Score

xobsidianx · September 27, 2002, 15:33

Can someone tell me what is the highest possible score one can obtain in smacx? In single player games it is the only measure of how well you have played, but without knowing the highest possible score obtainable, you can only compare it to your own past scores. Playing at transcend, with ironman, and abundant worms (does that increase your score?), my best was 1099%. Thanks.

Method · September 27, 2002, 15:36

i'm not sure, but 1099% is may more than i got (either 600 something or 800 something can't remember on thinker/ironman/normal worms)

abundant worms gives you +25% i think.

Cybergod · September 27, 2002, 16:31

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my best was 1099%

Wow!

The highest I ever got was around 300%...

xobsidianx · September 27, 2002, 16:50

If you guys played smacx as much as I do, you'd get 1099 also, or higher. I'm sure there are many players out there who have obtained much higher than 1099.

Cybergod · September 27, 2002, 17:03

How long did you exactly play?

I just play a little and then stop (and drag this process over a long stretch of time)

xobsidianx · September 28, 2002, 00:14

Cybergod, like you I play for a few hours at a time, and a game takes close to a week to finish. What I mean't about playing a lot, is that smacx is about the only computer game I enjoy playing. I tried civ 3, and I think it is lacking.

johndmuller · September 28, 2002, 02:56

I just noticed that the population portion of the score behaves a little strangely - for example in a current game in which I have reasonably good infiltration, Morgan has a much higher population score than the Hive, even though the Hive has a much greater population (Hive is running Police/Planned and Morgan nothing, but other factions not running police also have much lower population scores than Morgan and similar or higher actual populations).

Flubber · September 28, 2002, 04:53

I don't know of any limit to the high score but don't you find playing for score to be incredibly boring?? I mean once you have the AI down to 1 or 2 submissive bases and are getting multiple tech per turn around Transcendendent Thought 80 while you are producing drop pods and packing them into every square inch of Planet where the cloning vats booms them up immediately (with the support of your dozens of food sats) and every turn takes an hour as you have a hundred bases and blah blah blah blah blah.

I admire anyone who can go for those super high scores . . . not so much for their playing skill but their ability to put up with the tediousness necessary to get a high score--

Adalbertus · September 28, 2002, 05:53

My highscore was 2138% before boredom won, and I transcended (transcend, high native life, ironman). Two transcendent thoughts per turn and a decent growth rate do more than overcompensating the loss of points you get by deferring transcendence. I had no more patience to wait until all the other idiots went submissive. Obviously Miriam figured out she couldn't gain anything by treason to her master, and so she refused to submit

Cybergod · September 28, 2002, 06:34

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2138%

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ALL HAIL ADALBERTUS!!!

:::

Would this turn out to be a thread where we would post our highest scores?

Flubber · September 28, 2002, 10:27

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Originally posted by Adalbertus
My highscore was 2138% before boredom won, and I transcended (transcend, high native life, ironman). Two transcendent thoughts per turn and a decent growth rate do more than overcompensating the loss of points you get by deferring transcendence.

and thats the reality--you can get obscene population growth in the late game with food sats and your crawlers focused on food and the cloning vats booming everywhere.

xobsidianx · September 28, 2002, 15:55

Yep, the end game is boring beyond measure. If Firaxis could make the end game as exiting as the beginning and middle it would have a game that would be a masterpiece. As it is, smacx is still, in my opinion, the best game out there. To end the boredom, I usually vote myself supreme leader.

A score of 2,000+! How the hell do you achieve that? I've never been good at increasing population at my bases. The highest population I ever had at a base was about 62. Usually my largest bases at game end are about 40. What holds me back is the habitation domes late appearance in the game. Would it help to make a beeline for the dome's necessary tech?

Flubber · September 28, 2002, 17:17

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Originally posted by xobsidianx .

