Completed Let's Multiplay Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (PBEM) - Game 2

[Kalin]

CSS Beth Shan, Nessus Orbital Station
Ascension Day, 2300 A.D.

"All systems go! We are ready at your command, Sister Miriam!"

"Thank you Brother Jame. Dismissed."

And so it ended. Not in victory, not in the establishment of the Thousand-Year Kingdom, but in retreat, back into the Holy Void.
With a final look towards Chiron - now condemned forever to the tyranny of the Beast - Miriam entered the code sequences of
the Exodus Protocol, activating the self-destruct mechanism of every remaining facility and ship in the Alpha Centauri system.
All, of course, aside from the Christian States Spaceship Beth Shan, the new ark that would carry the Elect Priesthood to safety.
It had been a painful process and a hard lesson for the thousands of brothers and sisters who remained, picked out among the
millions of dead and dying below. The purification of New Eden had been achieved with nuclear fire and Levite death squads.
Merely a handful of bases now remained, struggling with the logistics of carrying out the final act of defiance. Horrendous, yes,
but then such was the will of the Almighty Lord God. Everything was done in accordance with the Holy Scriptures. New Light on
Revelation 12:14 was the key, for the woman was given two wings upon which to escape from the serpent's reach! Evidently,
the U.N.S. Unity had been but the first and Beth Shan was now the second! It was true: mistakes had been made. Expectations
had required adjusting, but the faithful remnant, though pruned and scorched, was still alive, and they were all stronger for it.
Or so, at least, they now endeavored to believe.

In reality, of course, the chances of the Believing Exodus were slim at best. While the destination planet was located within the
circumstellar habitable zone, the faithful had neither had the time nor the means to properly evaluate the prospects for human
colonization. Beth Shan was also a far cry from the U.N.S. Unity. The journey would take well over a thousand years - a divine
reign in itself - in which the ship would have to be maintained by future generations of Believers. Further, while the enemy had
no offensive capabilities in space as of yet, there was a possibility that they would see through the diversion maneuvers, figuring
out their destination. Even if everything went according to plan, a big if in itself, the Hive might then very well arrive in the new
system several centuries before the faithful, all owing to some future breakthrough. Yet all this and more was still preferable to
certain defeat and subjugation on Chiron, and for every single problem, the Lord's Believers did have their one answer that had
never failed them: Faith in the Lord God!

Spoiler

Yep, no way to win it, the Hive is simply too strong. My army, economy and production are all inferior, and while I could keep fighting there would be no point. Better to go the route of the Vault Dweller generation ship. (Sent my pitiful credits and tech to the Peacekeepers. Of course, there wasn't enough room for them on the ship, no unbelievers allowed, but judging by Believing technological know-how, that's probably a good thing for them )

Thanks all, it was a lot of fun! Also, well played Hellraiser!

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Well played indeed
I will send the next turn today
This game really helped me up my skill and ability with SMAC

I got some post-game analysis in a .txt ready to go

 

[Hellraiser]

Hoped it would end with New Eden turning into thermonuclear swiss cheese, with Hive Lei Sheng Demolisher Skydragons hopping over the craters assaulting zealot strongholds through their tachyon fields. Or at least that I would nuke New Jerusalem and the NSA. Without mindwormd ITZ triggering. It would have still been a meatgrinder, but I could afford to send wave after wave of choppers, hovertanks and rovers until every last Believer base was secured and nerve-stapled. Kalin had far less fearsome garrisons on New Eden than he used to.

I'll do a vote on becoming Supreme Leader, just to get to see the victory score.

All in all can't blame Kalin for suicide-surrendering, my advantage was already pretty solid in the past 10 turns. It was about to get bigger, I am 2 turns away from Biomachinery and already constructed enough speeder crawlers to instantly build the Cloning Vats. Even if all my currently ongoing offensives failed and indeed even if I could not conventionally invade or nuke New Eden, in the long run I would come out on top. I can tech, get decent energy(although not ridiculous as allowed by any free-market and democracy running faction late game), churn out units like mad and build up new bases at the same time. Kalin could only either tech or focus on building, without the University to give him free tech allowing him to just run 80% econ and rush the fuck out of units without worrying about falling behind.

