This one took forever, not least because my save file got corrupted when I was like 80% done and I had to start again.

So much fun though as ever, and I have scripts for more :D

Sometimes, without any visible reason, the power in the graph for your (or other factions) can fluctuate wildly. Anyone knows why?

​

Its been a while since ive played them

Normally I'm a builder. Recently played pirates and gaians

When you think about the Aversions of the factions, they actually leave a ton of room for wacky combinations. For instance, you can have Fundamentalist Peacekeepers, or Democratic Believers, the ever-popular game-winning Green Morganites, and even stuff that basically contradicts their established aversion like Wealth Gaians/Free Market Spartans/Free Market Cultists. Of course, a lot of that stuff is soft-locked not by the aversion system, but simply because they would make for terrible choices game mechanics-wise, dooming your play-through.

Regardless, it's still pretty fun to imagine, as the fanfic novella "Joe" by Alinestra Covelia did, with the vendettatime Data Angels choosing Police State-

The prop was sporting a fetching series of bruises on his left cheekbone today. Not only that, but Joe was reliably told that his knuckles had been specially hardened with many hours of striking a synthetic wooden wall. Soon, the prop confided, he would gradate onto using a stone wall, and then finally a polymetal wall in order to render his knuckle bones dense and lethal. Pity the poor policeman who came across the prop on a stormy night. They may have taken up residence in his cafe, but they could never take his freedom etc.

Joe smiled wanly and nodded. The speech, it would appear, was less for his own education than for the gratification of the three unfriendly-looking police officers watching the entrance and occupants. They appeared young and green - they all sported short, aggressive haircuts, but each had the look of imbecilic confidence that only the harrowings of experience can erase. Joe could see that each man was substantially built under the armor, but it did not lessen his doubts as to their battleworthiness. Joe had seen the Hiverian soldiers, and what they had been capable of.

There had been widespread panic only a few hours before, when the datanodes relayed the alarming news of the Hiverian move northwards. So far, the fleet had been unchallenged, but any vessels found in international waters had been boarded and their crews detained. Back at home, the domestic riots had been swiftly quelled by General Rowlings, and the curfew even more strictly enforced. Evidently, the investment in tear gas and glue guns had paid off - people could hardly appear to be dignified martyrs when they were immobilized and stacked like kelpfish. Strange how the methods of the police became that much more efficient when the threat of death was removed.

Joe sat down at the net let and connected using M/MI, aware that the guards were logging this even now, and that his every move online would be tracked by DataKnave technology.

Note how the society has its own unique spin to oppression- the Angels are both unused to such authoritarian behavior, yet innovate with technological solutions. Skimming the story again, it's interesting how it starts with the Data Angels first creating a rudimentary law enforcement force at all, then later are forced into the choice so that the faction is able to fight against the Human Hive, the apotheosis of Police State. The path of creeping totalitarianism, Nietzsche's saw about those who fight monsters beware, etc., etc. And so forth:

"I would like to draw your attention now to the findings of our own probes in democratic, peace-loving Iphiclia. These stills show the law enforcers dealing with undesirable individuals through the use of tear gas and batons. The transgressors in this incident were those who failed to produce adequate personal identification under Clause 208."

The crowd reaction was mixed, ranging from nonchalant disinterest on the part of the Hive and University, to hurried consultation amongst the Peacekeepers, to outright indignation amongst the Gaians.

"Another startling facet of the progressive fledgling democracy is shown in its militia. This is a holovid of the RapCafe Blue - a haven for seekers of freeflow of information, as well as freeflow of cheap ethanol. Note the twelve soldiers standing guard in the foyer - these soldiers are not paying for their rent, for the DataTech Interior has ruled a state of emergency and demanded that the citizenry give the army their full support. Evidently the DataTech have grasped a fundamentally sound and workable social order that has functioned smoothly alongside them for decades. Unfortunately for you, Commissioner, this social order is a Police State, and we the Hive are the example they have chosen to follow."

