Transcended in MY.2172 by Gaians

[zsozso]

When I saw korn469's post that he beat my 2179 record with a 2176 transcend, I just HAD TO start playing...

I did have a new strategy idea deducted from my ZFOCC games, but did not bother trying it out until it became necessary

So, the new trick is: play with Gaians with abundant native lifeforms. The rest of the setup is the same as for the Spartan technique (tiny planet mainly land etc).

The advantage is, that there is no need to waste resources to build an army for the first conquer phase, captured worms can do that for free! Abundant lifeforms provides lots of fungus all over the planet - so worms can move 3 squares, which is faster than rovers!

This method also gives a definite advantage in pod lotto - so I could collect a good number of Alien Artifacts. If the pod contains worms - no problem: new soldiers in my army OR bonus energy (if my worm too weak, I do not attack and the native ones leave my worm alone).

The only problem is, that the abundant lifeform setting slows down the development of other factions, so the AI factions couldn't do as much research as in the Spartan game style. On the other hand, I could focus all my building projects and research beelines for the fast transcendence from day 1, never built any military units.

I built 5 bases, fully equiped for research.
Built the Weather Paradigm and Merchant Exchange early, then early 60s the Supercollider, Theory of Everything, Network backbone and Universal Translator.

Other factions only had 2-4 bases (Lal established his 5th just in the last year).

Perhaps average native lifeforms would have been better (still enough for fast conquer and does not hurt so much other factions). The locations of other factions wasn't realy lucky in this game - 4 of them were too close to each other along the north edge, while Lal and Santiago next to each other far south with a big empty land in the midle.

So, this 2172 transcend is just the first try of this new strategy. I'm sure there is more in it, needs more practice and refinement.

Earlier I did not realy like the Gaians, thought of them as a weak faction. But now, after the ZFOCC games and this fast transcend, I am more and more convinced, that it is not only a very good faction, but quite possibly the best - if played with strong emphasis on worms. Good thing is, that worms fight purely by their 'morale', which means they keep getting 'free weapon upgrades' all the time. Of course, they are weak to start, but it is easy to get combat experience on the small and even weaker wild worms.

zsozso

[This message has been edited by zsozso (edited November 13, 1999).]

[ProvostB]

Save?

[korn469]

damn zsozso!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

what a game! congratulations! since my save game is now pointless do you want it anyways? send me your save so i can see if i can get any idea from it

hmmmm i might have to do my new strategy

go straight for secrets of alpha centauri and then use an alien artifact and pray to god that it gives you threshhold of transcendence (the good old transcend cheese rush like a five pool if you play starcraft)

how can the gaians get great tech without free market? how many bases do you have? for the early part of the game did you use planned democratic? or democratic green?

because to beat you by one years i would now have to discover threshhold of transcendence in 2169

i have found with the spartans that in the super quick conquest games that you don't even need impact rovers, that recon rovers are all you need

ok on tech order what is your opinion for the most important techs?

here's what i think (for the rover rush conquest)

secrets of the human brain
tree farms
planetary economics
cyberethics
applied relitivitey
fusion power
unified field theory
digital sentience
homo superior
secrets
matter compression (for some reason it's the key to unlocking a 69 tech threshhold)

in your opinion what is the best build order?

after i do conquest here's what i do

(rec commons when needed)
former
recycling tank
net node
chrildren's creche
tree farm
research hospital
fusion lab
hybrid forest

i found that with spartans the only secret projects i built in my last game was this was

virtual world
super collider
theory of everything
universal translator
VoP
AoT

i might of had enough to build one more late game secret project...i did have a large amount of supply crawlers (enough in fact to go from scratch to build the AoT in one turn with 50 energy left) cuz sparta command went into drone riots in 2175 so i could hurry the AoT from there (that pissed me off)

in one last point we have to be squeezing the margins out of a quick transcend victory...i knew there was still some margins left in my game so i had a feeling you'd beat me eventually but...i was hoping that it would take you more than one day to beat my score however lets see...it takes 69 techs to get threshhold of transcendence so without slaves and getting one tech every year then the quickest you could transcend would be in 2166 (with secrets and universal translator) the problem is begining to be building the AoT in one turn...back in the day it really wan't a problem to have enough time to get ready to build the VoP and AoT in one turn now it's getting harder...how low can we go? i dunno maybe 2168? at my skill level i think that getting threshhold in 2165 might be beyond me so i will try though i don't know if i will be able to beat your score...but i'll try

hmmm with luck, (read find some unity rovers in pods early on) it might be better to be the UoP and do the rover rush transcend i don't know yet...

well one last time congratulations!
compared to 2172 i guess that 2176 isn't that bad

korn469

[chaindoll]

Not that I am an expert, and I don't play tiny maps, so fast transcends arent my thing, but the superbase is incredibly helped by the merchant exchange.

