Scenario Information:

Difficulty: Normal
Race: Humans
Galaxy: Large, 2-arm
Starlanes: Short, Few
Random Events: Normal
Specials: Average
Computer Players: 8
Combat and Turn timers: Off
Victory Conditions: All


ROSTER:

Jaxom
Sulla
Darken
Vek

If your user name is different here than at RBMoo, be sure to let us know who you are :)

Rules:

* The first player will play twenty turns to open the game. Thereafter, all players play exactly ten turns.

* Since games can only be saved at the beginning of a turn, all games will be saved on a turn ending in 1. So the team captain plays from T1 to T20, saving the game at the start of T21. Next player plays from T21 through T30, saving at the start of T31. Etc.

* Reports must include notice of any vital SitRep items from the last turn, as this info will not be preserved in the saved game. Important items include military encounters, tech breakthroughs, colonization notices, senate bills, unrest news, espionage news. The rest can be ignored. If you can get the important items to fit in a single picture, please do so. That picture should be posted in a separate message than you actual round report.

Additional rules involving procedure are posted at RBMoo forum.

As is the norm for Civ 3 SGs, we will follow a 24 hours "got it" / 48 hours to return the game. If you let me know your round might be delayed a bit, I will grant more time, otherwise I'll keep the game moving.

You should play your 10 turns to the best of your knowledge. If something important comes up 5 turns into your round, you are in charge and should do what you think is best. Don't worry whether it is the best move or not, this is not a competition. The beauty of a SG is the possibility to see in your game things you would have never done by yourself. That being said, discussing strategic options between rounds so that we all work toward the same goal is not only desirable, but welcomed as well.

I will have my round played and reported by this time tomorrow. In the meantime, if you have suggestion for ship names you can post them in this thread. My usual standard is flying insect names for PD ships, birds for LR, fishes for SR, mammals for IF and horse races for carriers. I try to make the names meaningful in relation to size, can you guess which is the biggest ship between Bass, Shark and Orqual? These are simply suggestions, but all the designs must have a number indicating the warp level. This is very important and if you don't understand why, go read the thread for team A. We should also use a letter after the number to indicate a more powerful version of an existing design. Finally system ship designs should always begin with either SYS or DEF.

that's it for now, off I go to get this baby rolling!

As I said, I take the first start given to me. Meet the neighborhood.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_startsenate.jpg

We are number 9 in power factor, we know 6 other empires, so there are only 2 other empires in the galaxy, most likely Ithkul. This pretty much set our game to be a diplomatic/spying contest, I hope it fits your style. :)

Since there are many neighbors, some potentially hostile, we should look into spying right now. You probably know your spies eventually die of old age if nothing bad happens to them. So what I like to do is to recruit one of each type in rotation throughout the whole game. When I have 2 spies of the same type, I send the oldest one on a vacation in my enemy's empire. Usually, I can have 2 inserted spies while keeping a home defense of 6 spies. So here I start the recruiting process:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_startspy.jpg

I see no point in recruiting more than 2 at a time since they will come out one by one anyway. I put 2 in case I miss the sitrep message when the first one comes out and it helps to know what is the next spy you should schedule. When I get the message about the first spy coming out, I'll come back here and recruit a spy of the type following political.

Next stop is the Empire tab. At this point, I leave the oppressometer as it is, right in the middle for us. If our neighbors get funny ideas, we will have to raise this until we have adequate spies to protect us. I also leave the regional setting as it is, natural, mostly to take a different route than team A. I'll expand more on what our DEA building strategy should be later. Finally I turn off forced labor as we will want full growth on any magnate we might find.

Our initial government is Corporate, this improves mining and manufacturing while bioharvesting, research and recreation suffer. This prompts me to have a look at our starting system to decide if we should change government. First a word about conventions. If you have not read the first few post in team A's thread, you should now. In there Sirian suggest a convention for naming planets and I will use it here. As per his convention, we have a G1 of moderate gravity in our home system. Moderate gravity is green for us, so I would say this world is G1g, lower case 'g' to indicate a green gravity to us, lower case 'y' and 'r' for the other two. When we have a few species in our empire, we should prefix the planet with the species type, so it would be a cyber Y1y for our cybernetic slaves, err I mean citizens. :)

Ok, so we have a G1g hard scrabble with a thriving ecosystem. This means it is a good world for food and should sustain our empire for quite a while. We also have a large G1y with contraband and rare metals which would make a decent research/manufacturing world. There is also a Y1g mineral rich world to supply us with minerals. We may not have a splinter colony right under our nose, but our home system will nicely cover all the basics. Which brings me back to government type. I leave it as it is for now, we may want to switch to a democracy later on to boost research. I mark all three planets for an outpost and design a system outpost ship which I queue 3 times on our home world. My reasoning is, it takes half as long to build an outpost, so the home world will be ready sooner to send colony ships and claim a decent share around our home world. Next stop is the technology tab.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_starttech.jpg

I raised Economics and Social sciences as both schools will help our research and spying abilities. I also put a bit more emphasis on Mathematics, for better engines, and Biology, for food and terraforming. If we have minerals problems and can't find a neighbor to steal mineral techs from, we will have to change these settings to boost physical but for the first few rounds this should give us an edge.

Time to do the diplomatic rounds. Heh, I have only spent an hour an a half on the game so far. :) Dekalip, Sariar and Vomnast are on the other side of Orion so let's deal with them first. Their home world sits on the other side of Orion and it is unlikely we will ever fight them so we might as well try to be friends with them. My first action is to downgrade our rules of engagement with each of them to "Quiet front" to let them know we are no threat to them.

Vomnast is a Silicoid empire who dislikes us (CB: -7 Rel: -17). As I have no idea how to talk to them, I decide to let them come to us. Next up is Sariar, an Imsaeis empire who is neutral with us (-1, -1). The encyclopedia description of the Etherean tells me they are honest and forthright, so I offer an economic T/A using a reasonable stance. Dekalip is a Tachidi empire who is neutral with us (2, 11). The encyclopedia description of the Insectoid leads me to believe then would not respond kindly to strength so I offer an economic T/A using a reasonable stance.

Next we have a slight headache. Gaulrdu, a Sakkra empire, and Ivaquaria, a Trilarian empire, hate each other and will likely wage war early on. The problem is, we seem to be between their respective empires and ours worlds will likely be the battle grounds between them. Furthermore, any treaty with one will likely make the other hate us. For now, I decide to sit back and see what they will do. Gaulrdu is at 10,20 toward us while Ivaquaria is at 10,45.

My final diplomatic action is to propose a bill to praise the New Orions, just to suck up to them and let the Senate know we will take an active part in the political arena. :)

The final stop before launching the first turn is the DEA assignment. I know Team A will have a heavy hand in DEA assignment, so I suggest we take a more hands-off approach. The Viceroy will always put an industrial DEA on a new world, I suggest we add manually a single bio DEA on the best food spot, and a single mining DEA on the best mineral spot. We should also add a government DEA on the first world of any system and a recreation DEA on the second world in the same system. For everything else, we should let the Viceroy handle the DEA and see how it turns out. This is how I will play my first round but we should have a discussion about how to handle DEA early on. With that in mind, I don't touch the Viceroy settings on our home world, who scheduled an industry which is fine by me, and off we go!

Good luck on the first turn Jaxom! Let's hope things aren't as touchy in this game as they were in RBE6. :D

Turn 1: See the previous post.

Turn 2: Our first Senate task comes in.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_firstbill.jpg

I think this is good for us, so I go ahead and second the motion. The Vomnast ambassador thanks us warmly for our actions and our relations improve. For the first few rounds, I'd like to keep track of relations with all the other empires, so we can all better understand the diplomatic implications our actions.

New Orions (NO) dislike us at -15, -18, no surprise there.

Gaulrdu is better and worst at 19, 18. Maybe he doesn't like brown-nosers?

Vomnast seems to be a liar, our relations dropped to -5, -29! Let's see if the next turn brings improvements.

Ivaquaria dropped slightly to 13,41, so did Sariar at 2,5 and Dekalip at 9,8. So all our relations dropped but all our CB improved. Could it be nobody likes a brown-noser? Now I discover something really annoying, all of our rules of engagement are back to defensive front. I hope this is a bug, this is an imperial level decision, not the task of some provincial governor. :mad:

Now for my first :smoke:. With all the diplomacy and senate business, I completely forgot to send our ships exploring. I do that now, even sending the colony ship. In previous MOO, it was quite a risk to send your initial colony ship blindly. I have yet to see a real danger to our first colony ship in the many starts I made since even a Guardian can be evaded. So we have three star lanes and each ship takes one.

Turn 3: More Senate business. Our bill to praise the NO didn't find a taker. :( Ivaquaria propose a bill for total war on Gaulrdu, I pass on this one. Nobody voted yet on the recycling initiative, so I wait to see how the votes fall.

The new relation status:
NO: -19,-20; Gaulrdu: 23,21; Vomnast: -12,-27; Ivaquaria: 18,40; Sariar: 0,-2; Dekalip: 15,14.

So it seems the insectoid respond well to reason as Dekalip courteously agreed to my proposal. No word yet on the others.

Turn 4: An industry DEA is built on home world, the Viceroy scheduled 2 mining DEA. The total war bill didn't find a taker, no big change in relations with anybody. Everybody voted Yea on the recycling bill but the Silicoid, I guess they are tolerant in this version too. I go ahead and cast our vote with the majority. :) I raise the allocation to build the outpost sooner as we have a slight surplus.

Turn 5: A mine completes and the Viceroy adds an industry, so far, so good. Still no response from the other 2 empire, what's up with that? Dekalip proposes to praise Gaulrdu, I sit this one out. Our ships reach their destination and present me with interesting choices. First a strategic view:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_orion.jpg

Each of the newly discovered system have reasonable planets.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_firstcolony.jpg

None of these choices are great, but we will want all 4 planets over time. For now, I choose to send the colony ship one hop further and see what we find. If I had to choose now, I would be hard press to choose between Media, which doesn't need protection and Phobeus V, for the labor it provides. Yellow gravity is 25% less output without penalty to population growth while yellow atmosphere is 50% less population but no penalty on output. I have seen techs to improve the atmosphere, they are some time away down the tech tree. I have never seen a tech to improve gravity up to level 25, I do not know if there is one after that.

Turn 6: Our first spy, Familiar, breaks out of training. For now he will sit quietly at home. Nobody wanted to Praise Gaulrdu so this bill goes down the can. I am still without news for my proposed traded agreements with Sariar (-4,0) and Vomnast (-24,-22), so I renew my proposal by reasoning some more with them.

A cheerful Sakkra propose a research T/A while a humble Trilarian propose the same. I accept politely with Gaulrdu (25,32) and show my appreciation by accepting Ivaquaria's offer (40,40). I take this opportunity to reason with Dekalip (17,14) for a research T/A.

Turn 7: An industry completes on home world and the Viceroy schedules a mine in the final slot. I fiddle with the sliders to get the outpost next turn.

Another bill to praise Gaulrdu, submitted by Sariar the Imsaeis this time, another bill I will let slide. This reminds me that the recycling bill did come through a couple of turns earlier, it gives every senate member a 15% reduction in pollution for a 2% increase in maintenance. The bill was past on galactic cycle 9 and will last 20 turns. Whatever made QS decide to make a turn be 1.5 galactic cycle is beyond me. That is what I call "pointless complexity".

Ivaquaria comes stating he wants a non-aggression pact. We are more likely to wage war on the Sakkra than the Trilarian and we would benefit more by such a war. So I humbly accept Ivaquaria's proposal.

A look at the current relations:
NO: -19,-19; Gaulrdu: 29,26; Vomnast: -31,-26; Ivaquaria: 45,44; Sariar: 3,4; Dekalip: 9,18.


Turn 8: The call to Praise Gaulrdu went unsupported, poor Sakkra. The first outpost is ready and will land next turn, or shall I say next galactic cycle and a half, one the G1g world.

Vomnast accepts our proposal appreciatively and Dekalip accepts respectfully. A new look at the relations:
NO: -17,18; Gaulrdu: 29,28; Vomnast: -26,-32; Ivaquaria: 49,106; Sariar: 2,0; Dekalip: 13,14.

A sharp gain with the Trilarian, is it the non-aggression or the humility? I don't seem to have the proper stance with the Silicoid, I will have to try something other than reason.

Turn 9: Ivaquaria smirks and offers his warmest congratulations on our actions, relations improve to 75,105. The outpost dropped 80 people on G1g, I thought it would be more. I don't set migration yet as the home world is barely filling in all the jobs.

Turn 10: A new spy, Father Time, joins our spying ranks, a new one is ordered. The colony ship enters a dead-end will all red planets, however a scout spots a G2g with rare gems and natural wonders west of Bjorntoft so the colony is ordered to get there ASAP.

The Sariar ambassador came rambling something about praise being worth more than money and our relations improve. I would like an answer on the economic TA I proposed, is that his answer? Following his words of wisdom, I submit a bill to praise Sariar. *shrug* We did move to 20,9 in our relations.

Our outpost on Tali II gains 48 people without my help. I turn on migration for a turn to see how many will go there.

Turn 11: 35 peoples moved to Tali II, now up to 212 population. The second outpost lands on Tali IV with 81 peoples. We reach level 1 in social and economics.

Turn 12: Someone is terrorizing our citizens, this has to stop! I raise the oppressometer 2 notches to silence the population. :) Nobody wanted to praise Sariar and our relations dropped to 7,-3. Well go smoke a fish, you gas-bag!

The home world gains 0.35 population and loose 0.03 per turn, so I activate migration to Tali IV as well. The last outpost comes out and 3 standard colony ships are queued.

The Vomnast ambassador comes to parley and our relations improve to -32,-31. *shrug* Dekalip's ambassador orders us to enter a non-aggression pact! I coldly accept his proposal.

Turn 13: Our operatives kill a Sariar (-2,1) spy, the nerve! We state our disagreement threatening them pleadingly. It's hard to picture what such a threat would sound like. We argue with Gaulrdu (32,32) for an economic TA, while we plead with Ivaquaria (77,93) for the same. We also plead with Vomnast for a research TA.

Our scout explores Ganagweh east of Phobeus and discovers a worm hole leading quite far west of Orion. The third outpost lands with 61 peoples on Tali V, a Y1g, migration is ordered there too. We now have 546 people on Tali II, 5 more turns and it will be a colony.

Turn 14: Ghost Bear joins our spying ranks and another spy is ordered. A scout explore Kali, which contains a nice G1g. We would have to share the system with Ivaquaria though.

Vomnast (-33,-38) proposes his own research TA bluntly, I accept humbly.
Ivaquaria (76,93) whines about his poor economy and proposes his own economic TA, I accept humbly.
Dekalip offers his congratulations for our actions and our relations improve to 29,33.

Turn 15: Tali II becomes a colony, here is a look at some of the regions.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_firstdea.jpg

I placed the bio and mining DEA, the military DEA is there due to the outpost. Let's see if it disappear on the next turn since I played with the DEA manually.

A diplomatic message from each of the senate member, we are getting popular. :)

Gaulrdu (32,32) accepts our economic TA appreciatively.
Vomnast (-35,-38) accepts our research TA appreciatively.
Ivaquaria (76,91) accepts our economic TA slyly.
Dekalip (11,10) meekly demands we stop our actions. *shrug*
Sariar (-102,-85) demands we stop our actions immediately. Well same to you gas-bag! Death to your spies!

Turn 16: Gaulrdu (32,32) mockingly asks for a non-aggression pact, I accept politely.

Turn 17: A look at our relations with everybody, while nothing is going on.
NO: -21,-23; Gaulrdu: 30,52; Vomnast: -35,-37; Ivaquaria: 74,87; Sariar: -84,-88; Dekalip: 13,22.

Turn 18: Our first space battle. The scout who went through the worm hole found a system defended by 3 system ships, the Ramuctha empire. They are most likely Ithkul and are one jump away from the worm hole.

Our spies kill another of Sariar's spies. A bill to Praise Gaulrdu (30,42) is proposed by Vomnast, I second the motion as we could use a boost in relations with our saurian neighbor. Dekalip (20,19) politely asks for a better economic TA, I show my appreciation by accepting appreciatively.

Turn 19: Three, our forth spy, enters service, a new one is ordered. Continuous laser is discovered by a scout, our first new technology. Our first colony ship comes out of our home world. He could go to one of the 4 planets shown earlier, for now I will only take him out of the reserve for the next leader to decide. Talus IV reaches the status of colony and a first mine and bio are ordered, a research DEA is also ordered. By the way, the military DEA did not disappear from Tali II despite my tampering with the DEAs on the first turn.

Ivaquaria (68,88) humbly request an open border trade agreement. I am not sure what such treaty entails as I can't find it in the documentation. We need a strong ally and it looks like the Trilarian will be it, so I accept appreciatively.

Sariar (-93,-84) calls to say he hates us and proudly impose sanctions against us. I send a threat his way using a strongly worded argument. The same despicable gas-bag propose to the Senate a diplomatic isolation on us. I respond in kind by asking the Senate to condemn Sariar. The interface let me see that Ramuctha is indeed Ithkul, and the other empire is Psilon. That information should not be known to me until I open diplomatic channels with them.

Unrest is low, so I raise the imperial tax by 1%.

Turn 20: Tali IV falls into unrest level 1. *grumble* I lower the imperial tax by 1%.

Vomnast (-137,-90) demands that we stop our actions. What, he propose a bill, I second it and vote Yea and now he hates me? Nah, that must be the condemn Sariar he is not happy with. Everybody but us and Vomnast voted Nay to praise Gaulrdu, he will not get his party. Nobody second the motion to condemn Sariar but nobody second the motion to isolate us either.



Turn 21 sitrep:

You will get to vote for a new president. On your next turn, there will be a few bills to monitor in the Senate, including a proposition to declare total war on us. Sariar and Dekalip declared war on us this turn and Gaulrdu sent a threat our way. I guess I screwed up the diplomatic front badly. *sad*

We may be in need of a credible show of force, we have 0 warship. In case you don't know, when you vote for the presidency, you have to press the space bar after casting your vote. I do not know if the vote will be saved or not, so you may have to vote as your first action.

The system west of Nicrom is the home world of Ramuctha, an Ithkul empire. I wish there was a way to mark it on the map. To know what the ships are doing, use the 'F' to cycle through each fleet.

I notice the science sliders are screwed up after loading, you may have to go set them again on your first turn. Also, do no forget to recuit spies whenever a new one is recruited, we will need all the spies we can get. On this note, have fun!

Here is the save at the beginning of turn 21. (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_teamb_turn21.zip)

Nice first turn, and some fun stuff going on! :) Now for some of the questions I had while reading through your report:

With all the diplomacy and senate business, I completely forgot to send our ships exploring. I do that now, even sending the colony ship.

Ha! That's pretty funny! :lol: That's like not moving your scout on the first turn if you're expansionist in Civ3. We're going to look back at this in a few months and laugh ourselves silly. I can only imagine what kind of mistakes I will make on my turns.

One note: since the names of the AI empires are different in every game (unlike Civ3), it would probably be helpful to refer to our opponents by their race names (Sakkra, Sillicoid, Trilarian) rather than their empire name (like Gaulrdu, Vomnast, or Ivaquaria). I imagine this is the kind of SG convention we will work out as we play. :)

None of these choices are great, but we will want all 4 planets over time. For now, I choose to send the colony ship one hop further and see what we find.

Now I'm just starting out this game and am far (FAR) from an expert, but I think this was :smoke: If the colony ships are anything at all like settlers from Civ3, every turn you delay founding your cities (colonies) slows down your development. If we found a colony 5 turns later, the development of that colony is forever 5 turns slower in building DEAs, more colony ships, etc. Now if we find a better planet or the first system we scout is just abysmally poor it's worth it to delay the first colony, but we had decent stuff here. In my two solo games, my colony ships found nothing but red worlds first. Not even a yellow one. I LEAPED at the chance to found a colony on a Y2 world in the third system my colony ship visited in my first game.

I could of course be heavily influenced by the limited experiences I have had so far. The good thing is that we get to see different playing strategies here in succession games that we otherwise wouldn't experience. But I think we should have colonized one of those worlds. They aren't perfect, but I've found that very few worlds in the galaxy tend to be. ;)

Whatever made QS decide to make a turn be 1.5 galactic cycle is beyond me. That is what I call "pointless complexity".

Couldn't agree more! That's called "getting too deep into the background story." :p

Interesting decision to go with outpost ships rather than colony ones. They are cheaper, but it takes longer to get the outposts up to colony status. I have no idea at this point in time which is a more effective strategy. I imagine that outposts should work better for high growth/low production races (hmm, like some of the Saurian ones? don't know enough to say) and that colonies work best for the high production/low growth ones (sillicoids come to mind). We humans are in the middle and should be able to make due with either, so it shouldn't matter. Let's experiment with both and see what happens. :cool:

You will get to vote for a new president. On your next turn, there will be a few bills to monitor in the Senate, including a proposition to declare total war on us. Sariar and Dekalip declared war on us this turn and Gaulrdu sent a threat our way. I guess I screwed up the diplomatic front badly. *sad*

We may be in need of a credible show of force, we have 0 warship.

:eek: Oh my! :eek:

Wow, I cannot say I was anywhere near that kind of situation in either of my two games. This will either be a glorious first game or an ignominous fall for our race. Umm, "got it", wish me luck because I will almost certainly need it! :D

I decided to use the the empire name instead of the race name for 2 reasons. First, there could be 2 Shakkra races and we would need to use the empire name for them. Secondly, on the various screens where it matters, you will see the empire name, not the race. It may help you decide whether you should intercept the fleet coming at you or let it slide when you see it is a Sariar fleet and you have read for 3 pages that the Sariar are not our friends. ;: Now I did try to mention the race when it matters, like saying the Gaulrdu and the Aviquaria don't like each other may mean they will be at war. But saying the Sakkra Gaulrdu and the Trilarian Aviquaria know of each other means they WILL go at war, they can't avoid it, it is in their genes, so to speak.

