What kind of rule modifications would you recommend?

[LesCanadiens]

I mean editing alpha.txt or alphax.txt to produce changes in gameplay ie increasing road movement from 3 to 4. What kind of modifications have you made and would you recommend?

 

[DilithiumDad]

1. There are provisions in alpha.txt to give bonuses to those attacking or defending uphill, but are left unimplemented. It is easy to turn these on and this has been play-tested.

2. Increasing naval move points by two, as in CivIII-Conquests, helps make naval units more useful.

3. Many people feel air units, especially 'copters, are overpowered. I would suggest reducing needlejet range to 8, 'copter range to 5, and doubling the cost of all air units. They would still be valuable and worth beelining too, but not immediately game-ending.

4. Attack is grossly favored over defense. I suggest:
a. Increasing base defense bonus from 25% to 50%
b. Increasing sensor defense bonus from 25% to 50%
c. Increasing ECM defense bonus from 50% to 100%
d. Increasing AAA defense bonus from 100% to 125%
e. Increasing resonance bonus from 25% to 50%

5. These defense bonuses would unbalance psi combat, so some adjustments may be necessary. Have not tested this for balance.

 

[slappy]

Yeah, helicopters are deadly. Once I have em, that's usually the end of the game. The problem there seems more AI-related than a function of airpower itself. (And this may not be true at higher difficulty settings.) If the AI were smarter in responding to helicopter attacks, I wouldn't rely so heavily on them at the midgame stage.

Also, it might be good if you could restrict the blitz power of a copter to the level of its power source. That way, a fission copter could attack once per turn while a singularity copter could attack four times. I don't know if that's something that can be easily implemented, though.

 

[Terje]

If you don't like small bases, or if you're not too expirienced in the game, I would recommend to decrease the # of nutrients comsumed pr. turn from 2 to 1.
Since this makes everything evolve quicker, I would suggest that you also change the tech discovery rate from 100 to 150 or maybe 200, to make the tech balance a little better.

Other than that, I don't like to change the game much, since I yesterday somehow set the mandatory retirement date to year 1. Which was kinda lame...

 

[FinnMcCool]

I'm with Terje on this one, I'm reluctant to adjust gameplay rules unless there is also a file that explains each element. I've seen the ALPHA.txt file, and it
looks to me like that's the file where tweaks are made. Just to be sure though, I'd feel better if someone experienced validates this. Do game tweaks happen in the ALPHA.txt file? I know faction tweaks are done in the FACTION.txt file...

 

[The Person]

I made some modifications to the faction files once, but not more than that. I'm still more into Civ2 than SMAC, editing-wise, too.

 

[FinnMcCool]

BIG illogical decision to give FREE MARKET the -5 POLICE! Sheesh. No one
would want to take that Social Plan, unless also taking POLICE STATE. So it
would be a society with a "Police State Free Market"... and that just doesn't
make sense to me.
I've tweaked the ALPHA.txt file to make sure the Morganites have the chance
at least to get rich and decadent enough to ACTUALLY corner the energy
market--without also having to conquer several factions and reduce the rest
to pitiful slaves...

The original alpha.txt file has
Free Market, IndEcon, ++ECONOMY, ---PLANET, -----POLICE

I've changed that to
Free Market, IndEcon, ++ECONOMY, --PLANET, +INDUSTRY

Why should Free Market give you a +2, -3 and -5 for a total of -6 while the
other Societies have +3, -2 and +4, -2? I actually think Sir Sid designed the
social scale so bad to make it obvious that we should tweak it. My reasons
for the change are simple: no POLICE negative because the people WANT
a Free Market. A plus INDUSTRY because it stimulates business...

I've also tweaked the MORGAN faction file to give:

Morgan Industries, The Mogul, Morganites, M, 2, Morgan, M, -1, 0, 0, 1, 1,
TECH, Indust, ENERGY, 100, SOCIAL, ++ECONOMY, POPULATION, 3,
COMMERCE, 1, SOCIAL, -SUPPORT

A +2 ECONOMY will give him lots of energy credits to instantly launch an
attack by buying high-tech gadgets if necessary, but the "-1,0,0,1,1" means
"ai-fight, ai-power, ai-tech, ai-wealth, ai-growth" which should make the ai
want to seek wealth and growth but not combat and Council influence. This
seems a safe balance.


I've also tweaked the other Society numbers:
Original SE:
Police State, DocLoy, ++POLICE, ++SUPPORT, --EFFIC

I've changed it to:
Police State, DocLoy, +EFFIC, +SUPPORT, ++POLICE, ---GROWTH

This makes more sense. Fascist governments are always more efficient at
distributing wealth, and the GROWTH -3 because people are less inclined to
breed under tyranny...

