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Santiago_Claus
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I just finished a Zak game using all the best techniques I know -- with two exceptions -- and in 2257 won a Transcend victory with all techs and all SP's.
The first exception is wide base placement: no 2 bases overlapped > 3 tiles.
The second exception is that I built my secondary SSC in a base that received no trade income, not realizing that trade income is calculated only from the energy harvested by workers. The Network Backbone was thus largely wasted.
The map was large with average landmass ratio.
The victory conditions were all standard except for directed research and look first, and only the Transcend victory condition was enabled.
Difficulty settings were the Apolyton standards: Ironman, Transcend, Abundant Lifeforms.
The score, for what it's worth, was 1007%, but I wasn't really going for score. (I lack the patience to optimize a game for score ... ugh!)
I consider this an average game by Apolyton standards -- provided one uses wide base placement.
Using this as a benchmark, I'd really like to know the best and average Transcend times for those of you who use close-packed bases. (As with score I lack the patience to do this myself ...)
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Santiago_Claus
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Wow, those guys really went nuts.
While zso's 57-turn Transcend is truly amazing, it doesn't really help me much since it was with an ultra-tiny map and factions designed specifically for fast tech development.
The huge map Transcend isn't a solid benchmark either, as it was played at Citizen level.
57 turns ... wow!
Korn's insight is a little more universally applicable: part of getting to Transcendence quickly involves getting the AI to do some of the research for you. I totally overlooked that.
That still doesn't address where I'm trying to go with this, which is in relative terms the advantage of ICS over wider-spaced highland bases. (Did I mention I hate micromanagement?)
That in mind, I'm still interested in "average Transcend times", particularly for ICS developers, for reference. On a large map, at Transcend difficulty, with normal (i.e. non-repeating) AI faction leaders.
Last edited by Santiago_Claus on 14-06-2004 at 04:54
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Santiago_Claus
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"High-tech parking lot." Ol' Vel has a way with words, doesn't he?
In other news, I've gone through about 75 turns on a meagre 4 bases, thanks to a brutal early war with the Caretakers.
My Usurper legions thrown against her Mount Planet Volcano fortress, and she surrounded by mines a mineral special with her industry running a +5 advantage ... and I kept asking, "Where is she getting all those troops?"
A dirty, grinding war, nerve gas shrouding Mount Planet like the fogs of Mount Fuji -- not that Marr would know about Mt. Fuji.
Rolling snakeeyes against the dreaded mod-3 rule on the restriction-lifting tech ... I don't even have Gene Splicing yet, and techs are running 13 turns per. The slog to EnvEco is gonna be a long one.
It's definitely not a game they'll be putting on display in the strategy guides ... but it is the sort of game that we love the smell of in the morning, isn't it?
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Santiago_Claus
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That seems to be the most efficient way to win, confound it.
In other news, the mighty Usurpers have finally spiked the Caretakers, and in 2207 got Gene Splicing! Now before you catch your breath, the mod-3 rule once again reared its ugly head. * sigh * No EE for at least another 10 turns or so.
Marr can't run Democracy, either. At least with the Nexus I'm getting a little extra research. Maybe I can invent a sauce that goes well with those tender, juicy Gaians I've seen puttering around the Progenitor Islands ...
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CEO Aaron
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Everything has its price. Even you.
Aug 2002
time: 05:36
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I can't answer for Laz, but I do know that as a builder Yang, you want to use Wealth to gain the additional industry and take your economy penalty down to only -1 energy in your capital. Once energy restrictions are lifted, boreholes provide the bulk of your raw energy, and the rest of your econ and lab income is from specialists.
Specialists are very, VERY powerful, and do benefit from lab and econ-magnifying facilities. Once you have Environmental Economics, Yang's economy penalty becomes largely irrelevant. So you can build Network Nodes, Energy Banks, you name it. Limiting yourself to only Tanks and Creches is what you do if you only build bases to produce and support your military. If youre serious about transcendence you need research, and research requires facilities.
How do you get the most out of your research? Build biolabs and network nodes, in that order. With just 2 librarians, you'll see 9 labs for 2 ecs per turn, and that's not even including your energy from worked squares.
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binTravkin
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Lord of Progress of the Council of Lords of Gaia
Jan 2004
time: 07:36
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quote:
I can't answer for Laz, but I do know that as a builder Yang, you want to use Wealth to gain the additional industry and take your economy penalty down to only -1 energy in your capital. Once energy restrictions are lifted, boreholes provide the bulk of your raw energy, and the rest of your econ and lab income is from specialists.
Specialists are very, VERY powerful, and do benefit from lab and econ-magnifying facilities. Once you have Environmental Economics, Yang's economy penalty becomes largely irrelevant. So you can build Network Nodes, Energy Banks, you name it. Limiting yourself to only Tanks and Creches is what you do if you only build bases to produce and support your military. If youre serious about transcendence you need research, and research requires facilities.
How do you get the most out of your research? Build biolabs and network nodes, in that order. With just 2 librarians, you'll see 9 labs for 2 ecs per turn, and that's not even including your energy from worked squares. |
Have you ever tried ICSing hive CEO Aaron?
