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Zeppelin Insanity posted:being only nation to ever capture Moscow (even if it didn't go so well afterwards) Mongols twice, Crimean Tatars, Swedes and French.
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Nov 13, 2023 23:21
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I suppose you can count the French, if only because they did technically seize the burning ruin that was Moscow just before they arrived.
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Nov 14, 2023 00:41
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Poles too.
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Nov 14, 2023 00:52
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My version of each faction and my quick thoughts on those changes. I wanted to make each faction a bit more distinctive and interesting to play, especially if you've already played a ton of SMAC.Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter" posted:Learn to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone, for they quote:+2 GROWTH: {Rapid population growth} A simple additional Growth changed Yang from the Faction with the worst growth of the original seven to the undisputed best. Yang being the worst at pop booming of the entire original factions was the single thing that inspired me to make all these changes. I also gave him actual immunity to inefficiency penalties from his 2 favored Social Engineering choices, this lets him benefit from +Efficiency SEs while keeping his Police State and Planned. I feel that this opens up his gameplay choices a bit. Overall, I had a light touch with Yang and this is the rework I'm most proud of. I spoke a lot more about him earlier. I've already mentioned Yang being the Yellow Peril personified but check out that -2 ECONOMY. "Little Political Freedom" translates to reduced ECONOMY? "The freer the market, the freer the people" indeed. I don't have a name for Yang's specific changes. Pick your favorite below or suggest one. Yang: The Hive Will Grow Larger Yang: Imagine a Population Booming, Forever Yang: 1984 with Chinese Characteristics Yang: Despotism in One Faction Edit: Yang: 2184 Commissioner Pravin Lal, “U.N. Declaration of Rights” posted:As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth’s final century, quote:-1 EFFICIENCY: {U.N. style bureaucracy} Pravin Lal, he was so unpopular despite being quite strong. I thought he needed a big rework for him. I was heavily inspired by very society we all live in (or live in the periphery of). His big advantage is recreating the Liberalism and Rules Based International Order of the Earth that he came from and that he loves so much. You take no penalties from a full three Social Engineering choices, more than anybody else. Additionally, I decided to allow him to take Police State. Fascism is what happens when Liberalism bleeds. Cracking down on all those protestors is a tragic necessity when they threaten the very fabric of our society, hopefully they learned their lesson and won't force our hand like that again. I think this change also makes him still disinclined to Police States but less so than before? That's fine, the US doesn't mind allying with Police States after all. I wrote a lot more about my Pravin Lal changes earlier. To nerf him a bit I removed his +2 Hab Limit and gave him -1 Police, which seemed appropriate. Now he can't Nerve Staple his populace unless he switches to Police State. It's not much of a disadvantage since his extra Talents let him prevent Drone Riots, presumably by manufacturing consent. This is the (other) rework that I'm most proud of. Names for Pravin Lal's changes. Pick your favorite or suggest a new one. Pravin Lal: Yesterday's Man Pravin Lal: The End of History 2 Pravin Lal: There is No Alternative Academician Prokhor Zakharov, “For I Have Tasted The Fruit” posted:The substructure of the universe regresses infinitely towards quote:+2 RESEARCH: {Brilliant research} Zakharov and his University of Planet. The only change I made was to allow him to use the Knowledge value without penalties. I did that for everybody's favored Social Engineering policy on the idea that those penalties are already integrated in their society, this is especially true for the University of Planet. Other than that, he was already perfect. A single name for the Zakharov rework. Pick your favorite from the single choice below or suggest a new one. Zakharov: Why Reinvent the Wheel? Sister Miriam Godwinson, “The Blessed Struggle” posted:The righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress. quote:+25% Bonus when attacking enemies, from strength of convictions. Miriam, disliked but memorable. Pretty strong too. I removed the penalty from the Fundamentalist government for her since she already has -2 Research. Her and Zakharov are the Faction whose favored Social Engineering perfectly matches their own disadvantages which is an interesting symmetry. Santiago is similiar but only at half of the penalty. The other thing I did was to give her free Creches and Recreation Commons to represent the things that the church community provides instead of the state. Those are cheap but very useful buildings early game buildings. Miriam is already pretty flexible but this lets her both expand faster and take full advantage