Very positive experience with the Thinker mod

Psyringe

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Dec 7, 2001
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Berlin, Germany
Hi! I haven't posted here for a long time, but I've been playing SMAC/SMAX on and off since they came out. Every few years I want to experience it again, because I think it has amazingly well thought-out mechanics and a fascinatingly implemented setting. However, similar to Planet's consciousness, I was kind of stuck in a loop: every time I re-learned the mechanics, I also realized that the AI simply doesn't understand how to play it beyond the very start, and thus using mechanics like crawlers, high-end terraforming, satellites etc. in games against the AI kind of felt like cheating. That usually made me drop the game again for a couple years.

I have now played a full game with the Thinker mod (v4.8), and I'm amazed by what it accomplished! I finally can, and actually have to, use mechanics and tactics that I previously ignored. It felt like a dream come true! Perhaps this is (similar to The Voice of Planet) the "injection of infomation" that will finally bring the game to the next stage of its evolution. I'd like to share my experience in case anyone's interested. Please note that this will neither be a proper review of the mod (not possible after just one game), nor will it be an AAR, but a look at various aspects of my gameplay experience and describe how the mod affected it. The game I played used a standard-size map, Librarian difficulty, with me as Domai against Yang, Roze, Zakharov, Svensgaard, Aki-Zeta 5, and H'Minee. I largely used standard options, including "blind research". I feel that the original SMAC/SMAX AI was never meant to handle things like targeted reseach, lots of Unity pods, or "Spoils of War", so I stopped using them at some point, though it might be worthwhile to test whether the Thinker AI can handle them. Not in this game I'm reporting on, though.

First, a few words on the new map editor, which I used to generate two maps. The first one was a bit odd. I did use the "same amount of space for everyone" option on a standard-size map favoring continents. Regardless, I had one rival capital 7 tiles to the west of me (expanding towards me), another rival capital 7 tiles to the east (expanding towards me), and so I could only expand into a peninsula to the north ... until Marr landed there 12 tiles away from my capital, and the only direction he could expand to was into me.

I suspect that this was a statistical fluke with the new map generator, because a) I doubt that was the intended outcome, and b) the second map that I generated, fulfilled all the criteria I wanted - one large continent, 2 bigger islands, and enough room for everyone to expand. But the reason I'm mentioning it, is that I want to ask whether the "same amount of space for everyone" option takes progenitor factions into account.

Regarding AI expansion and terraforming: The AI factions kept expanding throughout the game (filling the ocean with bases after land got occupied). Yang and I were in a tight race for the same areas (including Uranium flats), that was fun. Roze and Zakharov were neighbours, but didn't expand much in my direction. That probably was a good decision from their perspective since the area between us was very arid, and Roze had better land available elsewhere. Zakharov didn't expand much at all - he started near the Unity wreckage and built a few bases around it, but it was going very slowly. I suppose a sort-of peninsula with the Unity wreckage is not that great to fuel expansion.

The terraforming has improved tremendously. The AI is finally using high-end terraforming options effectively. I can also automate my own formers and trust them to not mess up my economy. This took a lot of tedium and micromanagement out of the game for me. Previously, I felt that I had to micromanage my formers, because otherwise they might do silly or useless things. Now I feel letting them autoimprove their base leads to good results already.

I didn't use base governors yet, so can't comment on those. I did appreciate the "partial payment" option a lot. I did notice some oddities with worker allocation and specialist assignment: Sometimes, in the same base, the governor would assign most workers to land squares at one time, but would then remove almost all workers and use them as specialists just a few turns later. I never found out what made the difference. Clicking on the center square with the base would sometimes assign all population as workers even if that would cause drone riots, at other times it would create lots of specialists, and often it wouldn't change anything. In the midgame, engineers were sometimes favored over doctors even when drone riots were imminent. I also ran into situations where I clicked on one pop in a group of engineers, assigned them as a worker, and the game suddenly changed all of the non-talent population into engineers and doctors - not sure if that was intended.

