Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Imperial Guardsman]

Link to the original= http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=76225.315
In 2060 A.D., the Earth was one hell of an awful place to live, torn apart by war and sunken into disgrace by poverty and ecological damage. In a last attempt to save Humanity from extinction, the United Nations ordered the construction of a massive spaceship, the UNS Unity. The mission: stash as many people as possible within the spaceship, deep freeze them to sleep, get the hell off of the Earth towards Alpha Centauri, the closest star from the Sun, form a settlement on Chiron, a planet orbiting the star that seems to have most of the necessary conditions to sustain sentient life, and leave the planet of their birth to fester and decay like a parasite fleeing a corpse.
But Finagle's Law says everything that can go wrong will go wrong, and this mission was not the exception. The deep freeze system malfunctioned and the colonists found themselves living on rations meant for colonization in spaces around the ship not meant for living quarters. An explosion on board causes massive damage to the ship's thrusters, creating an escalating crisis among the ship's leaders. As a result, the Unity's captain is murdered, and the crew is now split into 7 different factions, each one commandeering a colony pod and launching for the surface of Chiron (known in the game as "Planet", and yes, that's a proper noun). Each faction has a different ideology and their own plans to achieve prosperity in the new world. These factions include:
the militaristic Spartan Federation,
the theocratic Lord's Believers,
the technocratic University of Planet,
the capitalistic Morgan Industries,
the environmentalist Gaia's Stepdaughters,
the fascist/communist Human Hive,
and the humanitarian remnants of the UN, the Peacekeepers.
The expansion pack added:
the rationalistic Cybernetic Consciousness,
the socialistic Free Drones,
the anarchist Data Angels,
the religiously-enviromentalist Cult of Planet,
the self-explanatory Nautilus Pirates,
two alien factions, the Manifold Usurpers and the Manifold Caretakers,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A little tweaking would also reveal a secret faction:
the self-inserted Firaxians, which may or may not be two factions since either Sid Meier or Brian Reynolds can lead.

Quoted directly from TvTropes.

[Imperial Guardsman]

Please, don't let LoudWhispers end the legacy. Post what you think, your misadventures, your triumphs, your losses, your ANYTHING related to the thread

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I think the old topic was perfectly serviceable. "Necro-ing" a topic in other games is generally acceptable as long as you're adding something to the conversation. It makes the most sense to regulate older games to "mega-threads" rather than filling up the boards with various topics that only contain only a few posts.
The original post (of the old topic) could contain more information but considering SMAC's firm cult status I doubt it's really all that needed. 

[Loud Whispers]

Please, don't let LoudWhispers end the legacy. Post what you think, your misadventures, your triumphs, your losses, your ANYTHING related to the thread

Imperial Guardsman,  your thread creation is clearly just a cover for your militaristic ambition to take over this subforum! From this day we are pact brothers no longer!

To help this thread on its feet (or possibly condemn it with my fatal presence), what restrictions do you impose on yourself in your games? After completing a 60 hour long campaign in a world without sea my restriction was that all new bases had to be built at most two squares away (resulting in a massive blob of Jerusalem leading the remnants of the other surviving two human factions to eventual victory against a usurper empire that spanned 3/5ths the map in a war that lasted centuries) and completed campaigns where I genocided all with mindworms or played single-city games where my pirate fleet of aircraft carriers scoured the world for victims, I have become particularly practiced at winning through industry, infrastructure and strategy of the militaristic variety. So for my latest restriction I intend to play as Morgan vs 6 other Morgan clonee in the Morgan Moguls trade war to end all trade wars.
After that I might do Miriam vs 6 Manifold factions.
How do you lot spice up your games?

[Parsely]

I've got Alien Crossfire sitting on my desktop, but I prefer some good old Civ. I'm terrible at both, cannot play on higher than mid difficulties.

[timferius]

So, I have this + expansion in my GoG library, but have yet to crack it out. Should I go all in with the expansion? or start with a regular game first. Is there any faction that's better to start with?