of conquered bases faster. Religion and community are factors whose importance is often ignored in the modern world despite the fact that they carried us through thousands of years of history. Names for Miriam's rework. Miriam: It Takes a Village Miriam: Church and State Together at Last Miriam: Church, People, and Steeple Colonel Corazon Santiago, “Spartan Battle Manual” posted:Superior training and superior weaponry have, when taken together, quote:+2 MORALE: {Well-armed survivalist movement} Santiago gave me trouble for a long time and was the very last Faction I figured out how to fix. She's a pure war faction with no real advantages during peace. What do you do as Santiago if you can't win your first war? In real life the answer is "be consigned to the dustbin of history" but I needed something else for the game. Santiago is obviously inspired by Space Militarism found in places like Starship Troopers. I rewatched both Starship Troopers and the original Top Gun for inspiration. As I watched and rewatched the shower scenes it struck me how emotional closeness in military movies is often shown through physical closeness. So I gave Santiago the +2 pop limit that I removed from Pravin Lal. Now you can actually do something as the Spartans if you can't win a war. You get no benefit from this change until you hit size 8 and don't have anything else that will help you reach it but now you can play Santiago as a builder and be rewarded for it. Names for Santiago's rework. Santiago: Sweaty Arenas of Fort Legion Santiago: Hard Times and Harder Men Lady Deirdre Skye, “Planet Dreams” posted:In the great commons at Gaia’s Landing we have a tall and particularly quote:+1 PLANET: {Environmental safeguards; can capture mindworms} Lady Deidre Skye, she's the only Faction leader that is referred to by her first name. I decided to distinguish her more from Cha Dawn, making Deidre focus more on blending Earth and Planet ecosystems together while Cha Dawn is more of a Plane purist. This is in line with both of their in-game quotes. Deidre gets free Tree Farms when they're researched. These are great buildings that you usually rush to build once you research them. Deidre no longer needs to spend the time and Minerals to build them or the Energy to maintain them. I assume the Gaians are already keeping tree-lined parks(and tree-lined housing blocks and tree-lined recycling tanks) in their cities and we just need to figure out all the steps to make all those trees and natural features a net economic benefit. This encourages you to focus on a Forest-based terraforming strategy and rush Environmental Economics. I also had her share the "use Mind Worms as cops" ability that Cha Dawn has in order to encourage her to have breed more Mind Worms. I spoke about her a bit more in my earlier posts. I always felt that Deidre's early-mid game was a bit weak. She can use her captured Mind Worms to nullify an enemy's tech advantage but she has a limited number of those early on. She can't use Free Market to rake in the Energy and doesn't really have any advantages in the mid game. Now she has distinct early, mid, and late game advantages. Early game you have an increased chance to capture Mind Worms and can use them as explorers, military, or police. You can continue to use Mind Worms as police throughout the game, with the your unlocking of Mind Worm breeding replacing most faction's methods unlocking of Non-Lethal Methods as a way to get more effective police. Easy access to Tree Farms is your replacement for Free Market as your way to rake in the dough early on, this gives you a nice strength in the mid-game. As you begin reaching late game your Efficiency bonuses let you lose less money to inefficiency and get less drones from a large empire. I did a minor nerf to her by removing her Xenofungus Nutrient bonus, that's going to go to Cha Dawn. Deidre has to adapt to Planet the same way the rest of us do, with technologies and possibly secret projects. She just has more incentive to do it faster and is better at adapting. I feel pretty solidly about this rework. To the extent that I'm going to play as Deidre next, both to test the rework and because she's one of the most different Factions from Morgan. I'll also be using the Thinker mod and seeing how the improved AI adapts to my new factions. Deidre rework names. Deidre: I Speak for the Trees. Deidre: Hearts and Mind Worms Deidre: GreenWar CEO Nwabudike Morgan, “The Centauri Monopoly” posted:Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may vary, Morgan, the guy I just played as. The only change I made was to let him ignore the downsides for Free Market and gave him -1 Planet. He was fun to play but right now he's too similar to how Pravin Lal plays but worse. I'm too emotionally invested in my Pravin Lal rework to change him so I have to change Morgan. I'm excited to announce (and you guys better be excited to hear) that I'm going to be reworking Morgan right here on this very forum. The theme/name I've chosen is "Morgan: Contradiction of Capitalism". BearsBearsBears has issued a correction as of 07:10 on Nov 14, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2023 01:28
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Orange Devil posted:Mongols twice, Crimean Tatars, Swedes and French. Ha, not in Polish school!
