SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[bvanevery]

Details my patreon

my patreon

On the positive side, Deirdre has rubber banded me again with another tech.   On the negative side, she's got 4 cities to my 2.  I'm supposed to be the one sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, with the food advantage.  Deirdre's insight from the Unity crash site, reveal that Lal is south of me, and will be competing for the Jungle.  I hope to avoid meeting him while I take it over.  But this mod is so dangerous, who knows if that's even realistic?

Details the evidence of sea spam

the evidence of sea spam

Look, this smells an awful lot like you've got some timer that's just dumping Isles pretty quickly into the oceans, to go abuse everyone on the land with.  I'm cranking up the Scenario Editor to verify this one way or the other.  Game over.

Details Caretaker pot stirring

Caretaker pot stirring

Hmm.  The Caretakers could have been causing some of my woes, although they can't have caused the Turn 2 incident.  3 Sealurks and 3 Isles currently in evidence.

Details alien armada

alien armada

The Caretakers have had at most 3 ships in service at once.  I have my doubts that that's enough to cough up 6 live sea threats.

I am thinking you have cranked up indigenous spawning rates somehow.  This does not result in evenly distributed landfall.  Some shores get really fried.

I also find out other factions have 3 or 4 cities.  I have 2, despite the Jungle.

Details beginning naval spam

beginning naval spam

In MY 2119 the Caretakers only had 1 Gun Foil.  Their sea stirring is fairly recent.  I don't have a good sampling of auto saved games before then.  In MY 2110, nobody had any ships at all.

[bvanevery]

Details doing you any favors

doing you any favors

This games I'm just going to watch the AIs slug it out.  To get that started, it's necessary to play at least 1 turn before switching over control.  On my 2nd turn I managed to pod complete a Synthmetal Garrison, so I felt I had to play yet another turn to keep the AI from getting confused about what it should be producing.  Sadly I forgot about the Morganite SUPPORT penalty in these nearly ummodded factions, so I don't know if that completion was actually all that helpful.  It was the most expensive thing I could complete though.  In MY 2103 I finished moving all units, set the production to Colony Pod, and started merely observing the Hive.  I set the editor to Omniscient View [Y] to see everything that's going on.  I'm particularly interested in sea spawning rates.

I got really tired watching this, so I set the laptop aside and left the game running.  I couldn't sleep though, due to something I ate.  Waking up again, I turned off the Omniscient View [Y] so that it would run faster.  I waited until MY 2200 and then stopped the run.  Here is the state of the world:

Details century pox

century pox

I'm not really seeing how I'd compete with this amount of colonization.  Boreholes must also come awfully early, because everyone's got them.

Details secret achievements

secret achievements

Not sure what to say about the Secret Projects.  My impression has been that they're godawful expensive.

[Tayta Malikai]

I don't mean to discount your experience, bvanevery, but are you sure you're playing as optimally as you could be? In the screenshots you provide, your bases seem to be spaced rather far apart, when most of those tiles are going to remain unworked for a large portion of the game.

I notice you don't have mineral bonuses, but in WtP the resource limits all come off with Centauri Ecology, so why not build rocky mines? Those would give far better mineral yields than forests, for the same terraforming time investment.

I am somewhat curious how you managed to end up with 700 credits in your game as the Peacekeepers next to the Morganites, though. o_O

I will admit that I don't seem to be experiencing quite as many fatal encounters with native wildlife as you're reporting (though I've seen my fair share of IotDs dropping off worms, and Sealurks eating scouts in my coastal bases). Nevill reportedly experienced a lot more, but that hasn't stopped him from building up a sizeable force to take me on by the 2140s (nor me building one to resist him). But then, we reverted a lot of the changes to early psi combat (units start at Green, psi attackers on land get 3:2 advantage, and killing worms gives money), and that likely makes a big difference to how we approach native life. We also play with Unity Pods disabled to curtail their various cheesy effects.

