Considering something a bit... different for AAR4

[Green1]

Alright, I'll have to give him some more industry (or growth or whatever you suggest! Just go overboard and make him slightly OP I suppose). I did try to make him work but obviously I failed. XD I don't know enough about SMAX balancing... but yeah I did try to warn you about Steph...

Your AAR is pretty good though. I've read two, your AAR3, and Chuft's one of his LazyMod. I think Chuft's one narrowly wins out through use of humourous images and stuff, but yours wasn't bad by any means.

If you ever did give LE an AAR, give me a shout beforehand and I'll make sure you've got the absolute latest version on hand for it.

(on a personal note, still raging over email notifications not working anymore... and images still don't work in IE)

Chuft used a lot of image magic for his AARs. It is a skill I do no have, unfortunately. BUT - I can promise AC2 I will never rage delet any AAR I post out of rage, lol. What I post is a gift to any AC player. Even if Sisko or BU turn Sith Lord on me.

You think Chuft's AAR is good, this one right here is the best Alpha Centauri AAR on the web (not including excellent videos by Quill18 and GimithR on Youtube.):

http://lparchive.org/Sid-Meiers-Alpha-Centauri/

The author, Fangz, even used flash to show animation of waves of needlejets. The writing is superb. He even opened the game up in scenario editor and had forum to let the readers determine what he needed to do and when to switch sides! Talk about reader participation!

As far as your mod and Maniac's, let me get through with this one (AAR3) and the custom faction madness one and I will get a hold of you. I have a feeling I would do Maniac's first since it is the closest thing we got to AC2 (noise from CFC about rouge-likes and Free Civ forks that never go anywhere notwithstanding). I am insanely curious about what he has done in the last several patches. Then, yours will be shortly after that because I have heard that you have done interesting things with the aging SMAX engine as well.

[Green1]

About ready to do AAR 4 probably next few days. Got really busy December to now with annoying life circumstances and frustrations and a lot of fate that was up in the air at that time.

Steph is fine. After all, the Antimind is in the sample so a little OP is fine. I like brutal, slow paced games.

Oblivion seems to be underpowered. You mentioned Lost Eden gives Oblivion a preferred SE that gives him insane industry and morale. Whith your permission and to go with the spirit of what Oblivion is about, I am considering adjusting his starting stats

current:

Oblivion's Fallen, The Demon, Fallen, M, 2, Oblivion, M, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1,
TECH, InfNet, FACILITY, 6, SOCIAL, +GROWTH, SOCIAL, +RESEARCH, SOCIAL, -EFFIC, SOCIAL, -PLANET, SOCIAL, -PROBE, IMMUNITY, SUPPORT, POPULATION, 2
Future Society, Thought Control, GROWTH,
Future Society, Cybernetic, nil,
Fallen, Fallen
Nagis, Sauii, Nagis' Fate
Prince, attractive, digusting, powerful, demonic,
Selfish Maniac
enjoy ourselves
to enjoy myself as much as I possibly can
desecrating everything that is good or sacred in this world
desecrating everything that is good or sacred in this world
waste your charms on me
admiring himself in a mirror
admiring yourself in a mirror
using my body to get what I want
balls, M2
desires, M2
disgusting behaviour, M1
subscription, M1
preventing any true evil from rising to power
my demons
my desires

Hmm.. thinking. Oblivion is a race of classic Christianity inspired Lucifer worshiping pokeman. I am thinking almost Jack Chick material here except from an evil, elitist do-as-you want philosophy such as Satanism or more appropriately Anne Rynd Objectavism. How would I make them more powerful AND keep in the spirit of Lost Eden?

Also, kind of wish there was a way to boot them off the human council. I may want to make them an alien race. Just wish I knew a way of doing that without making them have to be always-at-war with other alien factions.

Suggestions?

