Hi gang. ![Smile](https://apolyton.net/core/images/smilies/smile.gif)
I am interested in speeding up my transcendance times on SP games. But I am not interested in the ultra fast games possible on small or tiny maps. I play random factions SMACX, transcend level, regular sized random maps, all victory conditions enabled, pretty much default settings except that I now use "fully visible" research. Otherwise the results are too random. I don't quite ICS but I usually wind up with enough cities that a few are the Greek alphabet city names.
My best time so far is 2273 so far, playing Morgan of all people. (.sav available on request) I stuck with Dem Green Wealth and Thought Control SE as a means to easily fight wars while maintaining decent income. I have found that a peaceful building strategy is not as effective for me as a series of wars. Ideally the wars happen with one opponent at a time to maximize my submissive pact revenue yet minimize the disruption from building in the core of my empire. I typically like to see my submissive pactmate with only about half a dozen cities so that my science cities get the trade but the other conquered cities remain mine to maximize my production. I have several energy parks depending on where I have some free space.
First question is on commerce. I know that it is related to the non-specialists' energy production in the city. But the reallocation of submissive pact cities to mine is confusing when the number of workers are equal when I reach the pre-Hab dome limit. Can anyone tell me how the rules work exactly? Am I right in assuming that energy production before crawler energy is considered for commerce?
I typically load the build queue and thus do not exploit the SMACX stockpile energy cheat. How much of an improvement can I expect by using "stockpile energy" after each unit? Likewise I did not fully exploit the crawler upgrade cheat although I did a little because at some point in the game I needed some air drop crawlers.
Next question is on the final five to ten years. I had my research cranked up to two techs a turn and decent cash flow besides at that point. I think I moved too slowly to end my production of base or unit production and start up stockpile energy or build crawlers. How many turns before Ascent tech is optimal to make the switch? For that matter, my formers build regular improvements until the point when fungus was better than anything else. I figure that on account of the lag time to make a former improvement I should have switched a few years earlier for optimum. Is there a benchmark tech where other players start switching?
Finally what would the best number of sats to launch? Given that it took forever to get hab dome tech after I had the prerequisites, 13 was the point where I shouldn't go past given that I had Morgan and the Ascetic Virtues and Cloudbase Academy SPs. (and most others). But I never seem to get that many sats launched. I try to balance their usefulness against the risk of losing them in a storm. And the +1 minerals sats comes so late as to be almost useless anyway. My experience is that if I do overbuild sats (anticipating building hab domes) even by a small number that the chance of a storm taking them out increases rapidly. Is this the case?
Thanks for your patience for reading this far. Any other helpful hints or players benchmark transcendance times under the same conditions would be appreciated.
![Smile](https://apolyton.net/core/images/smilies/smile.gif)
I am interested in speeding up my transcendance times on SP games. But I am not interested in the ultra fast games possible on small or tiny maps. I play random factions SMACX, transcend level, regular sized random maps, all victory conditions enabled, pretty much default settings except that I now use "fully visible" research. Otherwise the results are too random. I don't quite ICS but I usually wind up with enough cities that a few are the Greek alphabet city names.
My best time so far is 2273 so far, playing Morgan of all people. (.sav available on request) I stuck with Dem Green Wealth and Thought Control SE as a means to easily fight wars while maintaining decent income. I have found that a peaceful building strategy is not as effective for me as a series of wars. Ideally the wars happen with one opponent at a time to maximize my submissive pact revenue yet minimize the disruption from building in the core of my empire. I typically like to see my submissive pactmate with only about half a dozen cities so that my science cities get the trade but the other conquered cities remain mine to maximize my production. I have several energy parks depending on where I have some free space.
First question is on commerce. I know that it is related to the non-specialists' energy production in the city. But the reallocation of submissive pact cities to mine is confusing when the number of workers are equal when I reach the pre-Hab dome limit. Can anyone tell me how the rules work exactly? Am I right in assuming that energy production before crawler energy is considered for commerce?
I typically load the build queue and thus do not exploit the SMACX stockpile energy cheat. How much of an improvement can I expect by using "stockpile energy" after each unit? Likewise I did not fully exploit the crawler upgrade cheat although I did a little because at some point in the game I needed some air drop crawlers.
Next question is on the final five to ten years. I had my research cranked up to two techs a turn and decent cash flow besides at that point. I think I moved too slowly to end my production of base or unit production and start up stockpile energy or build crawlers. How many turns before Ascent tech is optimal to make the switch? For that matter, my formers build regular improvements until the point when fungus was better than anything else. I figure that on account of the lag time to make a former improvement I should have switched a few years earlier for optimum. Is there a benchmark tech where other players start switching?
Finally what would the best number of sats to launch? Given that it took forever to get hab dome tech after I had the prerequisites, 13 was the point where I shouldn't go past given that I had Morgan and the Ascetic Virtues and Cloudbase Academy SPs. (and most others). But I never seem to get that many sats launched. I try to balance their usefulness against the risk of losing them in a storm. And the +1 minerals sats comes so late as to be almost useless anyway. My experience is that if I do overbuild sats (anticipating building hab domes) even by a small number that the chance of a storm taking them out increases rapidly. Is this the case?
Thanks for your patience for reading this far. Any other helpful hints or players benchmark transcendance times under the same conditions would be appreciated.
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