posted 07-29-99 03:11 AM ET        

Player2 - I put Deep Radar on some of my Rovers. Generally on 2 types. The 2 Move Tank (Top-Top-Rover) and the Rover Scout (Free-1-Rover). But then, I believe in using a combined arms approach when its feasible. So that means by the time a Builder has his Air Recon, I'm deploying columns of units with screening recon rovers with Deep Radar, lots of cheap Attack power (in suicide troopers top-free-infantry/rovers), and a few heavy defenders with free weapons. And even the occasional arty. All with Noodle Jets flying air cover and recon... There may even by Zues units (Top-Top-Jet Air Sup) flying protective cover. The Zues are expensive as hell, but I have found that they more than make up for it in the # of attacking air units to waste it.

PBs in MP games... The first person that builds them have an edge, but not much of one. And once you drop it, all other builders are going to be swapping and rushing like mad, I would think. Any Builders caught in such?

Why I don't use gas... Planet will bust you wide open if you use Nerve Gas. Its an adjustment that was made to slow down the mad Miriam Rush back in Version 3 I think. Try it as a steady item. It was great pre-3, but afterward... Maybe against a tough target, but I find the added cost would have been better used on something I will use...

Some player2 thoughts...
there are only two ways of accumulating power in SMAC: Using resources to create new resources (capital investment, in other words), or using resources to seize pre-existing resources from others. The builder paradigm focuses primarily on the former. Builders are basically just a bunch of venture capatalists. The conqueror paradigm seeks to increase its resources by seizing them from others, thus building themselves up while making another weaker at the same time. Builders must develop a means to protect their investments; conquerors must build up infrastructure to create a war machine large enough to seize resources from others. Both playstyles adopt aspects from each other. Its only a question of which is the means, and which is the end.

I like this, player2. Well spoken.

Dowdc said: Conquerers are trying to seize resources, that is why they conquer. Builders build their resources, then they try to win the quickest and easiest way possible.

Dowdc... not quite. A "BUILDER" isn't trying to win by quickest means. They are trying to peacefully build their way to victory. You waiting on your tech makes you a Delayed Conqueror. When I am in Conquest mode, I'd PREFER to take you cities, but the simple destruction of all of them WILL suffice. I build infrastructure quite well, thank you. Its a Builder hang up of mine. I just like to do something with my units in between micromanaging the heck out of my empire. And make them pay for themselves, other than just trawling for worms.

Not that SMAC gives you much of a choice about the micromanaging aspect. Unless you are playing Speed SMAC.

Feel free to email me if you want something from the parent thread moved over... I have a good modem and don't mind...

posted 07-29-99 05:33 AM ET         

btw Player2--I did mention a bit about my opponents and what they were doing in previous threads. Since we don't divulge a lot of our strategies, I can't really tell you how they expand. I only talk about my strategies/tactics when they're point-blank no brainers or when I've stopped using them

Sensors--When building sensors does anyone cover their entire territory with them? Since my terraforming exceeds my growth pop (usually 2 per city)--I plant sensors on practically every square Yes, I am paranoid.

I do this in Stars! and now beginning to in SMAC--I draw up battle tactics and seperate the attack maps in ~20 turn, ~30 turn, ~45 turn campaigns. Albeit somewhat static (adjusted for in my head to suppliment the dynamics of the battlefield), it helps when I've got 5 loaded transports attacking in different directions each with different objectives. Yes--I do build a pseudo city as a base of operations unless I can hide my APC's in fungus as mobile base/healers .

The Nerve Pods: I only use these as desperate measures (when I'm losing and don't care about anything except crippling my opponent so ally can finish'em off). And Nerve Pods don't really justify itself when it's 2x and takes up a valuable Special slot; Probes are just as adept, if not better, at it. Also, technically--the probes don't exist so the player doesn't need to take responsibility

PB's-are fairly hard to build, and by the time I have a few (if it doesn't get sabotaged or prevented). . so does someone else--so we just end up blowing up each other and fending off Planet while trying to win--gets tedious after 4, 5 games like that.

posted 07-29-99 09:52 AM ET            

I, for one, love it when Mindworms appear. That just means more cash.

