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I am trully surprised that Morgan is doing well, that faction has quite a few challenges. Good AI!

Mod: github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/ just go to Releases, right side. Short install guide here if you need it: th-cam.com/video/RmxtDEAvAS8/w-d-xo.html

You should definitely try it, I would say AI is surprisingly good. It can have some troubles early on occasionaly (mostly due to support and minerals), but once it grows up a bit it is doing great job. Does really good job terraforming and from there on its strong. Recommending the mod ;) You can skim through some episodes and see how AI progresses.

@@EdooGamingH Yeah, maybe I will put on your LP before going to sleep...

I think this could be misinterpreted: I didn't mean it in a disparaging way, that is the only way I consume let's plays...

@@frogmoth Hehe I know, believe it or not I do the same. Before sleep I watch some and is part of the reason I started these let's plays. I couldn't find the ones I liked for Alpha Centauri.. and decided to create something that people like me who like the game can actually watch. Because lots of other games like Civ 4,5,6 have really good let's plays.

True, I mixed up things here, Plex is right. You want this combo for Hive in general play to get lots of energy, but you cannot pop boom with it - have to pick Planned. Unfortunately, Hive is having it even harder to pop boom than I thought. Thx for pointing it out ; )

Agree & correct, should maybe have a slide for that. Ideally you pop boom once or twice per game to pop 7 and/or 14, all the bases at the same time. But it is easier said than done - takes some planning and setup to do it.

I would expect it, no reason why it would not, but will confirm if I get response from dev.

Got the response from dev: "It wont retroactively change the lifecycle for worms but it will apply immediately for any new units built on a base."

Well good for invasion like that certainly. Some of these things are better on larger maps, but I cant force myself to play on large maps, i think i would never finish the game. Had same problem with civilization games.

Don't worry you can ignore it, I already installed and tried it and developer is working on a mod for years now. Operating system doesn't like that there is application when you download it so it warns you it could be a virus. Its a thinker.exe file that is a mod. Safe 100%.

@@EdooGamingH I assumed was a false positive. Nightmare to get working had to use old computer to download then extract file before putting on thumb drive and transferring to modern computer. Any other way and file wouldn't download or zip would be deleted. Working now at least.

Aaah thank you, mixing things up a bit, well hopefully we will replace these slow tractors with real formers.

Or you could argue that it is the N-squared effect of every satellite being able to supply every base that is too strong in the first place. It also scales badly with map size, since if you have more bases you can more quickly build more satellites, each of them supplying all of the bases.

I agree, both are pretty much broken, especially when comboed, picking up Cloudbase Academy and then spamming lots of satellites, its just too much. Unfortunately Thinker mod tries not to change balance much, keeping it close to vanilla so there are more broken things. Will To Power rebalances some of these, although Cloudbase Academy and satellites are same there. This is one of the reasons why I play blind research + keeping to default faction choice (Discover for Zakh) and roleplay a bit. Otherwise I could always gun for those best Secret Projects and then game does become too easy. I went here for Supercollider which is not that great compared to Cloudbase Academy.. but it will be fun : ).

I am surprised that people play that long, I dont think I ever played much past late 2300 or 2400. Developers probably didnt consider this so its not designed probably. But I think modders could fix these problems, maybe even its not too hard. I will post something on discord to see what they say.

@ all right !

@@EdooGamingH also, what ? is there an alpha centauri discord ?

@@adalgisounoqualunque9033 Oh yes there is, mods are nicely active and even main ac discord is ok, there are these 3: discord.gg/sbAHS6GX discord.gg/UuF3F7vjf9 discord.gg/XdFuwWzzku

Oh I didn't even know about that, wow that is interesting and makes them worth even more. Cool, thanks for the tip! Glad that I can help with the guide ; )

Anime miriam is cool :D

I think I did pick it up just a bit later and rushed production with $$, I forgot here while talking : ( easy to get distracted.

Immune to probes, bonus to attack. Gotta love it, Miriam is fun!

Thank you. Yes I was planning to actually, since we had great discussion about drone mechanics few days ago on discord. I think I understand now pretty well how the mechanic is working. Just need some time to put it together, few days, and I am going to try to create some pictures and stuff to improve the quality of tutorials ; ). Picking up on some editing skills.

Glad to hear that :) Its good time to jump in, community moved a bit on discord, there is some activity now, and I guess we are all waiting for Civ7 to come out.

Surprised me as well.. he probably had colony pod on side towards his base and when i built mine base, borders spread so he continued moving to west until he found the spot xD just wait to see what happens in next episode :D hint at thumbnail

I was considering this, but I think ultimately it is worth it to keep researching because every tech you get, you can likely trade for another tech to one of the AIs. So even you lose 40% of labs energy .. with single tech trade you are already in net positive. I decided to keep the tech up and still invest in science also because if I completely kill research I would be totally reliant on stealing and thats not a good place to be.. yet. Maybe a bit later in the game when we can easily still techs. Btw WTP made it even harder to trade AND steal techs.. larger chance of failure to stop this kind of allin tech tactics. I may reconsider later, we will see how it goes.

