Trancendence Players

[Haon]

How many people her eplay at the level of Trancendence and actually won?

[Archaic]

*Watches the dozens of hands raise*
Trancend Level? Meh. After you've gone through MP a few times (Or read Vel's guides, etc religiously), Trancend doesn't seem so hard afterall.

[Maniac]

What do you think?

[Method]

most everyone here plays on transcend (though i'm still on thinker )

[Adalbertus]

I usually play Transcend. But sometimes I cannot resist cheating, when the AI does all the day . Doesn't decide the game, though.

[Zakharov VII]

I play on Transcend, except for every once in a while when I want to do something silly and I play at Citizen .

Z

[Blake]

I play on Transcend difficulty, I think I have lost once in not-so-recent history, that was to being rushed by spartans or aliens or some such...

I usually play "super-transcend" difficulty, scenerios where all the AI's start in a pre-forested jungle with extra boreholes, and other such boosts.

[Bearcat]

Usually I play on Citizen or Specialist.
*shuffles feet*

[MariOne]

Well, you maybe notice how all the players complain that the AI is not enough of a match for a human, and take all possible efforts to invent tweaks and involuted rules and challenges to make single playing interesting.

They wouldn't be making such comments if they weren't alredy playing at the highest difficulty level, don't you think so? They would just increase the difficulty, won't they?

I think this should definitely go in the FAQ!

With the caveat, that if you play SMAC (not SMAX) Firaxis never bothered to apply to the old executable the fixes they DID find for SMAX.
Thus, the Maintenance Bug was never fixed for plain SMAC and never will be. This means that at the two hardest SMAC levels, maintenace costs are reduced, and this makes the game easier for those who build a lot infrastructure.

[Straybow]

Pardon my foolishness… Maintenance Bug? It has been so long since I paid attention to SMAC forums I can't remember exactly what that is.

[Mongoose]

Originally posted by Straybow
Pardon my foolishness… Maintenance Bug? It has been so long since I paid attention to SMAC forums I can't remember exactly what that is.

In SMAC (fixed in SMAX) at Thinker level, only 2/3 of the maintenence expense for facilities shown on F3 is actually deducted from your treasury. At Transcend, only 1/3 of the indicated expense is actually paid.

I think Firaxis got the coding backwards and intended the AI to have those benefits. Human player gets them.

[Skanderbeg]

I usually play a random faction on Transcendent level on huge random maps with blind research and random AI factions and win around 75% of my games.

[Tommara]

No, this isn't a dig at folks who haven't played transcendence yet. This is just some of the stuff that this dummy did or didn't do, which might help other rookies.

1. RTFM! Sure, I read it when I first started playing, but there's a lot of stuff in there that I either missed, or didn't quite realize the significance of when I first started playing. Silly little things like interceptors having a penalty when fighting land units. Ohhh, that explains something odd I'd noticed about my Deathspheres...

2. Free Market and Wealth are good! But only if you spend the money! Sheesh, that was silly sitting there admiring how wealthy I was while getting my clock cleaned. Maybe I'd do better if I bought something....

I found that if I started the game with no one trying to pick a fight with me immediately, I could rush build base facilities and secret projects so fast, that I'd run out of things to build. Oh well, nothing else to do but build military units (and supply crawlers and formers to support them or maybe new colonies, making my own land if necessary) until somebody showed up to play...



And if I was lucky enough to get attacked immediately -probe units + lotsa money => instant army! Then go back to rush building while your army swells as you convert the invasion force (in my current game, I've got bases that are low on minerals because of this, so be careful - either transfer to another base or keep up mineral supply with crawlers).

3. Don't dispair if your faction rating lags behind initially. The AI is really dumb about building (take a peek at what your pact brothers are building sometime), and the strength of your infrastructure doesn't seem to affect the score as much as military units, population, number of cities, etc.

4. Expect some surprises from the military AI. If you see some little pitiful enemy unit lingering around one of your bases , expect a volley of missile strikes soon. Send out a unit to kill or intercept the land unit. That will also give you something to defend the base with after the missiles wipe out your garrison.

