Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Pirates are just plain awesome. There is something to be said about placing a base wherever the hell you want early game.

In my current Pirate game, I've gotten into far more wars than I'd have wanted one after another, leaving only three factions standing including mine. Turns out that the Progenitors are even bigger assholes than I remember, so I had to stomp them both.

I REALLY hate AI base placement, as well as the UN Charter, which means that I can't fix the base placement afterwards without penalties. Did you know that they don't just tack on another 10 years to your sanctions? No, they tack on 10 more than the previous time each time and add that to the previous sanctions AND it hurts your integrity. At least I didn't have to put up with that with the alien scum.

edited 17th Jan '13 7:53:20 AM by Balmung

In post-game play mode in SMAX after having smashed everything that moves apart from one remaining faction that has a leader who is my Pact Brother. They haven't broken it yet, which is even nicer. Though even if they did the resulting curb stomp would be brief. My armies are huge, most cities have Psi Gates, I can orbital drop probe teams in rovers and most of my infantry have orbital drop capability and String weaponry.

The only problem I would have is co-ordinating the attack so that all my guys and gals go in at once and obliterating everything in one move.

I also got an Alpha Centauri score of 144%, which is nice.

edited 23rd Jan '13 5:49:29 AM by TamH70

Jumping from the Paradox Games thread, in reply to Balmung:

Well, the way I see it in AC specifically...in AC, you're not a nation-state in the Earth sense and the rules are a bit different, with the faction leaders being a mess of ideologues, paranoids, and would-be world rulers. Unlike on Earth, most of the factions have ideologies that include "we are the rightful leaders of humanity" or "we have a reason for invading anyone who disagrees with us."

Miriam, for example, thinks that by conquering their neighbors, she is saving as many souls as possible from Hell. Cha-Dawn is trying to wipe out human civilization. Domai is liberating the drones. Lal is restoring proper government to the Unity project. Svensgaard is wondering what the hell a "casus belli" is and why he should care.

And I don't agree that there would be such a peremptory norm against total war in the early years of the colony. In the first place, the annihilation of the opposing faction is not the annihilation of its people, it's conquest. In the second, I think that under the prevailing situation in the early years, there would be more reason for total war. Resources are short, and the various faction leaders (except the Spartans, Angels, Pirates and Cult, and the latter two have their own reasons for aggression) all have reason to believe that they would allocate them better than their rivals. Or, less charitably, it's After the End and every armed gang for themselves.

(Does this mean a dissipation of resources and lives that could be used to fix things and get humanity back on its feet? Yes. But Alpha Centauri does not run on the principle that The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People.)

Oh, ha, that sounds like a challenge game. "What if Miriam got hit on the head one morning and thought she was Morgan?"

One of my biggest problems, honestly, is that you can't have a good old-fashioned border skirmish. No, if someone violates your territory (and the AI loves to do so in ways that the game doesn't constitute violating territory, particularly due to its atrocious base placement), your only recourse is total war. You can't wind up waging a few minor battles, then demand a change in the border arrangement or demand the disbandment of the offending base (force-reduce it to colony pods and tell the AI to not try to settle within three squares of the offending location again).

Actually, I just almost never keep a standing army, relying instead on my ability to build an army very quickly. I just used the bonus support point to field more formers, thus allowing more economic output, thus allowing more research, thus allowing me to, when the time to conquer finally came, have reactors twice as good as anyone else, run Democratic while still having full Support, and stomp all my debtors.

Oddly enough, my Morgan game was actually one of my most aggressive because I constantly felt the need for MORE due to their -1 Support and harsh population limits, meaning I needed moar bases and moar land to handle even the most basic operations like terraforming. Once I had clean reactor tech (my highest priority for obvious reasons), I was fielding a vast fleet of heavily armed and armored, clean reactor ships to keep the various other powers off my gorram islands.

edited 4th Dec '13 3:17:12 PM by Balmung

I actually liked the fact that SMAC made it feel like this wasn't a war of nations. It was a war of nigh immortal techno-demigods and their follower base. It neatly solved most of the fridge logic in the civilization games, while introducing a bunch of really fun dynamics.

Well, I'm less of a pure builder and I don't mind chomping territory off the AI if they're weak enough to make it worth my while. That said, I would rather like the idea of being able to pod a base under a certain size on capture just to get it off my turf.

I usually don't keep much of a standing army either, though it depends on the faction and the point in the game. However, I usually end up with a handful of elite fusion or similar choppers around the midgame, and units like that are worth keeping around and upgrading instead of building fresh for each war.

Hey I'm bumping this thread because I've started playing this game.

Has anyone got a good strategy for the Lord's Believers?

edited 22nd Apr '14 2:42:04 PM by Ultimatum

Nope. I never play them. I always either play Brother Lal (very rarely) or Lady Deidre Skye. Mainly because I like winning and playing any of the other factions doesn't make sense as long as the planet mind is out there and angry at you.