These screenshots are from a singleplayer game I played with WtP 141, using the provided alphax.txt and thinker.ini. I am playing as the Omegas, who most notably have +2 RESEARCH and -2 GROWTH.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Simple, I right clicked on the Contacts and looked at the Gaian readout.  She was Planned.  Ridiculous.  This design decision was deliberate on Induktio's part.  He values absolute AI performance over narrative experience or diplomatic mechanics.

Planned is not Gaiains aversion.
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Alpha_Centauri/Factions

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I'm not at all happy that you're making my Formers unable to change their orders and move off when a mindworm slides up next to them.  I assume you deliberately changed the game to behave this way. 

This is fix for this one.
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21359.msg127454;topicseen#msg127454

Formers still have their movement points until they spend them on terraforming. It it happens automatically, reload latest automated save at the very beginning of the turn.

The opening of your game is very very dangerous with mindworms.  Furthermore, you have made one of the best methods for mitigating early too-close fungus, planting trees right next to it, take a long time to execute.  So now you've deliberately nailed my foot to the floor, to make me die.  This is 1/2 of my terraforming production you think is a great idea to kill, before I've even had a chance to found my 3rd city.

They are twice as weak until turn 15 and they also are affecting all factions not yours only. It is made on purpose to make native life setting put a protection burden on a player since it adds astounding 25% to total score. Should as well be worth earning.
It's all configurable by native life setting when you create a map. The amount of worms is about one level higher than in vanilla. Turn it down to rare to reduce their numbers and make game easier. You would need less protection and lose 25% of the total score. This is a trade-off.

Can you give it a rest with the indigenous life forms already?  This is Turn 2.  I'd like to get my 2nd colonist underway, without it being a shooting gallery, or being gratuitously obstructed.  If it turns out that some other faction has started right next to me, well... I do have faction_placement=1.  If it means the same thing under Thinker as under WTP, this is rather unexpected.  Did you put an instantly spawning fungal tower just south of me?  This could be a rather quick game, so I suppose I'll be finding out soon enough.

Give a player too many crap starts, they're gonna stop trying.  Unless you're just doing a high pass filter for players who only like "monster" challenges.

I don't mean to be rude or joking about it but such filter/configuration exists. It is called native life. Seriously, though, please set it to rare and check it out. Let me know if you feel like it is too much even on rare. Then I should dial it down a bit.
Although, it is strange you cannot just kill native at the very game beginning. They are twice weak until turn 15 and chance winning against them with any Very Green unit is 85%.

So the immediate effect of such an incursion, is you're making me drop what I'm doing to deal with the spore launcher, rather than going out and popping pods like I want / am supposed to be doing.  You're putting me behind the competition, at a time when every single lost turn counts a great deal towards my growth.

It does not hurt the competition as it applies to all factions equally. Others suffer the same exactly amount as you do. The development may seem slower comparing to what you use to. That's true.

I am thinking you have cranked up indigenous spawning rates somehow.  This does not result in evenly distributed landfall.  Some shores get really fried.

This is how vanilla moves ocean natives to shores. Due to map configuration some places are attacked more often. Usually the most advanced outpost or those in close bay focusing all sea native movement to narrow point. I didn't change anything there.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I see the Pirates don't get a free mineral in the ocean shelf squares.  Well, that might be ok.  I did get to start with 2 minerals deposits.  But I didn't really get a chance to test further because:

Details gtfo

gtfo

WTF is this?  Turn 5.  This is still revised version 148.  Have you jacked the maintenance cost of Pressure Domes through the roof or something?

Oops. This is actually my bad. Here the fix.


# Version 152

* BUG: Forgot to revert Pressure Dome maintenance back to 0 when detached Recycling Tanks functionality from it.


You can also manually change Pressure Dome maintenance to 0 without updating version.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

then, we reverted a lot of the changes to early psi combat (units start at Green, psi attackers on land get 3:2 advantage, and killing worms gives money), and that likely makes a big difference to how we approach native life. We also play with Unity Pods disabled to curtail their various cheesy effects.