A score of 2,000+! How the hell do you achieve that? I've never been good at increasing population at my bases. The highest population I ever had at a base was about 62. Usually my largest bases at game end are about 40. What holds me back is the habitation domes late appearance in the game. Would it help to make a beeline for the dome's necessary tech?

If you really want to play for score. . . .

1. delay your victory
2. have the Cloudbase Academy, the PTS, the Cloning vats and at least 16 food sats (pre hab domes) and drop colony pods everywhere-- and I mean like every 2 tiles-- remember, you can starve your high pop bases for a while before they even lose 1 pop point-- while the nuts they used to utilize are booming another base . . . terraforming at this point is soil enricher and condensers-- all you build now are colonies, formers and crawlers with hab complexes and then hab domes as needed-- you should not need research or psych facilities

3. you can force boom bases past hab limits by adding colony pods to it but I see no real advantage to that since there is almost always some open space where yet another base can be placed and start booming

Mongoose · September 28, 2002, 17:46

What is the point?

Cybergod · September 28, 2002, 17:49

Has anyone ever completelly filled the planet with their cities? Would this be possible? I suppose you could in theory do that, set Transcendence as the only possible victory, kill off everyone and keep on building colony pod after colony pod...

xobsidianx · September 28, 2002, 22:11

That's an interesting strategy. I never tried it, and I think I will. Two questions: first, what so you mean by "food stats" and second, how is your strategy effected by being at war with other factions? Thanks.

Flubber · September 28, 2002, 23:08

mongoose-- no point but he asked so i told him

xobsidiabx

First it is food "sats" meaning satellites-- each satellite can bring one food to EACH of your bases ( each base will only benefit up to the same number of nutrients as the number of citizens in that base)

War is almost irrelevant -- If you are just going for obscene scores, you kill everyone except for a base or two and then proceed to fill up the world.

However a satellite fueled population boom can be effective even in a closely-fought game and is one of the reason that the Cloudbase Academy is so strong. It allows new bases to more easily have the excess nutrients needed to boom. A lot of the new citizens become specialists so you can rake in obscene amounts of tech and cash which allows you to outbuild and out-tech your opponents.

Note you cannot completely fill the world with bases. IIRC a base cannot be placed adjacent to another base.

MariOne · September 29, 2002, 09:32

maybe Cybergd meat "respecting the minimal spacing"... ?

Take a standard map: 3200 tiles
with tightest packing, a base takes up 4 tiles (1 basetile +3)
In theory, overlooking for now polar edges and wrap effects, you could thus pack 800 bases on a Standard map... (oh, well... 799: you must leave one to the "enemy"...)

be my guest!!!

Considering that with tightest packing (if you Condense+Enrich ALL your tiles - you'll get minerals from satellites, you can reconvert your boreholes!) each base can sustain 21 population, you'd have 799*21 = 16'779 population! Add 4 per each NutSpecial (only 2 if it's under a base), and I didn't consider the jungle at all.

I wonder how much score would it generate.... I leave it to you to find out!

Of course, as a basetile can provide only 3 nutrients against the 6 of a CondEnriched tile, the LESS bases you have the HIGHER you can push your total population up, in the end...

MattyBoy · September 29, 2002, 20:16

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be my guest!!!

Exactly. That is a neat way of putting it.

Once you know you have won, you should get the game over with asap, methinks.

tonic · September 30, 2002, 09:53

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Originally posted by MattyBoy
Once you know you have won, you should get the game over with asap, methinks.

Agreed except that for newbies, it is worthwhile to continue so that further aspects of the game may be learnt - researching the full tech tree, details of unit design as tech advances, ICS implications and so on.

At this early stage of my acquaintance with SMAC, I tend to play rather slowly and like a few previous others, tend to have a break after a couple of hours. It's quite mentally exhausting with the amount of micromanagement from the mid-game onwards.

Getting back to topic, for me the actual score doesn't count for much compared to the satisfaction of achieving certain goals eg winning OCC at transcend level.