Transcended in MY.2172 by Gaians

[BustaMike]

Interesting theory, but I don't think it's possible without at least workers to even get a size 50 base (probably less than that). Satelites only add +1 nutrients for every city size. Even if the base square yields 8 nutrients, the max city size with only satelites (no workers or crawlers) is 8. In order for your theory to work you would have to build up the city size using crawlers and workers first. However if the city reached size 200 and you cut off all the crawlers and workers the base would experience -192 nutrients a turn (400 to maintain size 200 city, 200 from satelites, 8 from base square). Surely that means it's gonna starve.

The pod booming part works for sure though. Heck, you don't even need Hab Complexes to get a size 500 city that way.

[David Byron]

Well the comment about the soil enrichers was practical and workable. Ecodamage for terraforming can be eliminated. You can have huge industrial capacity if you want by running Nessus mining stations (again no polution whereas your suggestion will have a lot of polution -- although since its all fungus anyway and it work even if the sea levels rise you only lose river bonuses, who cares as long as you don't mind the wormrape...). but let's face it by the time you are doing this you've killed off every enemy except a tiny base in the corner of the map, and you've built every SP except Ascent to Transcendence. You are going for score, and that means population.

"and HUGE labs capacity all without a single supply unit or a satellite."

If you don't have satelites the soil enricher *with* satelites will beat you. Let's assume you get your own satelites to compete. Your energy is then equal to what used to be your energy plus your food. What is that anyway? It's pretty good but I can't remember what it is. You'll get better energy but points from Future techs just don't make up that big a % of the final score. The main advantage IMO is you don't have terraform the sea. I'd probably use the fungus rather than the soil enrichers over all; just build clean-reactor colonists sooner to make up for the cities being smaller.

[Qilue]

Your missing my point.
Size 41 with 4-4-5 per square 'before' launching satellites. Also, fungus with satellites will beat soil enrichers. Plus if the fungus is already there (which it usually is in my games since I plant it everywhere) no terraforming needed, ergo, no formers need to be built in new bases. BTW, I never said I didn't use satellites and supply units, I just don't base my building strategies on them.

Granted my play style may not measure up to yours, but I can get a 10000+ score with any faction on a normal 64x128 map.

Edit: and I have fun playing this way.
[This message has been edited by Mouse (edited February 10, 2000).]

[David Byron]

I'm not sure what your point is now.

Originally you said Gaians could get a high score (and implied "through a large maximum city size"). Ok, well I'm just saying soil enrichers do better in terms of pop (either with or without satelites -- all that does is double whatever else the city size would be). Manifold Harminics are NOT an early or mid-game consideration and as you said in your first post you need to get all the Green techs to get the normal fungus production (without MH) to be 3-2-2. Space flight is the very least of your tech worries! This is a very late game strategy discussion. Highly theoretical because with any score system the more turns you wait around when you could easily win, the more poits you get. That's pretty dull play for anyone, even me

[Qilue]

It's only dull if your a conquistidor who usually plays small maps.

Edit:
You still seem to be missing my point.
All what I have been saying is based on 'max tech' as was pointed out in my first post. I base my building from turn one for when I have max tech. Most of the time, I don't even bother with combat (true incident, Deirdre surrended after ~50 turns with out any combat having occured). Transcending is easy, building 200+ bases and getting a record score is an entirely different game.

Some points about fungus.
Can be planted 'anywhere'.
Can be planted fast.
Can only be damaged by kelp/forest growing into it.
Mindworm spawns don't appear on it.
Big combat bonuses with Pholus Mutagen and Xenoempathy Dome.

Btw, fungus with MH and max tech gives 3-4-5 (4-4-5 for Gaian) with a planet rating of +3.
[This message has been edited by Mouse (edited February 13, 2000).]

[Bearcat]

No intention to be rude but how the heck do you transcend by 2176. That's virtually impossible. I mean it takes you forever to get to Transcendant Thought.

[Qilue]

Bearcat, research speed is dependant on a lot of factors, with map size being a rather important one. Smaller map = faster research

[zsozso]

Bearcat, for details on the standard fast transcend strategy, see the following threads:

http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum12/HTML/000402.html http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum12/HTML/000508.html http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum31/HTML/000058.html http://alpha.owo.com/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000849.html

I got the 2172 transcend by using Gaians instead of Sparta and using free captured worms for the conquer phase instead of impact rovers. This way, my research and base production was fully focused on getting fast research even from the start, while the standard technique requires that you spend the first 10-15 turns to get Nonlinear Math and produce impact rovers.