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Nov 14, 2023 02:13
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gradenko_2000 posted:yeah the Infantry unit is supposed to be [Foot] Infantry, and Mechanized Infantry is supposed to be "we ride the IFVs to get around but dismount to fight" except they use the IFVs as the unit model, and the IDF experience is that the troops are too scared to leave the vehicles I wonder how much the presence of APS on IDF tanks could be related to infantry not wanting to dismount. Taking cover near a tank and eating a handful of shrapnel as it tries to defend against an incoming RPG does not sound like fun. Sure they designed Trophy to have a short kill zone but you'd probably end up hitting your dismounted infantry once in a while.
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Nov 14, 2023 06:02
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Two sides of the same coin leading to a vicious cycle of ever-more coddled infantry and ever more swollen overweight wunderwaffen tanks
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Nov 14, 2023 06:10
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supersnowman posted:I wonder how much the presence of APS on IDF tanks could be related to infantry not wanting to dismount. Taking cover near a tank and eating a handful of shrapnel as it tries to defend against an incoming RPG does not sound like fun. Sure they designed Trophy to have a short kill zone but you'd probably end up hitting your dismounted infantry once in a while. When the Soviets were experimenting with such technology the tanks had a clear light indicator on the outside so the infantry could verify if it was turned on or not.
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Nov 14, 2023 06:16
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u check if its on with the app
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Nov 14, 2023 06:36
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supersnowman posted:I wonder how much the presence of APS on IDF tanks could be related to infantry not wanting to dismount. Taking cover near a tank and eating a handful of shrapnel as it tries to defend against an incoming RPG does not sound like fun. Sure they designed Trophy to have a short kill zone but you'd probably end up hitting your dismounted infantry once in a while. Those were developed because IDF infantry wouldn't get out of their M113s and screen the tanks in Lebanon, so doubtful. The same goes for the Israeli use of ERA blocks. They've just never been good at cooperating. Prior to getting M113s, the Israeli tankers would just leave their infantry behind. They would only catch up if the tanks had battered themselves against and obstacle (like ATGMs) and needed to pause while the infantry cleared it. Once the infantry got vehicles of their own, they continued fighting their own independent wars, only the infantry were now speeding around in vehicles too. The Merkava seemed like a solution - the infantry and armour have to cooperate if the infantry is literally inside the tank. That didn't work, so they turned the tank hull into an APC. Well, now there are tanks, and turretless tanks, and the infantry still won't go outside. In other words, it's not a technological problem, it's an IDF problem.
