Alpha Centauri - Morgan Makes Money! - Ep 1

[@quill18]

To anyone confused: This was originally posted too early and contained spoilers for the University run, so it was taken offline. So it might seem like a duplicate for people who were quick enough to catch it the first time.

[@CSirce]

I saw it on first release too... I have achieved monopoly! :P

[@sezarsezar2830]

I loved these runs and please do more civ6

[@Supergforce777]

Haha, it got pulled mid episode for me so now I’m gonna finish the second half

[@Blefiz]

@@CSirce When you watch a video you are a consumer and there's no such thing as a consumer monopoly,

[@chaosking911]

Genuinely wondering what magic 8 ball ya using when deciding if you can be bothered to playlist something or not. Just pure chaos...

[@RoyalFusilier]

"I'm escaping to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism. Space!" "Oh, I don't think so..."

[@Lottabun]

(Reposted from the original video uploaded too early) If there was any faction that heavily supports the Infinite City Sprawl playstyle (Or any of its lesser variants) it's Morgan, since not only will you want to be taking advantage of the increased energy per base (Or tiles), but it also helps to counteract Morgan's support problems. Some priority techs to aim for include Industrial Automation for Supply Crawlers (To crawl yields, but more importantly to rush those oh-so important secret projects), Bio-Engineering for Clean Reactors (Important for everyone, but especially important for Morgan), and of course Mind/Machine Interface for all that good stuff necessary for taking bases in a short amount of time as possible (Coptors, Drop pods, two really good secret projects, and the Thinker specialist). One really viable terraforming strat that I've been finding great success with when doing ICS (And to get away from forest-everything) is that once Ecological Engineering is researched or The Weather Paradigm has been built, is to build one or two Thermal Boreholes per base, the rest of the tiles with Farm+Condensors, and then have Supply Crawlers crawl the Nutrients from those Farm+Condensor tiles. The idea is that the only workers you will have will be working Thermal Boreholes or other yield-rich tiles while the rest of the citizens will be specialists working on Psych/Labs/Econ or whatever, and not have workers wasted on suboptimal tiles just to support the nutrient needs.

[@isiahfriedlander5559]

When I’m playing with Morgan, I always rush for the human genome project, give one extra talent per city, and that helps you massively when you choose free market “-5 police”

[@andersonklein3587]

Playing on transcend difficulty is literally the one thing I really wanted to see from this game after you compelled me to replay this game to the end and rewatch some of your other playthroughs. Looking forward to see how you struggle your way into being overwhelmingly powerful again. I have a feeling eliminating the Spartans early with the Battle Oger will help.

[@Scapestoat]

17:05 It knooooows! Gosh, this is a good game. The hours I lost, way back when, just trying out terraforming, and wrapping my brain around the concept of Rain Shadows. Especially back then, when it was obscure arcane knowledge.

[@TheBoringInvestorMan]

Man one of my favourite youtubers playing one of my favourite games! "Please don't go, the drones need you, they look up to you.."

[@thechosenwon6762]

There was always something very eerie about this game

[@Vyctor__]

