Right now the game is downloading, this will be my first dive into Civ in years, I'll try to take screenshots and give my 'probably biased' opinions here.
Posted by: Metaliturtle, July 28, 2025, 12:41:11 am
Replies: 37
Board: Civ 7
Views: 1824
Right now the game is downloading, this will be my first dive into Civ in years, I'll try to take screenshots and give my 'probably biased' opinions here.
I've resumed work on Lost Eden of late, trying to polish it up for a re-release on my site. While I can't show too much of it here I thought I can at least share some pieces over time, such as terrain work and the like. I'm more than happy to talk about the changes I've made, and I can link the new profile pages if that's alright.
Felt I should start up the thread considering I was working all day on that CVR editor that Ford made a while back. I've made a command line version that allows me to do translations of a range of colours at a time, with a view of making some recolours of the various mechanical units and make them more steampunk looking. It's fiddly work, but I've made some progress:
I find the flat gold part gets caught by the lighting engine too much, so will continue to experiment, but as a proof of concept this works.
The main reason I wanted to do this was actually to recolour the alien colony pod. I've repurposed it as an "Infested Citadel"--this way I can use a voxel for the Fungal Tower instead of a sprite, freeing it up for a unit. Sprite slots are in very short supply, and as I mentioned in my other thread, I was able to find a 10th slot, but no more than that. But without further ado, a before and after:
The idea of this one is it's a ruined structure sitting in the middle of the vine mass, and destroying it will clear out the worst of the viney nonsense.
Here's all the mechanical units in Lost Eden. I'm thinking about how to recolour these to be unique and hopefully less futuristic looking. What colours would be nice for the Colony Pod and Workers you think? Input welcome.
I've resumed work on Lost Eden of late, trying to polish it up for a re-release on my site. While I can't show too much of it here I thought I can at least share some pieces over time, such as terrain work and the like. I'm more than happy to talk about the changes I've made, and I can link the new profile pages if that's alright.
Felt I should start up the thread considering I was working all day on that CVR editor that Ford made a while back. I've made a command line version that allows me to do translations of a range of colours at a time, with a view of making some recolours of the various mechanical units and make them more steampunk looking. It's fiddly work, but I've made some progress:
I find the flat gold part gets caught by the lighting engine too much, so will continue to experiment, but as a proof of concept this works.
The main reason I wanted to do this was actually to recolour the alien colony pod. I've repurposed it as an "Infested Citadel"--this way I can use a voxel for the Fungal Tower instead of a sprite, freeing it up for a unit. Sprite slots are in very short supply, and as I mentioned in my other thread, I was able to find a 10th slot, but no more than that. But without further ado, a before and after:
The idea of this one is it's a ruined structure sitting in the middle of the vine mass, and destroying it will clear out the worst of the viney nonsense.
Here's all the mechanical units in Lost Eden. I'm thinking about how to recolour these to be unique and hopefully less futuristic looking. What colours would be nice for the Colony Pod and Workers you think? Input welcome.
This is me ruthlessly and shamelessly leveraging my friendship with Solver into some content.
So here's the deal: ask what you want to know that Solver might - try to keep it to gaming and/or the history of the online fan community [he won't remember much specific, but likes to discuss the Golden Years].
He'll be annoyed by my presumption -I'm doing this w/o permission- but he'll probably choose to look in once a week or so, and completely ignore questions he doesn't want to answer. -Try to ask good ones, then. -And have a little patience/keep checking back.
[He's got some juicy stories on Soren, y'know, and hasn't told me any of them - yet...]
So Solver: what's this about Dale representing you on Mohawk's Team page?
Posted by: Buster's Uncle, August 14, 2023, 01:12:33 am
Replies: 8
Board: Old World/Mohawk Games
Views: 3759
This is me ruthlessly and shamelessly leveraging my friendship with Solver into some content.
So here's the deal: ask what you want to know that Solver might - try to keep it to gaming and/or the history of the online fan community [he won't remember much specific, but likes to discuss the Golden Years].
He'll be annoyed by my presumption -I'm doing this w/o permission- but he'll probably choose to look in once a week or so, and completely ignore questions he doesn't want to answer. -Try to ask good ones, then. -And have a little patience/keep checking back.
