Rik tries a bit of SMAC

Today I happened to take a look in the Alpha Centauri forum here and suddenly realising that I own a copy of this game and I've never bothered to stick it into my PC.

So about an hour ago I got my CD, fired up my PC and installed the game. And I have no clue what to do.
Version is 1.0i (or so it says).

I've started the game, clicked on random tiny map and apperently chose Gaia. Her landing looks really "red" with some dots. I can walk around with what seems a scouting unit. I can open the city screen (hardcore civilization fan, so Sid's setups are not unfamiliar). Can't seem to find a way to build things; I can click the orange build button but no dropdown menu with a list of "things to build". Clicking the buttons "explore, discover governor build and conquer" don't seem to do much - so I close the screen again.

I can walk around with my scout patrol, but I can't see much difference in soil.

...

Later on I've managed to get/build some formers (I suppose workers) but I'm unable to find a list of commands to get them to do what I want. (civ: irrigate, mine, road etc.). And if they happen to build something I have no clue what effect a "solar thingy" has.

So I restart and ask help.

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In short - I'm a newbie as big as I can be. I have a legal disc, but no manual and the interface isn't helpful. Will you teach me this game ?



Edit: I just realised I've quit the game without saving ...

I've played a bit more (still clueless).

Some small questions:
* What are the key combinations for formers (workers right?).
* When I move a unit to a square it often doesn't go there, but stays on its tile. Why is that ?
* How do my units heal ?

Hey Rik! Glad to see you here. Here're some tips to get you started:

1. Download and install the SMAC Win 2000/XP Update, even if you're running some other version of Windows.

2. Play the tutorials. There can be accessed from the Main Menu by selecting SCENARIO and then PLAY SCENARIO. The three tutorials are: 1Explore, 2Build and 3Conquer.

3. You can find a good strategy guide here.

4. I think that when you begin a new game on the Citizen difficulty level (the easiest level), you're offered the opportunity to take a "tour." Do so, as that will explain some of the concepts.

To reply to some of your specific questions:

The "red terrain with dots" is xenofungus (or just fungus for short). It has no analog in the Civ world. It's more difficult to enter and move through than other terrain. It also can harbor native life forms (similar to barbarians in Civ).

The buttons at the top of the city screen are used to set options for the base governor. The governor will automatically build things according to how you set the preferences. You can override the governor by selecting the CHANGE button on the lower left of the City Screen. SMAC is similar to Civ, in that discovering new technologies unlocks new units and buildings.

Formers are the equivalent of Civ Workers. When one of them is active, you can give it orders by selecting MENU --> TERRAFORM. You also can use this option to automate them (although eventually you'll want to turn off automation when you become more familiar with the game). The TERRAFORM menu shows you the key combinations for the various orders.

If a unit doesn't move as expected, you're may be trying to enter a fungus tile. Also, the unit may not have a full movement point left (moving on a road or river tile in general uses only 1/3 of a movement point).

Damaged units outside of a base in general heal 20% per turn, up to a maximum of 80% healed. Damaged units inside a base heal faster and up to 100% healed. Units don't heal while moving. Lots of exceptions to those rules, but we can leave that for later.

HTH

Petek

I've started the game, clicked on random tiny map and apperently chose Gaia. Her landing looks really "red" with some dots. I can walk around with what seems a scouting unit. I can open the city screen (hardcore civilization fan, so Sid's setups are not unfamiliar). Can't seem to find a way to build things; I can click the orange build button but no dropdown menu with a list of "things to build". Clicking the buttons "explore, discover governor build and conquer" don't seem to do much - so I close the screen again.

I can walk around with my scout patrol, but I can't see much difference in soil.

Click to expand...

The building project is changed with the "change" button in the lower left corner in the base screen. The buttons at the top only direct the base governor, which is just about as useless as city governors in Civ games generally are (so you're better off turning it off). You'll see the words in other places around the game, for instance all techs are classified as explore, discover, build and conquer. Alpha Centauri is from a time when the "4X" appellation was taken quite seriously .

Soil by itself produces nothing in SMAC, but moisture adds food and rockiness minerals to a tile's production. Each thousand meters of height also adds to a tile's energy production if it has a solar panel on it (Planet has a thick hazy atmosphere). Early on, especially in poor terrain, it tends to be a good idea to use formers mostly to plant forests: They fix a tile's production to 1-2-1 regardless of moisture and rockiness, though a river will still add energy to it, and later on infrastructure will increase their production. Working those and some farms will get you pretty decent production and a manageable growth speed early on.

* When I move a unit to a square it often doesn't go there, but stays on its tile. Why is that ?

Click to expand...

You're trying to move on top of xenofungus, i.e. that red stuff growing all over the place that's the dominant life form on Planet. Most factions will want to avoid xenofungus as much as they can and start removing it early, since mindworms (Planet's native life and barbarians du jour) spawn in it and move on it as if it was road. And because it's hard for your units to move in it, and enemies can hide in it, and it produces very little and you can't build improvements in it before you get a lot of Centauri tech, etc..