Worst case scenario, if this was a nuclear stalemate with PBs just outside of range of the other guy and nobody being able to do a thing, I would simply tech to Orbital Defence Pods. There is no way the Believers could out-build me in ODPs and once I had enough of them, it would simply be a matter of using a few colony cruisers to erect sea-based Revolution Staging Platforms around New Eden.

 

[Nevill]

Just wondering if the game is still going, or if you guys have wrapped it up.

 

[Hellraiser]

Just wondering if the game is still going, or if you guys have wrapped it up.

I had a wrap up update 80% finished but xenforo deleted the draft

PBEM diplomatic victory is a bit bugged. It added all the victory points for Deirdre who was the last in the turn order before me.

 

[Silva]

Just passing to say this was the most sheer undiluted fun I've had with a Lets Play in all my life.

Spoiler

a pity The Brazilian Slaughter is such a noob and couldn't represent my country better

 

[Hellraiser]

Urmom is a n00b, southeasterner!
I was taken by surprise, is all. Too much butter, not enough guns. One turn and Hellraiser would have crushed his face on bases full of the best defenders money could buy, and I had a lot of money and had plans to upgrade all my defender.

Wait for when our other game gets big, I will lots of jewgold, I WILL HAVE ALL THE JEWGOLDS!

Well, if everything on my side went according to plan, that wouldn't matter. I was supposed to have fusion power at least 6 turns earlier but the RNG fucked me. I also banked on both you and Kalin not getting fusion power from Cassidy like I did (gave him applied relativity and superstring theory for it, with assurances I will not pursue the Particle Collider). Fusion Power was what was the second thing that was supposed to win the war for me fast.

But still even if you DID get the best defenders, you were doomed because UN HQ was exposed to a naval based landing and it housed the Citizens Defence Force, while you had no Perimeter Defences built in case that went down. If you intercepted my cruiser transports in time, there would be little I could do. Defenders didn't matter because I had enough gas choppers/needlejets and missiles to brute force through whatever garrison you put in UN HQ. I had one or two more missiles than needed in range of UN HQ just in case you move something to UN HQ on the turn of the attack.

But that wouldn't mean anything if I did not have the means to secure UN HQ before you could reinforce it.

Anyway, here are some screenshots:

This was before I even attacked Kalin's sea-based Planet Busting platform. He was already being rather hostile, so I dumped 4 probe teams near my Enclave in the monsoon jungle in preparation. Sneaked them using rivers and fungus between Gaian and Spartan borders. They later stole both silksteel alloys and super string theory. The latter was most fortunate, as without that I would steal that tech a few turns later after I attacked TBS. I think Kalin caught one of them later on, but the last team was chilling for a bunch of turns in some fungus on the eastern coast and stole Oragnic Superlubricant from Kalin as soon as it became available.

At this point the preparations were fairly advanced, but Kalin's sea base was an unfortunate event. I had to kill it fast and secure control of at least a part of the Sea of Leviathan or it could blow my invasion plan before my cruiser landed near UN HQ. Luckily Kalin with his infiltration saw all the build-up and thought it was directed against him, so he focused on repelling my first strike rather than striking first himself.

You can also see a bunch of rovers chilling near paradise swarming. These later used the transport foil to take UN Commerce Committee.

Two turns later the invasion has begun. One of the scout foil had to blow up foil former that was blocking the way, but otherwise everything went according to plan. The best defenders were fodder for new Manifesto Cruise Missiles.

Two cruisers landed on the same turn. One stored missile rovers which were meant to kill off anything blocking the road to UN HQ and any remaining defenders there. The other stored AAA ECCM plasmasteel rovers to reinforce the freshly guarded base and make any succesfull counter attack and liberation impossible.

In the south-west I had the third invasion task force, rovers and probe teams which were originally supposed to secure Superstring Theory and the bases after sneaking through fungus (gotta love xenoempathy dome). However I already had that stolen tech from Kalin, so the probes ended up doing little during the campaign. Kalin's chopper patrols had a tendency to spot and murder them.

