posted 07-07-99 10:14 PM ET            

Base facilities in all five major cities are Network Node, Fusion Lab and Research Hospital. My headquarters have Merchant Exchange (doesn't affect mirror park energy though), Supercollider, Theory of Everything and Longevity Vaccine (for that extra cash). But the real 'Secret Project' is my mirror park which pulls in about 240 energy per turn. And since most of my energy is concentrated to my headquarters and its close neighbors, I get to be like Yang and ignore the efficiency penalty from Police State. And with the Living Refinery, my cities can support 96+ units without breaking a sweat

If all goes well, I'll be able to Transcend at 2295, but I'll probably conquer the planet and see just how high a score I can get on a tiny planet

How would a larger map affect this? Maybe not by much, since each size 16 city only pulls in about 120 tech (+40% from UoP/Knowledge included, but with only 40% of the energy allocated to tech), compared to the 1920 from my headquarters. And on a larger map, efficiency would be an issue. An even bigger issue is that you'd have to have enough tech from all non-headquarters to research one tech each turn, otherwise the brunt of the tech from headquarters will get wasted as it uses all 1900+ points to fill in whatever points that remains until the next tech is researched (tech points from a base does not carry over to new tech). I also seem to manage my science about as well as I did on a standard map with non-stagnant tech, so maybe tech costs are lowered on tiny maps? I know that mineral costs are lowered by 20% on tiny maps.

I'd really like to know what the fastest Transcendance is though...tried finding something on it on Apolyton, but no luck...

posted 07-08-99 01:05 PM ET            

The fastest score as far as I know is 2279. Both ICE_DH and myself made it on that year.

Our settings were standard random map, blind off, don't restart eliminated players, TI level and everything else on default. I played with no Unity scattering.

Both of us played the UoP. There's no better race. Second best are the PKs in my opinion.

For those interested there is a thread at Apolyton/Alpha Centauri/General by the name, HOF and how to transcend early.

Alkis
The fastest gun in the wild West.

posted 07-08-99 09:10 PM ET            

SeriesII:
Is that the tech from the city that discovered the last tech, or the tech from all the bases that came afterwards in that turn? If you add last tech's cost with the tech carried over, does it equal the current tech per turn? If the carried over tech is slightly (or a lot) lower than it 'should' be, then I guess tech from one base doesn't carry over after all. If you're right though, upgrading to v4 will be a bliss

Civ II used to work like this, but I never had a city that could research an entire tech in one turn, so it wasn't as noticable in those days. But I did notice it, and I would be much happier if SMAC could let bases research more than one tech per turn, build (not buy) more than one unit/facility/SP per turn and have all food carry over to the next box (maybe it does and I just didn't notice?). In the case of building though, in order to buy the next item I always want to have the 10 minerals that carry over, which becomes a real hassle when I need to calculate exactly how much it will cost. I would much more prefer if the cost to hurry was directly related to mineral production vs minerals left. That way mineral production would matter without having to carry over when you hurry items.

In case I need to clarify the reasearch thingy:

Headquarters: 1920 tech/turn
Other bases: 570 tech/turn
Tech cost: 2332
Accumulated tech: 570

New turn:
570 + 1920 - 2332 = 158 wasted tech
Headquarters discover new tech, no tech carries over

Other bases starts adding their tech to "accumulated tech", for a total of 570. I don't count this as 'carrying over' though, since these bases never did any research on the newly discovered tech in this turn.

This is my current situation. In order to get more than "accumulated research" from my other bases, I would have to make them actually research a whole new tech each turn, otherwise any extra accumulated research will only increase the waste when headquarters discover the next tech, using 1920 tech to fill a 2332 - 570 = 1762 'tech hole'. And this is with 40% research; I would've liked to go to 50% research if it'd mean 1,5 techs each turn, but all I would get is wastage:

Headquarters: 2352 tech/turn
Other bases: 647 tech/turn

New turn: 570 + 2352 - 2332 = 590 wasted tech!!!

Other bases then adds 647 to "accumulated tech", meaning an equally high wastage next turn . So far the only use I have for accumulated tech is that I'll be able to get one tech/turn for a little while longer, even though my total tech/turn might not be quite as high as the tech cost. But getting faster research than one tech/turn is really hard. It would take many bases, and a high enough efficiency to make them count...something for the late game I'm sure, but can it be done fast enough to affect "fastest transcendance" in a big way? I suppose Alkis could tell us

posted 07-10-99 07:55 PM ET            

transend/ironman standard map, unity pods on

and i trancended in 2244 as the spartans!

posted 07-13-99 03:48 AM ET         

congratulations to your fast transc. with Spartans. I always was convinced, that Spartans are underestimated. They are great also in building, if there is a good player like you.