The original SE WEALTH:
Wealth, IndAuto, +INDUSTRY, +ECONOMY, --MORALE

Making all Morganite combat units very weak. A sitting duck. I've tweaked to
Wealth, IndAuto, +INDUSTRY, +ECONOMY, -MORALE

Also
Thought Control, WillPow, ++POLICE, ++MORALE, ++PROBE, -SUPPORT

Off-hand, I don't recall any Special Project that reduces the negative effect of
Thought Control, only Cybernetic.

 

[Terje]

Cloning Vats. Or was that Police State and Power?

 

[Sargon of Agade]

Cloning vats is correct, it does both Power and TC...
The Minus growth under a fascist state is an oxymoron. Fascist governments put great emphasis on the family, motherhood ect, so if anything A Fascist state should promote growth, which it does because fascism should be a power or knowledge+planned+policestate, a police state does not have to be fascist, it could be a military Junta or Dictatorship or a Communist state. I complety disagree with the changes made to Police state. I think morgan should have a plus 1 industry, another +1 to economy would make them too powerful.
I think Freemarket should be tweaked, but I would not change it the way you did. I faith that they handicaped it so much because play testing proved that it had to be; +2 economy in addition to another benifit and only -3 planet would make it so overpowered and would essentially make the early game to unbalanced. I think I would only give it -3 police and -3 planet, but I would not add another benifit...

 

[DilithiumDad]

After a couple months of testing and discussion, I have completed a re-write of alpha.txt. It works well and is balanced.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=125561

I left the economy section of the SE table as is. Most people think Free Market/Planned/Green choices are pretty well balanced. But I did some changes to strengthen Police State and Fundamentalist relative to Democracy (most people's choice throughout the game). I also got rid of the crippling Industry penalty in Power and replaced it with --Research and -Planet, which is more manageable. I also gave -Planet to Wealth, which is overused by most people. I have +Planet to Knowledge.

Anyway, download it, try it out and tell me what you think!!

 

[Cataphract887]

if you made people only need 1 food not 2,its way to fast.i already tried doing these changes and IMHO take away from the fun of the game,but of course if you like it play it

Many people feel air units, especially 'copters, are overpowered. I would suggest reducing needlejet range to 8, 'copter range to 5, and doubling the cost of all air units. They would still be valuable and worth beelining too, but not immediately game-ending.

a medium increase in cost and small range minus works on needlejets if you boost AAA to make beelineing for it viable.

4. Attack is grossly favored over defense. I suggest:
a. Increasing base defense bonus from 25% to 50%
b. Increasing sensor defense bonus from 25% to 50%
c. Increasing ECM defense bonus from 50% to 100%
d. Increasing AAA defense bonus from 100% to 125%
e. Increasing resonance bonus from 25% to 50%

i increased AAA to 150% and gonna try 200%,but increasing the cost of this ability.these units hsould be less seen and more powerful when they are encountered.attack is only unfair outside of base,but can you modify the terrain boosts?if flat land gave 50% to defence 30 attack still beats 12 defence,but thats good.resonance defence needs no boosting IMHO

Yeah, helicopters are deadly. Once I have em, that's usually the end of the game. The problem there seems more AI-related than a function of airpower itself. (And this may not be true at higher difficulty settings.) If the AI were smarter in responding to helicopter attacks, I wouldn't rely so heavily on them at the midgame stage.

i reduce range of copters to 4,no other changes,making them a close in weapon.

BIG illogical decision to give FREE MARKET the -5 POLICE! Sheesh. No one
would want to take that Social Plan, unless also taking POLICE STATE. So it
would be a society with a "Police State Free Market"... and that just doesn't
make sense to me.

people take that choice with democracy\knowledge all the time free market is the most powerful SE choice already,if anything more negatives could be added.