From my various test game on MOO 3, and from my experience with previous MOOs, yellow world are not worth taking until you have the technology to make them productive. They will contribute little, grow marginally and drain imperial funds that could be put to better use elsewhere. If they were in a strategic position they would be worth taking. If the Y2g in Phobeus had been a Y1, it would have been worth it since the first terraforming tech is not too far down the tree. You cannot build a colony ship in a couple of turns, it takes almost 10 turns at our current production. Your new worlds cannot build military police as soon as it is settled, they need a good 20-30 turns before they can get some cheap ships out. In Moo, you cannot do a quick expansion burst and let the military catch up latter, specially if you have many early contacts. You will only end up with a lot of blocaded worlds and your empire will crumble from starvation and unrest. You have to expand within you capability enforce your claim by force if necessary. As it is, I have already built too many colony ships and not enough warships. That is probably part of the reason so many AI want war with us at this point.

On your turn, you have a colony ship 2 turns away from a G1g, a colony ship in space that should go claim the G2g in Kali as it is very likely we will form an alliance with Aviquari and fight Gaulrdu. There is a colony ship on top of the build queue with a couple of turns production into it, but I think it would be a good idea to slip in a few Eagles in front to establish our claim of all systems up to Ganagweh as we will want to hold and fortify this worm hole leading directly into Ithkul territory. Once we start pounding on the Ithkul, the Senate member will sing our praise and eat in the palm of our hand. :)

As for the war, don't worry, they are phony. I really think they are on the other size of Orion and we can't reach each other until someone brings the NO down to size. If Gaulrdu is serious about his threat, then we will be in trouble as he is definitely on the same side of Orion as we are.

That is probably part of the reason so many AI want war with us at this point.

I doubt it. Issuing threats looks like the :smoke: move from here. I know the manual/readme talks about threatening those who spy on you, but take that with a grain of salt. Relations are more important. Cover yourself vs their spies, sure, but turn a blind eye to some provocations, since any response you make can affect your relations with several races. Probably also not the best plan to issue threats when you don't have a navy. :lol:

Your early turn diplo moves sounded great! That's one area where humanoids are in the advantage: race relations mostly start out very favorable. I've not seen nor heard of so many empires come beating down your door in twenty turns, demanding non-aggression pacts! My silicoids in my second game had to make nice nice for ~250 turns to get more than one race to sign non-aggression with us!

Maybe dial down the rhetoric a bit, and put up with the enemy spies without complaint? After all, you'll be doing your own share of spying, right? :)


- Sirian

Hi all,

Just posting to let you all know that I am Vek. Looks like we are off to a good start, excellent. : )

Hmm, I have never used Humans before, this should be interesting. Well, live and learn.

--Vek

All right Team B !

Jaxom, a couple of comments on your initial posts:

Ship naming convention: What you suggested sounds good to me. I am not quite as creative as you are with your animal taxonomy. I usually just call things Recon Mk I or Troop Mk 2 or LtCruise MK 5a which tells me ship size / function as well as engine / weapon level. But I have no problems with FuzzyBunny 3a if that's what we prefer.

Spies: I think that Social and Scientific spies should be given a priority. I think it is the Social spies that create the "someone is terrorizing our people" messages, and having counter spies rather than raising the oppressometer is a better response (of course, since we didn't have any Social spies, raising the oppressometer is not a bad response). We definitely will be wanting to steal techs and defend against our own techs being stolen. I've only played 1.5 games so far (1 game around turn 450, Easy Grendarls, and very first game abandoned around turn 120 Easy Grendarls), but it seems like the AI focuses on Scientific and Social spies in the early game and then opens up all possibilities around turn 80+.

DEAs: I am partial to adding a Government and Military DEA on every world, as Unrest tends to climb through the roof in the middle game, and any unrest reduction seems to be more than worth it. Plus, Military DEA improvements add to scanning range that help us detect worlds and fleets at greater distances. Also, you never quite know when an opposing spy will blow up your System Seat of Government, and which system might be in a better position to rebuild it, so having multiple systems be ready to do so by having Gov't DEAs helps. I think our development will lag and suffer by having the Viceroy allocate all of our DEAs (I prefer to manually pre-allocate them), but will suffer and defer to the Viceroy in the spirit of learning.

I definitely think we should turn off the "use forced labor" option as I think it creates unrest (and any unrest is Very Bad), and we should make finding a world with a Magnate Civilization a high priority. Once we have a Magnate Civilization world colonized (or a few enemy worlds conquered ... :) our colonization efforts should be greatly enhanced by our magnate or subject friends.

Otherwise, I am looking forward to playing my 10 !

Darken.Rahl

I got a chance to look over Team A and Team C's threads. I think things will be interesting between Team A and us. They seem to have a much better starting position than we do, but are not in the Senate, which could be quite a problem (and quite a quick game !) We have a tougher starting position and some aggressive neighbors, but if we're able to hold on for 150 turns should win a Senate victory easily enough (famous last words ...)

Also, in poking around the IGMoo boards, it seems like the manual describing our Government is wrong compared to what's actually in the game files. According to this post:

http://www.ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=272228

Our Corporate Gov't actually gives us these modifiers:

Corporate:
BioHarvesting 120%,
Mining 120%,
Manufacturing 110%,
Research 105%,
Military efficiency 80%,
Recreation 80%,
Spaceport 120%,
HFofG 95%,
Oppression cost 96%,
oppressometer 2-6,
total tax 35% (E:29% S:14%)

Which look pretty darned good to me !

Also, if we are going to have our Viceroys do most of our development, should we crank out a Dev Plan or two to assist them ? Or are we looking to let them go at it on their own and see what they come up with ?

Darken.Rahl

They seem to have a much better starting position than we do, but are not in the Senate, which could be quite a problem (and quite a quick game !)

I read this after playing my turn, and wait till you see how ironic it turns out to be...

(21) I vote for the New Orions in the Senate; they're going to win anyway, so might as well keep them happy. The good news is that everyone we are at war with is far away. On the other side of the center of the galaxy in fact; our two friends (the Trilarians and the Sakkra) are our two neighbors. Lucky for us! :D

I zone out a few more DEAs on our home worlds, leaving some unplanned for future leaders. I also build quite a few new ships, using this naming convention:

(Two-Letter Code for Ship's Function)(Ship Size)(Number of Warp Drive)

So a Frigate designed for long-range attack, using the starting warp drive is labeled a LRFrigate1. A Light Cruiser serving as a carrier is designed CRLghtCrusr1, and so on. I'm sure you can figure out what the ships are from my designations. Would be nice if we had more than 12 letters to work with...

I've got a freebie colony ship to move, and I decide to send it to Media. It's only a G2 planet with high (yellow) gravity, but it's classified as "very rich" on minerals so it's more than worth it. We'll be needing that ore to run our factories. Since we are at war, I also swapped our tech slider over to the more "military" branches like Energy/Mathematics/Physical Sciences. The next leader can change again if desired.

(22) This unusual bill came up in the Senate:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1_starlanes.jpg

This seems like something that would benefit us more than the AI, so I second the bill. The Orions also hold onto their presidency position (big surprise, since they have 99% of the Senate votes).

(23) The Vormnast (Sillicoids) declare war on us! :eek: Well, we knew that they hated us, so I guess this was just a manner of time. For those who are unaware, humans and rocks have a hate relationship just like the fishies and lizards. At least they are far away from us too... I ask for an armistice with the Dekalip (Tachidi) since they don't seem too angry at us even though we are at war.

(25) Our colony ship settles (errr, colonizes) a planet in the Media system. We can't colonize in the Dromos system though because a fish colony ship arrived the same turn we did and is blockading us. Take a look:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1_blocked.jpg

Since we can't break this impasse short of ending our non-aggression pact with the Trilarians (which I will NOT do to essentially our only friends), I send our colony ship there back to Bjorntoft to create a colony there.

(26) The Dekalip bugs sign peace with us. :goodjob: Nice, now only at war with two foes. I immediately ask for a trade agreement; got to repair our poor reputation. Things are looking up!

(27) Wtf?! Take a look at this SitRep:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1_kickedout.jpg

Oh my goodness - we've been kicked OUT of the Senate! :eek: WOW - that is really bad. It looks like we just pissed off too many people. Our game just got a lot more interesting. We've GOT to play this one out now. :) The bugs also redeclare war on us (somehow, since they don't have contact with us anymore, heh). The sole speck of good news is that our homeworld completes a colony ship which is dispatched to Pholeus.

(28) Re-establish contact with the fish. Our relations with them are down, but still pretty good. I plead with them to sign some new trade agreements with us.

(30) Pholeus IV created as our newest colony. The Trilarians accept our research offer and I offer another one. They offer us a non-aggression pact and I happily agree.

I go to turn 31 and save and exit. Here are the things that Darken.Rahl needs to be aware of for the next turn:

- Create a TF with our newly created LRFrigate1 and send it to the Milonni system to stake our claim there. With luck, we can intercept [shoot down] any Sakkra colony ships there and claim everything behind it for ourselves.
- Found a colony on Bjorntoft VII
- Try to repair our shattered reputation with the fish and lizards; we're doing pretty well with the fish but have yet to re-establish contact with the lizards.
- Move our scouts (duh), most of them can move again this turn.

So a horrible turn diplomatically, but I pulled us up from #9 to #6 on the power screen and managed to squeeze in a military ship to run blockade for us too. Everything is not lost; we will fight our way back into the Senate and take of business. Those who voted against us (the Sillicoids, Imsaeis, and Tachidi) have CHOSEN UNWISELY and must be "dealt" with in the future. :hammer: Good luck Darken.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1_31.jpg

RBMoo1 Turn31 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1B_Turn31.zip)

EDIT: System to the west of Knaa where our scout is retreating is the Sakkra homeworld. I had to retreat or lose our scout; not a tough choice.

Booted Out?!? :eek:

:lol:

Well, the verdict on issuing early threats is in: :nono:

"We don' need no steeking senate anyway." :D


- Sirian

Oh my. That does make things more interesting then, doesn't it ?

The Good News is that we won't have worry about nearly as many pesky spies now that we have lost contact with many of the races.

The Bad News is, well, uh, we've got our work cut out for us now, don't we ?

Got it, will play now and post results later tonight. Though I've never uploaded a file to this board. Could be an adventure.

Darken.Rahl

Ok, here is my first attempt to post a file to this forum. If this works I will summarize my turns in the next message.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1B_Turn41.zip

Darken.Rahl

Ok, looks to me like I uploaded the save game file OK. Score one for technology. Sorry, no screenshots as am still new to the forum. I promise to put at least one in my next round of turns. Here is my turn summary:

Overall, I don't think I did much -- bad or good. I beefed up infrastructure some, and sent some ships to far away destinations, but nothing particularly dramatic. I think I set us up for good relations with our Trilliarian friend Ivaq -- that was probably my best accomplishment.

Turn 31: Look over the lay of the land. Good production, research, unrest getting up there. Up our unrest spending, down our research spending, up our grants to planets. Finance tab -- reduce system tax from 4% to 1% (does anyone know what this does ? I haven't been able to find out yet), raise our empire tax from 10% to 13%. Our military spending is high, and will continue to need to be high. To keep our people happy, we need to set our policy to Limited War, which is done. Dial down opressometer to "middle" level, as we no longer have all those pesky empires spying on us ! ;-) Recruit a batch of Social / Scientific spies. Sensing our situation was dire, I allocated all the DEAs (sorry, Jaxom). We need to maximize growth, not leave it to the Viceroy at this point. I set migration to "on" for all planets. Our forced labor is turned off, good, this helps lower unrest and will make our magnate races expand if we can ever get any.

Note: The non-aggression pact didn't seem to transfer in the save. When I looked at our status with Ivaq, it was just trade agreement.

Diplomacy: New Orions are #1
Unknown is #2
An Etherean is #3, also in the Senate
An Insectoid is #4, also in the Senate
A Saurian is #5, also in the Senate (this is Gaulrdu, our neighbor)
RBMoo is #6
A Geodic is #7
Ivaq (something), our Ichthytosian neighbor and only remaining friend is #8
Unknown is #9

Looks like we need to buddy up to Ivaq, who is hurting. Ivaq is at war with Gaulrdu. Maybe we can help him in his war, especially as Gaulrdu has a naval forces strength of "2" compared to our "3". Since we seem to have lost our Non Aggression Pact, I send Ivaq a Trade Agreement with Emphasis Reason. Ok, time for next turn.

Turn 32: Ivaq accepts our Trade Agreement ! Try a Non Aggression Pact now. Someone is terrorizing our citizens -- we will catch them and make them suffer ! Upping the unrest spending has set our Unrest to 0 on all planets ! Bjorntoft VII is colonized. Change all non-Tali planets to building Hawk defense to combat the inevitable piracy that will spiral out of control. Keep Tali II (Scout), Tali III (Colony), and Tali IV (Frigate) settings. Income is 551 (+18)

Turn 33: Ivaq accepts our Non-Aggression Pact ! We have friends in low places now. We have captured a spy, and are no longer terrorized ! We're putting the squeeze on him now. Our retreating scout looks like it can do some good blockading the Sakkra outpost of Milonni. I design the LRIFCorvette1 (Long Range laser + nuclear missile), which is cheaper than our current Frigate and might pack a little more punch. A mix of our LRFrigate1, LRIFCorvette1, and a scout or two for detection purposes should be a nice force for the early game. Income is 670 (-39)

Turn 34: We kill a spy. Good. Unrest ranges from 0-14. Not bad. Our buddy Ivaq is sending an Indirect Fire detachment to Bjorntoft -- this isn't a sign of Bad Things to come is it ? Income is 603 (+1)

Turn 35: We recruit our second scientific spy -- 9/9/39/95. All right. Now all we need is an enemy empire contact and away we go. BlueNote at 4/9/35/95 will be inserted once we make contact. Rhoja is explored -- keeping with our wonderful luck in this game, it is all Red 2 planets. Income is 628 (+11)

Turn 36: We kill a spy from Vomnast ! Good. Unrest creeps up slightly -- ranging from 0-16. Milonni turns into a full fledged colonly. We'll see how well that famous Sakkra growth does with our scout blockading ! :-) Income is 562 (+47)

Turn 37: We build our scout ship. It can only be deployed at Tali, so we do so. We kill a Saurian spy ! Good. We see a Harvester scout (Ramactha) approaching from the Sakkra territories to the east. Good, this means that the Harvesters are probably very close to the Sakkra. We can put them in a nice squeeze play by rigorously defending or advancing our own borders, and the Harversters will do the same, without us even asking nicely. This is good news. However, the scout approaching our planet with no defenses is not a Good Thing. This is when I realize I am a bonehead -- I have not deployed our stylish LRFrigate1, even though Sullla explicitly told me to. Ok, well, I deploy it now. We continue to blockade Milonni. I forget to note income and unrest.

Turn 38: We now have made contact with Gaulrdu the Saurian. Good. We will start the spy mission soon. Streamlining paperwork reduces the HFOG. Hand Blaster is ready. We send our newly built and deployed scout on a 17 turn journey to the planet southwest of Alrai. We deploy our just built Colony ship. We have built a recreation DEA on Tali4, which is helping out quite a bit with unrest across the board -- we now range from 0-11. We continue to blockade Milondi -- population is 948 and dropping, which is nice to see from the Sakkra. Income is at 626 (+42)

Turn 39: We kill a Saurian spy. Good. We explore Namuro -- it has a Y2 and an R2 planet. Keeping with our luck, at least the Y2 planet has pollution on it and it Toxic, making it slightly less than desireable. We insert BlueNote on the Sakkra. We send our colony ship to Tyr. That will only take 10 turns or so. Unrest is up to 27-31 on Tali due to Human, Piracy, and High Tax. I increase unrest spending and grants to planets, and decrease additional research grants. The blockade on Milonni has the population down to 905. Good. Income is 689 (+19)

Turn 40: We recruit the Social spy Barracuda -- 5/10/44/95. We should insert him on the Sakkra. However, I don't want to do it because I don't think it will make it through the save game process, given how Sullla's accepting the Non-Aggression Pact did not make it. So I leave Barracuda to our next leader. The Sakkra propose a Trade Agreement. I think we will break it before long, but hey, every little bit helps so we say OK. The Sakkra military strength is 3 and they control 5 planets. Our buddy Ivaq offers us warm congratulations ! He appreciates our kindness ! Very cool, we like you too (our little Senate voter ...) His military strength is 4 and he controls 4 worlds. The arrival of our LRFrigate1 scares off the Harvester scout. It disappears, and I cannot see where. Pity, I was looking forward to blowing it out of the sky. The Autofire Mass Driver is ready. I think this would be a nice gift to our buddy Ivaq in another 3-12 turns. Our extremely lame spy BlueNote was killed by the Sakkra. Slacker. We can see the Mobile project ! This is Good News, as once we can build those we can mount some very nice ground invasions. I've not used Infantry, as I believe they are pretty weak. Even Marines struggle. But Mobiles are effective, and Armor rocks. The population of Milonni is 856 and dropping. Good. Our income is 713 (+37)

Wow. That was a fast 10 turns. Definitely has taken me longer to write it up than to play it ! :-)

Turn 41: Quark Cannon is ready. We kill another spy. Good. Income is 681 (+68)

Notes for Vek:

1.) You have a LRFrigate1 at Phobeus. You can either leave it there as part of our Eastern Frontier, send it to join the blockade at Milonni, or do something even more creative with it
2.) Unrest is looking pretty good -- 0-18 is the current range
3.) We need minerals to keep our industry cranking (and it is cranking now). Several mines are in the DEA build queues, so I think they should come online, but it is something to watch
4.) Watch our funding levels. On limited war, 15-30% of our AU allocation must be towards military purposes. We are currently spending 190/977 or 19.44% towards military purposes. If it drops below 15%, then unrest will rise, and that is a Very Bad Thing
5.) Our Bioharvesters are doing really well. We are in really good shape for food.
6.) Good luck ! I think you will have a fun set of 10 turns, as it looks like you will have a few different options to make contact.

Our totals on turn 41:

140 / 39 Bioharvest (great)
93 / 107 minerals (not bad but could be better)
351 industry (good)
605 production (great, bordering on amazing)
139 (140) research (ok)

I seem to really obsess about the Unrest levels, but it seems to affect a LOT -- if it goes high, you get the double whammy of each planet taking much, much longer to build stuff, and having to spend more of your empire taxes on reducing it, which is Very Bad.

Darken.Rahl

Ok, I've got it, and am playing it right now.

Let's see what happens. : ) Wish me luck

--Vek

Nice rounds Sullar and Darken.

A couple of points. First I understand it is easier to rmember the race name than the empire name but you have to consider this, when you are on the space combat screen you see only the empire name and have no way to identify what race he is. That is why I would really like all of you to make an effort to say the empire name in your report whenever an event, good or bad, happens betwen us and them. I know you can tell what race it is by the ship's picture, my eleven years old tells me which race it is whenever I ask, "Who is that ship coming to my world?". But I am old and can't seen to remember what picture goes with what race and I am sure others are like me.

With that in mind, if the sitrep tells you which empire spy you killed, do take a note and report it. A friendly empire should not be spying on us, if he shows as friendly and is spying on us, you can be sure he will not but a loyal ally if we ever get to that stage.

Second, do read the previous players report. Once in a while, it contains useful information. :) For instance, I know exactly where the Ithkul home world is, and said so in my report. Until QS provides us with useful in-game tools to do such things, we need to come up with a method for tracking that kind of information throughout the game. So far, we have Ramuchtha home world, an Ithkul empire, west of Nicrom across the worm hole at Ganagweh. We also know of Gaulrdu home world, a Sakkra empire, west of Knaa (or shall we say SW of Milonni since we consider Milonni a part of our empire). If someone has a good idea as to how to keep that info around and make it easy for each of us to know when it is our turn to play, please speak up! :)

I do not think the mission type of a spy matters on defense, any spy at home will hunt and kill enemy spies. So the type of spies we recruit depends mostly on what we want them to do on offense. Keep in mind that spies die of old age, you will not be able to keep more than 6 to 8 spies active at any time. So it is best to send old spies out on missions and keep young one at home, that is how you maintain a full active roster. If someone knows of a way to tell which is the oldest spy, share with us this gem of knowledge.

Finally, I don't see this as a competition, what matters is that we have fun playing. Now, if I was playing this to win at all cost, I would not blocade Milonni. Let the Sakkra outpost grow to a colony then take it over. If we capture a single Sakkra colony, then all we have to do is to make sure colony ships only come out of that colony and we have won the game.

Edit: One more thing about ship names. Using the ship size if fine with me, may I suggest the following abbreviations.

Mission type:

LR - Long range
SR - Short range
PD - Point defense
IF - Indirect fire
CV - Carrier vehicule
APC - Troop ships
RP - Recon picket (should contain at least 1 rack of 10-20 point defense nuclear missiles)
RC - Recon, cheap (simple cheap scouts)

Ship class:

LA - Lancer
CU - Cutter
CO - Corvette
FI - Frigate (biggest class that can be built by an undevelop colony)
DT - Destroyer
LC - Light Cruiser
CR - Cruiser
BC - Battle Cruiser
DC - Dread Cruiser (too many cruiser class in this game :( )
DN - Dreadnought
BB - Battleship
TT - Titan
MM - Behemoth
LL - Leviathan

Double letters are capital ships, classes with a vowel are pretty much useless in this game because of the limit on t he number of ships.

So a IFBB3b is a warp 3 indirect fire battleship with a second generation weapon system. Not very poetic, but quite functional.

Ok, here we go.

