SFDebris' Review of Alpha Centauri (Plus History of Civ)

[Dp101]

Anyone got tips on how to manage happiness? It feels like I pop-boom to get lots of minerals and energy through working more tiles, but then I waste all the energy on 50-60% psych and 10% labs, losing money all the while, and I end up with nothing to build.

[T-hawk]

You need some of everything.  Virtual World is a must for the University and strong for everyone else.  Also Human Genome Project.  A police infantry unit handles two, more if you're Yang running Police State.  (If you're pop booming, you're in Planned economy, not Free Market's police penalty.)  Also the psych slider, 50% is high while pop booming but 20-30% is okay (if 30% isn't enough then what you need is more boreholes for the energy.) And micromanage for doctor specialists when you need to.  Somewhere in the midgame are Thinker specialists which are +1 psych +3 labs which is a solid combination.  I don't really remember if the Recreations Commons facility was good enough to be worth building over more formers and colony pods and then tree farms and factories, but it seems pretty cheap at 40 minerals.

The ultimate solution is to repeal the UN charter (requires a certain tech) and nerve staple everything.  Not sure how often you can manage that under normal conditions, but that's what I did in my speed game.

Before pop booming, you handle happiness by keeping every base no bigger than size 2 and using a single police infantry unit at each.

[TheHumanHydra]

I started a new game using the advice you guys have been giving us and it's going pretty well so far. Cyborgs again; I just love their civ bonuses. I started on a rainy coastline extending down into the Borehole Cluster, with lots of space between me and the AIs. I spammed pods till I was at eight bases (I thought this was my efficiency threshold, but it was six in Planned. Oops!), then built as many formers as I could before having to shift to Rec Complexes. I was able to complete the Human Genome Project, the Weather Paradigm, and the Virtual World (Network Nodes followed Rec Complexes). My formers have mostly built solar panels and roads, and farms now that Gene Splicing has come in, due to the terrain. I've been rushing stuff to complete with exact minerals pretty frequently. Right now I'm growing my cities, but with the Human Genome Project my happiness situation is good enough to expand again, so I need to get on that. (Apparently I can't pop boom as the Cyborgs until Eudaimonia, or else I should have done so already.)

Thanks for all the advice! I'm sure I'm still not playing optimally, but better, at least.

[Commodore]

Cloning Vats are the -growth way to boom; you shouldn't be all that far from them.

[T-hawk]

You can pop-boom.  But you need all four growth bonuses to overcome the faction penalty.  Most factions need three of the four.  They are Democracy government, Planned economics, Children's Creche facility, and We Love The King Day (whatever SMAC calls it, I forget the name) which activates when a base has at least half of its citizens happy and none unhappy.  That last one only worked for pop-booming in SMAX until a fairly late patch fixed it for base SMAC too.  It's not easy to do (often requires >50% psych), but you only need it for 4-5 turns until you hit the housing cap at size 7.

But the easy way is the Cloning Vats secret project, that's how you pop boom as any faction that has trouble doing it through social engineering.

Eight bases isn't a lot.  Twenty bases isn't a lot.  Forty, now we're talking.

[*]The mineral cost to support the formers is significant early on.  (Once you can produce high-tech formers, don't put fungicidal tanks on most super formers as the AI does.  If you have the mineral production, clean reactors are better than fungicidal tanks.)

This is an example of an "obvious" strategy tip that all the guides repeat but is actually wrong when you work through the technical details.  Clean reactors on formers aren't worth it.  IIRC, it increases the mineral cost for a Fusion Super Former from four rows to six.  20 minerals is too much.  First, that takes 20 turns to payback... and from clean reactors to the end of the game isn't much more than 20 turns.  Second, that 20 minerals will probably take about three extra turns to build the former... but just get that former built and working three turns sooner and three turns of a borehole is worth 18 minerals plus 18 energy.  Third, that 20 minerals is opportunity cost that could go into something else instead -- like halfway to another non-clean fusion super former.

Clean reactors on formers aren't worth it.  It seems obvious and feels good both strategically and morally, but the underlying math actually doesn't work out in its favor.

Put another way: for the same price, you can have three non-clean fusion super formers or two clean fusion super formers.  The first costs 3 more minerals per turn to support.  That's only half a borehole, which is just four turns of labor supplied by the extra super former and then you come out ahead from there.

[Dark Savant]

The mineral cost to support the formers is significant early on.  (Once you can produce high-tech formers, don't put fungicidal tanks on most super formers as the AI does.  If you have the mineral production, clean reactors are better than fungicidal tanks.)