I'm just gonna post this again from the retracted upload: Great to see you're playing another game of SMAC, at Transcend this time even, nice one! There are a couple of things that I would like to point out either because you missed them, asked about them or seemed unsure about them. Again, no idea if you appreciate this, but if you do, here it is. Be warned, this is pretty long, I tried to stay concise, if you notice ((double brackets)) the stuff between them is just detailed explanation that you can easily skip if you don't care. Firstly, in terms of power scale, Morgan is somewhere between pretty good and insanely powerful, depending on how you play him. His +1 economy bonus is straight up the best faction bonus you could possibly have in the entire game, economy rating is so important. The Wealth social engineering choice is relatively low on actual downsides, -2 morale means your troops will suck but you're Morgan, you don't really want to be at war, you want to be trading with as many people as possible! The reason for that is another faction bonus that you skipped over: Morgan receives a +1 Commerce rating. The actual math behind how this translates to in-game effects is fairly complicated, but the gist of it is this: you gain more energy from treaties and pacts than your competitors do. And if you run Free Market in addition to Wealth, your commerce rating will be even higher, and you will be making way, way more energy from commerce. More on this below. A third bonus Morgan gets which I don't even know if you noticed, is the 100 extra energy credits he gets at the start of the game. I normally use these to rush out Formers, Recycling Tanks and Colony Pods to expand as quickly as possible. You used them to rush Network Nodes, which is fair enough given the amount of artifacts you found, but I wonder if rushing faster expansion was the better choice. One thing that may become significant is the fact that Morgan cannot use Planned economics as part of the social engineering. This means that Morgan cannot pop-boom in the normal fashion (Planned + Democratic + Children's Creche). This isn't really an issue at first because your bases only grow to 4 anyway, but once you get Hab Complexes and Habitation Domes you may still want to pop-boom. The way around this is to induce a Golden Age in the cities you want to pop-boom at by increasing the Psych output of those bases. A base needs more Talents (good citizens) than non-Talents, and must have zero Drones (bad citizens, the red guys) in order to start a Golden Age. If you want to use this method, I would advise preparing your bases for the pop-boom (this means having a Creche, a Hab Complex and enough nutrients to keep growing every turn, as well as some basic drone control facilities), using the Democratic social engineering choice (make sure you don't have Green economics active!) and just slamming the energy allocation all the way to 100% Psych for 7 turns. During these turns you will not be researching and you will probably lose a bunch of money every turn, but if you plan and prepare this right it is extremely powerful. Below I listed a couple of timestamps that caught my attention. 8:30 (Industrial Automation, "there's something else I'm forgetting...") - you're probably thinking of Hab Complexes, those are also unlocked by Industrial Automation and allow your bases to grow beyond size 4. It's a game-changing tech for Morgan, and yes you should absolutely focus on it. 10:55 ("We won that which I did not expect")- it's not that hatchling mind worms are always weak, it's that this is the "mind worm grace period" of the game. For the first 15 turns of the game, mind worms will be at one-third strength, and when attacking a base they fight at reduced strength for another 35 turns after that. ((Notice the "strength" rating in the combat interface: your scout patrol has a Psi of 2 as defender, modified by -12% for being green, resulting in a strength of 1.75. The mind worm has a Psi rating of 3 as attacker, modified by -25% for being a hatchling, but somehow resulting in a strength of 0.75. The same thing happens at 17:50 - it's still turn 11, so the mind worm is much weaker. Once the grace period is over, an attacking hatchling will be at its normal strength of 3*0.75=2.25, and they will be eating your scout patrol's brains. That's exactly what you see at 22:49 and 23:05 (turn 18), the hatchling mind worm has -25% from being a hatchling and +50% from being on fungus, Psi rating of 3 gives it a strength of 3*0.75*1.5=3.37, and it easily kicks your rover into a retreat and munches your scout to bits.)) 12:37 ("I wonder how close we are to getting the tech...") - you can press F2 and you will be able to see exactly how many turns it will take to research the current tech, as well as a bunch of other details ;) 17:30 (Gaians got Secrets of the Human Brain) - the Gaians do not start with any prerequisites for this tech. The Peacekeepers and the Believers each have a piece. Deirdre starts with Centauri Ecology. 22:10 ("I guess it keeps waking up because it's next to the coast, and that's what land units do") - spot on, that is exactly why they are waking up. Land units in transport ships will always wake up if they are able to disembark. 24:38 - hot damn, immediate war with Santiago who lives next door! That's a bold strategy Cotton, I hope it pays off. Santiago can be extremely dangerous. More on this below. 25:46 ("I wanna be able to see the map right now") - bottom right corner, you can click on the globe icon which shows you the world map (not super useful) and the globe-with-a-square-on-it which shows you a zoom of the map that you can click around on (much more useful), but sadly you can't really click a tile to see which units are on it. ((If you infiltrated someone's datalinks, though, you can use that to see the garrison of bases (click "profile", then click the third button at the bottom which kinda looks like a flag, then click "garrison" at the top). )) 26:35 ("I should wake up this guy and be ready to move back in") - that's not necessary. When a base finishes construction on a Network Node or starts building any secret project or prototype, it will automatically wake up all the Alien Artifact units inside that base. Then if you press space bar (pause unit) or H (hold unit) it will prompt you to link it to the Network Node. Also, moving the unit outside the base seems kind of risky, space bar would have worked just fine there. 40:30 (infiltrating datalinks, "I don't know if you'll ever get in trouble for it") - you won't. Infiltrating is considered a neutral probe action. You will never get in trouble for this, nor for walking around in allied territory with probe teams, nor for "probe combat" (one probe team attacking another probe team) - it's combat, but it doesn't mean vendetta. The game will warn you when trying to steal techs or money from others that this will be a cause for Vendetta, and it often does result in Vendetta (they will overlook probe actions only very, very, very rarely). (cont.)

