Confession Time

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

OK

Everyone out there has a game they aren't too proud of. So here is mine. Yes I just got my butt waxed by (gulp) the AI. *** Awaits the snickers ****

The game was going swimmingly and I had all the cards in my favor. The game setting were perfect directed research a huge planet. I played completely random and got Lal who I'm fairly proficient at. I had completed my tech run to IA had captured all the early SP's I could something like, Command Nexxus, HGP, VW and PTS.

I was connected by a small isthmus to a largish continent that had Domai right next to me and Moragna and Santi onthe far side of the continent. i played nice with Domai allied with Morgan and went to war with Santi using Doami as a buffer as Domai was also at war. Starting to feel cocky as I had just aquired Environmetnal Economics (all restrictions now lifted) from Domai framing Marr and had recently discovered Synth Fossil Fuels (missile yeah baby!!) I decided to take my next tech as DAP and preceed with a plan for a little alien ethnic cleansing as I didn't want to go after Domai right away he still had his uses. In the process I decide why not raise a land bridge and start a rover X campaign.

Huge huge mistake. My bridge was fully in place long before my rovers were. DAP was a full 8 turns a way. The turn the bridge arrived Marr ssent my way a full 5 needlejets which had never been sighted up to that point. My bridge now became the conduit for the alien horde. One by one I saw my bases fall. A few turns later I got DAP. Now the tides would turn right? Wrong!

One thing I've learned is that you never ever build interceptors to take on Marr. His +25% attack means he will send conventionals forcing your stupid interecpetors scrambling only to be chewed up assuming same weapon strength and morale. At the cost of those tactical babies its not worth it. So rover become upgraded to SAM capable. What that means tho' is that I've forgone the ability to put Nerve Gas on them. In the meantime, though I had used nerve gas meaning it was a duel to the death. Guess who's death?

Ohh the inhumanity of it all. From glorious Apex of Power to the cook pots of some slimy booger thing.

Post your sob stories here if you dare!!

Call me Ogie 'Custer' Oglethorpe

[Wiglaf]

My all time favorite is voting for the AI in a Supreme Leader election. Yang won 894 to 297.

[Wiglaf]

Come on people, speak up!

[Helium Pond]

Wow, that voting for the Supreme Leader takes the cake. I wish I'd done that, that's cool in a way. I do plenty of stupid things, I just can't recall any worth mentioning. I must've lost at least five games as Morgan within the first hundred years, before I learned to play him correctly. Um... well, I confess that I still hardly ever get up to getting a tech every turn, even playing as Zak, how's that? Seems like everybody around here can do that without breaking a sweat.

[Zonk]

When I first began playing, I'm sure I had my share of poor decisions, snafus, ect.
Concerning recent games, the one that comes to mind is one in which I was playing Morgan. Marr was just above me on the map, similar to what Ogie mentioned. I had DAP, but didn't have infiltration on Marr. I had seen no signs of him having Air Power. I held off building my air force because I was greedy: running FM, trying to squeeze out that last bit of infrastructure like all us builder types do. I should have at least built a needlejet for patrol purposes, because much to my surprise, Marr built a land bride and was quickly all over my northern bases. To make matters worse, they were frontier type bases, not that well garrisoned, and I had provided a nice little highway for him to march down into my territory. This is one of the few times I observed the AI using air power efficiently. By the time I could rush build an air force, it was too late.
I certainly learned a lesson on that one. I love to play Morgan because of the challenge of this faction, but I dont stay in FM like I used to. I can settle for going green a little earlier than I used to.

[Aredhran]

My only SMAC defeat was in Flo's Morgan Challenge scenario, where I got my butt kicked by the Caretakers, then respawned somewhere else only to be eradicated a few years later by Yang.

[Wiglaf]

quote: Um... well, I confess that I still hardly ever get up to getting a tech every turn, even playing as Zak, how's that? Seems like everybody around here can do that without breaking a sweat.

I can't either And Zonk, that sort of then happens to everyone, even Aredhran .

[Sprayber]

My worst thrashing was when I was still learning the game. I played Yang and was at war with the spartans and the believers. The spartans were on a different continent. they kept sending planes and the occasionl transport full of infantry. But the believers were on the opposite side of my continent. They took out the gaians and eventually turned on me. I just couldn't stop them there were so many of them. I built a sea colony and escaped certain death. Later I just gave up on the game. I was so far behind. This was regular SMAC by the way.