That a huge change. You are essentially playing an incomparably different game with it. 😊

[bvanevery]

I don't mean to discount your experience, bvanevery, but are you sure you're playing as optimally as you could be? In the screenshots you provide, your bases seem to be spaced rather far apart, when most of those tiles are going to remain unworked for a large portion of the game.

I do not believe in Smallpoxing.  Smallpoxing players can all go to hell.  Everything become so godawful tedious that way.  SMAC's game design does indeed have the major weakness, even a fundamental flaw, that it allows Smallpoxing.  Some game mechanics like EFFIC and Bureaucracy try to mitigate it, but they fail to do so.  The kind of AI spam where the map just gets covered in little bases, is not considered a feature by a substantial number of us 4X TBS players.

why not build rocky mines?

Historically, eco-damage.  Usually it's deadly.  If WTP nerfed the eco-damage, I wouldn't consider it a feature.

I am somewhat curious how you managed to end up with 700 credits in your game as the Peacekeepers next to the Morganites, though. o_O

I have absolutely no idea how to properly spend money in WTP.  A big reason I quit is because I'd had all my cash sitting around uselessly for such a long time.  I'm over my fear of Recycling Tanks as a kind of factory though.  They don't seem to do eco-damage.

But then, we reverted a lot of the changes to early psi combat (units start at Green, psi attackers on land get 3:2 advantage, and killing worms gives money), and that likely makes a big difference to how we approach native life.

Um, well duh.  You're not even playing Tim's WTP then.  I am!  And railing at it.  To condition him to change it to make it playable.  It was definitely way worse off a few months ago.  I do survive enough combats now.  It's this "pinning my foot to the floor" in conjunction with other stuff, something's gotta change.  No I haven't read through Tim's responses yet, I'm processing all of this in order.

[bvanevery]

Simple, I right clicked on the Contacts and looked at the Gaian readout.  She was Planned.  Ridiculous.  This design decision was deliberate on Induktio's part.  He values absolute AI performance over narrative experience or diplomatic mechanics.

Planned is not Gaiains aversion.
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Alpha_Centauri/Factions

When the AI plays the Gaians, they're supposed to follow their Preference.  That's Green.  They are not supposed to choose anything in the category other than their Preference.  They will spend all their time chewing out factions that don't follow their Preference.  I actually call it their Compulsion, not their Preference, but if Preference is the standard lingo, fine whatever.  Deidre chews your ass off for not being Green, even to the point of declaring war on you.  Well if she's also Planned, that's just [poop].  It really divides the player base into people who actually care about the original game, and people who don't.  I'm not in this modding biz for just a tech demo.  I don't want all the factions generically playing the same way and telling me a bunch of nonsense.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I don't mean to discount your experience, bvanevery, but are you sure you're playing as optimally as you could be? In the screenshots you provide, your bases seem to be spaced rather far apart, when most of those tiles are going to remain unworked for a large portion of the game.

I do not believe in Smallpoxing.  Smallpoxing players can all go to hell.  Everything become so godawful tedious that way.  SMAC's game design does indeed have the major weakness, even a fundamental flaw, that it allows Smallpoxing.  Some game mechanics like EFFIC and Bureaucracy try to mitigate it, but they fail to do so.  The kind of AI spam where the map just gets covered in little bases, is not considered a feature by a substantial number of us 4X TBS players.

That is pretty controversial discussion. I agree with bvanevery here that 20 tiles base coverage calls for better usage of it. Some small variation around it like not covering 1-2 tiles here and there or overlapping 1-3 tiles between bases is no big deal. However, the dense base placement has its merits. For one, shorter travel distance so player wins 1-2 turns per base. For another, heavier bonus usage like AI placing 3 bases on crater. Both the above let player develop initially slightly faster. Not too much but the benefit is clearly there. The downside of congested placement manifests itself only after mid game when bases growing beyond size 10 cannot get more nutrients and minerals. Although, these drawback and not that immediately impactful as super land fertilization + satellites allow even congested bases to grow to size 20 albeit slower. So, obviously, the bonus comes very early while payoff is delayed to the second half of the game where it can be already won by applying the above strategy! That's why people like it.