Turn 41:
Checked Queues for Planets, Figured out what the Home system was.
I sent the Frigate to Milonni.
I asked for a Non-Agressing pact with Gaulrdu
I asked for a intellegence T/A with Ivaquaria
Sent "Three" into the Gaulrdu Empire

Turn 42:
Class 1 shield is done
Finished exploring the Herculis system, Herculis 1 has a coloney of Darlok
Three made it in alright

Turn 43:
Ivaquaria turned down the T/A
Tali II finished a Industry DEA, Tali IV finished a Reasearch DEA.
Found and Killed a Sariar spy.
Our spy blew up some stuff. : )

Turn 44:
Tali V became a coloney
Sent a non-agression pact to Gaulrdu
Improved Economic T/A sent to Ivaquaria

Turn 45:
LRIFCorvete1 is completed on Tali II
Our spy is causing unrest
Started building Troop ships, we need a ground army
We're low on minerals, so I built a bunch of Mineral DEA's on Tali V

Turn 46:
New spy ready (Krikkitone) is ready. Nice name
Gaulrdu turned down the offer. I intend to kill him first.
Ivaquaria accepted the T/A. Good, he ill be spared our wrath (For now)
Three was captured. : ( And he was so promising. 10 cloak, 10 dagger.
Crusier is in the prototype stage. Yay
Sent ships to Pheobeus to discourage a coloney ship

Turn 47:
Three was captured (Again?)
CRFrigate1 is ready and being sent out.
Unrest on Tali II. Eek. I drop taxes to 15%
Indu San has been explored, one Green planet.
For some unknown reason, the task force I created decided to go off to some unknown star, and will take 105 turns to get there. ?!.
Bah.

Turn 48:
New leader joined us. Ranoun Falaliluisu (Nice Name)
+10% Factory Output
-10% Food Output
+2% Maintenence Fee
Spy's strike at our scientists. I raise Oppressometer a bit.

Turn 49:
Found and Killed a spy. : )
Gaulrdu asks for Open Border T/A, I stall
I make a Crusier design, CR (Crusier) LRA (Long Range Attack) StarS (Starship). Should work. : )

Turn 50:
Ivaquaria accepted
Another spy caught and killed
Three was captured (Again!?)

On Turn 51:
A bunch of DEA's have finished, and a new spy is ready.

Problem, I cannot attach the file, it is too big. What should I do?

--Vek

Vek, you have to upload the file and link it on a post. Take a look at the very bottom of this page, there is an "upload file" link. Click on it and follow the instructions.

You had an uneventful round but don't worry, by the next time you get the game there should be a lot going on. :)

Originally posted by JaxomCA
A friendly empire should not be spying on us, if he shows as friendly and is spying on us, you can be sure he will not but a loyal ally if we ever get to that stage.

Is that actually true? I thought everybody spied on everybody else as a matter of routine. That's the way it works in the real world, after all :)

Ah,aha. Excellent.

Here it is, have fun Jaxom

And yes, I did have something of an uneventful round, but I don't mind. : )

RBMOO1 Turn 51 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMOO1_Team_B_Turn_51.zip)


--Vek

EDIT: Corner. Yay. : )

Jaffa, the documentation seems to think so, comments from the beta testers give it credibility and my own experience in a couple of games where I seem to mostly catch spies from hostile empires. I also noticed a decline in relations with somewhat friendly races when they begin spying on me (and getting caught).

Got it.

Jaxom, from my very limited experience with the game, I've found that everyone spies on everyone else. Yes, just like the real world. ;) I routinely catch spies from my closest allies, and it doesn't seem to affect relations much at all. I don't think that catching their spies means that they have hostile intentions against us. We have few enough friends as it is; no need to go irritating the fishies by demanding that they stop spying on us. That kind of didn't work too well the first time we tried it. :lol:

And I don't mean to be rude, but I'm not going to type "Ivaquaria" and "Gaulrdu" when calling them fish and lizards will do. If we get back into the Senate and have contact with lots of rival empires again I'll be more specific, but for now we've got two neighbors (three if you count the Harvesters on the other side of the wormhole) and it's pretty easy to tell them apart. :)

Turn 51

A task force is on its way to a 200 turns journey, I disband the task force, better have a badly needed warship out of commission for 5 turns than 200.

A task force is on its way to Milonni, with a stated purpose of blockading the system. However the task force contains a colony ship and a frigate, was there a purpose to this? There is a Y1y world in Milonni which may prove useful so I let the task force continue to see what happens. My guess is, once the colony ship lands, the frigate will go in the penalty box.

There is an Ithkul outpost in Phobeus, this spells trouble for us down the line. I mark the planet for a colony ship and will try to outgrow the dreaded monster. That happened because we don't have a military claim on the system, actually we have no military claim anywhere.

Our colony ship reached Tyr, but the Trilarian have colonies on both world there. Hmmm, where else to send it? How far can we stretch while being able to really claim the system? For now, I re direct the colony ship to Kali which has a nice empty G1g world for us. Since we have a defensive alliance with the Trilarian, they might even protect our world.

We have an imprisoned spy in the Sakkra empire, his loyalty is 65 so I retire him before he sell us out. This, along with the blockade at Milonni, brings me pause. What is our overall strategy here? Do we want to get back in the senate? If so, we need two friends in the senate and the Sakkra would be one of them. Do we want to take over the galaxy by brute force? If so we should be building warships and begin to absorb the Sakkra empire.

This actually leads to a bigger question, what kind of game do you want to play?

Do you want to setup a goal and achieve it? Great, let's decide on an overall strategy, devise a plan to achieve it and do our best in each of our turns to implement the plan and see what we learn.

Do you want to react to whatever happens? Fine, I'll play my round the best I can with what we have. That will not take much of my time and might even prove educational and entertaining.

Do you want to each pull the empire in the direction that fits your playing style? Bad, at least for me. I'll just press end turn 10 times and tell you what happened. Or better yet, I'll let someone else captain the team and apologize to Sirian for dropping the ball.

This will probably sound rude to you, no offense is intended to any of you in this post or any of my previous post. If you can't tell by now, I prefer we setup a global goal and work as a team to achieve that goal. If you all prefer to pull the empire whichever way suits you, the game will be no fun to me and I will be no fun to you.

So I put the game on hold until each team member reply to this message.

P.S.: This is an inaugural MOO SG, I am simply trying to help setting up some good practices which will work well for any games. I know, there is only one fish and one lizard in our current game, there is no confusion possible here. ;)
Now I may be totally out of line about the purpose of the team captain. If so, I apologize to all and will let the show go on.

A task force is on its way to a 200 turns journey, I disband the task force, better have a badly needed warship out of commission for 5 turns than 200.

Sorry about that. It went on it's own and I was not sure what to do about it. :blush:

This actually leads to a bigger question, what kind of game do you want to play?
Do you want to setup a goal and achieve it? Great, let's decide on an overall strategy, devise a plan to achieve it and do our best in each of our turns to implement the plan and see what we learn.


Ok, let's decide. That sound good to me, and I would prefere to have a plan instead of just making this up as I go along.



This will probably sound rude to you, no offense is intended to any of you in this post or any of my previous post. If you can't tell by now, I prefer we setup a global goal and work as a team to achieve that goal. If you all prefer to pull the empire whichever way suits you, the game will be no fun to me and I will be no fun to you.

No problem at all, and I don't find this rude at all. So, what is the plan? Glactic Domination, or the Senate? Or the five X's? Lets make a choice.

I mean, if we are not going to have fun, why bother? Let's make a plan and try to avoid the :smoke:

--Vek

BTW, I would prefere Galactic Domination. :tank:

:thumbsup: Jaxom

I'm all for coming up with a global strategy and pursuing it, as well. My personal preference is to go for a conquest victory, because I feel the Senate victories happen before you get all the nice toys (larger ships, weapons). However, it seems like that is an extremely difficult task to pull off, especially since an empire all the way across the galaxy that you have no contact with and no ability to influence calmly expands by not running into the RL Human players and wins the Senate. So the most efficient path to victory seems to be the Senate.

I know we need friendly relations with 2 empires for a Senate win, but it seems like we don't have enough room to expand and make sufficiently large / powerful empire if we don't take out Gaulrdu.

I don't really care which victory option we pursue, Senate or conquest. Both would be fun in this game, I think. So I abstain from the vote and leave it to the 3 of you to decide. I will support whichever track is decided to the best of my ability during my turns.

Regarding my turns, I did note in my handwritten notes which empire all the spies we caught came from, and yes, I know this is valuable information. However, I had difficultly reading my hurridly taken notes when it came time to type them up so I had to genericize a bit on which spies we captured. I will try to print more clearly for future rounds. :)

This is the first SG I've participated in (though I've read most of the Civ3 adventures), so I'm still figuring out the process to an extent.

Darken.Rahl

We're boxed in between three other empires at this point, so unless we want to confine ourselves to ~5-10 systems for the game, we're going to need to go on the offensive at some point. Staying friendly with the Trilarians and the Sakkra might not be a bad idea if we want to go after the Ithkul. At the same time though, if we want to get back into the center of the galaxy, we're going to have to fight our way through the lizards sooner or later.

There's no reason why we couldn't adopt an expansionist strategy which would allow us to pursue either condition. That is, continue to expand - through other empires if necessary when blocked - while still trying to get back into the Senate. We don't need everyone to love us to get back in; support from the New Orions and one other race might be enough. And our position is really no worse than what we would have if we simply had not started in the Senate at all.

Essentially, I think the "unsettled land" (in Civ3 terms) is gone and now we need to grab some by force. My vote would be to go through the Ithkul or Sakkra, whichever is more conveinient, while keeping the Trilarians as our friends in the hopes of one day returning to the Senate. The AI isn't very good at protecting its planets early on; we should be able to make some decent gains in the next 50 turns if we devote ourselves to that effort.

And no, I don't find stepping back and posing a "where are we going" question to be rude either. :goodjob:

EDIT: Have to post this before I leave. I will be in Greensboro NC this weekend for the (women's) ACC basketball tournament and thus unable to play the next turn. Skip me if the game passes to me before Sunday - which it almost certainly will.

Ok, here is a snapshot of the western marches of our empire. There are 3 good planets to claim in the green dot stars. Too bad there is no planet available in Tyr, it would give us contact back with the NO. The ship above Tyr is a colony ship. We also have a colony ship in reserve and one could be available in 5 turns if I disband the frigate/colony task force.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_tb_westmap.jpg

The colored dots represent the best world to us in each system. The 'F' on Tyr means a full system, yes, 2 green worlds and both belongs to the fishes.

All star lanes lead to Orion, but how fast do we want to get there?

The Panoramic road. Send the colony ship above Tyr to Indu San right now. It will take 12 turns to get there and provide contact with the NO. Placing a colony there would stretch us very thin if we try to defend it, and it would be useless if we loose it. The AI might not do much invading but it does a lot of blockading.

Give me the NO now! Send the colony ship from Tyr to Alrai. The best planet in there is all red, so this outpost will not survive by itself unless we send 3 or maybe even 4 more colony ships. The world is quite far from our core but is somewhat protected by the fishes. Once we have a planet in Dromos, we can give Alrai to the NO to gain their favor, removing the need to make friend with the lizard. The whole thing would be a costly endeavor. An alternative is to wait for the scout SW of Alrai to reach the unknown system (3 turns) and hope for a green, or at least yellow world.

The long and winding road. Send our 3 colony ships to claim a planet in the 3 green dots. The first task of the colony in Dromos, after building basic infrastructure, would be to build enough colony ships to colonize Alrai, then go on with plan b. We are looking at 30-40 turns before contact with the NO.

I will have no NO! Get ourselves into range, but don't try to gain contact with the NO for a while. As per plan c, we colonize the green worlds but make no attempt to colonize Alrai until much later.


I personally favor plan c, specially if we are going to fight the lizards. We will not be ready to fight them for at least 30 turns. When we are ready we could decide if we try to get in the senate before or after the war. Plan a would be a gamble as I believe Herculis leads into bug's territory. Plan b would devote way too many resources without providing any growth in power. Even if the SW system turns out to have a green world, it may be wiser to delay contact with the NO for a bit. Of course, if any of you propose a better plan I am all for it. Plan c is also a gamble, I am hoping the fishes will stay our friends at least long enough for us to buildup defenses in their systems. If Tyr is any indication, we seem to have some overlap with the Trilarian preferred habitability so we may anger them by taking the green worlds in their system.

Let's take a look at the eastern marches.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_tb_eastmap.jpg

The Lizard's colony in Milonni is below a 1000 population, yet we cannot set migration to it or send a colony ship to it. There is an Ithkul outpost in Phobeus. No matter what we decide to do on this, we have to put a reasonable blockade over Ganagweh to stop the Ithkul from defiling our little paradise.

The Ithkul invasion, a bane or a boon?

Monsterville, because they are sentient too! Send a colony ship on their outpost and outgrow them. The world they are on is a very rich Y2g with Klakon labor, so it would be a useful world for us. This option would cost little but a delayed growth on the western marches. I have no idea what happens if we have Ithkul citizens in our empire, it could be a very bad thing.

Have hammer, will smash vermin. Let the outpost grow to a colony then smash it to gain points with the senate members. This may require having contact with the senate races to be effective. This cost but a few decent ships on permanent Ithkul smashing duty.


I slightly favor plan b but I am quite tempted by plan a, even though it may make us loose the game. I am not playing to win at all cost, in fact I don't mind loosing if the game is fun, as some of you may know from the recent Civ3 slug fest on human players. :) (Hey Charis, I may yet beat you to the infamy!) It may have no impact to have Ithkul citizens in your empire, shame on QS if it is so. We can still do some Ithkul bashing across the worm hole, so opting for plan a doesn't stop us from going for plan b too.

Smelly Lizards, friend or foe? Either way, tastes great fried!

Save a lizard! Do nothing, accept that our empire stops at Ganagweh, which we have to fortify anyway, until we own the Ithkul. This costs nothing now and may be the deciding vote for our return to the senate if the NO abstain. But it will become quite expansive later on because they will always have more population than us. We will have to capture their world or bomb them to 0 pop to get a chance at the presidency.

Just one, I swear! We can mount a small assault on Milonni. The fleet and troops should be ready by the time Milonni grows back to colony status. Go in, take over, dig in, promote lizard growth in our systems. We may then stop there and make nice with the lizard, or push on to their home world once we can afford it. This is probably the simplest way to victory.

Cutoff their legs, now! Gear up for a total war on the Sakkra until we control their home world. With our best world at 192 IP (industry points) and 1K revenue, we are on the loosing side of a war of attrition. Coming out on top would give us a huge boost in population and guarantee a senate win in a short time. That is, if we can do it in less than a 100 turns.

Die Lizard scum! We go at them all the way, there is no stopping until we control all of their worlds. Same benefits and pitfalls as c, only bigger.


Plan b is the most appealing to me. We can time it just right so that Milonni will be an easy spoil but it will tax our resources for a while as we will need a strong fleet there until Milonni can build it's own defense. Getting to mobilization center will be a high priority but we are almost there already (Mob center at level 8, currently at level 6, 93% done). Whatever we decide to do about the Sakkra, we will have to strike them at some point.


So here you have it folks, discuss at will as I will not be getting to the game until tomorrow.

P.S.: Many of these options mention senate victory. We don't have to take this path, but we do need to monitor the senate to succeed at the other 2 victory types.

Vek, I don't understand what happened with the nomad task force, I sure hope it is not a bug. Sometimes you can divert a task force of its intended destination but I don't yet understand when that is possible. You can however disband a task force and send your ships in the penalty box for up to 5 turns initially, more turns later on. So when you need a task force somewhere and all your ships are moving the wrong way, you have to decide if the penalty is worth it. In this case, it is quite obvious what will be faster. And don't worry about weed, you have an opportunity to be the first to "mine the desert" here. Unless the "empty threat to a senate member" wins the price but the jury is still out on that one.

Darken, I know what you mean, my handwriting is horrible. I write the report in notepad as I play the game and I had to load from 3 turns back when I saw my note about "we kill an enemy spy".

Sulla, I hope you will catch this in time and provide feedback before your trip. You will likely have the honor of launching the first assault when your turn comes around.

Save a lizard? :lol:

I like the sound of that plan. Very Jaffa-esque! :cooool:

Of course, I don't have a vote in this senate. Glad you guys are having fun.

:sheep: :fish:


- Sirian

Jaffa, I would be happy to cede the infamy to you, good luck! :hammer:

Sirian, it's kind of striking, looking at your avatar on the last post, to see:

1600 Pennsylvania... while talking about Senate votes.

This thread is B not A, but I also wanted to mention I got 100% waylaid last night and didn't get to MooSG1 or Inf2 as I hoped (ie, pulled without choice into watching a foreign films with subtitles) Fortunately, it was a semi-interesting one -- 'Ran', a Japanese / Samurai version of King Leer. The battle scenes were very interesting, and *very* much reminded me of a Medieval: Shogun demo. Mounted archers, samurai, muskets, cavalry (spears), archers, color bearers, rolling terrain, formations, ebb and flow.

Charis

Originally posted by JaxomCA


All star lanes lead to Orion, but how fast do we want to get there?



The long and winding road. Send our 3 colony ships to claim a planet in the 3 green dots. The first task of the colony in Dromos, after building basic infrastructure, would be to build enough colony ships to colonize Alrai, then go on with plan b. We are looking at 30-40 turns before contact with the NO.



Sounds good to me.



The Ithkul invasion, a bane or a boon?

Have hammer, will smash vermin. Let the outpost grow to a colony then smash it to gain points with the senate members. This may require having contact with the senate races to be effective. This cost but a few decent ships on permanent Ithkul smashing duty.




I like plan b. :tank:
... Or rather :rocket:




Smelly Lizards, friend or foe? Either way, tastes great fried.

Just one, I swear! We can mount a small assault on Milonni. The fleet and troops should be ready by the time Milonni grows back to colony status. Go in, take over, dig in, promote lizard growth in our systems. We may then stop there and make nice with the lizard, or push on to their home world once we can afford it. This is probably the simplest way to victory.

Cutoff their legs, now! Gear up for a total war on the Sakkra until we control their home world. With our best world at 192 IP (industry points) and 1K revenue, we are on the loosing side of a war of attrition. Coming out on top would give us a huge boost in population and guarantee a senate win in a short time. That is, if we can do it in less than a 100 turns.



Mmm....Plan b is good, but I like c more, just because I am a warmonger. :rocket: I say. Either works, take your pick. You *are* the team leader, right? : )


Vek, I don't understand what happened with the nomad task force, I sure hope it is not a bug. Sometimes you can divert a task force of its intended destination but I don't yet understand when that is possible. You can however disband a task force and send your ships in the penalty box for up to 5 turns initially, more turns later on. So when you need a task force somewhere and all your ships are moving the wrong way, you have to decide if the penalty is worth it. In this case, it is quite obvious what will be faster. And don't worry about weed, you have an opportunity to be the first to "mine the desert" here. Unless the "empty threat to a senate member" wins the price but the jury is still out on that one.


Believe me, I wish I knew. I made the task force, ended the turn, went to click on the newly created task force and saw "ETA 105 turns". :confused: So tried to get it to go somewhere else. "ETA 210 turns". Crap. I wasn't sure about what to do about it, so I left it.

And you're not supposed to mine the desert? Hmm, no wonder I never got anywhere in Civ3. : )

--Vek

Jaffa, Jaxom what's the difference? Hey they are almost 50% the same. :hammer:

And here I thought I was being clever. It was irrigate the desert before the cow. Mining the desert first would be the absolute unbeatable weed. :)

On a more serious note, Vek, the plans we lay out now will happen over at least one round from each of us, if will work better if we are all on the same page about it.

So you are a warmonger? Have you played the Ithkul yet? They are a lot of fun, and the empire's name don't give me any trouble. If my fleet encounters other ships, they are my enemy. If a system is not in my color, it is a source of food. :)

Originally posted by Charis
Jaffa, I would be happy to cede the infamy to you, good luck! :hammer:

Who? Me? What did I do now? :confused:

I think you mean Jaxom?

Originally posted by JaxomCA

On a more serious note, Vek, the plans we lay out now will happen over at least one round from each of us, if will work better if we are all on the same page about it.

So you are a warmonger? Have you played the Ithkul yet? They are a lot of fun, and the empire's name don't give me any trouble. If my fleet encounters other ships, they are my enemy. If a system is not in my color, it is a source of food. :) [/B]

Wars are fun. If I had my way...:die:

Yes, I would like everyone to be on the same page. It just makes sense. Mind you, I don't *have* to blow up everything I see, I just like to. :rocket: I say. If someone is stupid enough to wander into my territory, he deserves whatever he gets. :sniper:.

I will go with whatever is decided, it's all good.

--Vek

Well, I think claiming a planet in Dromos is mandatory. Trade, unrest, and colony growth all seem to go rapidly down hill if you are more than 1 system away from all of your other worlds. However, I don't want to anger the Trilarians any more than necessary, as they have been our only friends in this short game. However, if we start claiming unclaimed worlds in their systems and they attack us, then they deserve nothing less than total annihilation.

I think we should allow both Milonni and Phoebeus to reach full colony size, and then invade and take over. Having multiple races in our empire will increase our expansion options and rate, which to me is a Very Good Thing.

While Irdu San is nice, I think it is too far away for us to form a colony there until we have some closer. By taking over Milonni and Phoebus, we can perhaps have some options to fill in the Red planets like Alrai, Rhoje, and Herculis, which would make colonizing Irdu San nice and pleasant. Also, I am in favor of delaying contact with the new orions a bit, as their spies are just insanely effective in the early rounds due to their tech lead.

So my votes would be:
1. c -- The long and winding road. Colonize Dromos and Kali, see if the Trilarians accept it or respond negatively, and go from there.

2. c (new option) -- allow Ithkul colony to grow to a full colony then invade with ground forces and take over.

