How do you transcend in the early 2200's?

[Tai Mai Shu]

Hi, I've been reading a few threads about builder games in MP that people have been able to transcend in the early 2200 years and I am very curious as to how they managed to do that.

In my regular single player games on huge maps I normally transcend sometime in the late game at around 2400's if I ever get that far.

Right now in my current SP game I am playing Deidre and I am still setting up my bases. I'm currently at 20 bases and I have 21 techs and am researching neural grafting and gaining 6 techs per turn. I set the game with abundant indigenous life and my start was extremely slow due to the huge amounts of fungus everywhere.

My basic base layout is Yang model style and I managed to get a recycling center, network node and research hospital in each of my bases and the average pop in each base is around 3. I'm running Demo/Planned at the moment because I was using the extra industry bonus to build infrastructure faster and managed to get a decent sized military to defend myself from possible attacks from the hive/spartan/believer threat on the huge continent that I am on. I'm not in a vendetta yet, but I am pretty sure relations will break down soon enough.

So does anyone have any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong? Maybie some way to speed growth and research up a bit?
Or maybie it's not a good idea while sharing a continent with so many factions on it?

[Rynn:]

TMS:

At least 3 factors contribute to early wins in Multiplayer games:

> most are played on standard or large maps, where the tech costs are significantly lower than for huge or larger maps

> any AI factions are quickly subjugated and enslaved, and become parallwl research arms of the conquering faction

> tech trading becomes an art in MP games, where you can co-ordinate research with a pactmate much better than in SP games (realistically how many of us even read when an AI pactmate suggests "I am currently researching -----, I suggest you research -----" ??

(btw, in your post you say 6 techs per turn - you surely mean 6 turns per tech)

Energy is king in research - either crawl it like crazy to your best base where you have built the Supercollider and the Theory of Everything or crawl food galore and turn your workers into research specialists.

(and if you haven't yet got a copy of Vel's strategy guide, go to:

http://googlie2.tripod.com/spartanchronicles

and download a copy)

R.

[Tai Mai Shu]

Hey thanks for the explanation, and yes, I mean 6 turns per tech and not the other way around

[cbn]

Rynn hit some key points. I bumped up a thread where some of the top players discussed how one of them transcended in 2172 (tiny map). There are a bunch of tricks there. One easy one is to NOT cash your artifacts early since every tech you have early increases your tech cost for each subsequent tech AND many times, an artifact cashed early will yield a tech that you could have stolen or traded for later. It is much more effective to hoard the AAs until you have everything that any other faction has and then link a bunch of AAs all at once. Also ensure that you beeline. There are many techs in this game that have marginal utility that you should avoid when in the race to Industrial Auto.

Lastly lots and lots of crawlers and specialists are the keys. Remember, you do not need lots of bases to research fast. One Super-science center with all the research enhancing facilities, and the SuperCollider, TOE and the Merchant exchange can bring in massive labs. This base is set up and designed as a research centre from the beginning (on a river and on a coast so sea crawlers can bring in quick sea energy)while your other bases produce the military needed to eliminate the threat from other factions. Once the AI is subdued and no threat, ALL your bases become former/crawler producers as the goal is simply to crawl more and more energy to the super base or bases.

If you have infrastructure in each of your bases you could be wasting resources. instead of 20 research hospitals, perhaps you could have 2-3 and your other bases could stay as low population mineral producers that just churn out crawler after crawler for the 1 or 2 or 3 bases you choose to make your research centres. It is much better to have all the research facilities in a few places, doubling or tripling or more theenergy coming in than having a whole bunch of facilities giving a 50% uplift to relatively pathetic energy incomes.

If you want to hear from the real experts you should do a search using the terms "fast transcend" and scan the threads that result. Some of those guys had it down to an art form

[Tai Mai Shu]

Wow, just read the thread, thanks a lot. Was a very interesting read.

[Misotu]

It's probably just worth adding to cbn's post that the reason why you would go for several research centres, rather than just one, is that otherwise you will never research more than 1 tech per turn. The game does not permit you to make more than one breakthrough in a single base - so even if your HQ were making sufficient labs for 2 breakthroughs, one is all you will ever get ...

[big_canuk]

There are many, many strategies and factors that can/should be used to transcend quickly. These may be different in MP vs SP games.

In SP games some of the most important are:

1. As was said crawlers. First mineral crawlers to get your industrial capacity up. They can be on forests or mines. Then energy crawlers/trawlers rehomed to your SCC, or group of science bases close to your HQ (so you don't loose the energy to inefficiency)

2. pop boom. I noticed you have res hosps in size 3 bases. This would IMHO normally be a bit early for me. They cost 3 upkeep, and are expensive. I generally would use that ind capacity for more crawlers, and then children's chreche and if necessary, tree farms and rec comms to support the pop boom (SE choices democratic and planned plus the CC should do it for most factions)
Only when I have the pop up to 5 or more and some specialists, do I normally build the RH.

3. Less military. Against the AI you can easily cope with minimal defenses and a smallish strike force to slowly take over enemies. Make sure you run FM, and therefore make sure your airforce is homed to an all specialist base(or less effectively to a base with a punishment sphere)

4. Lots more ideas, I'm sure.

bc

[cbn]

Tags in . . . .

and to expand on Misotu's expansion of my point LOL . . . The reason that you can only get one tech per base is that the game will give you a tech when Lab points exceed cost but all the points in excess of the tech cost (from the base that puts you up to the cost) are LOST. There are old threads on this point where people lost a significant portion of their Labs each turn due to this effect. Lab points are always collected from your bases in a specific order based on date of founding IIRC (someone please confirm) so this is yet another thing to watch and tweak in maximizing your tech rate.