[TripJack]

the base game is the way to go IMO, the factions added by the expansion are pretty lame compared to the original set

[Culise]

Play with the expansion, use the regular factions.  I love the expanded tech tree, new planet features, and such-like, but the new factions tend to have some balance issues.  As for your starting faction, depends on how you play.  Gaians get ecology-based bonuses that help them against the mind worms (barbarian-equivalents, if you play Civ); they're the only ones of the core seven who can capture, rather than killing them from the word go, and thus have a bit of an easier early game.  Peacekeepers are the purest vanilla and thus don't have to worry about playing to particular strengths, but that also makes them tricky, and probably not the best choice.  The University's tech bonus gives them an edge across the board, and though trickier due to their lower population limits, the Morganites get a similar effect from increased energy (money) income.  If you tend to play these game by beating faces in, the Hive, Believers, and Spartans are your go-to. 

[MonkeyHead]

So, I have this + expansion in my GoG library, but have yet to crack it out. Should I go all in with the expansion? or start with a regular game first. Is there any faction that's better to start with?

Pick a faction that matches the way you think - that way, game-play seems more natural.

[Krevsin]

I've been meaning to get into this for a while, but there's one major sticking point I need to clear before I delve into this cult classic.

What's the combat like? SOD-based like Civ 2 or does it improve on that situation at all?

[MonkeyHead]

Stacking units is a risky tactic as it is possible for whole stacks to get wiped by the loss of one combat, or really badly hurt by bombardment.

[Parsely]

So, I have this + expansion in my GoG library, but have yet to crack it out. Should I go all in with the expansion? or start with a regular game first. Is there any faction that's better to start with?

Yeah whenever you boot up the game (at least on my disc) there's a nice clicky button that let's you pick vanilla or the expanded version. All it does is add factions I'm pretty sure. Even if you pick the expanded version you can still just not have the new factions in your game. You can mix and match as you like.

[Culise]

Stacking units is a risky tactic as it is possible for whole stacks to get wiped by the loss of one combat, or really badly hurt by bombardment.

Of course, this was technically true in Civ 2 as well; losing a single defensive battle could eliminate the entire defending stack, outside of a fort.  It's worth adding, since you were worried about Civ2-style combat, that stacks are a thing, but since combat tends to go combined-arms a lot more easily and quickly (you'll unlock your air force by the early-mid game boundary, if I recall the tech tree properly, and your air force doesn't benefit from stacking nearly as much), bombardment is much more extensive from the early game on (a very early-game tech), and you can design your own units to tailor them to your needs, they aren't really as bad as in the first four Civilization games.  Of course, there are still plenty of ways to break the game, but stacks aren't at the top of that list. 

[sambojin]

The combat suffers less IMHO due to the customizability of the units and artillery/mind worms being fairly early game techs. Sure, you'll have offensive units protected by defenders, but psi units and artillery can counter both. It's also hard to have everything early on.

So it's easy to abuse, but there are counters for virtually anything. Everything does have a reasonably pointed build cost as well.

[Sharp]

The AI isn't great, perhaps it doesn't cheat as much as it does in other games, although even then they make very odd calculations, I remember landing an assault on Miriam's island and she probably had about 30 odd Needlejets circling her little island but my troops were quite beastly although only a few of them in the assault, so in combat the Needlejets would most definitely lose but they could still take out my troops with attrition but instead she kept them circling around while I took her bases and killed the Needlejets where they live easily.

That being said the game isn't easy on it's hardest difficulty but if you play each faction to it's strengths and then maybe a bit of luck unless your Deidre or Zharkov (easily the most powerful factions in singleplayer although Deidre super strong in multiplayer as well) then it's not too hard to win.

Playing vs humans though makes the game super interesting and choices of what you build and countering really important although LAN/playing at same time is 10000x quicker then PBEM.