If you could get that in the base with Supercollider/Theory of Everything you'd be gaining +4 labs/square.

chaindoll
from the peanut gallery

[zsozso]

I have found that dem/green/knowledge can give you almost as good tech rate as dem/fm/know, of course this depends on your city spacing and numbers (green gives extra efficiency to overcome problems with larger distances from HQ). I used 100% lab allocation all the time during the game except for the last 3 turns when I switched to energy. When my facilities and police could not keep the drones out (above size 6), I have cancelled the UN charter and nerve stappled the drones - worked for 20 consecutive years, after I could afford to use 5-6 thinkers to keep the drones balanced with talents and still produce maximum lab points.

With Spartans I had problems with drones and eco-damage (destroying my forests) when I played Spartans with FM. So, I had to play with 10-20% psych allocation and keep repairing the fungus squares.

In contrast for Gaians, fungus gives 2 food from day one (mid-game gives even 3 and 1 mineral and 1 energy), so you can use it for faster growth.

I have built 5 cities as fast as I could (before switching to dem). My facility order:

1. former (rushed from 10 free minerals in 1st turn)
2. recreation commons
3. children's creche
4. network node
5. tree farm
6. hybrid forest
7. research hospital
8. fusion lab
9. nanohospital
10. quantum lab

Hab complex inserted when I go for pop-boom. I had size 3-4 in natural growth under dem/simple/know, then I switched to pop-boom (planned) to grow up to size 13-14 (except last base was behind schedule, that stopped at size 10).

I also built a second former at some point in each base when I could not keep up with forest planting during pop-boom.

I used a new hurry-trick for small bases (under 10 mineral production):
1. set a base facility to be built (even if you realy want to build a unit e.g. former)
2. click hurry and partial payment, pay 4*(10-minerals), where minerals is the production plus the carry over from previous if any.
3. Next turn, you will have exactly 10 minerals, switch to what you realy want to build (no penalty) then you can hurry it full.

This way you can build anything in 2 turns without paying too much for it. E.g. if you production is 3 minerals, then this technique carries over 3 from previous build, you need to pay for 4 minerals in first phase, that costs 16 energy, next phase you pay 2 energy per missing minerals.

Once I got Eudamonia, I used that instead of cybernetic - gives the same effect as FM AND +2 industry too, which helps to build faster/cheaper.

For techs, after hybrid forests I went for homo superior as fast as I could, then rush built the Universal Translator and linked in over a dozen alien artifacts and got digital sentience, quantum power, applied relativity and theory of everything at once.

For the superbase thing, I found a big drawback (I had to play again the last 30 turns with different SP placement to get the fast transcend):

If you put all goodies in 1 base, then you are wasting a lot of research points! I could get my superbase to produce over 5000 lab points per turn and about 1000 from the other bases alltogether. The tech cost was about 2000, so I should have been able to get 3 techs per turn, but I was only getting 1 each turn and had about 1000 points carried over each turn. The I realised, that 1 base can only give 1 tech each turn and all the excess points from that base are DISCARDED! So, it is better to make 2 strong bases, that way you can produce 2 techs per turn. So I built Merchant and Network Backbone in my first base, Supercollider and Theory of Everything in my 4th base.

zsozso

[TigToad]

This is quite an old thread to be bringing back to life, but why start a topic thats already been started

I was reading through some of Zso's old games of fast transcends and decided to take my first crack at it today, with the Spartans I transcended in 2146. Not all that great, I admit (had to erradicate 2 factions because they just wouldn't submit (Believers and the Peacekeepers) then the Hive and the Morganites barely helped out at all).

However, now that I have an idea of how to get this thing done I'm going to see how close to the 2172 I can get.

Question for Zso tho, what difficulty were you trying to do this on?

Tig

[Aredhran]

Surely you mean 2246 ?

[Qilue]

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned (it probably has though), but for those looking to make a record score,
Diedre + Cloning Vats + Manifold Harmonics + max tech = Size 41 bases with out external nutrients assuming your not using ICS and all squares have been terraformed to fungus.