[He's got some juicy stories on Soren, y'know, and hasn't told me any of them - yet...]
So Solver: what's this about Dale representing you on Mohawk's Team page?
Welcome to another After Action Report for Thinker mod! I've been playing SMAC and beating Transcend for many years, and recently installed Thinker AI. At first, it absolutely stomped me, even on Thinker difficulty, but I slowly figured out what I was doing wrong and, after a half dozen games on Thinker, started actually beating it. I've won six games on Transcend difficulty (four in previous AARs) so far, but the game is (usually!) hard for a while. Just how I like it! I'm considering tweaking the settings to up the difficulty a bit more, since I'm beginning to think it gets easy too soon... but we'll see. There have been some moderately close games in a couple of the AARs after all.
I'm playing with the latest Thinker Dev build (3/14/22). Many awesome changes recently from Induktio; I'll try to showcase a few of them as the game plays out.
Differences from default settings:
New world builder disabled I don't love the pangaea-ness of the maps it made on my first few tries.
Rare pods disabled
Nessus Canyon enabled
Buff to Planet Cult +4 Planet instead of +2.
Nerf to Usurpers/Caretakers -1 INDUSTRY and no recycling tanks
Again, map is just Standard with middle-of-the-road choices for all customizations. Transcend difficulty, blind research, no Unity Survey. All factions randomized (note: I'm rerolling till I get a faction I haven't played in an AAR. For some reason I got Svensgaard twice in a row.)
Who are we this time? Ah, our fundamentalist friends. It always amused me that the 'fundamentalist' faction in alpha centauri would be *radically* ecumenical today. They're quite fun to play, with that support bonus making early game so much less fiddly.
And our targetsthe heretics our loyal opposition is?
Well, whatever. They're all probe-bait to me. I hope I start on an island with Zak. Note that in Thinker mod, -Research factions don't have their tech delayed as the datalinks says. On the other hand, -RESEARCH is worse in Thinker: at -2, your techs/turn is reduced by 20% instead of 16.66%. At -4 (Fundamentalist), your techs/turn is reduced by 40% instead of 28.6%. This is the flipside of Thinkers rebalance to keep Zak from getting insane research. +RESEARCH stacks worse than vanilla, and -RESEARCH stacks 'better' (ie, more potently, ie, worse for the player) than vanilla. Apparently I misunderstood how vanilla handled RESEARCH. Turns out [...]
AAR: I believe in the peace that comes after your destruction (Thinker Mod)
Posted by: pblur, March 15, 2023, 07:04:52 pm
Replies: 4
Board: After Action Reports
Views: 5066
Welcome to another After Action Report for Thinker mod! I've been playing SMAC and beating Transcend for many years, and recently installed Thinker AI. At first, it absolutely stomped me, even on Thinker difficulty, but I slowly figured out what I was doing wrong and, after a half dozen games on Thinker, started actually beating it. I've won six games on Transcend difficulty (four in previous AARs) so far, but the game is (usually!) hard for a while. Just how I like it! I'm considering tweaking the settings to up the difficulty a bit more, since I'm beginning to think it gets easy too soon... but we'll see. There have been some moderately close games in a couple of the AARs after all.
I'm playing with the latest Thinker Dev build (3/14/22). Many awesome changes recently from Induktio; I'll try to showcase a few of them as the game plays out.
Differences from default settings:
New world builder disabled I don't love the pangaea-ness of the maps it made on my first few tries.
Rare pods disabled
Nessus Canyon enabled
Buff to Planet Cult +4 Planet instead of +2.
Nerf to Usurpers/Caretakers -1 INDUSTRY and no recycling tanks
Again, map is just Standard with middle-of-the-road choices for all customizations. Transcend difficulty, blind research, no Unity Survey. All factions randomized (note: I'm rerolling till I get a faction I haven't played in an AAR. For some reason I got Svensgaard twice in a row.)
Who are we this time? Ah, our fundamentalist friends. It always amused me that the 'fundamentalist' faction in alpha centauri would be *radically* ecumenical today. They're quite fun to play, with that support bonus making early game so much less fiddly.
