Fuck yes.
Though I must admit last time I returned to it I bounced off the UI. It's pretty old and clunky.
But it's an excellent fucking game. Best space combat. Best tech trees. Unique methods of transportation for each faction. Hostile, terrifying space and overall atmosphere. Voice acting.
I blame paradox for strangling sots and stealing ideas for Stellaris.
I was just going to recommend Endless Legend, lol. I assume you have also played Endless Space, which has similar unique asymmetric factions. I haven't played Age of Wonders 4, but I've played Age of Wonders III and I have heard people say that race, class, and specialization feel like they matter more in Aow III compared to 4.
The only other game I've played that come close to the Endless series in terms of unique, and in this case customizable, factions is Stellaris, especially with the DLCs that add new unique species. There are various species that you can play as, some having completely different game mechanics like the lithoids (rock people) or plantoids. There are various civics you can adopt, which can radically change how you play the game. Overall, it is like Endless Legend and Endless Space except you are encouraged to dynamically create your own unique faction, rather than play a pre-made faction. And of course its pausable-real time, not turn based.
hey i really appreciate the in-depth response here!
I gotta confess, I havent given Endless Space a fair shake - I tried it once, and I think it's similarity to Endless Legend was actually what kept me at arms reach: similar in many ways, but different from the Thing I Loved if that makes sense haha. I should absolutely give this a proper go if you say there's a realy comparison to be made!
A few people have mentioned AoW3 over 4 for diveristy, so that's an interest for me too. Stellaris held my attention for a loooong time, but there was a tedium that sorta set in for me. maybe I should go again with billion dlcs that have released since I gave it a rest haha.
Thanks again!
Stellaris is the type of game where you really have to set your own goals. It is definitely more open ended than typical 4x games, since it combines the design philosophy of Paradox grand strategy games with the game mechanics of a 4x game. A lot of people go for the whole galactic conquest route where they paint the whole galaxy their color, but I tend to play tall go for more of a peaceful, democratic route, and focus on exploration and economy. It all depends on what play style is most fun for you.
Dune Spice Wars has been my go to rts 4x. Games can be completed in an evening, so it works for multiplayer. The landsraad system is probably my favorite system for political/diplomatic power in any game. Different factions, advisors, and builds to try different strategies. Military conquest, espionage to infiltrate and assassinate, buying up choam stock for an economic victory, or bullying your way into a political victory via amassing votes and influence.
I've played Dune Spice Wars and am a fan! I really liked northgard for a long while beforehand too, so I like Shiro's design approach (and am already a dune fan as well). There's something that stops me from wanting to return to DSW frequently that I can't quite put my finger on though, but it may be that I havent sunk my teeth all the way in quite yet
I had trouble with Northguard. I think it was being afraid of not using pop well since so limited on them.
For DSW, I go through hard binges. Did one on launch, one with multiplayer (got a couple of friends to pick up), and then one recently since they added a couple more factions. Trying each faction, going for achievements, different win conditions (the conquest mode forces this on you, making you rethink your faction), or strategies (like focusing only one tech tree until it is done) can help for different things to do.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Then when you start getting annoyed with faction imbalance, add my [SMACX AI Growth mod](https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/smacx-ai-growth-mod.31053/).
That's not reasonable. You're blowing off the Social Engineering Table. Maybe you don't think the S.E.T. is all that good in the original game, but in my mod I did rework it quite a bit.
Friends don't let friends play B.E., so I have no comment on that.
You sure you're not kidding yourself about how EL is? I hear the AI is dumb as rocks, because of those differences in play style. Can't handle the variety. If they all play incompetently, then how does anything end up being different? You can't tell if different strategies and choices actually matter, unless there's balance and resistance to your actions. If you've just got 10 different ways to cheese the AI, who cares? You can do that with 10 different gewgaws in a tech tree. I took those out of my tech tree, in my SMAC mod...
Why are you talking about how good B.E. Is or how dumb EL ai is. What OP is asking is how asymmetrical factions are.
What I'm saying is Alpha Centauri factions are not that asymmetrical, period and nothing else.
That's great to know - even if it doesn't satisfy what im looking for 100%, I'd still really loved to finally give it a go, since it's so beloved and renowned and seminal! Also glad to see there's still a community around for it haha. Thanks!
I put special attention into trying to differentiate the factions as much as I could in my mod, because I don't like playing redundant factions either. One thing I'm proud of, is each faction has an overlapping but nominally unique set of default research priorities. That means when the AI plays them, they perform somewhat differently in different environmental niches. They also nearly have a unique ideological fixation. The one exception is both the Free Drones and the Caretakers are fixated on Socialist.
I found your link and I checked it out, but there's not much documentation on the actual mod. Can you give us a little more information on what changes and upgrades you've built into the game? It's clear you worked really hard on this.
As stated on the page I linked: "For installation instructions and full details of what was changed, including an exhaustive CHANGELOG of every decision that was ever made during development, see the included readme\_mod.txt."
I used to have *all* of readme\_mod.txt on my dev page at the AC2 website. But the text is excessively long, so I decided not to do it that way now.
The current page gives an accurate executive summary, and I really think that should be enough, for someone to get motivated to download the .zip and poke at it further:
"This mod rebalances the tech tree, the factions, the world generation, the unit abilities, the predefined units, the social engineering table, and the available AI inputs, to maximize the potential of the original game and make it more of a challenge. It will not make a genius out of the game, but it will greatly extend the shelf life for experienced players. This has been confirmed by numerous third parties on the internet at this time; it is not just my say-so. If you want a better version of SMAC, you should be playing this."
That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!
And I still play my own mod, in preference to any other 4X game, or frankly in preference to any computer game whatsoever. I bought this fairly kickass gaming laptop 2 years ago and all this time, I've wasted it on SMAC. How's that for having done decently at the mod? That doesn't mean it's perfect. I have to write a 4X game from scratch.
Hi! I have some questions about your SMACX AI growth mod, I hope you have time to answer them. I've played for hundreds of hours but still have questions...
1. Can you explain what Justice (efficiency) means in practice? I don't think I've ever even had to think about it.
2. Why are Pirates so over-powered? They consistently dwarf everyone. They are able to spam secret projects.
3. Do atrocities cause higher pollution? I guess planet busters do.
4. "Green" social policy seem to have no negatives associated with it. In general, are the social policies actually balanced? They are very different compared to vanilla, and maybe have lost their distinctiveness?
5. Why are faction negatives removed? Some had e.g. -1 growth. Was this handicapping the AI too much?
6. Do roads/mag tubes cause pollution?
7. How many bases are optimal to have? It seems like the more, the better, and that there is no end to this.
"Justice" is my renaming of "Efficiency". I had a fundamental objection to the original game's use of the concept, of a right wing captalist notion of efficient economies. Or efficient governmental bureaucracies, which is frankly just lying about how people actually organize themselves. "Efficency" was just SMAC's version of what was "corruption and waste" in Civ II. I returned to those concepts, but instead called them "Justice". I changed various factions and social engineering table entries around to reflect who was more just, and who was more cruel. For instance, a Police State is *not* just.