To show how pathetic I was, Lal and the Dee, while she was still active, kept giving me units for defending myself. I had been faithful in helping them out. Which is totally opposite the way Yang is supposed to be I guess. The Spartans were huge. They had an entire continent to themselves. The believers just took over my whole continent.
[This message has been edited by Sprayber (edited January 06, 2001).]

[Sindai]

The worst I've ever lost was my furst (and only) treanscend game, as Domai, one a custom bigger-than-huge map.

However, I do have one big shame.....I hardly ever use crawlers. I'm serious. For some reason I hate the things. I always end up building my bases so that their production radiuses overlap instead and I then borehole everwhere I possibly can.

This is probably why I can't play transcend without dying horribly, but I still can't stand crawlers.

[Misotu]

I have 2 SP defeats to my credit. Like Aredhran, I was eradicated very early by the Caretakers in Flo's Morgan challenge. And then Morgan actually got an economic victory against me in DiDad's AI Revenge challenge (his single-player version) the first time I played it ...

[Blake]

I guess my two "favourite" defeats was my first two momentum style games (both as Miriam). In both cases I started next to Morgan, he went fundie and I couldn't even get the tech required to break his 1-2-1 defenders.

What was worse is I had already won (or atleast achieved dominace) several builder style games on transcend.

Soon after I figured out a lot more of the military, and my next go at momentum (playing Roze) actually suceeded, I managed to beat the caretakers with there +25% bonus and 3r armour, using only impact weapons. That made me feel better

[Qilue]

quote: Originally posted by SMACed on 01-06-2001 11:57 AM Um... well, I confess that I still hardly ever get up to getting a tech every turn, even playing as Zak, how's that? Seems like everybody around here can do that without breaking a sweat. I can't either And Zonk, that sort of then happens to everyone, even Aredhran .

Last game I played (as Gaians), my bases (41) were pumping out 45k research points a turn and I was getting 2 trancendant thought techs per turn at the end (I was up to 226 when I finished building the Ascent).

On the subject at hand, most of my games where defeat loomed on the horizon like a dark cloud or all around my bases in the form of Hive speeders, I usually quit and start anew. I know, I'm pitiful. :/

[Skanderbeg]

My confession: I can't play Morgan. I simple don't know how to do it with this guy. I have won on transcendent even with the last cucumber factions like Chees Dong,
but Morgan? Forget it.

The last game before my recent, the random gave me Morgan to play (on huge random map, blind research). Okay, I said to myself, let's try it again. In former games, I have tried him in my normal demo/green/knowledge way, and, as usual, I got a fine spanking by the AI. So now, I said to me, it's Morgan, so play him Morganite, with wealth, free market and all this stuff I normally avoid like the devil avoids holy water. And I was was running free market and wealth.
I was getting some drone riots, but on long terms I could deal with them by turning some workers to doctors and getting production throug crawlers.
But my wealth and free market pissed of some other factions, I got trouble with some of them, especially the Caretakers. No problem, I thought, because just that time I discovered DAP. Nice, I thought, let's build some nice "Painkiller"-nerve-gas-needlejets, and
let's bring Booger the Metal back!
Some turns later, all my bigger base had one of that nice little bastards ready, and what happend? Drone riots in all those bases, drone riots like I have never seen them before. I would need to turn EVERY single worker into a docter to stop the riots, and that would starve the city. And because I had done some bribing just before, I hadn't the money to change SE choices.
I quitted.

For me, Morgan is target for a PB, but not the faction to play by myself!

[Skanderbeg]

quote: Originally posted by SMACed on 01-06-2001 11:57 AM Um... well, I confess that I still hardly ever get up to getting a tech every turn, even playing as Zak, how's that? Seems like everybody around here can do that without breaking a sweat. I can't either And Zonk, that sort of then happens to everyone, even Aredhran .

I didn't manage it in every game, but sometimes I got
the magic 1 tech per turn.

There is a simple recipe to do it, but there a certain conditions to do it. Of course, it is much easier in directed research than in blind research.


The reciepe is as following:

1. Best is a starting position near the northern or southern margin of the map (because of step Nr. 3). A starting position near the equator makes it much more difficult.

