The Will to Power - Transcending COVID-19

[bvanevery]

The coronavirus is upon us!  At least, I'm "sheltering in place" in real life a lot more than I anticipated.  Time to bang out a review of Tim Nevolin's The Will to Power mod, version 43.  I just shipped a version of my own SMACX AI Growth mod a few days ago, and I'm tired of playtesting my own stuff.  This mod has many binary code alterations.  Can it stomp me?  I'm not going to prepare overly much for the experience, just info "as I need it".  I mean, it's hard for me to visualize not knowing the game well enough to handle just about anything thrown at me, unless of course combat works in a fundamentally different way than I'm used to.  Which is possible.  We'll see.  I'm playing on Transcend because I have no respect for the dire warnings in the readme files.     And in honor of our current global pandemic, my intent is to end this game in a genetic warfare bloodbath.

In my own map I play on a Huge map all the time, so I selected the same for this.  That will give me a better feel for how same or different it is from my own mod.  30%..50% land mass, average settings.  7 random opponents.  I draw the Usurpers.  I see that they are not nerfed compared to the stock game, unlike my own mod.

Details My Diseased Self

My Diseased Self

I am tusky!  I am horrid!  And I'm going to stomp everything.  Even better, I'm not part of the human Planetary Council.  The U.N. Charter does not apply to me.  There are no penalties for me committing atrocities against anyone in the game, except the threat of their own retaliation.  Unless that's been modded at the binary level.  I will offend regardless!

Details Conqueror's Bay

Conqueror's Bay

Having a full planetary readout, simplifies my estimation of my new environment.  The proportion of land to water is similar to what I might see in my own mod.  There are some 1x1 islands, which wouldn't appear in my mod.  They can cause problems for the stock faction placement algorithm.  It's possible that this binary mod solved that issue and it's not a concern.  Generally knows the problem by completely flatlined entries on the power graph.  Those are factions that had degenerate starts and couldn't do anything.

If I were playing my mod or the stock game, I'd engage in stupid pod popping tricks to start with.  Generally one is safe from mindworms doing any serious damage for the first several turns.  However I can't assume that about this mod, and I've got -1 PLANET.  So I will be more cautious in my initial settlement.  It might be smart to settle completely away from the fungus.  I don't have much respect for this game on Transcend, but maybe I should.

Details unwanted guest

unwanted guest

I usually don't risk my Battle Ogre on exploration, not even 1st turn exploration like I'm doing now.  But desperate times call for desperate measures.  It does have 3-Res armor at least.  I notice that like my mod, the main armament has been nerfed.  Only a strength 3 Resonance Laser.  I think demoting those to strength 3 was Tim's idea originally, and something I adopted for my own mod a long time ago.

I survived without taking a scratch.  I settled my capitol on Rolling terrain away from fungus.  Ordinarily I prefer Flat terrain, so that my settlement will improve the square's mineral content.  However I don't know just how aggressive anyone will be in this game, so I probably better not spend too much time faffing around about "perfect" terrain locations.  I probably also better check whether different kinds of terrain yield the resources I'm used to, because a mod could change those.  Forests, in particular, don't have to be as valuable in the early game as they usually are.

I selected Doctrine: Flexibility for my research without even looking at it.  That's a mistake, because it doesn't have to do exactly the same things in this mod as I'm used to.  I would hope it gives me a Foil chassis, so that I can find out where everyone else is and fish Artifacts out of the water.  Looking at the tech readout, yes it looks sane, nothing to worry about with that one.  I suppose my Alien ability to do Directed Research is going to make it a lot easier to familiarize myself with this game's tech tree, than it otherwise would be.

Details a way better odds readout

a way better odds readout

This is new.  Odds expressed as a straight % chance of victory.  But is it true?  I think my odds were 100%.  Not just because of mindworm nerfing at the beginning of the game, but under any circumstances, I think this is always a winning confrontation.  But maybe the mod will show me otherwise.  It will take awhile before I have a feeling of how well the odds estimation, matches my empirical experience of combat.