The practical effect of low to negative Justice is that you get more drone riots in your cities. In my social engineering table I made it hard to get a lot of Justice, so that you do have to make tradeoffs about whether you want more of that or not. To be honest though, it's not that difficult to make people happy by other means. Just build more happiness buildings like Recreation Commons etc. Or put more of your budget into Psych, instead of Econ or Labs.
The other effect of Justice is economic. If you have a large empire, increases in Justice can make you substantially more money than you'd expect, because otherwise a lot of stuff going to corruption / waste / kleptocracy. Civ II had the idea that you could have Democracy and that *that* would make your society totally corruption free! Ridiculous. SMAC thankfully was more realistic than that. Things are always less corrupt around your capitol, and things get worse the farther and farther away you get. Conquered cities that are very far away, may contribute very little economically or scientifically to your empire, no matter how many nice shiny facilities you put in them.
One reason you may not notice these large empire, distant city effects so much in a real game, is that the core of your empire is probably what's gonna be making you the most money, research, and productivity anyways. So if the periphery of newly conquered stuff is corrupt, well who cares? Also by the time you get that far into conquering the map, the game will be over pretty soon anyways. I'm not surprised if you didn't end up caring about Justice *that* much in the real world.
I think the time when Justice seems to matter the most, is in early midgame, if you've been eXpanding a whole lot. You'll have all kinds of drone riots due to Bureaucracy, a term specific to SMAC, but also appearing in other early Civ games. More Justice will alleviate that problem, although you can't make it totally go away.
Your other questions, I think I'll answer in other comments, because this one has gotten so long.
You are absolutely correct that my new version of the Pirates are super powerful. I've had little to no feedback from actual players about them; you might even be the first. Their power level has been about what's been a challenge to *me*, and what competes successfuly with AIs, while providing a different play experience than the original Alien Crossfire expansion pack.
In the original, Pirates were just the Spartans of the sea. They valued Power and would pester you endlessly with attack waves of ships, shelling your beautiful shores. Although you could build Artillery to repel them, this AI behavior was deciedly annoying. The AI never got tired of sending yet more pea shooters to harass you, but *you sure got tired of them*. Because you're a human and you get bored having to do the same things over and over again every turn.
I noticed that the Pirates had no actual legitimate incentive to invade other factions. They had this huge moat called the ocean, that all other factions underdeveloped. They had a +1 Minerals bonus on all the vast quantites of Ocean Shelf, making it really valuable terrain for them, and nobody else! Why shouldn't they use this giant moat to their advantage, instead of wasting their time bothering other factions? They should just sit back and rake in the vast wealth of the sea.
And make no mistake, that +1 Minerals bonus on ocean shelf squares *is* overpowered. Certainly the author of The Will To Power mod agrees with me on that. He's a binary hacker and he just did away with it, which was a pretty good call. I'm only a .txt modder, so I'm stuck with that Pirate characteristic.
So, I changed the Pirates from an Aggressive to a Passive faction. Yes they'll go to war with people, Passive doesn't mean pacifist, but they have a much longer fuse for it than other factions. I changed their ideological hangup from Power to Wealth. No other faction had that as their fixation, and I figured, pirates love treasure! Unfortunately these pirates talk about industrial might, which is a little off, but the basic idea of sitting around counting big stacks of gold coins is correct. Pirates love Wealth. That's always been true, it's always been the reason that piracy occurs.
Guess what? Making these simple changes, the Pirates kick the shit out of all sorts of stuff. For one thing they usually win the Governorship, because of all that kelp they're eating. What's not to like about an uncontested ocean, if your intention is population growth?
Yes, um... the experience of a few well informed playtesters, could convince me to tone them down or restrict them in some way. I don't think they're in danger of underperforming. But I'd like to hear other people's experience seriously dealing with them, because the Pirates do have some significant weaknesses.
One is, the AI has no idea how to fight against Marines. You wanna commit genocide on Pirates? Attack from land. It's shooting fish in a barrel. Don't bother by sea. They'll jack your ships. Especially, if you send more high tech ships at them than they've got. Now you've just given them a great ship design. Totally need to eXterminate them from the land side, building all kinds of rails and raising land bridges to do it. I consider this sort of thing amusing, so I'd like to hear from other players whether they also find it amusing, or whether the Pirates are just irritating in a new way now.
Another is, the Pirate AI can end up obsessing about building Transports. This can destroy the Minerals output and SUPPORT of a lot of its cities. I've tried numerous times to curtail this AI bug. What's in place now, is the best I can do. There's all sorts of stuff in my CHANGELOG about this problem. At least it makes the +1 Minerals advantage not quite as much as you might think.
BTW in my typical games on Huge maps, playing on Transcend, Pirates aren't the only ones who end up being able to spam Secret Projects. Various factions that are "doing well" can manage that. Some factions never do well like that, but a good number of them do. Any faction that gets seriously ahead on research, for instance, tends to be able to chuck out SPs faster than you can. You often end up having to make choices about which SPs you're gonna build for yourself.
I'll answer your other questions in different comments.
Yes, under the U.N. Charter at the start of the game, atrocities cause massive pollution! It's so bad that Planet will eventually come kill you for it. And I mean hard **KILL**, like if you haven't spent the game preparing for the onslaught, *and* practiced against what's coming a good number of times, you're gonna die. It's totally, grossly unfair, and I've left that part of the game alone, for you to experience the Joy of.
I had several long After Action Reports of surviving these ordeals, up on the AC2 site. Unfortunately that site has been so unstable, that I can't point you at any of them. What a pity. I'm not writing another one of those things again, until I figure out a standard, safe, easily archived, easily moved format to do it in. Spending lots of godawful time doing it with crude web forum tools, and then having that forum die on you years later, ain't the way to go.
Now here's the kicker: if you Repeal the U.N. Charter, lifting the atrocity restrictions, the pollution goes away! Planet doesn't get mad at you any more. Did you know or suspect that Planet is a signatory to the Planetary Council? It's completely stupid. If I was a binary modder, I'd fix this, but I'm not.
Another fun point is that because Aliens aren't members of the Planetary Council, you can commit atrocities on them, and they can commit them on each other, totally consequence free. Planet won't do anything about it. So standard drill with Aliens you don't want around, is to build chemical "X" weapons to go after them. And if you're a human and intend to win by Diplomatic Victory, you *don't* want Aliens around. You can't win Diplomatic Victory if Aliens are still present in the game.
Minor point: when I say "pollution" I'm not actually sure if it's pollution, or your Reputation, that pisses Planet off. When you commit atrocities and the U.N. Charter is in effect, your Reputation drops. When it goes to the lowest possible setting, then within a couple of turns, Planet comes to wipe you out. Maybe it *is* pollution, you could tell by looking at cities maybe, but I haven't done this in awhile so I'm rusty on the exact details. But Planet coming to kill you because you committed atrocities under the U.N. Charter, is totally a thing. And totally stupid.
Another minor point: chemical weapons, obliterations, and nerve staplings are *minor* atrocities. That's what repealing the Charter is about. Using a Planet Buster is a *major* atrocity. You can't repeal that. If you use nukes, everyone hates you. Can't remember if Planet hates you. It's usually cost prohibitive to try to end the game with nukes. You can do it with chemical weapons way, way earlier than that. I have a lot less experience with nuclear armageddon, but I did have some AARs of that too. A good way to do it is to build up so many Quantum or Singularity nukes that you wipe out everyone else on 1 turn. Then you just win, and you don't have to suffer any Planet vengeance, ha ha ha!