2. Got yourself the Weather Paradigm.

3. Now you can terraform Yourself one (better more) nice inland seas (near the margins You sometimes have one to lift e few squares that makes it much easier at margin starting positions)

4. Build a seabase in the inland sea, and another base a the shore. It would be nice to have the seabase one or two coastal boreholes (I say weather paradigm again) in its range. Terraform the inland sea complete with tang farms and sea energy echelons. Build science and energy improvements in the sea base (Because of its safe position, it don't need military enhancements and units except one garrison), and let the shore base produce one trawler after the other to trawl energy fo the sea base.

5. Build the science special projects in these science bases.

6. Get the clone vets and build hab complexes.

7. Begin early to fill the sky with hydrolabs and orbital energy transmitters.

If You got to manage this, sooner or later You will get
the ominous One-Tech-Per-Turn

[Garth Vader]

I have lost a few times in the real early game. Or more accuratly quit when it became obvious I was going to lose.

I have only lost (quit the game) once in SP after the game got past turn 30-40.

It was my first game as Morgan. I started right next to the Believers, who I actually eliminated early. I was quite pleased. It turned out my continent was small, I only had about 6-8 bases. I was running FM and so didn't venture off my island. Eventually all the other AI's declared war on me and started attacking me with jets. For some reason we all had about the same tech level. Well I was getting tired of losing and unit that was outside of my bases, so I started building planet busters. I switched to 100% econ and was able to finish one every two years. I started nuking anything I could reach. Santiago was the first to retaliate, although the funny part was then the other factions declared war on her When I got the message that the sea levels were going to rise about 700m I quit. Remember I was on a small island, about 90% of my land would have been submerged.

[heynad]

I started playing a game around 1pm yesterday hoping I would finish the game before the day ends. I was playing Morgan on huge map/transcend level and was aiming for a quick climb up the tech tree for an ascent victory. Everything started well enough for me; I had a mid-sized continent all to myself and had good relations with UoP, which allowed me to obtain techs even more quickly. I was crawlering energy like a madman and paying little attention to the rest of the world. By the end of the middle game, I was still progressing quite well, having avoided major conflicts with other factions. However, by that time, the Gaians had managed to takeover 2/3 of the world, leaving me,UoP, and the Spartans really low on the dominance chart. The gaians then proceeded to attack my continent with massive air raids. I tried to bargain with her but she wouldn't listen. So I started mass producing an air force of my own and held her off for a good 20 turns. She didn't manage to land a single land unit thanks to my costal crawler blockade and air force. By then, I was about 10 turns from the Transcendent Thought. So, I got cocky and went on the attack and took over some of her bases. I was thinking to myself that I had already won and for the next few turns, I just kept skipping all my units. Finally, I get Transcendent Thought, and I spent about 15000 buying the voice of planet in one turn and skipped all my units again. The next turn comes, I spent another 35000 on Ascent to Transcendence. So, I click on end turn, thinking I would see the victory screen soon...
There I sat, watching the AI make their "last" moves. I see the message saying that I have ascended to the gods liking or whatever, I hit ok. And all of a sudden, a PB busted up my city with the SP i had built, taking all my surrounding prosperous cities with it. I couldn't believe what happened. It was heart breaking to say the least. I didn't know whether to be amazed by the AI or to feel stupid. Long story short, I quit the game afterwards. I probably should've kept playing and gotten enough energy to build the SPs again. BUt that PB broke my back, after 6 hours of playing straght.

P.S.
What are orbital defense pods?

[Wiglaf]

quote: I see the message saying that I have ascended to the gods liking or whatever, I hit ok.

quote: What are orbital defense pods?

ODP's are base improvements mainly used to shoot down incoming PB's or attack enemy space installations.

[cbn]

I lost a lot while learning the game but did get killed by the AI once recently as well. I was playing double-blind as cha dawn and ended up on a fairly small landmass alone. I made the terrible, huge unforgiveable error of not sacrificing everything to get the WP. I was left utterly alone until 2190 when the Usurpers dropped by. I was so VERY far behind in tech and the double-blind would not give me doc: Flex to build a boat. I thought I was toast then but the usurpers left me alone (took a bribe for a truce)and soon after the University dropped by and I got Doc: Flex and a pact and some techs. An intensive probing (probe skimships) campaign began as I probed my neighbors the Spartans and Usurpers for tech--= Big mistake

I had just about gotten to tech parity and figured I would be in good shape given time to build some up-to date-units and upgrade my garrisons. But the Spartans raised a land bridge to my island and began attacking on the same turn. No amount of attempted bribing or cajoling would sway them ( I think sunspots came then as well but don't remeber for sure) as wave after wave of missle rovers decimated my cities. I fought on until my last city was alone and with a single defender and was spared witnessing my own demise only by the call to dinner from Better Half. I think I still have the save but have resisted going back to view my own extermination.--Cha wouldn't do well in prison LOL. maybe I should go back since I am curious as to whether there is a "you are dead" movie.