I tried it yesterday SP & you know -> I have no commerce, very low (0) effic & -1 ECON
How do you expect me to support all those facilities before Fuision Power when I can switch all my librarians to engineers to gain that +3 econ from each?
I have only 8 ecs per base as raw output, which is in 50% bases halved by inefficency thus yielding 4..
half of it is delivered to economy, so my base is outputting 2-4 ecs per turn..
With that money Im only able to barely support 2 facilities!
& I need ecs also for other purposes!
Before Fusion, there's no way you can boost your research of 1 base by building facs if youre HIVE & ICSing!
I only build rectanks & creches in my bases & have to avoid hurrying them not to run in debt!
&thats a BUILDErR approach which, this time is also a Momentum approach as Im bulding more & more bases continuosly.
I build tanks, creche, garrison, 2 formers, 2 crawlers for
each base & then pump out CPs
Population of my bases never drops below 5 & never rises above..
If Im going to lose pop by building CP, I make a probe or crawler
& this boring approach all the way till Fusion & Orbital.. 
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CEO Aaron
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Everything has its price. Even you.
Aug 2002
time: 05:36
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Boreholes, BinTravkin. You need to work a borehole or two per base, which will probably also require crawling a condenser/farm to balance out your nutrient input. With wealth, tanks, 4 worked forests and a borehole, your raw energy input is 12 energy, before inefficiency. With a river, energy special, monolith or landmark, you can get even more. That should be more than enough to pay for a couple of cheap facilities. Run your base population up to 7, to avoid expensive hab facilities, and you'll have 2 specialists to devote to either economy or research.
Last edited by CEO Aaron on 17-06-2004 at 03:31
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Sikander
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Boulder, Colorado, United Snakes of America
Jan 2000
time: 22:36
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quote:
Originally posted by Archaic
Oops, that's right, I forgot that you don't perpetual GA boom like I do. You might want to try it sometime. I've often found I have far higher cashflow and research when I go 40/20/40 than I do at 50/0/50, just because of the +1 economy at every base. Honestly, can you just imagine what kind of monster Morgan would be with +5 Econ running Demo/FM/Wealth at 40/20/40, if he had any sort of commerce?
You do have a few nice points on the source of the pods though, but I'd generally prefer to build another base then just add 1 pop to another. I don't ever go past hab limits with the exploit anyway. |
I've tried out the perpetual GA pop boom previously (like sometime in 2000), and again recently and it does work very well. I like perpetual pop booms generally, which is one reason why I have tended to go with heavy specialists and crawlers while running Demo / Planned. As I wasn't using much forest later in the game the impact of +2 econ was minimal, as was commerce with my six vendettas.
I tried to emulate your success to some extent recently in the Sikander Build Game, and found that the forest and boreholes forming & a long GA boom was very strong. Once the AIs decided to gang up on me though, I switched back to 50 / 50. With the Vats in place now I'm thinking of going to a more heavy research profile, perhaps Demo / Green / Wealth and GA for the +2 econ, with most of the rest of the allocation for science. One thing I'm noticing is that I have less cash because I have so many fewer engineers, which is kind of tough. At this point in my crawler heavy games I'd put everything into science and rake in the money from engineers.
I can't do that right now basically because of hab limits. I have plenty of nutrients via satellites, so I'm building a lot of rover colony pods and building up one base at a time via pod boom. As I have the CV all my bases that built colony pods are magically back at size 16 every turn. So I'll get my vertical growth even before hab domes, albeit at a cost of keeping a lot of build queues tied up with colony pods and satellites.
I was fooling around with Morgan yesterday in response to CEO Aaron's comments about the best path to glory for Morgan. I got about 90 turns into the game, and things are looking pretty good. I don't think I'll boom for a bit yet (perhaps a decade), but everything is in place except the Hybrid Forests which have just been researched. I'm not an experienced Morganite, but I found taking formers first and then going for FM immediately paid off pretty well. So perhaps I'll see how Morgan looks at +5 econ very soon.
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binTravkin
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Lord of Progress of the Council of Lords of Gaia
Jan 2004
time: 07:36
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quote:
Boreholes, BinTravkin. You need to work a borehole or two per base, which will probably also require crawling a condenser/farm to balance out your nutrient input. With wealth, tanks, 4 worked forests and a borehole, your raw energy input is 12 energy, before inefficiency. With a river, energy special, monolith or landmark, you can get even more. That should be more than enough to pay for a couple of cheap facilities. Run your base population up to 7, to avoid expensive hab facilities, and you'll have 2 specialists to devote to either economy or research. |
Hey, CEO Aaron, do you know what I was talking about?
I said
quote:
Have you ever tried ICSing hive CEO Aaron? |
Notice the word "ICS"
With ICS I mean, that I have no more than 3 squares workable for 1 base!
its like
bobo
oooo
bobo
oooo
and so on where "b" = base & "o" = worked square
With such pattern you could further have the result of
bhbh
cccc
bhbh
cccc
where
"c"=condenser + farm
"h" = borehole
"b" = base
That outputs at max 8 energy per base (without commerce)
which means at max 4 energy for economy
How are you going to pay maintenance for a Netnode or Hospital???