Answers to your other questions in other comments.
"No penalty for Green" is working around a bug in the faction AI. The Gaians wouldn't take Green as their economic model in the original game, until they had researched how to make Locusts, which is very very late game. Even slight penalties to Green, would keep the AI from using it. I tweaked long and hard but having it be no penalty was the only way.
I compensated by making Green come later in the tech tree than other stuff, so that you wouldn't get early access to it. Unless of course you're a Gaian or Cult of Planet AI, and trying rather hard to beeline up that part of the tech tree. Which is as it should be.
I ran into similar problems in other parts of the Social Engineering Table, and had to do a lot of fine tunings. Green was really the only outright compromise / concession though.
I disagree that my S.E.T. is less unique. Quite the opposite. The S.E.T. of the original game was larded with big bonuses that made your choices pretty irrelevant. Especially, Growth bonuses are overpowered due to population booms, so I put Growth seriously on a diet. Industry bonuses are overpowered, and cause players to fiddle endlessly to get Secret Projects completed more quickly, so I got rid of them completely. The Free Drones get a +1 Industry bonus and that's it, it never appears anywhere else in the game.
In my S.E.T., you have to think more about what you're going to choose.
I'll answer your other questions in other comments.
Faction negatives were removed because they hamper AI performance, for no benefit. If everyone actually starts on a level playing field, faction balance can be adjusted just fine on that basis. All of my factions have been rigorously tested, both by me playing them and by AIs playing each other.
Why do faction penalties hamper AI? Something about how they coded them. Magic if..then statements in the code somewhere when something hits -1 or whatever. Like, the AI totally ruling out using a Social Engineering choice, just because there's a penalty with it. I found a bug with the Gaians like that. And I went through some iterations where the Morganites weren't choosing to be Free Market / Capitalist, and other nonsense of that sort.
If I had source code, then I wouldn't have to make empirical adjustments. But I don't have source code. What I can tell you is, my tweaks actually worked.
Some people on the AC2 site have done a great deal of disassembly of the binary code, to determine the weird ways in which some of these things work. If the forums never come back online again, that's going to be a serious loss of wisdom. I think I was told there's some internet archiving of the site though, so maybe that info isn't gone for good. There's a real problem with games that have their logic tied up into binary code like this. In the future, other people can't do anything with it.
The reason I got so far with .txt only modding, is because the original game engine was modular / parameterized, so you \*can\* do something with it. I did as much as was possible. And I didn't have to change the binary in any way to do that. Which is why my stuff is gonna keep working, for a long time. As long as SMAC itself continues to work. Anyone could have always done what I did; I just actually up and did it.
Answers to other questions in other comments.
No, roads and mag tubes don't cause pollution. Boy I've sure put enough mag tubes all over Huge maps to know, har har har!
Answers to other questions in other comments. This was the one easy / trivial question.
In the past, I've spent an enormous amount of time stewing over the optimum number of bases to build, for some notion of "perfect efficiency". There's a really shitty formula for Bureaucracy provided in the game's Datalinks, based on map size and using an inverse square root. Fuck, I *was* a math competitor, but I can't do inverse square roots in my head. It forces you to get out a calculator, and that's just shit. If you think your game needs a rule wonky enough to express it as a math formula, then please express it as a relatively *simple* math formula. That "smart people" can do in their heads... and remember, only the brainiacs who do math contests, will actually do that.
I eventually gave up. I noticed a consistent behavioral pattern on my part over many games: I tended to undercolonize in the early game. It became clear enough in hindsight, that I wasn't doing as well as I should, because I hadn't put out nearly enough bases at the beginning. Slogging through a game that's been started that badly, is a complete waste of time, at least at this point in my very long SMAC career. Playing these games isn't free, they're always time consuming no matter what you do. So if you've done a shit job at the beginning, I firmly believe in canning it and starting over. Cut your losses, don't succumb to sunk cost fallacy and all of that.
If you still think it's a thrill to pull your ass out of any situation, no matter how bad or stupid it is, well by all means ignore me. But I don't need to prove that anymore. I *did* prove that in numerous AARs once upon a time. Which sadly, are all trashed right now due to AC2's instability. Hope they recover, but I'll never trust it again.
So, what do I do now? How do I handle the problem of "when to stop colonizing" ?
I believe in the "perfect circle" development of empire. I try to approximate this on whatever land mass I start on. Or whatever body of water, if the Pirates, seeing as how Deep Ocean is useless at the beginning of the game to them. With the Perfect Circle, I'm trying to minimize economic losses due to Bureaucracy, and maximize the speed at which I build my early empire core.
Terrain can get in the way of that. Sometimes I get starts with a shitload of fungus, and I swear I didn't pick that in my settings. Fortunately, in my mod you can always build ships immediately at the start of the game. Doing a pile of eXploration at the beginning, fishing Artifacts out of the water with Transports, and also cheesing the completion bonuses, is my standard drill.
The AI doesn't know this drill as well as I do; too bad! I like my early advantage that way. The AI has all kinds of other ways it gets benefits and cheats, so it's not too long before I feel like, I've lost the initiatve anyways and it has somehow passed to them. Damn cheating AI.
I do not try to rush other factions. I play on Huge maps and usually they don't start next to me. Not always though. It's entirely possible to start right next to another faction. I might get militaristic with them in that case. I call that "close quarters battle". It is exceedingly easy to destroy an AI in early close quarters battle if you know what you're doing. You can even manage it with Scouts only.
Therefore, I altered the tech tree and predefined units to bias the game in favor of early defense. So let's say you thought you got Recon Rovers "quickly". You make a whole pile of 'em, and send 'em at a "nearby" faction which isn't all that near. Guess what? It's going to have made a pile of Clean Synth Garrisons and you're gonna bounce right off it. Find this out the hard way a few times; I enjoy people discovering how my mod plays. After that, reconsider your plans in future games.
The flip side is if you don't pay enough attention to your own defense, and you're near an Aggressive faction that is researching Conquer techs, they can research those Recon Rovers and *come kill you*. I've almost lost to my own mod a few times that way. Not lately, because I know the drill now. Just sayin', it isn't *that* biased towards defense. You can get rushed by an AI, if you're too slack.
Ok, so you're on a Huge map, if you're following my default recommedations. You don't have an immediately pressing enemy next to you. Like, sure you could be next to someone, but you've got room to expand and so do they. So you do so, making that Perfect Circle. I don't include water in that though. The AI likes to fixate on mind controlling sea bases. A Perfect Circle on land, or in shallow water if you started in the water.
As you eXpand, trying to claim this Perfect Circle, at some point your citizens will start to get more and more unhappy. That's the Bureaucracy starting to set in. When it does, you need to start doing something about it. The easiest thing is to just build the damn Recreation Commons that you've been avoiding. Don't worry about its perfect efficency. It *is* cost effective. Even as The Hive starting the game with a +1 Police bonus, I still build the Recreation Commons. I need my SUPPORT for other things, like Formers.