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Nov 14, 2023 06:55
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Morgan Unmodded posted:+1 ECONOMY: {Industrial conglomerate} Alright, here's base game Morgan. Let's go through take a look at his various parts and determine what to keep and what to change. quote:+1 ECONOMY: {Industrial conglomerate} "Industrial conglomerate" but it doesn't give Industry but gives Economy instead, what an odd phrasing. This is basically unchangeable, you can't increase it because it will give you the massive bonus of +2 Economy (+1 Energy for each square worked), and you can't decrease it because being good at Economy is basically Morgan's identity. Economy is such a weird thing because most of it's benefit is when you have +2 Economy and going higher or lower than that has very marginal benefits/penalties. It feels like the +1 Energy per Square bonus should be at somewhere like +5 Economy and Free Market should give you much more of a Economy bonus. I can't actually make that change though. quote:-1 SUPPORT: {Followers have expensive tastes} This reduces the amount of units you can support for free and so it essentially reduces the amount of minerals you earn. quote:COMMERCE: {bonus increases value of treaties, pacts, loans} Increases the value of loans? I don't know what that means. In general this attributes gives you bonus Energy for being at peace. It doesn't really do much since you get plenty of Commerce bonus from technology but I'm going to bump it up to +2, just to give Morgan a nice +2 somewhere. This is purely a vibes based decision. quote:Begins with 100 extra energy credits. A very minor bonus but nice to have. quote:Need HAB COMPLEX for bases to exceed size 4: {Creature comforts at a premium} This is either a very harsh penalty or a very irrelevant penalty. Here we come across the specter of ICS (Infinite City Sprawl). If you're ICSing (or even just semi-ICSing) then this penalty is irrelevant to you. ICSing is already a very strong but micromanagement heavy strategy. I avoid doing it and so does the AI, which makes Morgan pretty weak in the hands of the AI. In my opinion, from a game design perspective we should be discouraging ICSing and we certainly shouldn't penalize players for not doing so. I am going to be removing both this and the Support penalty for this reason. However, we now need to add some things to make Morgan both different and interesting. I will obviously be making him be able to run Free Market without penalties since that's something everybody in my mod gets to do for their favored Social Engineering choice. This unfortunately makes him rather similar to my version of Pravin Lal so I need to add some things to distinguish them. In order to distinguish playing the Morganites from playing the Peacekeepers I'm going to steal some mechanics from the Peacekeepers and add some Marxist Materialism. The base version of the Morganites is a system of exploiters with no exploited, we're going to fix that. Capitalism at its best is a brutal meritocracy. To show this I'm going to give Morgan both extra Talents and extra Drones. I'm thinking 1 Talent and 1 Drone per 4 citizens, leaving 2 normal workers. These numbers can be adjusted up or down and the symmetry can be broken if necessary (or to make an ideological point with capitalism producing more Drones than Talents). This is going to have some weird effects. The number of Talents you get is rounded up while the number of Drones is round down. The net effect is that you get one more Talent from these abilities except when your Population is divisible by 4. The other effect is that getting Golden Ages is going to be more difficult. Psych spending, Specialists, and how they affect Talents and Drones is a very complicated topic to explain. It takes 2 Psych to turn a normal worker into a Talent or to turn a Drone into a normal worker. Psych spending is the very first thing that affects your citizen's happiness and it prefers to make Talents over removing Drones. Overall, this means that as Morgan you're going to have to work extra hard to remove drones if you want to have Golden Ages. This could mean lavish Psych spending, Hurrying facilities that make Drones happy, harsh police presence, or heavy use of Specialists. On the other hand, if you're fine with slower growth then Morgan's capitalist utopia is usually more stable than most other Factions despite its vast amounts of inequality. Just how will you usher in another gilded age? Next up is Capitalism and Industry. Capitalism was responsible for industrializing huge swathes of the world and yet now its de-industrializing those same places. What determines whether the means of production are created or neglected within a capitalistic system? Profitability. I'm giving Morgan -2 Industry and giving him a 20% discount on Hurrying production. -2 Industry increases Mineral costs by 20% which also increases the cost of Hurrying production by 20%. I'm then giving Morgan a 20% discount on Hurrying production. Because of the way that math works, this works out to Hurrying production costing 96% of normal after everything is accounted for. For Morgan, Hurrying production is cheaper than normal but not Hurrying production is a lot worse. Sidenote: Positive Industry works differently than Negative Industry despite the numbers