SMAC/X Challenges

[Clear Skies]

I've been checking out the challenges at the Chironian Guild because I'm looking to make SMAC/X a little more interesting. However, I'm nowhere near as much of an expert as most of you guys are, so I'd like to start off small and work my way up. If someone could put the main five or ten challenges in order of difficulty (assuming that they're all being played on the same difficulty level) so I can work through them, that'd be really useful.

[zsozso]

I am not upto speed to make a full ranking, but I would say the easier ones are:

Medium Challenge
Lazy Manager
Tech Share
One City - Basic
No Former

The most difficult is probably "The Messiah", but YMMV

[bbailey]

Out of all those, only the
The Medium Challenge struck me as very interesting. I like stacking the odds against myself, but I don't limiting my actions. OTOH I do usually play factions "in character" so playing the Pirates with a decided prejudice against land bases appeals to me. I would select "flexible starting locations" since the computer loves settling sea colony pods on costal squares (which usually end up being non-productive). IMHO this is one of the AIs biggest limitations (right after its tendency to crowd cities too close together).

I mostly understand the choice of opponents: Hive, Spartans, Believers, aliens are all the tough and easy for the AI to play. But why Morgans for this scenerio?