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Author Topic:   Transcending while avoiding combat?

Nell_Smith posted 04-23-99 01:11 AM ET
I've never won by Transcendence, or even come very close to it, because when playing on Transcend (or even Thinker) level, the AI factions insist on declaring war on me no matter what I do or how many freebies I give them to try and make them go away. So, I end up with wars on all fronts, none of them started by me, and the game devolves into a conquest victory every time (unless I *totally* cop out and go for the Diplomatic Win). I really would like to see the Transcendence thing, so does anyone have any hints on how to get those pesky faction leaders to just chill out and leave me alone while I get on with it? I've tried bribery, giving away units, pacting-up with anyone who will listen, changing my SE choices to suit anyone who's looking aggressive, and so on and so forth, but they STILL want to kick me all over Planet!! Winning by conquest is OK I guess, but I'd appreciate any ideas on how to avoid having it forced upon me every time!!
Thanks,
Nell
dawgchild posted 04-23-99 02:19 AM ET
it's pretty easy i think. instead of totally obliterating an enemy... spare one or two of his/her cities and leave 'em alone. work your way to transcendence and that should be it. if they are weak they should try negotiating... but even if they don't... you should be powerful enough not to consider them as threats when they attack.
JAMiAM posted 04-23-99 02:20 AM ET
Nell,
You vicious brute you. Secure borders, iron will, adequate mobile reserves, advanced technology and superior moral authority are all that's needed. A pinch of luck helps. Personally, I consider myself a failure if I can't transcend without a noble reputation.

JAMiAM
sandals posted 04-23-99 11:06 AM ET
I was cranking along with everybody surrendering except PK (I stamped then out) & the Hive. I tried dawgchild's approach, leaving one Hive city, to go for Transcendence, and the Gaians came in and took it. Conquest Victory.
Since I was jamming along with 800 energy/turn & 2 turns/tech, I did the 'lemme play a little longer' option to see what the Transcend sequence was like. It's cool.
GaryD posted 04-23-99 11:11 AM ET

Could you not have asked her to make peace with them ? Or does that ally them to you as well ?
sandworm posted 04-23-99 11:17 AM ET
Don't accept surrender from one of the other factions. Knock them down to a few cities and keep sabotaging the production in those cities with probe teams. If you don't let them build anything, they can't attack. Keep planet happy and build up lots of 1-1-? empath units, Planet gets frisky as you approach transcendence.
I found the transcend sequence a bit disappointing, but, like most people, I had to see it at least once. My take on transcendence: if you can get to transcendence, you could have one the game much earlier through another type of victory, avoiding most of the endgame city management tedium. The only reason to transcend is if you play for high scores - there's a nice transcend bonus.
JAMiAM posted 04-23-99 12:02 PM ET
Arrrgh, that should read "...WITH a noble reputation." Teach me to post after the brain went to bed. No, it probably didn't.
JAMiAM
still on his first pot of coffee.
sandworm posted 04-23-99 01:39 PM ET
WON the game, not ONE the game
and I already had MY coffee
Corvus Corax posted 04-23-99 02:06 PM ET
Nell,
since you say you win by conquest I assume that waging war per se isn't the problem for you... I also find it near impossible to maintain an at least hal�fways peaceful game at Thinker/Transcendent; what I do to keep the wars as short as possible is this: look for a colony of your worst enemy that is a) small, b)easily aceesible, c) weakly defended (newly founded sea colonies are usually best suited). Have a couple of units hang out all the time at the fringe of the other guy's sight radius. If he declares war, take over that colony... and give it back the next turn. If you're not in an outright blood feud with the other one, they almost always consent to a truce or even a non-aggression p�act. Repeat above procedure as required...
On a side note, my son's using an interesting technique to stem off land-based, non-orbital invasions - establish artificial choke points! Plant fungus around your borders, or lower the terrain until you get lake(s). Make it so that the above connect to your empire via narrow land bridges - which you can easily defend with a couple of units (the AI seems to especially hate it if their approaching armies are being shelled by a couple of arty units). Add some bunkers & sensors to the mix, and you'll be able to end a war on your terms, i.e. launch a counter invasion or use the above 'take-token-base' mechanism.