Lal interrupted testily. "Regardless of the dubious veracity of your claims, Mr Berzhinev, even you cannot deny that the DataTech have had adequate reason - courtesy of your faction's aggression - to adopt this regrettable political order. The bridge to democracy is a steep and fragile one, even with support from the international community. When a young democracy meets with a brutal dictatorship intent on subjugation such as yours, one cannot fault them for a political slip in the interests of self-preservation."

So how might any of other unlikely, perhaps darkly ironic, or perhaps just funny, unexpected Social Engineering choices might look?

Edit: I just realized the AC Wiki is wrong; it claims that the Data Angels' Aversion is Police State when it's actually Power.

Also, in "Joe" the Hive chooses Green Economics:

"The Hive lives underground," continued Hu in a bland tone, "as you will see in your tour of our bases later this week. We do not have space or atmosphere to squander, and as such, our lifestyles have gradually become both more spartan in its luxuries, and more conscientious in its consumption."

McClelland's screen showed up various images of the Hive cramped internal structures: meeting rooms, feeding bays, sleeping rooms, cleansing rooms. All seemed clean, though there was no denying their claustrophobic limits.

"The Hive cannot afford waste and pollution. And it is with a sense of surprise that we find ourselves adopting interests very similar to your own, Mister McClelland. Preservation of the environment, and care for the surrounding ecology. Although," here Hu smiled thinly and sipped his water. "I must admit, our reasons are somewhat less noble than yours. We adopt a Green practice through the interests of self-preservation, not world-preservation... but I believe that our ends are convergent and similar."

Thinker Mod Version 5.5 can now be found on the homepage. After very significant rewrites in the previous release things continued steadily and even more game features were reimplemented. It is noteworthy that this release directly modifies the main menu screen to provide additional options since this was not done previously. Overall this release is mostly oriented towards stability fixes and config additions.

If you have not played Thinker Mod before, see Details.md for a complete overview of the features. There's also discord here and forum thread for Thinker related discussions.

• Modify main menu screen to also display Change Options button for Thinker features.
• Add option MovieExtension in Alpha Centauri.ini to choose custom file formats for external video players.
• If movies with alternate file extensions are not found, the game always defaults to playing WVE files.
• Add option energy_steal_rate to modify how many credits are taken by base captures or probe team actions.
• Add option faction_pair to set which random factions must spawn at the same time or neither of them appears. Not supported during network multiplayer.
• The game does not have fixed spawn pairing for Caretakers and Usurpers unless set in the config file.
• Paths to SAV savefiles can be entered in the command line and the main menu will be skipped and the save is loaded directly.
• Minor changes to faction spawn placement such as avoiding starts without sufficient landmasses nearby.
• Minor updates to AI social engineering, psych energy allocation and land raising strategy.
• AI has reduced expansion speed only at the two lowest difficulty levels when expansion_autoscale is enabled.
• Change DontResetBeginnerPrefs=0 to only reset preferences once when the conditions are met.
• When ignore_reactor_power is enabled and "Auto-prune obsolete units" is disabled from preferences, the game does not redesign any additional prototypes when new reactor techs are discovered.
• Secret project descriptions are updated to reflect their actual effects in the original game. Minor updates to additional faction base names.
• Remove original leftover debug code that activated the scenario editor mode when any savegame with specific filenames was loaded.
• Fix map generator issue with rare_supply_pods that resulted in an unequal distribution of bonus resources on ocean tiles.
• Fix edge case where governor might become stuck building colony pods when the population growth is zero.
• Fix issue where AI might sometimes open supply pods creating fungus at their spawn location before settling the first base.
• Fix AI sometimes raising land when this would not be possible without breaking diplomatic treaties.
• Fix savegame issue that sometimes caused facility completion voice blurbs to play multiple times when they should occur only once.
• Fix user interface issue where hurrying base production was not possible during the turn upkeep after hurry action in the previous turn.
• Fix possible game crash related to rendering code that sometimes happened during combat inside the fog of war.
• Fix inconsistent calculations in the original game during psych energy allocation.
• Fix mineral convoys between bases potentially being able to benefit from mineral multiplier facilities in multiple bases.
• Fix multiple significant data consistency issues or possible game crashes when loading or writing savegames.