And our targetsthe heretics our loyal opposition is?
Well, whatever. They're all probe-bait to me. I hope I start on an island with Zak. Note that in Thinker mod, -Research factions don't have their tech delayed as the datalinks says. On the other hand, -RESEARCH is worse in Thinker: at -2, your techs/turn is reduced by 20% instead of 16.66%. At -4 (Fundamentalist), your techs/turn is reduced by 40% instead of 28.6%. This is the flipside of Thinkers rebalance to keep Zak from getting insane research. +RESEARCH stacks worse than vanilla, and -RESEARCH stacks 'better' (ie, more potently, ie, worse for the player) than vanilla. Apparently I misunderstood how vanilla handled RESEARCH. Turns out that stacking -RESEARCH has ALWAYS sucked a lot.
Very nice start with high nutrients and minerals.
Turn one spore launcher? Come now, how's that fair game?
I march my scout patrol over and murder it, but it does delay settling my second city by a turn (since a spore launcher can eliminate a size 1 city.)
Nice start with the Nessus canyon there! Two options: one, I get a great landmark. Two, I get a nearby enemy to murderize.
Either way I win and end up with the canyon!
Speaking of nearby neighbors, I stumble into morgan by just walking next to one of his bases. Yeah... war-time. I start focusing on Conquer techs as a hedge against this taking a while (since I'm already working on Centauri Ecology.)
I refuse peace, march on his nearest city, and keep exploring his territory with my scout.
Oh, that will help NICELY. I also start cranking our scout patrols as soon as I have 4 cities: First city only has one defender, but unfortunately loses the coinflip and shrinks on killing it. Second city conquered intact, without a scratch on the Ogre: Looks like there's probably one more over on the mesa somewhere.
I hope I can get a submissive pact; morgan will be much better at teching than I am for a while. Another nice Thinker feature: You can see that I have one more drone than I should ordinarily (no inefficency yet, so I should be able to handle size 2 with a single police unit.) That's because it's a conquered base of course, and Thinker conveniently shows how much longer I have this penalty for. 25 turns seems really long for a size 2 city, but whatever. Time flies in the early game.
Now that I've basically beaten him, time to switch back to exponential colony pod growth! And his last city... falls, without him offering a submissive pact.
I wonder what dictates this. Was there something I could have done differently to get a submissive pact? Or was it randomly not in the cards?
Oooh, I get Uranium flats too? Truly, I get the most metal of landmarks. I'm really getting a lot of space to expand here. Very nice. I think I might have to go builder... or at least Hybrid, which is probably as builder as Miriam tends to get.
It's worth noting that Miriam's builder game is actually really solid in spite of her -RESEARCH and no KNOWLEDGE, at least in my opinion. Consider the Weather Paradigm; we all know it's one of the best Special Projects in the game, and I don't think it's controversial to say that's mostly just because of the 50% increased terraform speed. (Your early access to advanced terraforming is of limited utility before you unlock resource caps, and, well, you get all that terraforming unlocked at mineral cap removal ANYHOW. It's nice to get a few condensers up before that, and the occaisional borehole on mineral/energy bonuses on flat ground can be really impactful... but it's nothing compared to 50% terraform speed once you can spam those ultra-long terraforms everywhere.)
But do you know what's better than 50% increased terraform speed? Duh, 100% increased terraform speed! How can you get that? By building a second former in each base! Doesn't that take a lot of minerals? Doesn't your momThe Weather Paradigm take a lot of minerals? Ignoring the cheap joke, sure... ish. After all, TWP is 20 mineral rows, and formers are 2 rows. Would you usually have only 10 formers? Plus, what about the support for all these extra units?
Yeah. Going from 2->4 units supported for free means terraforming happens a lot faster. And it's even cheaper on up-front minerals until your twentieth former! Of course, you may notice that I'm also building the weather paradigm in New Jerusalem. #WhyNotBoth?
Cashed in my two alien artifacts for a quick finish on TWP. I don't really have good production in any of bases. (Not shocking, since they're all size 1-2...)