Hope this helps,
CC
Zero posted 04-23-99 04:35 PM ET
It's funny how people can have completely different experiences with the game. I always play to a Transcendence win, just because it's the lazy man's path to victory.
The trick is to not let yourself get bogged down in any war that you get into. I only plan to go all-out against another faction if it's going to present a serious security risk at some point. I typically play Democratic, so if Miriam or Yang are on my continent, I might as well go for a surrender; no chance for lasting peace with them. (If they're on another continent I don't much care if we're at war or not, unless they're whipping my allies). Anyone else, I just fight until they're willing to pledge a truce - usually taking one or two bases will do it. If the faction I'm fighting has compatible S/E choices (Gaians if I'm playing Green, say), I'll even give back a captured base to secure a peace treaty. You can go from war to Pact Brothers in a couple of turns that way. "Land for peace" seems to work well.
Of course, that's theory. Sometimes, I just have to stuff Yang in the punishment sphere he so richly deserves.
jhankla posted 04-23-99 09:05 PM ET
The way I got thought Trancendence in Thinker was to go for the early conquest victory route playing PK. WAIT for MISS GREEN to call you and say the wolves are at the door...either Yang, Santigo or the bible thumper. GO in and kick but, make sure you're the one to close the door on them! Then go down the Factions one by one taking out Yang, Santiago and Believers! This is important! You'll want a pact with Gaian's and hopefully Morgan. The University is there, keep the doctor happy, but aloof. He's next but don't know it! In the end you'll have a pact with Gaia and Morgan and it will be Morgan that tries to beat you, but he spends squat on forces and is easy! I've done this twice with different maps, same end!
Koshko posted 04-23-99 11:42 PM ET
Its funny. I won on via Transcend on Transcend level, and I never really was majorly attacked. I guess it helps having an entire continent to yourself.
Personally, I just let the planet waste itself. Be sure to attack the fungus before the turn ends if possible. Plus the fungus does give you 2/3/2? resources.
Nell_Smith posted 04-25-99 01:19 AM ET
Thanks all
Nell
presence posted 04-25-99 11:09 AM ET
I always try to win by transcendence, because I play for score and percentage, and it gives the best in both of those. One strategy that I've used is to build a small number of cities with a massive infrastructure and nearly all secret projects. The small number of cities is easy to defend, and makes little difference in research rate. This works best when I don't play as the Universtiy. I play at Transcend difficulty, and at that level, the computer blitzes through technology with the University. I play as another faction and just pick them off with probes. This technique usually gets me transcendence by 2340 or 2350.
Also, I find that my massive infrastructure and large base sizes tend to give me a massive influence in the planetary council - I can usually elect myself supreme leader after 2300, I have so many votes. My power makes most of the other factions mad, and I have a hell of a time with war. So what I do is pick the weakest faction and toss a few planet busters at them. This makes EVERYONE mad at me - so, as planetary governor, I call council and elect myself supreme leader. I then get a pact with all the other factions - except the really weak one which I busted - they're so pissed about the planet buster that they decide to dissent with the supreme leader bid. This gives me an extremely peaceful environment in which to work toward transcendence, as well as more commerce from all of my pacts.
trippin daily posted 04-26-99 03:21 AM ET
Jeez Nell, you sound like my girlfriend, going after everybody by the throat. Yet claiming you want to be peacefull. I've won through transecendence once on transcend level, and that was only because every other faction decided to hate each other for no apparent reason (other than my probe teams pretending to be other probe teams ). So everybody spent all their resources on war with each other, including me. I stayed defensive through all of this and by the end, they were using silksteel and chaos guns, and I was transcending. You just have to be a bastard and play factions off each other.
Trippin Daily
-Nell, you really like raves? Me too, but they are illegal here in the states' for some funny reason -
QuantumJ posted 04-26-99 01:20 PM ET
I'm playing Thinker level at the moment, as the University. I'm in the strange position of having kicked Santiago of my continent right at the beginning of the game and then seeing noone else for years. By the time I found Yang he was somewhat under developed and refused outright to declare vendetta on me. Yang won't declare Vendetta? Never seemed to be much of a problem before.