So I was playing as pirates on the second highest difficulty iirc.

Anyway all my cities died and turned into colony ships. Late game was getting near ascending.

Reloaded autosave same thing happened..

Quit and started new game random faction. Got pirates again.

Is this a glitch or a pirates thing?

​

United kingdom: +2 economy +2 research , -1 police, -1 efficiency

Lose efficiency points for debate , lose of police points for liberalism and democracy , high economy due to finance center.

Naval units free support and shildbuilding facility also have bonus.

Preference: free market

Japan : +2 planet, +2 efficiency, + 1 police, -1 growth + 1 or 2 support

Green economy and strong work ethic , police for highly ordered society， lose points for population growth. Public Support for military also part of culture.

Immune to fundamentalism negs because society prized science(closest to fund because there is no monarchy social choice)

Preference: power and fundamentalism, tried to maximize efficiency in social engineering

China: +1 economy, +2 industry, +2 police, -1 planet, -1 growth

High manufacturing power and police state, bad pollution and growth. Terraform upgrade and facility building also faster because building experts.

Oftensive Probe team action bonus for stealing secrets.

Preference: police state and power

USA +3 economy commerce, +1 industry, + 2 research +1 growth, -2 police

Growth from immigration, free talent every 5 citizen due to attracting skilled worker. Farm and nutrirnts has extra yield though not India level. Air and bombing units have free support or bonus morale.

Preference: free market and democracy

India: +3 growth, +1 economy , -3 planet, -1 efficiency , +1 research

Positive growth， pollution is bad, efficiency is low because of regional disagreement and burecracy, Good research and more probe team success because IT experts and hacking. Extra nutrient yield because of abundant farmland.

+Free military unit without support cost as 10% or 15% of total population, high manpower in military.

Less drones and unhappiness from overcrowd, can have more citizens before hab complex.

Thats all I can think of for now

#INTERLUDE21
#xs 500
#caption Epilogue
^ “The latest surveys are in, $TITLE0 $NAME1.”
^ You look up from the reports spread across your desk.
^ “And?”
^ “No coherent activity. Not at the continental scale. Not anymore.”
^ For a moment neither of you speaks.
^ “Very well. Thank you. Dismissed.”
^ And so it is ended. Not with the completion of some vast Secret
Project, nor with a final revelation from laboratories or psi domes, but with the
slow accumulation of a thousand lesser victories. Forest by forest,
continent by continent, the xenofungus has been cut back, burned,
poisoned, buried, isolated, and replaced. 'Former crews have crossed
Planet for generations, following behind surveyors, soldiers, engineers,
agronomists and ecologists, until the great fungal networks that once
stretched across the continents have been broken into scattered remnants.
^ The native life has not vanished. Mindworms still survive in isolated
regions, and patches of xenofungus remain where their destruction would
cost more than their containment. But the global network is gone. The
strange pulses once detected across thousands of kilometers have ceased,
and the great coordinated blooms which increasingly threatened the Human
Zones have dwindled into local ecological disturbances.
^ Whether the Planetmind has been destroyed no one can say. Perhaps it
has merely been crippled. Perhaps some fragment of it still dreams beneath
the remaining fungal beds, awaiting another age in which to grow together
again. If so, that age will not come soon.
^ Not a word has been heard from Earth in all the years since Planetfall,
only a deafening silence across all frequencies. Humanity remains divided
among rival factions, and old disputes over wealth, faith, freedom, power
and knowledge continue unabated. Armies still guard borders. Probe teams
still move in secret. Treaties are signed and broken, and every leader on
Planet continues to dream of a future shaped according to their own ideals.
^ But one looming danger is gone.
^ Humanity did not transcend it. Humanity did not surrender to it. No
single genius solved it, and no final machine saved the species at the last
possible moment. Scientists measured the threat. Engineers devised methods
to contain it. Workers built the machines. Soldiers defended them. 'Former
crews returned year after year to push the fungal frontier farther back.
What could not be solved in a moment was solved through perseverance.
^ The other factions remain a threat. They can be dealt with tomorrow.
^ One problem at a time.

