings there was no stopping the spartan military-industrial complex.

I like how I didn't have to fight Morgan at all. He immediately surrendered when I called him once everyone else was conquered.

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I wholly blame this game and whatever dictionary i had at the time for making my reading go from a grade behind to college level within the year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJSxe7ytfgY

Everyone says Morgan should spam bases and run Dem/Green/Wealth, here's a counter-example of playing Morgan "as the developers intended." Thinker mod, mostly normal settings.

Morgan Industries was founded in a fertile valley in the shadow of Mount Planet. My territory was in the center of a long, snaky continent, with a lot of room to expand to the east. I opted for relatively loose base placement, with just enough overlap to have every tile be workable. Usual terraforming strategy, a few boreholes and condensers for every city and forests everywhere else.

Nearest neighbors were the University to the north, and Believers to the east. That was a problem - Zak had a very strong empire, and I did NOT want to piss him off by running Wealth. Instead I opted for Dem/Free Market/Knowledge, to get on his good side and sign a pact in prep for the inevitable war with Miriam. Also made friends with the Peacekeepers, but unfortunately they were sandwiched between Miriam and Yang and would not hold out for long. Dierdre and Santiago were off to the far north and I mostly ignored them all game.

Running Free Market tanked my police and ecology scores, so I compensated with two bases founded in fertile areas with lots of rocky mines. These two received punishment spheres to completely eliminate their drones, along with morale buildings and genejack factories. Was just able to pump out enough missile rovers when Miriam inevitably declared vendetta and rolled over the border with her hordes of units. I briefly lost one city, but was able to fend her off with Zak's help.

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>>2469032
By re-homing units to my punishment sphere cities, I was perfectly capable of fighting an offensive war with no drone issues. Played around with building 'trained' units that were then upgraded with my oodles of FM cash, giving me instant elite units. Once air power was unlocked I rolled over Miriam with needlejets and rovers, conquering about half her empire. Zak declared on Yang after that, and I contented myself with bombing Hive units to bits while the University slowly took territory from him. Also defended Lal's remaining seabases to keep him alive while collecting that sweet commerce income. From there it was just a matter of building up cash and infrastructure to corner the energy market. I think Dierdre declared on me towards the end, but I had so many needlejets at that point that she couldn't touch me.

Economic victory achieved in 2324. Could have ended it faster, but I wanted to get Cybernetic and the Network Backbone for thematic purposes.

>>2469033
Sounds fun, and you work with what the map gives you, but if you're not gonna go Wealth, are you even getting any advantages from playing Morgan? You could have played Lal and done all those things without the Morgan downsides. The difference between +2 and +3 econ is one commerce rating, which Lal's shoo-in for the governorship gives you anyway.

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it's time

>>2469123
I think I was planetary governor most of the game, actually.

And your commerce rating factors into the economic victory formula. Having a high rating (and being Morgan) massively reduces the 'cost' on your side of the formula. The enemy's cost might be really high if they don't like you and have a shit commerce rating, but all things being equal, it will ALWAYS be cheaper for Free Market Morgan to corner the market. It'd be even cheaper with FM/Wealth!

>>2469177
You fool.

>>2469179
Ah, I didn't know that, interesting. I thought I had read somewhere that cornering the market scaled based on the cost of buying out every base via probe team. I am one of those filthy Dem/Green/Wealth base-spamming Morgan players... if that's true, it might pay off to switch into FM right before buying the planet, then. I'll have to try that.

It seems like it mostly it would just shorten the time you spend in a winning position before actually winning, though. It doesn't particularly help set up your winning position, apart from the direct energy income, of course. I still can't help but think Lal's talents and high population limits would have gotten there more smoothly if you're not going to abuse Morgan Wealth to reach the more important econ +2 and +4 breakpoints.

Not surprised to hear you were governor, given your pact with that Zak and that stillborn Lal.

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>>2469218
Yeah, cornering the market is based on the mind control formula for bases, modified by your and the owners' commerce ratings, as well as faction relations. In theory it would cheapest if every faction was running FM+Wealth, but of course that would never happen. I did try going for economic victory as Dierdre a couple games later; maybe I waited too long, but the costs were an order of magnitude more expensive for her than for Morgan.