I find that it's actually quite effective to play the Believers peacefully. Since Miriam is usually the one holding the Conflict Ball, by playing as her, you can greatly reduce conflict.

My favorite game was playing as her and acting as a moneylender to all the other factions. My economy was so huge that my tech was still far ahead of everyone else's and I kept there from being any major wars for nearly a century, thus forcing everyone to actually pay back my usurious generous loans.

Oh, and so what if Planet's angry at you? It's angry at everyone except whoever actually achieves the Ascent to Transcendence.

edited 22nd Apr '14 3:01:05 PM by Balmung

With a good Planet rating, you can turn that to your advantage and field armies of your own mind worms. There's nothing quite as awesome as capturing an entire boil at once.

Yes there is: Killing it and getting credits from it. Beats the hell out of paying upkeep on more damn worms that are probably lower lifecycle than if I just bred new ones. There really isn't much additional gain at some point. Instead, I just start disbanding all worms I capture at some point.

I mean, I like having a good Planet rating, but I don't really use worms anymore.

edited 22nd Apr '14 4:01:44 PM by Balmung

Well, sure. At a certain point you can disband them, but that doesn't change the fact that they can be a really awesome advantage in the early and mid game.

Sort of, but my early to mid game strategy has always been peace and colonization, not war and conquest, so I only really need a few worms to patrol, not a whole army of them.

Though the last time I played the Pirates, the Aliens started stuff pretty early on (Gatling Laser to Chaos Gun tech) and I steamrolled both of them with just technology.

edited 22nd Apr '14 4:08:36 PM by Balmung

You are aware that Obelisks upgrade Mind Worms for you, aren't you? Like from pre-Boil to Demon Boil if you are really into the Planet thing?

As I recall, that only works for one level and once per unit, sometimes makes the monolith vanish, and they're pretty sparse, and furthermore, does not make non-drop-pod one-move units much more useful on a huge map.

edited 22nd Apr '14 4:14:17 PM by Balmung

That's what the transport ship versions of Mind Worm boils are for. Getting your wormy friends on land you can't orbital drop onto.

Isles of the Deep are actually useful since they beat foil transports. On the other hand, cruiser transports are arguably better.

But know what they can't do that all normal Pirate sea units can? Capture ships. Take Proginitor base -> escape pods -> capture them all -> establish human bases. So much cheese.

On that note, the Pirates are kinda hilariously OP.

edited 22nd Apr '14 4:21:59 PM by Balmung

Yep. They were the last faction standing when I did my last run through the game (nerve stapling Yang was a particular pleasure). Though I did give them a proper spanking until they begged for Pact Brotherhood status.

Actually, a lot of the AX factions are really OP. Consciousness is basically the University with fewer drawbacks, the Pirates are rolling in unique advantages and start with uncontested control of the seas, and the Progenitors are just horribly, disgustingly overpowered.

And then on the flip side, the other three sides kinda suck.

I never got the expansion so I haven't played those extra sides. They really felt a bit out of place thematically, like the original game was about humans and Planet, and all of a sudden aliens and machine intelligences are crawling out of the woodwork.

edited 22nd Apr '14 5:05:27 PM by Fighteer

The expansion is free with the base game on GOG. In addition to seven new sides of dubious balancedness, it adds level 30 weapons, resonance and pulse armor (has built in bonuses equal to half of hypnotic trance and ECM, respectively), new secret projects, new special landmarks, new special abilities for units, and new alien lifeforms (Sealurks, which count as submerged, but can't transport units, fungal towers, which can't move but are very powerful, and spore launchers, which are artillery and the AI can fire from Isles of the Deep).

The Progenitors serve to explain why Planet is covered in sapient fungus and the others are all human factions.

edited 22nd Apr '14 5:14:50 PM by Balmung

Speaking of OP tusk-faced wankers from space, that was odd thing that just happened in my gmae. On the faction power graph, the Caretakers suddenly dropped like a rock, despite still taking Angel territory and not (apparently) losing anything important.

I think that, since their war started with me, their biggest income source (my peace money) dried up and they spent a huge pile o' cash, thus greatly reducing their wealth rating. And at about the same time, I broke the weapons parity we had, so this is gonna be fun.

edited 22nd Apr '14 7:53:56 PM by Balmung

I loved this game way back when, but I lost it since then so I think I'll partake in GOG. Never played the expansion but I guess it's intriguing.

IMO, Drones are pretty good if you can get momentum going; I managed to be the leader in technology in several games I played as them; the trick is IMHO to expand as quickly and widely as you can, and immediately go for research techs and build them in all of your cities; the drone's industrial bonus means they can do that without going broke, and generally the A.I.s won't have a big enough military force to stop you.