November GotM: A City called Armagedon

[Darsnan]

Location: UN Interplanetary Colonization HQ, Customs Inspection Bay 23

Ah, Customs Inspection, the place where all factions need to declare all goods they hope to take with them to colonize new worlds. Where the Believers languish in a Purgatory of bureaucratic red tape, the Gaians try to claim mindworms are pets, the University becomes indignant about witchunts against forbidden technologies, and the Hive becomes supersecretive as to their intentions. But for the Morganites, the natural businessmen of the Universe, Customs is simply an exercise in business by other means. And if anything, you are a true Morganite.
You watch as the Customs Inspector makes his way to your loading bay where you have your wares spread out for inspection. You note the Inspector’s uniform is sharply pressed, and his hat pulled straight forward over perfectly cut hair: a very by-the-book man if you ever saw one. Having marked him, you put on the personae which you think best fits the environment, opening with a warm smile and pumping handshake.
The Inspector ignores the warmth of your smile, perfunctorily shaking your hand before immediately moving over to the beginning of your bay. He pulls out a standardized checklist and immediately begins ticking things off against your manifest. After about half a minute he stops ticking things off and turns to you. “Mainframe”, he demands, sticking a hand out.
Your mainframe computer, the one which will run all your interests on this planet. You reach into your pocket and hand him the computer. The Inspector eyes it keenly, noting the model and serial number before plugging it into a scanner. The scanner starts chugging along, reviewing all the mainframe’s files, ensuring there were no contraband techs. Fifteen seconds later the scanner’s light turns green. “Mainframe clean” the Inspector notes for the log, and hands your mainframe back.
Next up is your equipment manifest -all your supplies which you plan on taking to the new world:

QTY ITEM
2 Hovertank Superformers
2 Drop Defenders
3 Supply Droids*
1 Alien Artififact
1 Transport Chopper*
2 Armored Probes
3 Impactor Battletanks
2 Hovertank Transports*
2 Crop Dusters*

*: modified from original manufacturer’s design

The Inspector stops at the asterisk, “how have you modified the equipment from original manufacturer’s design?”, he asks briskly.
You instruct the Drone workers to open one of the crates, specifically one containing a Hovertank Transport. You point to the back of the machine, “the two tanks attached to the back are additional fuel tanks, in order to give our traders extended range on their journeys” you say, before adding with a smarmy smile, “our faction’s motto is ‘We go the extra mile for our customers!’ “.
The Inspector stares at you blankly, then returns his attention to the transport, looking over the rest of the Hovertank Transport’s hull, “standard transport design, except for noted additional fuel tanks”, the man remarks for the record, before motioning the Drones to close the crate back up.
The Inspector moves to the next row of crates. “Weapons inspection” the man dictates, and the Drones move to uncrate the first battletank. The Inspector waves his scanner over the machine, its wand querying the battletank for the machine’s specifics. The tank in turn spits out its manufacturer’s specifications to the scanner display. “Impactor Main turret gun, synthmetal armor, fission reactor, hovertank chassis”, the Inspector reads off his scanner display for the record, “weaponry within quarantine parameters”. He proceeds to walk down the still crated row of tanks and armored probes, scanning each one in turn. After reviewing the scanner’s data he adds, “all weapons platforms within acceptable limits of quarantine”.
Finished, the Inspector stops at the far end of your bay and comments for the record, “Inspection complete. Morganite Faction cleared for transit”. The man motions you over, pointing to where you needed to affix your signature to the necessary triplicate documentation. He reviews hyour signatures, and once satisfied you have signed all three copies correctly, the man turns and walks away, completely oblivious to your outstretched hand.
You continue smiling as you watch the Inspector go. You have payed good money to ensure you got an inspector who was completely “by the book”, one who would be perfunctory and thorough, but lacked the imagination to think outside the box. For if the Inspector had bothered to review his scanner’s readout he would have noted your mainframe is actually of University design, and as such has all of the prerequisite capabilities of immediately researching one technology – a significant boost up in a new trading environment! And if he had bothered to physically look closer at your transport’s “fuel tanks” he would have realized that they could be easily reconfigured into the compression chambers of artillery units. And the “Impactor Battletanks”? Well, that’s what the scanner said it was, so that was good enough for the Inspector. Yes, you think to yourself, some very well spent EC’s.
A tingling at the back of your head causes you to turn, and you note a Gaian staring intently at you from across the inspection bay. The woman doesn’t waver in her gaze as she continues to focus on you, and you recognize the tell-tale sign of an empath reading someone’s mind. Can’t be, you think, empaths were outlawed from colonizing new planets, as they gave their respective factions a leg up against other factions!
The woman smiles coldly at you before turning away, and you uneasily realize that if you were so easily able to beat the Customs Inspection, then the Gaians probably have learned their own tricks to get by the Inspectors as well.
And if the Gaians had found a way to beat the quarantine, then how many other factions were beating the system in their own ways as well?