Master of magic has interesting design in regards to city placement. First, they do not allow them closer than 3 tiles. Second, they yield is defined by whole city territory land yield combined from the turn one. So any overlap with other cities essentially immediately reduce the growth and production potential for both overlapping cities. So, usually, it is more effective to make them as less overlap as possible.

I don't think such restriction makes sense in SMACX due to one-by-one worker tile engagement mechanics. Besides, someone may really want to fill some small gaps later on in the game. Why should we restrict that?

why not build rocky mines?

Historically, eco-damage.  Usually it's deadly.  If WTP nerfed the eco-damage, I wouldn't consider it a feature.

Mine has some eco-damage as any other basic improvement including roads. It's very minor. Advanced improvements are the worst.
For this logic one should avoid improving anything at all including farms and collectors.

[bvanevery]

Formers still have their movement points until they spend them on terraforming. It it happens automatically, reload latest automated save at the very beginning of the turn.

I hope this doesn't mean the workaround is save scumming.  Because if I'm just supposed to inspect my whole map for mindworm dangers every turn, then reload the game before I even start moving, that's gonna get real old real quick.

They are twice as weak until turn 15

Like that's gonna do me any good.  You made colonists so expensive that I hadn't even managed to get a 3rd city settled yet.  Your execution of my Former occurred on Turn 22, I checked the screenshot.  It's 8 turns to make a forest.  15 - 8 = 7.  You're saying I get to make one forest and then you're going to start killing me.  Even though I haven't gotten anything done yet.

What's happening here, is you're stacking multiple systems of difficulty for the player, to make it more challenging.  And not noticing that these difficulties are stacking.  You can't just keep doing more production expense, more terraforming delay, more difficulty in fighting, and more mindworms, and have this all come out peachy for the beginning of the game.  It's turning into random "why am I gonna die now?" and that's not an opening scenario, that's rolling a die and hoping you got a 6.

and they also are affecting all factions not yours only.

Specious because it's becoming pretty clear that the AI has at least a 2X resource advantage over me.  Yeah if you can chuck out many new Formers easily it's not a problem if some get blown up.  When you can't do that, it is.

It is made on purpose to make native life setting put a protection burden on a player since it adds astounding 25% to total score. Should as well be worth earning.

Score??  I don't play the bloody game for a score!  I play to win it, and I pat myself on the back if I do it in a shorter time.  If you think player actions are all generally motivated by achieving a higher score... well please remove that bias when you design your stuff.  Go ask people in r/4Xgaming how often they're trying to get the highest possible score, vs. just trying to win, maybe in less time.

It's all configurable by native life setting when you create a map.

Let's put it this way.  When I pick the Average setting, you're suppose to do something average.  Not some hell fest.  I don't mind if you want to crank it up some, because maybe the stock game isn't challenging enough.  But I didn't tell you Average so that you can just wail on me.

The amount of worms is about one level higher than in vanilla. Turn it down to rare to reduce their numbers and make game easier. You would need less protection and lose 25% of the total score. This is a trade-off.

Or I could just not play, because you've made a bad decision imposing too much.  I don't mind fighting mindworms.  I do mind fighting mindworms that can't be fought, because it's the beginning of the game and I've been denied the tools to do it.  Like you know, Scouts need to be used for scouting.  I don't have the production to form a tight defensive perimeter of Scouts around a Former.  I don't have the time to make Sensor Arrays, I have to risk Formers in the 1st place to make them.

I don't mean to be rude or joking about it but such filter/configuration exists. It is called native life.

Use it like it's meant to be used.  Redesign isn't you cranking everything to Eleven.

Actually, you're a binary modder.  Rename the menu entries if Average doesn't mean Average anymore.  And name it something clear like "asskicker" or whatever.