That's a bit painful on a Miriam who has no friends, no enemies, and no probe teams like me, because I'm struggling to get any real research speed. Oh well.
Speaking of friends... they immediately extort me for High Energy Chemistry and Industrial Base, refuse to trade any techs, but do sign a Treaty of Friendship. (Trading plasma armour for friendship is admittedly weird for the believers to be doing, but I have a ton of land I need to eXpand and eXploit. There's no real reason to go to war offensively before air power, except to probe the [poop] out of somebody.)
And there's their border. Ugh. I was hoping I was alone on this island. Hopefully, it's just a couple bases and not their entire civ. Oh well, we're friends for now. And there's a lot of fungus over there. I need to finish expanding through my land quickly though to minimize how much they can claim. Final Map: You can see I've claimed the entire north, and I'm about to claim Metal Peninsula. Final Techs:
Overview This is a fictional account of the Unity expedition featured in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
I am presenting material in pseudo-"photo" essay form.
Introduction This is the story of an expedition into the unknown. It was an act of desperation, undertaken not in optimism or from a place of pride, but because our species, and the civilization it created, had run out of time. And so we fled the world we had seemingly destroyed for one that might yet destroy us.
I'm going to try to post about three updates a day.
Source Material
The primary source for this timeline is, quite naturally, the eponymous computer game and its 1999 sequel, Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire, for which Brian Reynolds and Tim Train were the lead designers, respectively. You will see additional traces and head nods to the late Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park; the late James Clavell, author of the The Asian Saga, the most famous installment of which was probably Shōgun; author David Brinn, who penned The Postman in 1985; the present-day TNT television series The Last Ship; Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and its sequel; the book Cold War Hot, ed. Peter G. Tsouras; Jon F. Zeigler's GURPS Alpha Centauri book; the 1998 Blizzard computer game StarCraft and its many derivative and companion works; the Fallout series of computer games; the short-lived NBC drama Kings; Christopher Nolen's 2010 movie, Inception; and many others.
The Tribe faction, along with the characters of "Pete" Landers and John Baptist Keller (here, Jean-Baptiste Keller) are the original creations of an individual with the screen name "Thorn" on another forum.
Racing the Darkness - An Alpha Centauri Photologue
Posted by: Trenacker, March 13, 2022, 06:28:53 pm
Replies: 413
Board: Planet Tales
Views: 53860
Overview This is a fictional account of the Unity expedition featured in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
I am presenting material in pseudo-"photo" essay form.
Introduction This is the story of an expedition into the unknown. It was an act of desperation, undertaken not in optimism or from a place of pride, but because our species, and the civilization it created, had run out of time. And so we fled the world we had seemingly destroyed for one that might yet destroy us.
I'm going to try to post about three updates a day.
Source Material
The primary source for this timeline is, quite naturally, the eponymous computer game and its 1999 sequel, Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire, for which Brian Reynolds and Tim Train were the lead designers, respectively. You will see additional traces and head nods to the late Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park; the late James Clavell, author of the The Asian Saga, the most famous installment of which was probably Shōgun; author David Brinn, who penned The Postman in 1985; the present-day TNT television series The Last Ship; Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and its sequel; the book Cold War Hot, ed. Peter G. Tsouras; Jon F. Zeigler's GURPS Alpha Centauri book; the 1998 Blizzard computer game StarCraft and its many derivative and companion works; the Fallout series of computer games; the short-lived NBC drama Kings; Christopher Nolen's 2010 movie, Inception; and many others.
The Tribe faction, along with the characters of "Pete" Landers and John Baptist Keller (here, Jean-Baptiste Keller) are the original creations of an individual with the screen name "Thorn" on another forum.
Posted by: Buster's Uncle, July 28, 2025, 01:59:56 pm
Replies: 2
Board: Chiron News Network
Views: 933
New subforum and new theme -AC2's 22nd- to go with it. It's up to the membership to make it live - have fun. https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?board=37.0
AC2 management knows only that this patch is said to allow SMAX to run on Windows 11. This is said to also be true of Inducto's Thinker mod -also hosted in AC2 Downloads- but it changes the game more.