But I learned from this and in a recent game (double blind) started as Miriam on an island. WP was an absolute must and I terraformed a bigger area and a pathway to my enemies and an eventual victory.

Although I often witness the absolute idiocy of the AI I was glad to lose since it make the game more interesting if it is not always a foregone conclusion. Thats why I hope to start working through some of the many challenges that are posted on here-- Some look like they could be real lessons in humility.

cbn

[Gregurabi]

Skanderbeg: oh, so close to doing well with Morgan! Once you start building an air force, you cannot remain in Free Market. Planes always count as "out of territory" for purposes of making drones.

The way I usually play Morgan in the mid-game is Demo/Green/Wealth. This gives you +4 efficiency, +2 economy, +2 planet and utterly horrible support/morale. But that's OK, because you have energy coming out of your ears.

With +4 economy, it's tempting to set your labs allocation up very high, and sacrifice your income (leaving you with no money to spend). This is OK for short periods of time (e.g., getting Air Power or Environmental Econ or Fusion or MMI), but it's not something you want to continue indefinitely. Morgan needs to have cash.

Later on, when you have clean reactors and punishment spheres, you can make all your planes clean, build one punishment sphere somewhere, and re-home the planes to that city. Then you can have an air force under Free Market without suffering the drones for it; but it's costly (you spend more for the clean reactors, and you can only build new planes in the p-sphere base).

But the irony here is that Morgan doesn't really need to run Free Market. You can get to +2 Economy with just Wealth; the extra +2 from FM doesn't do nearly as much for you (unless you've got a huge number of tiny cities, which is actually a common Morgan strategy).

[Gregurabi]

OK, here's my confession. In a recent game as the Pirates, I started out with a small number of sea bases and then started expanding onto land. I thought: this will be a good way to offset my lack of minerals. I thought: once I've built up a decent land infrastructure, I'll resume my sea colonization, using the land bases to produce the horribly expensive sea colony pods.

It must also be noted that I began the game in a relatively small, enclosed sea near the north pole. I had to go across land to get to another body of water anyway.

It turned out that the land I was colonizing was part of a large continent on which Miriam was the dominant faction. She'd been steam-rolling Cha Dawn and some others; and by the time she got up to my little corner of the land, she was a juggernaut.

I didn't actually lose the game; in fact, it's still saved and I haven't got around to continuing it for a while. She conquered all of my land bases, and I rebuilt my forces from the sea bases which were completly untouched. I built an air force (can't recall whether I learned the tech naturally or probed it from her; but she definitely had air power before I did), harassed/killed her forces with it, took out some roads, used some marine attacks to take back the coastal cities, and managed to reestablish a hold on parts of the land. She's still a lot more powerful than I am, but the AI doesn't know much about effective warfare.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Skand,

If you really want to play Morgan as "Morgan the conqueror" then as Gregarubi indicates you'll need to step away from FM for a period of time at least until you can get either punishment spheres or better yet AScetic Virtues and Brood pits (resulting in -2 police with no pacification issues but still keep science rolling in at 100%). In fact, if the mood fits you and you really want to steam roll the human AI factions then Police/Green/Wealth is a nice combo for Morgan.

His one glaring weakness support is aleviated by the support offered in Police thereby allowinghim 3 units per base. Plus the police rating will allow him to quell most any uprising at any of his new Aquistions (new base sites).

Now for Alien invasions you probably don't care as any captured base site will be a mere size 1 not requiring massive drone quelling.

Morgan in the above situation does nicely for war and still allows him decent cash for bribing and/or unit upgrading albeit less than the Demo/green/wealth approach but the extra police and especially support in the pre clean era are nice to have.

[Skanderbeg]

Gregurabi and Ogie, thanks for Your tips.

I will give Morgan another try sometimes.


I didn't want to play Morgan as conqueror, I tried to play him as builder.
Normally, a play as a builder, as long as nobody pisses me off.
I build my airforce only to keep the aliens away from my continent, by "offensive defense".
But, I as I have learned now, I shouldn't have done this under free market!