In reality a base often gets only 2 energy as economy
Building 1 more base with at least 4 more specialists is MUCH more efficient than trying to put all in less bases
You get brand new 4-12 specialists for a cost of CP, 2 formers & a few facs (rectanks+creche)
and that base is merely affected by efficency (which is 0 for Yang), because:
1.specialists
2.close to HQ (tight placement)
Its THE BEST way to play Yang!
Go and check in "My Current AC Game" thread -> I posted an autosave archive there!
and btw-> with your vertical building variant youre going to have ~ 20-30 bases with some nodes & so on by 2200 which will output in total not more than:
(14 raw labs*1.5node*1.5Hosp )*30 = 945 labs/turn, but I will in 2200 have ~80(!) bases (as I produce CPs all the time) with a total of 14*80 = 1200
Which is better?
I presume I'll have also nutsats by that time & then the output would be ~2-3 times bigger with 11-13 citizens in each base from whom all but one are specialists
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binTravkin
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Lord of Progress of the Council of Lords of Gaia
Jan 2004
time: 07:36
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quote:
I'll see how Morgan looks at +5 econ very soon. |
Perhaps, but perhaps also not, notice that running ICS with maximum tightness you can't get GA after 6 citizens as the talent count must be equal to worker count and specialists count as workers
But of you dont run ICS(1x1) with Morgan which is, together with Yang and Zakh, among the best (1x1) ICSers, youre not on the path to glory, because your results will be mediocre compared to those who do!
Morgan is good at 1x1 ICS because of 2 reasons:
1.hablim
(max citizen count what you can get in 1x1 ICSed base is food ouput which is 5*2 (condenser,farm,soilenrich) + 3 (base) = 13*2 (nutsats) which is pretty close to hablim..
If you dont have popboom, which is most likely with morgan, you will have 11 citizens, because of too much time to those extra 2 (and lack of AV)
If you desperatly want to GApopboom-do the boom from 3to7 citizens, then start srawling condensers and use 1 worker on borehole, you'we got 6 specialists!
So practically, you have no penalty for that -3 hablim (it just disappears!)
2.huge energy/basesquare
It often reaches 8+ which repays your hurried CP (40ecs)in not less than 10 turns (A reasonable investment -> rate 10% not counting the borehole & other square incomes)
So..
But If you ask what I do before holes-> I forest-> it gives a good start & then I just re-form the land
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Enigma_Nova
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quote:
Originally posted by binTravkin
Perhaps, but perhaps also not, notice that running ICS with maximum tightness you can't get GA after 6 citizens as the talent count must be equal to worker count and specialists count as workers |
If your bases are in a checkerboard fashion, you can set the 'white' bases to specialists and GAboom the 'black' bases.
Not all members of an ICS have to be identical.
Mind you, I have NFI how you'd boom an ICS as you'd have your bases filled with B-drones, removing most of your boom ability.
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Sikander
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Boulder, Colorado, United Snakes of America
Jan 2000
time: 22:36
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quote:
Originally posted by binTravkin
Perhaps, but perhaps also not, notice that running ICS with maximum tightness you can't get GA after 6 citizens as the talent count must be equal to worker count and specialists count as workers
But of you dont run ICS(1x1) with Morgan which is, together with Yang and Zakh, among the best (1x1) ICSers, youre not on the path to glory, because your results will be mediocre compared to those who do!
Morgan is good at 1x1 ICS because of 2 reasons:
1.hablim
(max citizen count what you can get in 1x1 ICSed base is food ouput which is 5*2 (condenser,farm,soilenrich) + 3 (base) = 13*2 (nutsats) which is pretty close to hablim..
If you dont have popboom, which is most likely with morgan, you will have 11 citizens, because of too much time to those extra 2 (and lack of AV)
If you desperatly want to GApopboom-do the boom from 3to7 citizens, then start srawling condensers and use 1 worker on borehole, you'we got 6 specialists!
So practically, you have no penalty for that -3 hablim (it just disappears!)
2.huge energy/basesquare
It often reaches 8+ which repays your hurried CP (40ecs)in not less than 10 turns (A reasonable investment -> rate 10% not counting the borehole & other square incomes)
So..
But If you ask what I do before holes-> I forest-> it gives a good start & then I just re-form the land |
I'm playing Morgan at half that density and all forests. I quite agree that Morgan is the prime candidate for maximal density play, because nothing beats his base square production not only in the early game, but all the way up until satellites. At that point the best producing normal tile is condensor / farm / soil enricher, though this assumes that you have somewhere to put those extra people (ie hab domes if you are otherwise maxed out).
Btw, condensor / farm / soil enricher should produce 6 nutrients if you place them next to one another (2 for rainy + 1 for farm) = 3 * 1.5 for condensor (round down) = 4 * 1.5 for soil enricher (round down) = 6
So your bases should max out at 15 nuts when you add in the base tile, which with satellites will support 15 population.
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13-06-2004 10:27
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