The main problem I faced, especially early on in the war, were Kalin's gas chopper attacks. I lost quite a bit of crawlers, defenders and pop because of them. Luckily Kalin had no way of utilizing this for his advantage due to lack of anything that could capture my empty bases. I eventually secured my turf from his attacks by seizing control over the Sea of Leviathan where choppers constantly clashed. The sea is big enough that just flying over it in one turn and attacking is impossible.

Both me and him had to make a stop somewhere. Due to the way combat works, it was guaranteed a gas chopper that gets spotted is dead if anything even sneezes at it due to no armor. So I seized control through two things, junk missile cruisers with radar+clean reactors and cheap chaos choppers also with radar and clean reactors. Sent them on patrol runs. If the cruisers saw anything, I sent a chopper to murder it as cruisers are sitting ducks after an attack. Choppers can still move away.

Clean Chaos Gas Choppers and later fusion laser and shard choppers are expensive toys, but I didn't need anything nearly as expensive to stop them. I still used some Shard Gas choppers to kill spotted choppers, so Kalin deployed SAM choppers. But those were useless against my bases, and while I lost a few choppers due to not noticing they attacked a SAM chopper, I had missile cruisers to kill them. While my scouts did suffer losses, I was quickly replacing them while Kalin was dumping minerals into non-effective forces. This allowed me to use my expensive toys on other fronts, such as the University.

For example here. New Masada was an important base, because it potentially allowed Kalin to send Planet Busters to the University. This is why I went after the northern University bases and the ones south of Socialism Crater first. I tried taking it out once but failed due to derp and ending a turn on a monolith. The second time I took it with some forces I landed in the north and some of the rovers that previously were tasked with annexing the University.

Kalin decided to suicide-surrender later on, so I started the Supreme Leader vote. Here you can also see what I was planning. Basically I erected a sea base within Air Drop range of New Jerusalem. This allowed me to seize those two Believing bases Kalin left with no garrison, as after he used his remaining Planet Buster on the Gaians, I moved one of mine into range of those two.

My invasion force of gas marine rovers, which was supposed to raid New Jerusalem was discovered. As did my missile base construction where I was supposed to stage a planet buster to strike New Jerusalem or force Kalin to evacuate it. The third plan of what was supposed to be Operation Sickle, namely operation Dragon Talon, still succeeded. I used a cruiser colony pod and a cruiser transport filled with drop rovers to take those two bases.

Still, Kalin managed to retake them anyway. And I think he murdered all but one of my rovers on New Eden. And he caught my invasion force swimming to his east coast on Landmass Two, sinking it. Reinforcements were not coming at least for 2 or 3 turns so he was safe again. This is why I was surprised he surrendered. Four out of five of my invasion-related plots were discovered. And the last one failed to secure a permanent beachhead.

But I still had those shard drop tanks and I planned to erecting more sea-bases around New Eden. The idea was that Kalin couldn't nuke or destroy all of them at once and I would deploy PBs and garrisons to defend them simultaneously.

That was on the military front, where it went worse than planned but I was at no risk of losing. On the industrial and science front however, I had this:

Instantly build as I was building rover crawlers for it during the time I was research biomachinery, between producing hovertanks, shard choppers, planet busters and other tools of war. From there on out I think it would be about 10 turns before I could simply zerg and brute force through Kalin's defences. That and my research rate, even if hampered by inefficiency and -1 econ, would increase allowing me to tech to such game ending tools as Orbital Insertion, Orbital Defence pods, Pressurized Hull, better weapons or reactors.

Oh and I planned to switch from Wealth to Power, making all my units instantly Elite while being built only slightly slower.

Here are the scores, add the gaian's diplo victory to mine since it got bugged:

 

[Hellraiser]

Oh yeah , forgot to add. I think at the point I got elected supreme leader, my drones became fully immune to Nerve Stapling after half a century or so of it

Would have to dump energy into psych, or build some hologram theatres (because Cassidy destroyed his base with the Virtual World before I could secure it, and I was so close). Also I had far less orbital power transmitters than I should have had. Cassidy, despite being dead, still had at least an equal amount of those or just one less