and effects looking very similar. Stacking Industry is more powerful than it seems and very low Industry isn't as bad as it seems. This is why the Free Drones are so strong. -5 Industry = 50% More Minerals = 67% Production Speed (100/1.5) -32% Total -4 Industry = 40% More Minerals = 71% Production Speed (100/1.4) -3 Industry = 30% More Minerals = 77% Production Speed (100/1.3) -2 Industry = 20% More Minerals = 83% Production Speed (100/1.2) -1 Industry = 10% More Minerals = 91% Production Speed (100/1.1) 0 Industry = No Effect +1 Industry = 10% Less Minerals = 111% Production Speed (100/.9) +2 Industry = 20% Less Minerals = 125% Production Speed (100/.8) +3 Industry = 30% Less Minerals = 143% Production Speed (100/.7) +4 Industry = 40% Less Minerals = 166% Production Speed (100/.6) +5 Industry = 50% Less Minerals = 200% Production Speed (100/.5) +100% Total Isn't math crazy? Note that this gets more complicated because only 10 minerals can overflow from one production to another. The gameplay implications is that going Power during a war might be an even better than it seems for my new Morgan. He still benefits a ton from Wealth as he usually does. Next up, Morgan orginally had reduced Hab Limits. I removed that for both gameplay and thematic reasons. When I think of capitalism I think of the huge, neon-drenched cities in cyberpunk or the massive metropolises of South Korea, Japan, or even London and New York. Teeming masses of humanity crammed into tiny apartments or squalid slums. The elites get plenty of space to demonstrate their wealth but the vast majority do not. I'm going to go even further than removing his Hab penalty and actually give him a +2 Max Pop bonus, the same one I removed from Pravin Lal and also gave to Santiago. This will benefit Morgan hugely due to his +1 Energy per Square bonus from Free Market but will be difficult to reach due to his increased amount of drones making Golden ages harder to trigger. This will be his major advantage over Pravin Lal, ironically stolen from him. Now for a tricky addition, I'm going to give Morgan 2% interest on the Energy in his treasury. This is going to be very difficult to balance. This bonus is available in the Faction editor but isn't on any Factions, probably because it was such a nightmare to balance. 2% interest means that your balance doubles every 36 (72/2) turns and then will double again in 36 turns and so on. This can get out of hand very quickly. 2% is a relatively small amount, enough to give a bit of a reward if you're saving for something or being indecisive but not enough to base your entire strategy around. Finally, a -1 Planet rating just to make dealing with the native life more difficult for him and give him at least a small amount of the penalties from Free Market. So let's take a look at my new version of Morgan (3.0) Morgan 3.0 posted:+1 ECONOMY: {Corporate conglomerate} If I achieved my goals. Playing Morgan should feel like you're earning a ton of Energy but somehow it's never enough. You have a lot of problems and the solution to all of them is Energy but you don't have all the Energy you need so you have to prioritize what gets developed and what doesn't. You benefit greatly from population and can get more population than other Factions but you either have to get that population the slow way or spend lavishly on Psych and Hurrying Facilities and getting dedicated Police units. The main reward for spending all this Energy is even more Energy. You have to spend Energy to get Golden Ages, you have to spend Energy to Hurry your production, you have to hoard Energy to get interest from it then spend it on Secret Projects so you can finish them in good time. Don't forgot about upgrading your military and bribing your neighbors. Energy, Energy, Energy, Energy. So that's that. Morgan is now conceptually finished, the numbers may need to be fine-tuned through play-testing by both myself and the AI. He's going to be hard to play for new players but the number of new players for a 24 year old game that are going to be installing a Faction mod is vanishingly small. That number is probably zero. For anybody else, this new Morgan should let you show off your skill at handling the internal economic development side of Alpha Centauri like no other Faction. The AI will probably not be able to handle him properly due to the interlocking complexity of these changes, oh well. Names for my Morgan rework. I already like the first one but here are my other ideas. Morgan: Contradictions of Capitalism Morgan: The Gilded Ages Morgan: Rising Rate of Profit Morgan: Infinite Growth, Finite Planet
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Nov 14, 2023 07:33
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Lostconfused posted:Poles too. That's what we started with. Technically Polish-Lithuanians.
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Nov 14, 2023 09:28
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Frosted Flake posted:Those were developed because IDF infantry wouldn't get out of their M113s and screen the tanks in Lebanon, so doubtful. The same goes for the Israeli use of ERA blocks. They've just never been good at cooperating. That would be a command issue more tan anything then. Someone would need to order them to do their job but I guess their doctrine is too casualty averse maybe?
