I have a base in a late game I built on a whim called FungusAmongUs. It is surrounded by twenty fungus squares. The base produces 43Nut/62Min/62Ene. I have the ED jacked up to 249 with mineral boosting facilities and satellites. I get a fungal bloom every turn...which of course changes nothing at the base.
P.S. I am currently up to 85N/273M/143E and ED is 410. Curiously, I'm not getting any mind worms to spawn. I had hoped to harvest them for EC's.
Your tactic actually gave me an idea for the One City Challenge that worked.
As always, I select the University in order to blast through the tech tree. Abundant Life Forms are used for the sake of using the immense (albeit few) weaknesses of the Wild Native Life to my advantage. Otherwise, all map settings are left at their defaults; and I played on Citizen Difficulty.
My exact strategy was to get taller and taller until the AI founded a base in my territory. Once that happened, I just built the Ascent To Transcendence and completed the game.
Unsurprisingly, I was the only one who could even compete with Deirdre by the end. Since she’s so peaceful, no Planet Busters were used nor did I need to obliterate any bases; since having a peaceful faction always be in the lead makes repealing the UN Charter mighty tough to achieve.
The Secret Projects and Base Facilities that increase Labs, Psych, Growth, Morale, Energy output, Economic Efficiency, Ecology, Nutrients and Industrial Might are just as critical as ever. Skipping the Human Genome Project was a bit of a gamble, but I managed to overcome the disadvantages before too long.
Social Engineering choices that increase my scores in the most important areas (I.e. Research) are also just as important as before.
Normally, Psi-related projects are pretty much always a good thing; but due to how many of the strongest Mind Worms I had to face, my Scout Patrol (AKA the one that you always get at the start) was more than a match for every last wave of them no matter what. My Probe score was just as terrible as usual, but oddly enough; no one seemed to’ve ever used Probe Teams, so it wasn’t really much of an issue. The only units that I ever produced, of course were Formers.
Once I finished the tech tree, I just started planting Fungus in as many squares as possible without literally starving to death. Since I had already gotten all of the techs, the AI’s efforts to endlessly pelt me with Fungal Blooms and Mind Worms were completely in vain; because I’d always get something out of the Fungus in return.
I managed to finish in M.Y. 2506 with a score of 160% (Hover-tanks’ Lightness). At this rate, I’ll likely be able to finish before 2500 if I keep practicing; which will guarantee that my victory via this method on the higher levels is at least feasible.
By comparison, my highest score ever was somewhere within the mid-200s% range as “The Will To Power: A User’s Guide as Deirdre on a Huge Map with Abundant Life and the Iron Man setting that I now used every time (don’t exactly remember the rest). Meanwhile, my best OCC game utilized conventional means of getting as productive as possible with a score of somewhere in the 170s% range (Sentient Econometrics Made Simple) by simply having more projects, a higher population and more transcendent thought points (achieved by taking more time to finish).
I’ve finally learned to fully accept my fate in this game thanks to your recommendations, and really hope for others (including myself) to fully implement these strategies in the near future.