I like playing factions 'thematically' and going for clean economic or diplomatic wins. More interesting than straight conquest or transcendence as you have to play the faction diplomacy game while carefully managing your own development. Shooting too far ahead in power or ignoring allied factions gets you in trouble when Miriam or Yang end up gobbling half the map. Of course you could bruteforce wins with ICS, popbooms, crawler spam etc. but I don't find that to be very satisfying.

>>2466028
>>2467041
>create varied designs to keep production costs down
>build the equivalent of a pike-knight-trebuchet stack
>also an anti-psi, AAA garrison
>and up to two probe units, a cheap defender to prevent theft and/or one to use on the AI
>have to do the same again for sea units
>may have 1-2 air units
>various default designs (fission scout, former, sea transport, probe, colonist) clog up the start of the list

>research fusion/singularity/whatever
>"We've added this new power core to all our designs!"
>check list
>design limit reached!
>try to upgrade the anti-psi, AAA garrison at least
>"That'll be 14,000 credits"
Can I turn off the auto upgrade somehow? I turned off the auto designer thing but I can't tell if there's an option for when you research a new powerpack.

>>2467623
There's an option for that when you start a game.
>>2467670
>Civ4
I feel if SMAC did the same as 4 in regards to the AI deciding to kill you because of a weak military, I'd get stomped on more in SMAC.
There is a calculation to recognise a strong military, or at least one positioned to take a base, in SMAC, but it only seems to come into play if you're willing to call the AI's bluff, and then if overwhelming the AI seems to ask for loans, or offer gifts (I think? I can't remember if they do that or if that's just if you bring a large army over to them and they realise war isn't fun and games), rather than demand tribute.
>>2467671
I've had one get "eliminated" (escape pod) and resume the pact as soon as I found him again but not until I found him again. It was rather amusing, partly because I cannot imagine a modern game being so complex.

>>2469342
>I did try going for economic victory as Dierdre a couple games later; maybe I waited too long, but the costs were an order of magnitude more expensive for her than for Morgan.
It gets expensive for Morgan too if you wait too long. When I decided to just start buying bases to feed the engine so I could afford the final "mind control everyone" one, but the extortionate costs seemed to be entirely down to the garrisoned units and I assume their tech level. Ungarrisoned bases were cheap but of course making a base ungarrisoned doesn't play well with a negative policing score if you're not using punishment spheres like other anon said.

How does everyone feel about the natural wonders?
I think Mount Planet sucks, the Garland Crater is too good, the Sunny Mesa is useful but doesn't feel useful, and I would prefer to turn off UN pods outside of starting areas just because of how many times I get to the boreholes, freshwater sea or uranium flats and WHOOPS earthquake deleted half of it!
Does that alien ruin place do anything? The one that is described as music frequencies when you explore it.

I started a game a Deirdre, and holy shit she's busted. Starts with access to Formers, can easily rush Weather Paradigm, has the ability to capture worms from turn 1 and can use them to explore because fungus is like roads to them. I thought I wouldn't like her because of the morale penalty, but that doesn't matter when half my military is worms.

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Theres one thing i really wish this game had, visible entire tech tree like in later civs, its very annoying i just can only see small snippet when picking next tech

>>2469415
Thinker mod fixes that, mostly
>>2469464
At least we have cool online trees to look at
https://game-point.net/misc/smacTechTree/index.html#/

map settings suggestions?
i really like the default map but clearly i need to make navigation an unknown. the problem i have with generated maps is that they aren't as aesthetic. i find that "Huge" is too big though and "Standard" too small, so "Large" seems ideal.

>>2469464
i like the unpredictable, blind research gimmick, it's a mystery planet after all.

i tried giving Gaia's Stepdaughters a go but my research is in the toilet. i got a couple of the early projects but i don't even get close to starting the later ones.
it also took far too long to unlock the Green policy so i was stuck on Democratic for so long that Yang decided to attack. my Planet rating wasn't high enough either, so without the surefire ability to capture mindworms it all seemed a bit pointless.

>>2469428
The one that stands out to me is the Monsoon Jungle. Whichever faction starts near it, human or AI, gets an insane step up in the early game. +1 nutrient per square, and it's large enough that half a dozen bases can take advantage. A forest in the jungle generates 2/2/1, which before removing limiters is about as good as it gets. Ideal for ICSing, which is what you want to be doing in early-game anyway.