Possible invasion scenario: Scout Noodlejets head out to recon. On the turn they are out enemy interceptors pick them off in two different fronts, creating a big hole in your intelligence network while giving the possibility of two invasion points. Do you kill production in a nearby city to make more?

In come the PBs, hitting formers out in the field, or colonies, or bunkers, cutting your nation in half. Even if your one island is not now two, your road network is smashed, and an unknown collection of invaders are on their way.

Now, consider that both players have PBs. How would you get your PBs near the aggressor's colonies to counter-strike since the Conquerer's military more than likely controls the sea?

posted 07-29-99 12:18 PM ET            

A PB's range is 16. Nice long flight time. Also convienent 9 space deep recon (8 out +1 visibility).

The trick is, his described system of air recon is meant to keep it running safely as long as possible. No Jet unit is left "hanging" unless it attacks, and that is what the local Rover Responsive Defender is for.

Now, and attacker COULD try faking him out... but it would be expensive in unit count. If you are a Conqueror and have your War Machine in full swing, than you can afford to loose a few column elements as the main attack force makes it way in.

So far, we'd see something like this in our hypothetical Conqueror mid/late Player2 early/mid-game clash... Aggressor Outer Air (Recon) Elements spotted by P2 Recon forces. As main columns slowly advance towards their initial objectives, Aggressor Air units begin targetting sensors, boreholes, bunkers, special resource squares, units caught in field, and other targets of opportunity. Cities without AAA and Aero complexes in range will be SLAMMED hard. (This should draw out the first Defender Interceptors.) [Remember folks, Basic Jets and Choppers are DAMNED cheap, and highly mobile. Always use them that way...] The Defender will start to shift reserve units from hardened core towards likely contact area (and allocate another unit or three to take their place)... IF they believe there are aggressor units BEHIND the Air Screen. Otherwise, they will only allocate new Interceptor units. (Either way, once Interceptor vs Interceptor action is on, BOTH will have a few more Ints in the build queue... you just never know how many you need until they are shot down...) After that, it gets messy. As the Aggressor columns emerge from the Fog of War, the Defender moves up the first reserves to the nearby spots on the front. A series of ambushes and counterstrikes with Arty being used by both sides, Air units chewing up both sides units. As the second and possibly third columns emerge along the front, you get a fun blaze between the the Aggressor and Defender. If the Aggressor packed enough into the first combat (not contact) elements, with enough reinforcements to set up an expanding "beach head" the Defender can be in a world of trouble a lot quicker than they expect.

The Air Recon elements of the Defender exist in only the peaceful areas of the Defender's empire... IF the Aggressor brought enough to truly threaten to take a city. The reason is simple... they got used and abused to fill in the gaps while the Defenders secondary and triary reserves (That Responsive Defense Force) got brought into the conflict.

The is nothing new or sneaky about the above. The Attacker is merely using basic modern warfare tactics to focus their strength in a few limited areas on the Defender. The Defender is banking on being able to pull in enough of their reserves to slow or stop the Attacker. If they can't STOP the attacker, they want to slow the Attacker's advance so that their secondary reserver units, which are being BUILT, can enter the fray and throw back the invaders.

Note, I didn't go further with my description of a land engagement for the simple reason that no single plan ever survives contact with a thinking opponent.

I also left out Choppers and Drop units. The whole complexity of engages CAN change when the Defender uses choppers well. However, in general, Choppers merely increase the body count, as both sides will have them in short order. And dropping in troopers beats the snot out of moving them up... but you have to be able to drop them, which makes it a long air war (if my past experience is any clue).

But if one wants to be sneaky, once you have engaged the enemy, and have the Defender rushing his reserves to that side, you engage from another flank. This complicates the Defender's position, once the secondary engagement is made. But to do so complicates the Aggressor's postition in the first place. Then there is the secondary difficulties of resupplying each with replacements if you are trying to press both fronts. So most secondary attacks would be more of harassing and pinning down a portion of the defenders forces...