I was wondering just how far I could push when I finally flipped him over the brink with a probe team. Now I get to kick his arrogant arse into touch... Everyone else, in the meantime, is either quavering in their boots, or sabre rattling on the other side of Planet.
So, making peace isn't always difficult, I just don't know why not.
How can you outlaw 'raves'. They're just a more modern equivalent of rock festivals. Different drugs and music, not so well organised, but otherwise much of a much.
Nell_Smith posted 04-26-99 02:37 PM ET
Well... I still haven't managed to transcend... but seeing as we've wandered off-topic, I might as well wander a bit further...
Trippin:
Hey I've been raving since rave was invented (now does THAT tell you how old I am?? hehe)... never mind transcending in SMAC, the only real way to do it is in a field in the middle of nowhere, with 35,000 other likeminded people and the music pumping loud enough to take you right away from the cares of the world... {goes all starry-eyed}
My boyf went to the West Coast of the USA a while back and he said that, although raves are "offically" banned, there's actually quite a good underground scene there... but it must be a real bummer if you can't find out where the events are going on
Quantum:
Sure, the people who go to raves are the same kind of people who go to rock festivals (and the same who used to go to free festivals in the Sixties... there will always be freedom-loving souls out there!), but there's something about raves that you don't get anywhere else... not even in dance clubs... a kind of friendly fellow-feeling, if you like. You gotta love it
trippin daily posted 04-27-99 01:32 PM ET
Well Nell, I live in New Orleans. The only city that has it's entire economy focus around drinking and partying. Just the cops think that raves are bad. Raves are getting harder to find since they have now become "trendy" in the states. I remember back in the day, ok, 5 or 6 years ago, when raves only consiosted of maybe 50 r so actual cool people, and they wouldn't get raided. Now its like, go to a rave, get arrested. Like when Crystal Method came down and graced us with their presence, they had undercover cops all over the place. Four out of my five friends who went to it got busted. Fortunately I wasn't one of them, and they weren't the ones who drove. I told them not to go buy that lil plastic baggy from that normal looking girl, go buy it from the one that is already ****ed up. But NO, did they listen to me, nope. I'm straight edge now by the way. Despite the name My drugs are all prescribed and thus legal. Morphine, butalbital, vicoden, and codiene 2.
Trippin Daily
-wishing I was british-
P.S. Can you all start sending some good bands this way. I nearly shot myself after hearing oasis for the millionth time. Like the sex pistols were kewl. But they Johnny Rotten is no more, and Johnny was the sex pistols, so the sex pistols reunion was bull****. Its hard to get good techno in the states for cheap. I wind up having to go to independent stores, thus paying really high prices for anything good, because its imported from Britain. U.S. techno isn't that great. There is some noteworthy stuff, but not much.
Nell_Smith posted 04-27-99 02:54 PM ET
trippin:
I know it's hard to get decent rave music (whatever flavour) in the States. Have you checked out the online CD stores though? A lot of them have really good British, German and Dutch techno CDs available - OK so you pay a bit extra for postage, but it's not much. German techno is actually the best of all if you ask me, but we're lucky and only have to pay a small premium for imports, seeing as Germany's not far away from us.
React Records are the best UK label for all kinds of rave compilations - their Reactivate series (currently standing at no.13) is the best for uplifting dancey techno/trance, and their Bonkers series (currently at no.6) is the best for happy hardcore. Another good thing about them is that they usually release unmixed CDs as well as mixed ones, so you can get the full tracks if you would rather (great for DJs). They have lots of small sample WAVs for download. Check out their website at:
http://www.react-music.co.uk/
You could try emailing them and asking them how they feel about exporting to the USA (I don't know their policy, sorry). Their email is:
[email protected]
The best techno CD ever, ever, ever is Reactivate 10 (if only for the immortal "Access" by DJ Misjah and DJ Tim. Close second are Reactivate 9 and 12, and, if you like trance as well, Reactivate 13, which is a double CD - one techno, one trance (as they all are from 11 onwards, in fact).