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Nov 14, 2023 16:31
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Frosted Flake posted:Pact members couldn't make the turbines required for the T-64 and T-80, their automotive industries just weren't there T-80 had the turbine, T-64 had the opposed piston engine
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Nov 14, 2023 16:37
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:Ha, not in Polish school! Orange Devil posted:That's what we started with. Technically Polish-Lithuanians. I didn't realize things were skewed that way in Poland. I remember it was all about France and Germany. At the time the war with Poland was mostly remembered in the references to the main character from A Life for the Tsar.
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Nov 14, 2023 16:51
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supersnowman posted:That would be a command issue more tan anything then. Someone would need to order them to do their job but I guess their doctrine is too casualty averse maybe? It doesn't really work like that
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Nov 14, 2023 17:18
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Slavvy posted:It doesn't really work like that Sergeants getting out to bang on the door of the APC would explain the NCO casualties... lol
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Nov 14, 2023 20:56
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Inside the vehicle is 'safe' Nco is telling me to get out of the vehicle and locate the enemy by getting shot probably There's a good chance I might die doing that Is whatever we're doing here worth dying for Y/N? You can't really solve that by ordering harder cause it's a social issue
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Nov 14, 2023 21:13
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Why is that an idf problem specifically then. Is it just a function of colonial wars that the infantry gets that what they're doing sucks and so they are unwilling to do it? If not, why specifically is it something that the IDF has to deal with.
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Nov 14, 2023 21:44
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Because their official ideology that every Jewish life is inordinately precious has led to this going to extreme lengths. Coupled with the percent of the population they can't conscript, and being outnumbered by the states they endlessly antagonize, they have developed a complex about it.
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Nov 14, 2023 22:24
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It just crossed my mind how much... warhammer 40k chaos level of bullshit happened in Yugoslavia, especially the mountains where my family is from, during WW2. You had the nihilistic cult of "Death to the World", you had Typhoid Mary kulaks who had to be beaten with sticks to accept doing basic anti-lice hygiene in the middle of a typhoid epidemic (i swear to god, kulaks doing some variant of "you can't make me do this, i will poo poo myself and everything around me if you try" are the loving worst), you had actual, no poo poo "blood and skulls" warbands roaming around, you had weirdass Ustaše offshoots who thought making things out of human eyeballs was an art form, I might as well mention the actual, no poo poo, real name "Black Legion" military formation, you had the 7 Although actual communist political commissars weren't anything like their 40k counterparts, at all. Guys were handpicked to not be murderous idiots. Tough, ruthless, single-mindedly commited to the cause, sometimes to their detriment, yes. But you had to be someone who inspires respect first and foremost, and you had to be able to socially navigate complex situations in the middle of a loving warzone surrounded by people who had guns and knew how to use them. Fascist militias were the ones using fear to keep their men in line, and it didn't exactly work out well for them. Semi-related - I suspect one of the reasons why USA had its eternal quest to bomb HQs that never existed is due to Yugoslav Partizans actually having an HQ that did get found and attacked at one point and ratlined Nazis being unable to shut the gently caress up about that one time they almost got Tito. And now I'm suddenly also reminded of a quote: Basil Davidson posted:It was the nature of partisan resistance that operations against it must either eliminate it altogether or leave it potentially stronger than before. This had been shown by the sequel to each of the previous five offensives from which, one after another, the partisan brigades and divisions had emerged stronger in experience and armament than they had been before, with the backing of a population which had come to see no alternative to resistance but death, imprisonment, or starvation. There could be no half-measures; the Germans left nothing behind them but a trail of ruin. What in other circumstances might possibly have remained the purely ideological war that reactionaries abroad said it was (and German propaganda did their utmost to support them) became a war for national preservation. So clear was this that no room was left for provincialism; Serbs and Croats and Slovenes, Macedonians, Bosnians, Christian and Moslem, Orthodox and Catholic, sank their differences in the sheer desperation of striving to remain alive.