>>2469454
>>2469922
The duality of man.

Deirdre doesn't get access to Free Market, so energy generation is a long-term weakness (not nearly as bad as Yang's Economy -2, though), but the early game shouldn't be a problem. You do have one advantage: on the social engineering window, you can adjust your 50/50 economy/lab split. If your efficiency is less than +4, this will cause some energy to be lost, but Democratic (or Green) with the Gaian inherent bonus is enough to get you past that. Now you can dump as much of your income into research as you want. You'll be making less money, but you can supplement that with income from the worms you fail to capture.

>>2469965
>A forest in the jungle
I thought forests replaced the tile bonus (or does food not count) and fucked up rainfall for condensers even if you removed the forest or because it's only modified on condenser completion or something
Then again rainfall feels weird anyway because sometimes I notice a few tiles going arid for no reason and then other times I see a short lived message that X faction's terraforming has "altered" the rainfall at one of my bases but I can never find what difference it made nor how a faction half the planet away could have changed anything about my land

>>2469464
It takes so long to get to fusion, and then from fusion to quantum, but then singularity appears straight after quantum

>>2470095
Forests replace the base tile yield but tile modifiers such as unique terrain, rivers and resource bonuses are still added on top of that. Forests also shouldn't have any effect on rainfall to my knowledge.
>times I see a short lived message that X faction's terraforming has "altered" the rainfall at one of my bases but I can never find what difference it made
In true 90s jank fashion the game will always show this message to you whenever any faction finishes terraforming anywhere no matter how far away you are.

>>2467780
>t. vatnik

Transcendence victory as Deidre achieved, thinking if I should try out the expansion next. Does it even add anything new, other than new factions?

>>2469177
Human behaviour, is economic behaviour

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Am I missing something fundamental about needlejets? I am struggling as the Hive.
>fly to gaian jet
>combat starts
>lose
>"Oh I guess they were on Shift+L alert or something, a chaos gun would obviously blow up blue armour"
>fly second to gaian jet
>no combat
>fly into jet to initiate combat
>no odds offered, combat just happens
>dies after a repeat combat
>>2470192
>Does it even add anything new
Some things are altered like tile food yield after you add a mine... I don't remember what specifically though.

>>2471275
Air to Air combat does not factor in armor, the weapon is used to determine defensive strength instead. Putting armor on needlejets is almost entirely pointless.
Needlejets with Air Superiority that haven't acted in a turn will automatically scramble and intercept if another friendly unit within movement range is attacked by an air unit. When this happens you don't get to confirm combat odds.

>>2471290
different anon
when a base with several defending units is attacked, does the game pick the best counter to respond? e.g. a SAM infantry if a needlejet penetrative attacks
also i did not know that about armour and it explains things

>>2471315
>when a base with several defending units is attacked, does the game pick the best counter to respond?
I'm not actually sure myself. I'd assume it'd pick the defender with the best combat odds but I don't know exactly how it determines this or how the presence of interceptors interacts with the whole thing.

>>2471290
>Putting armor on needlejets is almost entirely pointless.
And here I was putting it on because the AI clapped back whenever one of mine went out on Alert or whatever the mode is called.
Thanks for explaining.
>That haven't acted
Does Hold count as not acting?

>>2469123
Ironically, even if it's not thematic, the best play for any faction is to go in the opposite direction instead of doubling down on the faction's bonuses. So he unintentionally made the right choice.

>>2471341
>even if it's not thematic, the best play for any faction is to go in the opposite direction instead of doubling down on the faction's bonuses
The best play is to make the thematic choice, not the optimal min-max choice.

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>behold! An ICBM!
>please accept this strongly worded letter of condemnation and unilateral disarmament from the UN
>... o- okay
Does the AI actually use busters or any atrocity or even conventional missiles? I've never seen it.

>>2471341
I was a bit saddened realising this when playing Yang that I had mostly been
Frontier/Police State (ditched as soon as I wanted 4 Efficiency)
Green
Wealth
Cybernetic
And then I won an economic victory. Efficiency > Economy at money, for some reason.
Some of it was for diplomatic reasons. Somehow the Gaians submitted entirely to me a vassalage despite them being I think in third place + owning half the planet (and conquering Spartan sea cities). I only retook one of my bases off her which made her submit and I owned none of her bases for longer than 5 turns.
It almost feels ironic that Punishment Spheres, something I'd expect Yang to use, completely negate the use of police and are best applied to anarchic societies... oh and I'm now learning Yang apparently never has negative efficiency.