If you want to get a detailed description and save files along the way (to see how it is achieved), I have a web page about my previous record 2179 by standard Spartan technique: http://CR190515-A.hnsn1.on.wave.home...scend2179.html

Zsozso

[David Byron]

The fast transcend astonished me too, but if you are used to a "standard" sized map then the tiny map gives you the equivalent of +2 growth and +2 industry in addition to the reduced cost of technology. You couldn't get transcended that fast with standard settings.

It seems like a fiddle to me and so I'm not sure what the criteria is for how far you can manipulate the settings from the standard and still count it. For example if you set up a scenario where UN pods could only give you alien artifacts then would that be cheating? I would be more interested in seeing how fast you could transcend with what I think of as standard settings. Namely transcend difficulty, huge map, middle settings for all the rest of the stuff.

[Vi Vicdi]

Umm, a "standard" Transcend would have to occur on the "Standard Map of Planet", homeboy ...

[David Byron]

What? Play on a map where you know exactly where everything is? And you don't think that gives you an edge? Well maybe. At any rate obviously if you play on a map where everything is cheaper and *intended* to be faster and easier -- you might as well play on an easier level or something.

Actually I had the impression "Huge" is the most popular sioze of map to play on.
???

[korn469]

what we were trying to accomplish was the fastest transcend possible

the only changes we made were to the basics startup rules, this is not a scenario but a legitimate game that anyone can recreate the conditions for, the setup was one that most favored for a early conquest civtory followed by a rush to tree farms followed by a rush to the threshhold of transcendence

anyone could make this game and i consider it a legitimate game, because not a single file was edited, nothing was changed except for the basic startup rules...if you did want to create a "standard transcend game" instead of a fast transcend game then i think you would have to play on a standard map of planet and use the default set of firaxis rules, which includes blind research btw...that would in my opinion be standard transcend

however we are not discussing a standard transcend we are discussing a fast transcend...yes it's fairly easy to get a sub 2200 transcend using our rules and methods but when you said that we might as well play on easy to do it, i think you are underestimating the skill it takes to accomplish these scores...to beat zsozso's score you would have to have the threshold of transcendence tech researched by no later than 2169 to get a 2171 victory...if that is easy for you then go ahead and do it...i will applaud your score just as much as i did zsozso's

when we first started doing this my first quick transcend score was in 2244 and i was labeled a cheater...people did not realize that i had done a conquest first then went for transcend...the high score before that was 2279 or over 100 years later than zsozso's top score...and now people are saying this is too easy...my how times have changed

one last thing to think about...when you play a quick transcend there is only one thing you are trying to do...that is transcend faster than the current leader, the first couple of games weren't that hard, but beating 2172 is hard, if somebody beats that it will get even harder, if anybody could ever get a 2169 or below transcend then it would be nearly impossible because you would have to avaerage over one tech a turn and not research any techs you don't need...and these games don't give you that much time to build up your infrastructure...the added growth and industry barely makes up for the time constraints...terraforming costs stay the same IIRC, so it still takes four turns to plant a forrest, and it gets harder and harder to have the industrial capasity to turn out the AoT and other SPs as the time gets shorter and shorter

though if a SMAC 5.0 patch is ever released which fixes the maintence bug on transcend then we might have to do new 5.0 scores

korn469
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited February 15, 2000).]

[David Byron]

I'm not denying that it is a challenge. But the challenge at least partially is in manipulating the game parameters to be an easy game to win. Usually for a challenge, if anything you make it hard. After all we don't bother asking how well people play on "citizen" level, rather the standard is transcend.

This just seems the same to me. The parameters for a tiny map are deliberately made to make the game faster, so obviously for the purposes of a speed challenge this is the 'easy' option. Well IMO once you've mastered the game at an easy level you go on to the harder levels not make a challenge based on the easy level, even though such a challenge would be interesting.

Also you are on a slippery slope. If you fiddle enough game parameters the game can be made arbitrarily fast and easy -- but I wouldn't feel good about myself for winning that way! Ok, you are saying this involves no scenarios.....

Fine so I'll run a "hot seat" game with myself as UoP 7 times [actually probably a variety of starting techs would be better] and win that way. Isn't that a standard option without the use of scenarios? Where do you draw the line? You've moved the competition from within the game to the extra-game mechanics of fiddling with the parameters and deciding what is too big a cheat to "count".

Now as it happens transcend level of difficulty is the best for the purposes of this challenge, but if it had happened that 'citizen" was the best, would you have played on "citizen" proclaimed the fastest time to transcend? Or would you think "well, duh! on citizen its supposed to be easy".

Well all I'm saying is that's my attitude to the tiny map play.