Hello Chironians!
I play the gog version of the game through Crossover (with Thinker mode – once again kudos to u/induktio). Works good, but when a secret project video starts playing – the screen turns black, audio is working, and after its finished the screen stuck. UI sounds and game itself are working but the screen is not.

I tried to install windows VLC into SMACX bottle and play videos from it when they appear – but the problem stays the same. VLC opens, audio is working, but an error pops up about incompatible video format.

I would appreciate any help and inputs!
All the best.

This game worked for literally years. Fired it up today, and it crashes before the opening graphic even completes. Is there a patch or anything?

How can I tell if I have Thinker mod installed ? I really dont remember if I installed it in the past!? Thanks

What if that funny bit from the Longevity Vaccine video, but a series of shorts?

This is a question I first asked myself about twenty years ago, and I've finally sat down and made a start. It's my first time doing anything like this so it's not the most polished thing ever, but I had a lot of fun! And now I've learned the basics, I'm getting quicker.

Hope you like it! I have scripts for 3 more so watch this space...

How can I get the game to allow automatic tubes and tubes to (location)m I realize it may be an edit to the initial file, but can you give me the specific entry?

For context, im running Alien Crossfire, Release 2.0 from 20 Dev 1999.

Thanks in advance!

So I'm playing in my first game in which I wasn't able to stop global warming, and I'm quite confused about how building Pressure Domes works and what the timetable is. And I can't find information on the Alpha Centauri wiki so far, and what I've read online in people's comments seems to be at least partly false.

Here's what has happened:

Speed Building Pressure Domes

8 years ago, I got the global warming announcement. I read in someone's forum post that that meant every 4 years for the next 20, the sea would rise. So I painstakingly checked all my cities to see which ones said they were in danger (Is there a less time consuming and annoying method than right clicking each city to check info on its terrain individually? I have ~80 cities and that was really tedious).

And then I started building pressure domes in all of them, set my economy to 80% energy so I would have enough money to speed buy a lot of them, disbanded units when needed, and got the domes built within 4 turns in about 20 bases. Leaving 2 unimportant bases which were small and had been captured from an enemy with bad terraforming still working on their pressure domes when the 4th turn arrived. So I figured those 2 bases would be lost, but it had been impossible to get domes built there in time, and they were bad bases anyway. So I just evacuated all troops out of them on the 3rd turn and then ended the turn.

Nothing. No sea level rise.

I'd also been monitoring some enemy bases that were building pressure domes and had been pleased to see that they weren't going to finish in time and were thus going to lose those bases. But... that didn't happen.

Turn 7 Sea Level Rise and Free Domes?

The game went on. Then SEVEN turns, rather than 4, after the initial global warming announcement, the sea did rise. It ruined tons of terrain and wasted hours of terraforming improvements and everything sucks now, but... my two-undomed bases suddenly have domes?

Somehow, inexplicably they had domes created for them, but were still working on their domes and now hadt he message that one couldn't build another pressure dome because there already was one.

This seems to have happened to the AI too. All their bases in which they had failed to legitimately build domes suddenly DO have completed domes, and are still working on unfinished domes too.

So... maybe if you're TRYING to build a dome, the game just gives you one for free rather than the city being destroyed?

In which case I wasted a huge amount of effort and money speed building domes when I could have just been lazy and got them for free?

8th Turn Sudden Wave?

But then also on the 8th turn suddenly a base was destroyed by a tidal wave. It was some random enemy base. No idea why that one didn't get auto-domed or why that didn't happen on turn 7 when the sea level rise had actually happened?

Furthermore, that didn't happen at the beginning of the turn when forests and other terrain stuff happen/when the sea level rise had been announced at the beginning of the previous turn. No, it happened during the middle of the turn. I move a unit on one continent and suddenly I get informed that an enemy base on another continent has been destroyed by a tidal wave.

Nothing makes sense

So in this game I have random events turned off, therefore there shouldn't be any random destruction of buildings.

And this base has a surplus of +26 energy per turn, and my overall net income is hundreds of energy per turn so I don't think the base should be losing facilities due to lack of energy...

