SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[bvanevery]

Ok, I lost faith in that game and quit.  I don't know what the point of what I'm doing is.  I started the game with a "no tech investments" strategy, but at some point, I simply didn't have anything worth building anymore.  I was unwilling to push out new colonies and cities anymore, I had an empire of a size that wasn't going to drive me nuts.  None of my neighbors have cities worth conquering.  When they get uppity with me and declare war, I'll take 1 or 2 of 'em until they settle down.  But why prosecute a campaign against an infinite ocean of spam?  It just doesn't basically make any sense. 

Am I supposed to sit around in my own little enclave until I Transcend?  That's like one of the most boring ways to play the game that I can imagine.  I doubt that I'll ever achieve Economic Victory with so many cities on the map.  Diplomatic Victory is impossible, you can't ever have the votes.

I wondered if I could ever get the production together to have a Singularity Planet Buster finish.  That's where you save up enough of 'em for doomsday, nuke the whole rest of the world all at once, and just declare victory before Planet comes to take vengeance!  It's a total cheat, but the game deserves it.

I have been playing with my usual fear of developing too many minerals and factories, because in the stock binary, that'll drown you.  I don't actually know if it's a big deal in WTP.  In Thinker it was totally nerfed, and that was one of my sore points with Induktio that caused us not to get along as designers.  Well I could see if there's not much reason to avoid Genejack Factories after all.

At one point I was going to wipe out the Caretakers with X weapons.  But the other factions kept spamming me with minor distractions.  Then something would come up that would seem like it needed to be built.   The end result is I never managed to get around to any kind of offensive at all.  I feel like there aren't enough resources to do much of anything, given the huge standing of the AI factions on the map.

[bvanevery]

Details Free Drone Island

Free Drone Island

MY 2215.  This faction is a complete cakewalk.  It is totally unbalanced compared to the various lousy factions I've previously played with: the University, the Cyborgs, the Peacekeepers, and the Pirates.  Why would anyone in their right mind pick any of those?  Either deliberately or as an indirect consequence of the colony spam, none of those factions have advantages and they've all been given significant penalties.  That ends up looking completely daft and pointless compared to the Free Drones.  They've got the ability to absolutely stomp everyone at making Secret Projects, in a game where there's no other way than doing it one city at a time.

Details leaderboard

leaderboard

I did use a new tactic I'll call "anticipatory minerals".  The cities I reasonably expected to grow to have 6 minerals soon enough, I build Recycling Tanks on them.  Then I started SPs, way before anyone else was even thinking of it.  It makes sense, as SPs have been turned into such a marathon.  Well as you can see, it worked.  Even with the Free Drones -2 RESEARCH penalty, which obviously doesn't mean anything in the early game.  AI factions trade techs that yield SPs pretty freely, with a few stumbling block exceptions for some reason.  So there are plenty of SPs to build, and I didn't even feel like my own research sucked all that hard.

I am concerned that Democratic Planned is the only correct way to play the game.  Maybe Free Market has some merit, I haven't really tried that because I'm afraid of mindworms and don't like being strung up with peaceniks.  But the other choices don't work.  You can't possibly want to be Green as long as you've got enough happiness to keep growing.  If you were in a mindworm war maybe it would help, but the AI factions don't make enough war for that to even be a concern.  I don't know if using hordes of mindworms as a continental extermination force is valid, with some super high PLANET rating, but it definitely wasn't appropriate for me in my last game.

Another thing is, I'm making a lot of money at Planned as it is.  Why do I need more money with Free Market?  I can't meaningfully spend it on SPs, with the 6 credit conversion rate.  I don't know if it can make so much more money as to yield Economic Victory, or do major buyouts of enemy bases, but I sorta have my doubts.

[bvanevery]

Details who da builder

who da builder

MY 2249.  They'll be lucky to get anything.

Details Morgan swatting

Morgan swatting

I had Morgan's sea bases thoroughly terrorized, just running around wiping out anything size 1.  That didn't get him to sign a Truce, so I started taking bigger bases.  That got his attention and he signed a Treaty.  Guess he doesn't like losing to a big army with no end to its growth trajectory in sight.

Details Gaian chicken

Gaian chicken

The belligerent evil Gaians cried uncle before I even took a base.  I guess they got tired of me running around with that 1 ship in their southern ocean.  And the huge land force about to spell their doom.  I started walkking it towards the Caretakers, but Zhakarov just cancelled our Pact.  Not sure what I'm doing now.