Regarding military, I saw many improvements. When I attacked H'minee with ground troops, she launched a naval invasion at one of my less protected bases behind the frontline, effectively forcing a truce because I couldn't afford losing that base. I've also seen missiles used by the AI for the first time - not sure if they are all that useful, but it's certainly nice to see the AI diversify its military.

That said, the AI still couldn't counter my military effectively. Yang took one base from me and nominally had the biggest military, but I took it back and then proceeded to take all of his and Svensgaard's bases as well, who had declared war on me in the meantime. I lucked out on getting needlejets, as well as weapons of strength 10 and 14, all very early. The AI was never able to counter my airforce, I simply shredded everything with a large fleet of needlejets and used cheap scout rovers to conquer the empty bases. But I was also playing as Domai and outproduced everyone. And I was only at "Librarian" difficulty. I think I need to play more than one game to assess the new military AI's abilities properly.

Diplomacy felt actually much better than before, even though the mod creator said he made only some small changes. It was nice to have the silly "everyone's ganging up on the human player" not kick in. Roze and Zakharov were my pact brother/sister throughout most of the game, even when I started refusing their tech requests. They eventually dropped down to "treaty" level, but never declared war on me. Even when I tried out an Economic Victory, they were battling themselves for second place rather than trying to get to my capital. That felt "right" to me from a roleplaying perspective - I had kept a "Noble" reputation throughout the entire game and never did either faction any harm. It always feels a bit cheesy/gamey to me when long-term friends suddenly turn on me for no other reason than "oh no, he might win the game".

I noticed one bug, though I'm not sure if it's related to Thinker: Even though Zakharov and Aki-Zeta were at war at some point, Zakharov still had a unit in Aki-Zeta's capital, and another one stacked with one of Aki-Zeta's attack rovers. I was at war with Aki-Zeta too, but had a treaty with Zakharov. This constellation meant that I could neither conquer Aki-Zeta's base nor the rover, because the game would select Zakharov's unit as the defender and warn me that I would break my treaty with him. Odd. I don't remember that happening in any previous game I played.

I didn't run into any other obvious bugs. The mod also ran very stable, not a single crash in more than 100 hours. I feel I can safely use Ironman mode with this mod, it feels very polished and well-tested.

And finally a word about the few rules changes the mod made. I'm usually very skeptical when unofficial bugfixing patches or AI mods also change game mechanics, as the latter are often a matter of opinion, and (as someone who was heavily involved in the creation of the unoffical code patch for Morrowind) I always felt that all players should be able to enjoy the fixes/improvements, regardless of whether they agree with the rules changes or not. However, I think Thinker does a good job at keeping its rule changes optional, and I actually agree with them so far. Copters, for example, definitely were overpowered (and probably still are, if fitted with a high-end reactor and Antigrav Struts), and the customizable "moves used per attack" parameter is a good way to balance that. The reduced healing felt pretty natural to me. I'm not so sure about the changes to reactors, I feel the level 4 reactors got shafted a little.

I'm happy to answer questions or enter discussions, but please be aware that (sorry for the sudden dark mood) I probably won't be around for much longer, and will undoubtedly have other priorities in the near future. But I hope to have made a few people curious about a mod that - imho - definitely deserves more attention. Feel free to copy this text to any place you feel it might help.
:)
 
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Interesting notes there. It is also encouraged for others to post any longer reviews on this forum so they don't get lost on other discussions. Recently I did several bug fixing iterations on the latest releases, so it should be quite stable. So far almost all of the issue reports have dealt with AI tuning or balance fixes, so that could be considered a success. There are several additional areas on which to expand the game engine rewrites if I keep doing this but the mod already reimplements a very substantial portion of the original game mechanics. :)
 
Good to know. I need to test this mod as soon as I finish my current game. I'm a big fan of SMAC and have been playing it for over 20 years. From what I can tell from the description, the mod seems to be a good piece of work, and I honestly think it will be a lot of fun, just like the first game in Caster of Magic. Thx
I made a few changes myself to make the game more challenging because, after getting familiar with the mechanics, certain technologies come to quickly and provide too much of an advantage.
 
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