So why did a base just have a HAB Complex destroyed by a power surge at the start of the turn and tell me to increase my energy?

I have a treaty with Morgan. When I asked him to stop attacking a faction, he stated (paraphrasing) that "I cannot withdraw, as I accepted a contract and already took payment." Wow, I have 100’s of games played and never saw this message.

I got the game on GOG years ago for like £2 and I've tried over and over to get into it but I find it all a bit mind boggling especially tech and social policies.

I have a lot of experience with Civ V and VI, struggled with IV and I played III when I was like 8, and had no real concept of how anything worked so I remember basically nothing. XD

So I've played a few 4X games and understand growth, expansion etc.

I just don't know what I should be aiming for or how to manage military and combat. (I really hated stacking in Civ IV because I didn't really get it.)Even without blind research I don't know what stuff really does and when I read the encyclopedia the info doesn't go in. So are there any good "idiot guides?"I did try reading Vel's SMAX guide but I'm more of a visual learner.

Thanks! I love the atmosphere and different factions (even though I got pincer attacked by two at once because I wouldn't give them credits for free) and I can tell once it clicks I'll be hooked, but it's just starting off is very intimidating and overwhelming.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Deidre just called a meeting and wanted to melt the polar ice caps.

And everyone said yes, overriding my veto.

I have absolutely no idea why Deidre would want that, she has plenty of coastal cities that have no pressure domes.

This will be absolutely catastrophic for me and ruin all my terraforming and make me waste my whole economy for 20 turns trying to save cities from this stupid idea, etc.

Is there any way to know in advance when the AI will suddenly decide to do something stupid that will ruin the entire world and undo half the game's worth of progress?

Or if a council meeting is called, to get my vassals to actually vote the way I want? Given that I have two people under my thumb and I'm the governor, I should be able to block anything, but apparently I need to call them all up in advance and coach them on every single possible stupid thing the council could ever do?

Edit: I just checked and I didn't even have the option in previous turns to tell my vassals to vote against melting the polar caps. So apparently the instant the melt caps council action unlocked, Deidre immediately called a meeting and everyone voted yes. Is there a way to force a vassal to change their vote?

One problem I often run into, which wastes a ton of time and forces me to micromanage bases more, is that the quick view of a base's happiness at the bottom of the screen is completely wrong. Again and again and again I find that it tells me drones are about to riot, whereas actually the base is perfectly content in the correct view if I go to the Psych page.

Is there any way to fix this and get the game to stop lying to me and making me waste time and Psych trying to pacify bases that are already fine?

So I'm curious if there's a lore explanation somewhere that explains why mind worms (or even locusts of chiron or whatever) are actually any threat at all to a society that can make robots or make any kind of remote controlled or automated weapon system or whatever.

We're told that mind worms psychically incapacitate and terrify people so they can't fight back as the worm (presumably) crawls up their entire body and then chews into their skull and so forth. Sounds nasty and dangerous if your military is just human infantry walking around with guns or driving tanks in-person or something, sure. On the other hand, we're told that the worms themselves are not particularly tough and you can just burn them all up with a flamethrower as long as you don't panic, etc. We also see both from how Sensors work and also from several of the interlude blurbs talking about monitoring mind worm and fungus activity that it's possible to see mind worms coming and monitor them remotely.

So basically if you can just make an automated weapon system with no human mind to incapacitate or send out a remote controlled fighting vehicle or a robot or whatever, it seems like the mind worms should be trivial to destroy and pose no threat at all. And all of those things already existed to some extent even when this game was developed, let alone in the far-future setting where we explicitly develop AI technologies that should perfectly counter these worms.

Is there a lore explanation why they are still considered an existential threat in-universe even when human society is so advanced that people are about to transcend, instead of having become trivial to deal with centuries ago?

So I'm getting back into the game after a long hiatus. Like everyone that plays this haha.

I'm on thinker mod playing on librarian as that seems to be the ceiling of my skills atm. My question is on build order in the early turns.

I usually try to get 2nd scout on first 2 bases then colony pods. Formers as soon as tech unlocks. WP if I have good minerals.

