June 1st, 2018, 11:36
Believe it or not, this isn't because of Haphazard's thread. I was planning this since last year's Alpha Centauri thread, to do sometime after I finished with Civ 5. Just a coincidence that Haphazard brought up the same game at the same time.
As the title says, I'll play Alpha Centauri. This isn't going to be break-the-game shenanigans, but a normal (if highly skilled) tour to work through and show the mechanics in detail. Relevant settings: Pod scattering off, directed research, Transcend (highest) difficulty, all win conditions enabled though I'll target winning by transcendence. I'll go a few turns at a time, reporting along the way, starting tonight. I did a couple 50-turn practice starts this week to refresh myself. I intend to include all mechanics as fair game, although I'll leave out of bounds a few outright bugs like setting patrol points to make a unit elite.
First I'll offer a question as to which of two factions to play. Eliminating the rest: the University is overpowered and boring, Morgan requires an extreme ICS style, Believers suck, Sparta sucks less but still doesn't do anything besides conquer with impact rovers. The Peacekeepers could be in play, but Haphazard is doing them; and on the highest difficulty the extra talent does skew significantly for how you manage happiness.
That leaves Gaia's Stepdaughters or the Human Hive. I think these are also the two most interesting factions to show as builders. Lacking Free Market is the big swing. Pretty much every faction that can usefully run FM is best off doing so, but because FM can't police drones, you expand out into endless bases all at size 1. Gaia and Hive are the two that most lean away from ICS towards more interesting base development.
And I really can't pick between the two. Gaia is more versatile across different SE choices (the +Efficiency matters a lot more than the +Planet.) Hive is locked in to Police/Planned, but may have more interesting challenges in the lack of energy and pop-booming. So what does my audience think?
For reference, as I play along, I'm keeping a save every turn and uploading them here. http://dos486.com/alpha/hive/saves/ Just this request: don't play ahead of me, both for leaking spoilers and for overshadowing my timeline with any other.
As the title says, I'll play Alpha Centauri. This isn't going to be break-the-game shenanigans, but a normal (if highly skilled) tour to work through and show the mechanics in detail. Relevant settings: Pod scattering off, directed research, Transcend (highest) difficulty, all win conditions enabled though I'll target winning by transcendence. I'll go a few turns at a time, reporting along the way, starting tonight. I did a couple 50-turn practice starts this week to refresh myself. I intend to include all mechanics as fair game, although I'll leave out of bounds a few outright bugs like setting patrol points to make a unit elite.
First I'll offer a question as to which of two factions to play. Eliminating the rest: the University is overpowered and boring, Morgan requires an extreme ICS style, Believers suck, Sparta sucks less but still doesn't do anything besides conquer with impact rovers. The Peacekeepers could be in play, but Haphazard is doing them; and on the highest difficulty the extra talent does skew significantly for how you manage happiness.
That leaves Gaia's Stepdaughters or the Human Hive. I think these are also the two most interesting factions to show as builders. Lacking Free Market is the big swing. Pretty much every faction that can usefully run FM is best off doing so, but because FM can't police drones, you expand out into endless bases all at size 1. Gaia and Hive are the two that most lean away from ICS towards more interesting base development.
And I really can't pick between the two. Gaia is more versatile across different SE choices (the +Efficiency matters a lot more than the +Planet.) Hive is locked in to Police/Planned, but may have more interesting challenges in the lack of energy and pop-booming. So what does my audience think?
For reference, as I play along, I'm keeping a save every turn and uploading them here. http://dos486.com/alpha/hive/saves/ Just this request: don't play ahead of me, both for leaking spoilers and for overshadowing my timeline with any other.