But, as I said, its not like its sneaky like putting drop troops on air transports in pre version 4 (they can unload anywhere). Or using probe and air elements to enable land units to ignore ZOC (Zones of Control). Its simple and basic war. And in a game where the only logistics are 1 mineral per unit for support, and how long it takes to get it in position, that tends to take the difficulty out of long range aggressive actions. Which is why they are so easy to organize...

posted 07-29-99 01:09 PM ET            

Analyst: "...player2 admits to needing:
i) the freedom to behave like a conqueror to his neighbors
ii) the luxury to be allowed to play on a waterworld or large map
iii) other people that think like him to keep the armies of darkness from marching all over the planet"

i) I completely and whole-heartedly agree. If things go awry in the early game, then I reserve the right to blow stuff up
ii and iii) I agree that these conditions are optimal and in some cases vital for the builder playstyle (ie: isolation from conquerors is very important, having other builder friends is prefered). However, the same could be applied to the conqueror. Consider my version of ii and iii applied to the conqueror...
ii) the luxury of playing on a large land mass or tiny maps
iii) having other conquerors to conspire with to keep the builders from entrenching their position and crowding the conqueror out of existance.
In a MP game, the only way to satisfy both the conqueror and builder is to randomize a standard map; both playstyles can thrive under a standard map, and the liklihood of the environment suiting one playstyle over another are equally likely.
The orientation of other players is pretty much out of the player's control, unless he's hosting a game between friends.
Oh, and Darkstar was right; we are a sneaky lot!

Darkstar: Deep radar on scout rovers? Not bad! I never thought of using it myself since one can successfully launch an attack on the AI with little or no recon. That would certainly lift the paranoia that someone might be watching me.

ZZ: To be honest, I think planning a 10-15 turn building project (and that's a liberal estimate) around the off-chance that the other guy might have a unit somewhere between the bunker and the city is pretty silly. I always thought it was dumb that you couldn't detonate a PB without hitting a unit; yet this is the case, so I think you're pinning a lot of hopes on a very unlikly circumstance. Bad stategy, IMHO.

On the issue of recon, cruiser, and PB ranges: As I recall, a fusion cruiser has a range of 5. Add to this maratime (+1 I believe), elite status (+1) and it extends to 7. A non-elite Fusion powered jet has a movement rate of 6, +2 for deep radar. That places the cruiser within the vis. radius with room to spare. (I may be wrong; I don't have a SMAC reference nearby, but by memory I'm pretty sure this is correct.) Fission reactors merely reduce the range of both by 1, but the same numbers apply.
I also do not remember PB range, but its rather large, and somewhere between 14 and 16 moves. As I stated before, conventional methods are unable to stop a PB attack; you have to fight PBs with PBs.

And on that issue, I don't see why sea power would have anything to do with the ability for someone to launch a PB. Are you going to build 20 ships and make a big barrier between the two?

Also, where on Planet are you going to get the resources to build the Maritime project, several PBs, a large ground force, an air force, and enough units to have complete control of the sea? This does not include other Pet conqueror projects. Are you seriously going to abandon the CC, HSA, and CDF over the maritime project, or perhapse you plan on building all of them? The point is that this ridiculously extravagant military you are depicting is, by several orders of astronomical magnitude, VASTLY more expensive than the defender's active def. If the defender would put the difference of these two militaries into infrastructure, he could probably transcend twice!

The only other sane possiblility is that the forementioned conqueror has achieved complete domination over the rest of the planet. Thus, it does not become a matter of two equal powers using different strategys against each other, but rather the winner simply ending the game sooner, which has nothing to do with the discussion between offensive vs. active defensive strategy.

All I ask is that you PLEASE think through the resource reqirements of any theory that you want to post here. You may very well devise a sound strategy for defeating an active def. but if it requires a 50 to 1 numeric advantage, what's the point?

posted 07-29-99 01:39 PM ET            

As I stated earlier, SP games with the AI make for bad practice at defending against air units since the AI makes such poor use of needlejets & copters. SAM rovers show some promise as a cheap and potent solution, and I might try experimenting with these. Aero-complexes and AAA garrisons offer a more obvious solution, but if the agressor is within air range of more than 2 or 3 cities, then the employment of this static air defense becomes more expensive, and some kind of active defense solution would be favored.