Posted by: Buster's Uncle, June 24, 2025, 04:30:12 pm
Replies: 2
Board: Chiron News Network
Views: 1658
Nathan Baggs' W11 patch
V1.2.0
AC2 management knows only that this patch is said to allow SMAX to run on Windows 11. This is said to also be true of Inducto's Thinker mod -also hosted in AC2 Downloads- but it changes the game more.
One of the best features of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire is its wonderful modability - which, thanks to SMACer Ford_Prefect, has now been expanded.
SMACX, although a science fiction game, is a robust enough engine that modders have frequently want to do retro-mods. There is a massive WWII scenario extant, and much work was done several years ago on a Middle-Earth TCM.
In such cases, the drawback of the SMACX platform was the proprietary, and obsolete, .cvr format units were in, which no one in the fan community could modify from their science fiction look, or alter into [...]
Ford_Prefect’s .cvr Editor Released: Interview with the Creator
Posted by: Buster's Uncle, March 08, 2023, 06:20:16 pm
Replies: 1
Board: Chiron News Network
Views: 1621
One of the best features of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire is its wonderful modability - which, thanks to SMACer Ford_Prefect, has now been expanded.
SMACX, although a science fiction game, is a robust enough engine that modders have frequently want to do retro-mods. There is a massive WWII scenario extant, and much work was done several years ago on a Middle-Earth TCM.
In such cases, the drawback of the SMACX platform was the proprietary, and obsolete, .cvr format units were in, which no one in the fan community could modify from their science fiction look, or alter into different science fiction looks. Now, Ford_Prefect has created the first .cvr editor available to SMACers - and he’s looking for technical help to expand its modest capabilities.
AC2 interviewed Ford about his creation in April:
---
AC2: How did you first take an interest in this project?
Ford_Prefect: I wanted to try to make a smac clone. So I googled around and found out no one knew how to read the calviar format(.cvr). So I figured, what the heck... I'll give it a try.
AC2: Why the .cvr part in particular, though?
Ford_Prefect: It was the only major graphics component that no one could read. I could use any of the other images for the terrain, faces, gui, etc, but the actual units were in the cvr file format. I thought it would be quicker and easier to figure out the .cvr format than it would be to recreate the units from scratch in blender. (I was wrong. )
AC2: What can be done with your .cvr editor?
Ford_Prefect: The editor allows one to re-texture any unit found in Alpha Centauri in its native cvr format. Each part of the unit can be viewed independently for painting. The editor also can export what it knows about the current cvr file into a human readable text format.
AC2: Could I turn the colony pod into a covered wagon with it?
Ford_Prefect: No. Currently, the tool only allows you to change the colors of the units, not their shape. It is a paint tool, not a modeler.
AC2: What do you think can be done in the future, assuming some breakthroughs?
Ford_Prefect: Currently, there is enough known about caviar (cvr) to create a 3d version of the editor. I might try to create this after I've improved my 3d programing skills.
One breakthrough would be if someone figured out where the rest of the color values are stored in the file. Right now the last 10-20 colors are unknown for each model. If someone figured it out, I could quickly fix the color palette to display the colors correctly.
A major breakthrough would be if someone figured out the values for normals... then almost anything would be possible. Normals would allow us to truly modify the units to appear however we wanted them to be. Knowing the normals would also allow us to export the units to blender and other games.
AC2: Okay, define normal for non-tech types to whom that last would make no sense.
Ford_Prefect: A normal tells the software how light should reflect off of a surface. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping I made a wiki page to hold what I know about the caviar file specification. Caviar (.cvr) specification. (WIP)
AC2: What do you want people to know about the project?
Ford_Prefect: Modders can now give the SMAC units a paint job. Help is needed to figure out the rest of the caviar file format. The units in SMAC are a voxel based 3d (like minecraft)
---
More information and a link to the editor can be found here: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=7866.0 Ford, and the rest of the SMACX modding community, would greatly appreciate your feedback and support.
Longtime Civ fan community veteran Dale Kent has been working for developer Mohawk Games for two years, fulltime since October 2021.
