Transcending quickly

[bvanevery]

In MY 2244 I'm changing to a Discover focus.  I've built Tree Farms in half of my cities.  I see no improvement in research rate at all, it's stuck at 1 tech per 6 turns.  I guess the Tree Farms are improving my econ and psych and not my labs at all.  Perhaps the energy restriction really wasn't a bottleneck for my research.  I did need the Tree Farms to keep the mindworms off my back though.  Think I need me some Fusion Labs and a Supercollider.

I have a fair number of Artifacts squirreled away, but I'm waiting to see if Zhakarov researches another tech I can steal.  Currently I have fungus to remove from all the pops, and several more Tree Farms to build.  When those are done maybe I'll pop Artifacts, as I would need something to work on.

[bvanevery]

 :PZhakarov and Roze have this nasty habit of finishing techs, then I try to steal them, then I research them myself just before I can get over there to steal them.  I don't like leaving probe teams in forward positions to steal later, because my experience has been they tend to get hunted down and killed.  Granted, maybe it would work better in this game because I'm still not at war with either of them.

Details got labs

got labs

MY 2261.  Half of my cities will complete Fusion Labs next turn.  Currently I'm at 1 tech per 5 turns.  I really hope my research rate improves dramatically, otherwise I will begin to wonder about all of this.  I've still got a lot of Artifacts I haven't popped.  I've been popping them when I finish other tasks and need a Secret Project to work on.  I didn't need a SP when building all these labs.  I disbanded an awful lot of fission units, keeping only the X planes which do all of the actual fighting, and anti-mindworm units.  That's part of how I've been getting the labs built.  My Formers are basically finished and have nothing to do, so I've disbanded them as well.

[bvanevery]

Details wtf

wtf

MY 2263.  Every city has a Fusion Lab now, and my cities are quite large.  Why did my research rate not change at all?  It's still 1 tech every 5 turns.  I did just cash a lot of Artifacts.  I complete the Supercollider next turn, and I'm also working on the Neural Amplifier.

MY 2264.  Completing the Supercollider in my capitol, which has The Merchant Exchange, did not improve my research rate.

MY 2265.  Now it's 1 tech per 4 turns.  Maybe the Supercollider kicked in.

My 2267.  Now it's 1 tech per 5 turns again.  I suppose it's on a rounding threshold.

[bvanevery]

Details my sps

my sps

MY 2269.  I've racked up an impressive count of Secret Projects, but my research doesn't go any faster.  I've used up my last Artifact and there are very few pods left on the map.  With the Cloudbase Academy to be completed next turn, I'm going to try replacing my old fission X Missile Penetrators with fusion Chaos Interceptors.  All I ever have to do is kill incoming Usurper units, and perhaps those will be sufficient.  Maybe getting rid of the unhappiness they cause, will boost my research rate?  I could make more troops, I could even solve the Usurper problem once and for all.  Outright conquest would be pretty trivial at this point.  But I'm trying to crack the mystery of how to Transcend quickly.  So far, this still doesn't make any sense.

[Mart]

Echelon mirrors are useful, and they are not something weird and unreal. They are thing of a science, below is link to paper from 1966, titled: "Mirror boosters for solar collectors"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0038092X66900259


SMAC creators may have had something different in mind when making echelon mirrors, but general idea remains the same.


Lifting energy restrictions is about the time, when forests are removed from many tiles and combination of farms+collector/echelon are placed. Mineral production goes down, but it is often, that facilities are completed quickly after the first 10 minerals by hurrying the remaining mins.


One borehole is usually not yet causing ecodamage, if just replaces 3 forests. Two boreholes in a base, that's something realistic and practical still. After the first fungal bloom, one can get mineral limit raised higher anyway.


Specialists can also bring research quite up, they get multiplications too.