Directions
1. In your Alpha Centauri/ Scenarios directory create a subdirectory called Armagedon, and unzip the attached files into the Armagedon subdirectory.
2. Start SMAC.
3. At the main screen choose Scenario, Play Scenario, and load up Armagedon.SC
4. The game will automatically load up with the Morganites.


Enjoy!

[Darsnan]

Changelog
- Numerator/ Denominator for arty changed to 2/2: an interesting twist – hopefully you will like it.
- Max Airdrop changed from 8 to 6: heah, this is a tiny map. 8 is waaaay overkill for this environment.
- Intrinsic base defense changed to 40%: you’ll thank me for this later…..
- Several combat percentage modifiers have been changed, primarily to benefit attacking/ defending on higher elevation.
- Minerals harvested from forests changed from 5 to 10: go ahead, indulge your inner Morgan and strip those virgin forests bare!
- Global warming parameter changed to 1/100: hopefully this will stop any effects of global warming for this game.
- The prerequisite for building mag tubes is now Industrial Automation.
- There is no prerequisite for building bunkers.
- Raise/ Lower land has been disabled.
- Foil and Cruiser chassis have been disabled for this game.
- Gravship chassis has been moved to Monopole Magnets, and its initial movement rate dropped to 5.
- Jet and chopper chassis movement have been dropped to 6 (again, because it fits a Tiny map better).
- The Troop Transport and Supply Crawler weapon values have been changed.
- The Troop Transport “weapon” has been disabled from being built: you start off with 2 transports, so Sheppard them well.
- Several default units have been modified, and several units added to the #UNITS section. Consult your datalinks for further details.
- Several Facilities have been modified by changing their maintenance costs to zero.

Other changes

- No Pods, no random events in this game.
- This is an OCC game, so Colony Pods have been disabled.
- The Morganite faction has been modified to give them a free tech at the start of the game (a la the University): use it wisely.
- The Believer and Gaian faction files have been modified.

[Darsnan]

