What's the wierdest, most jacked up thing that you've noticed about SMAC/SMACx? What I mean, is wierd little things that typically aren't supposed to happen.

For example, I played a game once, where I explored a pod, and found a Monolith. Next to it was another pod, so I checked it out, and it gave me some mines. Trouble was, one of the mines was on the same square as the Monolith! Get my point? You can't do any terraforming at a Monolith except to build roads, and remove fungus. Anything wierd like that ever happen to you folks?

Ok, here's another question. Has anyone ever used their Monoliths so much that they disappeared? Actually, this is supposed to happen, but I've only had it happen to me on 3 occasions. Strangely enough, it was in the SAME game a couple of years ago, and I was playing the Believers. I've never had it happen to me since.

Cant think of anything weird right now I'll get back to you on that.

Monliths: NO. Ive never heard of this happing.Strange???
Also whats the point of the option of leving them alone for??

I've had monoliths floating in water after the idiots on council decided to melt the polar ice caps.

Hmmm. About the 'leave it alone option'--I really don't know, Spy. Another thought that I've had is why the Monoliths only repair military units.

Yeah, monoliths dissapear OK. Ever noticed when an AI faction controls the Ruins how most of the monoliths are gone late in the game? I had a very marginal base once that depended on a monolith for food while the formers cleared fungus, and Zac wiped it out by using it to upgrade his units. Aaaarrggghh!!!!!! :mad:

Yep, all of the above -- disappearing, under water, etc. Notice that when you capture bases from the Usurpers, they all have roads out to the monoliths because the AI sends units out for a ritual upgrade automatically as they're produced.

The point of leaving monoliths alone is so you can use them to get promotions later on - each unit can only use them once, and promotions are increasingly hard to get through battle.

Originally posted by dreadhead7
Ok, here's another question. Has anyone ever used their Monoliths so much that they disappeared? Actually, this is supposed to happen, but I've only had it happen to me on 3 occasions. Strangely enough, it was in the SAME game a couple of years ago, and I was playing the Believers. I've never had it happen to me since.

Yep, many monoliths, including the one that start the game appear to be oermanent, some of the ones popped from pods vanish after about a dozen morale upgrades. Repair use does not seem to use them up.

The weirdest events I have seen involve capturing a unti (native or by marine detachment) and having other hostile units remaining in the square. You can then attack the stack with other units, but if one of you in the square has the best defense, you wind up fighting it.

I know it is part of the gameplay but aside from the experiences mentioned above I find the following pretty weird and annoying::rolleyes:

When you are getting close to the end of the story, almost ready for trancendation, the planet is really starting to fight you. Especially if you own a continent near the polar regions you have to fight hundreds ;) of native life forms suddenly uprising every other turn.
The similar babarian uprising with more than 20 horsemen in Civ3 reminded me of this fact.
My problem is that I normally don´t have much defense in the inner part of my empire, but when the fungus starts to appear it´s really hard to keep those mindworms at bay.:sniper:

And the monoliths disappear randomly in my games. Sometimes I heal and upgrade like 100 units and another time only 3. And not only those from capsules disappear.:alien:

There is a 1/32 chance that a monolith will dissapear when you use it. This probability value is independent from the number of times you've utilized it already. It's a fact, trust me :).
And BTW, throughout my entire SMACing career (almost 3 years now) I never had a monolith dissapear even once when I used it. For the AI, sure, numerous times, but not when I was upgrading.

That proliferation of fungus is down to pollution, Planet is deliberately trying to murer you! Try taking a few of the city squares affected out of production on the city screen, particularly the heavily polluting ones situated on mines.

If you pass through a monolith and you don't need the repair/upgrade, why end the unit's turn? Investigating automatically does that but if your unit has moevemnt left you can go on if you ignore it.

Originally posted by brrrrrett
That proliferation of fungus is down to pollution, Planet is deliberately trying to murer you! Try taking a few of the city squares affected out of production on the city screen, particularly the heavily polluting ones situated on mines.

One time I set of 15 (roughly) planet busters in one turn. The Planet DID NOT like that. I had a large army and loads of cities: the army were wiped out by hoardes of aleins and only 2 of my cities didn't get razed/pillaged.

I'd never seen so many aliens! It was cool, the game had been getting dull (hence setting off all those PBs) and I was winning easily. This totally brought me back to the same level as everyone else.

Ok, the weirdest thing I have saw, didn't see it actually, but it happened was in a PBEM with Aredhan, Mister Flo, and someone else.

Aredhan got a secret project built in one turn from a materials pod. He hadn't even started it the previous turn, IIRC. That is one for the books.

Ok, the weirdest thing I have saw, didn't see it actually, but it happened was in a PBEM with Aredhan, Mister Flo, and someone else.