Details can't settle for anything

can't settle for anything

Colony Pods are more expensive than I'd expect.  I felt a need to look into alphax.txt for that.  The cost of the Colony Module is the same, but the Infantry Speeder Hovertank chasses are on a 2 3 4 progression, instead of 1 2 3 as in the stock game.  I'm actually using that same progression in my own mod as well, but I tweaked some of the predefined unit costs to be the same as the original game.

Details my penalties

my penalties

I thought to check on the Social Engineering table in case I had nifty SUPPORT bonuses I didn't know about.     No such luck.  In fact I have an unexpected INDUSTRY penalty.  That is not documented in the faction description and I'd consider that a documentation bug.  The POLICE penalty, I don't know if that's intentional for this faction, or just a new baseline for all the factions.  But narratively, it looks irrational in the case of the Usurpers.  They would nerve staple early and often.

[bvanevery]

Details wanderlust

wanderlust

MY 2113.  My fear of popped mindworms and spore launchers, has caused my 3rd colonist to move much farther away than I would usually intend.  I find myself very much not wanting to be next to fungus, out of fear of the unknown about this mod, and my faction's -1 PLANET.  I hope I don't end up losing it, because I wasn't willing to settle sooner.  It wouldn't be a problem with more experience, but I've got the new mod jitters!

Details will it complete

will it complete

MY 2117.  Seeking completions for expensive units from supply pods is a pretty good strategy.  I do it all the time when I'm the Pirates and need to get Sea Colony Pods done.  I often remember to do it with my own mod for prototypes on land, because I have expensive prototypes.  Here I've got expensive Colony Pods and it could be most helpful.  However my base wasn't at size 2 last I checked, so I wondered how it could happen.  Looking again, perhaps it just turned size 2 this turn.

Details which way to Albuquerque

which way to Albuquerque

Meanwhile my 3rd colonist is lost in a fungal maze in really bad dry terrain.  I dare not try to cross the fungus.  From all of Tim's historical rantings on the subject of harvesting pearls and so forth, I bet it's a death sentence!

[bvanevery]

Details gentlmn start yur engeens

gentlmn start yur engeens

MY 2120.  At least something has come of all this wandering!  Now I can die happy.  No, don't do that.  Clear out the loot first.  And don't die anyways.

Details finder's fee

finder's fee

This is the usual early game payout for the discovery of the reactor.  Later in the game it becomes 300 credits.  Sorry I forgot to take screenshots of the Unity Mining Laser and the Unity Scout Chopper.  They are not modded from the original game.  In my mod I beefed them up.

I also know where all of the humans are.  Not anywhere near me, as it turns out.  Well, Miriam is on the other side of that fungal barrier I didn't cross.  She'll come visiting eventually, but she's got no land to grow on.  Strategically, this only leaves me with concern for where the Caretakers are.

[bvanevery]

Details the idiot's algorithm

the idiot's algorithm

MY 2131.  I've just done a terrible job with my 3rd colonist.  I should have followed the laser guy, but I got spooked when an earthquake raised up a rocky patch of food.  I went backwards 1 square, looking for something with no fungus next to it.  Didn't happen.  So the laser guy is going to perfectly good land, and my colonist is wandering forlorn.  I've actually got 3 cities settled, 1 of them where I should have settled this colonist to begin with.  Were it not for getting spooked by a spore launcher at the time.

The indigenous life forms actually seem to be terrible on offense.  This was a debate Tim and I had a long time ago.  I tested all of this stuff out, and concluded that shifting mindworms to a more defensive and more unkillable posture, didn't help with Planet Pearl problems.  It just changed whether it was better to attack or defend.  So I've been quite surprised to have one of my guys live through an assault.  Which now makes me realize...

Details great land north!

great land north!

He's standing next to the tip of the Monsoon Jungle, somewhat obscured by a supply pod.  I didn't notice it before because I'm tired and stressed out by real world COVID-19 related things that happened today.  I should march up there and summarily win the game.  Unless the Caretakers are sitting on it, it'll be cake, and I know none of the humans are sitting on it.  I've amassed 268 credits so I think it's time to actually start spending it.  Things were going so slowly before, and I was so uncertain of my expansion direction, that it didn't seem worth rushing.