Apart from Reactivate, check out a few online CD stores for anything in these series:
Ravermeister
Trancemaster (earlier ones are better)
Rave Now!
Rave Mission
These are also very good (all German, as far as I know).
Also check out this website, which sells mixtapes that are very good and not too expensive:
http://www.suresite.com/oh/m/mixtapes/
Hope this helps
Nell
PS: I agree, most mainstream British bands suck, the same as most mainstream bands do the whole world over. I stick to the underground dance scene, which is easy for me because I'm in London, where most of it happens. I never could understand why the charts are full of rubbish, when there's so much good music out there!! And yeah, the Sex Pistols were cool...
trippin daily posted 04-27-99 06:13 PM ET
Hey Nell, now that I've went through some kewl sites, and had my eyes reopened. I am in awww of what I miss in the states. I praise you for your kind gesture of showing me the way. You are, as we say in the states (its like an incredible compliment, although it may not seem like one to you), you are DA ****. Thanx Nell, I shall now go to my diet of techno fortified with 12 essential vitimans and minerals.
Trippin Daily
-This is why he's so dazed and amazed-
Nell_Smith posted 04-27-99 08:54 PM ET
trippin:
Hey you're more than welcome... I can't believe how annoying it must be if you can't get hold of any decent techno!
You just gotta buy Reactivate 10... if React Records don't have an American outlet, or won't send it to you by mail, I volunteer to buy it for you and post it over. Nobody should be without it
Cheers,
Nell
David Johnson posted 05-02-99 03:51 AM ET
As has been mention if you win by ascent to transcendence you could easily have simply killed all the opponents off [except one city], so you are really asking for a pacific strategy.
I'd suggest staying on one island and reaching transcendence very quickly. I wonder how fast you could do it? Research up to Ecological Engineering / Environmental Economics quickly -- don't get any other techs; they will slow you down [you can trade for all the tech you passed up after you reach the goal]. Build the Weather Paradigm and build boreholes left and right.
Put your efficiency up so you can shift to all 100% energy is research without loss.
I did it in about 150 turns without even building any research bonus facilities or shifting to mor than 50% research. I had about 4-5 military units total [and about 100 formers!] for defence against mind worms.
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Author	Topic: Transcending while avoiding combat?
Nell_Smith	posted 04-23-99 01:11 AM ET I've never won by Transcendence, or even come very close to it, because when playing on Transcend (or even Thinker) level, the AI factions insist on declaring war on me no matter what I do or how many freebies I give them to try and make them go away. So, I end up with wars on all fronts, none of them started by me, and the game devolves into a conquest victory every time (unless I totally cop out and go for the Diplomatic Win). I really would like to see the Transcendence thing, so does anyone have any hints on how to get those pesky faction leaders to just chill out and leave me alone while I get on with it? I've tried bribery, giving away units, pacting-up with anyone who will listen, changing my SE choices to suit anyone who's looking aggressive, and so on and so forth, but they STILL want to kick me all over Planet!! Winning by conquest is OK I guess, but I'd appreciate any ideas on how to avoid having it forced upon me every time!! Thanks, Nell
dawgchild	posted 04-23-99 02:19 AM ET it's pretty easy i think. instead of totally obliterating an enemy... spare one or two of his/her cities and leave 'em alone. work your way to transcendence and that should be it. if they are weak they should try negotiating... but even if they don't... you should be powerful enough not to consider them as threats when they attack.
JAMiAM	posted 04-23-99 02:20 AM ET Nell, You vicious brute you. Secure borders, iron will, adequate mobile reserves, advanced technology and superior moral authority are all that's needed. A pinch of luck helps. Personally, I consider myself a failure if I can't transcend without a noble reputation. JAMiAM
sandals	posted 04-23-99 11:06 AM ET I was cranking along with everybody surrendering except PK (I stamped then out) & the Hive. I tried dawgchild's approach, leaving one Hive city, to go for Transcendence, and the Gaians came in and took it. Conquest Victory. Since I was jamming along with 800 energy/turn & 2 turns/tech, I did the 'lemme play a little longer' option to see what the Transcend sequence was like. It's cool.