[@Vyctor__]

(cont.) A couple of things on diplomacy and commerce, which is a little more important at Transcend because you don't want to end up at war with the entire planet - not before you're good and ready, anyway - and you probably want to be trading with as many people as possible in order to increase your energy income. Your opponents have a certain disposition towards war (their "personality" on the faction profile page). Lady Deirdre is a Pacifist, as is AI controlled Morgan, which means she is unlikely to declare war. Brother Lal, Provost Zakharov and Colonel Santiago are Erratic, which means they are a little more aggressive than the Pacifists, and can sometimes make demands or demand money/tech under threat of war. Sister Miriam and Chairman Yang however are Aggressive, which means they are actively inclined to threaten and extort you for money or technology, or just outright declare aggressive (hence the name, duh) war on you. If you're at war with someone, you're not trading with them, so this gives a decent indication of how reliable your potential trade partners are. The factions also have an Agenda. This is actually extremely important for diplomacy, and if done right you can use this to play the diplomacy game like a fiddle. I'll just outline them below, because some are a little more complex. - Santiago will really like you if you use the "Power" choice in Social Engineering, she will dislike you if you use Knowledge, and she will absolutely hate your guts if you use Wealth. - Zakharov will really like you if you use the "Knowledge" choice, he will dislike you if you use Power or Wealth, and he will absolutely hate your guts if you use Fundamentalist. - Lal will really like you if you use the "Democratic" choice, he will dislike you if you use Fundamentalist, and he will absolutely hate your guts if you use Police State. - Deirdre will really like you if you use the "Green" choice, she will dislike you if you use Planned, and she will absolutely hate your guts if you use Free Market. - Yang will really like you if you use the "Police State" choice, he will dislike you if you use Fundamentalist, and he will absolutely hate your guts if you use Democratic. - Miriam will really like you if you use the "Fundamentalist" choice, she will dislike you if you use Democratic or Police State, and she will absolutely hate your guts if you use Knowledge. Based on all this information, you can make certain assumptions about your likely allies and enemies. Firstly, we know that Wealth will be really good for us, and Santiago really hates that. This means that Santiago will probably be our primary enemy. This is bad. Santiago is dangerous, she starts with Rovers and her research is biased towards Conquer techs, so she might straight up invade soon. She will either need to die or she needs to submit, especially since she is on your island. I recommend an early rush with Impact Rovers and Probe Teams, and not using Wealth during the war to avoid the morale hit. A purely defensive stance is probably suicide. Secondly, we know that Zakharov dislikes Wealth, which means maintaining a treaty with him will be challenging, but not impossible. Since he is Erratic, you may need to accept certain propositions or even extortion attempts he throws your way, even if you don't stand to gain much. Third, Yang and Miriam are Aggressive. Bad bad bad. This is the case in every game, these two are really dangerous, especially early. With any luck they'll fight each other (because their agendas are incompatible) but you may need to either fight them into submission (preferably one at a time) or give in to their relentless demands. So long as we don't use Police State/Democratic/Fundamentalist/Knowledge, they won't bother us about our politics, so a treaty is certainly a possibility if we catch them in the right mood. Fourth, Deirdre is (ironically) our most reliable trade partner in the game. As long as we don't use Free Market (and we don't need to), it is very probably that she will like us and trade with us. Fifth, Lal will probably be friendly with us as long as we don't use Police State. You can make him even more friendly by using Democratic politics, but that will call the wrath of Yang and Miriam upon you, so be warned. Pacts are extremely powerful for Commerce, they double the amount of energy you get from those trades. Making someone submit and swear a pact to you also works for this, so keep that in mind. And remember to tell your vassals to stop killing each other. :P

[@ValosarX]

I recently snagged this old gem, loved it when I was a kid. This may be the best civ game ever

[@NerevarineKing]

There are other 4x games that allow for unit upgrades, but I can't think of any that simulate the ecosystem/climate so well.

