Limiting SMAC

[Hydro]

A friend (Masterbuilder) and I have a series of ongoing PBEMs. We’ve agreed to limit ourselves to make the game (which have 2 humans and 5 AIs) more playable with a few humans and the rest AIs. I’m curious if others have come up with other options. Here are ours. So far the games have been much more interesting.

* Large land, rainy (AI is miserable with sea invasions or colonization, and rainy gives them a pop boost)
* Banned SPs: Cloning Vats.
* SE restrictions: can only switch one category once every 20 years to reduce mini-maxing. The reason is that such changes are significant and any changes that would occur would be gradual, with effects found much later.
* Banned units: choppers (the AI defenseless enough after airpower, why bother with choppers, which are significantly overpowered, in my opinion)

[CEO Aaron]

Try banning all SPs. Personally I don't think the Vats are particularly pivotal, it's a late game SP, and its function can be duplicated for most factions by SE changes. Without the Weather Paradigm, Human Genome and Virtual World, on the other hand, you will find yourself much harder pressed to expand early and gain a production advantage against your rivals.

I think the effect of banning choppers will be less pronounced than you think, a good combined force of rovers, garrisons and artillery will take as few or fewer casualties on an offensive than the old chop and drop.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Ban Cloudbase Academy. That SP basically hands the Air Power game as a victory on a plate to whomever builds it first.

[Lazerus]

Just stop building bases when you hit the drone barrier and dont have crawlers

[Jamski]

Ban the "early set" - WP, HGP, PTS, VW and the EG - Merchant Exchange isn't too unbalancing, so it can stay. Or accept that the early SP race is just part of SMAC.

-Jam