Well, all I can think of for now and better get back to work. Hope this helps. I'm sure that the vets here know this stuff like the back of their hand, never dreaming there might be dummies like me who didn't know this stuff.

Edited note: And if you already know this stuff, and aren't playing Transcendence, what are you waiting for? I play it and win.

[Earwicker]

Originally posted by Tommara
Don't dispair if your faction rating lags behind initially. The AI is really dumb about building (take a peek at what your pact brothers are building sometime), and the strength of your infrastructure doesn't seem to affect the score as much as military units, population, number of cities, etc.

And remember that the AI tends to be particularly poor at terraforming. Somehow a pathetic faction-wide food/ energy/ mineral production doesn't play into the power rating calculations either. Recently the graphs had me neck-and-neck with the Spartans for over 100 years. When I finally found their home island at the bottom of a huge map I was stunned that they had done NO terraforming.

So definitely give Transcend a try - the AI's silliness makes up for all it is given in cheats.

[Nowhere Man]

Once you get the hang of it, the AI - even on transcend -ceases to be a real challenge unless you soup it up through modifications or give it serious advantage in a prepared scenario.

[Kirov]

Even on a tiny planet with all the opponents insanely aggressive (aliens/Hive/Spartans/Believers, etc.) ? I found this challenge rather hard, esp when playing Morgan (Builder-style is not an option on tiny planet, and -1 SUPPORT grows to be _very_ important factor).

[knowhow2]

I remeber when asked the same question myself once........... ah great times......

[Mr. President]

Thinker difficulty for me. Perhaps soon.

[Tommara]

Originally posted by Kirov
Even on a tiny planet with all the opponents insanely aggressive (aliens/Hive/Spartans/Believers, etc.) ? I found this challenge rather hard, esp when playing Morgan (Builder-style is not an option on tiny planet, and -1 SUPPORT grows to be _very_ important factor).

Yeah, I'm pegged way over into the builder-style of play. I still play only University, and on huge maps. I get the biggest kick out of the "Populous" stage of the game - you know, where you raise/lower land and get settlers to build on it. What? Nobody knows what I'm talking about?

Tip: The -1 support can be countered with supply crawlers. I have so many now that it's hard to tell when I'm being invaded. My cities often start doing eco damage around size 4. :\

[knowhow2]

Try playing a game without using crawlers, formers and military units........

[Clear Skies]

If you're playing Transcend for the first time, pick your early-game SPs carefully. You will not get all of them, so make sure you get the ones you need most. If you're the University, beeline to the Virtual World; if the Morganites, the Planetary Transit System, and so on. The Empath Guild is a must on big planets - get tech trading early and often.

Other than that, watch for who's shooting up the power chart. Ally with others to take them out. When one of your allies gets too big for their boots, wipe them out next. Sure, you'll be a pariah, but SMAC isn't the place to be a nice person. Once you're on top, do anything to stay there, and you should make it through to Transcendence no trouble.

[Adalbertus]

Clear Skies,
About the Early Game SP's in Transcend, you are right, but in a normal game, I think with some optimisations, it's even possible to grab them all. The first time I succeeded was playing Gaians (ruthlessly exploiting the fact that they could build formers from the beginning). But I have to admit, this requires quite some optimisation on gameplay. I arrived at it with the "specialized approach" in Vel's guide, which means to pump out exactly as many Colony Pods as needed to get to the efficiency limit, and then concentrating on finishing the SP's, which even means to build units only to disband them in a base with SP. But I guess, Weather Paradigm, HGP, and Virtual Worlds are worth the investment. Most for Uni, least for PK. And planning to set up a SSC (sorry, SSB), I usually don't want to miss the Merchant Exchange.

[Alinestra Covelia]

I have only ever beaten the game on Transcend as the Hive. I have never been able to adequately balance Psyche in the SE settings for the other factions - something that you have to be able to do when your faction doesn't rely on Police to keep order.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Still waiting to win on Thinker..... 0_o

Hey - I don't often have the chance to play AC.

[Adalbertus]

I have only ever beaten the game on Transcend as the Hive. I have never been able to adequately balance Psyche in the SE settings for the other factions - something that you have to be able to do when your faction doesn't rely on Police to keep order.

