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zsozso
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of Chiron
Oct 1999
time: 00:13
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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).]
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ProvostB
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what do I put in this line?
Sep 1999
time: 05:13
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Save?
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zsozso
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of Chiron
Oct 1999
time: 00:13
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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
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zsozso
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of Chiron
Oct 1999
time: 00:13
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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
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TigToad
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Glendale, AZ USA
Dec 1999
time: 22:13
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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
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David Byron
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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.
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David Byron
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Well the comment about the soil enrichers was practical and workable. Ecodamage for terraforming can be eliminated. You can have huge industrial capacity if you want by running Nessus mining stations (again no polution whereas your suggestion will have a lot of polution -- although since its all fungus anyway and it work even if the sea levels rise you only lose river bonuses, who cares as long as you don't mind the wormrape...). but let's face it by the time you are doing this you've killed off every enemy except a tiny base in the corner of the map, and you've built every SP except Ascent to Transcendence. You are going for score, and that means population.
"and HUGE labs capacity all without a single supply unit or a satellite."
If you don't have satelites the soil enricher *with* satelites will beat you. Let's assume you get your own satelites to compete. Your energy is then equal to what used to be your energy plus your food. What is that anyway? It's pretty good but I can't remember what it is. You'll get better energy but points from Future techs just don't make up that big a % of the final score. The main advantage IMO is you don't have terraform the sea. I'd probably use the fungus rather than the soil enrichers over all; just build clean-reactor colonists sooner to make up for the cities being smaller.
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Bearcat
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Oregonia
Dec 1999
time: 05:13
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No intention to be rude but how the heck do you transcend by 2176. That's virtually impossible. I mean it takes you forever to get to Transcendant Thought.
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David Byron
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The fast transcend astonished me too, but if you are used to a "standard" sized map then the tiny map gives you the equivalent of +2 growth and +2 industry in addition to the reduced cost of technology. You couldn't get transcended that fast with standard settings.
It seems like a fiddle to me and so I'm not sure what the criteria is for how far you can manipulate the settings from the standard and still count it. For example if you set up a scenario where UN pods could only give you alien artifacts then would that be cheating? I would be more interested in seeing how fast you could transcend with what I think of as standard settings. Namely transcend difficulty, huge map, middle settings for all the rest of the stuff.
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Vi Vicdi
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Killeen, TX, USA
Nov 1999
time: 23:13
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Umm, a "standard" Transcend would have to occur on the "Standard Map of Planet", homeboy ...
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David Byron
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What? Play on a map where you know exactly where everything is? And you don't think that gives you an edge? Well maybe. At any rate obviously if you play on a map where everything is cheaper and *intended* to be faster and easier -- you might as well play on an easier level or something.
Actually I had the impression "Huge" is the most popular sioze of map to play on.
???
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korn469
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Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:13
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what we were trying to accomplish was the fastest transcend possible
the only changes we made were to the basics startup rules, this is not a scenario but a legitimate game that anyone can recreate the conditions for, the setup was one that most favored for a early conquest civtory followed by a rush to tree farms followed by a rush to the threshhold of transcendence
anyone could make this game and i consider it a legitimate game, because not a single file was edited, nothing was changed except for the basic startup rules...if you did want to create a "standard transcend game" instead of a fast transcend game then i think you would have to play on a standard map of planet and use the default set of firaxis rules, which includes blind research btw...that would in my opinion be standard transcend
however we are not discussing a standard transcend we are discussing a fast transcend...yes it's fairly easy to get a sub 2200 transcend using our rules and methods but when you said that we might as well play on easy to do it, i think you are underestimating the skill it takes to accomplish these scores...to beat zsozso's score you would have to have the threshold of transcendence tech researched by no later than 2169 to get a 2171 victory...if that is easy for you then go ahead and do it...i will applaud your score just as much as i did zsozso's
when we first started doing this my first quick transcend score was in 2244 and i was labeled a cheater...people did not realize that i had done a conquest first then went for transcend...the high score before that was 2279 or over 100 years later than zsozso's top score...and now people are saying this is too easy...my how times have changed
one last thing to think about...when you play a quick transcend there is only one thing you are trying to do...that is transcend faster than the current leader, the first couple of games weren't that hard, but beating 2172 is hard, if somebody beats that it will get even harder, if anybody could ever get a 2169 or below transcend then it would be nearly impossible because you would have to avaerage over one tech a turn and not research any techs you don't need...and these games don't give you that much time to build up your infrastructure...the added growth and industry barely makes up for the time constraints...terraforming costs stay the same IIRC, so it still takes four turns to plant a forrest, and it gets harder and harder to have the industrial capasity to turn out the AoT and other SPs as the time gets shorter and shorter
though if a SMAC 5.0 patch is ever released which fixes the maintence bug on transcend then we might have to do new 5.0 scores
korn469
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited February 15, 2000).]