Morgan Industries, The Mogul, Morganites, M, 2, Morgan, M, -1, 0, 0, 1, 1,
TECH, Indust, ENERGY, 100, SOCIAL, ++ECONOMY, POPULATION, 3,
COMMERCE, 1, SOCIAL, -SUPPORT

A +2 ECONOMY will give him lots of energy credits to instantly launch an
attack by buying high-tech gadgets if necessary, but the "-1,0,0,1,1" means
"ai-fight, ai-power, ai-tech, ai-wealth, ai-growth" which should make the ai
want to seek wealth and growth but not combat and Council influence. This
seems a safe balance.

i once thought that way,but that means you run democracy\green\knowledge and simply cruise through the game on autopilot.+2 econ at start makes morgan unstopable

've changed it to:
Police State, DocLoy, +EFFIC, +SUPPORT, ++POLICE, ---GROWTH

This makes more sense. Fascist governments are always more efficient at
distributing wealth, and the GROWTH -3 because people are less inclined to
breed under tyranny...

sorry,but this just made me laugh.free nations are faaaar better at distributing wealth,while fascist governments simply bungle things.where is the cave you are living in?

 

[Terje]

if you made people only need 1 food not 2,its way to fast.i already tried doing these changes and IMHO take away from the fun of the game,but of course if you like it play it

Yeah, I noticed that, so I've reduced research speed to 40%. Quite a nuisance when playing Miriam, but since I nearly never do that, I manage

Running 100% research speed with 1nut pr. citizen pr. turn is too fast.

 

[DilithiumDad]

I don't like 1 nutrient per citizen at all.

You can get an acceleration that is more manageable by increasing resources, as I did in TurboSMAC:

2, 2, 2 from Recycling Tanks
3, 3, 3 from monoliths
+2 for farms
+2 for solar
+3 for all bonus squares
increase the number of techs that give more resources from fungus
reduce number of turns needed for terraforming

Also, I reduced the length of nutrient rows from 10 to 6.

 

[FinnMcCool]

quoting Cataphract:

>> I've changed it to:
Police State, DocLoy, +EFFIC, +SUPPORT, ++POLICE, ---GROWTH

This makes more sense. Fascist governments are always more efficient at
distributing wealth, and the GROWTH -3 because people are less inclined to
breed under tyranny...

sorry,but this just made me laugh.free nations are faaaar better at distributing
wealth,while fascist governments simply bungle things.where is the cave you
are living in?<<

I guess the cave I'm living in is called PLATO'S CAVE!! You know, the one
where everyone looks at the shadows on the wall and calls it reality, while
the one who looks OUTSIDE the cave and sees the color, the dimension, is
called crazy??? Free nations are terrible at distributing wealth. It gets wasted
in such things as "kickbacks", "corruption", "lobbying", "fraud", "gerrymandering"
the list goes on and on... It takes a fascist to simply wipe out all the snouts in
the trough, irrespective of anyone's rights. I'm not saying a Police State is a
good thing, in reality, I'm simply trying to translate the facts of life into a game
scenario to reflect the choices available to a world-creator...

When you say, "free nations are faaaar better at distributing wealth,while fascist
governments simply bungle things..." I'm unhappily convinced that The Age Of
Innocence is not yet over...

+EFFIC for Police State. WORD.

Although. I like your idea of reducing 'copters range to 4. They are game-enders
otherwise, since they have the multiple-attack option.

As for "Free Market is the most powerful SE option..." I just don't get it. Maybe
I'm dense, but I think the -5 POLICE is so crippling that it can't be taken as an
option. Unless you use Punishment Spheres a lot. And that's a pretty late-game
option...

Believe me, giving the Morganites +2 Economy makes them seriously powerful,
but they're usually a wimpy non-player AI and even when I played them, they
had to eliminate several players to even TRY to corner the market. What I'm
doing is creating a player that can realisticly corner the market (Economic Win)
whithout having to initiate even a single war. Pacifist victory. Of course, the
game won't let pacifism happen, since the AI players will always backstab, but
I'm trying to tweak the Morganites so they can at least respect their actual,
ACTUAL economic victory. I don't think it's overpowering at all.

Of course, the test would be to use this tweak and play some other character,
and see how the Morganites do...

 

[FinnMcCool]

I've played several games where I steal a Secret Project from a rival faction, by
building up one base researching something less useful, then stealing the tech
for a more useful SP and switching over immediately to the more useful SP,
which is a sneaky way of gaining a SP! Just now, I sent several Probe Teams
after my THREE enemies, who were all researching the Hunter-Seeker Alg.
which if you ask me, is absolutely essential to have, for an economic victory.
So far, I've never gotten that tech by a Probe Team... So I conquered a base
and got the tech, immediately switched from Ascetic Virtues to HSA, and
voila! I've got it in one turn with less then 100 credits spent.

IMHO, tweak the alpha.txt file to make secret projects change be at 50%
spent energy... At least...

