Episode: 3990
Title: HPR3990: Playing Alpha Centauri, Part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3990/hpr3990.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 18:22:34

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,990 for Friday the 17th of November 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Playing Alpha Centauri Part 2.
It is hosted by Ahu Kha and is about 20 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Part 2 of tips on playing Alpha Centauri.
Hello, this is Ahu Kha, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode.
And we're going to continue on our discussion of Alpha Centauri as part of our strategy game series.
Because I think it's a game that deserves some attention.
Now what I want to start off with is social engineering.
This is a big step towards the policy options that we later get in Civ 5 and Civ 6 and the government choices in Civ 4.
Now you reach this from the HQ screen and it lets you make some choices about the kind of society you want to have and see how that will affect your faction.
First of all, your choices affect your diplomacy since each of the other factions will tend to like you more or less depending on how your choices match up with theirs.
For instance, Morgan Industries is the capitalist free market faction, Parish Salons.
And if you choose free market for your economy, Morgan will like you more.
Now Lady Deirdre and the Giants are the ecology faction.
So they will like you more if you pick options like a green economy.
Now this only establishes a bias towards like or dislike, but if it goes far enough you can either find yourself allied or in a vendetta vis-a-vis another faction.
And the wars in this game are called vendettas.
So these choices matters. Now there's four main categories for social engineering within which you make choices.
Politics, economics, values, and future society. And each of these categories has four choices.
The choices you make will affect your faction in various ways and this can be different for each faction.
As we discussed last time, the different factions are really different in meaningful ways.
This is expressed as either bonuses or penalties to the following society effects.
So economy is the first society effect and that's a measure of your energy flow and energy is money in this game.
Efficiency, this is a measure of waste and mismanagement.
Support. The support costs of the military units in terms of minerals.
Every military unit requires a certain amount of minerals to be supported.
Moral. The training and determination of your military units.
This is also the only thing that protects your troops from mindworms.
High morale units are much more likely to prevail in combat with mindworms.
Police. That's your society's tolerance for police control.
This affects unrest when military units are away from the base and whether you can use military units in the base to suppress unrest.
Growth. Well, that's your population growth rate.
Planet. A measure of how in tune you are with the planet's ecology.
A low score can mean more fungus blooms and high score can mean you will more easily capture mindworms.
Probe. Well, probe is spying.
So your probe measure is a measure of how effective your spies are and how resistant you are to other spies.
Industry. Manufacturing strength. Measured is how many minerals you need to build things.
And finally research the rate at which you make discoveries.
So your social engineering choices will add or subtract from any of these society effects.
So let's take a look. First for the politics section.
You have four options here. Now the first one is frontier.
This is the base case that everyone starts out in before you unlock other options through research and things like that.
So in the frontier case it has no particular advantages or disadvantages and thus does not matter to which faction you're in or what kind of strategies you want to pursue.
Now if you select police state and you get that after some research you that adds plus two to support and plus two to police.
Now what that means is for support you can support up to two more units per base.
And then the added police effect means that you know your police are more effective and that can help you to keep newly conquered bases from rioting.
Now there's also a minus two to efficiency and that applies to everyone except the hive because remember the hive is the basic police state faction to begin with.
So the idea I guess is that they're already adapted to all of this and so they don't suffer an efficiency loss.
So the hive loves the police state and since they don't pay the efficiency penalty other factions have to pay it works out fairly well for them.
Another option in politics is to go democratic. Now this adds plus two to efficiency plus two to growth and minus two to support.
So what that means is you're going to be more efficient. It's a good choice for someone who isn't interested in going to war right away because you can support fewer units but with the efficiency and the growth you expand faster.
So the peacekeepers are very fond of the democratic option. The hive hates it.
Then the final one in politics is fundamentalist plus two to probe plus one to morale minus two to research.
Now this is fairly similar to the fundamentalist government type in Civ2. It can be great for fighting wars but hardly worth bothering to do research because of that penalty.
You instead go for stealing texts using your probes which are spies which are boosted. So the lords believers are a natural fit here and the university hates it.
So politics was the first of the areas. The next one is economics and again the first choice is simple and that's the default case that has no advantages or disadvantages and this again is where everyone starts at the beginning.
And then you can get others as you research. Well free market gives you plus two to economy minus three to planet and minus five to police.
Now this is good if you want to bring in a lot of wealth. That minus five police penalty means you can pretty much forget about using military to control your cities.
But if you have a lot of money you can always afford lots of facilities to keep the population sated like the holographic theaters. The holographic theaters cost three energy per turn in maintenance which is pretty stiff.
But if you've got if you're rolling in dough, why not use your money to buy friends or spend your money on probe teams to steal texts or subvert enemy bases.
Now note that the Spartans have neat advantage here in that their police state capabilities offset the police penalty to some degree.
Morgan industries is a natural fit here and the guy is hated that minus three planet you know planned plus two growth plus one industry minus two efficiency.
And again the exception here is the hive the hive does not pay the efficiency penalty.
Now that means that for the hive this is a natural fit Morgan industries hates it. But there are some interesting combination plays such as a democracy with a planned economy because the efficiency bonus from democracy cancels out the efficiency penalty from planned economy.
While the growth bonuses add up together to give you a really nice boom. And finally there is green economics green economics is plus two to efficiency plus two to planet minus two to growth.