[zsozso]

Excuse me for throwing in my own game-playing history, but I feel it necessary for people (who don't want to try) to understand the challenge of fast transcend...

First I played a lot of SMAC games, learned to beat the AI in various ways into the ground (mainly on huge map sometimes standard but never smaller), had pretty high scores (several thousand %s) and kind of given up on the game with the notion that it is no fun anymore - too easy! THEN, I found Apolyton, read Vel's guide and saw the posts from korn469 about the fast transcend. And I was shocked: how on the red planet is it possible to transcend within a century - so I'm not that good after all ???

I tried to play a game with those settigs and first got it around 120 turns. And it was fun, more fun than I had in long time with SMAC. Then I played again and again... and after about 30 games I got down to 2179. It is no longer a question of beating the AI - which is very easy no matter what the world size or parameters are! It is a crazy race with time!

You have to try it to see. It requires an extreme amount of micromanagement - but not boring because you are not doing it with 150 bases and 300-400 units, but 5 bases and 10-20 formers (OK, you will have a lot of crawlers too).

An other way to put it: if you have a record transcend of say MY.2250 on huge map, then how hard it is to beat that by 2-3 turns ? It need a bit more luck with geology and a bit more attention. However, if you have a record of 2172 on tiny map, it is an entirely different universe. It is not enough to create 10 more bases (in Borg style), because that might throw your time back. You have to make careful decisions about every single former move, like: should I build a solar on this 2000+ tile or walk 3 more squares to build it on 3000+ getting an extra energy/turn ? It is not obvious, becuse if it happens in 2160, the 3 turn delay may not be worth!

It requires completely different thinking to race with time trying to squeze the game to yet another turn shorter.

So, in short I wouldn't be here now and playing SMAC if it were not for the fast transcend challenge.

After the numerous fast transcend challenge games I played, beating the One City Challenge, or Zero Facility Challenge or even the Zero Facility One City Challenge was not a big deal at all. E.g. I won conquest victory on standard map of planet in 2240s with a single city, no facilities built and NO military built (not even defenders!). I even did the Nomad challenge, where you never build any base and get rid of any conquered base within 2 turns. I could do those again any day. But beating the 2172 record with all the "easy" setting I couldn't. I tried with SMACX to use 7 research factions (mixture of cyborgs and university copies), also tried various other factions but failed. So maybe that was a very lucky game. But the bottomline is, it is not an "easy" challenge. It is much harder than winning on huge map by 2250...

Just my experience...

David, Bkeela has tried your exact Borg strategy to beat my score - even by repeated reloading to get the maximum number of alien artifacts linked into the free network nodes of the university and the best he got was something like 2220. So, go ahead and try to beat it with whatever settings you want (just don't cheat with the scenario editor!). I'm not saying it is not possible to beat, but it won't be easy. BTW, I'd love to see how you would do it with Borg style...

Another thought: playing Borg style, huge map is the "easy" setting, because you have lots of space to multiply your bases. It is much harder on tiny map... So, I think your hatred of tiny map is not due to seeking harder challenge, but escaping the claustrohobic feeling you would get playing Borg style on it

[This message has been edited by zsozso (edited February 16, 2000).]

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Gentlemen,

Truce please.

I am extremely glad Zsozso went to the effort to beat the snot out of the AI in a fast transcend game. By recounting his efforts it expanded many peoples play style including use of submissive pact bros. I applaud him his efforts and his contributions here. If, as he pointed out, he didn't undertake the challenge he might have abandoned the game and all of us here would have been much the worse for his decision.

That being said I think any challenge and any results obtained are reported with conditions being used. It is not appropriate to compare one set of conditions to another for bragging rights across the game as a whole moreover it is merely a statement of facts. Any legitimate settings (i.e. not scenario cheats) have there own difficulties and should not necessarily be a truism for all other games. An accomplishment in a certain game is an accomplishment. Zsozso I think realized that and thus the reason for a standardized scenario build for the UBC games. (If only I could get the *&$#@ thing to load).

David since you seem to be beating the snot out of the AI on the UBC challenge I have to commend you as well. Look forward to hearing of your transcend time.

Now stepping down from the soap box.

David your contributions and fresh ideas are invaluable. My hope is that all who use these forums try more to learn from them.

But I have to side here with the others on the whole legitimacy issue. It is legitimate and an accomplishment (would that I could do it). It, however, should be recognized as that but not as a standard for every setting and circumstance. One could never expect results like this in other cirumstances. The fact that these circumstance were chosen is not however a cheat.

Good SMACing all.

------------------
"Just puttin on the foil coach" - Hansson Bros.


[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited February 16, 2000).]