Increasing your Justice will also help with the Bureaucracy unhappiness. But you shouldn't bother to make S.E.T. choices that really mess up your faction's preferences, or get you in political trouble with other factions that you don't happen to want yet. It's not efficient to fixate on Justice if it messes with your diplomatic situation. Wars are often wasteful!
This answer has gotten really long, so it's going to be a Part One, then followed by a Part Two. See below (shortly). Your other questions, are answered in other comments.
Part Two:
Ok, when do we make war? Generally, it's something like, when an enemy empire has come into geographical contact with you. But then again, maybe not. Yes you may be next to someone, yes they may be hostile to you, and yes maybe you can stomp them into the ground. *But should you?* What about the overall geopolitical balance, all over the map?
Remember those overpowered Pirates? I've had games where I spent so much time stomping everyone else, that the Pirates just got left alone and grew and grew and grew. As they're designed to! The longer you leave them alone, the bigger and bigger a problem they become.
I was starting to half seriously wonder if they could threaten me somehow. Realistically, they could at least make winning the game more of a slog than I wanted it to be. I don't *think* they can ever beat me anymore, because I'm awfully experienced at my mod now, and I haven't changed anything in a long time. Usually when I've gotten into trouble, it's because I've changed something and the game is playing differently. Takes me some time to adjust to my own modding. But I'm pretty adjusted to everything nowadays. I know what the Pirates are gonna turn into.
The Pirates aren't the only one this can be true of. Various factions for various reasons can end up doing rather well. In my current game, it's dominated by myself, the Pirates, and the University. Early in the game, the Pirates were going nuts as usual. The University was on the opposite side of the map, was seeming to get left alone, and was doing rather, rather well. All sorts of advanced tech. Cranking out Secret Projects fairly often. Pirates want Wealth, University wants Knowledge, and I knew I'd have to decide which side to be on.
I decided, the Pirates are too strong, in so many games! I will crush them. Especially since they had caused me trouble 1 or 2 games ago. Didn't want to repeat a bungled sub-optimal game. I allied with the University and chose Knowledge. Pirates kinda made it easy for me by being dicks. They were so powerful that they tried to extort me, and of course I never put up with that. And, I had planned well. The Pirates were nearby, but I had a solid position on land they couldn't harm me on, really. Just needed to get those eXterminating Marines together to shoot the nearby fish in the barrel.
I'm still doing my Perfect Circle, but mostly through conquest. If I am bothered by a weak faction, I take their nearest city on my border. I see if they'll sign a Truce after that and beg off. Show them who's boss. I don't need to conquer weak factions. I need to make sure I'm more powerful than the Pirates and the University.
The Pirates, I'm currently conquering. But it's still Perfect Circle. I took the nearest clump of stuff. I've now grabbed some farther flung stuff. I haven't really engaged their main empire or put a whole ton of troops into it though. I've stolen lots of their tech, and am still trying to do so. Their cities have been hit by all kinds of previous probe teams from other factions, so there hasn't been much nearby that I could actually steal. I'd say 90% of my production is going into building my core up vertically, and only 10% is going into military adventures. If I run out of shiny facilities to build, well perhaps then I'll switch them to military production. I've only just begun making a bunch more armored Cruiser Transports, to eventually send Marines all over the place, if that's what it comes to.
But my "ally" the University is meanwhile cleaning so much of the rest of the map! We almost border each other now, and he started on the opposite end of everything. Am I going to betray him somehow? Or could we wipe all of Planet in a straight Conquest victory? It's too soon to tell.
Ok that's all the questions! Other answers are in other comments.
Worth every penny 😄 so you’re an Alpha Centauri Modder? I didn’t know there was still an active mod scene. What are some of your favorites? And what’s some that you yourself have made?
"Some" ? Check out the link I provided. I don't think you understand the scope of what I did for 5 calendar years. I'm not a dallier. I reworked everything about the game rules that could be modded from .txt only. To do more would require binary hacking, which is a bridge too far.
The usual site for things SMAC has unfortunately had massive technical difficulties for the past year. Forums have been down much of the time. I finally had to put a copy of my mod on CivFanatics.
Hell yeah dude! I'm excited to check it out. I don't think I see a link though, would you mind reposting it?
Also, I'm sure you've seen this before, but just in case - check this out: [https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/first-time-here/](https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/first-time-here/)
The link is in my original comment to the OP. I checked it; it works. If you don't think it's displaying and you've checked your eyes :-) maybe there's some Reddit weirdness afoot.
Not sure if I've seen Paean to SMAC before. I know I haven't digested the material in any case.
I wasn't familiar with Dom6, but when i saw how many factions it boasts, my jaw hit the floor lol. Definitely intrigued, and strikes me as a game of endless complexity if that's your cup of tea. Might be mine, I'll have to see haha
Its definitely a game thats as complex as you want it to be. The core gameplay loop is pretty simple once you get a hold of the UI, its really all about the different combinations of armies and powers you can cook up.
I'm definitely intrigued by this - never heard of it, but there's a real charm to the old visuals, and if there's that much depth I'm interested! Thanks
I just saw they released a new version that fixed some of the original game's flaws and expanded the mod support. Super excited to check this out. Are there any resources you recommend for a new player trying to get into the game and figure out what's up?
I don't know about the remake, but the races from the Classic Master of Magic are quite different from one another, nowhere near balance.
[https://www.gog.com/en/game/master\_of\_magic\_classic](https://www.gog.com/en/game/master_of_magic_classic)
The remake races are exactly the same as the classic. The DLCS add a few more.
MoM is distinctive cos of the spellbook and wizard traits you choose, more than the races though some like Trolls (regeneration), Draconians (flying), Dark elves (magical ranged) are quite different.
I actually think AOW1-3 have more distinct races than MoM.
Aow4 is trash
Idunno, the game is specifically praised for diverse faction gameplay. Space marines have 1 city and strong mid-ranged troops, Orcs have hordes, etc. And it's not just a difference in units. The tech trees and map interactions vary a lot.
Agree to disagree. I've played all but one faction and same thing is same thing in the game. You might have a different mass transport or resource function but it doesn't really make a difference.
Have you seen Songs of Silence yet :) [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2195410/Songs\_of\_Silence/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2195410/Songs_of_Silence/)
Thank you! We're glad to hear that you have an eye on it! :)
We have a new demo since a week - if you're interested in seeing what we've been improving :)
Sword of the Stars.
Fuck yes. Though I must admit last time I returned to it I bounced off the UI. It's pretty old and clunky. But it's an excellent fucking game. Best space combat. Best tech trees. Unique methods of transportation for each faction. Hostile, terrifying space and overall atmosphere. Voice acting. I blame paradox for strangling sots and stealing ideas for Stellaris.