Details manufacture this

manufacture this

Turns out my capitol also has lousy production.  Oh well at least it's got some food.  Guess it's time to actually make some Formers.  Of course I've researched everything but that, because I didn't seem to need it.  And arguably that's still true.  It's just that now I want to GO GO GO in a particular direction, and I can't.

Details this ain't cheap

this ain't cheap

My pod was only half done.  Oh well, easy come, easy go!

[bvanevery]

Details for the dissidents

for the dissidents

I found another documentation bug.  The Usurper faction description says I get free Recycling Tanks, and I don't.  That's a good choice for toning them down, and I do it in my mod as well, but the description should reflect that.  Think I'll work on it, since who knows, it might get completed.

Details only you can prevent forest fires

only you can prevent forest fires

MY 2136.  I settle pretty close to my capitol, to take advantage of a forest that sprung up.  It doesn't offer the usual amount of energy.  I wonder what that will turn out to be like?  Civ II did forests this way.

Details Obelisky

Obelisky

MY 2139.  I finally accept that I'll be next to some fungus and settle on some decent land. 

MY 2140.  My Scout Chopper completely blew up trying to kill a badly wounded mindworm.  I believe the odds said 83%.  Did they really mean I'll blow up 17% of the time?  Or was there some Air Superiority penalty that I didn't pay attention to and wasn't accounted correctly?  I won't have any Choppers for awhile yet to find out.

MY 2142.  I'm about to meet the Believers, because I saw a supply pod disappear on that fungal border in front of me.

[bvanevery]

Details let us kill

let us kill

We trade techs.  I don't care about her being able to complete the Command Nexus.  I'm in no position to start any SPs right now.  I think she will always be too runty to pose any serious threat to me.  If she did complete any SPs, and I really wanted them, I could just invade her.  Actually, she doesn't trade.  We sign a Treaty and then I buy the tech from her.  So, she doesn't get anything.  She won't sell me any more, as she says she's working on the Living Refinery.  Hmm I don't know about offering that at the beginning of the game.  I suppose if a faction gets +3 SUPPORT at the beginning of the game, their cities will still be small, so it's not necessarily a game breaker.  We'll see.  Since the SP video talks about being out in space, in my own mod I was unwilling to put it earlier in the game for narrative reasons.

I pop Morgan's comm frequency in an ocean supply pod.  We sign a Treaty.  He doesn't have any tech.  My tech seems to be zipping along.

I save scummed a conflict with a mindworm that slid up to my base.  You can't just assume that a Scout is going to kill such a thing.  It may have been better to let it attack my base.  I wasn't interested in that though, I just save scummed.  I'm calling it part of my mod learning curve.  When I have a better feel for what I can and can't win, I'll prepare more appropriately.

MY 2152.  Well, that was most uncool.  I forgot to save scum the next mindworm that came next to my base.  It wiped me out like sliced butter.  If units are 50/50 with whether they can handle mindworms or not, that means a single garrison unit isn't an adequate defense for any base.  And I didn't know how right I was about fearing mindworms and bases next to fungus.  It would be a death trap.  I'm replaying the turn.

MY 2153.  I've gotten 3 mindworm pops this turn in 3 different places, each with 4.  So my scouts are all gonna die, and my bases are likely to be hit by a lot of mindworms.  That's a pretty accelerated level of danger compared to what I'm used to.  I thought it felt like I was doing well, but now I'm not so sure.

[bvanevery]

Details I'm toast

I'm toast

MY 2155.  So like in this situation, there's nothing I can do about it.  Mindworms don't usually spread out to make an assault in the stock game.  I'm unlikely to live through 2 attacks.  I do seem to know Hypnotic Trance now, although I can't remember what tech I learned to get it.  Like in my mod, it's not free.  With an INDUSTRY penalty, and the 2 3 4 chassis progression, I can't just bang out Trance Scout units and call it good.  They cost double what a Scout costs.  This means there are going to be bases on my frontier, that are essentially helpless to mindworm attacks.  This may not be the only base that gets wiped, and I may not be seeing the blessed Monsoon Jungle as soon as I imagined.

