03-07-2003 12:05									#1
	High Scores Support Apolyton

I decided to challenge my own patience and try to get the highest score I could achieve. Playing Gaia on a huge planet with Average everything, except for native life forms that were Abudant. Transcend of course.
It started out nicely with me ending up on a southern continent together with Lal who got stuck on a corner of the continent after a fast start from me (I had all bases on colony pods except for one who went after WP). I was left alone since both Spartans (who ate Morgan) and Believers (who ate Zhakarov) started north and Yang stayed calm. I had a small skirmish with Lal after I finally managed to get a small mind worm army, but it only game me three of his smaller cities.
Once early game was over my fast expansion paid off and I got pretty much every mid game wonder. Once the wonders were saved I started building my locust army that was to take over the world. Ones my industry started cranking out the locusts there was no hope for them (spartans managed to get Neural Amplifier though, which annoyed me). I let Miriam stay on the map with a sea base surrounded by locusts.
By 2328 I had the world to myself. I started cranking out colony pods and formers filling the map with bases and fungus. (I forgot the 500 base limit though, which made the layout less than optimal).
Well, enough of that. After a rather annoying long time (I now hate forests. You can remove the forests bases are built on, but they still expand forcing me to remove them as they do). 1003 future techs, A population of 20113, and over 10 million energy gave me a final score of 80662 and a rating of 7562%.
What I was wondering is how does this compare to the rest of you if you've ever tried to optimize your score?

	03-07-2003 18:59									#2
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That sounds like a very impressive accomplishment , in playing and in patience.

I don't recall the highest score ever but I know that most players gave up on it as any sort of challenge or test of skill due to the extreme tedium of having to play so many turns ( over an hour each once the map is occupied everywhere) just to jack up the score.

	03-07-2003 23:11									#3
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Actually each turn would have taken seconds if it hadn't been for the forest spreading once the world was colonized. Now it took up to a minute. The whole thing did take quite a few tedious hours, though. It was a test of patience more than skill, a quality I've always been lacking and needed to practice.

	03-07-2003 23:52									#4
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quote: Originally posted by Gufnork Actually each turn would have taken seconds if it hadn't been for the forest spreading once the world was colonized. Now it took up to a minute. The whole thing did take quite a few tedious hours, though. It was a test of patience more than skill, a quality I've always been lacking and needed to practice.

Just curious but how can you manage 500 bases in a few seconds and all the movement of formers and crawlers that would be needed to maximize score ??

	04-07-2003 01:10									#5
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Flubber, just imagine you've got all possible buildings, and Telepathic Matrix. No build queue problems, no drones to be quelled. No noticable enemy. Bases big enough that they work every tile. What would you suggest to spend your time on except removing forest?

	04-07-2003 01:10									#6
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No kidding... I thought about maxing my score once, but I quickly gave up because my turns were taking forever. The former time was insane, and having to place more drop colony pods every turn was taking forever. I suppose you could automate everything, but that definately wouldn't be maximizing the score.

	04-07-2003 03:48									#7
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quote: Originally posted by Adalbertus Flubber, just imagine you've got all possible buildings, and Telepathic Matrix. No build queue problems, no drones to be quelled. No noticable enemy. Bases big enough that they work every tile. What would you suggest to spend your time on except removing forest?

Well if thats the case in every building then I can see that that would reduce the time it would take but you could still spend insane amounts of time if you were trying to really maximize things

1. terraforming-- moving a couple of hundred formers around takes time

2. crawling-- more crawlers or sea trawlers to place every turn--

3. Placing the workforce-- With overlapping bases there are always other ways to structure the workforce-- one more transcendii or starving the base for a few turns when it can't grow anyway

Unless you have EVERY tile on Planet in its optimal terraformed shape and you have hit the maximum base limit with every base with EVERY base up to the population limit and EVERY research enhancing facility, and as many satellites as the sky will hold . . . there is always room to improve your empire

If there isn't room to improve your empire in that you have done all of the foregoing already . .. well then you have already gotten through the bulk of the mindnumbingly boring turns and can just hit "end turn" turn after turn and watch your score rack up

Personally, I couldn't be bothered. I started to try it once but after about 80 future techs and a couple of 2 hour turns where I was just gang-terraforming everything, I quit . I just couldn't see investing those hours in a game that had been won long ago

Oh and if you have everything built, minerals are irrelevant (everything is "clean" anyway) and with bases hitting the pop limit, nutrients are irrelevant so I would terraform to maximize energy only. I have assumed you are removing forest because you see fungus as the "best" terrain . . ..

My point is simple--either you have a perfect empire already or you don't. If you don't, it will take many hours to move stuff around . If you do, you must have already invested massive hours ( I mean I am talking about working EACH and EVERY tile on PLanet here.

	04-07-2003 04:38									#8
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It actually doesn't take as long as you might thing. I had Super Skybase formers that are easy to manipulate, I did go the easy way and fungused it all (3/3/3 is quite decent. Farms and condensors would probably be optimal, but this was much quicker). This game wasn't even the longest I've played.

Crawlers, practically every square belonged to a base. What use would crawlers be?

Workforce, everyone should be producing nutrients. Optimizing pop was the most important.

Satellites, with each square producing 3 nutrients all you need is 62 sky hydroponic labs and 62 orbital power transmitters, any more are reduntant.

Flubber: I said after the world was colonized. For a while I just had enter pressed down, until the expanding forest got out of hand and forced me to build some formers. I was a bit worried that Miriam would call a council and I'd accidently not vote (I generally won 60.000 to 6, but she kept trying), but I was a bit sick of it then.

It's a pity I didn't have the SMAX project the gives fungus squares +1/+1/+2.

Well, if you ever decide to test your patience you atleast have something to beat. I didn't spend that much time on it so it's more than possible.

	04-07-2003 11:00									#9
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quote: Originally posted by Gufnork Crawlers, practically every square belonged to a base. What use would crawlers be? .

You are joking, right ??

	04-07-2003 15:45									#10
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No. Is there some use of crawlers I've missed?

	04-07-2003 19:04									#11
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if you don't use them to crawl resourcers, then absolutely. crawlers are best placed on tiles that produce only one resource (such as a mine or condensor) so that workers can be allocated to other functions, such as working forests or being specialists. using crawlers and turning your workers into specialists (usually engineers) will increase your income and labs dramatically

or something. i'm sure someone knows better than i do

	06-07-2003 06:02									#12
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Re: Crawlers .... see: here

G.

	06-07-2003 07:16									#13
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Well, there's that. I could maxed food in every square, crawled it in and turned everyone specialist. But that would have increased the amount of time spent considerably.