Good AI is key

[Jarek Noschese]

When I bought the GOG.com remake, I was convinced that the AI had legitimately gotten better. Boy, was I wrong. Neither the other factions nor the Mind Worms give either the inexperienced players (I.e. myself) a chance or even the experienced players (~100% of everyone else here) a genuine challenge. Its now of no wonder to me as to why this game has absolutely no high scores’ leaderboards. Achieving a high score in this game makes even less sense than trying to do it in Civ2. The game simply doesn’t let you get ahead.

This is absolutely not a joke, “until MY 2322” is NOT EVEN CLOSE to being enough time for the human to prepare for the then infinite Fungal Blooms.

The starting locations for literally everyone make LITERALLY ZERO sense. “Too little room” is NOT a valid excuse for the starts to LITERALLY OVERLAP INTO the HQ bases. You NEVER “have enough time to prepare” for the AIs’ begging you for your tech, even if they offer you something else in return. The same goes for when the AI begs for money.

I’ll list other problems later. I’m too frustrated to properly type right now.

 

[Agent Miles]

Prioritize discovering Heavy Artillery. Give the garrison infantry unit in every base your best offensive gun with heavy artillery. Make a few Speeder heavy artillery units, too. The garrisons should bombard any unit out to two tiles, weakening them before they can attack the base. The Speeder artillery can move 5 tiles on roads and still bombard to further weaken the enemy. Pound the worms into dog food and a Speeder with Empath Song can finish them off.

Have you looked at the "Less is more" (LIM) saved games I posted? Just give the AI factions what they want. It's not like they are any threat. Make a sea base off of your shore and then give it to an AI faction. They'll love you for it. If you get trade with them, then you'll more than make back what you spent to create the sea base.

With the LIM strategy, you should only generate Eco-Damage to raise the limit on the amount of minerals a base can produce. After that, your bases should be ED free. However, you can do this:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ever-done-this.560126/

Good luck!

P.S. Also, the game doesn't have a glitch where you can exploit something to get a score in the millions. So just play to win.

Here's turn 2201 on the 7 of 9 game I posted. I'm already ahead of the other factions and building up the bases.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

I know a SMACer who finds the same sort of thing irritating. He's been trying to mod out/lessen the stuff that makes him mad for nearly three years now. Try the mod here https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=20959.msg114452#msg114452 and see if that helps... He'd LOVE feedback...

 

[Agent Miles]

Here's a game I just started. You can use it to make a comparison.

 

[Concept]

Speaking about the AI, If you are at war with any AI in Alpha Centauri - the AI will always stupidly attack a SYNTH PROBE TEAM, once its availiable to you, and you use your Unit Workshop to produce these units.

One strategy is to use these defensive phalanx like unit as an offensive siege like unit in the AIs territory, surronding their cities and key resources, which they cant use when you are on top of. I dont suggest getting the speeder version, because that effectively doubles the unit cost, even though the normal probe team suggestion has that, but they make poor defensive units. Also, when I say, the AI stupidly attacks these units, I mean, they'll deplete their base defense against them too, losing. Also, since any type of probe team is effectively a "clean" unit, even without that technology, requiring zero support - this makes it perfect to mass, and since its not considered a military unit, you can even charge them forward into battle with a Free Market Economy, meaning zero unhappiness. Once an opponents base is well sieged enough, send in a mobile token military speeder unit to take each city, and its alright to then "sacrifice" some of these units in their base for free technologies. And then, I also think these units make excellent defense at your own bases too. The only technology needed is Planetary Networks and Industrial Economics, I think.