posted 07-01-99 10:50 PM ET            

Why? Early colony pods spend ages in travel, so if you make them travel further you lose time that could be spent building up the colonies, and making more colony pods and terraformers.

The base overlap is only important in the latter game, when your bases grow to size fifteen to twenty. (This could happen earlier with the Peacekeepers, but they're a special case. ) And by then you have other ways to get resources than by placing population on base squares.

So if I'm playing a faction that gets great benefit from the number of colonies, as for example the UoP and Morgan, then initially I build a lot of colonies two squares apart.

Even then, it's a long time before I can utilise all the squares available to each base, because I cannot afford to pop-boom (drones are a problem at Thinker) and supply units are still in the future.

So my initial goal is to have as many colonies as possible, pumping out colony pods and terraformers until their mineral production is affected, then I build them
up, as the outer bases are still furthering my expansion.

By the time supply crawlers appear, I have many colonies, very healthy research and energy profiles, few or no drones, plenty of terraforming, and a decent to superb military. On a Huge map, I've probably also expanded so far as to have borders on several sides.

Now I have speeder colony pods and supply crawlers so I can plant bases much further apart (on the very best locations) and utilise all the squares including remote squares.

I can also rush-build special projects with the supply crawlers.

Soon after this I start conquering in earnest.

After I gain fusion reactors I'll build supply and colony speeders, armored transformer rovers, and stronger needlejets and other military units with which I'll conquer much faster.

Now, I happen to enjoy playing UoP and Morgan, for which this colonisation strategy is appropriate, but if you prefer, say, the Spartans, who have speeders from the outset, then in your shoes, I'd scout far and wide for the best sites, and consider speeder colony pods much sooner.

posted 07-01-99 11:39 PM ET            

An exception was when the solar shade caused the Peacekeepers' sea bases to join the island that had the Monsoon Jungle. As soon as that happened, the PKs began building closely packed bases on the MJ. Apparently they know that exploiting all its resources ASAP is a good policy.

The funny thing about the most recent game is that the PKs, Believers, and Gaians were keen on sea bases, but the Spartans didn't build any. With their early access to naval technology, you'd think the Spartans would be building sea bases and making early expeditions to other continents, but it was very late before they sent any troop transports out.

The Gaians had formed a fast, triangular friendship with the Spartans and the Believers, in opposition to the UoP (me) and its allies the PKs, Morgan, and the (once great but now) submissive Hive.

None of the three sisters would have any serious truck with me. You can understand that with the Believers, because I could never be Fundamentalist, and the Spartans were annoyed by my long use of Wealth, but I had long been Deep Green, so Deirdre must have been simply jealous.

Well, D. was in the way, and since unlike the friendly Morgans and PKs, and the "ok I'm beaten" Hive, she wouldn't respect any of my overtures, even down to her last pitiful undefended offshore sea base, so she had to go.

Once I conquered the Gaians, the friendship between neighbors Santiago and Miriam fell apart and they declared Vendetta on each other. So it seems that Deirdre was the cement in that relationship.

I wish that the game gave more insight into the social engineering and diplomacy between the other factions, because it would have been fascinating to see how that Triple Entente was formed and maintained, and why it fell apart in the absence of the Gaians.

Maybe with the loss of their pact sister, they no longer had a common cause, and their loathing shifted to each other?

Another aspect of SMAC that could be improved is this: the PKs asked me to combine with them against a specific Spartan base only a few steps from their own bases, so my fusion shard needlejets repeatedly took out all its defenders, so it was undefended for many turns. Yet the PKs never took advantage of the situation!

My own bases were far away on other continents, so I had no land units to capture the base with, and the opportunity went begging.

By contrast, the PKs did send troops right up to the walls of a well-defended Spartan base!

Frankly I'm at least glad that they didn't beg me to clear that base out for them, because my jets didn't stand a chance against its AAA defenders sheltered by an Aerospace Complex.

The most I could do was to attack a few of the Spartan AAA troops in the field, and I lost a Fusion Shard jet each time. Commando jets died; only Elite jets had good survival rates. (My choppers didn't have sufficient range, and would have died anyway.)

Nerve gas would have worked, but I know from bitter experience that neither my Allies nor Planet will tolerate extended use of X weapons.

No, the Spartan menace will have to wait for the arrival of my Shard Hovertanks. I've given the PKs the tech to build their own, but I'm still waiting. They prefer to expend their manufacturing in making a Fusion Planet Buster, which is going to take ages.

PS: After I got the Cloning Vats, I won the game diplomatically, then opted to continue. Soon thereafter, at the start of a turn, MS-Windows claimed that TERRAN.EXE had committed the mortal sin of making an Invalid Page Fault.

Personally, I'd be happy for the game to continue regardless - so what if it has to do without some object?

However, I went back to the last auto-save (guess why I don't play Ironman? ) and noticed that the game was now awfully slow, and I do mean awfully. Even the mouse, which was never affected by crashes in versions 1 and 2, began behaving as if the ball were suddenly gummed up (which i checked and it wasn't). Sure looks like a memory problem all right (or all wrong).

While I slept I set the computer to defragging (one percent of 1 GB is still 10 MB, right? and I only have 56 MB free), and scandisking. In the morning the report was of no problems found.

Maybe I just need a bigger hard disk? Somewhere it's been said that SMAC wants 100 MB free while running. Goodness knows why; nothing else does.

When I get back home, I'll try running the latest save to see if the problem persists. In any case, I plan to send the save to Mr. Jeffrey K. Morris to look at.