MY 2156.  I did live through the first assault without my size 1 base being wiped for some reason.  In the stock game it would be gone.  Maybe this mod doesn't depopulate a base automatically.  Or maybe Scient patched it.  So, I've got another Scout to try to hang on with, against 1 half dead and 1 almost completely dead mindworm.  Maybe it will hold.  I don't feel motivated enough to rush it.  I'm kinda blase about what to do, because I'm not even sure how one is supposed to fight mindworms at this point.

I've started studying Centauri Empathy.  Going Green might be the only realistic way to deal with this.  I mean, I haven't had the time or resources to build any real infrastructure at all.  I don't think it's just my piss poor opening moves with my 3rd colonist.  If I were a human, I would only get 2 colonists, assuming that hasn't been modded.  There aren't resources to build Colonists and Formers and Command Centers and Trance units and other Needful Things helpful against the mindworm cause.  This is a restricted economy.

Details untenable

untenable

This was my 3rd colonist, down south.  It's about to be wiped, by unseen enemies coming up those fungus trails.  I was right to not want to settle, I just got tired of the unit pushing.  It is probably a death sentence.  Only if the rules on rushing have changed, will I live through this.

My other base actually survived, but the Scout defender is all but dead, and being shelled by a Spore Launcher.  I don't know how to deal with that at present, except by brute force attrition.  And I don't have the minerals to just cough up Command Centers or trained Scouts.  Or Formers or road networks to move them along.  It's like, the first 60 turns of the game are teaching me how awful things are going to get.  I do have a bit of money, but things are pretty expensive when I rush.

I hope others are suffering as badly from this as I am.  I've only got 5 viable cities right now.

I've gotta hang on 11 more years to get Centauri Empathy, unless someone else already knows it.

Miriam is Seething and did nothing for me.  Morgan is Obstinate and ditto.

MY 2158.  The base got wiped.  I half-built a Colonist before that happened.  I rushed it expensively, and now it's fleeing northwards, exactly back the way it came in the 1st place.  Complete waste of time!

These fungal mazes are hardcore.

MY 2161.  Shockingly, my all-but-dead Scout survived the mindworm hit.  A newly minted Scout steps forward to attack the spore launcher.  A bigger pre-boil mindworm has emerged from fungus and come right up next to another one of my bases, sitting on some forest.  Attacking just hasn't been a good idea, so I won't.  I'm in the middle of building a Former and I don't see much point rushing it, because I suspect in this mod it'll be worthless for defense.

MY 2162.  The mindworm fried me and it's going to eat the Recycling Tank I made in that city.  I don't know if I can say I'm being trashed, but I'm definitely being spammed and restrained.

It seems to be quite a bit easier to make money at sea, because Isles of the Deep are not that hard to avoid when popping pods.  Even though the Foils in this mod only move at 4, unlike the speed 5 ones in my mod, I've done the 4-dodge drill an awful lot.

Hmm, that mindworm took 1 population, not the Recycling Tank.

[bvanevery]

Details gadzooks

gadzooks

MY 2167.  Well I don't think Green is getting me out of this scrape after all!  It seems if you want to capture stuff, you're gonna pay through the nose for those units.  I wonder if it's worth it anyways?  I couldn't bring myself to take such a harsh penalty this time around.  I lost 2 Unity Rovers attacking 1 stupid spore launcher, and it's still not dead yet.  A Scout has stepped forwards to finish it off.  I clearly need some trained units.  I'll give Tim this, his game design vision on mindworms being a PITA is consistently severe.