Kent, a prominent modder, most notably of Civ4 Road to War, and Civ4 Colonization, and former WPC co-owner, has long been acquainted with major fan-turned-pro Soren Johnson, the Design Director of Mohawk Games.
Kent worked part time for Mohawk as a QA tester/ Community Manager from March 2020 to Oct 2021, and full time from Oct 2021 to the present as a Designer/ Programmer.
He has worked on various parts of Old World, including the Achievements system, [...]
Posted by: Buster's Uncle, February 22, 2023, 01:48:24 pm
Replies: 2
Board: Chiron News Network
Views: 1822
Longtime Civ fan community veteran Dale Kent has been working for developer Mohawk Games for two years, fulltime since October 2021.
Kent, a prominent modder, most notably of Civ4 Road to War, and Civ4 Colonization, and former WPC co-owner, has long been acquainted with major fan-turned-pro Soren Johnson, the Design Director of Mohawk Games.
Kent worked part time for Mohawk as a QA tester / Community Manager from March 2020 to Oct 2021, and full time from Oct 2021 to the present as a Designer / Programmer.
He has worked on various parts of Old World, including the Achievements system, integrated Modio and Workshop into the mod browser, and is currently working on future content for the company.
Bases are the most difficult aspect of a SMACX faction graphic to create, so it is hoped that these graphic goodie files will give beginners at faction modding a leg up. See also the Portraits, Diplomacy Landscapes and Logos series, also in this Downloads section, and for info on art techniques and/or to communicate with BU and ask any questions, see the Graphics thread: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=1237.0 These are a lot of work to put together, so please be sure to credit me in the empty space of the .pcx. Posting to let me know you found it [...]
Posted by: Buster's Uncle, February 21, 2023, 02:05:16 pm
Replies: 0
Board: Chiron News Network
Views: 1434
Bases 20
Bases are the most difficult aspect of a SMACX faction graphic to create, so it is hoped that these graphic goodie files will give beginners at faction modding a leg up. See also the Portraits, Diplomacy Landscapes and Logos series, also in this Downloads section, and for info on art techniques and/or to communicate with BU and ask any questions, see the Graphics thread: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=1237.0 These are a lot of work to put together, so please be sure to credit me in the empty space of the .pcx. Posting to let me know you found it useful would be okay, too.
WPC has been down for several months - Solver indicates that there was a tech error. He also hints that if/when he gets around to fixing it, it will be an archive.
The management requests that anyone in touch with Solver join in nagging him to hurry up that fixing - a very large quantity of excellent SMACX and other content is at stake.
Posted by: Buster's Uncle, January 16, 2023, 12:38:16 pm
Replies: 0
Board: Chiron News Network
Views: 1646
WPC has been down for several months - Solver indicates that there was a tech error. He also hints that if/when he gets around to fixing it, it will be an archive.
The management requests that anyone in touch with Solver join in nagging him to hurry up that fixing - a very large quantity of excellent SMACX and other content is at stake.
The CFC forums will be taken down this Friday (15th July) morning (9 AM London time) for a forum upgrade. We expect to be back up sometime on Saturday (16th) in the afternoon or evening. Updates can be found on the CFC front page while the forum is down. Please check this thread in Site Feedback for information and updates! https://forums.civfanatics.com/.../site-upgrades-are.../
Posted by: Buster's Uncle, July 15, 2022, 01:47:52 pm
Replies: 1
Board: Chiron News Network
Views: 1963
The CFC forums will be taken down this Friday (15th July) morning (9 AM London time) for a forum upgrade. We expect to be back up sometime on Saturday (16th) in the afternoon or evening. Updates can be found on the CFC front page while the forum is down. Please check this thread in Site Feedback for information and updates! https://forums.civfanatics.com/.../site-upgrades-are.../
In the year 2101, six factions left the damaged hull of UNS Unity and made Planetfall. Colonel Santiago, Lady Skye, Provost Zakharov, Brother Lal, Chairman Yang, and finally – you, Captain Svensgaard – led their people onto this alien world. The Gaians proved to be the luckiest and landed in a rich jungle, which helped them rapidly expand throughout the main continent. You remained in touch with Santiago, as you two had forged some rapport onboard Unity. However, the fate of the rest is still a mystery. It remains to be seen if they are dead or [...]
