Upheaval Cost?!

[fluxcapacitor]

I'm playing as University, and when I go into social engineering and change to anything from the beginning-game settings, I get "upheaval cost."(a defecit of energy credits that I have to "pay" to use whatever SE choice I've made) What is that? What causes it, what's the formula to calculate it, and how can I remedy the situation? PLEASE help if ya can, I can't find this in any guides, or websites. Is this specific to smAXF?

[Misotu]

The "upheaval cost" is a standard element in SMAC and SMAX. The actual cost varies according to difficulty settings and I can't remember off-hand what the range is. IIRC it does not vary within a game - but the cost increases dramatically if you change more than one setting per turn. For example, if you want to go Demo/Planned from the basic SE settings, it's much cheaper to do this over two turns if you are short on energy (which is likely, since this will probably occur early in the game).

[mark13]

Upheaval costs range as follows:

Citizen - 0 ec
Specialist - 8 ec
Talent - 16 ec
Librarian - 24 ec
Thinker - 32 ec
Transcend - 40 ec

[VoodooChild]

It should also be noted that the effects are immediate and do not take a turn or three to convert like in Civ

[fluxcapacitor]

figured it out now: I almost alwayz play on Citizen and now I'm using Specialist.

[RedFred]

...and the Progenitors pay more, presumably because they are less flexible socially. So 40 for a single change at Transcend level for humans, 60 for those lovable aliens.

[Aredhran]

The cost is also higher if you're changing from more than one row* at the same time, but offhand I don't remember by how much (I think 2 rows on Transcend is 135 credits but don't quote me on that)

Aredhran

* Row 1 = Governemnt, Row 2 = Economy, etc.

[MariOne]

RedH, I'l quote you indeed, that's correct.
And if in the same turn (on Transcend), you make one switch, and then you come back in the SE later and add a second switch (on a different SE row, of course) the cost will be 95 indeed, as 135-40=95 (or should we say 40+95=135?).

Curiosity: if I forgot which difficulty level I'm playing a game on (quite usual with many and slow pbems) the only trick I figured to tell it from INSIDE a turn, is attempting a SE switch and check the cost.
Is there a more simple & direct way to tell the difficulty from within turn? Is it reported somewhere that I overlooked (apart when you open the turn)?

[Mech Assassin]

fluxcapacitor, are you the same one as the one on Icy Brian's RPG Page?