Armageddon: the history behind the myth

Megiddo is the jewel in the crown of biblical archaeology. Strategically perched above the most important land route in the ancient Near East, the city dominated international traffic for over 6,000 years — from ca. 7,000 B.C.E. through to biblical times. As civilizations came and went, succeeding settlements at ancient Megiddo were built on the ruins of their predecessors, creating a multi-layered archaeological legacy that abounds in unparalleled treasures that include monumental temples, lavish palaces, mighty fortifications, and remarkably-engineered water systems.
Megiddo was the site of epic battles that decided the fate of western Asia. It was here that the Egyptians took their first steps toward empire building when Pharaoh Thutmose III, in the 15th century B.C.E., conquered Canaan; it was from here that Assyria staged its deportation of the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel; and it was here that Josiah—the last righteous king of the lineage of David—was killed by Pharaoh Necho II, opening the way for centuries of messianic yearning. Megiddo is the only site in Israel mentioned by every great power in the ancient Near East. In the New Testament it appears as Armageddon (a Greek corruption of the Hebrew Har [=Mount] Megiddo), location of the millennial battle between the forces of good and evil. Megiddo is an archetypal historical site whose cast of characters includes Canaanites, Egyptians, Israelites, Assyrians, and Persians in the biblical period and Ottoman Turks and Englishmen in the modern era. No wonder that it was the inspiration for James Michener’s bestseller, The Source.Megiddo’s importance was undoubtedly due to its role as a way station and control point for international trade. Its strategic location on the Via Maris (the major international military and trade route of antiquity that linked Egypt in the south with Syria, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia in the north and east), gave it control of a bottleneck where the road emerges from the narrow ‘Aruna Pass into the fertile Jezreel Valley.
Megiddo is widely regarded as the most important biblical period site in Israel. Surrounded by mighty fortifications, outfitted with sophisticated water installations, and adorned with impressive palaces and temples, Megiddo was the queen of cities of Canaan and Israel.
Megiddo began to dominate the surrounding countryside in the 4th millennium B.C.E. (ca. 3500) — at the dawn of urbanization in the Levant. Today its monumental architecture provides the most impressive evidence of the rise of the first cities in the region.
In the late 4th, 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C.E. Megiddo was probably the most powerful city-state in the north of Canaan. When the Canaanite city-states revolted against Pharaonic attempts at hegemony, it was at Megiddo that they assembled to do battle. The Egyptian army, led by Pharaoh Thutmose III, surprised the rebels by choosing the most dangerous route of attack — through the narrow ‘Aruna Pass. After routing the Canaanite forces and capturing rich booty, Thutmose III laid siege to the city for seven months. His decisive victory enabled him to incorporate Canaan as a province in the empire of the New Kingdom. The description of the battle of Megiddo is the earliest account of a major war in antiquity.
Six letters sent by Biridiya, King of Megiddo, to the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten in the 14th century B.C.E. were discovered in the archive of el-Amarna in Egypt. The letters indicate that Megiddo was one of the mightiest city-states in Canaan. The magnificent ivories found in the Late Bronze Age palace at the site also attest to the city’s wealth and grandeur and its varied cultural contacts in this era.
The Bible lists the king of Megiddo among the Canaanite rulers defeated by Joshua in his conquest of the land (Josh. 12:21). According to I Kings (9:15), King Solomon built Megiddo together with Hazor and Gezer. At that time the city had become the center of a royal province of the United Monarchy. The Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak took Megiddo in the second half of the 10th century. His conquest of the city is affirmed both in his inscriptions at the Temple at Karnak and in a stele erected at the site. In the 9th and 8th centuries B.C.E., the rulers of the Northern Kingdom refitted the fortress even more elaborately than before. The palaces, water systems and fortifications of Israelite Megiddo are among the most elaborate Iron Age architectural remains unearthed in the Levant.
In 732 B.C.E., the Assyrian King Tiglath-pileser III took the region from the Northern Kingdom. In the following years Megiddo served as the capital of an Assyrian province. With the fall of the Assyrian empire the great religious reformer, King Josiah of Judah, was called to Megiddo to report to Pharaoh Necho of Egypt, who was on his way to assist the crumbling Assyrian army in its last-ditch efforts against the Babylonians. Josiah was slaughtered by Necho (II Kings 23:29). Recollection of this event, along with the memories of the great battles fought here, were probably the bases for the idea in the Book of Revelations (16:16) that Armageddon (the mound of Megiddo) would at the end of days be the site of the last battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil.
In the modern era Megiddo has also played a decisive role in battles for the control over the Jezreel Valley. In World War I, British Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, leading an Australian cavalry division and the Tenth Indian infantry, dislodged from the advantageous heights of the mound a group of about 100 Turkish fighters defending the last vestiges of the Ottoman Empire. Allenby used tactics similar to those of Thutmose III (over 3000 years earlier), by cutting through the ‘Aruna Pass and catching the Turks unaware. The historical significance of the site prompted Allenby to include the name of Megiddo in his family’s hereditary title.
Previous Excavations
Megiddo has been excavated three times in the past, and has yielded some of the richest finds ever found in Israel. Gottlieb Schumacher conducted the first excavations at the site from 1903-1905, on behalf of the German Society for Oriental Research.