I tend to struggle a bit with mimdworms - how do I take out fungal towers? Is it worth building sensors early on or will this hurt growth too much?

I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong, because while I can consistently beat the AI to most/all secret projects on Thinker difficulty, I often find it's difficult or impossible to beat them to the early ones on Transcend.

Last game, the Gaians got Weather Paradigm on turn ~25. I used the map editor tools to figure out how they did that so fast. Turns out they had one city with four mineral resources right around it, so that plus their transcend bonuses was just unbeatable.

But even when the AI isn't ridiculously lucky like that, it seems like two different AIs will always build Weather Paradigm and Human Genome Project by turn 50 or so. If I had decent luck with Unity pods and got a bit of money or an alien artifact, I can usually beat them to 1 of those projects. But there's no way I can beat them to both of those projects without ridiculously good luck.

This is a problem because I hate playing on Transcend without HGP, it just becomes boring and frustrating to be grow cities. And I don't like playing on any difficulty without WP since terraforming is the entire point of the game. If I can't get both of those, I usually find that I don't have fun at all, and I'd rather just quit than spend ~100 hours on a tedious run of things.

My current approach is something like this:

1) Play as Santiago. This seems to be basically mandatory on Transcend with aggressive AI. Otherwise I always run into an enemy Santiago within 10 turns and immediately lose to her powered up early units (or have to waste my precious early game production on military units and thus end up way behind). Santiago seems extremely useful anyway, since she can do population booms and has big boosts to 2 useful stats and a small penalty to one. Admittedly that one is useful for these early game secret projects, but that's a tiny factor compared to her other perks.

2) Don't build scout infantry, skip directly to colony pods. Get out at least 2 colony pods for each of my starting 2 bases before building anything else. I might get a scout infantry after that if my starting rover has gone off really far in one direction.

3) Research Biogenetics -> Social Psych -> Secrets of the Human Brain, which then lets me grab Centauri Ecology as my free tech. I find going Centauri Ecology first to be a bad idea on most maps, because I want to make more colony pods first, and it's useless to unlock Formers before I'm actually building them. The timing usually seems to work out very efficiently with this order.

4) I don't let cities grow beyond size 1 at first. I try to have them get to size 2 just before producing their colony pod. And have someone be a Medic for one turn to avoid a Drone Riot that turn.

5) After Centauri Ecology, I start getting Former -> Colony Pod at most bases, but sometimes am mixing in scout infantry or extra formers or an occasional recycling tank if that makes more sense for that city.

6) Formers usually make forests, prioritizing resource tiles followed by rivers followed by arid ones. Occasionally I'll clear annoyingly placed fungus or build a solar collector if I have a rainy tile with 1000 elevation or whatever

7) I research Industrial Base -> Industrial Economics.

8) I nerve staple all my bases at once and then switch to Free Market, so I have 10 turns of them being able to grow and produce more money and research.

9) When the 10 turns are up, I switch back to Simple for 1 turn, Nerve Staple them all again, and then Free Market again. This costs 120 money up front, but it seems to more than pay for itself on average. The extra Energy from all tiles for all bases gets me about 1 money per turn per base for 20 turns is something like 120 right there, plus the value of the bases being able to get larger and produce more due to nerve stapling.

10) Relatedly, I'm not putting my research rate above 50%. It feels like I need to prioritize getting money to have any chance of rush-buying secret projects in time.

11) Somewhere around turn 30, I'm starting to build secret projects in whatever 2 bases I can get the most production in. It's usually possible to have two bases from 5 to 7 minerals with a couple of forests and maybe a recycling tank.

12) I try to research Information Networks -> Planetary Networks. I'm not in any rush for that. I want to be able to switch to Planned for 1 turn later though.

13) Around turn 50 I hopefully have made enough progress on my secret projects plus have enough energy plus have found some alien artifacts plus have unlocked Planned. I switch to Planned to reduce the cost of my secret projects, and try to rush buy one.

14) Usually I'm able to get ONE of them. And then an AI grabs the other one I want and I'm not even close.