GaryD	posted 04-23-99 11:11 AM ET Could you not have asked her to make peace with them ? Or does that ally them to you as well ?
sandworm	posted 04-23-99 11:17 AM ET Don't accept surrender from one of the other factions. Knock them down to a few cities and keep sabotaging the production in those cities with probe teams. If you don't let them build anything, they can't attack. Keep planet happy and build up lots of 1-1-? empath units, Planet gets frisky as you approach transcendence. I found the transcend sequence a bit disappointing, but, like most people, I had to see it at least once. My take on transcendence: if you can get to transcendence, you could have one the game much earlier through another type of victory, avoiding most of the endgame city management tedium. The only reason to transcend is if you play for high scores - there's a nice transcend bonus.
JAMiAM	posted 04-23-99 12:02 PM ET Arrrgh, that should read "...WITH a noble reputation." Teach me to post after the brain went to bed. No, it probably didn't. JAMiAM still on his first pot of coffee.
sandworm	posted 04-23-99 01:39 PM ET WON the game, not ONE the game and I already had MY coffee
Corvus Corax	posted 04-23-99 02:06 PM ET Nell, since you say you win by conquest I assume that waging war per se isn't the problem for you... I also find it near impossible to maintain an at least hal�fways peaceful game at Thinker/Transcendent; what I do to keep the wars as short as possible is this: look for a colony of your worst enemy that is a) small, b)easily aceesible, c) weakly defended (newly founded sea colonies are usually best suited). Have a couple of units hang out all the time at the fringe of the other guy's sight radius. If he declares war, take over that colony... and give it back the next turn. If you're not in an outright blood feud with the other one, they almost always consent to a truce or even a non-aggression p�act. Repeat above procedure as required... On a side note, my son's using an interesting technique to stem off land-based, non-orbital invasions - establish artificial choke points! Plant fungus around your borders, or lower the terrain until you get lake(s). Make it so that the above connect to your empire via narrow land bridges - which you can easily defend with a couple of units (the AI seems to especially hate it if their approaching armies are being shelled by a couple of arty units). Add some bunkers & sensors to the mix, and you'll be able to end a war on your terms, i.e. launch a counter invasion or use the above 'take-token-base' mechanism. Hope this helps, CC
Zero	posted 04-23-99 04:35 PM ET It's funny how people can have completely different experiences with the game. I always play to a Transcendence win, just because it's the lazy man's path to victory. The trick is to not let yourself get bogged down in any war that you get into. I only plan to go all-out against another faction if it's going to present a serious security risk at some point. I typically play Democratic, so if Miriam or Yang are on my continent, I might as well go for a surrender; no chance for lasting peace with them. (If they're on another continent I don't much care if we're at war or not, unless they're whipping my allies). Anyone else, I just fight until they're willing to pledge a truce - usually taking one or two bases will do it. If the faction I'm fighting has compatible S/E choices (Gaians if I'm playing Green, say), I'll even give back a captured base to secure a peace treaty. You can go from war to Pact Brothers in a couple of turns that way. "Land for peace" seems to work well. Of course, that's theory. Sometimes, I just have to stuff Yang in the punishment sphere he so richly deserves.
jhankla	posted 04-23-99 09:05 PM ET The way I got thought Trancendence in Thinker was to go for the early conquest victory route playing PK. WAIT for MISS GREEN to call you and say the wolves are at the door...either Yang, Santigo or the bible thumper. GO in and kick but, make sure you're the one to close the door on them! Then go down the Factions one by one taking out Yang, Santiago and Believers! This is important! You'll want a pact with Gaian's and hopefully Morgan. The University is there, keep the doctor happy, but aloof. He's next but don't know it! In the end you'll have a pact with Gaia and Morgan and it will be Morgan that tries to beat you, but he spends squat on forces and is easy! I've done this twice with different maps, same end!
Koshko	posted 04-23-99 11:42 PM ET Its funny. I won on via Transcend on Transcend level, and I never really was majorly attacked. I guess it helps having an entire continent to yourself. Personally, I just let the planet waste itself. Be sure to attack the fungus before the turn ends if possible. Plus the fungus does give you 2/3/2? resources.