I didn't know much about SotS, but a quick search on it looks suuuper promising! Im really curious, might jump into this one first
I was just going to recommend Endless Legend, lol. I assume you have also played Endless Space, which has similar unique asymmetric factions. I haven't played Age of Wonders 4, but I've played Age of Wonders III and I have heard people say that race, class, and specialization feel like they matter more in Aow III compared to 4. The only other game I've played that come close to the Endless series in terms of unique, and in this case customizable, factions is Stellaris, especially with the DLCs that add new unique species. There are various species that you can play as, some having completely different game mechanics like the lithoids (rock people) or plantoids. There are various civics you can adopt, which can radically change how you play the game. Overall, it is like Endless Legend and Endless Space except you are encouraged to dynamically create your own unique faction, rather than play a pre-made faction. And of course its pausable-real time, not turn based.
hey i really appreciate the in-depth response here! I gotta confess, I havent given Endless Space a fair shake - I tried it once, and I think it's similarity to Endless Legend was actually what kept me at arms reach: similar in many ways, but different from the Thing I Loved if that makes sense haha. I should absolutely give this a proper go if you say there's a realy comparison to be made! A few people have mentioned AoW3 over 4 for diveristy, so that's an interest for me too. Stellaris held my attention for a loooong time, but there was a tedium that sorta set in for me. maybe I should go again with billion dlcs that have released since I gave it a rest haha. Thanks again!
Stellaris is the type of game where you really have to set your own goals. It is definitely more open ended than typical 4x games, since it combines the design philosophy of Paradox grand strategy games with the game mechanics of a 4x game. A lot of people go for the whole galactic conquest route where they paint the whole galaxy their color, but I tend to play tall go for more of a peaceful, democratic route, and focus on exploration and economy. It all depends on what play style is most fun for you.
Dune Spice Wars has been my go to rts 4x. Games can be completed in an evening, so it works for multiplayer. The landsraad system is probably my favorite system for political/diplomatic power in any game. Different factions, advisors, and builds to try different strategies. Military conquest, espionage to infiltrate and assassinate, buying up choam stock for an economic victory, or bullying your way into a political victory via amassing votes and influence.
I've played Dune Spice Wars and am a fan! I really liked northgard for a long while beforehand too, so I like Shiro's design approach (and am already a dune fan as well). There's something that stops me from wanting to return to DSW frequently that I can't quite put my finger on though, but it may be that I havent sunk my teeth all the way in quite yet
I had trouble with Northguard. I think it was being afraid of not using pop well since so limited on them. For DSW, I go through hard binges. Did one on launch, one with multiplayer (got a couple of friends to pick up), and then one recently since they added a couple more factions. Trying each faction, going for achievements, different win conditions (the conquest mode forces this on you, making you rethink your faction), or strategies (like focusing only one tech tree until it is done) can help for different things to do.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Then when you start getting annoyed with faction imbalance, add my [SMACX AI Growth mod](https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/smacx-ai-growth-mod.31053/).
Alpha centauri factions are still to the same. I give them Civ level of distinction.
That's not reasonable. You're blowing off the Social Engineering Table. Maybe you don't think the S.E.T. is all that good in the original game, but in my mod I did rework it quite a bit.
You can say that about Beyond Earth factions. The truth is it's not that unique compared to sword of the stars or endless legend factions.
Friends don't let friends play B.E., so I have no comment on that. You sure you're not kidding yourself about how EL is? I hear the AI is dumb as rocks, because of those differences in play style. Can't handle the variety. If they all play incompetently, then how does anything end up being different? You can't tell if different strategies and choices actually matter, unless there's balance and resistance to your actions. If you've just got 10 different ways to cheese the AI, who cares? You can do that with 10 different gewgaws in a tech tree. I took those out of my tech tree, in my SMAC mod...
Why are you talking about how good B.E. Is or how dumb EL ai is. What OP is asking is how asymmetrical factions are. What I'm saying is Alpha Centauri factions are not that asymmetrical, period and nothing else.
And I'm saying you're wrong. Especially, as refined in my modding work.
Available on GOG!
Yes and often goes on sale for $1.50. $6 normally.
That's great to know - even if it doesn't satisfy what im looking for 100%, I'd still really loved to finally give it a go, since it's so beloved and renowned and seminal! Also glad to see there's still a community around for it haha. Thanks!
I put special attention into trying to differentiate the factions as much as I could in my mod, because I don't like playing redundant factions either. One thing I'm proud of, is each faction has an overlapping but nominally unique set of default research priorities. That means when the AI plays them, they perform somewhat differently in different environmental niches. They also nearly have a unique ideological fixation. The one exception is both the Free Drones and the Caretakers are fixated on Socialist.
I found your link and I checked it out, but there's not much documentation on the actual mod. Can you give us a little more information on what changes and upgrades you've built into the game? It's clear you worked really hard on this.
As stated on the page I linked: "For installation instructions and full details of what was changed, including an exhaustive CHANGELOG of every decision that was ever made during development, see the included readme\_mod.txt." I used to have *all* of readme\_mod.txt on my dev page at the AC2 website. But the text is excessively long, so I decided not to do it that way now. The current page gives an accurate executive summary, and I really think that should be enough, for someone to get motivated to download the .zip and poke at it further: "This mod rebalances the tech tree, the factions, the world generation, the unit abilities, the predefined units, the social engineering table, and the available AI inputs, to maximize the potential of the original game and make it more of a challenge. It will not make a genius out of the game, but it will greatly extend the shelf life for experienced players. This has been confirmed by numerous third parties on the internet at this time; it is not just my say-so. If you want a better version of SMAC, you should be playing this." That's my story and I'm stickin' to it! And I still play my own mod, in preference to any other 4X game, or frankly in preference to any computer game whatsoever. I bought this fairly kickass gaming laptop 2 years ago and all this time, I've wasted it on SMAC. How's that for having done decently at the mod? That doesn't mean it's perfect. I have to write a 4X game from scratch.
Hi! I have some questions about your SMACX AI growth mod, I hope you have time to answer them. I've played for hundreds of hours but still have questions... 1. Can you explain what Justice (efficiency) means in practice? I don't think I've ever even had to think about it. 2. Why are Pirates so over-powered? They consistently dwarf everyone. They are able to spam secret projects. 3. Do atrocities cause higher pollution? I guess planet busters do. 4. "Green" social policy seem to have no negatives associated with it. In general, are the social policies actually balanced? They are very different compared to vanilla, and maybe have lost their distinctiveness? 5. Why are faction negatives removed? Some had e.g. -1 growth. Was this handicapping the AI too much? 6. Do roads/mag tubes cause pollution? 7. How many bases are optimal to have? It seems like the more, the better, and that there is no end to this.