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Nov 14, 2023 22:31
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A lot of 40k's ideas come from pre-existing pop culture about ww2 which we know by now come from germans trying to explain how they really really almost won against da barbarous orient.
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Nov 14, 2023 23:02
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i mean possibly but it was mostly 2000ad and dune
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Nov 14, 2023 23:10
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A lot of the original GW crew were history nerds - see warhammer fantasy.
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Nov 14, 2023 23:14
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Impermanent posted:Why is that an idf problem specifically then. Is it just a function of colonial wars that the infantry gets that what they're doing sucks and so they are unwilling to do it? If not, why specifically is it something that the IDF has to deal with. Israel is a settler colonial project with the goal of establishing an ethnostate in which there is a permanent racialized underclass, and every dead Israeli soldier is not just a dead soldier but also a setback in the ongoing effort to outnumber the natives it’s similar to, although much more severe than, the casualty aversion experienced by white Rhodesians or pro-apartheid hardliners in South Africa
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Nov 14, 2023 23:18
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Great Yugoslav posting, do you have any English language book recommendations? Also I've always joked that the best representation of comissars in tabletop wargames is Chain of Command, where they have a points value but forgot to actually include the rules
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Nov 14, 2023 23:26
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Mister Bates posted:Israel is a settler colonial project with the goal of establishing an ethnostate in which there is a permanent racialized underclass, and every dead Israeli soldier is not just a dead soldier but also a setback in the ongoing effort to outnumber the natives On the one hand ethnic cleansing is bad, but on the other hand Yang's cities are too close together and aren't situated in the right places...
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Nov 15, 2023 00:38
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sullat posted:On the one hand ethnic cleansing is bad, but on the other hand Yang's cities are too close together and aren't situated in the right places... You can starve a city down to Pop 1, (sell all the improvements), and then build a Colony Pod in order to abandon it. This doesn't count as an atrocity. It turns out if you spread out your ethnic cleansing over enough time people don't regard it as an atrocity even if the end result is the same. In Alpha Centauri. I'll be doing more SMAC but this time with the Thinker mod in order to improve the AI and as Deidre. I'll be posting significantly fewer pictures and updates but I'll probably still do a few. Previously I was doing full size screenshots with the [img ] tag. Should I use the [timg ] tag in the future? This makes the pictures smaller but for some reason when you click them it doesn't expand to full size but instead to a medium size, you have to open the picture in a new tab in order to get the full size view and be able to actually read anything. Please enjoy this picture of what the original 7 faction leaders looked like when they were younger. The actual pictures were taken from the diplomacy screen in the game. 
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Nov 15, 2023 01:55
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I see that 'in Alpha Centauri' is becoming the geopolitical version of 'in Minecraft' and I like it
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Nov 15, 2023 02:00
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BearsBearsBears posted:You can starve a city down to Pop 1, (sell all the improvements), and then build a Colony Pod in order to abandon it. This doesn't count as an atrocity. It turns out if you spread out your ethnic cleansing over enough time people don't regard it as an atrocity even if the end result is the same. In Alpha Centauri. Call me David ben Gurion but I do know how to conduct an ethnic cleansing without running afoul of the rules-based international order. Just, you know, musing on the morality of it. I mean I guess I can pretend that all those starving Yang drones are being assimilated into the genejack factories of Morgan Industries, but we all know most of them are ending up as mindworm food. Speaking of which, is there a link for your mod? There's probably more than a few veteran SMAC players here who'd be willing to toy with it.