[Kilkakon]

Oblivion is the only perverted faction in my game, and as you say completes the Light <--> Cyndatech triad. He's just in it for his balls really~

In my game he gets very early access to Demonism with no penalty. This brings his stats (in LE at least) to +3 GROWTH, +1 RESEARCH, -1 EFFIC, -1 PROBE, -1 PLANET. I could just give him those stats flat out... (I gave the research but not the growth in the copy I gave you it seems)

[Green1]

Oblivion is the only perverted faction in my game, and as you say completes the Light <--> Cyndatech triad. He's just in it for his balls really~

In my game he gets very early access to Demonism with no penalty. This brings his stats (in LE at least) to +3 GROWTH, +1 RESEARCH, -1 EFFIC, -1 PROBE, -1 PLANET. I could just give him those stats flat out... (I gave the research but not the growth in the copy I gave you it seems)

Yeah.

The plus Growth makes sense. A society based on polyamory  would contribute to that. Although, with that HUGE +growth due to polyamory, I may consider adding drones. Most real life polyamory scenes I have been on the fringes of tend to have a bit of dissatisfaction. Single males are worthless (except for labor) while women would all usually only go after the most attractive/ financially powerful male. In the Bible, Abraham (and many figures of that time) had dozens of wives while normal folks were lucky to have one. Even then, like with King David and Bathsheeba, if a prominent dude wanted your lady, he could get away with taking your lady - maybe getting you killed in the process! Most societies including the Fundy Mormons and even ancient biblical had issues with polygamy that made huge populations of unattached males who were basically made slaves, were forced to fight wars, or turned to homosexuality if that was allowed in that society. I am sure Oblivion does not mind, if he is head honcho pokemon, he probably trades lovers in as younger more nubile females come out of the creche along with his lieutenants. It is good to be king

+1 reseach is fine as Oblivion in the classic Christian mythos would have tasted the fruit in the garden from the tree of knowledge. Not insane like Zach, but a bonus nonetheless.

- Efficiency is fine. I can see a society based purely on pleasure not to be particularly efficient.

- Planet. Yeah. Planet's feelings be damned. I almost agree with old Oblivion with this. Leave that to hippies like Deidre or religious nutcases like Cha Dawn. Although Miss Skye probably has some killer weed that Oblivion and crew could grow in the garden while fornicating! That would actually make the drones complacent, too that only can clean up the mess after the orgies and not take part. Yeah, keep them on drugs!

I do think I should make them a prog faction though since pokeman are kind of alien and I doubt that in my custom AAR they should be allowed to be in diplomatic council with humans. Prog victory for him would make tons of sense, too. He is, after all, serving a particularly nasty demi-being like Lucifer. In essence, he would be gating Satan into the world!

What do you edit exactly to make a faction alien?

Also... maybe + POLICE? Even in a society of decadence, you have to have some way to enforce that disorder otherwise the guys serving the decadent parties and cleaning the spurge off of Oblivion's bed sheets could get POed and kill him so they can have some fun instead of dieing and doing all the work....

[Kilkakon]

I like your reasonings there. I argee with almost all of the points you made, you seem to have got the main wind of the faction yeah.

Oblivion (personally) actually has a special version of the Attract move that works on either sex, so you can imagine that he just takes what he wants whenever really.

I didn't go with a police bonus as the faction gets a free Rec Commons in every city. Note that the support immunity could go as that was me just trying to find something else to make him immune to.

It's plausible for either alien or human, as he can just pleasure up either race really, haha. He also doesn't really speak: in confusing ways. But be sure to stick to just 2 alien factions as otherwise their power goes downhill. "ALIEN, 0" is what makes a faction alien, as you asked.

[Green1]

The other alien faction is going to be the Antimind. Of course, making Oblivion alien means he will be permanently at war with the Antimind. Also, even with those bonuses, Oblivion may not be on par with Antimind. No lie... even Marr has trouble with Antimind. the Caretakers sometimes fare a bit better. Matters not, though. Antimind as an AI tends to attack everyone so for this AAR, I do not think it will be an issue and it does kick him off the council. However, I am not a big fan of losing all the witty Lost Eden diplomacy dialogue as this AAR is to showcase one of your factions. So I may keep it as is.

I will try it with just the changes  +3 GROWTH, +1 RESEARCH, -1 EFFIC, -1 PROBE, -1 PLANET for a test go.