In 1925, excavations at Megiddo were renewed by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. This large-scale undertaking, directed successively by Clarence Fisher, P.L.O. Guy and Gordon Loud, continued until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. These excavations revealed twenty major levels of occupation, covering the entire history of the site. The most important remains were the sacred compound, the monumental fortifications and gates, the impressive water systems of the site, various palaces, and the so-called ‘Solomonic stables’.
Yigael Yadin carried out a few short seasons of excavation at Megiddo in the 1960s and early 1970s on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He partially uncovered the monumental Palace 6000, generally attributed to King Solomon, in an attempt to clarify the complicated stratigraphic problems related to the Iron Age remains at the site.

The previous excavations at Megiddo laid the foundation for the discipline of biblical archaeology.However, archaeological methods were still in their infancy and nearly every layer and major architectural feature, in fact, almost every wall and vessel unearthed at the site, has become the focus of fierce scholarly dispute.


Datalinks: http://digmegiddo2010.wordpress.com/history/

[Vishniac]

Yoohoo! Gonna start it today, before going out on Halloween!

Originally Posted by Darsnan

- Intrinsic base defense changed to 40%: you’ll thank me for this later…..

That sentence frightens me...

- Minerals harvested from forests changed from 5 to 10: go ahead, indulge your inner Morgan and strip those virgin forests bare!

Could you explain what you mean here? It could be some mechanism I am not accustomed to.

[Darsnan]

Originally Posted by Vishniac

Could you explain what you mean here? It could be some mechanism I am not accustomed to.

Move a Former onto a forest square and select the terraform command "build farm". Once the farm is built (i.e. the forest is replaced) you will "harvest" 10 minerals to your city.

D

[Vishniac]

Another thing I didn't know in this game... It works only for a farm or for anything build on a forest? That could be a strategy: have several tiles with a former on each and build forest-farm-forest-farm-forest-farm...

Ok! I shall play later but I tested it. It's installed, it works (only tested first 4 turns to see) but there is a problem: first turn, the 3 impactor battletanks are "Already moved" and on the second turn, they can't be moved from the base because they have a RED flag (like native life).

I'll try without them but....if you could look that.

Some other strange things, like the unit display (bottom left) being black for 3 turns. I was afraid but test shows it comes back at the 4th turn. Strange.

[Darsnan]

Originally Posted by Vishniac

Another thing I didn't know in this game... It works only for a farm or for anything build on a forest? That could be a strategy: have several tiles with a former on each and build forest-farm-forest-farm-forest-farm... .

Just what a true Morganite would do....

Originally Posted by Vishniac

Ok! I shall play later but I tested it. It's installed, it works (only tested first 4 turns to see) but there is a problem: first turn, the 3 impactor battletanks are "Already moved" and on the second turn, they can't be moved from the base because they have a RED flag (like native life). .

I just DL'd the file and loaded it up: I can't replicate your problem. Can you try DL'ing again and see if that cures it? If it doesn't I can always send you the file via E-Mail. We can then see if anyone else has the same problem and go from there.

Originally Posted by Vishniac

I'll try without them but..... .

Um, I wouldn't. Your going to need those "Impactor" Battle tanks.....

Originally Posted by Vishniac

Some other strange things, like the unit display (bottom left) being black for 3 turns. I was afraid but test shows it comes back at the 4th turn. Strange.

Thats an artifact of the game: I can't do anything about that. After 4 turns its gone for the duration of the game, though.

Anyways, let me know if DL'ing again cures your problem or not.

D

[Vishniac]

After downloading and installing again, same problem.

Yes, please, send it unzipped by e-mail, we'll see. (v-i-s-h-n-i-a-c-A-T-h-o-t-m-a-i-l-D-O-T-c-o-m)

[Darsnan]

Originally Posted by Vishniac

After downloading and installing again, same problem.

Yes, please, send it unzipped by e-mail, we'll see. (v-i-s-h-n-i-a-c-A-T-h-o-t-m-a-i-l-D-O-T-c-o-m)

file sent. Let me know how it goes.

