Hey people,
I thought I'd interest some of you into playing this game which you'll see has many interesting cvhallenges to overcome. First of all, let me say that I only recently
restarted playing SMAC/X, my last game dating somewhere in December, and was hooked on Civ3 for a short time.
So I have several skills I need to brush up on, like remembering that you CAN hurry SPs in SMAX...
In this SMAX game I selected to play modified Drones - who only have:
* Industrial Base as their free tech at start
* +1 ECONOMY
* +1 EFFIC
The
other factions are as follows:
* University
* Gaians
* The Cult
* Peacekeepers
* Cyborgs
* Data Angels
And it's on Huge Map of Planet.
Briefing:
I started off nicelly on the southwest continent, south of the big lake. I managed to get sh1tloads of ALien Artefact for some bizzare reason
and got the commfreq to Lal who was
all alone on the big continent in the middle of the map with his HQ just off the crater! 
But I was on such good terms with him, both of us running Democracy and all, that we made a pact.
Later on I met University near the Ruins in the north, and Gaians on the little volcano continent to the east. After a brief war, I captured Lily of the Valley and signed a peace treaty with Dee. Treaty 'n' trade also with Zak.
Meanwhile I cashed in all of my alien artefacts for SPs, and with the combination of Planned/energy credits/disbanding units like probe teams, and managed to secure Human Genome Project, Weather Paradigm and Virtual World.
However, Lal managed to hog the rest, with the exception of Command Nexus which went to the Cyborgs. When I eventually met them, they were extremely hostile towards me and wished to drag me into a war with the Cult (who was too far away from me for me to care). Cyborgs were situated near the boreholes
on the eastern contient, along with the Angels (who loved me and made pact). The Cult is on the little island in the north.
Now as time went, Lal was getting enormous and annoyingly cancelled the pact. Cyborgs and Cult pronounced Vendetta. And so did Gaians and University but I eliminated the Gaians and made Zak into my useless research monkey, since Lal and Cyborgs were getting all the tech.
I also
just managed to snag the Hunter-Seeker before Lal and Aki, who ripped all the other SPs away from me.
They got pretty enormous and pacted together. Now Lal, is getting tech every 3 turns and owns a PB, like Aki and I do aswell.
After a long time, I have come to doubt my powr in an AC game. As this was a quite an interesting one, I decided to post it so far to see how would others get out of the sh1t I got myself into. I mean I'd
love to PB Lal's heartland thereby eliminating his chief 3 bases in a single move (wipping like 10 SPs in the process
), but he's the Governor and wont let me do it. And iif he manages to get Clinical Immortality (did I mention he got EMPATH GUILD!?!) we're all doomed.
But I did manage to break the long pact between Lal and Aki with the clever use of probe teams, and pitted the two giants against each other. Angels are my only friends at the moment but they are losing too many bases for my liking.
I repeat, I
could PB Lal and get EVERYONE to gang up on me (as I actually did but didn't quite liek the outcome), but I was wondering if there is another way.
It's obvious I am not so good strategy-wise as Rubin and CEO Aaron here (no I didn't give Vel a read 
