posted 04-07-99 09:04 PM ET        

Ever since Civ 2, I've always hacked the hell out of my games to suit my tastes, and SMAC is no exception. For the curious, here's the highlights of my latest revised game rules. Anyone else do anything like this?

- the map generator sucks. I randomly generate a map and then fix the obvious problems, storing it in my map library.

- to avoid faction clumping at game start, I always use a scenario where faction positions are fixed.

- one thing I absolutely hated about Civ 2, and found to be equally true in SMAC, was the light-speed advance of technology. Tech increases come so fast that you don't have a hope in hell of building even a modest fraction of the improvements in your cities before the new ones pile up, or getting together a reasonable army assemblage that isn't outdated before they can be unleashed on the enemy. I want my games SLOWED DOWN, with long periods of tech stagnation typified by big ol' grand wars. In SMAC, I choose 'stagnant' tech in Custom Rules AND reduce the tech advancement percentage to 20% (normally 100%) in alpha.txt. If there's lots 'n lots of land and having 30-40 cities is a reasonable expectation by midgame, I reduce tech advancement to 10%.

Note: "McDonald's Gamers" - the instant gratification crowd - will probably find this kind of slow advancement to be unbearable.

- to counter the slower tech advancement, I set the scenario to start in 2100 and end in 3000. It never makes it to 3000, of course, but that means you don't have to worry about the tech research dragging past the endgame. You can do the same thing in alpha.txt; I just never have bothered.

- I generally turn off random events and opt for blind research. I also turn off the flaky I'm-a-yuppie-who-believes-in-crystal-power Transcendence victory.

And now for the alpha.txt changes:

- airdrop range is increased to 10.
- population w/out hab complex: 10.
- population w/out hab dome: 20.
- cost of prototypes: +100%.
- intrinsic base defense: +50%.
- attacking from higher elevation: +25%.
- attacking from lower elevation: -25%.
- defending vs mobile in rough: +25%.
- numerator/denominator for global warming: 1,10.
- raise/lower/level terrain: disabled.

Movement rates for units are altered as follows:

infantry: 3
speeder: 6
hovertank: 10
foil: 10
cruiser: 20
needlejet: 20
gravship: 30

infantry/speeder/tanks all have the same chassis cost (3), as do foils/cruisers (6). These are considered to be improvements, one over the other, a bonus of advancing tech.

The helicopter is removed altogether. I don't like these, either in Civ 2 or SMAC. Missiles have also been removed (conventional warheads are part and parcel to any decent military regiment - or should be, by the 22nd century). This means no planet busters as well (nuclear war is *dull*).

The Needlejets are set so they *must* return to base or run out of fuel at turn's end. No hanging out in the sky for a year. Make your strike and go home. On the brighter side, you can make *lots* of strikes before you go home, necessitating real investment in AAA (which the AI seems able to recognize, admirably enough).

The various orbital facilities critically unbalance the game in this long-haul version; populations of 60+ cities with hundreds of minerals spring up overnight if modifications aren't made. In that light, all orbital modifications have a cost of 50/maintenance 5 in alpha.txt, EXCEPT defense pods - which are 20/2. The theory being that it's a hell of a lot easier to shoot down that Hydroponics station than it was to build it in the first place.

I'm still working on making some of these modifications to see what the end results would be. I don't think I'll screw with the tech tree like I do in Civ 2 - SMAC is much better at 'channeling' developments than Civ 2 ever was, and doesn't need any help.

Looking forward to seeing what other people might be doing.

Max

posted 04-08-99 10:59 AM ET            

Thats about all i do.

THX

posted 04-08-99 11:41 PM ET            

Believers: these folks fall farther and farther behind in research as time goes on, eventually getting killed by someone else. But then, the Believers have gotten wiped in all of the non-modified games that I've played, so par for the course.

Gaians: The Gaians tend to have a field day. I haven't quite determined why, but the Gaians always become one of the largest powers - and often sport the most powerful military machine on Planet.

Hive: like a bad cancer, the Hive just expands, and expands, and expands, until someone shuts them down - meaning the player. I hate the hive; they build virtually nothing, focusing all of their efforts on military conquest.

Morganites: the Morganites generally survive longer than they do in the original game, sometimes doing quite well for awhile, but they're **** for waging war. I don't know what's up with the AI code, but they never fight as well as the other powers in the games I play. This ultimately spells their doom, modifications or no.

Spartans: oddly enough, the Spartans also suck at waging war. They too get killed regardless of rule changes in the games I play, though they tend to survive longer than the Morganites or the Believers.

University: the University does *well*. With the longer research times, they can pull far, far ahead of the competition in tech and wrack up a nice little collection of Projects. They also tend to be a bit more aggressive, making them a decent military power.

U.N.: I always play these folks, so I've no idea how they'd respond to the rules changes.