Nell_Smith	posted 04-25-99 01:19 AM ET Thanks all Nell
presence	posted 04-25-99 11:09 AM ET I always try to win by transcendence, because I play for score and percentage, and it gives the best in both of those. One strategy that I've used is to build a small number of cities with a massive infrastructure and nearly all secret projects. The small number of cities is easy to defend, and makes little difference in research rate. This works best when I don't play as the Universtiy. I play at Transcend difficulty, and at that level, the computer blitzes through technology with the University. I play as another faction and just pick them off with probes. This technique usually gets me transcendence by 2340 or 2350. Also, I find that my massive infrastructure and large base sizes tend to give me a massive influence in the planetary council - I can usually elect myself supreme leader after 2300, I have so many votes. My power makes most of the other factions mad, and I have a hell of a time with war. So what I do is pick the weakest faction and toss a few planet busters at them. This makes EVERYONE mad at me - so, as planetary governor, I call council and elect myself supreme leader. I then get a pact with all the other factions - except the really weak one which I busted - they're so pissed about the planet buster that they decide to dissent with the supreme leader bid. This gives me an extremely peaceful environment in which to work toward transcendence, as well as more commerce from all of my pacts.
trippin daily	posted 04-26-99 03:21 AM ET Jeez Nell, you sound like my girlfriend, going after everybody by the throat. Yet claiming you want to be peacefull. I've won through transecendence once on transcend level, and that was only because every other faction decided to hate each other for no apparent reason (other than my probe teams pretending to be other probe teams ). So everybody spent all their resources on war with each other, including me. I stayed defensive through all of this and by the end, they were using silksteel and chaos guns, and I was transcending. You just have to be a bastard and play factions off each other. Trippin Daily -Nell, you really like raves? Me too, but they are illegal here in the states' for some funny reason -
QuantumJ	posted 04-26-99 01:20 PM ET I'm playing Thinker level at the moment, as the University. I'm in the strange position of having kicked Santiago of my continent right at the beginning of the game and then seeing noone else for years. By the time I found Yang he was somewhat under developed and refused outright to declare vendetta on me. Yang won't declare Vendetta? Never seemed to be much of a problem before. I was wondering just how far I could push when I finally flipped him over the brink with a probe team. Now I get to kick his arrogant arse into touch... Everyone else, in the meantime, is either quavering in their boots, or sabre rattling on the other side of Planet. So, making peace isn't always difficult, I just don't know why not. How can you outlaw 'raves'. They're just a more modern equivalent of rock festivals. Different drugs and music, not so well organised, but otherwise much of a much.
Nell_Smith	posted 04-26-99 02:37 PM ET Well... I still haven't managed to transcend... but seeing as we've wandered off-topic, I might as well wander a bit further... Trippin: Hey I've been raving since rave was invented (now does THAT tell you how old I am?? hehe)... never mind transcending in SMAC, the only real way to do it is in a field in the middle of nowhere, with 35,000 other likeminded people and the music pumping loud enough to take you right away from the cares of the world... {goes all starry-eyed} My boyf went to the West Coast of the USA a while back and he said that, although raves are "offically" banned, there's actually quite a good underground scene there... but it must be a real bummer if you can't find out where the events are going on Quantum: Sure, the people who go to raves are the same kind of people who go to rock festivals (and the same who used to go to free festivals in the Sixties... there will always be freedom-loving souls out there!), but there's something about raves that you don't get anywhere else... not even in dance clubs... a kind of friendly fellow-feeling, if you like. You gotta love it
trippin daily	posted 04-27-99 01:32 PM ET Well Nell, I live in New Orleans. The only city that has it's entire economy focus around drinking and partying. Just the cops think that raves are bad. Raves are getting harder to find since they have now become "trendy" in the states. I remember back in the day, ok, 5 or 6 years ago, when raves only consiosted of maybe 50 r so actual cool people, and they wouldn't get raided. Now its like, go to a rave, get arrested. Like when Crystal Method came down and graced us with their presence, they had undercover cops all over the place. Four out of my five friends who went to it got busted. Fortunately I wasn't one of them, and they weren't the ones who drove. I told them not to go buy that lil plastic baggy from that normal looking girl, go buy it from the one that is already **ed up. But NO, did they listen to me, nope. I'm straight edge now by the way. Despite the name My drugs are all prescribed and thus legal. Morphine, butalbital, vicoden, and codiene 2. Trippin Daily -wishing I was british- P.S. Can you all start sending some good bands this way. I nearly shot myself after hearing oasis for the millionth time. Like the sex pistols were kewl. But they Johnny Rotten is no more, and Johnny was the sex pistols, so the sex pistols reunion was bull**. Its hard to get good techno in the states for cheap. I wind up having to go to independent stores, thus paying really high prices for anything good, because its imported from Britain. U.S. techno isn't that great. There is some noteworthy stuff, but not much.