The Planet Rising - May2014 GotM scenario for the Pirates
Posted by: Buster's Uncle, January 24, 2021, 04:05:33 am
Replies: 0
Board: Chiron News Network
Views: 3591
The Planet Rising
In the year 2101, six factions left the damaged hull of UNS Unity and made Planetfall. Colonel Santiago, Lady Skye, Provost Zakharov, Brother Lal, Chairman Yang, and finally – you, Captain Svensgaard – led their people onto this alien world. The Gaians proved to be the luckiest and landed in a rich jungle, which helped them rapidly expand throughout the main continent. You remained in touch with Santiago, as you two had forged some rapport onboard Unity. However, the fate of the rest is still a mystery. It remains to be seen if they are dead or thrive in some secluded areas.
You found a safe bay at the base of a dormant volcano called the Mount of Planet. After a while, in order to contain the Gaian expansion, you decided to send colonists onto the mainland. After founding the Outpost and New Hope, you managed to establish mining operations on a range of hills, deeper in the continent. Things were going well for a while.
But then, something… happened. Nobody knows for sure what. Some say the Gaians awoke some kind of force among the ancient Ruins. Others, that the will of Planet itself manifested in a physical form. Perhaps the strangest rumors talk about a young boy who got lost in fungus and miraculously developed new powers. But whatever it was, it brought havoc to human settlements. Gaian bases, one by one, succumbed to hordes of mind worms, beyond doubt controlled by some wicked intellect. Gaian citizens were forced into submission, while Lady Skye herself, humiliated, swore obedience to her new master – self-proclaimed Prophet Cha Dawn, leader of the Cult of Planet. Now she is the head of a puppet government, a fraction of her former glory.
Soon, yours and Spartans’ bases were quickly conquered as well. Despite heroic sacrifices of your people, they simply could not stand against ferocious attacks of countless mind worms. As the Spartans faced complete obliteration, you used your transport ship to evacuate some of their colonists to a small island to the North East. Colonel Santiago refused to come onboard the ship, but was grateful enough to sign a pact of cooperation with you.
Shortly, waves of attackers reached the Outpost, your last settlement on the mainland. In order to evacuate the civilians, you have dispatched a transport to the base, loaded with your best soldiers, the Shock Platoon. They reinforced the garrison and saved so many people that you cannot possibly evacuate all of them. You need to choose whom to save…
Your mission is to evacuate, find some territory to settle and rebuild your power, and then to reclaim Chiron for humanity. You’ll be damned if you surrender to some disgusting bugs, even if it means fighting the Planet itself.
------------------------
It is 2106 and you play the Pirates. The main continent is overrun by the mind worms controlled by Cha Dawn. He is very powerful and remains a serious threat even when you leave the mainland, so consider yourself warned.
You start pacted with Santiago, but it is not a permanent pact, unlike the vendetta with Cha Dawn and Deirdre.
Your mission is first to survive, then to conquer Cha Dawn’s HQ. This is the only objective in the scenario.
You start with a battleship, 8-3-6, but you have no technology for the components. Do not play any tricks to pull reverse engineering on it (although I’m not aware of such a thing).
There is no Planetary Council. Nobody has the time for ballots and politics when the entire mission is compromised and the humanity itself is on the verge of extinction.
Raising and lowering terrain is impossible.
Other standard rules apply – no reverse engineering, crawler upgrade, bug abuse, etc.
Other settings:
large map victory conditions: conquest only Spoils of War and Do or Die off Supply pods and random events on Direct research, normal tech rate.
I provided this scenario in three different versions:
1) Light – for casual game, after evacuation you should get some peace for a while. Cha Dawn has no Projects and only a few IoDs. 2) Normal – quite a difficult version in itself. Cha Dawn has 2 Planet-related Projects and many units to keep you on your toes from the early turns. 3) Hard – look, some people just get off of pain and who are we to judge? Download this version if you’ve been naughty and deserve punishment. Cha Dawn has 5 Planet-related Projects and a horde of units to make your life miserable.
This is my first scenario, so feedback will be appreciated a lot!
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