 

[Cataphract887]

I guess the cave I'm living in is called PLATO'S CAVE!! You know, the one
where everyone looks at the shadows on the wall and calls it reality, while
the one who looks OUTSIDE the cave and sees the color, the dimension, is
called crazy??? Free nations are terrible at distributing wealth. It gets wasted
in such things as "kickbacks", "corruption", "lobbying", "fraud", "gerrymandering"
the list goes on and on... It takes a fascist to simply wipe out all the snouts in
the trough, irrespective of anyone's rights. I'm not saying a Police State is a
good thing, in reality, I'm simply trying to translate the facts of life into a game
scenario to reflect the choices available to a world-creator...

you must be refering to mussolini's or hitler's efficent super powered economy states or the mighty soviet unioin,that collapses cause it cant even pay the postage to mail troop orders

if 50% of the wealth in a free market econ was wasted,it would still have more power and vitality than any police state government.look at real life the US has huge percentages of the worlds wealth,while china etc have zilch


your right-total control states are efficent at bringing everyone to the lowest level.while in the US hard work can elevate yourself.you tried looking at a history book of the last 100 years or so??

 

[Cataphract887]

and on the free market as an SE choice,try probe teams for defense and zero troops.none.rec commons and holo theaters make happyness and 20% psych allocation keeps everyone happy or sometimes even starts golden ages...

econ victory is easy with morgan,even on transcend with +2 econ.beeline for planetery economics and hit it.dont spend your cash,just build it up as you go.knowledge+green+democracy are the settings to go with.free market+wealth if it looks like you cant get enough cash.seriously,the AI is a total pushover,how could you not win? i get my SP's from crawlers,and aside from the first seven,that i let the AI grab,i get them all the turn after i get the tech

 

[Sargon of Agade]

Again, your reference to Fascism is moot, Just because a country is in a Police State doesn't automatically make it fascist. Furthermore, The redistribution of wealth would happen in the Planned portion of the social engineering(or Free Market if you mean the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer), the Police state would hamber economic freedoms, not redistribute wealth....
the Changes to wealth( I don't think the negatives need to be changed, but maybe add another +1 to industry?), Free Market and the Morgans seem to me that you create one way overpowered ideal (IE Morgan + FM + Wealth) and you eliminate any sense of actual balance that was once in the game. I agree that FM should be changed(The -5 is a little much, but it makes sense that people would be more unhappy when they see their job go to someone else and have to pay an arm and a leg to pay off their dept, however I think that a reduction to -3 or -4 would be more then enough to be more appealing, and maybe more fair) but to add more benifits would hurt balance, I agree that morgan should have a +1or +2 industry rating, but to give him +2 economy would make him unfair from the begining and further unbalance play...
The changes your propose just seem too drastic and don't seem to be based on anything but making an economic win a peace of cake for Morgan...

 

[Cataphract887]

Sargon,im not sure if your are refeering to me,but fascism\police state is identical in my mind.correct me if im wrong tho and i tend to think of police state+planned as the same as i never ever ever use either of those unless im yang or pop booming

do you have any analysis or statistics showing the SE to be unballanced?except for power and the future choices,it seems perfect balance wise.

 

[FinnMcCool]

This thread is starting to let the real world leak in. Cataphract has some good
ideas (less -POLICE) but the references to history aren't on-point. Those
smiley emoticons are misplaced.

As for Sargon's suggestion that tweaking the ECON for Morgan makes it a
"piece of cake".... Sigh. OF COURSE IT'S A PIECE OF CAKE TO WIN, you
pucilanimous nit!!! I've won several games as Morgan, but it always involves
conquering so much that the Market Takeover involves weak AI opponents.
What I'm trying to do is create a Morgan that can remain passive, not get
swamped in Viet Nams and Iraqs, (oops! reality leaks in...) and accumulate so
much wealth that he wins even over strong military opponents, merely by
virtue of having so much energy! THAT, my brothers and sisters, is not possible
at all, given the current structure. (and I agree, a Police State could be, say,
a Republic, like what we're seeing in the US...)

I really want to support the +EFFIC for Police State by mentioning things like
Nazi Germany coming out of a DEPRESSION in less time than the US did, to
become the world's largest Military-Industrial power, only to be squandered
by the "FUNDAMENTALIST" doctrine of the madman at the helm. Any decent,
self-respecting Civ player wouldn't make the same mistakes in judgement, but
by all rights, should be able to benefit from the economic workhorse that SE
can provide... If you actually READ any history book written within the last
100 years, that discusses Nazi Germany, it's pretty well established that if they
hadn't been such ***holes about their Fundamentalism, they might have
actually taken the world.