Oh and the fandom wiki has had someone replace half the text with the akbar (Simpsons) font.

How is it possible that it has been over 20 years and nobody has tried to make a proper spiritual success to SMAC?

>inb4 Beyond Earth
Doesn't count.

>>2467780
I kinda dislike yang cuz everytime Im playing against him I always have to start building nukes. Otherwise he will try to bomb me to hell, and Id rather play tall with my jets

>>2471537
We lost the technology/Firaxis is probably 70% female and 30% simp by now/Paradox has no writers and prefers their existing IPs.
Other excuses may include
>4X is a high investment yet unprofitable genre
>Sci-Fi is only popular if set on Earth, specifically in America
>sociology students would get the ick from half of the original game's themes, including references to christianity or christian philosophers, despite the diversity and 50:50 gender split with Planet being a thick accented woman who wants you to die

>>2471537
There's multiple, none of them are good
>Beyond Earth
>Pandora
>Pax Nova
>Shadow Empire this one actually is good but it's extremely autistic

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>well it's not much but at least I have moist rolling tiles to make settling here worthwhile
>...
This is like when a rain condenser doesn't work. I don't know why it's happening.

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>hmm I wonder why the hive are doing so well...

>>2472169
i can never read that shade of blue

>>2472174
Yeah it's a poor choice in any game or program.

>>2472174
i think one of the SMAC mods everyone should uses (pracx or thinker) changes that color

>>2471531
I just now realised Zakharov is the only White male in that lineup, lmao. I think the DLC pirate dude is another, desu

>>2472107
You know, I'd really like to know why that happens too.

>>2472107
Wind and rainfall travels west to east. If you have or get hills to your west, it'll lower the amount of rain you see. Besides your own terraforming, certain events can raise terrain, making it one of the ways Planet can fuck with you.
In this case, the picture shows coast to the east, meaning the west is probably a higher elevation. Depending on how things look inland, that previous level of rain could've been hanging on by a thread when something relatively minor changed.

>>2471531
>Does the AI actually use busters
It does, when I was still learning the game Yang used to routinely send his first planet buster to one of my border bases in 2-3 separate games. I learned the hard way that the AI cheats with that, too - I used units to completely surround his base where the planet buster was about to be built, and it still somehow teleported past and nuked my base.

What's funny about that is that the atrocity causes everyone else to declare vendetta on him, so for the sacrifice of one expendable base you get to enjoy relative peace and quiet when everyone is busy fighting a world war against the buster user.

>conventional missiles
They spam them if they can get to them. Fun fact, Miriam's belief attack bonus applies to the conventional missile too.

>>2472107
Pretty sure it's the forest. That always happens to me when forests are expanding nearby even if elevations remain unchanged.

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>>2472912
I don't believe the landscape changed by that point but the annoying part is the AI definitely hit two earthquake pods after that to the west, but that didn't affect rainfall elsewhere.
Why might the south of this island (I wish my games would stop generating with islands, I know it can make larger landmasses) be a desert? It was practically one to begin with. Would a real hill help?
>>2473462
Maybe spamming forests and tree farms is just better if that's true.

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>sister miriam on casting couch
>emaciated group of morgans stood behind it

>>2473520
And just after this he took one of my actually good bases I just lost a few turns ago because I destroyed all the defenders.
It was on an island, I didn't expect him to snipe it with a literally who solo unit.

>>2473521
that's Rover Rick and you will show due respect

>>2471874
pandora deserves more credit than it's given desu

>>2471537
neither modern devs nor the modern 4x playerbase are high IQ enough to make a new SMAC

>>2471537
The biggest problem is that modern devs have forgotten to use 2D graphic's biggest strength: information density. Each 2D tile can hold a large amount of information, not just biomes but also things like humidity, elevation, wind, etc that go into SMAC's adaptive climate model.
Compare SMBE, which just uses biomes alone.