[bvanevery]

I have a lot of farms with solar collectors on rolling moist terrain.  They're only producing 3-1-2.  Those same cities with hybrid forests are producing 3-2-3.  If I ripped up Mines and put in Echelon Mirrors, the solar collectors that they are adjacent to would merely perform as well as a patch of forest, energy-wise.  So why would I do that?  More importantly, this can't be a magic answer for my research problems, as I already make more energy.

In fact it seems my terraforming strategy is basically wrong, at least in this era.  I should have more forests and get rid of farms.  Pains me, as it took quite awhile to make those farms, but they're obviously not as good as a Hybrid Forest.

While I'm waiting to build Super Formers and to rework various tiles, I will also try convoying nutrients from my cities that are size 18, to my cities that are not.  Usually I've just built colonists but maybe moving nutrients works too.  I've not usually done that.

[Mart]

A farm on a moist tile with soil enricher can give 3 nutrients. On rainy tile 4 nutrients, that's enough to feed the worker and one specialist.

[bvanevery]

I don't think food is my problem.  I've been sitting on the Monsoon Jungle the whole game.  Half of my cities have Aquafarms and Thermocline Transducers anda are sucking in 4 nutrients and 5 energy per ocean square.  My cities are size 18 or will be shortly getting there.  I don't believe in sending colonists to make them higher pop than size 18 until I get Hab Domes, I think that's a bug and an exploit.

Details I pod

I pod

MY 2274.  I've popped the last pod that I can reach.  There are 3 left in a landlocked body of water way to the south.  I'd need to lower terrain or have a global warming flood to get to them.  Technically there's an area of land I could settle and then produce a boat.  Not sure I'll go to the trouble for 3 pods.

I have no city improvements to build.  With a 40-20-40 budget I'm making too many credits.  I will try shifting to a 30-30-40 budget and see if that helps anything.  LATER: blowing my budget on more Psych didn't even make people happier.  I'm changing it back.

[Mart]

This is also about being ready for having hab domes and go over the second population limit. Meanwhile, if a base has overlapping tiles with other bases, it may not have enough for 18 workers, so tiles producing 3+ nutrients make possible to have more specialists, that do something useful. And if nutrients can be omitted, crawling energy to, for example, HQ base, that has no inefficiency brings more energy. Crawling 7, 8 or more energy to HQ base from multiple tiles, that get additions from echelons amounts to something. This would be combined with expansion. It is good not to stop expansion.

[bvanevery]

Expansion is bloody tedious though.  It's bad enough leveling up the bases I've got!  I mean if you can't "quick Transcend" with size 18 bases in the Monsoon Jungle, what good is this game?

Details grand central station

grand central station

MY 2283.  I have terraformed every inadequate farm to a forest now, but it hasn't changed my research.  It holds steady at 1 tech per 4 turns, which at least is better than it used to be.  I complete the Theory of Everything next turn.  I've got massive amounts of money and nothing to do with it.  I suppose I'll upgrade a few units to Tachyon.

I've completed a rail network for all my cities.  Now I suppose I have a lot of Super Formers with nothing important to do.  Ditto Super Cruiser Formers.  I lowered some land to finally put a hole in the super strip continent, so now I can pass ships between the north and south oceans.  Basically a Panama, although east-west instead of north-south.  There is of course, nothing important in either of these oceans anymore.

I could have long since won this game by outright conquest, or by Diplomatic Victory.  Both require the elimination of the Usurpers.  What I'm actually doing, is sending 1 X infantry per size 18 city, and a lot of probe teams to introduce genetic plagues.  The Usurpers are being slowly ground to bits.  My Photon armor is not invulnerable to counterattack, I'm finding, so I need to be careful about timing my plagues to weaken the enemies.  I've got 1 unit that barely survived and is limping back to a Monolith.

Actually since all my cities will soon be size 18 and I don't need Super Formers anymore, I'm making 1 X infantry per city, except my capitol.  That should put an end to the Usurpers.  I suppose the Super Formers could make an energy park and then I could crawl it.  Although, sea crawling is probably inherently higher yield.