:eek: I didn't think that was possible.

As mentioned before, monoliths have that 1/32 chance of disappering and it has happened to me just once!

The weirdest thing in my short SMAC playing experience is having a mw appear on the ocean tile adjacent to a coastal pod which I popped. I didn't have any movement left to check if I could have got the 10+ energy credit for killing it. Of course it drowned in the next turn :p

Playing as Gaians and built my first mindworm in my capital Gaia's Landing. Didn't really have any use for it at that moment so left it there. Couple turns later alien mindworms atacked and killed my mindworm who was defending Gaia's Landing. Up pops the normal events screen that happens when your first mindworm unit dies...except there were a couple of funny things in this one...."...flamed by 's men, those Aliens don't like mindworms..." then later on Deidre says..."I want Gaia's Landing destroyed" Destroying your own city????? So much for the "peace-loving" Gaians.

Haven't played this game in 2 years, but had to reply when I saw this thread. I got hit by an asteroid once. Wiped out four of my big cities like they were never there and made a second crater. Only happened to me once in probably a year of playing, so has to be a really rare feature.

Renata

Originally posted by Renata
Haven't played this game in 2 years, but had to reply when I saw this thread. I got hit by an asteroid once. Wiped out four of my big cities like they were never there and made a second crater. Only happened to me once in probably a year of playing, so has to be a really rare feature.

Renata

I read about this but never saw it myself. I thought it destroyed one city, not groups.

I had 1 synthmetal survive 35 alien mindworms!lol
1-2-1 against 35....

Originally posted by CrackedCrystal


I read about this but never saw it myself. I thought it destroyed one city, not groups.


It produced a new (second) crater. Everything (cities, units, improvements, whatever) within that radius was gone. Pretty cool. :D

Renata

Originally posted by philippe
I had 1 synthmetal survive 35 alien mindworms!lol
1-2-1 against 35....

Mindworms fight using psi, not physical strength. So the synthmetal doesnt change anything.

I saw something weird last night when I was playing as the Spartans.

I had just gotten the 24-weapon, and had equipped all my units with it. Then, I was gonna attack the University with my fleet of AAA Singularity Cruisers, but somehow, around 80% of them had been upgraded into Clean Singularity Shock Troops.

That's weird.

Originally posted by dreadhead7
Another thought that I've had is why the Monoliths only repair military units.

You can actually bypass this by giving your formers, etc, armour. At least they then loose the -50% non-combat thing.

I've played lots of SMAC but never heard of an asteroid landing. Sure it wasn't a planetbuster. They leave holes too.

Another thought that I've had is why the Monoliths only repair military units.
Monoliths repair any unit. If mindworms attack your former and it survives, send that puppy to a monolith. It'll be repaired just like any other unit.

Originally posted by Plug
I've played lots of SMAC but never heard of an asteroid landing. Sure it wasn't a planetbuster. They leave holes too.

just holes not anything like the garland crater
I've never had that happne but I did see a new vulcano created.

two things I just noticed last week were that wild mind worms never attack your mind worms they run away from them.

if you get one of those unity pods that gives the eight mind worms each time you kill one it upgrades all the others good way to make deamon boils...

in my current game i've built boath the xylempathy dome, the pholos mutagen and the dream twister there's nothing like being able to mass produce deamon boil locusts swarms with a +50%

I once had a believing elite infantry unit equiped with the singularity laser, nerve gass pods, blink displacers. so if you attack a city you have 24+25%infantry vs. base+25% believing+50% nerve gass+ 50% elite=60 attack and ignores base defenses... and if you get one of those fungus upgrades another +50% for attacking from a fungus square giving 72 attack, a planet buster is 99...:eek:

the game I'm playing right now they just voted to increase the solar shading for the third or fourth time, there's almost no water left on the map at all

one time playing as the university I had the values set to knowledge and was taking over the peace keepers the -4 probe had them buying the cities back right after i took them which really sucked since they also got all the mind worms I had in or arount the city (my entier army was mind worms, i love those things) so I tried a different strategy, probe teams don't work on mind worms so every time I'd take a city I'd surround it with worms at one point I had a line of worms going right across the continent to keep the probes out. then I built the hunter seeker...

I also managed to knock out five cities with one singularity planet buster...

Iwas able to put a laser on a mind worm, scary bury in your breain and fry you

I looked around in the text files of alpha and other stuff, there are no revrences to astiods anywhere or comets or mediores ect..
I say they don't exist.:(

new volcanoes happen but asteroids?!!

I'm inclined to agree with No.1 Person.

I think the asteroid random event was added with one of the patches.

