To be fair, it doesn't seem to do much on the surface. In truth, however, having a high score is the early game is a massive boon, because the main thing it does is weaken and reduce the spawn rate of mind worms attacking your empire. If you dump planet early on, before you've got a decent military, the mind worms can wreck you. Keep it high, however, and they'll spend their time attacking the other players.
Yeah, I really appreciate deeper (and more competent) guides - them being for Thinker is a bonus! I find so much SMAC content is casual let's plays or relies on massive gaps in the AI's play. I'd also be curious about SMAC-in-SMAX playthroughs. I'm in that camp of people who dislike SMAX. Really, though, I'm thrilled to see any good content!
@@michaelbird9148 Yeah, 90% let's plays. Honestly, as a RU-vidr I'm fed up with full game playthroughs. I'd rather make 6-15 minute video essays and tutorials. More fun to make, and they get more views too. And I can do longer form content on stream.
I cannot sub again, but I think we would all love some AC content. Before the guides though, a simple tutorial and later an over-explain game would prove really helpful. The game's UI is difficult to say the least, and a lot of the mechanics dated. Even if we played the game a long time ago, having gotten used to modern UIs and mechanics makes it difficult to get back.
"Some civilian workers got in among the research patients today and became so hysterical I felt compelled to have them nerve stapled. The consequence, of course, will be another public relations nightmare, but I was severely shaken by the extent of their revulsion towards a project so vital to our survival." - CEO Nwabudike Morgan, The Personal Diaries
I remember once reading a Wiki page or something that trashed Recycling Tanks, telling you to build a Former instead. This is probably an example of some sort of "novice" -logic: -Formers use up Supply slots (particularly hurting Morgan, as showcased in the video.) -It will eventually run out of tiles (especially useful ones) to improve. -Options for investing the minerals are scarce in the early game. Obviously, if a new base is founded later in the game, there are other buildings available for construction. Also there's less turns left to get return on investment.
Yeah, one of the players who coached me told me recycling tanks were low priority. I'm going with my gut here. Generally, flat yields = good in weak cities, multipliers = good in developed cities. And Alpha Centauri is loaded with weak cities early on. Recycling tanks pay themselves off after ~16 turns, (less if you're Domai due to his industry score) that's an insanely fast turnover time. Rushing buildings is at a cheaper rate, as noted here. I will say that formers are likely relatively better on lower difficulties, because food is better, you can grow without running into happiness issues. And formers are obviously great too. But if you're running lean, I'd move towards trying to get away with fewer formers early on.
This is contextual. Formers are generally better if you have the Weather Paradigm or have Ecological Engineering. At this point, you can convert Former Turns into advanced improvements. It requires building a lot of Formers to run out of land to improve with advanced improvements. It is however, extremely tedious to make so many Formers and so many advanced terrain improvements. And if you can't build Condensers yet you can only really benefit from 1-2 Formers per base. For something like speed Transcendence (minimum turns), Recycling Tanks are an extremely marginal build, their return on investment just isn't very good, this is not to say they are never built at a high level of play, they're marginal, not useless. Formers however are built in vast numbers.
@@blakewalsh9489 "This is contextual" -best way to phrase it. If the context is "start of the game" and "knowing the game will run many, many turns" then obviously Recycling Tanks make sense, if for nothing else that there aren't enough alternative investments available for the first handful of cities. Also, you could argue that this would also make sense "in the lore." The whole point of the tanks is that the early settlements are so starved for resources that (at least according to the Yang quote that plays) the dead people are "recycled" instead of buried. (Presumably other things are recycled as well in the tanks.) It's not explicitly stated if Hive is the only faction recycling people, but most other factions would have reasonable ideological justification for it. -Deidre is all about sustainability and harmony with the planet. -Morganites could have a system where you have to pay for the privilege of "proper burial" or at least your cadaver would be considered something that could be (literally) liquidated to help pay any outstanding debts. -University and Spartans would probably consider this basic pragmatism. I could easily imagine a military funeral where dress-uniformed Spartans gather at Tanks Facility to accompany their fallen comrade on their "final mission." -Peacekeepers would likely find the practice unsavory, but necessary for survival. -Believers would presumably have most qualms about this practice. Religious funeral practices, "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
A broken strategy is to reload the start until you spam close enough to the monolith and/or the volcano central tile (non rocky) to plant your capital in the center of those. Especially the monolith as you won’t even need to terraform them and any unit coming out will automatically receive an experience upgrade
Getting RR Slugger jumpscared in the comments of a Suede Civ 3 video of all things lol. Love to see that crossover between two of my favourite niche channels.
@@mangomation3945youtube recs you channels based on (among other things) the channels you watch, including the channels the channels you watch are watching (and vice versa) so it’s not as coincidental as it can feel it is
It would indeed be interesting to hear more strategy guides, although I'm a player who'd never be remotely near Transcend difficulty. But, considering you mentioned a money-focused strategy, it makes me wonder, whether there's a good eco-focused strategy (spam mindworms), or a tech-focused strategy, or something similar :)
Dude We should set up some online games together. If we can I used to have a Gaian strategy where I could win at the hardest level. But not with the mods you talked about For me it was all about catching a few mind worms then creating a mindworm mega army Then I would rush for green research creating huge areas of forest which gave me high high yields. And the great thing about it. I would barely terraform my area. So the planet, in the endgame when it starts to spam huge mind worms dependent on how many times you negatively effected the planet would have little effect on me.