Details minerals R us

minerals R us

MY 2179.  I've finally got a foothold on the Monsoon Jungle, with colony pods marched completely from the southern tip of my empire.  Obviously my opening for this mod was completely terrible.  I'm in for a treat, a University probe team.  They just told me I was going to be executed, after I paid good money for their comm frequency.  So how much damage can probe teams do in this mod?  I'm about to find out.  Overpowered probe teams have been a historical source of me rage quitting the stock game.  I think if it takes over one of these bases, I am scrapping this game, AARs be damned.  Too badly played with no knowledge of what I'd encounter.

It merely infiltrated.  Doesn't mean another one couldn't still do something horrific, but so far so good.

MY 2181.  Since I've gotten my credits up to 600, and I've got 3 Artifacts home safe, I thought I'd check up on the cost of Secret Projects.  Quite surprised to see the Command Nexus cost me 880.  In my mod I've got late game SPs that cost that much.  On the other hand, I don't make supply crawlers available, and I could have learned them by now if I wanted to.  In my mod, one can't do that.  It's strictly a late game capability.

MY 2190.  I popped a Scout Chopper from a pod.  It was effective at destroying a University probe team that had just showed up to bother my base.  In my mod that wouldn't have worked, as my probe teams recently all went armored.  You see them coming longer, but they're harder to get rid of when they're coming.  I'll keep the chopper in base for probe elimination.  It'll also help pop a few nearby supply pods on fungus.

[bvanevery]

Details wtf

wtf

MY 2192.  Patted myself on the back about my modding prowess too soon.  Fusion Silksteel Probe Team?  On a Speeder?  I could have researched Fusion Power awhile back, but I wasn't clear on it actually being valuable in this mod.  A lot of talk in its development thread suggested that maybe it wasn't.  Not that I tried real hard to figure it out.  I guess we'll see.  I don't expect it can steal much from me, as what's to take?  But my Scout Chopper isn't cutting through that.

Ok, another of my bases got whacked by a Boil mindworm.  Again, my productivity level is still back on barely getting untrained Scouts going.  I'm quitting this game.  It's seriously making me itch.  I've learned a lot about what to expect, and maybe it's not appropriate to do an After Action Report until I've done a bit better with this mod.  This is like being in kindergarten and being slapped around by 6th graders.

I clearly have to have trained units immediately to be able to survive any of this.  I'm unclear on where the minerals productivity is supposed to come from.  I guess I'd have to Rec Commons at least one city, combine forests with food, and get a Command Center on it.  I could pay for all of that, my cash flow was actually not a problem and I could have bought all kinds of stuff that I didn't.  When I quit I had 700 credits.  I'm used to spending all of that "when it's a good time to do it", like if I can rush a SP.  But that will never happen in this mod.  I will obviously never complete anything, and I wonder how the AI was able to manage a few.  Steep discounts?

[Hans Lemurson]

Interesting report.  One thing I've always felt was lacking in the base game was a sense of true danger and struggle in the opening days of the colony.

I think you'll have to form a strong well-defended nucleus of settlements and then expand from there.  No farmer's gambit land grabs.

[bvanevery]

I'm not even into land grabs.  Generally only radially perfect empires from my capitol.  But you have to spawn a certain number of bases to be competitive in a normal game, and it helps to fund all that with popping pods.  Well Tim has put the ixnay on that!    I'd say popping pods worked until about turn 50, when all of my Scouts were suddenly and summarily executed.  And the mindworm remainders trashed outlying bases, which totally weren't ready for such an onslaught.

I'd obviously need at least 1 Command Center from the very beginning.  I don't think there's enough SUPPORT for doubling or tripling up Scouts as untrained cannon fodder.  One of the SUPPORT heavy factions could do that, but I couldn't as the Usurpers.

[bvanevery]

While I'm "leveling up" on my skill with this mod, I'm just going to report on things here and there, instead of doing any full blown game reporting.