MY 2284.  The Theory of Everything has changed my research rate to 1 tech per 3 turns.

[bvanevery]

Details melting aliens with chemicals

melting aliens with chemicals

MY 2297.  I eradicate the Usurpers.  They previously eradicated the Caretakers, so I could win Diplomatic Victory right now.  I will press on with the attempt to Transcend quickly, even though it's already been proven, in this game, to be quite a bit slower than outright conquest.  I don't know how it would be made faster in any other game either, as my research is still stuck at 1 tech per 3 turns.  I've planted massive numbers of forests and put half as massive a number of supply crawlers on them.  I also put tidal harnesses on the Geothermal Shallows and have mostly sea crawled it.  None of these extra energy inputs seem to make any difference.

[bvanevery]

Details greenie

greenie

MY 2299.  Belatedly I realize that the growth penalty for going Green doesn't matter to me anymore.  My cities were already size 18, and I built The Cloning Vats.  Earlier in the game, I checked on the benefit or liability of going Green and changing my budget around.  Previously, I couldn't get my Labs to go any higher no matter what settings I chose.  Nowadays it does make a difference.  By going Green I can change my budget to 20-20-60 without any penalty.  This gets me to 1 tech every 2 turns.

I will complete The Living Refinery next turn.  I thought I might be getting close to Super Tensile Solids but actually I'm missing a fair number of techs.  Those darn N-Whatever tech icons look awfully similar to each other.  Ergo I will stick with my Discover focus, as who knows, maybe I'll get some Quantum Labs.

[bvanevery]

Details Thunderdome

Thunderdome

MY 2303.  Completing The Universal Translator triggered a burst of research, which also nabbed Secrets of Alpha Centauri, which got me within spitting distance of Super Tensile Solids.  So I have changed to Build focus.  I'm building a pile of Nanohospitals but it hasn't changed my tech rate yet.  I'm not as rich as I was under a Free Market, so I'm having to wait on some of them rather than just buy them outright.  I used up a lot of crawlers to make Secret Projects due to the lack of cash.

[bvanevery]

Details pub crawl

pub crawl

MY 2305.  I cashed in lots of crawlers from my capitol to make another Secret Project.  Those crawlers must have actually been doing my research some good, because now I've dropped down to 1 tech per 3 turns again.  Maybe building SPs isn't strictly compatible with the goal of quick Transcendence.  However at this point I'm bored and just want to play the game.  I don't feel like I should have to go through heroics to pull this off.  After all, as far as winning the game is concerned, I could have won it 80 years ago.  Zhakarov and Roze have been phenomenally pathetic at population growth, they've been in a war this whole time.  Zhakarov never did any serious terraforming for some reason, so his population is pathetic.

With the decimation of my crawlers, I have more trees planted in unused land that you can shake a stick at.  I have made a few new cities in places, mainly to fulfil strategic objectives like bridging land to Zhakarov, or preventing anyone from ever having a chance at claiming The Manifold Nexus.  Now I'm goofing off and trying to give my vassal Aki some access to the main continent.  I'd ally with Deirdre too since I'm Green, if only we weren't in sunspots.

MY 2307.  I got Super Tensile Solids.  I went back to Free Market because I'm not making any money under Green, and I can get 1 tech per 3 turns under Free Market anyways.  My budget is back to 40-20-40.

[bvanevery]

Details I shot the sheriff

I shot the sheriff

MY 2309.  I obtain Digital Sentience and go Cybernetic.  My Police rating is laughably bad, but the isn't effect any worse than the plain Free Market drill anyways.  I've exhausted my land supply crawlers, so I cashed in an old expensive X unit to get The Network Backbone done.  We'll see if I have enough old units to do that with the Space Elevator next turn.  It is also a "do it in your capitol" project.  I haven't made any Orbital Power Transmitters, so the Elevator bonus for making them could be useful.