3. b -- Just one, I swear ! -- Take over Milonni with a ground invasion force, and then assess the possibilities / difficulties / cost of further Sakkra conquests, or make Milonni our Eastern frontier and defend, defend, defend.

I like these 3 options because I think we can pursue all 3 simultaneously with little production impact, and it puts us in a nice strategic position in 15-30 turns. By the time we contact the NO, we should be a solid empire. If we can find enough votes to get back in the Senate, we should be in good shape.

Darken.Rahl

Sorry for the delay, it is spring break here and I have two kids to take care of.

Sulla didn't give his vote, but what I know of him makes me think he would favor a cautious expansion. So here is the overall plan:

Short term, establish a strong core of worlds between Dromos and Milonni. This is human territory, non-friendly ships should be shot down on sight.

Mid term, get back in the senate so we can keep an eye on the other empires. Fighting the Itkul will be helpful for that. Settling some worlds to buy the NO vote is desirable, keeping good relations with the Trilarian is a must. So no spying on them and no shooting down their ships.

Long term, sole survivor. This goal may be unreachable because of a bug when attacking a system with more than one planet. So we may have to fall back on senate victory.


Here are our goals for the next 50 turns or so:

The long and winding road.
To achieve this, we need 3 colony ships and a solid production world in one of the 3 system. We have 3 such ships available so getting the world should be taken care of on my round. I mark these 3 worlds for a colony ship.


Dromos III, a poor barren G2g7 world, should emphasize industry. It is a red world for fishes.
Kali IV, a rich subsistence G1g5 world, should push badly needed mining.
Sardonyx IV, an average barren G2g6 world, should be a mix of mine, farms and industry.


Monsterville.
Let the Ithkul outpost grow and capture it with troops. This will require a troop corps at least, so 12 marines and 3 transports. On my round, I will make sure enough of them are on the build queues, the sooner the better to let them gain experience.

Just one, I swear!
Let Milonni's outpost grow and capture it with troops, Another marine corps and 3 transports. An IF flotilla will be needed for defense as well.

To enforce our claims on these system, we need some kind of navy up and running. We need at least a squadron size, preferably flotilla size, IF/Carrier fleet above Dromos, Ganagweh and Milonni. That means 3-9 IF/Carrier ships, and 3-12 PD ships. Since we can't afford such a navy with our current production, we will start with a squadron over Dromos and Ganagweh, and a flotilla over Milonni. Ganagweh is the highest priority and Dromos is the lowest. We have a CRLgtcru that will make a fine carrier design. I don't like the LFIR design as everything I have read so far indicates ships work at their best when they specialize for their mission assignment. I leave it in for now but design an IFLC to be the capital ships for our IF fleet. I also design a PDFR for point defense, but we can't afford to put a nuclear missile on them yet so it will not be useful to take on planets with missile bases. It should work fine as support for the blockading fleets. We also have a SRcovette design that will work well for point defense purpose and we have a couple of these on the build queues.

We have a big mineral shortage, so I take a look at each planets to make sure our rich worlds are mining. May new mining DEA will be built shortly so this problem should fix itself. Tali IV has 2 recreation DEA, a military DEA and is trying to build a government DEA. If these were the viceroy choices, they suck. I replace the government DEA with a research DEA and will replace one of the recreation DEA with industry once our mineral shortage is fixed.

I queue up some infantry batches to be used as military police for unrest reduction. We will have marines soon and we will use them for the planned invasions. I reduce the oppressometer to our minimum, our defensive spies should be more than enough to catch enemy spies. We need to buildup and consolidate first, so there is no point in sending out our spies at this point, keep them at home for defense. After some reading and researching, it seems the type of spy matters on defense too, so I go back to the my initial plan of recruiting one of each type in sequence. We NEED to have 2 of each type at home for a reasonable defense, try to follow the recruiting cycle.

Shopping list of military hardware:

Capital ships, 3 minimum, 6 would be nice, 0 in stock, ETA to min: 21 turns for carriers, 30 turns for IF. I can use our existing LRFrigate and LRIFFrigate to setup the most pressing blockade at Ganagweh, so I queue up a batch of 5 CRlghtcru on our home world.

PD/SR ships, 6 minimum, 12 would be nice, 1 in stock, ETA to min: 16 turns for corvettes, 25 for frigates. Tali II, our second best world, will complete a SRcorvete soon. I'll use it on the Ganagweh blockade. I queue up one more SRcorvete and a batch of 5.

Colony ships, 3 minimum, 5 would be nice, 3 in stock, a couple of colony ships should be queued once the blockading needs are fulfill.

Troops, 24 needed, 50 would be nice, 0 in stock, ETA to min: we will have marines soon, the requirement will be addressed later. For now I queue up some infantries for MP purposes.



Turn 51

Diplomacy: We have an imprisoned spy in the Sakkra empire, his loyalty is 65 so I retire him before he sell us out. We are not quite ready to take this world over, and there is no point on making the lizard angry before we are, so the blockading scout is sent into the penalty box to be reassign elsewhere.

Economy: I reduce empire tax to 11% so that each planet can generate more tax and I set our policy to Peace through strength, we need our planets to develop before we can consider a limited war. The colony ship above Tyr is sent to Dromos.

Military: A task force is on its way to a 200 turns journey, I disband the task force, better have a badly needed warship out of commission for 5 turns than 200.

A task force is on its way to Milonni, with a stated purpose of blockading the system. However the task force contains a colony ship and a frigate, was there a purpose to this? The task force is disbanded to recover the colony ship for other uses.


Turn 52

Diplomacy: The Sakkra ambassador offers an open border TA courteously. I am uncertain what is the impact of breaking agreements so I refuse with a cool emphasis. Our captured spy dies in captivity.

Science: Marines enter prototype stage, that is good news.

Economy: A couple of mining DEA come online but that is not enough by far. A colony ship is auto-sent to Dromos III so I divert our previous colony ship to Sardonyx. Unrest drops across the board except on Tali III where they complain about high tax and piracy. I had raised local tax to 23% to get our big ships out sooner, I drop it back to 21%. :(

Military: A Trilarian scout appears above Bjorntoft, on its way to Phobeus. We can't do much about that.



Turn 53

A random event causes our relations to drop across the board, a problem with the translation software it seems. :(

Diplomacy: We kill a Sariar spy. I reason with Ivaquaria for an intelligence agreement.

Science: Marines are ready to be built. A couple of planets complete their infantries, I queue 10 marines so they gain experience before we need them.

Economy: Unrest went down a bit on Tali III, I assign an infantry division to police the population. I reduce unrest allocation on the budget and raise the science allocation with the savings. I set military allocation to about 20% of our income.


Turn 54

Diplomacy: Gaulrdu the lizard ponders about open border again, I counter politely, asking for knowledge of space ports. Some unrest cause by spies, nothing major. A cloaked figure destroy our imperial seat of government *grumble*

Economy: More mining DEA are completed, we are almost out of the red.


Turn 55

Diplomacy: Our leader is assassinated. *grumble* We catch and kill a Vomnast spy. Ivaquaria accepts the intelligence TA. I offer him soil enrichment and policy theory for sub-light drives, using a reasonable stance.

Economy: Infantry divisions are assigned to MP duty on all our worlds.


Turn 56

Diplomacy: A spy destroy a system seat. *grumble* Gaulrdu speculates our request for space ports is coming too soon and rejects our counter-offer. The intelligence TA reveals Ivaquaria is quite active in his exploration.

Economy: A scout reaches Schwan, SW of Alrai, and discovers a SSy4 with active volcanos. This provides a much simpler mean to contact the NO. A colony task force is auto-formed and sent to Sardonyx so the manual colony ship is diverted to Kali, ETA 2 turns.

Military: Our ships are out of the penalty box, I form a LR squadron with our 2 warships and a scout and send it to Ganagweh.


Turn 57

Diplomacy: Ivaquaria turns down our offer. I plead with him, offering fighter armor, marines and very light armor for his sub-light drives.

Economy: Spies are causing unrest, but unrest level is 0 across the board. I further reduce unrest allocation and raise planetary grants.

Military: 20 marines are completed, a couple of troops ships are queued up as the Ithkul outpost approaches colony status.


Turn 58

Diplomacy: Diplomatic channels close down with the Sakkra empire, their world on Milonni has reverted to outpost status. Looks like it is not a good world for them. Our leader is poisoned again? Oh well, looks like he will be gone for good now.

Economy: Unrest climbs a little but is well within reasonable limits.


Turn 59

Diplomacy: Ivaquaria is pleased with our offer but turns it down. I beg him to reconsider, replacing very light armor with fusion cannon. A spy destroy our system seat in Tali, again. :mad: We have plenty of social spies, aren't they doing anything?

Economy: Kali IV is settled. Because of hostile gazes, it cost 1300 PP to build an industry there! Oh well, that planet will never be useful. Tali III falls into unrest level 1, more MP is assigned to the planet. :( We finally get out of the red in mineral production.



Turn 60

Diplomacy: A spy steals fighter mass driver from us, yet we have 3 scientific spies on defense. Looks like defensive spies are useless, the next leader may want to raise the oppressometer to address the problem.

Economy: Our colony ship is stuck above Dromos. We didn't have any problems creating a colony in Kali, why won't it land in Dromos? I clear the colony order and reset it. The Trilarian colony has a fighter base, could it be why we can't land? Unrest allocation is increased at the expense of planetary grants.

Military: An Ithkul recon ship shows up at Ganagweh, on its way to Phobeus. The LR squadron can stop at Phobeus next turn, I order it to do so. A squadron of LR frigates is deployed at Tali to gain space superiority at Dromos.



Final SitRep

Contact with Ramuctha, an Ithkul empire. This means the outpost in Phobeus is now a colony.
Ivaquaria refuses our exchange offer, check the diplomacy.
Spies are hurting our scientists and causing unrest. You may want to raise the oppressometer or wait for our defensive spies to do something.
A LR detachment is ready above Tali, you should sent it to Dromos to gain space superiority. The Trilarian colony in Dromos has a fighter base and a system ship, so our colony ship can't land. If you decide to forget about Dromos, there is an half decent planet in Schwan.
A LR squadron is over Phobeus, you should leave it there until we invade the Ithkul world. Also, an Ithkul recon ship will show up next turn over Phobeus. You will have enough transports to send a Marine corps in 2 turns.


Turn 61 save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_teamb_turn61.zip)

Have fun!

UPDATED ROSTER:

Jaxom
Sulla --> Up
Darken --> On deck
Vek --> Below deck :)

Umm, except that I'm already back and Darken hasn't posted a "got it" yet, so I will take the next turn. :D I read through the discussion above and will try to follow as best as possible. Our position already looks significantly better than it was on my last turn, nice work!

Hey Jaxom,

Looks like a pretty good plan and a solid round. Marines are definitely good in the early stages. How on earth did you product so many so quickly ? 20 marines to take over 2 planets is a GREAT start.

A few comments and observations:

1.) Viceroy choices for Gov't, Mil, Rec DEAs -- don't blame our struggling Viceroy for those, blame me. I like to put 1 Gov't, 1 Mil, and 1 Rec on all size 5 and under planets, and 2 Recs on all size 5+ planets. Seems to go a long way towards reducing costly Unrest. As our technology develops, our planets will get terraformed and the population limits will go towards 80-150. At those levels, you absolutely need multiple Unrest reduction factors. Once you get a DEA built with several addons to it, it is a real pain to delete it with all of its addons. So that is why I pre-allocate a lot of Unrest reduction. Also, as we are beginning to see, spies seem adept at blowing up our system and imperial seats of Gov't. So having all planets in a system have the ability to rebuild them when they inevitably get blown up seems to be a Good Thing. Also, I think spaceports are first built in Gov't DEA zone (but can eventually be built in all DEAs), and spaceports are definitely key to getting any planetary finances going, and planetary finances are key to getting the planet to be productive in any sort of way. I definitely don't mind seeing my DEA choices get veto'd, but I would at least like to know if my theory on them being necessary is incorrect.

2.) You mention that you dialed back our economy to "Peace Through Strength", but that you put our Military budget at 20%. The limit of "Peace Through Strength" military spending is 20% before the Military budget causes additional unrest. So if we miss our calculations and go to 20.1% military spending, Unrest increases sharply with "Peace Through Strength". That is why I had our financial plan on a more flexible (15-30% military) Limited War. Other than reducing unrest due to funding levels, I haven't seen much other impact of changing this setting. Since the Humans have "Human" as a "bonus" cause of Unrest, I think doing all we can to minimize Unrest is a Good Thing (of course, I think I tend to obsess about Unrest, too)

3.) Our leaders getting assassinated are due to Political spies. Even with 2 Cloak 10 Political spies on defense in another game, my leaders weren't making it more than 2-4 turns. I think leaders are basically worthless -- they cost too much to protect with Political spies, and seem to get killed quickly even with good defensive spies, anyway. I would vote not to make Political spies, and let the leaders live their short lifespans. Basically, I would look at leaders as a 1-4 turn bonus, and not factor them into any real planning. Just my opinion, the rest of you may think I'm wrong.

4.) You mentioned that you weren't sure why our System and Imperial seats of Government were getting destroyed even though we have Social spies. Those buildings are protected by Diplomatic spies, and I'm not sure what our Diplo spy status is (if any). Social spies just handle Unrest, I think.

Regarding spies, I've found that spies with less than a 9 or 10 in Cloak seem to be pretty worthless in defense. So if a spy has a 7-10 in Dagger and anything less than a 9 in Cloak, I tend to send them off to other empires hoping to get lucky. They seem to mostly get captured 1-3 turns into their missions, but they don't seem to do me a heck of a lot of good on the home front, either. On the rare occasion where a Scientific spy is able to steal a technology, it makes it all worthwhile. I am unconvinced of the effectiveness of Military, Economic, or Diplomatic spies on the enemy. Having 1 (or maybe 2) of each on the Home Defense front is definitely a Good Thing, though.

Regarding invading enemy planets, I think I posted the bug on the Realms Beyond board. I have since learned a bit more. First of all, it is definitely possible to invade or starve all enemy planets in a system. You don't seem to always pick which option you get, though. With 20k+ population planets, you can almost always invade. Though if you try to invade a 150k population planet with a 34 member Army, sometimes the Army doesn't seem to want to go, almost as if they are saying "what are you, nuts ? We'll get killed there. We're not going until you bring us some reinforcements". It seems like 1 31-34 member army per 50k of population usually does the trick. However, when your invasion fleet has cleaned up the system of all pesky system defense ships and extremely rugged orbital defense ships, some planets seem to be "designated to starve" -- no matter what I do, I can't invade. But it doesn't matter because the population drops to 0 in 3-4 turns and the enemy presence is removed. A bit odd and kludgey, but we can definitely invade and conquer all worlds. Though if my turn 576 (and counting) Grendarl game is any indication, it is not exactly a quick or easy process.

I don't mean to be confrontational or obstinate. It is my understanding that this SG is meant to be a learning experience for all involved (especially myself), so I figured I would post my thoughts on each round if I see anything that doesn't make sense to me, we could discuss them, and I could be educated towards the error of my ways, and hopefully we could all learn something from the discussion. Since you posted an exceptionally clear summary of your round, there were a few things that didn't make sense to me :)

Sullla -- Good luck on the round ! I'm ready to play whenever you end up finishing.

Darken.Rahl

About the 20 marines, I asked our 2 most productive planets to build 10 marines each, it was only a matter of 3-4 turns to get them out. I like to build troops as soon as I can so they can become experienced before I need them.

Government and Recreation DEA have an outreach effect. I tend to build only one of each in each system as they will cover the whole system anyway. I prefer to keep the limited number of DEA for production building. I also try to have one military DEA on big planets. I never had any problems getting space port built on system without a government DEA, so that is not an issue. There will be only one seat per system and it will be put in the queue as soon as it is destroyed unless the queue is already full. If the queue is full, you can always go in and remove items to put in you system seat. So having more than one Gov DEA in the system will not reduce the time needed to get a new seat up and running.

Seats are blown up by diplomatic spies? Then we were not covered on that front at the time. I believe we now have one diplomatic spy and another in the queue.

About Peace through strength. I wrote, about 20%, it probably was more like 17-18%. I am not 100% sure on this, but I think your setting has a diplomatic impact. It is pretty easy to look at the income sheet, divide the income by 10, multiply by 2, and drop a few notch to leave a safety net. In any case, both your argument and mine apply to both settings so we could discuss all night and both be right and wrong. ;) Without more information about the setting, I prefer to set the economy policy according to my actual war activity.

I understand leaders are difficult to defend, could be a bug or could be by design. That means we should recuit political spies and kill the AI's leaders.

I mentionned the potential bug, in part because of your message on RBCiv, in part because I had a similar situation in my game. I went to a system with planets from 2 different empires. I bombarded the first one after destroying its defense but I was unable to bombard the second planet. On the next turn, I could bombard neither planets. I tried various things in how I handled the combat phase in the following few turns but I was never able to bombard again. Eventually, my fleet general got bored and moved on to other realms. It might be a misunderstanding, but it does smell like a bug to me. Yet in the same game, in another system, I had no trouble taking over the 3 enemy planets in there, but all 3 belonged to the same empire.

A SG is always a learning experience for all involved. Do post your thoughts and discuss whenever you wish, this is what makes a SG interesting.

That's interesting on the Recreation and Military outreach effect. I have noticed that several tech enhancements mention increasing the outreach effect, but haven't really quantified it. With that in mind I will minimize creating these DEAs.

My thinking on the Gov't DEAs spread all over is that when you need to rebuild a seat, putting something in the planetary build queue will very adversely delay whatever is in the military build queue. So if our most productive planet was busilly cranking out Marines in record time ;) our 2nd or 3rd most productive planet could build a Gov't Seat. Also, in the (extremely unlikely, given the AI) possibility that one of our worlds gets invaded, it can buy a turn or two as the attacker must conquer the region with the Gov't seat in it to control the planet. Still, neither reason is probably a great justification to build Gov't DEAs on every planet.

I've only had the experience of 2 races in 1 system once or twice, but I think the same fix applies: You must click on the "system view" tab at the bottom of the ground combat screen, and it will show you all of the planets in the system. You must click on whichever planet you want to assault for that round. I think the AI picks one planet at random (the weakest ?) when you arrive in system, and will continue to target that planet until you take it over, and sometimes continue to target it even afterwards. You must tell it via the "system view" to move your fleet on to other planets. Though as I mentioned, some seem to get the "starvation only" designation and you still can't assault them with ground forces, but they do starve to 0 quickly. I'm still not really sure 100% if its a bug or not, but it is at least crummy UI design.

Darken.Rahl

I'm sorry but I won't be able to get to this tonight. Travelling has put a bit more of a crimp in my schedule than I expected. I will get to it tomorrow morning though and play my turn.

Originally posted by JaxomCA
UPDATED ROSTER:

Jaxom
Sulla --> Up
Darken --> On deck
Vek --> Below deck :)

Below deck? Ouch. That hurts.

Guess I'll catch up on my sleep. :sleep:

...Nah, I'll just play more MOO

--Vek

Although the Recreation, Military and Government DEA's do have an outreach effect, they also have an overlap effect. That is, when it comes to happiness, where one is good, two are better. The more you have, the higher you can run your oppressometer, the higher you can run your taxes, the more piracy you can combat without having to build massive garrison fleets (system ships or backwater TF's rooted in place as virtual system ships).

Military DEA's expand your orbital capacity, too. This sounds useless, and in the current game it is, but once the game is fixed to where the AI will go on the attack and is boosted up in strength, orbitals may be important. They are also more important to the "diplomatic expander" who signs full alliances with one or more races then grabs a bunch of worlds right in their core. (New info I learned in the last 24 hours: A FULL alliance ends ALL blockades. Each side ends up grabbing all the worlds that are green to them but red to the ally, mixing planets and systems all over the place, and then you need to combat piracy for the AI worlds in your systems as well as your own worlds).

BTW, "piracy" is the game's anti-expansion mechanism. It is basically an unhappiness factor tied DIRECTLY to population in a system, so if you get a system with 4+ worlds and populate them all, you're going to NEED more than one of each happiness DEA per system or else you'll have to combat the unhappiness some other way, like direct spending or large garrisons. Only the Klackons avoid recreation DEA's, as Hive governments get little use out of them. They can still do OK with extra military DEA's, though.


Team A, at least, will be going with a more liberal "keep em happy" approach. We may even open Planet Disney on a small world in some major system: like, Recreation DEA's out the wazoo, while larger worlds in the system focus on military and production and research. Especially once spaceports are around to bring the tourists in, Recreation DEA's actually make money. Our home system is a candidate for major piracy, even, with its four already-populated worlds and growing numbers.

OK, back to your regularly scheduled Team B activities. :D


- Sirian

(61) We have three scientific spies on hand? I insert one into the Ithkul empire. A few too many of our planets have migration turned on; we have migration set to planets with population 15 and 17. I'd rather have it going to planets that really need it. Migration is left on for all planets under size 8, turned off for those above it. I go through the planetary build queues and scrap about a million Hawk Defenses that the AI loves to build. As requested, I send the TF in our home system to the Dromos system.

A general note: try to build our LightCarrier-sized transports instead of troop ships. It's more cost efficient to build one ship with four troop pods than 4 troop ships with one pod each (maintenance costs are lower too).

(62) I try to intercept the Havester scout but must have clicked something wrong because I don't engange in combat. I never see the ship again, so it must have gone back through the wormhole. We discover the all-important Mobilization Center tech, and I add it into the build queues of many planets. I also note this turn that we are running a massive debt, at -600AU. I scale back on planetary unrest grants to deal with this.

(63) Enemy spies steal another tech from us. I up the Oppressometer a notch to 3 to deal with the efforts of enemy spies. We are being attacked by spies from empires we don't even have contact with anymore, like the Dekalips. I form a ground TF to attack the Harvesters on Phoebus. Since our colony ship on Dromos continues to refuse to settle there, I give up and send it to Schuan I.