I also had some good results with Spartans, even on higher level than TI, but I stopped playing after 90 to 150 turns because of my huge power-difference to AI. There are even more factions better than UoP for fast transc. imo.

posted 07-15-99 10:11 AM ET            

Wow...Alkis, that score is distinction
May I know the size of your map?

posted 07-15-99 10:02 PM ET         

Would any of you care to expound on your use of blind research, version, level, size of planet, planet settings, reloads, cheats?

posted 07-16-99 03:14 AM ET            

part I.

Ok the first thing is the goals. For good research the
Goal is +2 economy (for the +1 energy a square) +4 research (that is the
highest research level you can have) and +4 economy so that you can change
lab allocation without losing energy. ok to get that with the spartans you're
going to nedd democratic/ freemarket/ knowledge/ cybernetic and then crank
science as high as you can until you can achieve a break through in 1 turn
(without losing energy of course). Ok the second is the secret projects. you
only need research/money projects (and the virtual world) here is two list of
special projects the first one is the only special projects you NEED, the
second one list is the ones that are helpful

list1
1. merchant exchange
2. super collider
3. theory of everything
4. network backbone
5. virtual world (could even be considered optional)
6. voice of planet
7. AoT

list2
1. merchant exchange
2. super collider
3. theory of everything
4. network backbone
5. virtual world
6. cloning vats
7. longevity vaccine
8. space elivator
9. universal translator (optional)
10. voice of planet
11. AoT

building anymore secret projects than those are a waste. if you do not build
the merchant exchange then it will be hard for a super quick transcend. build
at as soon as you can. when it looks like you are going to get some early
conquest then build it. build the first four things from the list in the same
base. also don't build satelites the reasonyou are building the space
elevator is for the money bonus not the orbital facility bonus. also build
the longevity vaccince for the money and built it in the same base as the
space elivator (perferrabbly in the same base as the merchant exchange) save
up your money in order to rush build in your head quarters. when you rush
build rush build the item so it will finish in one turn, never rush build it
all the way (there are a few exceptions to this and i'm sure you'll figure it
out).

starting out. this is important the first tech you want to research is
applied physics and then you wanna zoom for impact weapons. if you haven't made
everyone submit by the time you have impact weapons (which is kind of a luck
thing) then you probably won't have a super fast transcendence. in my game i
never lost a battle to the AI factions (mindworms killed some guys) and by
the time i had discovered gatling technology only lal and mirriam hadn't
submitted and in like four turns ater that they surrendered. in my game i
never went to war with the gaians at all. i maintained a state of truce with
her the whole game. also you'll want to have two (maybe even three) feeder
bases for your headquarters. found bases close to it with a three square
spread and build terraformers from those bases. early on you'll wanna build
rovers and colony pods. after you make everyon submit and a good number of
bases have recreation commons go free market (before that use police
state/green) ok like y!
ou said the most important techs are after impact is

1. idustrial economics-free market
2. environmntal economics-tree farm
3. centauri meditation-empaths
4. cyberethics-knowledge
5. applied relativity-super collidor (build ASAP)
6. fusion power-fusion labs and engineer
7. planetary economics-trade pact and hybrid forrests
8. unified field theory-thearoy of everything
9. digital sentience-cybernetic
10. the secrets of alpha centauri and the secrets of creations-free tech

thats the order i went for the techs in. cloning vats and biomachinery can
help too. work mostly on the main base turning it into your super science
city. improving the rest of your empire just enough to help you out. but at
least you won't have to build military units.

ok and here is what won me that transcendence, good old spartan diplomacy.
even before they submit make as many demands on tech and money as you can
attack them asap and go for the surrender not the extermination. when you
negociate try to get them to surrender as fast as possible use their social
setting when you talk to them and just try to over them quickly. now once we
got our slaves extort all their money (you can always extort so that they
will have 24 energy or less) every turn or every two turns. between this
eergy and commerce this is where most of your energy will come from (cause
most of your energy is put into science) and then make them all tech slaves.
if they are ever researching a technology you already have let them get to
one turn until discovery (sometimes it better to do this at 2 turns just to
be on the safe side) then exort all their money and then SELL them all of
your techs, every AI that submits beside miriam will buy all of your techs
going into the h!
ole for them. then just to make sure give them all your techs...that's just
in case. so what miriam discovers tech only once every 80 years that one time
she does discover a tech it can be one you don't have. submitted faction will
give you newly discovered technology. if they discover more than one tech in
a turn talk to them more thn once. always wait till they are one or two turns
away from discovering a tech (or building the universal translator it's good
if the AI builds this and they have all the tech you do) because giving them
all the new tech will slow down their research some because it increase tech
cost. also make sure the AI faction stay at pace with one another and as long
as that happens they will build up their empire and get tech at a decent rate
in my game the AI discovered probably over half of all the technology that
game. once you can build the voice of planet turn tech off and then build the
voice and transcend. your only 8 years behind me in your current!
game. oh yeah and i did find about five alien artifacts if!
you get alien artifacts save them until later in the game when you are
getting techs at a rapid pace and them cash them all in one turn before you
discover a new tech. if you cash them in too early it could hurt your
research rate by making the techs cost too much. so am i doing anything that
you are not? i hope this helps.