On copters and drop pods: I agree that this would change things for both the agressor and defender. The role of copters in an offensive role is obvious from SP games. Defensively they may be even better. The theory is that the agressors ground forces are somewhere between the launch sites of his airforce, and the defender's cities. Whereas the agressor choppers must transverse the entire distance between the two cities, the defending choppers must only go as far as the agressor ground force. Thus, when the agressor copter might get two or three swipes at the defender cities, the defender might get 5 or six in on the approaching force. Also, the offensive power of the "conqueror copter" stays constant so long as it must transverse this distance; defender copters become more and more deadly as the agressor creeps closer to its position.
Lastly, copters armed with air power could be an excellent counter to needlejet attacks with its ability to strike multiple times in one turn.

posted 07-29-99 02:01 PM ET            

The PBs, the Isles, the Shard Copters and every other tactical option I mentioned are just possibilities for which the defender must prepare. I am not implying that the attacker will use all these options, but the possibility of their use demands a counter from the defender. Your static defense must take all these things into account from all possible directions and at any point during the game. You are spreading a dozen 8-year-olds across a parking lot and asking them to stop a motorcycle.

50 to 1 odds? Don't be absurd, or insulting.
Let's see, per colony:
Scout Needlejet, scout foil, probe team, 2 Infantry defenders, 1 Rapid Response Rover, and say one interceptor.
That would be 7 units per colony. So for a 10 colony island the attacker would be bringing 3500 units in his little invasion....
Sounds crazy, yes?

I have thought through, played, and rejected your defensive strategy. I believe the "ridiculously extravagant military" belongs to the defender while all the advantages lie with the attacker.

So, lets get down to brass tacks, shall we? Assuming you are tucked into a moderately large island without another land mass nearby to worry about (rare but possible) what sort of defensive units would you employ per colony? Please be specific. I want to know exactly how you are setting up this defense.

posted 07-29-99 03:41 PM ET            

Dropping in harrassing Defender elements is a nice way to foul up advancing columns and pick off the non-defense elements. And since its your land, there shouldn't be any problems with refusal to drop elements... but is it worth the extra rows of waiting to a defender? Not once its push and shove time, I would think. But when you already have the force lieing around, waiting on the Chopper hoard to reach critical size...

P2, I can't believe you didn't think of DR on Rover Scouts. The Autodesign does... and so does the Autosuggest (why I know in the first place).

ZZ, the key element to the responsive defense that is being overlooked in your anaylsis is that Builders do it so that generally go can go lightier in the units. A few chicken conquerors might go that heavy, but the REAL point to putting a couple of rovers in a bunker that is 3 tiles from 3 or 4 bases is so that you don't have to have each of those bases having 1 Responsive unit each. That leaves 1 or 2 garrison units (with Police, if your Police rating is high enough to use them at all). And lets you easily afford those Air Scouts (which are probably actually Top or at least Free in Weapon slot). And Probe Foils as watch dogs and picket lines require 0, that's right 0 support. Its just time to make them. That would allow you to have a couple of your port cities supporting all of those you want to make, and a cruisers. You don't depend on the pickets to stop incoming... you depend on them to REPORT incoming. You let the power houses do the stopping. Hell, if it was me, I'd armor a foil supply and put deep radar on it as a listening post, and have the unit PAY ME to do its job. (And yes, I do that...)

Superiority, as I said previously, is generally on the attackers side ALREADY. Not the Aggressors or Conquerors side. That is why Responsive Defense works... those units go WHAP the Invader units. Then the Invader units WHAP them back and get rid of them. Only Arty exchanges, Psi at water, and Air Scrambling are done on equal terms...

posted 07-29-99 04:20 PM ET            

I understand how the Responsive Defense is supposed to work. The Rovers are prepared to go to one of those 3 or 4 bases where they are needed, yes. Scouts are cheap, as are probe teams. I never really questioned the support issue, considering that the defender's beefy cities could probably handle it.

Since this theory came onto the forums my position has always been that a well timed application of force will rip a big, ghastly hole through any static defense. The addition of cheap recon units and a few support garrisons doesn't change that. Planetbusters, drop troops, and probe teams all make a mockery of defenses in Alpha Centauri.

If my wave of attack Rovers wades through a sea of fungus, sensors, recon units and long range bombers, I get what I deserve.

