A civ vet explores Alpha Centauri (SMAC)

[haphazard1]

Inspired by RFS-81's recent 'Help me Learn Civ IV' thread, plus a comment on Fluffball's thread, I am planning to try a game of SMAC and post my progress here for comments and advice. While I have been playing Civ since the original game and have put tons of hours into all of them over the years, I never have played SMAC. I was busy with things other than gaming when it first came out, and when I got back into Civ games I went straight to the newest Civ rather than the earlier SMAC. Apparently I missed a real gem, so it is time to give this game a try.

(Hopefully this forum is the right place for this thread, as SMAC is a close cousin of Civ. Or maybe the Gaming Table would be better?)

I will open with some questions:

- As a veteran Civ player who is comfortable on high difficulties but not the very top level (the AI just gets too much of an edge at Deity, it is no longer playing the same game), what difficulty would you recommend for starting out? I have no idea how tough the SMAC AIs are at various difficulty levels.
- What faction would you recommend for the initial game? More research is always a good thing in Civ games, so the University is appealing. Or maybe the Peacekeepers? They sound like a middle of the road faction with some diplo advantages, kind of like Humans in MoO, so they might be good to try while I learn what I am doing.
- Any specific options you would recommend being on (or off)? Beyond the default descriptions I don't really know how much impact most of them have on the game.
- I am looking at SMAC, rather than the Alien Crossfire expansion, as I thought it better to try the base game before trying the additional stuff. Is this a good idea, or are there reasons to play SMAX instead?
- Anything else I should be aware of before beginning, but don't know enough to ask about?

Updates will likely be a bit irregular, but I will try to keep things flowing. And to make it entertaining, even if I die horribly as mind worms eat my brain.

[Fluffball]

Oh I'm glad I could inspire someone to give it a whirl! For a dollar or two, missing out on one of the best strategy/4Xs of all time is a shame for anyone!

I'd recommend talent difficulty at the highest for a first game. You could do a small map on specialist even to get the hang of the plethora of new (old) mechanics like psy combat or probes. It doesn't matter if you've finished the tech tree, the Gains can still take it to you with native life, and the Believers will just probe you to death.

You might try the Spartans. Their troops tend to come off the assembly line at high morale levels which will help you deal with Planet and psy combat, which won't take into account your tech lead over the AI. They also don't have any particularly troublesome faction penalties. University's extra unhappy citizens and probe vulnerability can be troublesome. But the Spartans just take slightly longer to build things, which isn't a huge deal if you don't already have a sense of how long it takes to build things anyway. They can also get out your new unit designs without the huge prototype cost increase which will allow you to tinker with the design workshop.

Morganites would be another tempting builder choice, but their troops tend to be just horrible, and combined with their polluting tendencies, Planet could give you some psy combat headaches.

I think the base game is better than the expac, which basically just adde new factions.


One final note, (listen to all the quotes!) I'd recommend not reading any really detailed strategy guides at least at first. SMAC gives you huge amounts of freedom so it's easy to break if you follow a guide. I.e., you may want to make self enforced rules like no ICS.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the comments, Fluffball. And for your original comment, which inspired this. I have been thinking about giving SMAC a try for a long time, and this has finally gotten me to make a start on it.

Combat with the native life is all about morale, if I am understanding the manual correctly? So a well promoted unit can be effective against them regardless of its tech, and a high tech unit can be easy meat if it has poor morale. Sounds like it gives a nice use for older units, rather than having to upgrade them.

I don't really understand probe teams yet. They sound sort of like spies on steroids.

Some of the mechanics take me back to the old Civ I/Civ II days, like units costing production to support. Other things are clearly more related to what came later, like borders and the options which kind of look like Civ IV civics. Reading through the manual was an odd sort of time warp, almost.

[naufragar]

I forget if blind research is on or off by default, but I strongly recommend turning it off. With it on, you just get a choice between four flavors of techs rather than selecting the tech itself. (I think. Its been forever since I've used that option.)

[yuris125]

It is 4 (Build, Conquer, Discover, Explore if I remember correctly). I think Blind research is an interesting option, but agree it's not the best for the first playthrough. It is on by default, so do go into rules customisation and turn it off

[T-hawk]

This forum is fine for a SMAC thread, it's certainly a Civ game.

Difficulty, I'd recommend the second-highest.  That is the one where the AI costs are equal to the human's.  It's tight on happiness as the game is meant to be, but gives you a little breathing room that the highest difficulty doesn't.

Peacekeepers are indeed the middle of the road and best learning faction, also with breathing room on happiness.  They're the most able to try out different civics without being locked in to any particular plan as several factions are.

