posted 03-31-99 04:48 PM ET        

Each game that I played noted a similar factor..
Your faction will proceed evenly with the others , but at a certain point a nearby faction will attack you (tipically in a Continental war you'll always be fighting the Hive (unless it's you who is controlling them)).. Then two things can happen..

1) You can either lose and watch "your cities destroyed.... your people enslaved... your armies scattered" (MoO2)
2) You can resist the invasion , begin to counter-attack , in the meantine you'll make a technological breaktrough (hey I sound like Nostradamus ;-) ) which'll permit you to strike a final blow against the opposing faction..

Tipically this will happen at about the "Time of Shard Tanks" ;-)

And then... after they have lost? What will happen after this war?

Well the game is over..

Because you'll begin (if you follow a "Build" strategy that is..) developing your bases to a point where they are able to average 100 minerals.. and your powergraph will look like a "rockclimber's nightmare" :-)

Why is this? It's simple. No one is following a "Build Strategy" (which in a long-term strategy.. is the best)..

Look at their cities.. Very few bases have all the improvements almost all of your cities have.

They rely on setting ALL of their cities on building whatever military unit they want. And in the early-mid game , this strategy can be important because they can just outnumber you.. But in the end , they can no more keep the pace with you (in fact you'll be averaging a discovery every 2-3 years.. let's compare your 2-3 years with their 15-30...)..

In fact since they would take too many turns to build a Ultra-Hyped-Extra-Doped-Tank they just build... Mind Worms.

It's really sad to watch your spies'reports and seeing ALL the Morganic (which should be a Pacifist faction with a "BUILD" strategy) building Mind Worms..

I know.. If we had "Self-Aware Machines" the earth would be a better place.. But I know I'm not asking a miracle.. I'm not saying that I could do this myself , but having a litle programming experience I know that an (almost) perfect way to solve this would be to just "enfoce" something... Like adding those famous "war penalties".. or instructing the pacifists faction to have NOT MORE than 1/4 of their cities building military units , and the other 3/4 building city's improvements... This is the only way they can survive in the late 2300s or 2400...

I have not yet had the chance to use those GravTransports (which look very cool :-) )...

One last thing.. Planet Busters are supposed to scare enemies , to make them surrender.. not to make them fight to the death.
I can't believe that no one at Firaxis ever read an History of the World War II :-) If they had they would surely have noticed that Japan surrendered after (and maybe even before) the nuclear bombings..

Yeah maybe someone would fight to the death... but not everyone..

I also noted the lack of Civ2's "Parliament"... If you played it , you will remember that sometimes if a enemy offered you to a "Blood Truce" , they could sometimes sign a treaty anyway , ignoring your disapproval..

Why isn't this in SMAC?

Also they , IMHO , should add some other "effects" for the war..
For example they could do something like this :

1 less drone if Important Conquest achieved (for example , if you conquer their Headquarters... your people should be happy because you are winning the war)

1 drone (as it was said during the "War Penalties" thread) for every xxx year of war..

-xxx research because some "bright college students are now cannon fodders"..

Also ... some more "IF"s..

IF FactionXX[Total Number of Military Units] is (much less than) EnemyFaction[Total Number of Units] AND FactionXX[Cities Lost] => FactionXX[Total Number of Cities] THEN ..... PRAY FOR PEACE!!!!!!!!!!

IF EnemyFactionXX[Planet Buster] is in Faction[Base Radius] then PRAY FOR PEACE!!!!!!

They have to UNDERSTAND they are getting slaughtered... And they have to UNDERSTAND not to "provoke" other ... HUMAN faction leaders :-)
Especially if they are mathematically not able to sustain an Hi-Tech war... How many hopes as a faction with no cities improvements against another which has already crowded the geostatiotanary orbit from centuries?

Just my 0.2 Euros.. ;-)