All of my bases are built up to Genejack Factories.  Despite whopping eco-damage in some cities, there's been precious little mindworm vengeance.  You're looking at the worst of it.  In the stock game, global flooding would have definitely started happening by now.  It might even be serious.

If I had rails, I'd build land bridges and so forth.  But, I'm attached to a supercontinent anyways.  So it would be more about bypassing other factions' lands, to get to a victim.  Like the Caretakers.  It's not fun to manually push units all the way across the map.

If I had air power, I suppose I could send out Carriers and X Needlejets to liquidate the Caretakers.  It's been a long time since I did a long distance air campaign.

I tried to legalize atrocities some turns ago, but Deirdre vetoed it.  Despite me having the Empath Guild, I don't have the votes to change her standing.

Details choke point

choke point

Like my last game, this is a supercontinental system cutting the map in half, with only 1 teeny weeny passageway connecting the halves.  Last time around I started very near that passage.  But I didn't settle it, so the Free Drones swept over it and bottled it up.  I was landlocked for quite some time, and unable to get to my preferred victim.  The Free Drones finally got uppity and then I took their cities on the passageway from them.

Hmm I wonder what it would cost to just sink everything?   It's pretty darned pricey in the stock game.  However if I settled a sea base first, maybe the cost would go down.

I could do a sort of cold war beating, jerking them around with probe teams, then real troops, then a Treaty, then messing with them all over again.

You know... it's 4 AM and this game is just way too silly.  I'm quitting.  I gotta stop picking random factions.  Need to consider whether there's one that's a "fair test", because it's neither crippled nor overpowered.

[bvanevery]

Details even a lousy start does well

even a lousy start does well

This morning I put 1.5 hours into the Cult of Planet.  I actually had a fairly bad start, where I could have settled at various points, but didn't want to, for sheer lack of resource bonuses.  It was all pretty dry and overgrown with fungus too.  I kept walking west trying to find some good land, and I don't think I settled my capitol until turn 20.  My 2nd base, not until even later, as it ran into a fungal maze and had to turn back. 

Despite this, the hordes of mindworms I stirred up and captured made all my scouting rather easy.  +2 PLANET must be a big threshold of difference in the mindworm power curve, where you have enough offensive oomph that you can do a quite traditional mindworm capture and steamrollering.  It did start to get shakier in later turns as the mindworms got tougher, but the opening value of the mindworm spreadout was obvious and decisive.

The Cult's other huge advantage is they've got WORMPOLICE, in a game where otherwise nobody gets police units until... I don't even know when?  Didn't see them in my previous test games, so no time useful, that's for sure.

The Cult is clearly one of the 'good' factions.  Having established that, I'll try someone else.

[bvanevery]

Details Gaian fundaminimalists

Gaian fundaminimalists

The Gaians are a more balanced faction.  They do have the +1 PLANET advantage, so can score some supply pods pretty quickly, but they don't come crashing out the gate at quite the same speed as the Cult.  I had to wander some Scouts around to finally get some mindworms and spore launchers.  Subsequently though I found the Manifold Nexus in my backyard, putting me on offensive parity with Cultlike play.

I had no time to do anything other than the Merchant Exchange, as I had land claiming pressure from both the Morganites and the Believers.  Just a lot of spewing of colony pods.  As of MY 2218 I still haven't learned Recycling Tanks.  It's about to be stolen from Morgan though.  He surprise attacked me some turns ago.  I took a walk-in city and secured a Truce, giving me time to finish Biology Labs and build up a stupid large horde of Mindworms.  And I don't plan to stop, until Morgan goes down.  We have a Treaty and I just stole from him this turn.  He declined to go war over it, and just wagged his tongue at me.

I'm Fundamentalist Green.  This is pretty sycophantic, although the combo does work.  I don't really need more tech, I'm happy to steal to provoke war, it offsets my MORALE deficiency, and I don't mind an INDUSTRY bonus.  Haven't managed to get the Believers allied with me, but they changed from Seething to Belligerent, last we talked.  They're at war with the Morganites and will start liking me again when we start fighting.

In my own mod, I usually just whap 1 base to secure peace.  But in WTP, I've realized that allowing the AI factions to go back to spamming colonists uninterrupted, is a bad idea.  So I made it a point this game, if the circumstances warranted it, not to plan on peace.  I have eschewed the value of Green, but this is actually the circumstance where it is appropriate.  We'll see what +4 PLANET can do.