(64) Piracy is running rampant in the Tali system. We should queue up some system defenses there in the future, but for now all planets are working on our fleet. I create a TF there with a SRCorvette to combat the pirates.

(65) Enemies spies blow up a system seat of government on Tali III. I have to turn down taxes in some areas to quell unrest.

(66) The fish offer to exchange techs will us, that sounds good to me. Enemy spies continue to bug us; maybe we should up the Oppressometer some more? I'll leave that up to the next leader.

(67) Our scout runs into enemy forces in the Garr system; I immediately order a general retreat, but it is struck by a volley of missiles and killed before it can get away. It died too fast for me to even snap a picture, heh. We have better luck on Phobeus II, attacking and taking it with ease thanks to our marines. Even better, a free outpost appeared on Sardonyx I this turn, a SS planet! The population is 100% human; I have no idea how it was created. But we'll take it. :D I set migration to that outpost to turn it into a colony...

(68) We lose contact with the Ithkul, since we took their planet which was close to us. We also sign a full alliance with the Trilarians this turn, with whom we have extremely high relations (over 150 in both categories).

(69) A new leader shows up; doesn't look like he'll be that useful for now though. He only increases spaceport revenue, of which we have next to none since we just discovered that tech. Still, we may as well keep him.

(70) Not much going on. Our high-shield (err, production) planets are engaged in long projects building our fleet for future conquest.

(71) Another leader shows up! This one looks very useful, increasing mining output by 20%. A new colony is founded on Sardonyx IV. The Sardonyx system is amazingly fertile, with no fewer than 4 G+ planets, including a SS world. We've got two of them, and should use system colonies to grab the rest. Also be aware of new diplomacy messages. Check the planetary build queues to make sure they are running OK as well. We are still in debt, but reducing it slowly; we are down to about -480AU now. Finally, after sitting at #3 in power for most of my turn, we jumped up to #2 on the last turn. That's a lot better than the #9 that we were when I first got the game! :cool:

RBMoo1B Turn71 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1B_Turn71.zip)

Here's our new leaders:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1B_newleaders.png

And a current map, showing all of our systems:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1B_Turn71.png

I must say I really like the ability to take screenshots with Shift-F4 in this game. I also really detest having to take notes on paper and then type them up later here; PLEASE let the first patch fix the Alt-Tab problem. It will save me much time. :)

Ok, I've got it (but haven't opened it yet). Will play soon and post results later this afternoon.

As far as I know, my goals for my set of 10 are:

1.) Colonize Dromos (if this is still an option)
2.) Colonize Schwan
3.) Send as many colonies as possible westwards, continue to explore westwards
4.) Capture Milonni from Sakkra
5.) Continue to build fleet and infrastructure

Darken.Rahl

The Sakkra outpost on Milonni is starving itself into nothingness without us doing anything. We probably want to grab the yellow planet on that system for its strategic value, but the Sakkra outpost will go away without our needing to attack it. Otherwise, your goals sound good to me. :)

Thank you very much, Sullla, for noting this. Unfortunately, in my haste to get playing I did not get a chance to catch this before starting. It would have been very useful, as you will see from my report.

The stewardship of Darken.Rahl can be characterized as lacking strategic focus but putting up solid economic numbers. Our economy doubled, our spy base increased, our leader stayed alive (miracle of miracles ...), and we discovered many new technologies. However, we also colonized only 1 new planet, and saw the Sakkra outpost of Milonni dry up into nothingness, putting our Eastern Expansion plans into a questionable state. What happened to that renowned Sakkra growth rate ?

Turn 71: Reduce System tax from 4% to 1% (because I have no idea what it does, if anything)
Increase Empire tax to 13% from 11% (still net 1% tax reduction due to system tax reduction)
reduced FLU slider to minimum (not sure this does anything, since FLUs are disabled, but making sure to minimize all unrest factors)
Dismiss our leader Cha Hode' (+15% spaceport profits, -2% taxes, +5% unrest). I don't think his spaceport bonus is worth his 2 negatives. However, our other leader, Altair Murgage, rocks (no pun intended). We'll definitely keep him around.
Spies -- recruit Science, Diplomatic, and Science spies
Diplo check -- We have an open border: trade agreement with Ivaq (mil = 7, 9 worlds total). Ivaq is our only known contact.
Ivaq is at war with Gaulrdu, and is allied with Sariar and us. He has a non aggression pact with Vomnast and a trade agreement with Dekalip.
Tali 2 is at unrest 12 -- due to Human, Leader effects. Well, the leader effect should go away next round.
Our economy is 1.9k (+475) with a -472 treasury
I queue up a system seat of Gov't at Bjorntoft 7
I switch Kali 4 from Hawk to Mobilization center
I switch Bjorntoft to SysOutpost to colonize Dromos. 7 turns later I realize that this was major weed, as the SysOutpost (as indicated by its name) is only a system colony, and won't be terribly effective in colonizing Dromos. Darn.

Turn 72: Sunlight Redirection, Mobile (yes!), Point Defense, and Duranium (yes!) technologies are all ready.
Tali 3 builds a spaceport
Tali 5 builds a mining DEA
Media 1 builds a system seat of gov't
Redesign IFLC1 to IFLC1a to take advantage of new armor. Mark IFLC1 obsolete.
Deploy transports and send them to Phoebus, for the big invasion of Milonni. This turns out to be wishful thinking.

Turn 73: Spies steal Magazine from us. This is actually good, as whichever AI stole it will now build 200 magazines and never really get to use them.
Continuous Fusion Cannon is ready
CRLC1 is built on Tali 3
Spaceports are build on Tali 3 and Tali 2
Hydroponic farms build on Tali 4
Deploy a Carrier Detachment for the upcoming invasion of Milonni.
Economy is at 2.4k (+375) / -646. I slash our research budget to get out of debt.

Turn 74: Astro University is ready. Not sure exactly what this does in MOO3, but it was pretty killer in MOO2.
Pests reduce bioharvest efficiency on Phoebus 4
Armor Piercing Quark Cannon, Materials Processor, Autofire Fighter Laser are all ready
Imperial Seat of Gov't is finally rebuilt on Tali 3
Tali 5 builds a Mining DEA
Samsara is scouted -- Red2, Yellow2, Yellow2, and Red2 worlds. Not bad, but not great.
Schwan I colony is created.
Unrest is 0 across the board !
Economy is 3.0k (+458) / treasury balance of -329
I switch us back to Limited War because I'm not as good with math as Jaxom ;)

Turn 75: Dunatis the Social spy is ready. This is Very Good, because by colonizing Schwan I we now have contact with the New Orions again. Which means a flood of Social and Scientific spies should be on their way Real Soon Now.
Space Port built at Tali 3
Milonni is not going to make it -- the Sakkra outpost is at population 44 and dropping
Our economy is 3.8k (+10) / treasury balance of 296. We're in the black !

Turn 76: Space port built at Tali 2
Industry DEA built at Kali 4
Spies attack our research
Deciding to write off Milonni, I send our Carrier Detachment to Dromos, where it should provide one heck of a deterrent.
Our economy is 3.8k (+78) / 184

Turn 77: Spaceport built at Tali 3
Soil enrichment built at Phoebus 4
Kill spy belonging to Ivaq (our ally ! How could he ? ;)
No more science spy alerts, so perhaps Ivaq was the only one so far
Deploy LRFrigate
Our economy is 3.9k (+15) / 189

Turn 78: Planetary Complex, Holistic Planning, Heavy Mount are all ready
Kill a Dekalip Spy
Unrest at 0-6 across the board
Economy is 4.0k (+15) / 139
Try a tech trade -- trade Soil Enrichment, Interchangeable Policy Standard, and advance Policy Theory to Ivaq for Fusion Drives and Planetary Shield Generator

Turn 79: A Rhea magnate race is discovered on Slkim 4. This is a Good Thing, as the Rhea are Gargantuan, and make great troops.
Slkim has a R1 planet with the Rhea, another R1, a Green2/rich/size 4 planet, and a third R1. Probably good for a colony or two here ... we definitely should get 3 colony ships to Slkium 4 with the Rhea ASAP
Planetary Shield Generator completes (doh ! why did I ask for that in the trade ?), Environmental suits complete
Astro University built on Tali 3, Media 1
Space Port built on Tali 3 (we sure have built a lot of space ports the last 9 turns)
Hydroponic farms built on Tali 5
Bjorntoft makes SysOutpost1. When I go to deploy it in a colony task force, I realize I can't, since it is a system ship and not a starship. Doh! We send the colony to the Yellow2 planet in the Bjorntoft system.
Milonni officially Didn't Make It. The outpost has vanished, leaving the system totally uncolonized
Our economy is 4.0k (+45) / 89
I queue up Planetary Shield Generators on all planets. These reduce unrest due to Piracy to 1/10 of its original levels, so they are, to me, THE key item to build on all planets. This is the first thing I build on new or newly captured planets.

Turn 80: Medium Armor is complete, Command Center is complete. These are 2 solid technologies and will be useful.
Spaceport built on Tali 2
Hydroponic farms built on Tali 5
Mining DEA built on Tali 5
We kill a Gaulrdu spy
Spies hit our scientific research and terrorize our populace. I would think that both of these are due to our recent New Orions contact.
No response to my trade offer to Ivaq. This must be a "stall" reply

[Inter Turn]: We destroy a Gaulrdu scout at Ganagwah

Turn 81: Espionage Training Requirement is ready
Kane the scientific spy is ready for assignment. Kane is 8/9/42/95 and is our best scientific defense, so he should stay home right now.
Spaceport built at Tali 3
Hydroponic farms built at Tali 5
Basic Systems Module built at Media I. Now we have 3 systems capable of building Light Cruisers:
No science or terror spy warnings, so the NO must be taking the turn off.

Notes for Vek:

1.) We probably need to redesign our LRFrigate ship, as we have new armor and weapons now. Our current LRFrigate design has just laser cannons on it.
2.) Tali 2 and 3 (our 2 biggest and most productive worlds) are getting a bit antsy with unrest. We may need to garrison ships at tali, or up the unrest $ allocated. However, when all the Tali worlds build their planetary shields, they should be OK again.
3.) Not sure what to do with our Ganagwah Eastern Defense / Assault force. They're ready for something, but exactly what I didn't want to decide after the Milonni plan fell through. They could probe and attack the Sakkra homeworlds.
4.) There are 2 transports at Phobeus, also part of the original Milonni Assault Force. Not sure what to do with them. Disbanding them may be our best option.
5.) Don't forget about Slkim 4 with the Rhea on it. Getting a colony going there would help us out a lot.

Our economy is 4.2k (+59) with a treasury balance of 64

Our bioharvesting is 355/122
Our mining is 438/197
Our Industry is 1.0k
Our Production Points are 1.6k
Our research is 635 (834)

Here are the Western Reaches as discovered by our hard working Scout this round:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/turn81pic.png

So, I leave you a good economy and a few ships, and no sense of a strategic plan. But I think you have enough stuff to do a few fun things on your round. Good luck !

Here is the saved game file:

RBMoo1B_Turn81 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1B_Turn81.zip)

Darken.Rahl

P.S. -- A note on file sizes of our SG files:

The first one I received (turn 31) was 243k zip'd and expanded to 1.98 MB raw
The second one I received (turn 71) was 339k zip'd and expanded to 2.6 MB raw
I became concerned at the growth rate of these files. But then I took a look at my turn 576 game. It is 11.59 MB raw, but zips down to 1.06 MB. Passing around 1.06 MB files don't seem too bad to me. And it would take our game many, many weeks to get that big. Also, the uploads folder says that there is a 3000kb limit, so even with a huge game we should come in well under that.

Nice rounds to both of you. The Lizards must have heard of our plans for them and ran away in terror :)

Was any attempt made at colonizing Dromos since we have a full alliance? If not, the next colony ship should definitely stop there and try it again. If I recall correctly, that was one of the few G1g planets within our reach.

There are many nice worlds to take in the Trilarian systems, I would go for them before rushing for the gargantua. They may be the best ground troops in the game but we can do as well without them.

If we want some Lizard worlds, I see no alternative to attacking their home world. This would be a costly business as it is most certainly defended by a missile base by now. We probably need at least 4 IF flotilla composed of 2 IFLC,2 PD ships and 1 recon ship. A couple of LR squadrons or flotilla would be nice to take out the system ships first. Expect to loose many of them. To be on the safe side and do it in one swoop, I would send as many marine armies as they have worlds in that system. Stage the transport ETA so that one arrives each turn, starting a turn or two after the attack fleet.

I don't think it is a good idea to go after the Sakkra at this point. I think it would be better to push research on mathematics so that we can get our first engine tech (I have never seen a game where your first engine tech is at level 13). After we get that tech, make new ship designs and go on a total war on the Ithkul.

Migration is turned on for Phobeus II. It is the Ithkul world we captured. If the humans become more numerous than the Ithkul, we loose the opportunity of building harvester troops. They are the second best ground troops in the game. So whatever you do Vek, turn off migration to Phobeus II and put a big sign saying "Monsterville, no humans allowed".

Roster:

Jaxom -> on deck
Darken
Sulla
Vek -> Up

This looks like the first item for RBCiv style tactics. It seems you can capture enemy worlds without ever declaring war on them and not makng them angry. The question is, do we accept the tactic or not in this game?

If we don't accept the tactic, make sure you declare war before attacking a world. If we do accept the tactic, make sure you take notes of the impact on our relationships. This would help evaluate whether it is a dastardly action or downright exploitative.

I am open to both in this game as it was never discussed. But I have pretty much made up my mind that is is exploitative.

Well, my attempt at colonizing Dromos was to build a system outpost ship. That, of course, didn't do much good. Other than having a couple of colony ships in the build queue, I made no other efforts to colonize Dromos.

It probably does make a lot of sense to fill in our perimeter before colonizing the Rhea magnate planet. Though as soon as we do so, we get some help with our colonizing efforts from our rapid breeding magnate friends.

I found a neat drop-down on the Planets view screen that I hadn't encountered before -- you can set the "view by racial type" to any of the major races, and see what your planets look like to other races (i.e. green, yellow, red). This is pretty cool, and is an easy way to see if the lizards or fish really are coveting any of our worlds.

I think the Harvester migration problem will work itself out. I am pretty sure that given enough time, the Harvester world will definitely become 100% Harvester, no matter who migrates or colonizes there. I have yet to see a world (out of maybe 15 so far) where that is not the case. This, of course, is due to what the harvesters are. So I don't think we need to turn migration off to Phobeus II.

I really like the idea of going after the Ithkul while peacefully co-expanding with our ally Ivaq.

I am ambivalent towards attacking the Sakkra. On the one hand, it would be an interesting challenge, a chance to eliminate a race quickly, and would eliminate one empire sending spies against us. On the other hand, they probably have good defenses by now, have better ground troops than us (more on that in a minute), and attacking them would probably cost us heavily, perhaps costing us all of our military reserves and still not making much headway. I think the safer strategy is investigating the Ithkul and expanding, but if the rest of you want to be warmongers then I'm OK with that, too.

I got a chance to compile a table of how Experienced Armor units stack up. I have no idea if Mobiles or Infantry are much different than this list. But I had a lot of Armor in my big game, and not much else. Here it is:


race initiative attacks evasion attack_strength armor hits

sauron 61 10 290 149 225 25
humanoid 71 10 290 139 225 25
gargantua 76 13 370 189 265 34
protoplasm 56 10 290 139 225 33
avian 76 10 350 139 225 25
geodic 56 10 290 139 245 29
harvesters 81 10 290 139 225 25
plant 61 11 330 144 235 26
etherian 66 11 290 139 225 25
insectoid 61 10 290 139 225 25

race Gravity Battleground Terrain

sauron middle-g surface plain
humanoid middle-g surface plain
gargantua crushing-g surface mountain
protoplasm zero-g underwater broken
avian low-g atmospheric mountain
geodic high-g surface mountain
harvesters high-g surface mountain
plant middle-g surface plain
etherian crushing-g atmospheric broken
insectoid middle-g underground plain



Ok, well, that looks totally crappy. I am not sure how to make the tabs work so the columns are remotely readable. Even my tricky attempt at using a proportionally spaced font seems to have failed. However, it shows that our humanoid troops have a +10 initiative over the Sakkra, but -10 of their attack strength. Harvesters are equivalent to our humans in every way except they get +10 initiative over humans (and have the highest initiative I've seen). I have no clue what any of these fields really mean, but I thought I'd at least show the values. And the Rhea (gargantua) are masters of the ground battlefield in just about every way.

Regarding attacking enemy worlds without declaring war being exploitive, I don't think it is. If you persist in attacking the enemy's worlds, they very definitely will declare war on you after you take over 2-4 worlds. During the middle and late game when everyone has 30-120+ worlds, what are 2-4 worlds in the scheme of things ? I think this is the way the game is meant to be, as it fits in with Sirian's "border skirmish" philosophy (though it certainly is taking a "border skirmish" to the ultimate level). I think I have had an ally invade one of my worlds, and act as if nothing was wrong with our relationship afterwards. But it only happened once, so I can't be sure.

Darken.Rahl

Ok, got it, playing now.

Will post turns within 24 hours.

--Vek

Looks like I am going to have to pass on my turns. I am leaving to go to my cottage (which does not have internet access) and will not be back till Thursday. So, I am passing my turns to Jaxom.
:blush:

Have fun,

--Vek

Oh well, have fun on your trip and drop us a line when you come back. :)

Roster:
Jaxom -> up
Darken -> on deck
Sulla
Vek -> skipped

Got it.

My main objective for this round is to set us up to claim a world in Dromos, at least to try again, and begin to make nice with the NO.

Turn 81

Diplomacy: I offer a reasonable trade to Ivaquaria, we give him our new planet in Sardonyx (G2g6), they give us their established planet in Tyr (G1g8). I give our new planet in Schwan to the NO.

Economy: We have a big surplus of food and minerals. I don't do anything about food, but I order the removal of some mines on worlds with less than a rich rating. Most of them will be replace with recreation DEA where we have none.



Turn 82

Diplomacy: Ivaquaria offers to improve our economic TA, I agree humbly.

Under cover: A Sariar spy escapes! Darn slippery gas bags! Ivaquaria has a nice engine tech he doesn't want to trade to us. I try my luck and send our 3 scientific spies.

Economy: I make sure each of our planets get at least one recreation DEA in their build queue.

Military: We will not be doing any invasion in the next 10 turns, I disband the 2 transport TF over Phobeus.


Turn 83

Diplomacy: The NO accept our gift but we loose contact, so I don't know what effect it had. :( Ivaquaria is stalling on our proposal.

Under cover: A Sariar spy is rooted out and killed in a freak accident when trying to capture him. Our 3 scientific spies successfully enter Trilarian territory.

Science: Automated factories is discovered and grants a positive overrun.


Turn 84

Under cover: All 3 of our spies work at slowing down Ivaquaria's research, can't they make a plan or something? Enemy social spies are hard work in our empire, I raise the O-meter to our max.



Turn 85

Diplomacy: Ivaquaria politely refuse our offer, oh well, that didn't work too well. I add the world we captured from the Ithkul to the offer and sent it again.

Under cover: One of our spies is captured, he has low luck so I retire him before he squeals.

Economy: Unrest is on the rise throughout the empire. An outpost ship leaves Tali for Dromos.

Military: The Sakkra pay us a visit at Ganagweh, I don't intercept their single ship.


Turn 86

Under cover: We kill an Ithkul spy. Still more spies are hiding out there.

Economy: Unrest on the rise, mostly in the Tali system. The main cause seems to be piracy, so a couple of hawk defense are queued in. Some of these planet will get a planetary shield in a couple of turns.


Turn 87

Diplomacy: Ivaquaria offers to improve research TA, I agree appreciatively.

Under cover: One of our spies is killed by Ivaquaria, the other one is imprisoned. Oh well, better luck next time. We kill another Sariar spy, I like how the AI seems to be able to plant spies after loosing contact. If it really is the case, I call this a bug.

Economy: Major unrest in Tali III. I lower the O-meter since it looks like we caught all the spies. I also give a major boost to unrest on our budget. Factories, biocares and space ports are coming online quickly, our economy should improve a lot.

Military:Our fleet dispatch a single Ithkul ship at Ganagweh before I have time to see what it was.



Turn 88

Science: Hard beam enters the prototype stage, I give a major boost to mathematics, we need a better engine then retro.

Economy: Unrest down to 0 across the board, I lower our budget for unrest to 10%. I also lower our empire tax to 11% and adjust the budget to give us a slight surplus. Money is spent more efficiently at the local level and we don't have huge expenses at the empire level.

Military: A silicoid scout from the Vomnast empire is shot down at Ganagweh.


Turn 89

Random events: What, not even a single spying event? Nothing to report.


Turn 90

Under cover: We kill an Ivaquaria spy. :nono:

Military: We have Mobile units, so about 30 of them are queued up.



Final SitRep

Diplomacy: No news, still waiting on Ivaquaria to respond to our offer to trade 2 of our worlds for one of his.

Under cover: We trained a new spy, check the queue. We killed another Ithkul spy and there is at least one more doing damage.

Science: Try to leave the boost on mathematics, at least until we have a better engine.

Economy: Not much to report. Try not to raise the empire tax above 11%. Give it time and our planets will provide more than enough money.

Military: A couple of scout ships are on long trips. An outpost and a colony ship are on their way to Dromos, keep an eye on them to see if they do land. If the fishes accept our offer for a trade, the fleet above Dromos should move to Tyr. The fleet above Ganagweh is doing its job, we may need to reinforce it soon as the Ithkul will probably try to break through. Our systems need system ships for piracy control. Try to have at least 5 hawk defense in each. We may need more in Tali since we have many worlds there.


