Corrected version SMAC_444_n
http://dfiles.eu/files/4cxkbh09p


The patch does *not* work with SMAX
The patch includes scient's latest patch, fixing a good number of bugs.

Features [n]

- corrected bad bug from previious release!
- improved basic terraforming to include more forests (see weirwood's suggestion up in the thread)
- improved sea terraforming, we'll see a lot less sea mines
- AI will now use its mines and boreholes

Features [m]

- AI will stand up and fight in air wars. It builds a lot more AAA defenders, it uses planes for other things than bombing formers. You may see it use hit and drop tactic.
- AI will attack with while in "hurry" (with 2/3 strength etc.). It should counterattack from bases more.
- AI sees enemy probes as a primary target and may go long way to destroy them.
- AI uses more intelligent pattern for city spreading. AI colpods will now rarely walk half map somewhere.
- AIs ruthlessly exchanges technologies between themselves, hopefully this makes them competitive until later stages of the game.-
- AI likes buildings a lot more. It is able to rebuild its hedaquarters now. It loves orbital pods.

So Zakharov did something really odd or really clever. First he asked me to declare war on another faction, I declined. He then proceeded to trade every single tech he could with me. Finally he asked to trade world maps. Everything good here.... except as we finish the diplomacy exchange he declares my wealth grubbing ways as disgusting and opens a Vendetta :O

Is this usual behaviour in SMAC or did the patch make the AI nastier? In a way what he did was smart: he got everything of value out of me, exchanged map information to find where all my bases are and then declared war once he assessed he was stronger.

This may well be caused by the new patch. In that case it is not smart, but a flaw which I have to prune out.
Easy exchange should have been always for AI-AI case.


EDIT: On the second thought, I am more inclined to say that it is not caused by the patch.
Can anybody remember similar behaviour from the original? I think it is still possible that AI behaves so, no?
[What the patch does - it should make the AIs contact other AIs about tech exchange a lot more. Which is not how Zak behaved, is it?]

If he wants to play the map again, he could open up the scenario editor, undo the patch, see how it plays out.

It's never happened to me before but I haven't played SMAC enough for that to be significant. All the other AI who have contacted me (everyone of them now) have behaved normally so it was only Zakharov. I'm not dead yet so I'll keep playing and see what happens, it's an Iron-Man save so I can't go backwards to an earlier state and mess around but I could always upload the save if that helps.

You'd have to start the game over. My feeling is that it was a coincidence. The patch made the AI more cunning, but I doubt that cunning.

Seriously, great work on this patch. Really improves the game.

What I'm really impressed with is how much air combat has been balanced. Needlejets now provide new strategic and tactical options, instead of being a magical "I win!" button. I remember the first time I tried an air war. While I was used to cackling maniacally while my planes effortlessly wiped out entire factions, I now discovered that bases were often manned by a couple of AAA units who shredded my air force with impunity. Any time a unit ended a turn outside of a base, odds were decent that it would be sniped by an Interceptor or a unit with SAMs.

I actually had to use combined arms, and it was only a joint force of Hovertanks, Needlejets, Copters, Infantry, and Cruisers that won the day.

Air units are still a great way to blitz a faction with a horrendous military, but my experience now is that against a faction of comparable might, relying on them is a sure path to defeat.

I'm actually even considering trying one of the militaristic factions. I normally alternate between Lal and Morgan, but now that combat feels more diverse and more interesting, I might give Santiago a spin.

@KingCrimson250

Thanks for the feedvback! It makes me happy that you find the combat and the game on the whole less formulaic. That's the goal of the patch, to enrich the SMAC experience, this lovely game deserves it.

Just for your info, regarding replay. There will be another update really soon, I hope.

Description: New release of AI patch for SMAC - 17/5/2014
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=260

Features

AI Terraforming
- AI got a basic lesson in advanced terraforming (boreholes, condensers, less raising terrain)
- it builds no more bunkers
- it builds denser sensor array network

AI crawlers
- AI builds now tends to build crawlers earlier and slightly more of them
- AI crawls more intelligently its resources

AI Social Engineering
- the patch includes an emergency fix of the worst parts of social engineering code
- AI now understands that pacifist drones are a major problem

AI buidling units
- AI spreads quicklier on oceans
- Morgan has got new incentive to spread quickly
- AIs build less of probes, bar Miriam
- a lot more AAA defense
- AI now likes rovers and choppers

@kyrub Is it possible to install your mod on a mac computer? I can only find exe files to download. I would love to be able to apply your mod to the game.

The last version of Kyrub's smac444 AI patch for SMAC was posted on May 17, 2014, while Scient's patch V2 was psoted on December 08, 2014, several months later. Kyrub's smac444 patch included the latest version of Scient's patch at the time the post was made, which was V1. Yitzi's patch includes Scient's patch V2 and the Kyrub's patch Ai improvements, but it is only for SMAX. There is the SMAC-in-SMAX mod which change SMAX to be very similar to SMAC in terms of features, while still using the SMAX engine, allowing, and in fact depending upon, Yitzi's patch to be used while having a feature set similar to that of SMAC. Kyrub would appear to have left the SMAC/SMAX community, so an update is extremely unlike at this point. In addition, there was some talk by of having Yitzi's patch ported to SMAC, but not much progress appears to have been made, it would seem to not be a particularly high priority.

While the Scient v2 patch files where indeed postet on December 08, 2014, the relevant part of the patch, the terran.exe file, is dated 20.04.2013. SMAC_444_n was released nearly a year after that (09.04.2014).
If you consider that Scient and Kyrub know each other, it is not totally unreasonable to think Kyrub had access to the v2 files prior to public release. (Download the v2 patch and check the dates)


As of now Yitzi's patch does only include the code from Kyrub's SMAX Unofficial patch PLUS and not the Code from the Kyrub SMAC_444 patches. While the Kyrub 444 Ai is not perfect, single player games with Kyrub 444 Ai are way better than with Yizi or Vanilla Ai.
Read this post by Kyrub (https://www.gog.com/forum/sid_meier_s_alpha_centauri_/another_smac_fan_patch/post40) and the changelogs here (https://www.gog.com/forum/sid_meier_s_alpha_centauri_/another_smac_fan_patch/post28), here (https://www.gog.com/forum/sid_meier_s_alpha_centauri_/another_smac_fan_patch/post34), here (https://www.gog.com/forum/sid_meier_s_alpha_centauri_/another_smac_fan_patch/post47) and here (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=8703.).


That's not true, check this post by Kyrub (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=12048.msg84166#msg84166), this post by kyrub (http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-unsurpassed-brian-reynolds-alpha-centauri-thread.101751/page-10#post-4236643) and this post by kyrub (http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-unsurpassed-brian-reynolds-alpha-centauri-thread.101751/page-10#post-4466619). The last one is from April 2016.

As of now and IMHO there is simply no single player substitute for SMAC + Kyrub 444_p + PRACX.v1.08.


Edit: formatted the text for better readability