Gaians like xenofungus a bit more than the other factions, though. Moving into xenofungus sometimes causes a mindworm to pop up. The Gaians, with their +1 social engineering planet rating, can capture mindworms by attacking them with any combat unit (this is guaranteed to work for your first mindworm, and will keep working reasonably often after that). They also get +1 food production in fungus tiles, but that's somewhat unlikely to be useful before the late game, so the Gaians will want to terraform for their production, too.

I've found and played the tutorials - thanks.
Now playing faction v faction , believers v University , citizen and getting my butt handed to me on a silver plate. I don't understand why. Every battle (attack or defense) I seem to lose.

And I don't understand the "upgrade thingy". It says it upgrades fine, but I see no effects. And I seem to be able to upgrade a landunit into a boat ?? Strange to me ....

Rik Meleet said:

I've found and played the tutorials - thanks.
Now playing faction v faction , believers v University , citizen and getting my butt handed to me on a silver plate. I don't understand why. Every battle (attack or defense) I seem to lose.

And I don't understand the "upgrade thingy". It says it upgrades fine, but I see no effects. And I seem to be able to upgrade a landunit into a boat ?? Strange to me ....

Click to expand...

Are you playing as Believers or University?

With the believers you should crush the University. Just build probe teams( similar to Civ 2 spies) and steal your way to tech parity. Believers have a probe team advantage and University a penalty so this should be easy. Believers also have + 25% to attack which is great.

With the University you might be able to research your way to superior units with your huge research advantage. Your defense should be based on attacking first because of the Believers afore mentioned attack bonus.


With either changing your social engineering choices to something that boosts morale is good. Higher morale units get attack and defense bonuses. Build a command center( analogous to a barracks ) in all bases that will be producing military units for moral upgrades. You can also move every unit to a monolith to get a one-time morale upgrade. Fast units get attack bonuses on open ground and infantry units get attack bonuses against enemy bases. Also peruse the datalinks(F1) as they hold a wealth of information.

Fugitive Sisyphus said:

Are you playing as Believers or University?

Click to expand...

I was white; they were orange.

With the believers you should crush the University. Just build probe teams( similar to Civ 2 spies) and steal your way to tech parity. Believers have a probe team advantage and University a penalty so this should be easy. Believers also have + 25% to attack which is great.

With the University you might be able to research your way to superior units with your huge research advantage. Your defense should be based on attacking first because of the Believers afore mentioned attack bonus.

With either changing your social engineering choices to something that boosts morale is good.

Click to expand...

And how do I do that ?

Higher morale units get attack and defense bonuses. Build a command center( analogous to a barracks ) in all bases that will be producing military units for moral upgrades. You can also move every unit to a monolith to get a one-time morale upgrade.

Click to expand...

You mean 1 by 1 or simultaneously ?

Fast units get attack bonuses on open ground and infantry units get attack bonuses against enemy bases. Also peruse the datalinks(F1) as they hold a wealth of information.

Click to expand...

I'll try that.

Rik Meleet said:

I've found and played the tutorials - thanks.
Now playing faction v faction , believers v University , citizen and getting my butt handed to me on a silver plate. I don't understand why. Every battle (attack or defense) I seem to lose.

And I don't understand the "upgrade thingy". It says it upgrades fine, but I see no effects. And I seem to be able to upgrade a landunit into a boat ?? Strange to me ....

Click to expand...

If you haven't already done so, go MENU --> GAME --> Adv. Preferences and select Confirm odds before attacking. That will help you to avoid attacking when the odds are against you.

The "upgrade thingy" is probably what is usually called a monolith. As mentioned above, it "upgrades" your unit to a higher morale level. Morale levels in SMAC are analogous to veteran or elite units in older versions of Civ. Press the F1 key within game to go to the datalinks. You can read more about morale there. You can truly upgrade units if better weapons or armor are available. Select a unit and press Ctrl-U to upgrade it, or press U to go into the Design Workshop to upgrade an entire class of units all at once. However, you can't upgrade a unit to one with a different chassis, so a land unit can't be upgraded to a sea unit, for example. Not sure what you were seeing there.

Petek said:

If you haven't already done so, go MENU --> GAME --> Adv. Preferences and select Confirm odds before attacking. That will help you to avoid attacking when the odds are against you.

The "upgrade thingy" is probably what is usually called a monolith. As mentioned above, it "upgrades" your unit to a higher morale level. Morale levels in SMAC are analogous to veteran or elite units in older versions of Civ. Press the F1 key within game to go to the datalinks. You can read more about morale there. You can truly upgrade units if better weapons or armor are available. Select a unit and press Ctrl-U to upgrade it, or press U to go into the Design Workshop to upgrade an entire class of units all at once. However, you can't upgrade a unit to one with a different chassis, so a land unit can't be upgraded to a sea unit, for example. Not sure what you were seeing there.

Click to expand...

I'll take a screenshot of it when I'm playing next time.