This is an example of an "obvious" strategy tip that all the guides repeat but is actually wrong when you work through the technical details.  Clean reactors on formers aren't worth it.  IIRC, it increases the mineral cost for a Fusion Super Former from four rows to six.  20 minerals is too much.  First, that takes 20 turns to payback... and from clean reactors to the end of the game isn't much more than 20 turns.  Second, that 20 minerals will probably take about three extra turns to build the former... but just get that former built and working three turns sooner and three turns of a borehole is worth 18 minerals plus 18 energy.  Third, that 20 minerals is opportunity cost that could go into something else instead -- like halfway to another non-clean fusion super former.

If you're playing for cutting-edge speed on not-large maps with size ~7 bases, then yes, it's not worth it for the reason you say.  But I typically space my bases wide, so a mature base is size ~14.  Yes, I know this is suboptimal, since SMAC plays like Civ 2 in that optimally you want a few tall bases and dozens of middling ones, but I don't like even the hint of ICS-ing in my single-player games of Civ 1/Civ 2/SMAC.  At this size, the extra mineral cost often doesn't matter because you hit the 1 item/turn limit.  (That limit's a very good reason not to build tall for optimal play -- it's much easier to waste minerals to overflow.)

[TheHumanHydra]

You can pop-boom.  But you need all four growth bonuses to overcome the faction penalty.  Most factions need three of the four.  They are Democracy government, Planned economics, Children's Creche facility, and We Love The King Day (whatever SMAC calls it, I forget the name) which activates when a base has at least half of its citizens happy and none unhappy.  That last one only worked for pop-booming in SMAX until a fairly late patch fixed it for base SMAC too.  It's not easy to do (often requires >50% psych), but you only need it for 4-5 turns until you hit the housing cap at size 7.

But the easy way is the Cloning Vats secret project, that's how you pop boom as any faction that has trouble doing it through social engineering.

Eight bases isn't a lot.  Twenty bases isn't a lot.  Forty, now we're talking.

Good call; I should have said, 'without a golden age' ... which I guess is actually easier to trigger than I thought. And the Cloning Vats, I forgot about those.

Yeah, I guess it's not a lot. I'm not used to the ICS mindset ...

[Dp101]

The number of cities that you people talk about makes me feel like we are playing a completely different game. Where do you fit so many cities? Also, is it worth working boreholes before you get the techs that uncap production and energy yields? Also, is it the right move to expand until you cannot any more, and only then pop-boom?

[Dark Savant]

The number of cities that you people talk about makes me feel like we are playing a completely different game. Where do you fit so many cities? Also, is it worth working boreholes before you get the techs that uncap production and energy yields? Also, is it the right move to expand until you cannot any more, and only then pop-boom?

You want to roughly make a 3x3 grid (for ~8 tiles/base), though it doesn't need to be regular.  You should have one tall city that gets the full ~14 tiles with a hab complex (for your super science city), but for optimal play you don't want much more than that (as then you've got to spend resources on hab complexes and keeping a large population happy).  If you're Morgan, you should build denser because of their low hab limits.

Some of your formers may need to raise land out of the ocean so you have more space.  You can build sea bases, but those are expensive and come with other logistics issues.  It's relatively cheap in both energy and former turns to go all Dutch on the ocean.

You can put boreholes on mineral/energy tiles early on, which can bypass the early-game caps.  Unless you have some kind of large research penalty like an enormous map, it shouldn't take that long to remove the mineral/energy caps by the time you finish your first few boreholes.  (If you didn't get the Weather Paradigm, you can't even build boreholes until you've lifted the mineral cap anyway.)  You don't need to rush quite that fast to build boreholes; early forests, a road network, and a few farms/condensers on fertile tiles are more important.

Pop boom as soon as you've got both the Children's Creches (in your core; have the more outlying bases work on more colony pods) and some way to manage happiness.  It shouldn't cost that much to switch back and forth out of Democracy/Planned, and you might want to run one or both of those regularly anyway.

[Thoth]

The number of cities that you people talk about makes me feel like we are playing a completely different game. Where do you fit so many cities? Also, is it worth working boreholes before you get the techs that uncap production and energy yields? Also, is it the right move to expand until you cannot any more, and only then pop-boom?

SMAC rewards dense base placement.  Hardcore ICS can work very well (base--tile--base-tile--base ect ad infinitum)  though memory suggests that "Sikander spacing" was also highly effective.  ( bases 2t apart on the diagonal with a borehole in between and condenser farm or forests on the other tiles,  roads go only on the boreholes)
 This thread has some discussion about Sikander spacing:  
https://apolyton.net/forum/miscellaneous...er-spacing
Unfortunately the forum that the original was posted on appears to be gone.    

If you run out of land just raise some more out of the ocean.  

Edit:  This thread also explains Sikander spacing  https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/a...y-question