korn469

ps i think in the next month at least somebody (probably you, me, or Ice_DH)
will break 2244 but however i think that the late 2220's are the earliest
anyone can transcend. i think it'd be impossible to transcend before 2220.
but who knows maybe i'm just not a good enough player to see how you could

Part II.

aslo i when you extort a base from a submited faction here's how you do it. buy the base then extort your money back. it takes forever (miriam wanted like 3500 for all of her bases and would only give me 12 energy at a time) i sent you two save files. the first one was where i had exorted bases to merely run the score up. the second save file was where i had given all the bases back to the AI (diedra wouldn't talk to me and two bases of her was still in my possesion) on the last turn after i had already rushed the Acent to Transcendence to one turn i just wanted to run the score up a little. i started the game with the unity survey on and i think fog of war was off so that's what's contributing to the mag tube thing, or maybe it's a 4.0 bug. also in my game i found 7 alien artfacts and cashed five of those in for techs and two were destroyed by mind worms. i also think that i discovered two techs early on through pod popping. but as i have mentioned before the place where i got most of my techs from was the AI. pretty much i was directing the research for six factions, and deidra would at times trade tech with me. there was a couple times i got slack and didn't check the research status every turn, so a few times out of laziness i let my conquered tech slaves discover technologies that i already had. twice two of my conqured factions discovered technology on the same turn and it just happened to be the same technology. one turn zak built the universal translator and deidra gave him technology, on that turn zak gave me four new techs. it wasn't until i got cybernetic that i started discovering a tech every turn. and it was probably only like 10 turns before threshold of transcendence that i started discovering techs every turn. on another turn zak discover both secrets and a new tech plus when i originally conquered him he gave me seven new techs. without zak i probably wouldn't have transcended as fast as i did.

ok now i that my empire wasn't that pretty in that game. and if you are rushing for an Acent win it's not going to be pretty. every single amount of resources not spent on transcending are wasted in a game where the goal is to transcend as fast as possible.

to acend by 2230 which i think is quite possible you're going to have to get lucky and you're going to have to do everything right. to ascend by 2230 you'll have to have all the tech researched by 2228.

now in order to do this you're going to have to rush things. that means some things are going to have to suffer, and to truly get the fastest win you need to cut off win by conquest and make ALL the factions submit. and then you need to roll over them quickly. a faster transcend will happen on a standard size map than a huge one. i'd almost say that a faster transcend would happen on a small map because rows of food are only 9 long and minerals rows for the spartans are only 10 long (9 for the other factions). plus it's be easy to make all the factions submit quickly (if you got lucky) and once a faction submits at the vary least there are going to be three to five times when you give a faction all of your tech (or sell it to them) so that faction will discover a technology you don't have. so the best map for a rush transcend is standard or small, high erosion, dense rainfall, small oceans average fungus. small would be better except for the fact that i don't know if there would be enough space for 7 semi developed factions. (at least 3 bases per computer faction and 10+ bases for the human). if so then small is the best. maybe after all factions submit you could seed computer bases, in my game i seeded a base for yang. remember the computer is still getting production bonues and so forth, and if the computer is at only yang and miriam really build troops, all the other factions try to develop their cities. if you have to fight a war after 2200 then you are going to do a super fast transcend. all wars slow you down. early wars don't slow you down as much as later one and the benefit from making all the other factions submit will more than make up for the penaly for devoting your resources to war.

when going for a fast transcend you're going to need pods on and you're going to need to get lucky. also besides only build a single trance garrison in a base to protect from mindworms after your have built a network node (cause you have the virtual world and you're using free market) you're not going to build any troops. and not only that you're not going to build any military structures. also for a rsuh transcend you don't even have to research all the techs and you'll transcend faster if you don't. satellites and all factories won't be needed. factories will raise your eco damage and migh force you to take workers off of sqaures to keep things from exploding and attracting mass worms. you need all the workers possible gathering energy, when you can use thinkers. if you can substitute all thinks for empaths you're in good shape later on transcendi will make things easy. you only need to discover 1 tech a turn.