Not terribly weird, but pretty convenient:

I'm the Spartans, sitting on my own little continent. A couple of tiles away, the Hive are unhappily inhabiting a similar continentlet. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, Yang declares war. Immediately, an earthquake occurs, creating a land-bridge between or continents. Promptly, my Speeder legions zoom across and occupies several key cities, incl Hive capital.

How immediately Last Conformist?

Was it on the same turn?

Poor Yang!

Same turn, yes. Poor Yang, yes.

I don't suppose this is too weird, but once I created a huge map with almost no elevations whatsoever, and the AI factions all voted to increase the sea level, which would have destroyed most if not all of their cities....

Was playing a MP game recently with a MAC Version Smac.

The spartans where paying me a visit with the wierdest looking mind worm, I've ever seen. It was looking like - well, like the Giant Causeway in Ireland perhaps, which is a basalt stone formation.

Now I wonder if this was just a graphical glitch, or if the worm graphics have been changed for some factions in the MAC version?

Just two minutes ago, found a monolith hidden by a Unity module... Of course, no clue of what this module contained !

umm whats a monolith??

what game are you playing, useless? ;)

A monolith is half of a duolith.

For what it's worth, I've been struck by the astroid event as well. Left a large crater, though I only remember losing one city; it was early in the game and well before planet busters were available...

Asteroids are avalible. I'm sure I read something in the manual about it.

I've seen them. They happen. Just rarely and almost never below Talent difficulty. They also only hit you if you're in first place. (Most of the major disasters are first-place only or first-and-second only.)

I believe monoliths disappear from a 1/32 chance. Another point of leaving them alone is to reducing that risk by only using the monoliths powers on your best, most worthy units.

Thats cool.

For me the Believers just went to war with me, the next turn an astroid hit their main cities, then when I was sending my troops there, another event hit their other main cities this time it was volcano, this pretty much killed them. I was like :eek: :goodjob: (and was gald it didn't happen to me)

I had 1 synthmetal survive 35 alien mindworms!lol
1-2-1 against 35....


Well, since normal defense don't count in PSI combat, that's no surprise. More interestring is what level your synthmetal was, and did it have hypnotic trance?

Wierd thing: SMAC don't work in XP, since XP doesn't have DOS (or so my friend said; I don't really know these things...), so I haven't played SMAC in 3-4 of years... (I know XP's not that old, but it didn't work to good on my win98 pc either...) :mad: :mad: :mad:

It works with XP, here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=84247) is a link that should help

Wierd thing: SMAC don't work in XP, since XP doesn't have DOS (or so my friend said; I don't really know these things...), so I haven't played SMAC in 3-4 of years... (I know XP's not that old, but it didn't work to good on my win98 pc either...) :mad: :mad: :mad:

I don't agree! I have XP Pro on my laptop and XP Home on my desktop computer, and in both cases SMAC (and SMAC-X by the way) work.

I really think you should install it and see what happens!
If it won't work,add (or modify) the following line in your Alpha Centauri.ini file:

[PREFERENCES]
ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=0

For me the Believers just went to war with me, the next turn an astroid hit their main cities, then when I was sending my troops there, another event hit their other main cities this time it was volcano, this pretty much killed them. I was like :eek: :goodjob: (and was gald it didn't happen to me)

just shows who's side god is really on.... ;)

I've been playng smac again (it works on my xp without modification), always on transcend, i saw 5 strange things in the last couple of games:

I started a game on the sunny mensa, and there was a river all the way around the base, and only around the base, i had a moat!

I saw one tile of beliveing territory alone in my territory.

I saw a group of gigan impact rover attack a stack of gigan synthemetal. they killed at least three..

and one game I was allied with the gigans, (slowly) sweeping across the world, the gigans were having trouble and so nuked someone (randomised faction personalities), "declare vendetta on the gigans?" "no". 4 turns lated to make things go faster, i nuked a culster hive cities, so the gigans declared war on me... why is it ok if they do it?

another game i had beat one civ into submission, they swore a pact to serve me, that was fine until they allied with the spartians, which were my current target, i found this out because we had at one point units of all three nations in one of my ally's cities

Uh, who are the gigans?

I've had monoliths staying on ocean squares after using a Planet Buster.
But the weirdest thing I've seen was a fungal bloom which resulted in fungus under a base! A pity screenshots from SMAC always get black.

I've had monoliths staying on ocean squares after using a Planet Buster.
But the weirdest thing I've seen was a fungal bloom which resulted in fungus under a base! A pity screenshots from SMAC always get black.

Not always they don't. :)

http://aa.1asphost.com/Venutia/asskickery1.jpg

!!!
how'd you do that?
my screeen shots always come out strange colors...

I just found a city built on the top of that volcano..

I'm fighting a war wish the Morgans. (I'm the University.) It's very early in the game, and my military technology is about par with theirs, so I'm using mindworms. I take a base of his with my first two mindworms. The next turn, he mind controls it. A few turns later, I attack the base, killing the mindworms, and I recieve the following interlude...