[@skrv8588]

Of course we'll bundle our MorganNet software with the new network nodes; our customers expect no less of us. We have never sought to become a monopoly. Our products are simply so good that no one feels the need to compete with us. -- CEO Nwabudike Morgan, Morgan Data Systems press release Objects once measured in meters have become so small that they cannot be seen by the naked eye, with revolutionary applications across the board. Gentlemen, forget what your courtesans have told you: size does matter! -- CEO Nwabudike Morgan, Morgan Industries Annual Report Important? Yes! Critical? Absolutely. I would go so far as to say that Superconducting Fiber alone makes our present economy possible. I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice. -- CEO Nwabudike Morgan, MorganLink 3DVision Live Interview Fossil fuels in the last century reached their extreme prices because of their inherent utility: they pack a great deal of potential energy into an extremely efficient package. If we can but sidestep the 100 million year production process, we can corner this market once again. -- CEO Nwabudike Morgan, Strategy Session Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant. Need as well as greed have followed us to the stars, and the rewards of wealth still await those wise enough to recognize this deep thrumming of our common pulse. Life is merely an orderly decay of energy states, and survival requires the continual discovery of new energy to pump into the system. He who controls the sources of energy controls the means of survival. Energy is the currency of the future. Our first challenge is to create an entire economic infrastructure, from top to bottom, out of whole cloth. No gradual evolution from previous economic systems is possible, because there IS no previous economic system. Each interdependent piece must be materialized simultaneously and in perfect working order; otherwise the system will crash out before it ever gets off the ground. Planet's Primary, Alpha Centauri A, blasts unimaginable quantities of energy into space each instant, and virtually every joule of it is wasted entirely. Incomprehensible riches can be ours if we can but stretch our arms wide enough to dip from this eternal river of wealth. We estimate that during the next mission century most of Planet's industries will be moved off-planet to Nessus Prime and other orbital facilities. Many of our industries will benefit greatly from the low gravity environments available in space, particularly those involving genetically engineered microbes. And when at last it is time for the transition from megacorporation to planetary government, from entrepreneur to emperor, it is then that the true genius of our strategy shall become apparent, for energy is the lifeblood of this society and when the chips are down he who controls the energy supply controls Planet. In former times the energy monopoly was called "The Power Company"; we intend to give this name an entirely new meaning. -- CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Centauri Monopoly" Look at any photograph or work of art. If you could duplicate exactly the first tiny dot of color, and then the next and the next, you would end with a perfect copy of the whole, indistinguishable from the original in every way, including the so-called "moral value" of the art itself. Nothing can transcend its smallest elements. You ivory tower intellectuals must not lose touch with the world of industrial growth and hard currency. It is all very well and good to pursue these high-minded scientific theories, but research grants are expensive and you must justify your existence by providing not only knowledge, but concrete and profitable applications as well. Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill. -- CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Ethics of Greed" Some civilian workers got in among the research patients today and became so hysterical I felt compelled to have them nerve stapled. The consequence, of course, will be another public relations nightmare, but I was severely shaken by the extent of their revulsion towards a project so vital to our survival. -- CEO Nwabudike Morgan, The Personal Diaries

[@sp0ckz0mbi3]

Gaian Stepdaughters for life. Imagine not just using worms as your military.

[@isiahfriedlander5559]

Always played with Morgan, and never used mind worms to it’s potential, yeah, it becomes hell… When you’re late in the game, your cities and thermal boreholes generates -50 of ecology, the world goes to hell, ocean level rises a lot and mind worms and locust of Chiron spams your territory, you have to create entire armies of psychic soldiers, I’m not joking, once I counted almost 20 fully boiled mind worms trying to attack my cities “a response from the planet”. By this point you only survive with lots of satellites “delivering minerals, energy and nutrients to each city”, because spores destroy everything… I generated more than 2K energy per turn, but had to spend everything rushing units each turn

[@TiaMylin]

The faction who 'owns' the Manifold Nexus inside their borders gets +1 Planet I believe. Might not be much, but enables mindworm capture. At this level every bit helps. :-) Maybe push your borders a bit towards Santiago. Oh, and Morgan DOES have the best quotes, hands down. But Yang is a close second, haha. Thanks for this series!

[@HansLemurson]

7:49 This was a mechanic inherited from the previous Civ games: The technologies are (semi-randomly) assigned to tech groups A, B, and C. Whenever you research a tech, only 2 of those groups will be available, and the selection cycles with each new tech. AB then BC then CA. It's not obvious which techs are in which group or why, so it just means that techs will be unpredictably unavailable. The good news is that a tech cannot be unavailable twice in a row. The bad news is that fate can align sometimes so that your desired techs are always unavailable when you complete their pre-requisite.

[@barstokians365]

11:15 So about that Mind Worm. Not only was it a Hatchling, but in the first few turns (I believe it's 10) native units get a penalty to their combat strength, presumably so it's less likely they'll wipe out a player right at the beginning. I think it's 50% penalty, which more than wipes out the advantage they get by attacking.

[@angelofdarkness128]

Oh my god I'm so glad I didn't imagine this, so happy for more Alpha Centauri!