I'm getting base placements wrong. My instinct is to give each base their own uncontested grid, and then put supply crawlers in the "dead" squares left behind, but currently I'm trying to learn Domai and evidently due to the discount on mineral costs his bases actually don't need all that space, and I could be packing in much more in the territory I acquire.

>>2473841
That's too far apart. My preferred compromise is to have 2-3 squares between each base, and have nearly every tile in my core territory workable, while leaving 10-14 tiles for each mature base to work.
Of course you could pack em in denser, but it's rather ugly and gamey to do so.

>>2473688
>open civ6
>map is so flat it's basically 2D
>have to swap map mode to figure out if it's a hill
>check for sea level map mode
>there isn't one

>>2471317
iirc, yes. The game should always give you whichever unit has the best defensive odds. Interceptors generally get picked first against air units because of the ground to air penalty, not any kind of special rules. You should be able to see this play out if you have an interceptor survive a few attacks while taking damage that lowers its odds to less than some infantry unit in the base.

>>2471334
iirc, no. Hold counts as an action and so will stop the scramble from happening. There should be a command to keep a unit on perma-alert just not in your list of shit to move each turn though.

Needlejets are the "air to air" combat unit, they have the air superiority module. If you go into the unit editor the auto-naming will tack on needlejet to anything you add the air to air thing to. Essentially, they're supposed to be fighters so holding them back is generally a waste. They get to use their offensive weapon on defense in the air, so you still shouldn't put armor on them though. They are also terrible bombers since the air superiority module penalizes them against ground units, and you should pretty much never actually use them as one unless you're mopping up extremely low level dregs or, sometimes, worms.

With air power you mostly want to be on the offensive. Needlejets main value is that they provide a range of air cover across tiles. But most of the time you probably want to doomstack anyway, so the extra coverage isn't much more useful than bringing along a dedicated aa unit in your stack. It can be nice to cover multiple bases, if you've ics'ed, using a few planes.

Occasionally it can be a good idea to have your needlejet "hover" atop a land stack because units without air superiority cannot attack them. Needlejets get one turn of flying before they crash if they aren't in a base, so two jets can sortie out to cover a stack and rotate atop units. A single needlejet against someone without any of their own can stop all counterattacks.

>>2473841
A base covers 20 tiles. I don't know if pop can go that high. You start limited to 7 pop. You eventually get up to 5 food on a tile (nutrients + rainy + tier 2 farm?) and can get off-map food from space. You can use crawlers on any of these tiles (until the AI blows them up). You will also want specialists even if it's just 1-2 doctors/empaths to keep the drones in line, so cannot work all the tiles you do have pop for.

I will put two bases on the sunny mesa or in the garland crater, even a tile apart from one another.
And conversely remember that shitty land makes for a shitty base.

You basically want to place bases near bonus resources (primarily food) and to consider strategic locations such as a base providing canal access between seas, or a base being placed defensively away from a coast that could be invaded (hard to know who you're going to be enemies with when you don't even know where or who anyone is). Oh and it's not necessarily bad to put a city on a river. I think you still get the bonus energy but the more important part is rivers are indestructible roads even if they can't go diagonally, which might be an immediate benefit (or not).

>>2474351
>or, sometimes, worms.
For some reason my brain is telling me a second worm boil always attacks and kills the pilot.

i'm getting crashes with the latest Thinker mod patch. getting unplayable in this state sadly.

>>2475574
nvm i was running the wrong executable

>>2473688
Optimization and maximizing usage of assets are lost arts

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Is there a mod to fix the aliens or is it best not to play with them?
They're absurdly aggressive, the AI can't handle them, and the best I can do is spam 4-1-1 units early game to simply wear down their assaults until their economy overtakes mine just before they launch needlejets and put the expansion plasma armour on everything
Their demands are solely to join in their conquests, which if I'm already at war with them is just a blood truce that they then break, sometimes the next turn
The only thing I'd guess is the idea that you should join one to "fight" another when asked but the AI wouldn't be able to figure that out at all

>>2476934
The expansion was poorly thought out. I like most of the human factions, but the aliens just suck.

>>2476934
Install Thinker Mod, choose the SMAC in SMAX option, and forget all that shit ever existed.

>>2476934
They're from the expansion so they're there so that experienced players can have a little bit more of a challenge. I'm afraid if you're getting beaten by them you're not the target audience until you git gud.