[Vishniac]

I can already tell you that, without Impactor battletanks, I managed to stay alive until 2139, getting a final score of 8.

It's gonna be tough for sure...

Ok, let's try your original file now!

[Vishniac]

I still can't use those impactors. Too bad, they would come handy.

This time, dead at 2132, score 8.

[Darsnan]

I just tried the same scenario on my other computer - no problems there, either. So dunno right now how to proceed.

If you like, what you can do if you want is open the scenario using the scenario editor and change the ownership of the units to Morgan, then save off, and start the scenario again. Either that or you can wait and see if anyone else has the same problem you do, and maybe we can better narrow it down from there.

D

[Darsnan]

Problem simulated: your playing the game in SMAX aren't you? This is a SMAC scenario.

D

[Vishniac]

Perfect! It works with SMAC.

It's much better. Have saved at 2153, will continue tomorrow.

[Vishniac]

Dead in 2176. Score: 17.

[Vishniac]

Dead in 2138. Score: 11.

It's gonna be tough! But I made one big mistake in the beginning.
It's doable, definetly doable!!

[Darsnan]

Originally Posted by Vishniac

Dead in 2176. Score: 17.

I don't think you're getting in touch with your inner Morgan and using you're superior negotiating skills. However looking at the bright side, 2176 is currently the high score!

Originally Posted by Vishniac

It's gonna be tough! But I made one big mistake in the beginning.
It's doable, definetly doable!!

Oh yes, it most certainly is doable. I playtested this scenario enough to ensure that. As usual I have given the player the "pieces of the puzzle" as it were: they just have to figure out how to put these pieces together in order to develop a winning strategy. And of course if your a veteran of OCC games, then you already have a good idea of what needs to be done, anyways.

D

[bdanv]

if this is your first OCC attempt, here are some advices from Flubber:

Lessons I have learned:

1. Watch those SE allocations-- Everything beyond the tech cost is lost so watch that
...
3. You can generate obscene amounts of cash and have no use for it at present
4. There are really not enough Drone-control facilities LOL- it is not really worthwhile to build the Drone control SPs so at size 14 I just live with a couple of specialists whenever psych allocation is 0
...
6. The build queue is precious. No matter how many minerals or energy you have, you can at most build one thing per turn.

and some from Vel:

Other stuff I remember:
1) The crawler is your best friend
2) The probe team is your second best friend
3) Give in to every demand made of you, even if it ticks you off
4) Save your money, and probe with a vengeance when sunspot activity disrupts communications.
5) Total Mind Control solves numerous problems

[Vishniac]

The probe team is your second best friend

That would be true if that weren't a Darsnan scenario: the two most heinous factions seems immune to probe team actions!!

Just a question: the two land transports are written "Artillery" but they can't fire. What does it mean? That artillery units can fire without disembarking?
I must admit I use these transport only as armored defence units.

Ok, let's try again!

[Darsnan]

Originally Posted by Vishniac

That would be true if that weren't a Darsnan scenario: the two most heinous factions seems immune to probe team actions!!

Yeah, its almost like I had read Flubber's and Vel's comments on OCC's and tailored my scenario to attenuate human advantages in this environment, huh?

Originally Posted by Vishniac

Just a question: the two land transports are written "Artillery" but they can't fire.

Really!?! They work as arty units on my machines (Level 3 weapon). That would be too bad if they don't work for others. Question in reply: you are playing this as a scenario (i.e. from the scenario folder), and the alpha.txt file is in that folder, correct? If this is true and it still doesn't work, then can you try subbing in my modded alpha.txt into your regular SMAC subdirectory and seeing if that works?

Originally Posted by Vishniac

I must admit I use these transport only as armored defence units.

I used them extensively as ambulances to withdraw injured units from fronts. Also, they were quite handy to ferry attack units out for an attack, then load the units back up after the attack and retreat.

Originally Posted by Vishniac

Ok, let's try again!

<Roy Baty mode> Thats the spirit! </Roy Baty mode>

D