[@daviddyer3543]

"Full access to Morgan Industries stuff available in exchange for a certain fee, including full versions of The Centauri Monopoly, full versions of MorganLink 3D Live interviews, and other documents."

[@krakskrik]

I think I've been watching your videos for at least 12 years now. Much love!

[@almar8874]

Quill, on screen at 23:20 - just above your foil is a hint of a land feature that I think is the Manifold Nexus. Having that in your territory would be good.

[@widders1]

I've got double deja vu on this one, been watching your old Morgan run when this popped up the first time. I really need to dig my copy out, been enjoying your playthroughs, I should play my own

[@AnonAdept]

Wow so much excitement just crushed. Quill the unintentional tease huh?

[@Nightingale1986]

Don't forget the social psych slider, esp. on Transcend with Morganites. Also the SP Virtual World with that many artifacts is a good way to offset the drones early on

[@F0r3v3rT0m0rr0w]

Kinda glad your taking off the gloves. Last round was fun, untill the snowball. This one should be entertaining throughout.

[@tcghunter33]

You should play as miriam godwinson of the lord believers... Or maybe try out the alien crossfire factions instead.

[@EricTheGr81]

I loved playing this one back in the day. I was always bummed about the expansion though cause for whatever reason it was hard to come by and super expensive if you could find it.

[@darelsmith2825]

I think the play here is High Energy Chemistry, buy either SotHB or Doc: Flexibility from Lal, and move your ogre over to Morgan Industries. You can take Santiago and her techs. But this is Alien Crossfire so Let's see what's behind door #3!

[@ArdaKaraduman]

I skipped this game back when it came out. seems like it had a really interesting lore. Wish they did a faithful remaster.

[@compwiz13]

I noticed the early upload but was too slow to actually watch. I've been eagerly awaiting this series to get posted for real.

[@stewartgames6697]

That second city placement is just painful. Coastal cities are always better (sure, they need domes in case of sea level change, but you need them for pushing out a navy...), plus you had that amazing cross with a mineral and an energy resource. I appreciate you wanting to teach new players that city overlap isn't that bad, but the missed opportunity there...oof!

[@FunnyLag]

Will there be a run with Custom Faction, like the Fantasy Nation of Belgium?

[@kommodore979]

I mean it probably is a fantasy nation by the time of Alpha Cenaturi, they left a dying Earth, do all the factions have a complete Earth history still?

[@DrownedInExile]

Wise move in ditching Blind Research. I hate that crap. It's particularly bad for the Morgans, because you get pop-capped at 4 pretty early. You can't delay researching those hab-complexes.

[@JimmyMon666]

I usually do tech stagnation to slow down the tech advances (which can be quite quick).

[@bbgun061]

Especially in the end game, if one is playing right, as in his last series.

[@BobHerzog1962]

Energy is pretty strong in AC since you don't get any special you can't buy this rules (like i.e. Wonders in many games). Also Energy = Research.

[@Smarmantzach]

It doesn't always work, but you can try demanding something from X (Sparta in this case) to get them to break the treaty/declare war on you. I have also declared friendship with an unguarded city taunting me. Your response was also justified. :p

[@eduardmart1237]

What mod did you use?

[@WeisserPaladin]

Hey Quill, any reason why you don't queue up "stockpile energy" for all your production? I remember this was the most basic exploit that was (AFAIK) never patched, so each time your build finished, the excess production would be converted to hard cash. Is this no longer the case?

[@darelsmith2825]

Stockpile Energy merely converts your mineral production to energy credits for that turn if you need a little extra cash to beat a rival to a secret project perhaps.

[@HansLemurson]

@@darelsmith2825 The exploit I think is that if it's in your queue after building a unit, you get the benefit of both at the same time. You get to have your cake (use the minerals for the unit) and eat it too (convert those minerals to energy).

[@darelsmith2825]

@@HansLemurson Ah so.🍰

[@ErikHolten]

Who else always joins the callback reply for the Spartan Barracks March?

[@michaelrenzema1353]

how do i get this game?

[@JimmyMon666]

GOG, good ole games

[@pemarinchhen]

oh hey..didnt see this before.

[@SkyFly19853]

No Morgan, No Money... 😏

[@eduardmart1237]

Is it crossfire?

[@danii7584]

tech shows progenitor psych, so it's crossfire

[@danii7584]

@Orthodox_Serb-x4u if I wanted easy stuff like easy answers I wouldn't play alpha centauri! :D