Options: there are two big significant ones.  Turn off Unity Pod Scattering; grabbing pods everywhere is fun but screws up the balance as the goodies get pretty far out of whack.  The other is Blind vs Directed Research, yeah.  There are a lot of opinions both ways.  Some folks swear by Blind as it's more realistic to not know exactly which far-future breakthroughs are forthcoming, and that keeping yourself ready to handle all possibilities is an important part of the game.  But I think a Civ vet will be more satisfied with directed research.

I much prefer the base game over SMAX.  The alien factions just completely break the far-future immersion for me, and most others are lame remixes of the first seven. (Pirates are the only unique one, but the playstyle doesn't really work, they just want to move onto land instead of paying the too-high water unit costs.)  There's nothing essential in the expansion.

There exist a few unofficial patches that fix various bugs.  I haven't used any, so not sure if you want to go that way or just use the original.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Please keep them coming, I am likely to need all the help I can get.

Some thoughts after reading the manual:

- Tiles produce nutrients, minerals, and energy when worked by population. Bases grow with excess food. Core Civ mechanics, familiar enough so far.
- Pop can be talents, regular workers, or drones. All of them work unless drones outnumber talents, causing the entire base to shut down due to riots. Much more the Civ 1/2 model than what came later.
- Production overflow is to be avoided; no Civ IV overflow building of big projects here.
- Bases suffer inefficiency losses as you add more of them or get farther from HQ, rather than economic maintenance as in Civ IV. This is a big one; spamming bases will be a viable tactic. Even with bad inefficiency an additional base will provide something, while controlling territory. Cost of a new colonizing unit looks like the limiting factor.

This all points to playstyle much closer to the Civ 1/2 days than what I am used to. ICS here we come!

[Fluffball]

Re: Psy combat questions. You can do several things to influence it.

- Attacking rather than defending gives you a bonus (if you pay attention to the flavor and tech quotes, it's because a troop is ambushed by their nightmares invading their mind, and it helps if you initiate that nightmare yourself)

- You can build sensors which will also help detect native lifeforms hiding in fungus, as well as give a defense bonus to both forms of combat

- There are a small handful of techs that give you unit workshop choices. There's a morale upgrade, and both PSI attack and defense. (Which reminds me, you may want to turn off auto-design units and just create what you need instead. Or that might cause you to miss out on new techs if you're only half paying attention.) The units you create will usually be better than the default ones; you may want a super expensive elite unit patrolling a far flung border of yours.)

- There are some wonders that will help in PSI combat.

- Finally, if it's native lifeform and not psy-human units fighting each other, the industry value will benefit or harm you. If your civ is super-environmentally friendly you can often capture native lifeforms rather than fight them.

I think I got all of the things that influence it... might be something I missed.

ICS is definitely a powerful tactic, one you may want to self limit. You might try the Civ4 spacing rules for yourself rather than cramming 9 cities in 2 spaces apart.


Edit: Yes, probes are basically powerful spies. It's sort of a third form of combat, in that probes can fight each other (or just be annihilated by a hostile standard unit.) You've got some similar factors that influence probes, like the UoPs weakness towards probes. I usually try to heavily prioritize the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm wonder because it makes you immune to spies.

Many of the wonders would be insanely OP for MP, but SMAC shines as a SP flavorful game.

Edit 2: Talents, regular workers, drones and you forgot specialists. They're similar to the other Civ specialists in that the different kinds add different types of bonuses (research, psych, or efficiency.)

Edit 3: Ok one last edit. :D If you play on the 2nd highest difficulty on your first game I think you're going to get blown out of the water. This was pre-Civ5 when the AI actually had some idea how to hinder you. I'd be happy to read about that though!

[Mardoc]

I played the heck out of SMAC...when I was in middle school. Which means I never pushed anywhere close to the limits of the game. I'm going to have fun learning what I thought I knew about the game but didn't really .

[haphazard1]

I don't expect to go for a true dense-pack ICS style. Not in my first attempt, anyway; it might be fun for a later game just to see how far that can be pushed.

Not sure I am brave enough to try the 2nd highest difficulty level first time out, either. A lot of things will probably carry over from other Civ games, but without a lot of knowledge specific to SMAC I doubt I will prioritize things very efficiently. So probably a little gentler than that for difficulty.

Sounds like maybe the Peacekeepers would be an OK choice to learn with, and blind research off. That sounds interesting and flavorful, but not for the first attempt. And Unity pods off also sounds good; I remember reading that they can be quite unbalanced.

I'll try to start things off later this evening. How is SMAC at balancing starts? Do I need to worry about getting a terrible dud start?