Sadly enough, remember that last AAR with Lal I never did finish before I got bitten by the Eve Online bug before getting some sense after a few months and realizing I dislike Eve's combat system and overly harsh penalties? It got wiped out when a hard drive got corrupted and i had to reinstall OS. I even had to go plop down cash at GOG to get a new copy of SMAX. Kind of sucky. I knew I should have backed that stuff up on flash. Oh well. Hope I do not appear wishy-washy to the community. That is the reason I really should focus myself more and not get distracted by shinys.

On a side note:

I have also been delving a bit into youtube. I do not think a video really is cool for Alpha Centauri as the games tend to go really long and a huge majority are viewing from smart phones. Plus, I like AC2 to have content, as I like this place. Also, I had enough issues trying to convince my computer to take screen shots of the right color. My laptop balks at letting Fraps capture anything from this game. I believe it may be an Intel HD family integrated graphics issue, but not sure.  Still, I managed to get for my first "learning how-to" video over 100 views and some great feedback from another forum community called twinkinfo from World of Warcraft and some folks pushing me  wanting more. Makes me feel good in a nerdy kind of way.

Who knows? If I get better and get more polish, say 1000 views, I could start monetizing. Would not do that while I am learning. That just seems to me to be tacky.  200K views like Wowcrendor or TotalBiscuit get, I could quit my job and just be a pundit of some sort. Heh, unlikely. Till then, I just like having fun

[Kilkakon]

Alright, let us know how you go.


Interesting your points about videoing it. I admit I've been tempted to give a video one a go after I finish my text one.

[Green1]

Alright, let us know how you go.


Interesting your points about videoing it. I admit I've been tempted to give a video one a go after I finish my text one.

Much better with those new stats from just a quick game. Will not make alien, as much as having Oblivion on council a bit immersion breaking.

As far as videos, the Youtube videos of obscure games like SMAX do not really get lots of views and the folks that are into them are more READERS than VIEWERS. I guess it is also the age group. On Youtube, you got 2 LPers that have put out some SMAX LPs. Quill and GrimthR. Quill is MUCH bigger than GrimithR, but seems to be because Quill jumped on Civ 5 LPs when many LPers were not touching it. He also promoted it on a huge board - Civ Fanatics. So, he gets carryover from folks going to his channel looking for Civ 5 content. I think dude made some change off of that while his SMAX and Roguelike vids only ended up with less than 1k views. GrimthR tends to mainly get less than 1k views - mainly because I do not really see him doing big games, only games that are VERY niche like Liberal Crime Squad.  I also have not really seen him on various forum boards and the videos are divided up between like 20+ vidoes 10 minutes long. By the time he gets to the 4-5yh video, he is down below 100. That is a pain for folks to watch. However, you look at threads in forums, you tend to get 600+ views and when i look at "who's online", there is always someone looking for one. Plus, it's good for small sites like this which I like to see stay afloat.

Now, I am probably giving a bit too much away here, but if I was a dude that wanted Youtube money while entertaining folks and having fun at the same time, I would probably hit Age of Wonders 3. I believe it is the next "BIG" release of a 4x. Key is, you would HAVE to edit and upload VERY QUICKLY after release to be one of the first the search engine brings a viewer to.. You would have to be GOOD (no umms and ahhs...). BUT - You would then also have to be a good regular poster on all those boads that may like stuff like that (HeavenGames AoW2 forums, ENworld forums, etc.) so you wont look like some loser leecher begging. Once again, tackyness. I see this crap on MMO and RTS boards all the time - folks with one post history putting up videoes. Worse is when they BEG makes me laugh. Particularly when it is one of these "PvP vids" with screaming rock music and some dude blowing cool downs over and over. Not that I am pro...

[JarlWolf]

New AAR hm? I will be on the lookout. Don't post much at this point in time, but I come and look, always a pleasure reading your stories.

[Green1]

Awesome, Jarl.

Probably next week. It takes quite a bit of time to do these as I have to stop, screenshot, then write most moves.