I haven't tried altering the base radius, by which I'm assuming the borders as outlined in alpha.txt. They're fine for me, excepting of course the curious lack of extensions into the sea.

Max

posted 04-13-99 10:58 PM ET         

Max, the Believers AI sucks, and they can only suck worse when tech is slowed. Whenever the comp is playing the Believers, Id reccomend editing their faction file to give them totally different stats, or download a faction from http://civilization.gamestats.com/smac or http://sidgames.com/ac,
and use that faction for the comp to play instead of the believers.

Also, I would not reccomend giving the defender an advantage when defending vs mobile in the rough, because that would be cumulitive with the, say, +50% bonus for rocky ground, it would come up to +75% for the defender.

posted 04-14-99 05:44 PM ET            

Mainly, though, I think giving infantry a move rate of 3 can really unbalance the early game (unlike you, I do use random maps... huge only). Unfortunately, a rate of 3 does make sense later on.

posted 04-15-99 01:47 AM ET            

I've tried to balance the movement rates to allow for a more 'blitzkrieg-like' style in combination with slower tech. As I mentioned, I want SLOOOOW tech advance punctuated by long wars using period units. If the movement rates are retained, I have to slow down the tech even more than I already have.

And, of course, playing on a large or huge world kinda pops the balloon for me when I see FOOT troops off a STARSHIP slogging through the mud just like some WWII G.I. Yeee-eahh....

BTW, I've modified the file even more. For some reason, screwing with the movement rates absolutely kills artillery. Why? I dunno, I didn't think movement had anything to do with artillery fire - but it does, or it does in combination with some other change. I can't seem to fix it without restoring the old move rates. So I took out arty altogether (changing the 3,2 ratio to even 20,1 did NOTHING).

I've also removed all of the satellite technology. After seeing all of my cities get up to 60+ population, able to pop out the most sophisticated battle tanks in a single turn, I decided that this was just a bit too much. No more orbiting facilities, thank you.

As for modifying factions - every time I modify a faction using Acedit, the game crashes as soon as it tries to start up. Dunno why, it just does. Remove the modified file and everything plays normally. It must be something specific to my system, as everyone else seems to be getting along okay. Maybe a reinstall of both the game and the patch would do the trick....

And to the person who said "why the high terrain bonus?". If you've been in the Army, high terrain doesn't have anything to do with the kind of weapon you're using; it's about having better command of the immediate area than the enemy. This may very well be an outdated concept by the time we land on AC, but even in today's forces high terrain is a big, big advantage. Since the armies in AC aren't really futuristic, but rather SF versions of modern forces, I reintegrated these concepts back into the game.

They work fine, BTW.

posted 04-15-99 01:55 AM ET            

ACEdit, in working with lines of text, keeps everything "in a line", that is, no carriage returns to break a long string of characters into a series of lines. This will crash SMAC! The solution is to use ACEdit, and then work through the faction file with a text editor, breaking the long lines of text [the main culprits are the blurb, truce, and treaty sections] into smaller "chunks" ... try to keep the text lines to 70 or so characters in length - I do not know what the maximum "readable" length is [128?], but 70 is safe and prevents the crashing.

Let me know if this is an unclear explanation of a problem that I also encountered and solved.

posted 04-15-99 02:24 AM ET            

Thanks for the note, though.

posted 04-15-99 04:47 PM ET            

Just random thoughts towards the end of the day. (work that is)

posted 04-15-99 05:44 PM ET         

Can you do this in the txt's ?
Can anyone tell me how

posted 04-17-99 01:29 AM ET            

mindworms: go into alpha.txt under UNITS and set all three versions of the mind worm to DISABLE. Then go into the scenario editor, scenario rules, and check the box 'no mind worms, fungus, planet, etc.'. You have to do this at the BEGINNING of the game; do it in mid-stream and it won't have any effect (in other words, craft a scenario beforehand and then play that).

global warming: I currently set global warming to 1, 100 to essentially disable it completely. I don't mind melting ice caps; what I mind is that the sea level rise far above anything that's even remotely possible (one such instance resulted in an increase of over 700 meters!). Here I'd rather have a CIV-like increase in arid land, e.g., a bunch of rainy tiles go to moist and a bunch of moist tiles become arid. Add a random chunk of your developed farms being destroyed and life gets bad without the sea level rising nearly a klick.

alien artifacts: I don't allow these in a game. Since I use the scenario editor, I eliminate these at the outset. In fact, I generally go to the map and remove all Unity pods completely before I begin play.

satellites: I initially raised the cost of all satellites except orbital defense pods to 50, with a maintenance value of 5. Orbital defense pods were increased to 20, 2. While it slowed down the buildup, once the initial framework was in place my cities got too far out of control again - the AI didn't stand a chance. Removing satellites altogether (and I've already taken out missiles, so no PB worries) works to level the playing field when you're playing a long game.