Turn 91 save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_teamb_turn91.zip)

Roster:

Jaxom
Darken -> Up
Sulla -> on deck
Vek

If it comes to Vek's turn before Thursday, we will wait until Thursday to give him a chance to take his next round.

Jaxom, was there some reason why we gave away a world to the New Orions and are trying to give away more worlds to the Trilarians? I can't see a reason why we'd want to do so. I mean, if we want to improve relations, giving away technology would do the same thing and be a lot less damaging to us in the long run. :)

I am trying to get some Trilarian blood into our empire to have more good world to colonize. If they had accepted the first proposal, we would actually have gained a better world than what I was giving. If they accept the 2-for-1, I still think we get a better world because of location. Since there is a very good chance we will fight the ithkul, we will still get Ithkul blood when we capture their home wolrd.

Giving the world to the NO, hmmm, I guess I should have waited on the fish response before doing it, but the world I gave was yellow gravity, so it is no big loss. The NO have all the techs, so the only way to improve relations with them is by giving worlds to them (and possibly fighting the Ithkul, but I am not 100% sure of that).

I think that anything we do to understand human player initiated diplomacy is a Good Thing. I definitely have no idea behind cause and effect when I propose diplomatic deals (accepting the computer's offers for trade agreements or tech exchage is a no-brainer). With that in mind, I have as my turn goals:

1.) Ensure that the colony really does get started on Dromos this time.
2.) Try to trade red / yellow planets to the Trillarians for green ones, but at no more than a 1 for 1 trade
3.) Try to trade techs to get faster drives from the Trillarians
4.) Build up system defenses to combat piracy (I will probably redesign the Hawk to something with better guns but the same cost to accomplish this).
5.) Maintain and enhance the Eastern Blocking Force at Ganagweh as needed.

Got it, will play and post late tonight.

Darken.Rahl

Well, the CEO stewardship (since we are a Corporate Gov't) of Darken.Rahl this time was a little better than the last go. I again grew our economy nicely (only 50% this time), but was OK on the colonization front instead of being a bonehead. We got 2 new colonies, are 1 turn away from a new outpost, have 1 colony ship in transit and a few more close to being built. I successfully defended Ganagweh several times until turn 101 when I lost 3/5 of our fleet. We built a few system defense ships, and unrest was 0 throughout my run at management.

Turn 91: Redesign Hawk Defense into Hawk Def 2. Hawk Defense costs 375, Hawk Def 2 costs 585 but has 1x4 missiles, 2 x hvy hard beam, and light armor vs. no armor. Hawk Def 2 is a credible defense, Hawk Defense is obsolete. So Hawk Def 2 is worth the extra 200 credits.
Economy is 6.4k (+208) with a treasury balance of 2284.
bioharvest 403/155, mining 443/263, industry 1.4k, production points 1.9k, research 791 (922)
Reduce system tax level from 4% to 1% (since no one has ever mentioned how this is beneficial)
Raise empire tax level from 10% to 13% (still net 1% reduction in taxes)
Move unrest spending down (since I inherit 0 unrest on all planets -- nicely done, Jaxom !), raise science, military, grants to planets spending
Retire Kikkitone, our imprisoned spy. Kikkitone is 9 cloak, 2 dagger, 9 luck, 85 loyalty. Why did we ever send a 2 dagger spy out into the wild ? They are almost guaranteed to get caught, and having a 9 cloak spy at home would have been beneficial.
Ivaq is still the only person we know, he is at military strength 6, has 10 worlds, is at war with Gaulrdu, has alliances with us and Sariar, and non-aggression pacts with Vomnast and Dekalip
We are 4th in power with HFOG of 1.7
Check our build queues and swap a few Hawk Defenses for Hawk Def 2's

Turn 92: ECCM2, automated mine are ready
Spies steal sunlight reduction
Industry DEA built on Sardonyx4
Our people cower in fear from enemy spies
Unrest still = 0 across the board !
Economy is 7.1k (-66) / 1531
I propose a trade to Ivaq of Interorganizational Evolution (level 9) plus Hand Blaster (level 4) plus ECCM2 (level 11) for Fusion Drives (level 12) and Missile Armor (level 4). I never, ever hear back from Ivaq during the rest of my turn as to whether he accepts or declines our offer (obviously is declining or stalling). I don't understand diplomacy much in this game.

Turn 93: A Ramuctha scout is destroyed at Ganagweh. The scout is tough and takes several rounds to destroy, even though it doesn't hurt us much.
Unity defense grid is ready
Industry DEA built on Phobeus 2
Research DEA built on Bjorntoft 7
We kill a Gaulrdu spy
We build a Colony ship, and I send it to the Y2 world of Namaro 1. We need to start building the Western Frontier, and this is the closest non-red world to start with. ETA is 15 turns.
Economy is 7.6k (-185) / 1882
I queue up some system colonies at Phobeus 4. Even though the Phobeus worlds are all red and toxic, they are quite big and will serve nicely as Industry worlds, which we need ASAP, especially given our food and minerals surpluses right now.

Turn 94: A Gaulrdu short detachment is killed at Ganagweh. They are easier to destroy than the Ramuctha scout.
Our colony is formed at Dromos 3 ! I assign the DEAs and miliary build queue
Planetary commodities market is ready
Planetary Shield Generators are built at Phobeus 4 and Tali 4
Economy is 8.0k (-281) / 2144

Turn 95: Maeghan Terron emerges as a leader. Maeghan seems good at +20% mining and +3% maintenance. We keep her.
Industry DEA built at Tali 4
Recreation DEA built at Kali 4
Industry DEA built at Sardonyx 4
Planetary Shield Generator built at Tali 4
Economy is 8.4k (-333) / 2327

Turn 96: We train the Social spy Mr. Nice Guy. I think Mr. Nice Guy is indeed Half Baked and has been smoking too much :smoke: as he is 3/2/41/95 and pretty worthless. Though Dave Chappelle remains a very funny man. If I really wanted to role play this one, I would quickly get him imprisoned. But we are just going to leave him alone.
Planetary Shield Generator is built on Phobeus 2
Military DEA is built on Phobeus 2
Bioharvest DEA is built on Sardonyx 4
A Vormnast spy escapes capture
I redesign SRCorvette1 at 460 AU to SRCorvette1a at 602 AU, and much better guns
I queue up Magazine x5 and Command Center x5 on Phobeus 2, our 2nd worst Industry world. With the completion of these 2 items, we will have one heck of a ground force. Great Mobiles, effective Marines, and Psy-Ops, Magazine, and Command Center support units. As soon as the Command Center x5 completes, we should invade somewhere.
Economy is 8.6k (-353) / 2436

Turn 97: Mobile x10 is built at Tali 2
Psy-Ops x5 is built at Tali 5
Recreation DEA is built at Phobeus 2
Industry DEA is built at Bjorntoft 7
Gov't DEA is built at Sardonyx 4
Narn is explored -- R1, R2, R1, and G1 with Natural Wonders and Elerian Labor. A nice world, just need to get the Western frontier going and make this part of it.
Our Scout that just explored Narn has done a great job. There really is nowhere to go but to the system west of ungal, which is a 26 turn journey. I start our Scout on its long journey.

Turn 98: A Ramuctha SR detachment is destroyed at Ganagweh. This, like the Gahrldu detachment, was also an easy win. Much easier than the Ramuctha scout. We have 0 casulties.
Mass Synthesizer is discovered when exploring a new system (Narn had the random tech special on one of its planets, I guess this is our random tech).
Ivaq contacts us to Improve our TA:Economic by 1. I accept. Hey -- Ivaq, buddy -- what about that exchange of Tech I sent you 6 turns ago ? Any word on that ? No ? Ok, we'll take the Econ agreement. Ivaq's military strength is 6 and he has 10 worlds now. Which is no different than Turn 91.
Economy is 9.0k (-336) / 2569. We still have 0 unrest on all worlds !

Turn 99: The Ramuctha attack us again at Ganagweh. But I cede control instead of Watch, and don't know what they hit us with. Oops. Regardless, we suffer 0 casulties and destroy them. Good.
Industry DEA built on Bjorntoft 4
We kill a Gaulrdu spy
The outpost on Bjorntoft 4 grows into a colony ! I assign all the DEAs and make Bjorntoft 4 primarily a research colony. Biodiversity is low (red leaves) which makes more pollution for industry. Plus, minerals are poor, and agriculture is poor -- so research it is.
We achive level 12 mathematics -- Fusion Drives are available for research
We deploy the SRCorvette1a at Phobeus to send to Ganagweh. But I accidentally deploy it as an LR task force rather than an SR task force. I don't think this matters a lot.

Turn 100: Mining production is reduced on Tali 4 due to worker strikes. Yet Tali 4 has 0 unrest ? Why is this happening ? I have no idea.
Industry DEA is built on Tali 4
Space Ports are built on Media 1, Phobeus 4
Research DEA built on Kali 4
Military DEA built on Sardonyx 4
Economy is 9.5k (-425) / 2782

Turn 101: The Ramuctha attack us again at Ganagweh. It is a single ship SR Detachment. However, this ship came well prepared. We barely defeat it, losing 3 ships. It is our missiles that ultimately save the day. This SR ship has a rail gun, and what looks like a Lightning Field Generator, but it is awful early in the game for that one ! The rail gun lights up our ships for -45 damage per hit, which puts a hurting on our "no armor" or "very light zortium armor" models. We do prevail, though our defenses at Ganagweh are now very thin. The SRCorvette1a should arrive in 2 turns because our Retro Engines are SO SLOW.
Thetaplex Scanning Array is ready
A colony ship is built at Media I. It is in our reserves. I recommend sending it out west somewhere.
Industry DEA built at Bjorntoft 7
We are power rank 2, with HFOG of 1.7 (which is about the lowest of any race right now)
Our Fleet strength is 10 compared to Ramuctha's (Ramuchta is power rank 10)
Our Fleet strength is 10 compared to Gaulrdu's 6 (Gaulrdu is power rank 6)
Economy is 9.8k (-430) / 2905
bioharvest 459/196, mining 547/355, industry 1.8k, production points 3.1k, research 1.2k(1.7k)

Notes for Sullla:

1.) We have an outpost ship at Sardonyx that should build an outpost on Sardonyx 2 next turn. Make sure that happens and it doesn't get confused in some fashion
2.) Don't forget to deploy our colony ship in the reserves to some destination
3.) Our ground military forces are looking good ! We have mobiles, which are very effective, and nice support units. We should think about an invasion when the Magazine x5 and Command Center x5 build on Phobeus 2. Should we build a colony at Yellow1 Milonni and take it to Gaulrdu ? Should we take it to the Ithkul ? We are definitely ready for a military campaign soon, but faster drives would be nice first because our current speed 1 retro engines take FOREVER to get anywhere.
4.) Ignore the continual (-400) stuff in our economy. Because all of our worlds are growing, our estimate continues to be low each round. We have slowly added to our Treasury even with 10 turns of (-200 to -400) predictions.
5.) I'm getting nervous that we don't seem particularly close to getting back into the senate. Games can end as soon as turn 150 with a senate victory. Though I don't really see what we can do to improve our situation here. Fortunately, the New Orions are still #1 on the power curve, and we are #2. So we still have some time.
6.) Good luck ! You have several military ships and colonies due to be completed in the next 2-5 turns. Do something fun and exciting with them !

Here is the Save Game File:

RBMoo1B_Turn101 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1B_Turn101.zip)

Darken.Rahl

I'm baaaaack.

:) Since Rahl has already taken his turn, let Sullla take the next turn, and I'll go after.

From what I have read, things are looking good.

--Vek

Edit: Corner again. :nya:

Sounds like I was left some "toys" to play with. ;) I hope to play and report tomorrow morning.

(101) I look around the galaxy and note that there are no good worlds left to colonize anywhere close to us. I mean just about nothing better than R2 anywhere within a dozen systems. All of the nice worlds we've found have been beyond the borders of our opponents. For that reason, I scrap most of the colony ships in production - we've got nowhere to send them! It would be better to build up our fleet - but we have a new engine tech due in 5 turns. I decide to use these turns to increase the shipyard capacity of our industrial worlds. The colony ship we do have is sent to the best world I can find even remotely close to us, a Y1 world on Sardonyx III.

I turn off migration to all planets over size 20, so that our people will migrate only to the worlds that need to build up population. I also scrap our production of magazines and command centers. The AI never blockades planets, so I doubt we'll need magazines, and I very rarely have seen them build combat support units. Until we see some of them, I'd suggest we work on building more useful things.

(102) Kill an Ithkul scout at Ganagweh. It takes almost two minutes to do so; our forces there are really outdated. Quiet turn still waiting on our engine technology.

(104) Nothing going on, still waiting. All large planets are building their infrastructure up for when we can design fast new ships.

(105) One of our leaders is killed. Do leaders even serve a point in this game? Their survival rate is appallingly low. We discover Fusion Drives, increasing our engines from Warp I to Warp IV. That's a LOT faster! I go through all of our current designs and build the same things using modern weapons and our new warp technology. I particularly like the updated Corvette design with both LR and IF capabilities. Then I go through the build queue of every planet and switch the new designs into the building process. It's going to take some time, but in about 25 turns we will have one sweet fleet! Just remember to build transports (not troop ships) so that we can invade worlds, not just attack enemy fleets.

(106) Our imperial seat of government gets blown up. Several mobilization centers happily complete in our western systems. A colony ship is dispatched to Milonni, where it will settle on the yellow planet there. If we can get a planet there, we will have contact with the Galrdu (Sakkra) again.

The Trilarians land a colony ship on a world where we also landed a colony ship (Sardonyx I). Right now the planet is 45% human, 55% fish. With migration, our percentage should go up. It will be interesting to see who gets control of the world.

(107) We shoot down a Harvester and a Sakkra ship in the Ganagweh system in two separate combats. It's a busy place! :D Our final leader dies. How short is the life of a leader... We sign a new research deal with the Trilarians. Thanks to some well-timed migration, our outpost on Sardonyx II becomes a colony.

(108) We lose a system seat of government. Hmm, seems like enemy spies are really posing a problem, what's the Oppressometer setting? Two? That would explain it... I set it up to three, let's see if that helps. Our first new ship rolls off of the assembly lines.

(109) We kill two spies and are putting the squeeze on some more; looks like it worked! A colony ship lands at Phobeus II (R1); it still has some way to go before it becomes a colony though. I set migration to the planet.

(110) A scout ship retreats from a Guardian in the Nazin system. Too bad I don't know where on the map that was... A colony ship lands at Namaro I, migration again set to get the planet up to size 1. A second Trilarian colony ship lands at Sardoynx I, now the planet has gone over to control of the fish. :( I form a new task force at Phobeus to help go defend Ganagweh.

(111) One of our old carriers is shot down over Ganagweh by an Ithkul ship. I tried to retreat when the fight went bad, but could not get away.

For the next player to consider:
- Send the newly created task force at Phobeus to Ganagweh to kill the Ithkul ship there and prevent further encroachment on our territory. It consists of two of our new ships and should be able to deal with any small force.
- A trade has been proposed diplomatically by the Trilarians, we should probably accept it.
- Check our planetary build queues and adjust to your desire. You can also design some new ships to meet any needs the ones I build may be lacking.
- Have fun!
RBMoo1B Turn111 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1B_Turn111.zip)

Jaxom <<< on deck
Darken.Rahl
Sullla
Vek <<< UP NOW

Now as to where we're going... My thought at the moment is that we should attack the Sakkra and take over their entire empire. It would be nice to peacefully expand, but we really are blocked from doing so. Oddly enough, thanks to a wormhole the Sakkra are on both our east and west borders. If we started in the east and took out their homeworld first, we could roll through their planets in one large assault and link our entire territory in a gigantic circle. Another option would be to go after the Harvesters, but that would send us out to the galactic rim instead of in towards the center. Our hope would be to get back into the Senate through palling around with our buddies the Trilarians. After all, they will love us even more if we attack the lizards.

The only other thing I see to do would be to attack the Trilarians, and that would not be wise for our Senate chances. So do anyone else have a suggestion on what we should do? :)

Got it. Will post within 24 hrs.

--Vek

Going to copy Jaxom's style here, hope you don't mind. : )

Turn 111

Diplomacy: I accept a Dipomatic offer from the Ivaquaria. Gotta keep them happy. : )
Nothing else interesting, so I end the turn


Turn 112
[LIST]
Very little going on this turn.

Science: Improved Mass Driver is ready to be used, as is Tritanium




Turn 113


Military: I create a task force at Media.

Hmm, pretty boring so far.



Turn 114

Under cover: Someone is causing unrest, so I raise the Oppresometer a bit.
Military: I start planning to attack Knaa



Turn 115

Diplomacy: Ivaquaria offers an "Improve T/A: Research" I accept. Again, ket keep 'em happy

Under cover: Tali III lost a Regional Research Network. Again, I raise the Oppressometer a bit

Military: The scout is just sitting around, so I send him off to another unexploed starsystem, ETA 31 turns



Turn 116

Under cover: Still more spys. Oppresometer going up another notch.
Military: Another task force formed at Phobeus



Turn 117


Under cover: Still more spys. Grrr...

Coloney established at Sardonyx III

Something I noticed. As it turns out, we are ranked #1 for power. Guess who is #2. The Ivaq. This could be a good thing, or a bad thing...NO are #5


Turn 118

Under cover: Caught and killed a NO spy. :nono:

Military: Made some Transport task forces.


Turn 119

Random events: Genetic Mutagens will take another 8 turns. : (

Military: I sent the transports and military task forces to Milonni (All that could be spared.)



Turn 120


Science: Deep Loyalty Indoctrination is in Prototype Phase.

Nothing interesting going on, I hit turn.




Final SitRep



Science: Deep Loyalty Indroctrination is ready

Military: We are going to be in a very good position to attack Knaa, and those area's in general. We have to either attack Knaa, or go after the Ivaq, and I would rather attack Knaa (And the other planet, who's name escapes me)



Turn 121 save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMOO1_Team_B_Turn_121.zip)

--Vek

After catching yet another Sariar spy in our succession game, an empire we lost contact with when we were booted out of the senate around turn 20, I got curious and wanted to see how long his spies live. Well I did catch one of his spies after turn 121 so I cheated a little and opened the game in multi player, playing as Sariar.

Here is his spy list at turn 91:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/sariar_spies_turn91.jpg

And here is his spy list at turn 121:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/sariar_spies_turn121.jpg

We never had contact with Sariar since we were booted out, so it looks like the AI can still insert spies after loosing contact, why can't we? Actually, I'd prefer if spies could not be inserted after loosing contact. Either way, it ought to be the same rule for players and AI.

My actual round report will come up shortly.

I've been wondering about that. So it IS possible for the computer to insert spys even after you loose contact. With the amount of spy activity during my turns, I was starting to wonder. I mean, how many spys would the Ivaq really send?

Pfft, the computer can cheat. Go figure. I guess that is considered the only way to make them even remotly difficult?

--Vek

My guess, probably it's a bug. QS says the AI is not supposed to cheat (i.e. do something illegal for the human player.) Not to say it couldn't have bonuses or what have you, on higher difficulty.

Turn 121

Diplomacy:
We dropped to number 4 in the power factor while Ivaquaria climbed to number 1 and the NO are number 5. However, the power factor includes a count of the number of hulls deployed and the NO have 0 ship deployed so this doesn't mean Ivaquaria has more population than the NO. Ivaquaria has a tech we need, a better scanner. so I make him a reasonable offer where we give him Heavy Mount (L11), Advance Policy Theory (L4) and Public Service Ethos (L12) for his High Caliber detection (L14) system.

Under cover: We have 3 fresh scientific spies in our reserve, I send all 3 of them on Ivaquaria with orders to look into detection systems. :)

Science:
We have a second terraforming tech coming up, this means Y2 worlds are G2 to us. There are many such worlds with moderate gravity in Ivaquaria's system, so we have plenty of room to grow in without going to war. Better shields, beam, missiles and engines are on the horizon. But no better detection tech to be seen anywhere. :( I adjust our research sliders for a more even growth, everything at 16% but mathematics at 20%.

Economy:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_tb_prod121.jpg

Most worlds are complaining about high taxes, yet the planet tax is barely 20%. Our best industry worlds can't afford to work at more than a 1:1 ratio because of the lack of local money. So I drop the empire level tax to 9% from 13% and adjust the budget accordingly. We need to develop our worlds before thinking about war, so I change our military policy to Peace through strength. Why force the viceroy to spend 15% of our income on ship building while there are so many space ports, DEAs and infrastructure still to build. I know Darken will undo both these changes in 10 turns, but at least I do what I think is best at this time.

We have no high industry worlds, our best world is barely 391 PP. I choose our 2 highest maximum population worlds to be our main industrial centers, Tali IV and Bjorntoft VII. I scrap a lot of DEAs on both world to be replaced by manufactures. I create a player defined1 dev plan, to emphasize manufacturing on these worlds. I create a second plan, defined2, to emphasize research as we are somewhat lagging in that area and set some of our new worlds to that designation. I change our global regional policy to Specialized so the Viceroy will at least consider our dev plans and I allow forced labor at the minimum setting since we have 2 sources of labor in our empire.

Military:
There is a transport TF heading for Milonni, it is formed of a warp 4 ship and a warp 1 ship. Vek, you really should pay more attention to what the AI puts in a task force. Sometimes, you ask for a long range fleet and it will put a transport in there or even a colony ship. Now it is only partly your fault as we should have made the Troop transport obsolete a long time ago. I do that now and design a destroyer size transport with 4 pods and call it Bus4. Be careful with this, it has no system speed and it should not be sent with the attack fleet. Send it one turn after the fleet and disband it if the attack fleet loose the battle. Also, the TF was created at Tali but we have a mobilization center at Phobeus, which is 4 turns closer to Milonni. Oops, scratch that, Tali has lost its mobilization center, so there were created at Media, our new capital. It is also possible the mob center at Phobeus came online after the ships were deployed. In any case, I queue up a mob center in Tali.

