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**Main_Brain** · January 3, 2003, 13:48

Well you didnt include the big Research-AI's ;=)
Also it seems you were alone on your Home-Continent?
This of course seems to easens this Attempt.
Also I have this Question:

-- I am not permitted to conquer a base

not conquer it or not capturing it?

**spartak** · January 3, 2003, 14:25

What's the difference?

**Hydro** · January 3, 2003, 14:44

Getting a fun SP game going can be frustrating. Here are some suggestions some friend and I have come up with. Try them if you like:

* No Unity pods – the AI is clueless on how to use these, and any non-AI faction (especially the Univ with free NN) gets a huge advantage.
* High rainfall – this helps out the AI’s generally hopeless terraforming
* Large land masses – lets the AI expand, since it is hopeless in setting up bases across water
* Limit yourself a reasonable number of bases (maybe 6, but 10 should be plenty), regardless of landmass size
* Diplomacy – always give tech when asked, give energy when you can (e.g. – bribing the AI to leave you alone, since you value your solitude)
* Decline to be Governor, and abstain in all Planetary Council items
* Used truly random tech, or semi-blind tech (such as sticking your priorities on Discover, and leaving it there). This largely eliminates b-line, and can do a lot to frustrating folks who assume they can have Ind Auto by 2130.

**Flubber** · January 3, 2003, 19:08

Originally posted by Main_Brain
Well you didnt include the big Research-AI's ;=)
Also it seems you were alone on your Home-Continent?
This of course seems to easens this Attempt.
Also I have this Question:

not conquer it or not capturing it?

I wemt random opponents and thats what came up.

I was alone on my homeland but it was more an island than a continent

I transcended in 2301 without ever having set foot on land not connected to my homeland ( I terraformed a link to a big continent next to me). The AI was hopelessly behing in tech as here is waht they were researching

Caretakers -- fusion power
Usurpers -- airpower
Drones -- nonlinear math

well you get the idea --

It was about 2280 before the AI caretakers started to bother me. They even sunk a sea trawler or two before I decimated their forces and then they kept trying to land troops on my homeland. But their troopships could not get around my masses of trawlers and I sank 23 troopships in all. In the end, my labs were coming in at a rate of about 12000 per year and I was getting 2 techs a turn.

My play was very sloppy however as I was not alocvating specialist each turn and many times I found that a worker was assigned to produce 1 mineral when a specialist would have been much better. Score was 2891 and 271%

**Flubber** · January 3, 2003, 19:10

Oh and I played that I could not capture an opponents base by any means. I could theoretically destroy an opponents base but could not take any action that garnered any base I did not build myself

**Flubber** · January 3, 2003, 19:16

Originally posted by Hydro
Getting a fun SP game going can be frustrating. Here are some suggestions some friend and I have come up with. Try them if you like:

* No Unity pods – the AI is clueless on how to use these, and any non-AI faction (especially the Univ with free NN) gets a huge advantage.
* High rainfall – this helps out the AI’s generally hopeless terraforming
* Large land masses – lets the AI expand, since it is hopeless in setting up bases across water
* Limit yourself a reasonable number of bases (maybe 6, but 10 should be plenty), regardless of landmass size
* Diplomacy – always give tech when asked, give energy when you can (e.g. – bribing the AI to leave you alone, since you value your solitude)
* Decline to be Governor, and abstain in all Planetary Council items
* Used truly random tech, or semi-blind tech (such as sticking your priorities on Discover, and leaving it there). This largely eliminates b-line, and can do a lot to frustrating folks who assume they can have Ind Auto by 2130.

For a good challege play Miriam using double-blind research (tick all or none as priority) and use random worlds until you find yourself alone. I have won this a couple of times but the last SP game I lost was like this as well (spent 100 years alone on an arid island and could not get doc flex)--

Another decent game is the One City Challenge-- There are many variations on this but the basic one of transcending while never ending a turn with more than one city can be fun

**Xian** · January 3, 2003, 20:05

HOW THE HELL DO YOU PLAY SO WELL?!?!?!? i F@^%# LOSE ON ANYTHING WITHIN 2 FROM TRANSCEND!!! WTF?

I must be missing something incredibly important, or i must be just dumb, i fing the game a challenge enough vs the AI factions on transcend!

But these are all good suggestions for the "citizen" difficulty |-)~

**Marid Audran** · January 3, 2003, 20:42

Three words Xian: Vel's Strategy Guide. You can find a URL to it in the SMAC/X FAQ.

**stuntman19** · January 4, 2003, 01:51

I haven't played much smac\x for over a year now, but normally terraforming and the use of crawlers\trawlers really breaks the game open in SP. It is what enables one to utlilize specialists, golden age, and reach a 2 tech\turn research rate. Flubber did some smart things, land bridge for one, but even then he was so far ahead that he admits to getting sloppy or he prolly would have won sooner.

