Questions, questions

fender · August 8, 2004, 15:06

What is considered to be a good, or at least acceptable year to Transcend at the Transcend level?

Also, from my point of view it’s harder, or at least takes a lot more time and trouble to Conquer than Transcend. I’m wondering why you get such a lower score.

What is a good year for a Conquer win?

Does anyone do Economic Victories? I’ve done each one a few times….well, just because, I guess.

Just wondering. I’ve had some “fast for me” Conquers, around 2290 or so, but the one I’m playing now, and the last few, I’ve had put fend off Miriam, Yang, and Sparta, which has slowed things down a lot. It will be around 2350 I’m guessing. I’m not complaining though. I’ve never felt so confident playing this game since the change to an ICS type game plan. I have an easier time on Transcend than on Librarian, which I used to play. Well, I don’t get all the SP’s at the start of the game like before. I can usually get the HG and one or two of the others up to VW. After that I rarely miss one.

Does anyone think running Demo, Green, Wealth, Cyber, and sometimes Thought Control is not a good SE using Zak. It works well for me.

Thanks

Commy · August 8, 2004, 15:29

Usually, I shoot for any victory by the year 2350. Depending on map size, you could easily get an economic before 2200, if you do a free market and bee-line to planetary economics. Same thing with a conquer victory. If you're on a tiny map with no islands, a couple particle impactors and rovers, and you can usually win by 2150.

However, in my opinion, it is not the speed, or even the score on the game that matters, it is the quality. The game somewhat gives you a figure on this with the 'Alpha Centauri Rating' or something like that and gives you a percent. For the average player, a rating over 100% shows that the game wasn't just one by playing momentum style on a tiny map. A good number is 200%, although that is not at all considered great, more or less just simply average.

As for a Transcend victory on Transcend, if you can win between 2300 and 2350, you're timing will be decent, acceptable, and you score will be pretty high too.

And as for SE with the UoP, I would suggest Demo/Market/Knowledge/Cyber. If you don't like free market, substitute it in with a planned economy. While +2 effic may be nice with a green, on Transcend, you're going to run into beauracracy anyway, and I find +1 industry and +2 growth more helpful than capturing a couple of mindworms...

fender · August 8, 2004, 20:37

I should have added that I like to play on a huge map. No big oceans, lots of rivers, and everything else normal, or average.

I removed the Monsoon Jungle 'cause who ever got there began killing off the other factions ASAP. I was never the victom, but it ruined the game, as you can get to anyone by land.

Chaos Theory · August 8, 2004, 21:31

I can always win (vs the AI) before 2300, and probably before 2250 most of the time.

Note this is on Huge, with variable other map settings, and a normal tech rate.

-SafaN- · August 9, 2004, 08:02

I'm morganite player and I find econ victories to easy. If u have to pay a realy huge amount, then just go to war and try again after taking 10 bases, does wonders.

BTW does anyone know if its important whether myriam is still alive for the price. With her SE settings her bases and units will be more expensive ...

Anyways I have disallowed Econ Vic for me, I have some trancendent vics. Diplo doesn't work for me, just not good at buttlicking AI i suppose. And A trancend conquest vic with morgan seems a good challenge ... But i don't realy like combat ...

Greetz

Chaos Theory · August 9, 2004, 09:47

Diplomatic victory is easy when you have 3/4 of the votes by yourself.

Zeiter · August 9, 2004, 14:33

Yep, diplomatic victory can be a great way to wrap up a game that is clearly already won. Sometimes there will still be a few small factions off on their own islands after I've done most of my conquering. Instead of taking the time to build a bunch of transports, march over, and obliterate them, it's much faster just to vote myself in as supreme leader and win the game that way.

fender · August 9, 2004, 16:31

My point about Conquer VS Transcend can best be explained in the game I just finished. The year is 2298. I spent a few very long years doing Chop and Drop on all enemies. It's just Me, Morgan and Lal left in the game. I've been protecting them, but we are not packed.

Choice #1: I made them pack the same year and won a joint conquer victory. 250 something percent.

Choice #2: I shut down the game and reload the same year and went for Transcend. I could have done this years before. I paid for the Voice of Planet and two turns later Transcended in 2301. Score of 324%

My point is or was, it was much harder and time consuming to conquer. I could have gone for Transcend and I could have saved all the time and trouble of the conquer, and done it sooner, yet Transcend gets a much higher score. It doesn't make sense to me that the easier way gets a better score.

I had Voice of Planet avalible to me before I began the conquer chop and drop. It would have been a breeze.