We are not ready to take on the Sakkra 2 original systems as they most certainly have all the defense bases and probably some orbital to go along. I let the attack fleet go to Milonni but I disband the transports and will scrap all the cheap troop transports. I take this occasion to evaluate our navy and notice we have no good picket ship. A ship with ECM I will sneak up and destroy most of our ships before we even know it is there. Given our current industrial base, the biggest ships we can afford at this time are Light Cruisers. We should have a cruiser design for IF and Carrier missions, a light cruiser design for LR and SR missions, destroyer design for PD mission and a frigate design for Recon picket ships. To cover the most urgent need, I design a HvyScout with dual ECCM II for detection and dual fusion cannon for PD but we really need a better detection system. I don't design any other ships yet as there are many techs coming our way soon.

Colonization:
I mark multiple yellow and green worlds in Ivaquaria's systems and queue up some colony ships. I also mark a magnate world in Alya and a red world in Alrai to gain contact with the NO again and undo my weed of giving Schwan to the NO too early.




Turn 122

Diplomacy:
Our buddy Ivaquaria is offering a tech trade deal. :lol: Let's see, he offers Titanium (L4), sub-light drives (L8) and fighter fusion cannon (L9). We already have better armor and drive than what he offers. We could use fighter fusion cannon but we will have fighter neutron cannon soon. He wants Heavy Mount (L11), Advance Policy Theory (L4) and Inter organizational Evolution (L9). Sorry buddy, you will have to do better than this, how about you give me High Caliber detection (L14), I humbly reply to him.

Under cover: Our 3 scientific spies enter Trilarian territory undetected. We are putting the squeeze on enemy spies.

Science: Class III shields can be used on our next designs.


Turn 123

Science: Neutron Blaster come in to better equip our gun ships.

Under cover: One of our spy is captured but another one steals Plasma Enveloper, a level 19 troop weapon. Thanks, but look for a scanner, please!

Colonization: 2 new colonies pop up, including Milonni which will give us contact back with the lizards.


Turn 124

Diplomacy: Ivaquaria humbly refuses my counter-offer, too bad. He is stalling on my own offer though.


Turn 125

Random events: Unrest in Sardonyx due to a rumored Antaran star killer.

Diplomacy: Ivaquaria proposes to improve our economic TA, I humbly agree. Incidentally, we are making 1.5 AU trading with him alone.

Under cover: All of our spies are captured. :mad: There was a 9,10 and a 10,10 in the bunch.

Economy: Many infrastructure are coming online every turn, that is good. The Viceroy on Bjorntoft VII refuses to build any industry, why? Where did we put the whip, it looks like someone needs a good beating.


Turn 126

Under cover:
We kill a Sariar spy, huh? I thought they all died a long time ago. Something smells fishy about this, I'll have to take a look at Sariar's spy (see my previous post).

Military:
A Vomnast ship shows up at Namaro, we have 2 ships there and he has one. But I have no idea what are my 2 ships and what is ship is so I hold position and no combat occurs. I hope they improve that whole interface in a later patch, how can you make an informed decision if you don't know what ships you have?

Our only good transport ship is back in the reserve, I deploy a troop TF at Phobeus for the next leader to play with. I called it "10 Mobile Cor" so that you know what troops are in there. A parenthesis is in order here. An experienced troop Corp contains 18 units but our transport design can carry only 16. After auto-building, you can easily remove 2 useless support troops to make the Corp size 16 so that it fits in a single transport.

Colonization: A colony ship leaves for Cephee III, I cancel the colony order at destination.


Turn 127

Diplomacy: Ivaquaria is still stalling, I make a new offer, pleading that he considers it this time. I offer Heavy Mount (L11), Full Crust Mining (L15) and Public service ethos (L12). This looks like a bad deal, but we have no scanners in our tree up to level 25. We will be blind as a gopher if we can't trade or steal a scanner.

By the way, I can look at every empire tech progress on the tech matrix screen even though we have contact with only one empire. Yet another poorly designed game element.

Science: We discover shields to put on our missiles and fighters, good news. :)

Military: The troop transport is sent to Milonni, ETA 4 turns.

Economy: The Viceroy on Bjorntoft VII finally wakes up but he put up a mine instead of an industry. *sigh* Ok, I replace the mine by an industry and wave the whip in front of his nose.



Turn 128

Under cover: We kill a leech spy, of course he can send more if he wants to.

Military: A scout finds a well defended leech system south of Proxima but manages to run away. Since there is nothing else to explore in that area, I disband the task force.

Colonization: A colony ship leaves for Nashira IV, I cancel the colony order at the destination.


Turn 129

Random events: Locust invasion on Kali IV, they eat our crops.

Science: Neutronium warhead, good, we are almost ready to design new ships.

Under cover: We get a new scientific spy, Duncan, but he sucks big time so I keep him at home.

Economy: Bulk Freight modules are coming online, giving us a temporary reduction in trade.


Turn 130

Diplomacy:
Ivaquaria turns down my last offer. :( He is at war with the Sakkra, I wish there was a way to trade our involvement in that war for the tech. Specially since the Sakkra ambassador came to threaten us in a cheerful tone. :) Looks like he didn't like being ignored since we met again. I'll let the next leader decide whether we make TA with them or we go to war.

Military: Our first CRCruiser comes out of the assembly line.




Final SitRep

Diplomacy: The NO are still in fifth rank, we climbed to third rank and Ivaquaria is now ranked second. The number one would be the remote Psilons.

Science: Magnetic field modification came in this turn, it is our second terraforming tech. You should check that our planets who need it get some budget on it. A new warp drive will be discovered very soon now, maybe on your round.

Under cover: There are still some spies hidden in our empire, I guess it is impossible to get rid of them completely. Don't drop the O-meter, but there is no need to raise it either.

Military: I was not able to get any good recon ships built since I was focusing on getting some colony ships out. Also, we have small to moderate unrest due to piracy, so I built a lot of system ships and many more are on the queues. When the new warp drive comes in, we should design a whole line of ships, maybe starting at battle cruiser for the IF and Carrier missions. But we don't have many productive worlds so it will be difficult to build enough support ship if they are too big. So I would stick with cruiser as the biggest hull for now.

Economy:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_tb_prod130.jpg

I managed to get us two decent industrial worlds, at the expense of research. There are many smaller worlds currently working on research DEAs and a new very rich world which should be checked to make sure it produces enough mines. Tali IV now has 663 IP and will get higher as the automated factories are built. Bjorntoft VII has 550 IP and still need to build a few industries. You may have to whip the viceroy a couple of times to get them built.

Colonization: There are still a few decent planets to grab in our neighborhood and there are some colony ships in the build queues. There are 2 colony ships in route which should land during you round if we still have a full alliance with Ivaquaria.


Turn 131 save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmsg1_teamb_turn131.zip)

Roster:

Jaxom
Darken -> Up
Sulla -> On deck
Vek -> below deck :)

I don't think it would be wise to start a war against the Sakkra now. It would only waste ressources that we need to make our worlds really productive. Oh you should verify the migration orders, I think some of our older worlds have enough population and some of our newer worlds good use a boost.

Nice round, Jaxom ! It seems like you have presented me with many options. I think we should get a war going with either the Sakkra (to help our ally Ivaq) or the Ithkul (only other target of opportunity), so I will scout both of them (or else build disposable scouts if we don't have any) and see exactly which one we should take on.

From what I've read on the IGMoo board, it seems like you must offer 3 techs and ask for 1 tech if you want to have any prayer of the AI accepting your offer. So I plan to try that. I also read that the AI likes trading its planets for techs, so I plan to try that. That may very well be ruled an exploit if it is true, but hey, no rule on it yet ...

I will probably look into building an ultra cheap "pirate defense" class of starship -- no armor, frigate sized or less so it can be built on poor industry worlds, and just our best gun. Not much use against enemy incursions, but useful to deploy to counter unrest from piracy. I am not sold on system defense ships. If the enemy brings a nice sized fleet, since system defense ships usually run a rev or two behind, they are usually toast. Orbitals are definitely worth every penny, though, especially on planets with moons.

Regarding taxes, yes, I will probably raise the rates :) I have learned that the system tax is mostly useless -- it gets collected from all planets in a system, and gets spent only on the planet with the System Seat of Gov't. So, if you are looking to turbocharge your System Seat of Gov't planet, it can be useful, but it is good to set to 0 in the general case. In the only long game I've played, I kept the Empire tax rate at 18% the entire game, and my economy got up to 6.1 million AUs per turn at the end. I spent no more than 100-200k per turn on average on unrest reduction, and had 0 unrest on all developed planets. Of course, I had Grendarls and not Humans, who have a bonus "Human" unrest factor, but I think high taxes are a Good Thing for empire growth and development. 18% might be a little high for Humans, but 12-15% seems like a good rate.

I really don't know anything about terraforming. I didn't do much of that in my long game. From what I have read, terraforming adds to the maintenance costs of a planet, and if you don't pay the maintenance, the planet slips back to its bad environment. So I will leave terraforming alone until I understand how it works.

So, the overall plan is:

1.) Try 3 (of ours) for 1 (of Ivaq's) tech swap if there is anything worthwhile
2.) Try tech for planet swap with Ivaq and Gaulrdu
3.) Deploy system defense and/or anti pirate system ships
4.) Scout Ithkul / Gaulrdu worlds for updated military deployment information to figure out who we can attack
5.) Deploy attack force if possible. Build one if we don't have one.
6.) Continue solid infrastructure growth and development
7.) Continue colonization efforts

Sounds like a fun turn ! Let's see how it goes.

Darken.Rahl

Um, the best way to make trades is to have good relations with the aliens...the best way to have good relations with the aliens is to every 3 or 4 turns, go through EVERY race you have contact with and offer a T/A of some sort. Don't sit around and wait for them to offer--go after them first!

The spreadsheets say that the tone DOES matter somewhat, but it depends on what race you are and who you're talking to, so you're on your own to figure it all out. (But later on I just use the defalt 'State' and it works fine.)

When you're out of T/As you may want an alliance of some sort. When you're out of those, THEN trading becomes a lot easier! I had relations of 200/200 with the fish one game! Trading is also easier if you ask for something that is just around the corner for you--I usually take the deal since it DOES save some time, and time is money!

The downside to all this is that as you up your relations with some races, the others races tend to hate you more since they're proabaly at war with them. But the upside is that your allies ships will join you in attacks...The downside is that having powerful enemies means that there's a lot more action in the Senate trying to get you thrown out or sanctioned; the upside is that you can praise your allies or mabye start total wars against your enemies!

The point you keep on ignoring Darken is that the total tax will never exceed a certain value depending on your governement. The higher the empire tax is, the lower the planet tax is. The more money you place in grants, the less money the planet receive due to bureaucracy. So the best empire tax rate would be 0%. However this is hard to do since your empire treasury pays for military maintenance, spy maintenance and interest on debt.

If you are going to raise the empire tax again, take a look at the planets first. You will notice their tax rate drop by as many percent as you raise the empire tax, making everything being built take longer excepts on the newest planets.

I agree that system defense ships are usually useless as blockade protection because we usually don't keep them up to date. In my own games, I always design better system ships as I get new system drives and replace the standing piracy fleet on frontier worlds where I am more likely to see an attack. Since all the system ships go in the same TF, if you don't replace the old system ships your new ships end up going as slow as the old ones and usually get creamed quite easily.

My only trade attempt was a 3 for 1 with Ivaquaria and it was turned down. However, we don't have 200,200 with him and by far. Maybe we need to give him some obsolete techs to improve our realtions. Fighting the Sakkra would (hopefully) raise our relations but the cost of doing so would not be worth the potential gains at this point.

The tenure of Darken.Rahl as CEO of RBMOO Team B, Ltd. was filled with accounting irregularities. Taxes were modified heavily, and much unrest came and went. At the end, a steady operational state emerged, though not without pain in getting there. Many foreign trades were negotiated, but zero were closed. Defenses were shored up, colonies were settled, and up to date military recon was done, though at a small cost to some of the recon forces involved.

Turn 131: Adjust taxes. Take system from 1% -> 0%, take empire from 9% -> 13%. increase unrest spending, grants to planets. Peace and Prosperity looks like a good plan. Our military is at somewhat of a crossroads -- our missiles are effective with neutronium or anionic, but our beam weapons are lame with Neutron Blasters (11) being our best option. We are not able to research the highly effective Hellfire Cannon (22), which is a great early-late middle game weapon. Our fighters are not in great shape either, with fighter mass driver being our best bet instead of Fighter Fusion cannon or Fighter Neutron Cannon -- they would be effective vs. ships but not so good in a planetary or orbital assault. So, we will focus on building IF ships and the occasional carrier for defensive purposes.
Notch the oppressometer down to its center position, then look at our fleet situation.
The Heavy Scout looks like a great addition to the fleet, and will probably have a long and storied career. But I think it would be more effective with 1 x ECCM and 1 x Focus Detection Array instead of 2 x ECCM, so I redesign it as such to the HvyScout4a..
In terms of building an anti-pirate startship to be readily deployed across the empire to combat piracy, this doesn't look like a good plan yet. The bare bones AntiPirate1 costs 609 AU and has no missiles, and the Hawk Def 2 costs 585 and has missiles. So looks like we keep the Hawk Def 2 for a while. Also, we don't have a lot of mobilization centers yet, so it kind of defeats the point of having a lot of anti-piracy ships in the fleet reserve.
The IFLightCrusr4 is showing its age with mostly Nuclear missiles plus 1 Anionic. I modernize this into the IFLtCr4 with 3x3 Neutronium missiles.
The CRCruiser4 is a good ship, but is a Cruiser and costs 1606 AU. This can be made cheaper (and at more of our shipyards) as a Light Cruiser at 1285 AU. I make the CarLtCr4. I realize upon writing this that the proper name should be CRLtCr4.
I make both the IFLightCrusr4 and the CarLtCr4 Long Range mission types, as they seem to be the most flexible. They can be mixed and matched without a lot of rules, and can serve as escorts to transport fleets if necessary. I haven't noticed any difference in performance by making them Long Range.
Our LR Gun boats are obsolete, but we don't have anything to replace them with, so I leave them alone. If we are able to get Graviton Beam and Class 4 shields (both of which are in our technology path), we would have a pretty effective gun boat again.
I deploy a LRFrigate4 x 2 and a CRCruiser4 at Phobeus to shore up the Eastern Defense front.
I adjust the MBQ -- I let whatever is building finish, and queue up a few IFLtCr4, CarLtCr4 and lots of HvyScout4a's behind whatever is building.
Looking at Technology, we have Broader Usage (L11), Plasma Enveloper (L19), Cloning Complex (L14), Magnetic Field Mod (L18) that Ivaq and/or Gaulrdu don't have. We have some spy or weapon technologies, too, but I don't think giving possible enemies any spy or any good weapon technologies is a good idea, so I leave them off the list. I will try several trades with these techs and see if we can't get a planet or tech in return.
Gaulrdu has the all important Hellfire Cannon (L14), so that will be my first target. Improved Mass Driver (also L14) wouldn't be a bad one, either.
Ivaq has a great world near other good worlds at Slkim4, so that will be our target for the Ivaq trades.
So, the trades are:
We offer Broader Usage, Plasma Enveloper, and Magnetic Field Modification to Gaulrdu for Hellfire Cannon
We offer Cloning Complex and Magnetic Field Modification to Ivaq for Slkim 4
We are power rank 5 with a HFOG of 1.6
Economy is 16.4k (+181) / 7097

Turn 132: Biosphere Housing Management (L16 Physical) is ready -- Gaulrdu has it in his tree at level 17 but doesn't have it yet, Ivaq has it already. In fact, Ivaq is a good 3-5 levels ahead of us in technology in all areas, which makes trading a bit tough.
Research DEAs built on Bjorntoft 4, Dromos 4
Planetary Shield Generator built on Sardonyx 4
Spaceports built on Kail4, Sardonyx 4
our spy Nightmare is captured
We kill an Ivaq spy
Unrest is pretty high. Ok, 13% is too high for taxes. Try 11% instead.
Move the Eastern Defense Supplemental Force from Phobeus to Ganagweh. ETA is 2 turns.

Turn 133: Gaulrdu and Ivaq both politely turn down my offers. Well, this is disappointing, but interesting. It is the first time I have ever heard back from a "exchange items" offer. So perhaps the format of 2 or 3 for 1 is OK, but the 2 or 3 are not the proper items to exchange for the 1 ? Ok, try several more combinations. I notice that Ivaq is pretty weak in general on all of the Bio stuff. So maybe offering him more of that will be productive
We offer Broader Usage, Plasma Enveloper, and Magnetic Field Modification to Gaulrdu for Samsara 4
We offer Cloning Complex, Magnetic Field Modification, and Automated Biocare to Ivaq for Slkim 4
Colonies land and are established at Cephee 3 and Nashira 4. I allocate Cephee 3 to be balanced, and Nashira 4 to be basically all industry.
Media 1 builds Colony4. It is autodeployed at Kali and sent to Solocka. OK.
Industry DEAs built at Bjorntoft 7 and Milonni 2
Nightmare is slain by Ivaq
Unrest is now 0 across the board. Try Empire tax of 12% up from 11%.
Economy is 15.1k (+81) / 3366

Turn 134: A scout encounters resistance at Garr. Studying the ship combat and system view screens, we learn that Vomnast has quite the force on Garr -- 1 missile base, 1 beam base, 1 fighter base, 6 orbitals, and 15 system ships. Well, our scout won't be able to defeat any of this so it retreats. In fact, our entire fleet probably couldn't defeat this system at this point, which is somewhat problematic. We need to build our fleet up a LOT.
Skrolle the Social spy is ready. Skrolle is pretty good at 9C/10D/41/100. We try to insert him on Gaulrdu to cause Gaulrdu pain, anguish, and Unrest.
We recruit a Diplomatic spy, as we currently have none
Biorganic Monitoring Station (L16 Bio) is ready -- Gaulrdu can't get this one, Ivaq already has it.
HvyScout4 is built at Tali 4. Deploy at Phobeus to go and scout the Ithkul's current military might.
Research DEA built at Tali 5, Bjorntoft 4
Industry DEA built at Sardonyx 2
Send our extremely obsolete SRCorvette1a to scout current military strength of Mufrid
Nicrom, the Ithkul outpost is at population 627. If it gets to ~1000, it would be an easy conquest for us.
Nope, Empire tax of 12% generates more than a little unrest. Back down to 11%.
Economy is 16.8k (-883) / 3593

Turn 135: System University (L16 Econ) is ready. Gaulrdu doesn't have it and can't get it, Ivaq of course already has it
Both Gaulrdu and Ivaq turn down my new offers politely. Try 2 more offers:
Offer Gaulrdu System University, Magnetic Field Mod, Biorganic Monitoring Station for Hellfire Cannon
Offer Ivaq Cloning Complex, Magnetic Field Modification, and Automated Biocare to Ivaq for Tyr 2
Colony ship lands at Solocka. Not enough for a full colony, just an outpost. Mark the outpost for migration.
Space Port built on Sardonyx 4
Industry DEA built on Sardonyx 2
Skrolle, our super Social spy, can't get into the Gaulrdu borders, even at 9/10/41/100. Try again.
We kill a New Orions spy !
No unrest at 11% tax. Ok, I will not raise taxes for Humans any higher than 11%.
Economy is 16.2k (-43) / 3696. Our economy has taken quite a beating as I experiment with Taxes. Sorry about that. I think I found the optimal threshold, though. I still need to investigate the correlation between Empire tax level and planetary taxes, banks, and production times, though I will be experimenting with that in offline games.

Turn 136: Colony 4 built at Tali 2. Auto deployed at Phobeus, going to Knaa 5. Not sure it will make it, since that is Gaulrdu's world, but I decide to let it try.
Industry DEAs built on Phobeus 5, Sardonyx 3
Space Port built on Sardonyx 3
Skrolle our super Social spy still can't get into Gaulrdu's borders. I keep him home instead.
We kill a Sariar spy
Solocka I grows from an outpost into a colony. I zone it to be mostly Industry
Fighter graviton beams are visible ! We can make quite a nice carrier fleet with these when they come through.
Economy is 17.7k (-797) / 4960.

(Inter-Turn) Namaro (our slowly growing outpost) -- Intercept a Gaulrdu colony ship and kill it
Mufrid -- our SRCorvette1a arrives, and finds that Mulfrid 1 is the only planet settled, and it has 1 missile base, 1 beam base, 1 fighter base, 1 orbital and 12 ships defending it. It has 1 moon, so it can have up to 5 orbitals eventually defending it. I retreat, and our Corvette gets away OK.