i know i'm leaving out lots, but that's what i think about a rush transcend. that's what i was thinking when i played my game it just turned out good. and i think there is a difference from a rush transcend than there is from a normal i'm bored and can do anything i want transcend. i think there is also a difference from a normal consistant transcending in the late 2200's. the difference is everything goes into the rush including alot of luck and alot of know how.

alkis

i hope i answered your questions and i hope that you believe me when i say i didn't cheat all you needed to do was to transcend eight years earlier to tie me and i think that is easier than you think. i hope i have enncouraged som new ideas, and i'd like to see som one transcend in the early 2230's because isn't that the goal of this thread. the fastest possible transcend.

posted 07-16-99 04:46 AM ET            

2239/TI/V4/UoP/Standard/Rarelifeforms/Off/No/No

The level of this challenge is always TI and I at least play by the rules. I never reload. I usually play the game in two or three sessions. Map size is standard or large. Blind is off and don't restart is on.

About the other settings I experimented with no Unity scattering (no pods) and made a very good score which was a top one, at that time.

The strategy of this kind of challenge is constantly evolving to the point that a top score some weeks ago seems mediocre today.

About other cheats and tricks the only one I use is the colony pod trick to increase a city's size beyond the limit. I used to consider it a cheat and therefore didn't use it but other players at Apolyton convinced me that it's no big deal and since they use it I begun to use it too.

The mystery of my fast score is not to be found there.

There are many strategies for a fast trans which you can find here and there but maybe the most popular is korn's great idea. Go for a quick conquest, make some factions surrender and then play a builder game.

posted 07-16-99 08:14 AM ET            

Well, this scenario was made to be so on a number of reasons. First, to the newcomers, they can take it as a training ground for all their building skills and how to get to transcend - in a real patient and long way.

Right from the start, I was actually thinking of creating a simple template with only 20-30 turns passed to act as a standardized start for all to vye for the "Fastest to transcendence" tag - you know, over at the ACOL forum there are a lot of posts that want the high scores from us or fastest tscend time. I think they are just incomparable at all.

For all the vets out there, your scores, victories and strategy-pointers are most valued here. Usual routine play might not appeal to you anymore. aceplayer's lal_2286 scenario, which is the most disputed so far, has generated an amount of interest in some of us with its victory conditions - and most importantly now, replayability. As VictorK has shown us recently, he has played out the diplomatic victory in that scenario in an entirely new light, putting all the previous highs to almost newbies' victories.

I wanted to do the same thing with my scenario. Looking at lal_2286 and some others, I thought that the primary idea here would still be fast conquest. The great builders out there shouldnt be left out. Transcend_Zakh_2241 was designed so as to - if possible - test your micromanagement skills to the maximum.

For the new ones, they might want to manage every single base every turn, getting familiarised with all the facilities and the energy yields from diff. kinds of combinations.

For the vets, as cousLee has mentioned before, you can just shunt the growth of those faraway bases and get them to stockpile energy all the way. Then again, perhaps managing every single base to its max. potential could yield the little more energy that might in fact speed up your reserach by 1 yr and you can get to transcend 1 yr earlier. What I'm concentrating on is: Replayability and availability of play for all strategies.

Important decisions must be made along the way, your original HQ is at Science Hub, and the stretch of continent it is developed in is the most developed, with all the rainy farms and forests planted. However, its location is too far north, and would you actually spend your time terraforming the central area to get more energy from other cities, and would you think that that's wasting precious time (since time is a competitive factor here) and stick with Science Hub? This is just one of the minor factor in addition to a lot else, secret projects, SE models to suit your current infrastructure...

I could have reduced the number of bases - obliterating 80% of them before submitting to aceplayer - but restrained from that as I wanted to let you explore all the various ways that you can do with your bases. If you have 20-30 bases, most probably we aren't going to build anymore but concentrate on them to get transcendence. But with 50 bases, scattered all around the map, you got to make, big decisions.

I think 50+ bases aren't alot, Singularity build well over 90+, a considerable number. In fact I completed my scenario in 2296, building a couple of bases more, for apparent crazed reasons ;p My decision here is to reallocate my base to Morgan Transport (at the Garland Crater) but put my main energy farmhouse in the area from Science Hub and Greater Enclave, using forests, tree farms and lakes to get the inputs. Because of the time constraint, I decide not to go for ech. mirrors, clusters and stuff like that but build simple solar collectors in the other areas. It was how I won it in 2296, 4920(492%).

posted 07-17-99 03:43 AM ET            

i already posted this over at apolyton but hey i managed to beat your score! i managed to transcend in 2229.

2229/TI/V4/spartan/small/blind research off/ unity pods on/do or die on/survey on

korn469

posted 07-25-99 02:02 AM ET            

small map blind research off pods on. aggressive AI off random events off low water low erosion i have the save if you want it