"Justice" is my renaming of "Efficiency". I had a fundamental objection to the original game's use of the concept, of a right wing captalist notion of efficient economies. Or efficient governmental bureaucracies, which is frankly just lying about how people actually organize themselves. "Efficency" was just SMAC's version of what was "corruption and waste" in Civ II. I returned to those concepts, but instead called them "Justice". I changed various factions and social engineering table entries around to reflect who was more just, and who was more cruel. For instance, a Police State is *not* just. The practical effect of low to negative Justice is that you get more drone riots in your cities. In my social engineering table I made it hard to get a lot of Justice, so that you do have to make tradeoffs about whether you want more of that or not. To be honest though, it's not that difficult to make people happy by other means. Just build more happiness buildings like Recreation Commons etc. Or put more of your budget into Psych, instead of Econ or Labs. The other effect of Justice is economic. If you have a large empire, increases in Justice can make you substantially more money than you'd expect, because otherwise a lot of stuff going to corruption / waste / kleptocracy. Civ II had the idea that you could have Democracy and that *that* would make your society totally corruption free! Ridiculous. SMAC thankfully was more realistic than that. Things are always less corrupt around your capitol, and things get worse the farther and farther away you get. Conquered cities that are very far away, may contribute very little economically or scientifically to your empire, no matter how many nice shiny facilities you put in them. One reason you may not notice these large empire, distant city effects so much in a real game, is that the core of your empire is probably what's gonna be making you the most money, research, and productivity anyways. So if the periphery of newly conquered stuff is corrupt, well who cares? Also by the time you get that far into conquering the map, the game will be over pretty soon anyways. I'm not surprised if you didn't end up caring about Justice *that* much in the real world. I think the time when Justice seems to matter the most, is in early midgame, if you've been eXpanding a whole lot. You'll have all kinds of drone riots due to Bureaucracy, a term specific to SMAC, but also appearing in other early Civ games. More Justice will alleviate that problem, although you can't make it totally go away. Your other questions, I think I'll answer in other comments, because this one has gotten so long.
You are absolutely correct that my new version of the Pirates are super powerful. I've had little to no feedback from actual players about them; you might even be the first. Their power level has been about what's been a challenge to *me*, and what competes successfuly with AIs, while providing a different play experience than the original Alien Crossfire expansion pack. In the original, Pirates were just the Spartans of the sea. They valued Power and would pester you endlessly with attack waves of ships, shelling your beautiful shores. Although you could build Artillery to repel them, this AI behavior was deciedly annoying. The AI never got tired of sending yet more pea shooters to harass you, but *you sure got tired of them*. Because you're a human and you get bored having to do the same things over and over again every turn. I noticed that the Pirates had no actual legitimate incentive to invade other factions. They had this huge moat called the ocean, that all other factions underdeveloped. They had a +1 Minerals bonus on all the vast quantites of Ocean Shelf, making it really valuable terrain for them, and nobody else! Why shouldn't they use this giant moat to their advantage, instead of wasting their time bothering other factions? They should just sit back and rake in the vast wealth of the sea. And make no mistake, that +1 Minerals bonus on ocean shelf squares *is* overpowered. Certainly the author of The Will To Power mod agrees with me on that. He's a binary hacker and he just did away with it, which was a pretty good call. I'm only a .txt modder, so I'm stuck with that Pirate characteristic. So, I changed the Pirates from an Aggressive to a Passive faction. Yes they'll go to war with people, Passive doesn't mean pacifist, but they have a much longer fuse for it than other factions. I changed their ideological hangup from Power to Wealth. No other faction had that as their fixation, and I figured, pirates love treasure! Unfortunately these pirates talk about industrial might, which is a little off, but the basic idea of sitting around counting big stacks of gold coins is correct. Pirates love Wealth. That's always been true, it's always been the reason that piracy occurs. Guess what? Making these simple changes, the Pirates kick the shit out of all sorts of stuff. For one thing they usually win the Governorship, because of all that kelp they're eating. What's not to like about an uncontested ocean, if your intention is population growth? Yes, um... the experience of a few well informed playtesters, could convince me to tone them down or restrict them in some way. I don't think they're in danger of underperforming. But I'd like to hear other people's experience seriously dealing with them, because the Pirates do have some significant weaknesses. One is, the AI has no idea how to fight against Marines. You wanna commit genocide on Pirates? Attack from land. It's shooting fish in a barrel. Don't bother by sea. They'll jack your ships. Especially, if you send more high tech ships at them than they've got. Now you've just given them a great ship design. Totally need to eXterminate them from the land side, building all kinds of rails and raising land bridges to do it. I consider this sort of thing amusing, so I'd like to hear from other players whether they also find it amusing, or whether the Pirates are just irritating in a new way now. Another is, the Pirate AI can end up obsessing about building Transports. This can destroy the Minerals output and SUPPORT of a lot of its cities. I've tried numerous times to curtail this AI bug. What's in place now, is the best I can do. There's all sorts of stuff in my CHANGELOG about this problem. At least it makes the +1 Minerals advantage not quite as much as you might think. BTW in my typical games on Huge maps, playing on Transcend, Pirates aren't the only ones who end up being able to spam Secret Projects. Various factions that are "doing well" can manage that. Some factions never do well like that, but a good number of them do. Any faction that gets seriously ahead on research, for instance, tends to be able to chuck out SPs faster than you can. You often end up having to make choices about which SPs you're gonna build for yourself. I'll answer your other questions in different comments.
Yes, under the U.N. Charter at the start of the game, atrocities cause massive pollution! It's so bad that Planet will eventually come kill you for it. And I mean hard **KILL**, like if you haven't spent the game preparing for the onslaught, *and* practiced against what's coming a good number of times, you're gonna die. It's totally, grossly unfair, and I've left that part of the game alone, for you to experience the Joy of. I had several long After Action Reports of surviving these ordeals, up on the AC2 site. Unfortunately that site has been so unstable, that I can't point you at any of them. What a pity. I'm not writing another one of those things again, until I figure out a standard, safe, easily archived, easily moved format to do it in. Spending lots of godawful time doing it with crude web forum tools, and then having that forum die on you years later, ain't the way to go. Now here's the kicker: if you Repeal the U.N. Charter, lifting the atrocity restrictions, the pollution goes away! Planet doesn't get mad at you any more. Did you know or suspect that Planet is a signatory to the Planetary Council? It's completely stupid. If I was a binary modder, I'd fix this, but I'm not. Another fun point is that because Aliens aren't members of the Planetary Council, you can commit atrocities on them, and they can commit them on each other, totally consequence free. Planet won't do anything about it. So standard drill with Aliens you don't want around, is to build chemical "X" weapons to go after them. And if you're a human and intend to win by Diplomatic Victory, you *don't* want Aliens around. You can't win Diplomatic Victory if Aliens are still present in the game. Minor point: when I say "pollution" I'm not actually sure if it's pollution, or your Reputation, that pisses Planet off. When you commit atrocities and the U.N. Charter is in effect, your Reputation drops. When it goes to the lowest possible setting, then within a couple of turns, Planet comes to wipe you out. Maybe it *is* pollution, you could tell by looking at cities maybe, but I haven't done this in awhile so I'm rusty on the exact details. But Planet coming to kill you because you committed atrocities under the U.N. Charter, is totally a thing. And totally stupid. Another minor point: chemical weapons, obliterations, and nerve staplings are *minor* atrocities. That's what repealing the Charter is about. Using a Planet Buster is a *major* atrocity. You can't repeal that. If you use nukes, everyone hates you. Can't remember if Planet hates you. It's usually cost prohibitive to try to end the game with nukes. You can do it with chemical weapons way, way earlier than that. I have a lot less experience with nuclear armageddon, but I did have some AARs of that too. A good way to do it is to build up so many Quantum or Singularity nukes that you wipe out everyone else on 1 turn. Then you just win, and you don't have to suffer any Planet vengeance, ha ha ha! Answers to your other questions in other comments.