Try the specialist approach: Crawl food and turn most of your citizens to specialists (librarians early on, engineers with fusion), after your bases reach size 5. If you have the patience to rule many bases, make as many bases as possible (ICS). Try to get the anti-drone projects (HGP, VW).

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Transcend is the only way I play.

Aside from a couple of stupid games where I thought myself invincible and for instance raised a land bridge to let my missile rovers open a can of whoopass on the Usurpers(without probe infiltrating them first) only to find their chaos penetrators decimating my 10+ speeders invasion force. Then sit back and watch the horror of the inevitable humanesque tactics of air cover and speeders take base after base in my homeland.

Normally speaking though, I can say my record is very very heavily weighted in win collumn verses the loss collumn. ( and of the losses it almost always comes down to a stupid mistake).

[knowhow2]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
I have only ever beaten the game on Transcend as the Hive. I have never been able to adequately balance Psyche in the SE settings for the other factions - something that you have to be able to do when your faction doesn't rely on Police to keep order.

Rec com, Holo the, etc build them!

[Tommara]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
I have only ever beaten the game on Transcend as the Hive. I have never been able to adequately balance Psyche in the SE settings for the other factions - something that you have to be able to do when your faction doesn't rely on Police to keep order.

Heh, I've only beaten the game as University and would probably get my butt kicked if I played the Hive => it just depends on what you're used to. Although you are right - without Police control, your own population is your worst enemy until you learn to keep them happy.

So naturally, I switch to Free Market as soon as I can to get the negative 5 police rating. Heck, I already suck at police control, how can it get much worse?* I also generally don't allocate anything to Psych unless it's just going to waste in Research and Energy nor do I use any punishment (not even sure if I could if I wanted to, due to my social settings.)

How does it work? Obviously, I can't take offensive military action at first. So I take a purely defensive route.

With respect to research, I make a beeline for formers, Secrets of the Human Brain, Free Market, Wealth. I switch to Free Market and Wealth as soon as I have the energy to do it. Those research choices also give me probe teams, crawlers, and last but not least, lots of cash. The key is to spend the cash, which as I noted above, is critical to success with these social settings.

Recreation commons is the first building I build, which I generally time to appear before population size 2 (and the first drone) or shortly thereafter to avoid significant loss of productivity from losing a worker to drone control. I'll build crawlers as long as my formers can keep up and up to the point where I start doing enough eco damage to force a fungal pop. (That way, all my tree farms, once I research it, count towards increasing clean minerals.) Obviously, I'm using the crawlers to farm minerals, rather than allowing me to lay-off my workers.

I'm usually able to build both The Human Genome project and The Virtual World, which of course, really helps a lot. As does the project, whose name escapes me, that nets you new colony sizes of 3. These projects not only overcome the effects of a poor Police rating, they over-compensate, except for the inability to take offensive military action. I use the cash that Free Market and Wealth gets me to rush build the projects, or lacking the cash, will sacrifice crawlers to the building fund. I may even start building a project I don't want, like Empath Guild (as University, I don't need to obtain technologies from other factions.) so that I've got a lot of minerals saved up for a project I *do* want.

If I'm attacked, I simply start building probe teams. I then use cash to subvert the invaders to being my defensive force.

*Edited note: that actually makes sense if you think about it. Kinda the opposite of diminishing returns - there's diminishing punishment as well.

[CEO Aaron]

I currently play Thinker. While I believe I _could_ win on Transcend, and plan to do so as soon as I refine my game more, I currently find the outcome of my games more dependent on my opening position than on any difficulty settings. If I begin relatively isolated, the game is mine, but if I have neighbors, I'll blow my early game killing them while a third faction cleans up on Secret Projects and tech. My situation becomes even worse if I'm stuck on a small island, which seems to happen to me more often than not.

Its all very well to say 'rush to Industrial Automation', but sometimes I really just can't. And when I can't, I invariably get fried.

[baturkey]

Don't wory about losing the SP race early on. Why build projects when you can seize them?