SMACXOR

[kingcomrade]

Alright I got SMAC installed and was playing it. The computer beat me

How do you defend against probe teams? I would have tons of guys sitting around in the city but they wouldn't stop the probe teams. Also, how do you shoot airplanes? They seem impossible to hit.

I liked using Probe teams myself, but I couldn't seem to get them to the enemy base very often. I would go into what looks like empty space and then a dozen enemy soldiers would appear. I did end up stealing like 6 or 7 technology from the asshat UN people but I couldn't seem to build enough units. I would clear out a town one turn (and have nobody left to invade), then the next there would be two or three new units sitting there. Is it possible to build more than one unit at a time using the "rush" option?

Cool game, much better than any of the Civ games, but I was never good at 4x. I need to understand better what my cities need to prosper.

 

[Dmitron]

Higher Game should be able to tell you 'bout Probe Teams. He just wiped the floor with Fraubishop..and was about to do the same to me. :shock:

 

[Frau Bishop]

Why do you lie?

 

[Higher Game]

Alright I got SMAC installed and was playing it. The computer beat me

I never play the AI on anything except transcend difficulty. After a while, you'll figure out its quirks.

How do you defend against probe teams? I would have tons of guys sitting around in the city but they wouldn't stop the probe teams. Also, how do you shoot airplanes? They seem impossible to hit.

Probe teams fight each other, just like normal units. They don't use weapons, so it all depends on morale. Proper training and experience matter even more than normal for probe units, and that's saying something! A normal unit instakills a probe team in combat, though. Keeping units 2+ stacked prevents your units from getting stolen by enemy probe teams. Killing airplanes requires either the air superiority trait on some of your airplanes, or the SAM trait on a land unit. Custom units kick ass, and are yet another reason why SMAC is the greatest 4X game ever.

Keeping probe teams on defense is really important. If you get infiltrated, that means your opponent can see inside every base you have, and knows all the units within, and what you're building. If your opponent is worth anything, this usually means game over, unless your build plan is obvious and predictable, like the midgame crawler rush that every good player does. NEVER allow a probe to get in, even if it means allowing one of your units to get stolen.

By the way, the Empath Guild project gives you an infiltrator in every faction, which lets you see every base on the planet, what's in it, and what it's building. At all costs, don't allow this to get built. If you do capture the city that holds it, consider doing genocide on the city and PERMANENTLY destroying the project so no one can abuse it. It's too powerful, and possessing it can easily piss everyone off. Even the SMAX sky academy isn't that overpowered.

Interestingly, airplanes can NOT by default attack each other. By default, they're bombers. Giving them the air superiority trait makes them fighters, but they get a nasty 50% penalty for attacking ground units if you do this. It's really best to stick with SAM units for anti air offense, since you can kill multiple air units in a single turn with a SAM rover. In air to air combat, a unit's offense IS HIS DEFENSE. Yes, a 8-1-12 bomber is an even match for a 8-1-12 fighter. However, in a SAM battle, an air units defense is his defense, and it's almost always 1. Because of this, a few weak 4-1-2 SAM rovers are a much cheaper, better air defense choice than 8-1-12 fighters.

Of course, you need lots of terraformers, since you need roads all over your territory for the rovers to move around on.

I liked using Probe teams myself, but I couldn't seem to get them to the enemy base very often. I would go into what looks like empty space and then a dozen enemy soldiers would appear. I did end up stealing like 6 or 7 technology from the asshat UN people but I couldn't seem to build enough units. I would clear out a town one turn (and have nobody left to invade), then the next there would be two or three new units sitting there. Is it possible to build more than one unit at a time using the "rush" option?

The AI is a cheating bastard, and it still sucks, even at the highest difficulty. Live with it. To build more units, you need better infrastructure. Thermal boreholes are an extremely important breakthrough tech, since they give 6 minerals and 6 energy in a single tile! They're a great way to cause global warming, though. For normal tiles, forests are usually the best choice, but when Echelon mirrors are buildable, a properly designed solar array can be great for energy cities, usually located near the capitol to prevent efficiency losses. Interestingly, ocean cities and coastal cities make the best energy cities due to nice ocean improvements, while inland cities are suited for manufacturing.

Cool game, much better than any of the Civ games, but I was never good at 4x. I need to understand better what my cities need to prosper.

Alpha Centauri crushes the Civ games, ESPECIALLY when you get into its depth. Don't get too addicted though. Trust me.

MODS: Please move my huge ass posts in the "Codex Gaming" thread to this one. And please don't move this to the strategy forum where no one looks.

 

[Sovy Kurosei]

Even today SMAC is better than Civilization IV. I remember playing SMAC for a bit then I went and got Civilization III. Wow, I was in for a surprise. Never thought the "spiritual successor" of SMAC could be so underwealming. There were problems with SMAC (Balance for the most part) but I thought it was a pretty good design that you could refine and build off of.

 

[kingcomrade]

Okay here's a question:

I've known that you could support so many units per city. What I did not know is that the units are actually bound to each city. Unfortunately, this leads to a position where my best two manufacturing cities end up supporting my entire army. Is there a way to bind units to a different city? I was looking around and couldn't find out.