However, there are many ways to make a successful landing on the builder's mainland. Let's take our standard island:

Airborne or Drop Colony Pods create a temporary base within Drop range of the Builder continent. Even if he finds it, the attacker can have it filled with Drop troops from other bases or transports, preventing its destruction. Next turn out comes Probe foils and bombers or choppers. How many units are in the typical defending city in the vacinity? 2 Infantry and whatever garrison is nearby. Which city will be the target? Better kill the probe foils to keep that base from being bought. Better kill those nerve gas bearing bombers/choppers before the Drop Troops walk into an empty city. Did the Rovers leave their garrisons? Perhaps the Drop troops wait a turn and just populate those nice defensive areas. If we are assuming that the attacker has a large number of experienced military units, and the defender depends on killing large numbers invaders in the first two turns, how is this accomplished if the attacker occupies a bunker or colony? How many turns does it take for the defender to move all his defensive units to the right front? What if this is all a feint?

posted 07-29-99 04:42 PM ET            

Drop range is what? 8 Tiles before Orbital Insertation? That means you had to make a string of sea bases from your heartland/production center to the P2 Island. Don't expect it to last long. In P2's position, I would be killing that resupply link as a secondary action to a dropped beachhead.

One Fission PB would eliminate your dropped beachhead. 1. The question is, would the Defender have it? See, that is all a problem with this "Hypothesizing". Without the framework of a game, its easy enough to say, I'd use this. In the framework of a game, who is to say if you had the time or tech? That is why I didn't want to draw out the supposition I made above any further. We all know what "WE'D" do to win in a contest... After all, we have "unlimited" resources like this... like that Fission PB. Poof. There it is.

But I am interested in hearing Player2's response... what DO you do against a dropped beachhead onto your ideal Island Continent? (Australia anyone?)

posted 07-29-99 04:49 PM ET            

SMACX is looking like a pure expansion pack, after all. The Cyborg faction is obviously intended to be a builder. After SMACX hits the market, one might well be able to organize those builder Xanadu games, if one can create all-builder-faction games. I suppose that would make some folks happy.

The whole builder/conquerer debate missed the left turn at Albequerque a while back. The simple assertion is that the basic game design favors military strategies over economic/developmental ones.

Even if I concede the viablility of Player2's elaborately conceived strategy of a seeing-eye, flexible response military defense net, which he sets up *after* ICSing and pounding all of his immediate neighbors into worm food, I don't see how it changes the truth of that assertion.

Even if I concede Dowdc's theory (contrary to all of my practical experience) that conquest oriented players will suddenly become too dumb in multiplay to adopt sensible alliance behavior, I don't see how it changes the truth of that assertion.

Even if I concede that the game allows for the creation of maps that make geography serve the defensive capability that players don't normally have in the game, I don't see how it changes the truth of that assertion.

Shining1 said it best when he said that the game is a tease. It gives you a long roster of structural options, terraforming options, unit abilities, etc., etc., etc. and tells you that the game is all about using these tools to build an empire. Rubbish! The game is all about pounding your neighbors with relatively crude military assets early enough and often enough that those empire building tools never come into play. Empire building only occurs *after* the game was won or lost on the fortunes of the use of those crude military assets. Even at that, using the top 50% of empire building assets is strictly unnecessary to achieve victory conditions other than conquest. SMAC doesn't even rise to the level of it's own design pretensions, much less it's own hype or the reputation of its designers.

If this is still your idea of how a TBS should function then more power to you. At this point, though, I think that it would behoove the leading designers of TBS games to differentiate themselves from the RTS market and make an empire builder game about building empires, not military machines. In designing this game, they appear to have moved in the opposite direction.

posted 07-29-99 05:01 PM ET            

Glad you once again brought out the heart of this issue. Conquerors side on the fact that SMAC is a just Empire on Chiron. Builders don't want to believe it, and so they argue that given this and that, that's not true. And we let them. Gives us something to discuss. After all, some of them agree, Analyst. They just are working hard to tone done the power of the Conquer and enjoy SimCentauri as much as they can.

