Highest Scores... how high can they go?

[coldfission]

Been playing Alpha Centauri for a while now, and more recently the alien crossfire expansion pack - and my main motivation at the moment has been seeing how high an end score I can get.

About half an hour ago I broke the 300% score mark (3714 points, 301%) - and I was wondering;

You know when you complete a game you get a list of the books that your character was supposed to have written, starting with "Recycling Tanks Humour" and going onto things like "I'm okay you're a Drone".

The highest book I've ever got is "The Will To Power: A User's Guide" coming directly after "Conqueror Marr's Critique of the Critique of Pure Reason"

I played Marr in the game, my first time as an alien - I won by alien victory, had researched every tech except transcendant thought and the last resonance tech and had every secret project including the voice of planet, excluding 4.

So I was wondering - are there any higher books? And how high can you go? is 500% possible without cheating?

EDIT - Looking at the list there could be space for one more book... anyone know what it is and what percentage you need to get it?

[Flubber]

I don't know if there is an upper limit but you can go much higher than you did by researching hundreds of transcendent thought techs and spamming supersized bases every two tiles. Imagine a size 40-60 base every two tiles filled with transcendii and a sky filled by food and energy satellites .

The problem is that it is not much of a test of anything except someones ability to play out multi-hour turns with no challenge or point

[Kataphraktoi]

I think ive seen a game with 47000%. check the apolyton HOF, there might be old stuff in there

[Leon Trotsky]

I reached 1000% back in the days when I didn't know Apolyton, PBEM and SP challenges (though I did impose myself some challenges of sorts). Playing for score is, as someone pointed out, mind numbing, to say the least. Once you have reached a supreme position, it's just a matter of getting several techs per turn, until you fed up.

[Whoha]

Your memory size is the limit. How big a map can you make, whats the max # of cities you can plant, + how many nut condensors/crawlers you have on the board.

my highest is a Morgan game I played for 240 turns before giving up on. I didn't actually win by any means, but just by resigning I have a 556% rating(something like 200 size 20 cities packed into the densest ICS pattern).

[coldfission]

Well, my limit was basically transcending or alien victorying as quickly as possible, I suppose I could hang about and get a huge score, but its rather pointless.

My main question is still - are there any more books to get? If there aren't then to my mind I've fully completed the game, unlocking everything as it were, while still playing to win rather than to get a high score.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by coldfission


My main question is still - are there any more books to get? If there aren't then to my mind I've fully completed the game, unlocking everything as it were, while still playing to win rather than to get a high score.

I don'y know the answer on ther book thing but I have never thought that I have "fully completed the game"-- Foe me there has always been a new challenge, scenario etc to make it interesting


Once you win, do an OCC or a no crawlers game or one where you hit enter only for the first 10 or 20 or 50 turns. My personal favorite is the switching sides challenge where you use the scenario editor to take over the weakest faction and then try to beat the monsters you built up before. I've done 2 switches a couple of times and intend to try to win with 3

[Petek]

Referring back to your first post, "The Will To Power: A User's Guide" is the next-to-last book. The last one is "Stairway to Transcendence: The Last Book You'll Ever Read". However, I don't know what score results in this book being displayed.

[Illuminatus]

Here it is. It is the artbox24.pcx file in your main SMAC folder (I've replaced the ugly pink pcx background with black for purposes of this posting)