Nell_Smith	posted 04-27-99 02:54 PM ET trippin: I know it's hard to get decent rave music (whatever flavour) in the States. Have you checked out the online CD stores though? A lot of them have really good British, German and Dutch techno CDs available - OK so you pay a bit extra for postage, but it's not much. German techno is actually the best of all if you ask me, but we're lucky and only have to pay a small premium for imports, seeing as Germany's not far away from us. React Records are the best UK label for all kinds of rave compilations - their Reactivate series (currently standing at no.13) is the best for uplifting dancey techno/trance, and their Bonkers series (currently at no.6) is the best for happy hardcore. Another good thing about them is that they usually release unmixed CDs as well as mixed ones, so you can get the full tracks if you would rather (great for DJs). They have lots of small sample WAVs for download. Check out their website at: http://www.react-music.co.uk/ You could try emailing them and asking them how they feel about exporting to the USA (I don't know their policy, sorry). Their email is: [email protected] The best techno CD ever, ever, ever is Reactivate 10 (if only for the immortal "Access" by DJ Misjah and DJ Tim. Close second are Reactivate 9 and 12, and, if you like trance as well, Reactivate 13, which is a double CD - one techno, one trance (as they all are from 11 onwards, in fact). Apart from Reactivate, check out a few online CD stores for anything in these series: Ravermeister Trancemaster (earlier ones are better) Rave Now! Rave Mission These are also very good (all German, as far as I know). Also check out this website, which sells mixtapes that are very good and not too expensive: http://www.suresite.com/oh/m/mixtapes/ Hope this helps Nell PS: I agree, most mainstream British bands suck, the same as most mainstream bands do the whole world over. I stick to the underground dance scene, which is easy for me because I'm in London, where most of it happens. I never could understand why the charts are full of rubbish, when there's so much good music out there!! And yeah, the Sex Pistols were cool...
trippin daily	posted 04-27-99 06:13 PM ET Hey Nell, now that I've went through some kewl sites, and had my eyes reopened. I am in awww of what I miss in the states. I praise you for your kind gesture of showing me the way. You are, as we say in the states (its like an incredible compliment, although it may not seem like one to you), you are DA ****. Thanx Nell, I shall now go to my diet of techno fortified with 12 essential vitimans and minerals. Trippin Daily -This is why he's so dazed and amazed-
Nell_Smith	posted 04-27-99 08:54 PM ET trippin: Hey you're more than welcome... I can't believe how annoying it must be if you can't get hold of any decent techno! You just gotta buy Reactivate 10... if React Records don't have an American outlet, or won't send it to you by mail, I volunteer to buy it for you and post it over. Nobody should be without it Cheers, Nell
David Johnson	posted 05-02-99 03:51 AM ET As has been mention if you win by ascent to transcendence you could easily have simply killed all the opponents off [except one city], so you are really asking for a pacific strategy. I'd suggest staying on one island and reaching transcendence very quickly. I wonder how fast you could do it? Research up to Ecological Engineering / Environmental Economics quickly -- don't get any other techs; they will slow you down [you can trade for all the tech you passed up after you reach the goal]. Build the Weather Paradigm and build boreholes left and right. Put your efficiency up so you can shift to all 100% energy is research without loss. I did it in about 150 turns without even building any research bonus facilities or shifting to mor than 50% research. I had about 4-5 military units total [and about 100 formers!] for defence against mind worms.