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Nov 15, 2023 05:56
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sullat posted:Call me David ben Gurion but I do know how to conduct an ethnic cleansing without running afoul of the rules-based international order. in Master of Orion 2, if you wanted to... remove the alien inhabitants of a newly-conquered planet without drawing the condemnation for doing so (or if you were a Democracy, that didn't have the option to do ethnic cleansing directly), the way to do this was to use freighters to transport the population to another planet. under normal circumstances, this is useful for quickly getting newly-settled planet up to speed, or to take advantage of an agriculture-rich planet by sending population to the rest of your empire whenever the agri-planet hits max pop but, if you send population to a planet that is already at max pop, then those people simply go poof - die burning up in the atmosphere, get lost in space, who knows
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Nov 15, 2023 06:05
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sullat posted:Call me David ben Gurion but I do know how to conduct an ethnic cleansing without running afoul of the rules-based international order. Just, you know, musing on the morality of it. I mean I guess I can pretend that all those starving Yang drones are being assimilated into the genejack factories of Morgan Industries, but we all know most of them are ending up as mindworm food. iirc in SMAC you could get yourself elected council president then pass the law legalizing chemical weapons. equip the units who storm enemy cities with the now entirely legal and legitimate defensive weaponry and presto, no problems with garrisoning captured cities
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Nov 15, 2023 07:53
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bedpan posted:iirc in SMAC you could get yourself elected council president then pass the law legalizing chemical weapons. equip the units who storm enemy cities with the now entirely legal and legitimate defensive weaponry and presto, no problems with garrisoning captured cities They're using them for illumination, so therefore its fine.
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Nov 15, 2023 08:07
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BearsBearsBears posted:You can starve a city down to Pop 1, (sell all the improvements), and then build a Colony Pod in order to abandon it. This doesn't count as an atrocity. It turns out if you spread out your ethnic cleansing over enough time people don't regard it as an atrocity even if the end result is the same. In Alpha Centauri. I like how everyone look 12-18 except Mariam who look like 35
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Nov 15, 2023 20:16
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Miriam does plausibly look like someone's senior year yearbook photo. I asked in the general games thread but this is probably the more appropriate place, how is Victoria 3 now? Is it worth getting into or does it still need more time/actually will always be bad? skooma512 has issued a correction as of 00:32 on Nov 16, 2023 |
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Nov 15, 2023 20:41
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Will update you on v3 once my shitbox computer finishes loading it. New patch just released yesterday
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Nov 15, 2023 20:45
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Define bad.
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Nov 15, 2023 20:55
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Winding my way through ultimate general civil war but I also picked up UoC2 (with no DLC) and realized it's been a literal decade down to the week according to Steam since I played UoC1 and have no idea how to play.
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Nov 15, 2023 21:00
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It's reached Paradox par, is about the best way to put it. All the systems but one (puppets, who you still can't tell "bro I conquered Arabia for oil, start building pumpjacks instead of art academies") do the things they claim to do in ways that don't break down until you think about them, from a basis that feels about right to pop-history. Flaws are that the political sim hasn't decided and probably never will whether you're choosing a cabinet or a legislature, the economic cycle of the game boils down to either clicking every minute to build new tooling workshops to support the lumber camps and iron mines that you built to support the last batch of tooling workshops if you're a big country or just queueing to pop/slots cap and watching the century go by if you're a small one, and the military side is based entirely on war weariness and nothing lasts more than a year or so after the initial stalemate is broken. E: Also, the military side only works with goals articulated before war breaks out, about matters restricted into a neatly-fenced bidding system. V3 World War 1 really is over by Christmas '14, based entirely on whether the Entente or Central Powers control Serbia, with the result being Serbia either does or does not stay a puppet; it's technically possible to Versailles an opponent but only if it's demanded from the very beginning and it only can be demanded if the target enters the prewar bidding minigame with a level of bad boy points only achievable by a successfully map-painting human. And of course politics and military don't interact; the most jingoist or fascist politicians will demand is a standing army and security force, they'll never so much as give a Convene Estates mission to take a province, and ardent pacifists will sit at max approval forever as you conquer the world as long as you only use conscripts and ban the use of regulars or colonists. Mandoric has issued a correction as of 21:32 on Nov 15, 2023 |
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Nov 15, 2023 21:13
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| # ? May 27, 2024 19:03 |
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Lostconfused posted:Define bad. Missing features or features that just don't work. Hollow gameplay that seems ok up front but goes off the rails or becomes boring by mid/late game (example: Stellaris). But going by Mandoric's post, and 1.5 (I actually didn't know this had come out, let alone yesterday), it seems like it might be time to give it a shot
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Nov 16, 2023 00:16
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