And yeah, probe teams seem kinda overpowered (I read your post in the other thread) especially considering you have to have your own probe teams in every city just to counter them.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

If you park a unit in another city, go the the city screen, click on the unit, and you should have the option to support from that city. The Hunter-Seeker secret project also makes you immune to probe teams.

I won't spoil all the truly cheap exploits for you, but transcend does get to be a cakewalk after a while. It generally pays to just make friends with everybody at first, then make your neighbors your bitches the second you research air power. When you're the only one with it, it's really quite sick. If you really curb-stomp them but are nice to them when they've got one base left (giving them back a base usually works), they'll often totally capitulate and swear fealty to you. This is generally better than annihilating them, as they'll support you in U.N. votes and will stay your allies no matter what, so you get free trade.

 

[Higher Game]

And yeah, probe teams seem kinda overpowered (I read your post in the other thread) especially considering you have to have your own probe teams in every city just to counter them.

Nah. It's usually just 1 or 2 border cities, depending on how your cities are layed out. If you're in open land, you have the disadvantage of bad probe defense, but you have the advantage of easier contact with AI and trading. If you're on a peninsula, probe defense is easy with a choke point city, but you probably won't have anything steal worthy anyway, since you're isolated and lack good tech trading partners. It's a catch-22.

Of course, it really gets difficult to defend against probe teams when navies start to get built up. Inner land villages can get away with no probe teams, but an ocean village simply must have some probe defense, since they're wide open. I avoid making ocean villages, though, preferring coastal villages with sea formers instead.

I think the swear obedience option was only in SMACX right? Even if so, we could still make pacts based on Codex honor.

 

[Dmitron]

The crawler strategy hadn't occured to me since I'd never seen the AI use them. I can see how it would completely change the early game.

About the AI and multiplayer. As I recall, playing a scenario allowed for limiting the amount of players. Of course, the maps aren't auto generated. Don't know if the game ships with any decent scenarios? The few that I tried started mid-game. One could always create a "rts" like map. Four identical pieces of land with choke points in the middle, seperated by ocean, and the same starting monoliths, resources etc.

 

[taxacaria]

Alright I got SMAC installed and was playing it. The computer beat me

Try Master of Magic. It's much better.

 

[JoKa]

Alright I got SMAC installed and was playing it. The computer beat me

Try Master of Magic. It's much better.

than SMAC? you gotta be kidding...

 

[Higher Game]

It's damn good, actually, but it just hasn't aged well, it's a bit more simplistic, and some of the races are just worthless. I like the worldwide spell effects like Armageddon and such, but overall, I think the Heroes of Might and Magic series were much better. Master of Orion 2 is very good, especially since the battles can be very highly technical, yet it is balanced very poorly.

AC just brings it all together the right way.

 

[jefklak]

Sovy Kurosei, what's the deal with Civ3 and SMAC? Why the comparison?
By the way, someone else has sound troubles with civ3 on winxp? Cracking and stuff. Latest patch.

 

[Sovy Kurosei]

Sovy Kurosei, what's the deal with Civ3 and SMAC? Why the comparison?

What comparison? I basically said "SMAC r00lz, Civ3 drules".

 

[Frau Bishop]

AC just brings it all together the right way.

QFT


@Sovy Kurosei
What about joining the network?

 

[Sovy Kurosei]

@Sovy Kurosei
What about joining the network?

Got SMAC reinstalled and I tried to join the network earlier but it said it was too full.

 

[Dmitron]

Thrown together scenario for 4 player no ai match?
4player_g_s_m_u.SC

Should be easy to make it 1v1\3v3 with diff factions.

EDIT: bugfixed..

 

[kingcomrade]

Weird how Sovy and I can join each other's games but nobody else's. And how nobody can join ours. :S

 

[Sovy Kurosei]

It is a mystary.

 

[Higher Game]

Weird how Sovy and I can join each other's games but nobody else's. And how nobody can join ours. :S

It must be due to version differences. I can't see how any other thing could explain it. I don't know how to check my version though. It must be fully patched, I guess, since the planetary pack came out with the expansion pack so the original must have been fully patched by then.

 

[Dmitron]

Weird how Sovy and I can join each other's games but nobody else's. And how nobody can join ours. :S

Start a game, once in, menu --> help --> show version number. Should say "release 4.0".

 

[kingcomrade]

I know. I have version 4.0. So does Sovy.

 

[Frau Bishop]

So do we all.
17-May-1999

 

[Dmitron]

This might work: go to your Network Connections, right click and disable any connections (momentarily disables your internet) except Hamachi, start AC, host a TCP\IP game. Alt-tab while the game is running back to your Network Connections, right click and re-enable your other connections. Alt-tab back into AC. Get someone who wasn't able to join prior to try again.

 

[kingcomrade]

When we were playing Starcraft today we were getting horrendous lag. It was me, Kreide, Slavemaster, and Sovy. Sovy was on a different network from everyone else (they were all on codex-arena, he was on codex centauri). Once they all joined kingcomrade's kool klub it ran smoothly.

I will try that the next some someone is on, Dmitron.