[bvanevery]

Details farming the Morganites

farming the Morganites

+4 PLANET mindworms can do an awful lot against Free Market Morganites.  They're basically invincible.  Morgan has paid me very large sums of money to beg off, like 2000 credits or 1300 credits.  Not sure how he got the latter back so quickly, but whatever.  I used the cash to make rapid upgrades to my infrastructure, finally getting a lot of Recycling Tanks built.  Then my hand slipped on the keyboard, and I accidentally contacted my ally Santiago.  She wanted to precipitate war with the Morganites all over again, just after I signed a Treaty and backed off!  Well I said sure... and this is such an exploit, that I've lost interest in the game.  Quitting.

Mindworm stomping against a PLANET vulnerable faction is pretty much cake.  I think this is partly due to the 15% increments.  Also the AI has a bad habit of attacking mindworms in the field and just dying.  Like it didn't think about the disadvantage it was at due to relative PLANET ratings.

[bvanevery]

Details life of easy destruction

life of easy destruction

The Spartans are pretty much a cakewalk.  They're overpowered.  Proud as I am of this nascent empire and the beginnings of a Gaian stomp, there's no reason to continue this game.

The Spartans start the game with Speeders, no prototyping required to get started sweeping the map of supply pods.  Speeders in WTP are also extremely cheap, costing only what a Scout costs in the normal game.  Thus, suicide tactics into supply pods is no trouble at all.  They're tough enough due to their MORALE bonus that they might live through the experience, and if they don't, who cares?  It's the cheapest unit in the game.  A Laser Synth armored Recon Rover still only costs 1, so very quickly, the Spartans have a minimum armor and weapon unit that can be used for anything.  I started in the middle of nowhere so I didn't have any enemy to immediately trash.  But if I had, and they were doing the AI's usual Trance Scout thing, they'd be toast!

Worse, the Spartans have +1 POLICE, in a game that otherwise makes it really really difficult to use police units.  They can out-police the Hive and get +3 POLICE when declaring a Police State.  This makes all units do 2x police work.  So I don't even have to try to keep my citizens happy, it's trivial.

In my own mod, I couldn't abide the Spartans having better police than Chairman Yang.  So I made +1 POLICE into Yang's primary play mechanic, getting rid of other things like the INDUSTRY bonus and the IMMUNITY to EFFIC penalties.  I took the +1 POLICE away from the Spartans and I strongly recommend you do so.  I feel strongly enough about the gross imbalance here, that I'm filing an Issue about it.

Similarly for the Cultists.  Their WORMPOLICE make them way too powerful.  If you're going to put police on a diet, stick to the plan and don't give them away.

The Ascetic Virtues is a solidly midgame SP, not easy to complete any time soon.  Its +1 POLICE benefit is generally the only way that anyone can get to double police, until Thought Control becomes available.  That takes awhile.

[bvanevery]

Details Christianing it up

Christianing it up

The Believers seem balanced enough.  I didn't have any real difficulty with my -1 PLANET rating.  I had to adopt some cautious tactics, but mindworms will ultimately hurl themselves at your cities.  Usually they die that way, particularly if I've toughened up by going Fundamentalist.  The INDUSTRY bonus helped me crank out a couple of SPs.  The graph says I'm not doing really much better or worse than anyone else.  There's nothing really wrong with this game, but it's 3 AM and I'm tired.  The mission of testing the basic playability of yet another faction has been accomplished, so I'm bagging this.

The Believers are a good fit to WTP's biases.  Early tech research isn't worth anything, there's no point.  You can buy it easily enough, and allies will often just up and give it to you.  For both the Believers and the Free Drones, you might want to consider the meaninglessness of the -2 RESEARCH penalty.

I figured out that building a Rec Commons followed by a Hologram Theater can count as "anticipatory minerals" for building early SPs, if Recycling Tanks is not learned.  Just has to be somewhere that will grow enough in the meantime to get meaningful minerals.  Such as combining nutrient specials with forests.

[bvanevery]

Details The Leader's Horde

The Leader's Horde

The Hive is definitely not an underpowered faction.  I don't think it's overpowered, but there's more of this game to go.  My start was fine.  Pretty good land.  More than I could reasonably settle before "other concerns" drove me to go vertical.

In MY 2216 I completed the Command Nexus.  Previous to that, all of my garrison troops came from 1 Command Center.  Elsewhere I built a big pile of various Formers, and then finally Synth armored Rover Probe Teams because I had nothing better to do.  They're all heading for Deidre, and the Fungicidal Formers are coming after to carve a better road to the enemy.  Several factions are at war with me but Deidre is the closest land adjacent neighbor.  I had planned to stomp the Morganites but we went into sunspots.  There's no point in stomping them until I can get a surrender out of them.