So if you want advantage in dealing with the mindworms the planet bonus is very helpful. And the faction that does this best is of course the Giants combined the green economy with democracy and your growth stats cancels out and your efficiency goes up.
So of course the Giants love this economy but Morgan industries doesn't.
Okay the next area values there is a base case that you get at the beginning called survival no particular advantages or disadvantages then you unlock other options as you go along.
If you put your value in power that gives you plus two support plus two morale minus two industry.
So plus two support you can have two more additional units supported in each base plus two morale your units are better minus two industry it's going to take you longer to build them.
This is just there's a trade off this is a generally a good militarist option because you can have more units without paying a mineral support cost and they have the higher morale.
Now a morale is a measure of how experienced your units are they start at very green then green then disciplined hardened veteran commando and finally elite.
A unit may receive an upgrade if it wins a battle but with this values choice your new units will start at discipline instead of very green so they're already not stop a couple of points.
As you might expect the Spartans love this as do the Nautilus pirates in alien crossfire.
Then the next value is knowledge plus two research plus one efficiency minus two probe this is what you might want to pick if you want to focus on science.
It can boost your research significantly but watch out that other players don't steal your text with their probe teams you might want defensive probe teams on guard at least until you have researched the hunter seeker algorithm.
Now that won't help your offensive probe teams but it will make you immune to the other players probe teams.
So the university of planet always goes for knowledge and the words believers hate it.
A wealth if you want if wealth is your value plus one economy plus one industry minus two morale.
So great for a massing money but bad for your military strength with that minus two morale hit.
Now this can work if you don't have a lot of aggressive neighbors but imagine what happens if you were Morgan industries and combined wealth with free market.
You can't use police at all and your military is weak. This means other players can wear you down easily.
For example the lords believers can turn out a ton of units with high morale and can swamp Morgan fairly easily in many cases.
Now the last section is future society.
Now this whole area of things you know future society stuff as you might expect is something that gets unlocked later in the game so at the very beginning you're not going to be able to do anything here.
But when you start to get to the end of the game if you're moving towards a victory and you've researched all the necessary technologies this opens up for you.
Now again there is a base case for future society which is none.
No particular value here and that has no advantages or disadvantages.
You could elect to go with a cybernetic future society that's plus two efficiency plus two planet plus two research minus three police.
Now this is a pretty good choice in a lot of cases. The police penalty should not be a big deal by the end because you should have solved all your happiness problems by then anyway.
Now this is the preferred choice of cybernetic consciousness from the alien crossfire expansion which seems kind of obvious from the name.
Another choice here is udimonic. Do you want a udimonic future society? What's that going to be?
Plus two economy plus two growth plus two industry minus two morale.
Well all right you want to build a lot of infrastructure look at those plus two economy plus two growth plus two industry this is building.
This is great for a population boom near the end and since population is a part of your score you probably want to max it out.
Now with that minus two morale that means you probably don't want to select this until you've already got a dominant position in the game and you're just going for score.
And finally your future society could be based on thought control plus two to morale plus two to probe plus two to police minus three to support.
So this is military all the way your units are better your spying is improved policing is better.
And you know this could work if you're at the end game and you have enough other stuff to offset the support penalty.
And remember what that means is that you know you need more minerals to support any units that you have.
But you know if you've been building lots of mines you've put some orbital mining platforms in place you know you could be rolling in the minerals and in that case you might not care.
Now what are some of the other factors that affect your social engineering choices.
Now as you research you uncover options you didn't have before for your social engineering choices everyone starts with the default choices and as others open up you can start to select them.
So you should keep track of your options.
Check this screen regularly to see if you could be doing something better.
Now keeping track of all the bonuses and penalties might seem like a pain but the game actually helps you here.
At the right side of the screen is a summary by category of the net effect of your choices.
So you can see if your economy and politics choices are adding together or canceling each other out and now you will be affected.
There is a cost to making a change but if you keep a good energy bank you know the energy bank is your treasury basically.
You should not find it very expensive.
Now note that these modifiers can be offset or enhanced by other things you build.
For example a minus two industry modifier can be offset by building cloning vats which eliminates that penalty.
And finally nothing is written in stone you should make changes depending on your circumstances.
If you have good relations with your neighbors choosing options that help your economy or growth might make the most sense.
But if relations get bad you might want to switch to more militaristic options temporarily until you have sufficiently crushed your enemies.
But as in all 4x games remember that stands for explore expand exploit exterminate.
The key to deterring aggression is to maintain sufficient forces at least enough to hold off and attack long enough for your own production to catch up.
Everything is based on maintaining a balance among the goals of military research infrastructure and happiness.
Now the last aspect of social engineering to discuss is how you allocate your revenue which is your energy.
You have three places to invest this for your faction. You can put it into economy, into psych or into labs.
Economy means you're keeping it for uses like paying maintenance on buildings, for use in diplomacy with other players, one of the things you're going to discover.
Other players are always looking for loans and if you're careful you can turn a nice profit with this.
Now psych means basically keeping people happy. Unhappy people become drones and they show up as red faces on the base screen.
If you don't take care of it you can wind up with drone riots which shuts down all production at the base.
So managing your psych is important and one way you can do it is by diverting some of your revenue.
Labs means research into more technologies. As in all 4x games you have to find an appropriate balance among all three and that balance can change over time depending on your circumstances.
You can change your allocations on the bottom of the social engineering screen.
So this is a hukka for hacker public radio signing off and encouraging you as always to support free software. Bye bye!
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