Santiago, the Builder

[Kaosium]

The neat thing about the Spartans is with the right combinations of Secret Projects they can run the Free Market with basically impunity later in the game.

Run Police State/Free Market/Knowledge/Cybernetic and pick up the Asthetic Virtues, Network Backbone either the Pholus Mutagen (which as I recall gives a undocumented +1 Planet) and/or control the Manifold Nexus and for good measure the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm and your final Social Engineering results look like this:

Efficiency +1
Morale +2
Planet 0
Probe -2
Growth 0
Police -1
Industry -1
Research +4
Economy +2
Support +2

That gives you a way of not only having a great economy, but absurdly good research and you can fight well under it too. Cybernetic shows up quite a bit before Eudomania as I recall, and you can time the Network Backbone to be completed the same moment you pick up Cybernetic with Digital Sentience, with either horded crawlers or switching from another Project.

With the Cloning Vats (+2 Support) you can also maintain a vast army without having to pay the extra cost/slot for Clean Reactors. That goes a long way towards mitigating your Industry penalty which there's nothing you can really do about anyway until Eudomania, when the game is almost over.

Your -2 Probe, if you have the HSA, doesn't impair you a bit as all that does is make you more vulnerable to Probe teams, it doesn't inhibit your offensive probe actions.

[CEO Aaron]

The game is usually all but over by that point, unless you're playing with a group of unrepentant builders.

[Kaosium]

I was referring to a single player game. I've never played multi-player, mainly because I imagine ICS is the only way you can play and succeed, and I just don't like what that does to the game. It's ugly too!

Digital Sentience is not that far up the tech tree and I usually end up getting it still in the mid game. Once you do, and get that Network Backbone built, if you have the rest of those projects the Spartans have an awfully powerful combination there. Free market with impunity and that huge research boost without sacrificing your moral or support is pretty awesome all the way around.

[CEO Aaron]

Even in the single player game, the game is over, it's just that the computer doesn't know about it. However, relevance aside, I also think that many of the merits of Free Market dissipate once you progress into the late game. First of all, there is a point at which the extra efficiency from green will dwarf the extra cash from market. It generally requires a good amount of population and bases, but it will happen if you get big enough. Second of all, toward the late game, tile based energy generation starts to take a backseat to specialists. Third, significant commerce income gets hard to come by unless you spend time building up your submissives and granting bases to them, which in most cases isn't worth the bother, and if you improve your submissive bases too much before giving them away, you can actually cause some hilarious disasters. For example, I recall one game where I build up a group of captured Uni bases massively before granting them back to Zak, but I apparently went too far, because the pollution caused by Zak's overnight empire triggered sea level rises and drowned most of my main continent.

Another thing worth mentioning is that if you have SMAX, Brood Pits and the Ascetic Virtues will allow nearly any faction to run FM without producing pacifism drones, so it's hardly an advantage that's unique to Sparta.

[Kaosium]

True, however the Spartans are the only ones who can do it that well and still use police. -1 means all they can't do is nerve-staple, which I never do anyway. Note the war capabilities of that combination as well, especially with the Cloning Vats.

Though I do admit if you're any good at the game it's probably all over except for the type of victory you're pursuing by the time you get to Digital Sentience. I kinda miss the days when the outcome was still in doubt at that point, even on transcend, and that combination was more valuable to me.

[Chaos Theory]

A single police unit, at a point in the game when all your bases should be upwards of size 20, doesn't count for much. Just set enough Transcendi specialists to keep everyone happy, or build the Telepathic Matrix. I've never considered Digital Sentience to be anywhere but the late game, and whether you're good or not, the game is almost always decided by then, win or loss.

[Littiz]

...and that brings me again to the issue of late game's excessive lenght...
I just realized I was doing an evident "mistake".
I took the habit of playing with HUGE maps, since I am a builder, and I prefer a quite peaceful game, at start.
But this is probably what makes the late game TOO long for me, unless I aim for the usual Ascension victory.

Now I'm going to try with regular maps again... probably even a conquest victory will become a reasonable option, finally...

[CEO Aaron]

Not only that, but you do realize that tech rate is a function of map size, right? One of the reasons the game is taking longer for you is the slower tech rate from your vast map area.

[Littiz]

Yeah, I knew that, but I wouldn't mind a longer game, per se... it's just that the final stage gets unnecessarily long too, and probably it's too high of a price, for me.
I just didn't connect the two things so far.
Indeed I'm trying a normal map size now, and the game runs even faster than I expected. Hopefully the final part will be bearable, this time

[CEO Aaron]

If you're determined to push through to Transcendence and your progess bogs down in the late game, try to focus on cranking up your lab production, via energy parks, specialists, or whatever other measures seem good to you.