That is correct from what I remember as well. I know that I read that mods like this one enable extra landmarks to spawn (if the can fit on the map). There is landmark call Nessus Canyon for example that can be added to maps, but its never on the maps in base game or expansions. Then for example Uranium fields are often not on the map.. it may be that map generation could not fit them on the map or it rolls what to add on the map each time, so it leaves some landmarks out. Not sure actually..

Scary.. I think I will be reading all the books, just need some extra time to get to it.

Fundamentalist socialist like make some sense with her if you stretch your imagination.. strong belief, care for her people, focusing growth and manufacturing good while controlling things with government not to let people venture into "sinful" - by her defintion, category. In similar way I think you can image Miriam with using Free Market economy, it just may not be as free as we have it today. Rich game ; ). Hm about Democratic -1 Planet, I could actually ask dev about it to see his exact thought. It makes sense to me since Democratic promotes growth and freedom and that leads to overpopulation to some degree at least - like we have today, and people fight for their own rights - at expense of the planet. We do it today basically that way. So we have now green movements to counter it. Dev was also looking for a way to slightly nerf Democratic policy.. maybe there is more to it I am not sure. Thx for support!

I was looking at Civ2, never played it, but oh boy.. that seems now old and hard to play. Civ3 on the other hand has aged pretty well. Might maybe try that a bit, maybe worth some videos.

I think it is definitely more fun than vanilla, probably even more fun than Thinker mod. So I got further in the game Lal is having silk armor (5 def) and i have 5 str weapon.. and he seems to have airplanes already - i am in slight trouble actually. AI protects bases better - Thinker just made upgrade defenders improvement in v4.6 - hope that will help in pure Thinker mod.

The mod author wants to make morale bonuses more valuable - this makes it harder to fight worms, to use SEs that give morale, harder to get elite units. It boosts military facilities importance as well - and he even changed that it is not guaranteed to level up from very green to green after one battle (as in vanilla game).

@@EdooGamingH OK does he remove factions/SE with negative morale as well?

@@Harquebuze No, the idea is that factions with lower morale have that morale for a reason as they have another advantages. So i think Gaians have -1 morale and start with Very Green.. so they have actually more trouble to get decent morale. But they do focus on worms which helps them there. Fundamentalist and Power are +2 Morale, Wealth is -3!

@@Harquebuze Gonna see how it works out.. for example Lal may have better tech than me but Miriam is better in combat, Spartans as well.

Makes sense.. I got scared by that explosion lol :D

Hey, check github.com/induktio/thinker?tab=readme-ov-file and there you have Release version link. Also lots of info about mod is there. And I would suggest joining discord as well there is nice community there: discord.com/channels/1081332929436856460/1081339859819565106/1293841668528930899

v.4.6 is latest release

@@EdooGamingH How do I see it That thinker Is installed correctly

@@EdooGamingH Simple thinker Copy and done?

@@LPYenlo87 Yeah copy and paste, you run the game with thinker.exe and in game you can press alt + t to see the version of thinker mod

Ok will do, it actually takes practice :) to talk clearly and to keep distance from mic. I am guilty of playing tired though, I will try to record videos when I am fresh and energetic in the future. Not happy that I recorded some while a bit tired and got also sick a bit from a virus.

@@EdooGamingH yep, you can tell ... otherwise great insights and really enjoying the series. IMO, for more complex games you need commentary in order to explain better what is going on, what decisions are taken and why. Again, just my humble opinion. :) Cheers

Actually thats a quite good idea for a short video - I should probably present the mods separately so people know what they are about. Thanks ;)

:) Go jump to part 1 xD you just had a glimpse in the future. Should have asked people to like the video, i think youtube recommends these a lot based on likes and views.

Hello, yes its default. If you press Alt+T in the game you have couple of options in Thinker menu, but you dont have to change them.

@@EdooGamingH thx

Yes, there is something likeable and unique to it. I keep returning to the game, never found a game quite like this. For example always wanted Civilization to have terrain and elevations and climate.. but they keep going with flat map and in general to simplification.

Tldr didn't watch yet but I'm predicting the ai roflstomped you into the dirt hard. The ai in vanilla smac/x, while not the most competent, was still very capable of laying the smackdown on returners, I can only imagine what Thinker is going to do now. This should be entertaining: note I'm running a sma x run as cha dawn atm on just scients patch and while I'm in the lead, I still reset at least 40 times.

@@perrymeril Hehe : ) I am rusty but I did play before WTP mod on these difficulties, and that is harder I think so I was hoping I will prevail. Still playing this game, it is interesting I can say that AI knows to fight back, but I am optimistic. Thanks for support!