= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Vaniver comments on How I Ended Up Non-Ambitious - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (237)
SMAC is one of my favorite games. I find it unsatisfying from a strategy standpoint, though, because the factions are so unbalanced- the University is top-tier (unsurprising for a game set in the future!) and the Believers are terrible.
(For example, the example you mention- Believers going probe-heavy- is the best strategy for the Believers, but will lose out to Hive doing infinite city strategy. Hive can outproduce you, use police to keep their drones in line more effectively, and doesn't have the crippling early-game research penalty.)
Back when I played SMAC a lot, I found the unbalanced thing was useful for player-vs.-AI games; once I got good enough to reliably beat the AI with the powerful factions, I could play the weaker factions as a challenge. For multiplayer games, though, not so much.
It did, however, make me long for a version of SMAC where you programmed units with AI guidelines rather than control them individually, and where probes could read and alter enemy unit programming.