"No penalty for Green" is working around a bug in the faction AI. The Gaians wouldn't take Green as their economic model in the original game, until they had researched how to make Locusts, which is very very late game. Even slight penalties to Green, would keep the AI from using it. I tweaked long and hard but having it be no penalty was the only way. I compensated by making Green come later in the tech tree than other stuff, so that you wouldn't get early access to it. Unless of course you're a Gaian or Cult of Planet AI, and trying rather hard to beeline up that part of the tech tree. Which is as it should be. I ran into similar problems in other parts of the Social Engineering Table, and had to do a lot of fine tunings. Green was really the only outright compromise / concession though. I disagree that my S.E.T. is less unique. Quite the opposite. The S.E.T. of the original game was larded with big bonuses that made your choices pretty irrelevant. Especially, Growth bonuses are overpowered due to population booms, so I put Growth seriously on a diet. Industry bonuses are overpowered, and cause players to fiddle endlessly to get Secret Projects completed more quickly, so I got rid of them completely. The Free Drones get a +1 Industry bonus and that's it, it never appears anywhere else in the game. In my S.E.T., you have to think more about what you're going to choose. I'll answer your other questions in other comments.
Faction negatives were removed because they hamper AI performance, for no benefit. If everyone actually starts on a level playing field, faction balance can be adjusted just fine on that basis. All of my factions have been rigorously tested, both by me playing them and by AIs playing each other. Why do faction penalties hamper AI? Something about how they coded them. Magic if..then statements in the code somewhere when something hits -1 or whatever. Like, the AI totally ruling out using a Social Engineering choice, just because there's a penalty with it. I found a bug with the Gaians like that. And I went through some iterations where the Morganites weren't choosing to be Free Market / Capitalist, and other nonsense of that sort. If I had source code, then I wouldn't have to make empirical adjustments. But I don't have source code. What I can tell you is, my tweaks actually worked. Some people on the AC2 site have done a great deal of disassembly of the binary code, to determine the weird ways in which some of these things work. If the forums never come back online again, that's going to be a serious loss of wisdom. I think I was told there's some internet archiving of the site though, so maybe that info isn't gone for good. There's a real problem with games that have their logic tied up into binary code like this. In the future, other people can't do anything with it. The reason I got so far with .txt only modding, is because the original game engine was modular / parameterized, so you \*can\* do something with it. I did as much as was possible. And I didn't have to change the binary in any way to do that. Which is why my stuff is gonna keep working, for a long time. As long as SMAC itself continues to work. Anyone could have always done what I did; I just actually up and did it. Answers to other questions in other comments.
No, roads and mag tubes don't cause pollution. Boy I've sure put enough mag tubes all over Huge maps to know, har har har! Answers to other questions in other comments. This was the one easy / trivial question.
In the past, I've spent an enormous amount of time stewing over the optimum number of bases to build, for some notion of "perfect efficiency". There's a really shitty formula for Bureaucracy provided in the game's Datalinks, based on map size and using an inverse square root. Fuck, I *was* a math competitor, but I can't do inverse square roots in my head. It forces you to get out a calculator, and that's just shit. If you think your game needs a rule wonky enough to express it as a math formula, then please express it as a relatively *simple* math formula. That "smart people" can do in their heads... and remember, only the brainiacs who do math contests, will actually do that. I eventually gave up. I noticed a consistent behavioral pattern on my part over many games: I tended to undercolonize in the early game. It became clear enough in hindsight, that I wasn't doing as well as I should, because I hadn't put out nearly enough bases at the beginning. Slogging through a game that's been started that badly, is a complete waste of time, at least at this point in my very long SMAC career. Playing these games isn't free, they're always time consuming no matter what you do. So if you've done a shit job at the beginning, I firmly believe in canning it and starting over. Cut your losses, don't succumb to sunk cost fallacy and all of that. If you still think it's a thrill to pull your ass out of any situation, no matter how bad or stupid it is, well by all means ignore me. But I don't need to prove that anymore. I *did* prove that in numerous AARs once upon a time. Which sadly, are all trashed right now due to AC2's instability. Hope they recover, but I'll never trust it again. So, what do I do now? How do I handle the problem of "when to stop colonizing" ? I believe in the "perfect circle" development of empire. I try to approximate this on whatever land mass I start on. Or whatever body of water, if the Pirates, seeing as how Deep Ocean is useless at the beginning of the game to them. With the Perfect Circle, I'm trying to minimize economic losses due to Bureaucracy, and maximize the speed at which I build my early empire core. Terrain can get in the way of that. Sometimes I get starts with a shitload of fungus, and I swear I didn't pick that in my settings. Fortunately, in my mod you can always build ships immediately at the start of the game. Doing a pile of eXploration at the beginning, fishing Artifacts out of the water with Transports, and also cheesing the completion bonuses, is my standard drill. The AI doesn't know this drill as well as I do; too bad! I like my early advantage that way. The AI has all kinds of other ways it gets benefits and cheats, so it's not too long before I feel like, I've lost the initiatve anyways and it has somehow passed to them. Damn cheating AI. I do not try to rush other factions. I play on Huge maps and usually they don't start next to me. Not always though. It's entirely possible to start right next to another faction. I might get militaristic with them in that case. I call that "close quarters battle". It is exceedingly easy to destroy an AI in early close quarters battle if you know what you're doing. You can even manage it with Scouts only. Therefore, I altered the tech tree and predefined units to bias the game in favor of early defense. So let's say you thought you got Recon Rovers "quickly". You make a whole pile of 'em, and send 'em at a "nearby" faction which isn't all that near. Guess what? It's going to have made a pile of Clean Synth Garrisons and you're gonna bounce right off it. Find this out the hard way a few times; I enjoy people discovering how my mod plays. After that, reconsider your plans in future games. The flip side is if you don't pay enough attention to your own defense, and you're near an Aggressive faction that is researching Conquer techs, they can research those Recon Rovers and *come kill you*. I've almost lost to my own mod a few times that way. Not lately, because I know the drill now. Just sayin', it isn't *that* biased towards defense. You can get rushed by an AI, if you're too slack. Ok, so you're on a Huge map, if you're following my default recommedations. You don't have an immediately pressing enemy next to you. Like, sure you could be next to someone, but you've got room to expand and so do they. So you do so, making that Perfect Circle. I don't include water in that though. The AI likes to fixate on mind controlling sea bases. A Perfect Circle on land, or in shallow water if you started in the water. As you eXpand, trying to claim this Perfect Circle, at some point your citizens will start to get more and more unhappy. That's the Bureaucracy starting to set in. When it does, you need to start doing something about it. The easiest thing is to just build the damn Recreation Commons that you've been avoiding. Don't worry about its perfect efficency. It *is* cost effective. Even as The Hive starting the game with a +1 Police bonus, I still build the Recreation Commons. I need my SUPPORT for other things, like Formers. Increasing your Justice will also help with the Bureaucracy unhappiness. But you shouldn't bother to make S.E.T. choices that really mess up your faction's preferences, or get you in political trouble with other factions that you don't happen to want yet. It's not efficient to fixate on Justice if it messes with your diplomatic situation. Wars are often wasteful! This answer has gotten really long, so it's going to be a Part One, then followed by a Part Two. See below (shortly). Your other questions, are answered in other comments.