I'm starting on hordes of Missile Speeders with Plasma armor.  I'm working on a Chaos prototype.  I'll be surprised if Deidre has any chance at all, because infiltration doesn't show her defenses to look like much.  Some armor and ECM, but a lot of Trance Scouts too.  Unimpressive city size and infrastructure, not much minerals output.  Her SUPPORT must be bad as I see various cities with some units costing her 2 minerals.

[bvanevery]

That Hive game, I failed to follow through with eXtermination when I had Deirdre on the ropes.  I stole all their tech and then just stopped my offensive.  I get tired of unit pushing, and I either worry about or strongly prefer to build Secret Projects.  Sometimes I wonder if it's just my psychology, what I "like to accomplish" rather than what is strictly optimal play.  It's hard to say.  But I think task fatigue, tends to make me want to beg off.

I played a game as the Data Angels, starting in fairly close quarters to hostile Spartans.  At first I thought I was getting the better of them.  But with only 1 "good minerals" Command Center city, and trying to grow the rest of my empire under all that combat stress, I really couldn't put them under.  In fact they took back the city I took from them.  Their artillery was surprisingly effective at keeping my wounded units weak.  It really does a lot of damage to units to bust open a city, so they're all but spent afterwards.

The Data Angels' PROBE bonus is not really that useful in the early game.  It's not like I had lots of money to buy Spartan units or cities with.  Nor did I have the manufacturing capacity to make lots of probe teams.  The main thing keeping me going was SHARETECH.  But that's not as helpful as you might think, because as the game progresses, it only means you stay even with most factions.  You're not actually gaining an advantage.

I don't think the Data Angels are a bad faction, but they're not as good as the better ones.  It's hard to use probe teams effectively.

[bvanevery]

Details Caretakers heist my cargo

Caretakers heist my cargo

I didn't think a probe team could mind control stuff that's on a Transport.  It can't in the unmodded game, because there are 2 units in the square.  Makes me wonder if that rule is gone in WTP.  I didn't see the Recon Rover leave my Transport, and it's empty now, so I wonder if it summarily sunk?

Details verticality

verticality

I'm playing as the Usurpers because it's the last faction to try.  I got an unusual start with 3 minerals deposits next to a manageable slice of the Monsoon Jungle.  So uncharacteristically, the 1st thing I researched was Social Psych.  One advantage of directed research is I will be able to get Recycling Tanks very soon, like in 5 more years.

I lost my 1st Independent Scout on the 1st turn of the game, popping all those pods with my non-combat units.  But otherwise mindworms haven't been a serious problem yet.  I beat some pops off with my Scouts, taking casualties, but my cities and terrain improvements weren't harmed.  My exploration radius is rather limited compared to what I usually do.  Hope I don't get hordes later as a result.

In MY 2212, at 1 AM, I quit.  The game was viable, but I don't think my 3 city vertical opening was particularly advantageous.  Despite making some early conquests of the Caretakers just to the east, I wasn't able to reinforce the conquered cities and the Caretakers merely retook them.  When I quit, I think we had rough parity, which isn't an endorsement for my opening strategy.  I think there's just too much work to do everywhere, and colony spamming is still obviously the optimal strategy.

I also got hammered by a lot of hordes of wandering mindworms.  Although I did hold them off by sheer numbers of ECM Synth Laser Infantry put in as defenders, they did tie me up and blunt any other offensive activities I may have engaged in.  This indicates to me that allowing others to pop the pods is a very bad idea.  Not only won't you get the money, but you'll also get their mindworms hitting you.

[bvanevery]

Details the spam line

the spam line

I made it to MY 2304 as the Peacekeepers before quitting.  Things are calm now, but I previously fought overwhelming amounts of Hive Recon Speeder spam.  It just went on forever and it has worn me out.  Although the AI's strategy of spamming incredible numbers of cheap units may be effective in some cases, it's pretty darned dull to fight forever.  Too much.

This sort of thing seems to pit extreme vertical (me) vs. extreme horizontal development (them).  There just comes a point at which I'm like, why would I want to wade through any more of this?

On the positive side, I did manage to get elected Governor.  It did take the Empath Guild, and all the terraforming I did for a long time instead of other things, and Democratic Planned.  And probably an ally finally voting with me instead of undermining me.

[bvanevery]

Details the defenseless Hive

the defenseless Hive

I made it to MY 2297 as the Cult of Planet before quitting.  I actually out spammed the Hive.  However this is not basically playable, pushing all these units around, 3 or 6 squares at a time.  I can't imagine doing this for lots more of the map than I already did.  This is what rails are for.