Last night I learned that Diablo II's difficulty levels were named Normal, Nightmare, and Hell.  I'm pretty sure I never played Hell.  I probably did play Nightmare after graduating from Normal.  I also learned that because I played the game fairly late, I benefited from all the patching and rebalancing they did meanwhile.  The game upon release was rough, to the point of poor little kids not being able to beat the damn thing.  Fortunately I was not a little kid, I was probably 31.

Although, it is strange you cannot just kill native at the very game beginning. They are twice weak until turn 15 and chance winning against them with any Very Green unit is 85%.

You killed my Former on Turn 22.  I couldn't move away.  Nor could I see the mindworm come in the 1st place.  Game design wise this sort of thing has been called "Tomato Surprise", an unpleasant form of casserole where someone takes the lid off and says "Surprise!!"  Nothing you can do about it, you've been served.

It does not hurt the competition as it applies to all factions equally.

BS.  They didn't get any spore launcher on Turn 2, I got that random event.  I'm not interested in the start of the game, in practice, being a bunch of die rolls with a high dynamic range of which factions are going to get it good or bad.  I don't want to play Civ II starting on an ice floe at the North Pole either.  Been there done that.  It's just crap game design.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

When the AI plays the Gaians, they're supposed to follow their Preference.  That's Green.  They are not supposed to choose anything in the category other than their Preference.  They will spend all their time chewing out factions that don't follow their Preference.  I actually call it their Compulsion, not their Preference, but if Preference is the standard lingo, fine whatever.  Deidre chews your ass off for not being Green, even to the point of declaring war on you.  Well if she's also Planned, that's just [poop].  It really divides the player base into people who actually care about the original game, and people who don't.  I'm not in this modding biz for just a tech demo.  I don't want all the factions generically playing the same way and telling me a bunch of nonsense.

Really? I wasn't aware the preference is a hard choice in vanilla. Let me check it out and maybe I'll fix it in Thinker/WTP.

[bvanevery]

First, they do not allow them closer than 3 tiles.

Freeciv has that as a configuration option.  I've played with it.  I don't remember it making the game any better.  For one thing, you have these really annoying "missed corner squares" that nobody's working, and that enemies can sneak into.  It's just aesthetically pretty ugly that you can't do the fittings right.  There is an extent to which Civ-style games are Builder games, and nasty map appearances rub some of us players the wrong way.  The metaphor of calling these city dispersions Smallpox is not accidental.  It's repugnant to some of us, like a disease.

For this logic one should avoid improving anything at all including farms and collectors.

Mines have always done more eco-damage than farms or collectors, unless you changed something.

[bvanevery]

Really? I wasn't aware the preference is a hard choice in vanilla. Let me check it out and maybe I'll fix it in Thinker/WTP.

It is absolutely impossible in the stock game for AI Deirdre to choose any economy other than Simple or Green.  Ditto every other faction's Preference / Compulsion.  Yang will not ever be Fundamentalist when played by the AI.  Nor will Lal.  Miriam will never be Police State or Democratic.

Induktio decided he'd put the AI players on the same footing as the human player.  It was a very bad decision on his part, and one of the main reasons I haven't been able to work with him as a developer.  There's no respect here for the original system of diplomatic balance, the play mechanic, of someone going to war with you because of your ideology.  It throws ideology out the window, as a mere placeholder for whatever choice is going to give you the most performance on the SE table.  Opportunism becomes the only ideology.

And it sucks narratively too, having Deirde get in your face about you needing to be Green, when she's Planned.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Formers still have their movement points until they spend them on terraforming. It it happens automatically, reload latest automated save at the very beginning of the turn.

I hope this doesn't mean the workaround is save scumming.  Because if I'm just supposed to inspect my whole map for mindworm dangers every turn, then reload the game before I even start moving, that's gonna get real old real quick.

# Version 153

* Added configuration option for former wake fix: fix_former_wake.