[zsozso]

I was doing it on Transcend difficulty. That is the best, because tech cost is not increased compared to lower levels, but the AI has a lot of advantages (growth, industry, etc.) which will help you once you enslaved the AI factions.

BTW, the game save is available for those interested: http://CR190515-A.hnsn1.on.wave.home...eirdre2171.zip

Zsozso

[Kinjiru]

Question about the fast transcends. What is the most effective use of artifacts? Does it matter on how many you have at one time?

In general would you use them to hurry SP production, or to run through the tech tree faster?

This question is always important, but more so when using Cha Dawn or Deirdre simply because those two stand a much better chance of having multiple artifacts at once (since they can quickly go podpopping far from home).

[zsozso]

I would say it depends on the situation. If I have a race for an early SP, then I will use them for that (typically in multiplayer games). However, in fast transcend games, where you have no competition for the few SPs you realy need, I would link them for techs.

The timing is another important question: in multiplayer games, you may need the early advantage of some key technologies, so it is good to link them as soon as you can. However, for fast transcend single player game, you should get the most out of them and so save them for mid-game, when the tech cost is higher and your infrastructure is not yet strong enough. Typically, I have time period around tree farms/hybrid forests where the tech is coming slow (e.g. 5-6 turns), that is when it is good to link in the AAs (as many nodes as you have).

Zsozso

[TigToad]

Yes... absolutely, I meant 2246. I'm going to keep at it tho, this is the most fun I've had playing against the computer that I've had in a while... never played much on tiny maps before. (My favorite accomplishment was a game I won in 150 years by conquest with miriam on a huge map).

Daniel-Tig

[David Byron]

quote: Originally posted by Mouse on 02-08-2000 05:27 AM Diedre + Cloning Vats + Manifold Harmonics + max tech = Size 41 bases with out external nutrients.

Well Anyone + Cloning Vats + Condenser/soil enrichers + 250 odd orbital satelites = Size 123 bases which are self suppporting (if you mean no crawlers). The satelites just double whatever else you'd have had.

Incidentally in theory with satelites you can be self-supporting at any size city without extra nutirents from anywhere so long as you work two cities in pairs. (This is not a practical thing of course)

Say you have 2 level 200 cities with no external nutrients except the satelites-- not even from workers. If you use cralwers to extract the 202 nutrients from city A to city B then B now has an excess of 4 food. Meanwhile (assuming A had any food in the box) is reduced to "hungry" but won't yet lose a level. Next turn you (and this is where the theory part comes in) painstakingly transfer control of the 202 crawlers back to city B and then send them to donate the same amount of food back to A.

Repeat ad nauseam

Now a more *practical* approach to a large score is to get about 500 cities producing one colonist each turn and each turn use the group movement command and monorail to deliver them all to one central city. Then you press "B" a lot. One level of the city dies due to starvation. Net gain 499. Ok call it 500. Thats 500 points per round on the score, and the situation described could be reached by 2300 so thats a size 100,000 city if the software doesn't break down...

Which reminds me; did anyone settle the matter of tech stagnation giving you more turns before forced retirement?

[David Byron]

You sort of half-starve them. The trick is that you don't lose a city level immidiately just because you can't supply enough food. As you know the first thing that happens is the food box is empied.

Now what happens on that last turn where there's not enough in the food box to make up the deficit? Well in fact you don't lose a city level until you *start* with a cleaned out food box. In other words on that last turn before starvation just 1 food in the box will keep the city *relatively* happy.

Every other turn each city in the pair is doing this to survive. On the other turns it gets the full amount and a little more to put something in the box.

[Qilue]

quote: Originally posted by David Byron on 02-08-2000 06:58 PM Well Anyone + Cloning Vats + Condenser/soil enrichers + 250 odd orbital satelites = Size 123 bases which are self suppporting (if you mean no crawlers). The satelites just double whatever else you'd have had. Incidentally in theory with satelites you can be self-supporting at any size city without extra nutirents from anywhere so long as you work two cities in pairs. (This is not a practical thing of course)

David, my method, unlike yours, doesn't generate eco damage, is workable and practical

Plus, all Gaian bases setup like this, also have HUGE industrial capacity (240+ minerals), and HUGE labs capacity all without a single supply unit or a satellite.

Edit:
I should also mention that this assumes a huge map and the number of bases is 200+. At these numbers, it's 'build and forget'.


[This message has been edited by Mouse (edited February 09, 2000).]