Since we seem to have a lot of SMAC experience assembled here... a question: Has anyone ran the same faction through all the slots in SP? There seems to be strong evidence that the 7 slots are hardcoded for their much of their strategies. I am curious about this... as it means that you can never have a "Builder" only game in single or 2 player games. Even WITH the new factions. Look at Aki and her Cyborgs. They are the Green slot. Replace Deidre and her Green loving tendencies with a Custom faction and its Planned loving tendencies, and that would be the difference. Oh, and graphics of course. But we still end up with forest/planet raping expanist crazed Green, right? Just that Aki will like Yang in his perpetual Planned economy?

posted 07-30-99 12:01 AM ET            

The reactive defense that we have been discussing is meant as a means of preserving the "other" playstyle should the player be placed in a position where he is able to choose between being an agressor or conqueror. If this initial condition occurs, then it is very possible that a RRF could repel the crude rover rush with its "combined arms" design. This then forces the conqueror to design his units in such a way as to counter this defense (adding armor, AAA, deep radar, etc). He must evolve his crude rush tactics into a more sophisticated design.

My goal through all this is to try and salvage the origional intent of the game; a non-rush fest, empire building game. Sadly, this cannot always be accomplished, but I will say that it is possible.

Since my outline of this defense is spread out over several threads, I will outline the entire strategy in a future post, and possibly post a scenario demonstrating its use. Some of you have not read the info I have posted (I won't mention any names), so to spare you the trouble, I will try and assemble it into one easy to read place.

On the issue of drop-pod invasion: The MMI tech is a very big milestone in SMAC. It introduces two very powerful entities. Drop pods, and copters.
In the scenario I have been asked to consider, the invader is about to send in his drop troops to my faction's periphery. So what do I do? One important feature of interceptors is that they prevent drops within two squares of their position; thus the defender could place interceptors in cities which are within drop range (in fact, they're probably already there to stop incoming airstrikes, since bases within drop range are also within airstrike range). If the attacker is unable to remove the interceptors, he must drop outside the city radius, where he may not have road access to attack. Slightly better, but the units still pose a threat within the next turn when they lose their -50% drop penalty. Pods are best used when dropping into a vacated enemy city. If this can't be accomplished, then they're vulnerable for a counter-attack in the next turn. They can still attack after the drop, certainly, but because of drop damage and the -50% penalty, they can't do much damage unless dropped in very large numbers.

This is where copters would come in. After discovering MMI, I would reccommend the defender to scrap his bombers for copters immediately. Copters are able to accomplish everything the bombers could and more. As I stated earlier, copters make an excellent defensive unit. They are extremly powerful at close range. At drop range, however, they are no better than a bomber, and are more vulnerable, as they can be attacked by ground units. Even if the dropped units are able to capture a city despite their depleted status, the enemy's copters still have to land at the newly captured city for one turn before they can begin wreaking havoc. This invites a counterstrike, and thus this is where the defending copters would come in, as even a few copters can deal an enormous ammount of punishment.

posted 07-30-99 12:33 AM ET            

I think we shall have to get Brian Reynolds in here to answer that one. What was the game meant to be? Civ in Space? Empire On Chiron? According to Analyst and myself, that is true. It's a simple Conquest game. There are other options available, but without working very hard, you really won't see them, or even *need* them. I salute you, P2, for trying to slow, nay, *morph* the path of war and conquest to merely another element of expanding the Empire. But until Civ3 or SMAC2, I don't think we will see it. But I will wait eagerly to see what genius you have cooked up. Perhaps married with Shining1's mods we can have a better game overall. Which is what we are after... a better game, and a better gaming experience.

But I have a strong suspecion that SMAC is EXACTLY (minus the bugs) the game BR wanted. A World Conquest game that allows one to be the Neapolian Emporer... You tell everyone what to, nothing gets built or done without your explicit orders, unless you actually deign to allow them decide for themselves. And you can lay down the bounds of their abilities for the important ones (formers). Otherwise, you can tell them to do certain things or just as their training tells them. Humm... sounds like a Micro-manger Heaven. If I am Morgan, why can't my underlings go build their own factories, hospitals, energy banks without specific orders from me? And why only one? I know he's a monopolist, but that's ridiculous... leftover element from MOM? Or just no need for it as the game is about Conquering the world? You decide...

posted 07-30-99 06:36 AM ET         

They had to tackle one basic problem:
NO-ONE has produced an AI (TBS or RTS) which is competent (strategically or tactically) to handle the proverbial whelk stall.