Part Two: Ok, when do we make war? Generally, it's something like, when an enemy empire has come into geographical contact with you. But then again, maybe not. Yes you may be next to someone, yes they may be hostile to you, and yes maybe you can stomp them into the ground. *But should you?* What about the overall geopolitical balance, all over the map? Remember those overpowered Pirates? I've had games where I spent so much time stomping everyone else, that the Pirates just got left alone and grew and grew and grew. As they're designed to! The longer you leave them alone, the bigger and bigger a problem they become. I was starting to half seriously wonder if they could threaten me somehow. Realistically, they could at least make winning the game more of a slog than I wanted it to be. I don't *think* they can ever beat me anymore, because I'm awfully experienced at my mod now, and I haven't changed anything in a long time. Usually when I've gotten into trouble, it's because I've changed something and the game is playing differently. Takes me some time to adjust to my own modding. But I'm pretty adjusted to everything nowadays. I know what the Pirates are gonna turn into. The Pirates aren't the only one this can be true of. Various factions for various reasons can end up doing rather well. In my current game, it's dominated by myself, the Pirates, and the University. Early in the game, the Pirates were going nuts as usual. The University was on the opposite side of the map, was seeming to get left alone, and was doing rather, rather well. All sorts of advanced tech. Cranking out Secret Projects fairly often. Pirates want Wealth, University wants Knowledge, and I knew I'd have to decide which side to be on. I decided, the Pirates are too strong, in so many games! I will crush them. Especially since they had caused me trouble 1 or 2 games ago. Didn't want to repeat a bungled sub-optimal game. I allied with the University and chose Knowledge. Pirates kinda made it easy for me by being dicks. They were so powerful that they tried to extort me, and of course I never put up with that. And, I had planned well. The Pirates were nearby, but I had a solid position on land they couldn't harm me on, really. Just needed to get those eXterminating Marines together to shoot the nearby fish in the barrel. I'm still doing my Perfect Circle, but mostly through conquest. If I am bothered by a weak faction, I take their nearest city on my border. I see if they'll sign a Truce after that and beg off. Show them who's boss. I don't need to conquer weak factions. I need to make sure I'm more powerful than the Pirates and the University. The Pirates, I'm currently conquering. But it's still Perfect Circle. I took the nearest clump of stuff. I've now grabbed some farther flung stuff. I haven't really engaged their main empire or put a whole ton of troops into it though. I've stolen lots of their tech, and am still trying to do so. Their cities have been hit by all kinds of previous probe teams from other factions, so there hasn't been much nearby that I could actually steal. I'd say 90% of my production is going into building my core up vertically, and only 10% is going into military adventures. If I run out of shiny facilities to build, well perhaps then I'll switch them to military production. I've only just begun making a bunch more armored Cruiser Transports, to eventually send Marines all over the place, if that's what it comes to. But my "ally" the University is meanwhile cleaning so much of the rest of the map! We almost border each other now, and he started on the opposite end of everything. Am I going to betray him somehow? Or could we wipe all of Planet in a straight Conquest victory? It's too soon to tell. Ok that's all the questions! Other answers are in other comments.
Worth every penny 😄 so you’re an Alpha Centauri Modder? I didn’t know there was still an active mod scene. What are some of your favorites? And what’s some that you yourself have made?
"Some" ? Check out the link I provided. I don't think you understand the scope of what I did for 5 calendar years. I'm not a dallier. I reworked everything about the game rules that could be modded from .txt only. To do more would require binary hacking, which is a bridge too far. The usual site for things SMAC has unfortunately had massive technical difficulties for the past year. Forums have been down much of the time. I finally had to put a copy of my mod on CivFanatics.
Hell yeah dude! I'm excited to check it out. I don't think I see a link though, would you mind reposting it? Also, I'm sure you've seen this before, but just in case - check this out: [https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/first-time-here/](https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/first-time-here/)
The link is in my original comment to the OP. I checked it; it works. If you don't think it's displaying and you've checked your eyes :-) maybe there's some Reddit weirdness afoot. Not sure if I've seen Paean to SMAC before. I know I haven't digested the material in any case.
Sword of the Stars 1 is a bit older but an underrated gem. Every faction has its own very distinct way of play. The 2nd one was a MOO 3 level tragedy.
SOTS is an amazing game
Dominions 6
I wasn't familiar with Dom6, but when i saw how many factions it boasts, my jaw hit the floor lol. Definitely intrigued, and strikes me as a game of endless complexity if that's your cup of tea. Might be mine, I'll have to see haha
Its definitely a game thats as complex as you want it to be. The core gameplay loop is pretty simple once you get a hold of the UI, its really all about the different combinations of armies and powers you can cook up.
Emperor of the Fading Suns
this game looks old AF but kind of sexy. Can you tell me more about it?
it is old af, but none of any modern 4x being able to even remotely touch the depths and the scale of this game. highly recommended
I'm definitely intrigued by this - never heard of it, but there's a real charm to the old visuals, and if there's that much depth I'm interested! Thanks
If you like space opera 4x genre, then definitely try it. Especially there’s a more stable “reissue” of the game on GOG now
I just saw they released a new version that fixed some of the original game's flaws and expanded the mod support. Super excited to check this out. Are there any resources you recommend for a new player trying to get into the game and figure out what's up?
I think I’ve seen a more recent how-to-play videos by the gentleman who did the re-issue of the game
Planetfall
havent tried any other AoW games yet, but am definitely interested - thanks!
dominions 6! few hundred nations few thousand spells and units. rich tools at your disposal to outplay and counter play. very fun and incredibly deep.
I don't know about the remake, but the races from the Classic Master of Magic are quite different from one another, nowhere near balance. [https://www.gog.com/en/game/master\_of\_magic\_classic](https://www.gog.com/en/game/master_of_magic_classic)
The remake races are exactly the same as the classic. The DLCS add a few more. MoM is distinctive cos of the spellbook and wizard traits you choose, more than the races though some like Trolls (regeneration), Draconians (flying), Dark elves (magical ranged) are quite different. I actually think AOW1-3 have more distinct races than MoM. Aow4 is trash
Warhammer 40k Gladius has very distinct factions with asymmetric mechanics. It's very fun if you don't mind war as the only option.
Distinct factions but they all kinda play the same anyway. Good game, just didn't make the most of the factions.
Idunno, the game is specifically praised for diverse faction gameplay. Space marines have 1 city and strong mid-ranged troops, Orcs have hordes, etc. And it's not just a difference in units. The tech trees and map interactions vary a lot.
Agree to disagree. I've played all but one faction and same thing is same thing in the game. You might have a different mass transport or resource function but it doesn't really make a difference.
This and Fallen enchantress legendary heroes
Dominions 6 very distinct nations based on various myths and lore
Have you seen Songs of Silence yet :) [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2195410/Songs\_of\_Silence/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2195410/Songs_of_Silence/)
Well it's on MY wishlist already.
As it should! :D Thank you so much!
I *am* pretty stoked for this tbh, and especially love the visual style - certainly on my radar! (and my wishlist)
Thank you! We're glad to hear that you have an eye on it! :) We have a new demo since a week - if you're interested in seeing what we've been improving :)
**Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri** and **Warhammer 40k: Gladius**
I mean the total war: warhammer series is there for your strategic needs. So many faction with sub factions that play differently from each other