-RdF

P.S. The Caretakers and Usurpers aren't even in this game.

Weirdest thing I've ever seen is probably having some units turn into aliens...
As in turn into the red guys of course!
My singularity tank instead used psi attacks as an alien...

Granted, this only happens in my rather prolonged games (they last from yr 2100 to 3000)

Another weird thing is building Fungal Towers... by enabling it I tested building one... didn't work too well... Got a baby fungus tower in my base, and it wasn't mine :(

Finally, there seems to be a unit limit in the game... I only get that after building several hundred Formers in a game... (i'm teraddicted...)

Oh... and for taking screenshots, I found this to work... by accident though :)

DirectDraw=0

Just put that in the Alpha.ini file... However, when you do, you can't see other programs like AIM and whatever music u might use... (you can still control them if u know all the hotkeys and stuff...) So i just put that line in when I wanna take a screenie.

The other day I released some mind worms back into the wild, but I did it while it was inside one of my bases.. it was just an alien mindworm in my base for the rest of the game.

To take a (non-black) screenshot of SMAC, keep the program open and use your Windows button to get your task bar to appear. Open Paint or Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop and paste the screenshot with SMAC still open.

The other day I released some mind worms back into the wild, but I did it while it was inside one of my bases.. it was just an alien mindworm in my base for the rest of the game.

Released it back into the wild? How so???

You use the transfer control option on them.

I had the Planetary conuncil completely submerge the planet under water. Luckily I had seen it coming and rushed Pressure Domes, but the AI lost most of their cities. Made winning a Diplomatic victory easy.

Haven't played this game in 2 years, but had to reply when I saw this thread. I got hit by an asteroid once. Wiped out four of my big cities like they were never there and made a second crater. Only happened to me once in probably a year of playing, so has to be a really rare feature.


Are you sure you didn't get hit by a planet buster?

Does anyone think of locusts of chiron being weird? They only appear once or twice a game, so they have the "rare-factor" going.

Does anyone think of locusts of chiron being weird? They only appear once or twice a game, so they have the "rare-factor" going.
:confused: I don't remember having ever encountered one of those!
Maybe because the translation from English is not adequate: is it the flying form of the mindworms?

Are you sure you didn't get hit by a planet buster?

Does anyone think of locusts of chiron being weird? They only appear once or twice a game, so they have the "rare-factor" going.

It was an asteroid. I seen it happen before to the Believers, right after they went to war with me.


I wouldn't really say the locusts of chiron as being weird I seen afew of them that attack.

In the really late game, Locusts are not rare at all...

As a matter of fact in the late game I usually produce some locusts, i find them almost as useful as gravships, and if I am not wrong you can get them before gravships.

it wasnt weird,but i just had to reply seeing all the people doubting metoers.i had 3 size 20+ cities in my core get hit by them.you have to be in first place overwhelmingly and have random events on

I once had a fungal tower appearing (fungal bloom) under one of my own units, and once saw another tower on top of a unity pod. After destroying the tower I could still open the pod. It happened to long ago for me to remember what I got from that pod though.

Me and my friend played Hot-seat alot, and one game, every Unity Pod hatched Mind Worms, even after reloading, it was very uncool, we did not get one, and I mean one non-mind worm pod, no free rivers, no rovers, ect... After we finished I loaded it again and suddenly I was no longer playable, it transfered my control to the computer(I was Peacekeepers and my friend was Cult) and so I then reinstalled it, saved the save games i wanted in a safe place,( I had over 400 saved games, thats how much me, my brother and my two friends played) and it fixed the mind worm bug but not the problem where it was no longer multiplayer, and at the time we were doing really well and had to start over from a previous save which was a sveral turns back.

Somewhat of an old topic, but I've taken up SMAC again lately so I thought I'd throw my hat in.

I was playing as the University once, and had this fabulous continent that was half rainy and half desert. I'd slowly been expanding to the north and east after having grabbed up all the good bits and was in the desert, encroaching on Gaian territory. I'd decided to be peaceful and had just purchased one of their cities, and was moving a Colony Pod north to expand territory further when an asteroid hit right in the same region as the city I purchased.

I decided to take it in stride and renamed it from "Garland Crater" to Tunguska. As I was sending up another Colony Pod to compensate for the loss the Gaians moved in and made all my gains in the region for naught. Then I reloaded.

Another time I was playing a rather spiffy map of Mars as the Morgans and decided that rather than outright fight the Spartans, who were occupying the nothern half of the map (Mars' north is a few kilometers lower than the south on average) I'd melt the ice-caps. Took out about half their cities and made the whole operation pretty easy.