Therefore, a competent human player will beat the AI not just in the 50/50 situations, but the 40/60 and 30/70 ones too. Good players will win the 20/80s 90+% of the time.

Thus, unless the rules are stacked to make early conquest very easy, the AI conqueror factions pose no early threat at all (as in CIV2), and the human can simply build a massive infrastructure and then win in whatever way he chooses. However, humans can play early conqueror too....

Likewise, the complete control/micromanagement issue - Firaxis at least made an attempt to allow you to let your citizens "get on with it", but their A(non)I is so laughable that no serious player can afford to do so.

Jaechdan

I used the AutoGovernor once. I set it to "explore". It tried to build a (6)-1-1 artillery unit. 'Nuff said.

posted 07-30-99 09:18 AM ET            

So in lieu of more confrontation, here are a few of my MP tricks.

Renaming cities is a good thing. I have gone so far as to name some of my colonies "University Base" and "Gaia's Landing" after conquering those factions. Then the original "University Base" becomes "Hawk of Chiron"... har har har.

I used that sea colony Drop Hop on a friend after feinting an attack on his opposite border. The Sea is sometimes vast, and some Players just don't build enough ships to recon their coasts effectively. Sure those colonies where hangin in the breeze, but it allowed me to drop a ton of Infantry into his backfield.

posted 07-30-99 02:30 PM ET         

ZZ: How about flying in a suicide Needlejet and using the self-destruct to blow up some crawlers? They generally are packed tightly together and I have heard that a unit with a descent reactor can do significant damage.

posted 07-30-99 04:47 PM ET            

And not making a great Opp Eng will never ever fly with the customers. We paid money, and want the impossible. The fact that a few of the TI people here are actual Expert System programmers (what the REAL Opponent Engine is and called AI by Firaxis) doesn't draw any sympathies. Its their system. And while they have done better than many previous games, we expect it to be less stupid... Have you noticed that early encounters, the Opp Eng sends out its ONLY defender in its only (HQ) base when you declare WAR on it and have a unit RIGHT THERE? Talk about BAD coding... Why does the Opp Eng never use its 50 Jets except to attack Supply Crawlers, Formers? Otherwise, they sit in a base.

Nope, Firaxis deserves the reaming that they get given by their dedicated fans on the matter. There are LOTS of areas where they should have added a big 5 or 10 lines of more code or so to improve its capability. You making excuses makes them feel validated to not improve a thing... and since the SMAC engine, graphical and Opp Eng included, is the BASIS of Civ3... trust me. They need to be reamed on a daily basis to help keep them motivated to make it the best they can in the time they can. If we could get the boards flaming, the could take that back to EA and Hasbro and get extensions on the project. EA extended SimCity3000 for Maxis so that they could refine it. I am sure that they would do it again. And Hasbro would want to best possible product on an outside Microprose developed Civ3. And if they want Sid's name on it, they will have to play ball.

So, stop rationalizing the piss-poor behavior and blatant tilting of SMAC's balance for Conquest. The truth is the game was meant for conquering, and all other concerns got tossed out the door as unnecessary bells and whistles by somebody in management. Whether it was Firaxis itself, or just EA, it would be hard to say... be happy you can do anything other than make scouts and colonies and conquer. Hey, that's an easily won challenge, isn't it? Yep. What does THAT say about the game?

posted 07-30-99 09:19 PM ET            

As for supply crawlers, one needs to ask if they need to be attacked in the first place. If its during a full scale assault aimed at capturing a bunch of cities, I would just assume not waste valuable attack moves on a defensless crawler. If the attack is instead aimed at crippling the constructive capacity, then that screams air power to me. Needlejets and copters would be great against crawlers (provided there are no interceptors nearby) Your multiple move kamikaze copter sounds like a good idea. Even a badly damaged copter could take out several crawlers. So when considering this kind of attack, I would say that if you can get at least 2 crawlers with your kamikaze copter, then its worth it. Also, the exploding needlejet idea sounds like it might work also, and again its worth it if you can take out at least two crawlers.