This is what I meant by upgrade. I select this unit and activate it. First picture. Then I press U and this upgrade screen comes up. But there it doesn't show the basic unit type the way I chose - from a wheeled unit I see an infantry unit. I can change "Chassis" from infantry to other things like boathulls, but it all doesn't seem to work. Even when I see comments like "upgrade succesful" or something similar.

Now I see what you're saying. When you go into the Design Workshop, it will not necessarily take you to the unit that's selected on the main screen. If you want to upgrade the ECM Plasma Skirmisher, you have to find it at the bottom of the Design Workshop (looks like it's #15) and click on its thumbnail. You then should be able to upgrade it, if possible. What happened when you opened the workshop is that the system designed a new unit (an ECM Plasma Garrison). You can tell it's a new type of unit because its slot on the bottom (#18) is still empty. In this case, if you click the upgrade button, it will try to find an already-designed unit that's in the ECM Plasma Garrison's upgrade path. If it finds such, it will say "Upgrade Complete", but nothing actually happens, except that the ECM Plasma Garrison never gets "designed."

The design Workshop interface is poorly designed. It took awhile when the game first came out to figure out details like this.

Rik Meleet said:

I was white; they were orange.

Click to expand...

If you were white you were the University.

And how do I do that ?

Click to expand...

Hit 'e' and get to the social engineering screen. Depending on your spot in the tech tree and your faction you will have different social engineering choices. I believe you can click on the morale button to make the choices that maximize morale.

To steal tech just build a probe team and send it to the nearest enemy city just like in Civ2. You can even go into the design workshop(hit 'w' ) and make a probe team with a boat chassis to make it insanely easy.

Started a new game as the "Hive" and started conquering cities. Orange capitulated to me (Marian or something).

Just wondering - what do 'probes' do ?

A save from the game - care to comment / advise / critisize ?
Thanks

Rik Meleet said:

Started a new game as the "Hive" and started conquering cities. Orange capitulated to me (Marian or something).

Just wondering - what do 'probes' do ?

Click to expand...

Probes are espionage, or spy, units. I want to say that they behave similar to spies in Civ 2, but that might not be accurate. Anyway, you can send a Probe Team to another faction's base and attempt to move into the base. One of two events will take place:

1. If the other faction has a Probe Team in the base, the two probes will engage in probe combat. The result of the combat is based on the relative morale of the two units. The one with the higher morale usually wins.
2. If the base isn't defended by a Probe Team, you'll get a list of actions, such as infiltrate datalinks, steal tech, sabotage facilities and so on. Some actions cost energy credits. Most actions carry a risk of failure and if the other faction detects your probing, the might declare vendetta (but you can attempt to blame another faction for your spying).

Probes can also be used to subvert other faction's units. You do so by attempting to move the probe onto the tile occupied by the unit. Again, it costs a certain amount of energy credits to subvert. ("Subvert" means that the unit then belongs to your faction.) Stacked units can't be subverted.

That should get you started.

Rik Meleet said:

A save from the game - care to comment / advise / critisize ?
Thanks

Click to expand...

Well, you're winning big time. You're playing at Citizen level, which is almost like sandbox mode. Next game should be at a higher difficulty. I see that you're allowing the base governors to control base production and the formers all appear to be automated. That's fine for now, but you'll eventually want to take more control if you progress to higher difficulty levels. You might want to take control of just one former and use it to plant forests. The general opinion is that automated formers don't plant enough forests.

Have you looked at the Social Engineering screen (press the E key)? There are some interesting things going on there. Currently you're running Police State and Planned. Those are both ideal choices for the Hive since Yang doesn't receive inefficiency penalties from either option. You also have the possibilities of running either Knowledge or Wealth. You can click on either choice to see its effect in the Social Engineering box at the bottom center of the screen. Selecting Knowledge will decrease the number of turns to research a tech, but will make you more vulnerable to enemy probe actions. Selecting Wealth will increase your net income and base production, but will decrease the morale of your troops. Also, your SE choices greatly influence the other factions' attitude toward you, similar to the choice of a state religion in Civ 4. In this case, selecting Wealth will cause both Zak and Santi to tend to dislike you. Choosing Knowledge will cause Zak to tend to like you and Santi to tend to dislike you. The other remaining factions will be indifferent to either choice. So, there's a lot to think about in making an SE choice.

Great to see some more people playing SMAC/X. Keep at it!

Alpha Centauri is very similar to civ2. Infact, I'd say its more like a professional mod of civ2 than a whole new game. Its still very fun!

Rik Meleet said:

I have a legal disc, but no manual and the interface isn't helpful.

Click to expand...

Petek,

Could you clarify CFC policy? At 'poly, it was OK to refer people to a certain site that had copies of manuals. Is this the case with CFC?

Thanks.

vyeh said:

Petek,

Could you clarify CFC policy? At 'poly, it was OK to refer people to a certain site that had copies of manuals. Is this the case with CFC?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Well, the FAQ says that you can't post copyrighted material unless either you or CivFanatics owns the copyright. By extension, you also can't post links to such material unless one of the above exceptions applies.

@Rik -- If you haven't already done so, you might want to check the disc. Some versions contain a pdf file of the manual.