Zsozso's attempt at fastest transcend on huge map

[Mongoose]

Aggressive and forunate pod popping, perhaps? You can get almost all the L1 techs from pods.

[Capt Dizle]

Yeah. Lucky duck.

[Capt Dizle]

In his narrative above zsozso noted that he got one of the Zak's commlink on his 2111 report so that settles that.

I nevertheless unretract my previously retracted statement: "I daresay a sub 100 turn transcend on transcend is impossible outside of some freak event. On huge."

[Hendrik]

I must say I was shocked by this amazing time, but JT is right, getting that many techs so fast has a large effect on the game. It took a lot of skill to transcend as fast as you did, but you were still playing under freak conditions, in terms of diplomacy (ideal) starting location (very good) and pod pops, that early forest pop is the only visible one, but 13 techs in 23 turns scarcely seems doable without at least several tech or commlink pops.

I don' t think that early tech can be added on in terms of straight turn advantage. There are very few techs that bring advantages without any costs to implementing them, IE clean reactors make formers cost more, facilities need to be installed, SPs need to be built, etc. Most of the advanced facilities are totally useless to a fledgling empire. I guess you could say that additional techs beyond a certain point in infrastructural development mean diminishing marginal returns... the first few techs make a large difference and don't need a heavy infrastructure to implement (SE related techs, formers, IA) and the like.

Beh a bit of a rant. Anyways zsozso I would be tickled pink if you would play a game on a regular random map using a Byron variant.

[Capt Dizle]

Diminishing marginal returns. Yeah kinda, but, for the no infrastructure pardigm lifting restrictions is huge in terms of affect per base. This semi Byron method uses the number of bases as its multiplier rather than facilities in bases.

One example is the effect of Wealth on the center square of a University base. Without this SE in effect you are getting 2 or 3 from the base square and then with it you get +2 (although the datalinks indicates you'll only be getting +1 commerce).

So then your base squares are generating 4 or 5 energy and your adding bases as fast as you can and this has a big effect at a time in the game when research costs are very low. Remember the multiplier of the free network node.

When you get ahead on tech everything can happen faster for you like getting the Empath Guild and soaking up the tech trades and commerce that much sooner.

The University is really the best fast transcend faction you know. Morgan can sure rush infrastructure but the benefit from some techs is not strictly tied to infrastructure as zsozso has painfully taught us.

Getting tech sooner means being able to build SP sooner and gosh it's not like it will interfere with his infrstructure builds is it. PTS, PEG with VW to keep all happy. And WP and ME, none of this stuff is dependent on having infrastructure for benfits.

[MariOne]

JT, one reason for the undocumented +1 Energy in basetile is Governorship (which thus gives more than just the documented +1 for each Treaty/Pact in that base).
DilithiumDad taught me this very recently (I had always taken for granted the datalinks without checking...)

You now report that there is an undocumented +1Energy in basetile for Wealth (or did you mean for a particular leve of SE Economy induced by Wealth?).

I am positive about the cause I quoted, I verified the effect by comparing a pre- and post-election save, all the rest unchanged (explicitly, SE unchanged).

Are you sure you didn't mistook the Gov'ship effect for the SE cause, or are you actually speaking of a different undocumented effect, which could even cumulate with the one I report???

[Capt Dizle]

As you know I am not a math head Mose.

Precontact, non governor Zak running simple survival gets one energy per base square, or two with HQ or tanks. Econ rating of zero.

Precontact, non governor Zak running free market survival gets two energy per base square, or three with HQ or tanks. Econ rating of +2. This is consistent with what the datalinks says "+1 energy per square"

Precontact, non governor Zak running free market- wealth gets four energy per base square, or five with HQ or tanks. Econ rating of +3. This is inconsistent with the datalinks entry for +3 econ which states "+1 energy per square +1 commerce rating". It is actually +2 energy per base square that you are getting and you will keep it after you get commerce.

Also, I do believe you get an additional +1 in the base square with the governorship.

And I think you get a nice boost with golden age of about +2 energy per base square but that I can't be sure about. There may be some other stuff going on with that.

Base square +1
+Tanks +1= +2
+FM +1 =+3
+Wealth +2=5
+Governorship +1=6
Golden Age +2=8

Shows up as 8+ but I think 8 or anything higher shows as 8+.

So you can see that with all of these factors in place zsozso was making out like a bandit with his little bases on the base squares alone not to mention that with the projects he had he was getting a size three base, free node, free energy bank, free hologram. And so it goes.

[Capt Dizle]

mathematically, there is probably a correlation between the GA induced increase in base square energy and the +10 psych allocation trick you use in the early game Mose.

By going 40-10-50 I was actually increasing the labs I was making because the +2 per base meant +1 energy to the same 50% energy allocation. The credit income lost by going to 40% was also mitigated by the increased base energy. And of course +2 growth without planned!

I digress, your early game 10 pysh allocation is probably doing the same sort of energy boost but all the numbers are fractions, so small as not to show up except in the final tech per turn where you do gain because, again, the cost is low in the first place. So I'd say that your little trick is kind of linked in the math sense.

[MariOne]

To be fair, "my" little trick I actually learned it from cousLee, or JAMiAM, or Bingmann, can't recall.
To my knowledge, it helps forcing the game splitting some energy in a different way it would do by default, without actually allocating any to psych in most cases...

I must say that I only ever see it effective with a 30%Econ 10%Psych 60%Labs.
For instance (just an example, actual figures could be different), with 4 net energy you have 2ec-2labs at 50-0-50. You might find to be still stuck in 2-2 after shifting to 40-0-60 or even to 30-0-70. Usually the 30-10-60 allocation does the trick to split your energy 1-3, despite this means leaving your labs allocation unchanged, or even decreasing it!

But it only works to squeeze the best labs out of your energy in the early game, inevitably at the cost of some ec.
A -1Eff could be enough to make the trick uneffective, as a too good Eff also makes it moot.

And I never saw any money benefit from it, i.e going 60-10-30 does not give any extra ec over those the game already is able to allocate by default with 60-40 or 70-30.