Details AI quick secret project

AI quick secret project

MY 2179 in a new game.  The AI has rapidly completed the Universal Translator.  Since even the Command Nexus was ungodly expensive compared to my own modding, this surprised me.  Looking at the Datalinks, it is "only" a 400 mineral project.  Double the cost of an early SP in the stock game, and equivalent to what the Weather Paradigm costs in my mod.  All my SPs start at 300.  I had some 400 mineral ones, but recently I bumped several of them to 500 minerals, the price point of the Planetary Energy Grid and a few other things.  In my mod, that's difficult to get done.  I'm not sure how the AI has gotten the UT done, although there are 2 obvious possibilities.  1) The AI may have been tweaked to start on these things much earlier.  2) The AI may have been taught to rush the SPs with money.

I strongly suspect that I'm never going to ever get any SPs.  My empire in this mod starts in pretty dire poverty.  Mindworms have tremendous damaging capacity compared to the stock game.  Fungus is everywhere, it's a really serious threat, and it's not easy to expand.

Also, given that Green has such onerous penalties, it means an inherent faction +1 PLANET advantage is huge.  Might not be an accident that the Caretakers finished this SP.

[bvanevery]

Details more rapid secret projects

more rapid secret projects

MY 2187.  The Human Genome Project is another 400 mineral project.  Why do I get the feeling that these expenditures are somehow not going to impact AI operations at all?  I guess I'll see when I finally come into contact with their empires.  I've got a mere 9 cities, not fully garrisoned to be safe from mindworms yet, with an incomplete road network, and various resources undeveloped.  Formers are pretty expensive.

MY 2192.  The Gaians complete the Merchant Exchange, a merely 200 mineral project.  I'm not sure it's that worthless.

[bvanevery]

Details too dangerous

too dangerous

MY 2201.  I had just finished garrisoning my cities with Trance Scouts, trained at a Command Center.  A pre-boil mindworm wiped my defender like it didn't even exist, while taking hardly a scratch.  This isn't playable.  There is no obvious correlation to combat success that I can rely upon.  I can't afford to stock my bases with 4 or 5 defenders "just in case" mindworms have good runs of luck that summarily wipe anyone out without any challenge to them.  I don't have the productivity for that.  It's the first 100 turns and I've only managed 9 bases.  Even doing what I'm "supposed to do", like not getting aggressive with fungus poking, clearing fungus away from bases so I can't be readily attacked, and training my garrison units, I'm getting wiped like I didn't do anything.

Unacceptable.

Further playtesting is suspended until this imbalance is addressed.  It is a dealbreaker.

Details the empire at quitting time

the empire at quitting time

What I've done, I've done "in good order".  But mindworms can just walk up to bases and attack them.  You can't attack them first as they cross open ground, and have any kind of realistic chance of success.  And planning with a Trance defense is worthless.

[bvanevery]

Ok, I'm holding true to my statement that I won't test The Will To Power further, until something is done with the mindworm combat balance.  But there is something else of interest to test, at least to me.  What happens when I drop my own SMACX AI Growth mod on top of The Will To Power?  That would become a Thinker binary, with whatever combat system and under-the-hood combat odds modification Tim has done, with my tech tree, factions, unit costs, etc.  A year ago, I took stern measures to curtail Thinker's various methods of exploiting for the AI's benefit.  Do I end up with a playable or unplayable game?  Let's find out.

Doing such a test, is in part driven by cognitive dissonance about the COVID-19 outbreak.  I haven't yet accepted how much "cabin fever" I'm going to be in for, nor the level of "social death" I'm going to experience this year.  It's gonna suck.  What I can say positive though, is I do have somewhere I can hunker down and stay alive.  That may be more than some other people manage, and as a guy who usually lives out of his car, I feel for them.  I've got a compadre in Asheville NC right now, that's prepared rather much like Santiago would be for this.  Nuthin's gettin' him.

I've got Dragon Age: Inquisition sitting on a better computer I recently got access to, and I'm resisting getting into it.  I played Dragon Age II and thought it was good enough to at least look at the sequel.  But not good enough, I suspect, to be better than SMAC or my own game development.  And I'm a little frazzled about my own game development right now.  So here goes: The Will to AI Growth mod.  Version 43 of Tim's, version 1.41 of mine.