The Hive mostly built regular units without Trance ability, so I just steamrollered them with my +4 PLANET mindworms.  The Hive eventually started building some Trance Scouts.  Those would interfere with my conquest, except for the fact that they're extremely vulnerable to artillery fire.  One shot with a high caliber artillery piece, and they're half dead, which means just about any mindworm will kill them.  Since they're no longer viable anti-mindworm defense, the stronger armored units which typically have ECM are selected.  They die, and then I might send some kind of Speeder to mop up the Trance Scouts if necessary.

You would improve the AI's resistance if you built Trance units that actually had armor.  And if you didn't make Trance so expensive that the AI objects to doing so.  In my own mod, I finally had to go back to Trance being a free ability on certain units, like in the original game.  Otherwise mindworms were just too overpowered, the one true weapons platform.  You've balanced mindworm offense and defense differently, but you've also made PLANET a +15% increment.  I question the wisdom of that.  Especially since it pretty much makes the Cult of Planet the supreme faction.

What I didn't do this game, compared to the previous, is waste time building terribly advanced facilities.  All that does is give the Hive time to create Recon Speeder ultra spam.  You don't actually get any advanced abilities worth having, for all the facilities making trouble you go through.  So basically, no Fusion Labs or Research Hospitals this time.  Only in my capitol, where I built the Merchant Exchange and the Supercollider.

I did pretty much all the basic facilities stuff, but then my empire was pretty much "ready to invade with mindworms".  Yang finally got around to being enough of a jerk, he pretty much started the war.  Granted, I went Democratic Planned for a long time.  Then Democratic Green.  When he declared war I went Fundamentalist and then that was that.

It's a bit insulting that the graph rated me as Feeble when I'm walking all over my nearest neighbor.  What's he supposed to be?  Wasn't my land area impressive enough?  Weren't my troops legion?

[bvanevery]

Details too dispersed

too dispersed

I played to MY 2253 as the Pirates before quitting.  I did better than a previous attempt quite a number of games ago, but still felt pretty starved of minerals compared to a land empire.  Not convinced that sea energy makes up for it.  I basically chased all the minerals deposits, which spread me out quite a bit.  That might not be the optimal way to do things.  A more centralized empire that hugs a coast might be better.

I'm not sure if I was left alone by virtue of lucky geography, or the AI not being as good at sea expansion as one might think.  This is way before the "oceans completely filled with spam" part of the game.

I played Fundamentalist most of the time.  It's really not necessary to do serious research in WTP.  Fundamentalist did however undermine me on EFFIC and GROWTH though, as the Pirates have EFFIC and GROWTH penalties.  I benefited from the INDUSTRY bonus, but despite some threats of war and some nominal war, MORALE never mattered.  I think I had 1 ship combat with the Data Angels when they declared war, just passing through my waters with a Gun Foil.  That's it.  Some time pretty late in things I finally learned Green from someone else, and then went Democratic.  I think I was overly afraid of the -2 SUPPORT penalty, forgetting that in WTP you can still have 2 units for free.

I may try the Pirates again as I think they offer something different to think about than the land factions.  I'm not sure the Pirates actually have any advantage.   Any faction could just choose to go to sea, and it seems like the Pirates might have to go to land, at least along a coast, to get any real minerals.  Sure you can build Subsea Trunklines eventually, but they're expensive to maintain.  I definitely didn't get rich this game.

[bvanevery]

Details the small pirate empire

the small pirate empire

Made it to MY 2308 before throwing in the towel.  3 AM.  Better centralized than the last Pirate empire, pretty close to a "perfect circle" from my capitol.  Spent all my time leveling up cities, just don't have any minerals.  Don't see that money makes up the difference.  Pirates are poor.  Theoretically they have the advantage of Naval Yards and Marine Detachments.  In practice, I'm too impoverished to deploy any ships.  I kept a few on "capture Sea Formers" duty, whenever Yang would foolishly send some my way to make Sensor Arrays in my region.  I made almost no SPs, just the Merchant Exchange and the Supercollider at the beginning of the game.

The only other advantage I can think of for the Pirates, is if you're playing random opponents, you know you won't have the Pirates bothering you.  Otherwise, I think even 1 port city with a Naval Yard could accomplish the amount of force projection I managed this game.  Being on the ocean really doesn't have any point.  There's nothing out there.

Oh, and I never learned Advanced Ecological Engineering, so never got to take advantage of the "build on Ocean squares" ability.   Not that I needed it anyways.  The oceans in WTP are mostly shallow, and very few of my bases had any shortage of workable squares.  And that's only because I was building Hab Domes when I quit.