Trouble is, I did want payback to Sparta, and the Hive, and I had to crush them. A weakness on my part I guess.

Chaos Theory · August 9, 2004, 16:34

Conquering can be quite a bit easier on smaller maps, especially with impact rover rushes. Transcending always requires researching most of the techs. Conquering has a snowball, momentum effect if done right. Getting too many techs tends to slow you down until you can use them.

mendaliv · August 15, 2004, 16:05

Really though, I mean, look at how scoring works in the first place. Right now, I'm playing huge map of planet, as hive, librarian difficulty. The year is 2424, I could transcend in 2 turns (1 for voice, 1 for ascent).

The thing is, I'm getting something like 6 transcendent techs every turn, at a point value of 10 each. 60 points per extra turn elapsed, where I'm losing 2 points per turn for not accomplishing victory.

On top of that, by having telephatic matrix and cloning vats, my score for population is through the roof, and is only rising more. Last I checked, I had something like 4263 population.

Maybe just time to move up in difficulty level

If anything though, if your score is increasing by more than 2 points/turn, then it is NOT worth transcending yet!

If I had transcended in 2424 (an impossiblity since I hadn't built voice of planet), I would have score of 8585 (minus whatever my pact brother would've gotten, if anything, and plus... probably 50 points for the last two wonders).

If I had transcended earlier, in 2417, my score would've been only 7480 (minus whatever pact brother would've gotten, plus points for last two wonders).

So, my score had gone up by 1119 points in 7 mission years (an average of about 159.86 points per turn), while I lost 2 points per turn because of the scoring system for Transcendance.

So really, it's a matter of economics with your points more than anything.

GeoModder · August 15, 2004, 16:23

42 million citizens in your faction???

Zeiter · August 15, 2004, 17:21

Good god. How many cities do you have, and what is the average population for each city? Do you have any megalopolis (size 100+) cities?

mendaliv · August 18, 2004, 09:42

Biggest city is like... 70-something. But the average is pretty high.

I just realized that I hit some kind of max unit cap too... I'd been wondering where my colony pods were... sigh.

Since I can't find a specific number for the number of cities that I have, I'm going to guess from the number of Children's Creches that I have (since it's the first thing I built at my cities at this phase), and say that I have 134 cities total.

Biggest city is tied between Socialism Tunnels and Fecundity Tower, each with 73 citizens. The smallest of my original bases (i.e., not conquered, pre-building spree) would have to be 58. Of course, the smallest base I have is like... 2 or 3.

Current population (as of M.Y. 2432) is 5249. I think I'm starting to plateau though. With this new factor of the maximum unit cap, I've been unable to build the new bases I planned on building to help get some more population...

Stupid 240 Super Singularity Skybase Formers... and 217 Singularity Skybase Supply... lol

Here's a pic of the map zoomed pretty far out. Gives an idea of what I have to contend with every @#%%ing turn.

Lord Nword · August 18, 2004, 10:45

I've reached the unit limit before too.... It's SO annoying; I can't even create enough garrisoned guys for my new bases (every base already has only one or none)

My best example is this one... about 150 bases, most at least 80 population... about 90 colony pods waiting for terraforming to occur... 7265 citizens... I'm not sure how many formers... prolly 400ish... (the design workshop says 93, but that is WAY wrong... I have screens with more than that on them..., and they are most of the small dots on the screen) 6216 turns of sanctions because I razed every single base that did not line up perfectly with mine....

No I'm not showing the entire map there, one cluster of 15 cities or so is not visible.

256x192 is map size... :-D

As I asked before, is there a limit on the number of bases you can have? 256 is what I've heard...

Flubber · August 18, 2004, 10:48

This example shows why NOBODY seriously plays for high score. It becomes a senseless game where proper play may take hours per turn and there is no real contest left. You can just mindlessly rush colony after colony and satellite after satellite and delay winning for years and years after when you could have achieved it.

While games like this are fun to look at, I know that I would not want to be playing it. The "fun" game might be to go back a 100-150 or so years and take over one of the lesser factions and try to win

Lord Nword · August 18, 2004, 10:55

Oh... did I mention that a turn takes about an hour in that game?

I dunno why, but I find that it's often quite stress relieving for me to be mindlessly building with my terraformers...

smacksim · August 18, 2004, 14:11

I recently tried a game for score for the Hall of Fame, but got bored 70 years in. It's just too silly after awhile. We need a challenge game for the HoF, rather than a standard game.

Inspiring empire pics