I use to give AI factions crawlers to start with but they still don't seem to use them properly. Really the only way I found was to not allow terraforming or crawler\trawler use at all to keep SP close.

**Hydro** · January 4, 2003, 08:34

Other ideas:

* No population booms, since this wildly unbalances the game against the AI. In my experience the AI only pop booms by accident.
* No or very limited crawler use. I've only rarely seen the AI use crawlers for harvesting resources.
* Limit yourself to a handful of SPs. However, if you limit crawler use it is possible that the AI will get more SPs than they would otherwise.

Lastly, role play and don't do things that faction leader wouldn't do. This is subjective, and it is the way I've always done things.

MA is right - get Vel's most excellent strategy guide now, if you don't already have it! His insights are keen, and he is an excellent writer.

**Clear Skies** · January 4, 2003, 09:04

Designing & gifting clean crawlers & sea trawlers to the AI tends to be useful...especially if you get them to them before they discover the prereqs. That way they tend to keep producing them for quite a while...
And Xian, I'm with you. Transcend is plenty hard enough for me...mind you, I tend to play mostly without crawlers or specialist cities. Might be the reason, but I see that as kinda cheating...

**Xian** · January 4, 2003, 15:57

Ivs never used supply crawlers, i probably should, and as for specialist cites i barely know what they are

/me gets the strategy guide

**stuntman19** · January 5, 2003, 09:49

Xian...basically crawlers allow you to massively increase your prod in any of the resources you wish and maximize base size quickly using pop booming. If you have an energy park feeding a super science base(ME,Supercollider, and TofE) and then use specialists(Thinker or Engineer) one base can come close to a tech\turn if I remember right.

Clear Skies...did the clean crawlers actually serve a purpose for the AI? When I tried they made them but had them conveying one mineral or something not very productive when I checked thru infiltration.

**Flubber** · January 6, 2003, 13:18

A couple of things

Why are you building clean crawlers (except to pump up the mineral cost when you cash them) ?

Xian

I use very simple methods

-- beeline to industrial auto to get crawlers
-- use crawlers to bring in minerals for faster builds-- Once I get a base or two that can produce a crawler a turn (perhaps with some cash added for rush-building at first) I am very happy--- these crawlers can move outward and then be rehomed to help other bases mineral or food production (and remember to click on the crawler and have it produce something even when en route to a final location)
-- build the WP so advanced terraforming is possible and quicker
-- start building condensor farms which are crawled (extra citizens can become librarians if they would be unhappy otherwise)
-- switch from FM to planned and pop-boom (I did this twice-- once to get to size 7 and later to get pretty much all my bases to 14 (time your switches-- save up some cash and rush-build while in planned)
-- choose 2-3 bases as super science cities (ports are often best)-- throw every science and energy enhancing facility in them and use sea crawlers to bring in energy-- other nearby bases also produce crawlers and trawlers to be rehomed to these best bases

get the cloning vats for a perpetual boom, have satellites providing energy, food and minerals and then the future SE choices allow just insane abilities.

Specialists and crawlers go hand in hand-- 3 crawled condensors will bring in 12 food, feeding 6 citizens (more when soil enrichers are available. Turn those into librarians and you get 6 content people and a great science boost. Once engineers are available it really pays off. My terraforming is designed from the start to maximize one factor of production-- rocky squares get mines or boreholes while everything else gets a forest or a condensor/farm combo. workers generally work boreholes or forest while everything else is crawled

I don't claim my system is optimum but it is easy enough to beat the AI (particularly as the university on a large world). If your goal is to learn an easy way to beat the AI, this is it. But beware, it will get easy to beat the AI and then you will start seeking other challenges --- like winning

1. with no crawlers and/or no formers,
2.only building one base
3. using double blind research
4. using the scenario editor to take over the last place AI and then trying to win (the difficulty is catching and beating the faction you previously developed)-- I think some people have switched more than once
5 win without building a base ( I did this on a tiny world using the cult) its impossible unless the lands are all linked or you pop a boat since without a base you are limited to your initial units and captured worms

I've done each of these except number 4 ( hmm-- I know what my next game will be) and there are dozens of engineered scenarios for even tougher challenges.

When I first came here, I could not understand how people could talk about how "easy" it was to win at transcend. Frankly I thought they were full of crap. But after reading up on the methods here, I won at transcend and then won again and again until now, I have lost ONE game in the last 50 or so to the AI (I played double-blind as Miriam and got stuck on an island-- I never met anyone for a hundred years and when they came calling it was a spartan invasion fleet that just rolled me . . . I actually replayed that game from year one, this time making sure to get the Weather Paradigm and using formers to link to nearby lands to give me adequate space and won easily.)

So

READ VELS STRATEGY GUIDE

then read it again

tinker with your game and read old threads here on pretty much every topic . . .

and pretty soon you will be crushing the AI.

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