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David Byron
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I'm not denying that it is a challenge. But the challenge at least partially is in manipulating the game parameters to be an easy game to win. Usually for a challenge, if anything you make it hard. After all we don't bother asking how well people play on "citizen" level, rather the standard is transcend.
This just seems the same to me. The parameters for a tiny map are deliberately made to make the game faster, so obviously for the purposes of a speed challenge this is the 'easy' option. Well IMO once you've mastered the game at an easy level you go on to the harder levels not make a challenge based on the easy level, even though such a challenge would be interesting.
Also you are on a slippery slope. If you fiddle enough game parameters the game can be made arbitrarily fast and easy -- but I wouldn't feel good about myself for winning that way! Ok, you are saying this involves no scenarios.....
Fine so I'll run a "hot seat" game with myself as UoP 7 times [actually probably a variety of starting techs would be better] and win that way. Isn't that a standard option without the use of scenarios? Where do you draw the line? You've moved the competition from within the game to the extra-game mechanics of fiddling with the parameters and deciding what is too big a cheat to "count".
Now as it happens transcend level of difficulty is the best for the purposes of this challenge, but if it had happened that 'citizen" was the best, would you have played on "citizen" proclaimed the fastest time to transcend? Or would you think "well, duh! on citizen its supposed to be easy".
Well all I'm saying is that's my attitude to the tiny map play.
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zsozso
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of Chiron
Oct 1999
time: 00:13
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Excuse me for throwing in my own game-playing history, but I feel it necessary for people (who don't want to try) to understand the challenge of fast transcend...
First I played a lot of SMAC games, learned to beat the AI in various ways into the ground (mainly on huge map sometimes standard but never smaller), had pretty high scores (several thousand %s) and kind of given up on the game with the notion that it is no fun anymore - too easy! THEN, I found Apolyton, read Vel's guide and saw the posts from korn469 about the fast transcend. And I was shocked: how on the red planet is it possible to transcend within a century - so I'm not that good after all ???
I tried to play a game with those settigs and first got it around 120 turns. And it was fun, more fun than I had in long time with SMAC. Then I played again and again... and after about 30 games I got down to 2179. It is no longer a question of beating the AI - which is very easy no matter what the world size or parameters are! It is a crazy race with time!
You have to try it to see. It requires an extreme amount of micromanagement - but not boring because you are not doing it with 150 bases and 300-400 units, but 5 bases and 10-20 formers (OK, you will have a lot of crawlers too).
An other way to put it: if you have a record transcend of say MY.2250 on huge map, then how hard it is to beat that by 2-3 turns ? It need a bit more luck with geology and a bit more attention. However, if you have a record of 2172 on tiny map, it is an entirely different universe. It is not enough to create 10 more bases (in Borg style), because that might throw your time back. You have to make careful decisions about every single former move, like: should I build a solar on this 2000+ tile or walk 3 more squares to build it on 3000+ getting an extra energy/turn ? It is not obvious, becuse if it happens in 2160, the 3 turn delay may not be worth!
It requires completely different thinking to race with time trying to squeze the game to yet another turn shorter.
So, in short I wouldn't be here now and playing SMAC if it were not for the fast transcend challenge.
After the numerous fast transcend challenge games I played, beating the One City Challenge, or Zero Facility Challenge or even the Zero Facility One City Challenge was not a big deal at all. E.g. I won conquest victory on standard map of planet in 2240s with a single city, no facilities built and NO military built (not even defenders!). I even did the Nomad challenge, where you never build any base and get rid of any conquered base within 2 turns. I could do those again any day. But beating the 2172 record with all the "easy" setting I couldn't. I tried with SMACX to use 7 research factions (mixture of cyborgs and university copies), also tried various other factions but failed. So maybe that was a very lucky game. But the bottomline is, it is not an "easy" challenge. It is much harder than winning on huge map by 2250...
Just my experience...
David, Bkeela has tried your exact Borg strategy to beat my score - even by repeated reloading to get the maximum number of alien artifacts linked into the free network nodes of the university and the best he got was something like 2220. So, go ahead and try to beat it with whatever settings you want (just don't cheat with the scenario editor!). I'm not saying it is not possible to beat, but it won't be easy. BTW, I'd love to see how you would do it with Borg style...
Another thought: playing Borg style, huge map is the "easy" setting, because you have lots of space to multiply your bases. It is much harder on tiny map... So, I think your hatred of tiny map is not due to seeking harder challenge, but escaping the claustrohobic feeling you would get playing Borg style on it 
[This message has been edited by zsozso (edited February 16, 2000).]
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13-11-1999 12:10
(Believers and the Peacekeepers) then the Hive and the Morganites barely helped out at all). 
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