Anyone else always play with random research?

[Kirov]

Funny thing with blind research. I must say I always loathed it in the context of multiplayer which, for the lack of a better word, I'll call 'competitive' - that is, playing to win, microing, employing the most efficient tactics, etc. Blind is simply randomizing stuff like automated formers or governors, i.e. not the way I want to play my MP games.

However, currently we have one game with blind on, requested by one of our players. And I think I'm getting to love it for the following reasons:

1) It levels down skill differences between players. Every vet knows exactly which techs they want to have until late midgame (where all games will have been completed anyway), people with less experience struggle more and can sometimes accept tech deals which actually harm their potential (due to the fact that each tech clogs your tech rate a bit). There are many techs which you should almost never accept in a bargain or consider researching.

2) Related to the above, it removes all the boring, most obvious beelines - IA, then boats, then either 2xEE or D:AP. In very few situations you need to stray from them.

3) It removes the annoying abuse when two players join forces, both research tech A at the same time, the one who's first sends it to the other, who immediately switches to tech B and voila! they both have A and B in the time needed for A only. This is simply too much as not a single lab point is lost here.

4) It forces you to buy unnecessary techs (mentioned in (1) above) just for the purpose of removing them from your tech options.

5) It forces you to probe or otherwise get creative with tech acquisition.

Anyway, forget about easy Industrial Automation, the single most important tech in the game. The main drawback, of course, is that you can be more or less lucky with your tech asortment. But for now, I'm going to propose or insist on blind research in my games to come! 

[realjackryan]

Does anybody have insight into how AI change between Blind and Direct Research?

[bvanevery]

Always blind research.  Hey it's the default rule.

Caveat: I play SMACX.  Nowadays always with 7 random factions from the 14, including the one I'm playing.  Otherwise after 17 years I'd be pretty bored with the game.     The Caretakers and Usurpers have directed research as a faction power.  That's one of the main reasons I play all the other factions with blind research, I don't think everyone should be getting a free faction power.  Same thing with getting tech when conquering a  base.  I don't play with that, because that's Aki Zeta 5's power.

Blind research can be a real PITA to get things done.  However it's also a challenge, and I need some of those.

Directed research makes it trivial to get ahead in the game, IMO.  Granted, I'm an almost 17 year exclusively single player gamer.  I did have 2 PCs set up for 1 on 1 multiplayer once.  Against a friend of mine who wasn't particularly good at the game.  He could never do much to me.  Neither did we ever really finish the games we started either.  I really came to view SMAC as an inappropriate game for multiplayer.  Takes way too long.

I've also lately been playing on rather large maps, 256x256.  That's a bit of a drag, but as I've not done a lot of it yet, I'm not quite ready to give up on the challenges presented.  Sometimes those maps give pathological start conditions though, like 1 square islands, to many factions.  Wonder why that happens?  Nowadays I'm just restarting if that's the problem.

On these 256x256 maps, I have the foreknowledge that Exploration is going to be really important.  In particular, if the default unity supply pod scattering is allowed, scooping artifacts and energy credits from the oceans is enormously profitable.  So profitable as to be a crutch.  The AI factions don't understand this, so they are at a disadvantage that way.  Lately I've started turning off the pods.  Haven't played many games of that yet.  It makes these huge worlds really, really boring and pointless to explore.  I think you could say I've been playing "Pac-Man" in SMACX for a couple of years... now I'm thinking about what the game is, if it isn't "Pac-Man".

One thing I've turned off, is random events.  The bad ones are way too obnoxious and painful to put up with.  Like you've accumulated 1000+ energy and the market crashes, reducing you to 1/3 of that.  I've had that happen even when I had built The Planetary Energy grid.  Every single one of my bases has an energy bank, WTF is the problem??  Having research fizzle due to a claimed lack of network nodes is not fun either.  The good events don't make up for that kind of punishment.  The setting AFAIAC is "do you want some s**t in your SMACX sandwich?"  In recent discussion of these un-fun design misfeatures on my gamedesign-l, someone suggested hey, why don't you just turn that crap off?  I said "good idea" and haven't looked back.

Turning random events off, the only thing I really miss are sunspots.  They can be useful for pulling distasteful Social Engineering choices, as nobody can bother you for the duration.

I also play with "look first" before settling 1st colony.  I think it would be irritating not to find a suitable piece of flat ground.  Better yet, pop some pods first, then settle on the nutrients.  Or near minerals if I get lucky like that.  Minerals = early secret project.

I've played a lot of games with tech stagnation, but eventually decided it didn't add that much to the game, and severely penalized the AI players.

Abundant native life seems to really penalize AI players so I don't do that.  I've seen games where most factions are Dead On Arrival.  Presumed wiped out by stupid choices regarding mindworms.  I've decided to just start over if I see that sort of thing happening again.

So now you know my assumptions.

Oh and always Transcend.  On 30%..50% land worlds.  Which seem to yield a surprising number of water worlds with island archipelagos.