Turn 137: Both Ivaq and Gaulrdu again politely turn down my offer. Darn. Try the following:
Offer Gaulrdu System University, Magnetic Field Mod, Biorganic Monitoring Station for Samsara
Offer Ivaq Cloning Complex, Magnetic Field Modification, and Automated Biocare to Ivaq for Tyr12
Space Port built on Tali 5
Colony 4 built at Media 1. Auto sent to Knaa 5. I cancel this and redirect to Collevar 3. ETA is 9 turns.
Research DEA built on Bjorntoft 4
Industry DEA built at Dromos 2
Nicrom is population 648. Growing, but won't hit 1000 anytime soon.
Our HvyScout4 arrives at the Ithkul world of Esra. Esra 3 has 1 missile base, 1 beam base, 1 fighter base, 6 orbitals and 25 (!!) system ships. I order our Scout to retreat, but it gets tagged quickly by missiles and dies. The Ithkul are STRONG, and I don't think we will be attacking them any time soon.
Economy is 17.2k (-234) / 4106

Turn 138: Ivaq asks to increase our Trade Agreement. I say OK
Battleship is complete. I don't note which tech level this is, because I don't think we should trade this to our future enemies.
Extractor Assemblies complete (L17 Phys) -- Gaulrdu doesn't have it yet (but will), Ivaq of course has it
System Seat of Gov't destroyed on Kali 4. We need a Diplomatic counter spy -- still 17 turns away, though.
Nicrom is population 655. Just ~40 more turns and we can invade !
Economy is 17.2k (-306) / 4487

Turn 139: Both Ivaq and Gaulrdu again politely turn down my offers. Ok, that's it for me trying to exchange items for now.
Impulse Drives and Subterranean Farms are ready
Industry DEA completes on Phobeus 5
Space port built on Sardonyx 4
IFLtcr4 and CarLtcr4 complete.
We kill a Sariar spy
I note a Vomnast ship creeping towarsd Solocka. I deploy a fleet at Kali to head them off.
Economy is 17.1k (-31) / 4124

Turn 140: Alkalarops -- Gaulrdu have 1 ship -- I hold, no combat
Alkalarops -- Vomnast has 1 ship -- I hold, no combat
Training Resistence Compensators (L17 Bio) completes -- this is spy related, so I put it on the "do not trade" list.
Kilo, our 10/3/45/100 Scientific spy is built. I keep him at home, as 10 Cloak is nice.
I recruit an Economic spy
Colony 4 built at Tali 2 -- sent to Phelot. OK
Planetary Shield Generator built at Phobeus 5
Mining DEA built at Phobeus 5
Space Port built at Sardonyx 4
Research DEA built at Sardonyx 2
Economy is 17.3k (-101) / 4156

Turn 141: Colony 4 built on Media 1 -- this is auto deployed at Phobeus and sent to Knaa 5. We need to manually redirect it, as it will get destroyed at Knaa 5
Our turn 137 Colony Ship gets intercepted and destroyed at Knaa 5. I turn off the Send Colony feature here so as to avoid future losses.
Mining DEA built at Phobeus 5
Industry DEA built at Bjorntoft 7
CrCruiser4 builds and is in reserves
Bioharvest 717/406 Mining 1.1k/692 Industry 4.5k Production 6.5k Research 2.8k (3.4k)
Economy is 17.5k (+175) / 3941
unrest is 0-18 across the board, but mostly 0-6 with a few exceptions
We are power rank 3, Ivaq is power rank 1, and I have no idea who is power rank 2 (we haven't met them)

I was encouraged by my failures in Exchanging Items. This is the first time I have ever gotten a response from the AI when I have proposed trades. I got a (negative) response to all 6 proposals I made. Now I need to work on actually getting one accepted.

Sorry I blew it on the whole taxes situation. I thought I knew I understood the mechanics there, but I guess I don't fully grasp them yet. More offline trial and error and finding the correlation between Empire and planetary tax levels is needed.

Notes for Sullla:

1.) Look for the Colony ship at Phobeus moving to Knaa, and stop and redirect it to Namaro. We need Namaro to be a full colony so we can continue to expand in the west.
2.) We will need LOTS of carriers and IF ships if we are going to assault any world with Orbitals. Probably on the order of 20-30 ships for a 2-5 Orbital world.
3.) When Graviton beam comes in, it would be a good time to redesign our LR gunboats
4.) When we get Fighter Graviton beam in and build 10-15 carriers, we probably can go on the offensive. I think we're pretty stuck for a while, though.
5.) Our Galaxy is rapidly getting crowded, and we don't have a whole heck of a lot of planets, relatively. Not really sure what to do about that one except keep expanding and pray. We are power rank 3, but it sure doesn't feel that way.
6.) Try more trades ! If we can get Hellfire Cannon (through trade or espionage ...) from Gaulrdu, that would greatly enhance our current ship capabilities
7.) Good luck !

Saved game file:

RBMoo1B_Turn141 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1B_Turn141.zip)

Darken.Rahl

Darken, anti-piracy effects are based on hull size. Hawk def 2 might have missiles but if it's based on the same hull as the original hawk def it's not as good at fighting pirates as a frigate, which is probably what the anti-pirate ship is. You are better off building the anti-pirate ship anywhere where you don't expect to get attacked.

When designing system defenses, you should have a real defender and an anti-pirate ship. The real defender can be built in key systems where you need defense, and should probably be a carrier or a missile ship unless you plan to scrap and rebuild system defenses over time. The anti-pirate ship should be a frigate as it's biggest ship you can build without shipyard improvements, and should NOT be a missile ship as missiles are too expensive; you would waste a lot of time/production on something that will probably never see combat if you use missile ships as anti-piracy forces. An anti-pirate ship is probably best as a cheap carrier. If you ever do have to fall back to that system, at least its fighters can distract the enemy while any real defenses/fleets you might have on hand can do the work.

Good round Darken.

I don't remember flagging Knaa for a colony ship, if I did, my mistake, sorry. There are quite a few usable worlds in Ivaquaria's system, we should go for them first.

According to the readme and the spreadsheets, there is 1 point of piracy for each inhabited regions in a system. If you have 20 regions in a system, you will have 20 piracy points when they are all inhabited. A planetary shield cuts piracy to 1/10th its normal amount, so if the same system has a planetary shield on all its planets, piracy points would be 2. Each hull size combat 1 piracy point, whether it comes from starships, system ships or orbitals. According to the readme, the initial Hawk, a corvette, combats 1 piracy point. So a cheap anti-piracy ship needs only be a corvette with the cheapest weapons. I have success combating piracy in my private games using 3-5 corvettes per system, depending on how many planets I colonize in these systems. To make those ships cheap, I make sure they have no shields and no armor, and I use only mass drivers for the weapons. These ships are not meant to fight, so I make sure my border worlds receive cover from a reasonable starship fleet, as well as building the planet's defense bases.

Sulla, it's your turn to experiment with the tax rate. :) If you do change the empire tax, make sure you note the planetary tax on some key systems. It should be quite obvious that a lower empire tax is a better thing when you have more mature planets than newly colonized planets.

Roster:
Jaxom
Darken
Sulla -> Up
Vek -> on deck

OK, I will try to play tomorrow. I was playing MP with Sirian and Jaffa tonight using Colin's mod. It was a real blast; the AI is FAR more aggressive and the slowed tech pace is a big relief. Multiplayer works really well in MOO3 - now why couldn't Firaxis have done the same for Civ3? :) Regardless, I should get to the game tomorrow.

Oh good, I thought that you had forgoten about us. :lol:


Ok, I'll wait. :cry:

--Vek

Actually... I have a lot of things to get done before Friday, at which time I will be leaving for spring break. Rather than let the game sit until Friday evening, I'd rather pass on my turn and just grab it the next time around, which I know will be soon with the fast turnaround of this team. Just don't think that I'm quitting or anything, ok? :D

Jaxom
Darken
Sulla
Vek <<< UP NOW

Allright, I've got it, so I'll post it tomorrow.

--Vek

Corner again. :goodjob:

Edit: I take it back, I got it. I'll post results tomorrow.

Sorry this took so long. The past few days have been busy.

Turn 141:

I debate sending the task force to Knaa, and decide against it. I'm going to build up more troops first.

Sent the Coloney ship to Slkim II. It was the closest habitable Green planet.

Nothing interesting, I end Turn

Turn 142:

Really nothing to do this turn. I end the turn.

Turn 143:

I send a T/A to the Ivaq. The more Buddy-Buddy we are with them, the better.

I am starting to worry that we could loose to a Senate Vote on turn 150...

Turn 144:

More spy activity. I up the Oppressometer. If it causes unrest I will lower it again.

I'm falling asleep here. Nothing interesting is going on. Another coloney ship is trying to go to Knaa. I send it off.

Turn 145:

Ivaq accepted the T/A. I send another one. We get a new spy. Yay.

Turn 146:

Nothing happening

Turn 147:

The Ivaq accept our offer.

We kill a Sariar spy. :nono:

I create another Task Force.

Turn 148:

We kill a NO spy. Tut Tut.

There is still a spy terrorizing our Citizens. Yeesh

I send the TF to Milonni

We finally kill that irritating scout at Alkaup.

149:

*yawn*

150:

We kill another Sariar spy. *sigh* Bloody Hell.

Pffft. Nothing to do.

151:

Fighter Neutron Cannon is now ready.

Messages from Ivaq. Check that.

Nothing else interesting. Have fun.


--Vek

Turn 151 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMOO1_TeamB_Turn_151.zip)

Jaxom <<< UP NOW
Darken <<< on deck
Sulla
Vek

Thought I'd post this since it's been a little quiet around here lately. :) I share the concerns of others that we don't really have a plan for victory here and don't seem to be making much progress. If this were Civ3, I'd recommend a plan of action for the team. But it's not Civ3, and I don't know how best to proceed in the situation. There's so much I still don't know about this game, and I think all of us are in that situation. So does anyone have an idea about what we should try to do to win this game? I'd love to hear about it, and I'm sure everyone else would too. :)

Regarding the nature of MOO: it is distinct from Civ, always has been. In civ, you have a terrain map. Military and territorial concerns enjoy the tactical element spread across the terrain map, including water units at sea, air units in the late game, and so on. Civ3's cultural control zones, in which the defender enjoys more movement than attacking forces, move only slightly in the direction of MOO gameplay.

In MOO, there is no terrain map. There are star systems, fixed points in space at which action takes place. The space between represents travel space, with fixed travel times dependent upon your technology level. Since there is no "room to maneuver on the map", the gameplay moves away from the tactical movement of small numbers of units spread out, to the strategic movement of grouped forces with timing elements of departure and arrival. To make that viable, defense must be bolstered, easier, requiring far more expenditure on the attacker's part than the defender's, to win. Standoffs can even emerge where neither side has the force to overcome the other "on the opponent's home field". That is, the attacking space fleet cannot handle the planetary defenses, but the defending space fleet cannot handle the attackers out in space, away from the planetary defenses. You get a result that has a bit of the World War I "trench warfare" feel to it, where clear lines form at the front, whether the wars are hot or cold.

The idea that your game here "seems to have stalled", or some other equivalent, or feeling some kind of pressure to "do something", may be off the mark. Preserving and improving what you have is generally more urgent than imposing losses on the enemy. In that regard, MOO actually becomes more of a builder game. You can go on the offensive any time you dedicate your cause to doing so, but since you'll need to significantly outproduce or outdesign or outmaneuver your enemy to make gains into his core (border areas can be another story) you may find yourself in an impotent position offensively, at times, and NEED to hit "Next Turn" a few times to gather more forces to use. There is no Civ3 equivalent of "puppet strings" in MOO. If they have a fleet of a certain size, you just can't finesse your way past that.


When I organized the SG, I expected the game to have an AI in there. The one that is in there now is lobotomized: it's missing large parts of its brain. However, I have seen through mods that the core AI is actually quite strong. I can't describe how encouraging that is.

In light of the fact that the release-version AI is so sad, I can understand the feeling of loss of direction. If the AI is not competently fighting back, there's no pressure on the player or the team, therefore no tension, little excitement, plus a bit of a disconnected sense between what you do and what it means to the outcome. I wish I could correct that for this first SG, but I really can't.

Sulla, as you've seen in the mod, the patched game (via the mod) is a lot more engaging. I, personally, am now getting what I wanted out of the game: a GAME, a strategic challenge. I'm well into the depth of that now and having an absolute blast, despite all the bugs, unfinished or unpolished UI elements, and so on. That is not possible without the mod, though. The mod makes all the difference, folks having poked and prodded at the game through tweaks until hitting upon an effective combination to unleash the true potential of this AI. I can't overstate the effect, the difference it makes. Having a viable opponent lends purpose to the game. For me, that purpose extends far enough that my grumbles and minor complaints fade into the background, pending official patches, only to re-emerge if those patches fail to correct the problem issues. There's a real game in there, though, and it's not a matter of "being patient until you find it". It's a matter of playing a version that poses meaningful adversity.


It seems to me that some in the SG's, across the three teams, are active, enjoying the games, and some are lost or wondering when the fun starts. I have been considering gathering another smaller group to start a second SG with the mod, so that we can get past the "training game" feeling and get some excitement going, both for players and spectators. Team A has a little excitement going with some meaningful skirmishes with the Ithkul, and I don't mean to suggest cutting SG1 short, or setting it aside, or any such. Not yet, at least. But I personally have hit a zone of enormous excitement, entertainment and intensity with the game, which is missing here in the SG's, and I wonder how I might infuse the SG concept with some of the fun I'm having on my own, in the background. My mod postings at RB have not generated many replies lately. I don't know whether people are not tuned in, or simply not impressed. I do know that for me, I've found enough of what I'm looking for here, and now have enough real hope to expect the likelihood of a polished version -- through patches alone, or a combo of patches and mods -- that I can't see myself ever again playing more hours of Civ3 than MOO3.

I'm going to go forward with the idea of a second SG, using the mod, if there are enough players. If you are interested, check it out. I recommend that skeptics or confused/uncertain players sit that one out, though. This is for those with the drive to push forward, to blaze the way through what may be difficult terrain.


- Sirian

I agree, our pace the last week was not what it was for the first 2 weeks. However, the last week has been somewhat exceptional in terms of RL World Events, so I've been patiently waiting for our team to digest these events and get around to their turns whenever they get a chance. I'm ready to go whenever it eventually gets back to me.

I also agree that our strategic position is not the strongest -- however, I think we were thrown quite a curve by being kicked out of the Senate early, and outside of knowing the map in advance and make a push purely to the west and southwest, I'm not sure how we could have done things a lot better.

I'm looking forward to continuing our game and seeing what we are able to accomplish. If we are able to win this one I think it will be very satisfying. If we are not able to win this one, I am still glad to have played, as it has definitely been educational for me.

Darken.Rahl

Since you skipped your round, you should go ahead now Sulla.

I would personnaly see it as a victory simply to get back in the senate but I have not many ideas as to how to proceed on that. Once thing is certain, I have no intention of entering a 600 turns slugfest just to say we have won the game.

If we want to get into some military action, we need to build a balanced navy, we don't have that yet. In private games, I have had successes with armadas made of 6 core IF or Car, 6 PD ships equipped with a 20 shots nuclear missile and the longest range PD beam weapons, and 6 Recon ships heavy on the recon equipement and some beam pd weapons. It would take at least 30 turns to field such an armada. This single armada will not be very useful if it is not supported by gunships, for that I make a LR armada formed of 12 LR gunships and 6 recon ships, and a SR armada equipped with the best stealth equipment, composed of 12 SR gunships and 6 stealth recon ships. We would need 2 such navies, one in the east and one in the west, to wage a successful war on the lizard and make actual gains. But we are looking at roughly 100 turns before any action takes place going with this plan. With a single navy of 1 IF, 1 Car, 1 LR and 1 SR, we can enter Ithkul territory and get some action sooner while this may be helpful to imporve our chances of getting back into the senate.

In any case, without some kind of middle to long term strategy and some kind of short term plans to achieve it, there is not much point in playing the game. It takes a long time to setup a good strong core in MOO and even longer to setup a useful navy to pursue military targets. The SG format requires a lot of team work and discussions to make the game move significantly in one direction or another since most plans will take a good 50 to a 100 turns of preparation before they can be implemented.

Roster:
Jaxom -> on deck
Darken
Vek
Sulla -> Up

Alright, I will take the game next, though I fear some of the details of shipbuilding you just provided are way over my head. :)

I need to take a pass on this round, as I will be travelling from Thursday - Tuesday (back next Wednesday) and doubt it will get to me by the end of tomorrow (my last available time to play for a week).

Darken.Rahl

(151) I start by looking through the planets and adjusting the build queues as necessary, cutting funding in some places, raising it in others, etc. Have to go check out the shipyards to see exactly what our new ships do - Bus4 is a very creatively named transport, I see. :) Since Bus4 is superior to our older transport, I obsolete the old design (but don't get any Bus4s in a fight, since they are incredibly slow and lack any defense whatsoever!) Checking diplomacy, the fish want to sign a new research deal with us; sounds good to me. I set migration on to a planet where we have an outpost, turn migration off to planets over size 20, and reassign a colony ship which is sitting around doing nothing after an Ivaquarian colony ship beat it to its target planet. That was a pretty useful first turn, methinks. Then I redesign most of the old ships from my last turn, designating them "4a" where appropriate. We don't have any designs larger than a Light Cruiser? And we can build Battleships now? I design some new ships with larger hulls, notably LR and CR Battleships and a missile (IF) Battle Cruiser. Then I go back and change our high industry planets to increase their shipyard capacities so we can build some of these ships. Small is good, but bigger is better, hehe, ;)

(152) Disband a scout TF which is extremely far away from our systems and is surrounded by known enemy systems. Nothing to scout there, better to return to home. I notice this turn that the Knaa system, which we are attempting to colonize, already has 8 Gaulrdu ships in it. That could prove to be... a problem. Fortunately we have 21 ships that can be in that system in 3 turns. I send them in, intending to create a presence in the Knaa system but NOT to attack the Sakkra planet there; I have the feeling its defenses could rip us to shreds. A new TF is created to go protect Milonni.

(153) Ganagweh II colonized, migration ordered on to get it up to colony status. Continue to adjust build queues. Agree to exchange items in a deal proposed by the fishies.

(154) Phelot III colonized. Migration turns the outpost on Collevar III into a colony; I zone out its DEAs. Preparing for the battle to come next turn for control of Knaa.

(155) No combat occurred in the Knaa system; the Sakkra were unwilling to challenge our ships. However, it won't seem to let us colonize a planet until we take over control of the system. If that's the case, I've got 11 more ships coming into the Knaa system in 3 turns; we'll be able to take down there forces at that time no matter what.

(156) A new leader which boosts technology research has arrived this turn. Wonder how long he'll last, heh. Speaking of tech, we are ahead of everyone else by about 2-3 levels except for our friends Ivaquaria who are 2-3 levels ahead of US. We are third in the power rankings, and our fish buddies are #1. It looks like the Trilarians are in good shape to win this game, since they are in the Senate and have good relations with most races. We can only keep on plugging away towards some victory goal.

(157) Nada. But I expect to see a nice light show on this next turn.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1B_lightshow1.png

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1B_lightshow2.png

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1B_lightshow3.png

(158) Our forces were cut to ribbons. Cut apart to pieces in battle. I sent in 34 ships, almost all up to date designs, against 10 system ships and 2 orbitals. We not only lost ALL of our ships, we inflicted not a single casualty to the other side. Not a one. I know this game is geared towards defense, but come on now, this is ridiculous. The extremely strong defense in this game is what is probably turning me off from MOO3 the most. It's SO difficult to take enemy systems, even when you bring overwhelming force, that I must confess I have little desire to play at times. Is this supposed to be fun? Needing 5x the other side's forces to win, and then still losing 1/3 to 1/2 of your forces each time? Bah, I say to that. :) I suppose I am missing the point of this game and still trying to think of it in Civ3 terms (I have 3x the forces of the other guy; I should have a pretty good chance to win). It's a different game, and it will take time for me to learn how much force is needed to take over an enemy system. But with odds of 34 against 13 and our side not just losing, but overwhelmingly defeated? I say somethin ain't right there. :)

I'm passing off here, since I don't want to screw us up anymore. At least we don't have to worry about the AI civs fighting us back in the standard version of the game, heh.

RBMoo1B Turn158 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1B_Turn158.zip)

Sulla, you forget to consider the planet bases in your evaluation of forces. A planet base is roughly the equivalent of an armada of cruiser size ships. Furthermore, these armada are always equipped with the very latest technology. On one of your pictures we can see the planet has all 3 bases, which means 10-15 IF cruisers, 10-15 LR cruisers and 10-15 Car cruisers. Now evaluate the forces again, do you still think the odds were in your favor?

Now this is not a blame, you did what you could with what you had to work with. Knaa is the second world the Sakkra colonized, I expected it to be well defended. We can take the system but we need about 100-150 ships to do it. Not just any ships either, it needs to be well balanced task forces, with the proper ships in the proper mission types.

The combat AI can do many more things than the player controlling a combat. The combat AI works great if the ships are using the proper mission type. A LR ship in the escort ring will fire its weapons at incoming threats to the core ships, not at the planet's bases. An IF fleet will stay back and shoot mostly at the planet and a carrier fleet will use its fighters in a defensive role if they are needed that way. A LR fleet will close in to the maximum range of its BEAM weapons so if you design an IF ship and call it LR, you are telling the AI to send this ship in to be shredded to pieces.

I'll take my round and design the ships we need to build a balanced navy. Note that having the technology to build battleships doesn't mean our planets can build batleships. We don't have any worlds with enough production to build battleships in a reasonable amount of time so my designs will be of cruiser size, maybe battle cruiser size. Not that it will matter much as most of them will be made obsolete and re-designed as LR ships by the time the game comes back to me. At least you'll be able to load my save game and have a look for yourself.

I was counting the planet in my estimate. I just didn't think that conquering a single planet would necessitate bringing "100-150" ships. If just building the three cheap planetary defenses can require that kind of force to dislodge, then WOW did this game's designers ever want to focus on defense. I guess that's something else I need to learn. A good lesson nonetheless, even if it did prove costly in the short run. :D :mischief:

I'm not sure I know too much about ship design best practices, but I thought I'd throw out here what has been working for me before I go travelling about for a week.

For turns 1-250 of most games, my ships break down into 3 types:

1.) LR frigate, armed with 1 or 2 of the best spinal mount weapons, and 2x2, 1x4, or 2x3 of the best and heaviest missiles I can build. This ship is a combination missile assault ship with firepower to kill incoming missiles and fighters, as well as killing any remaining ships if (when) I run out of missiles.

2.) LR frigate, armed with 6-9 interceptor fighters with the best 8-15 space weapon (phasers are usually my favorite, though graviton beams work nicely too). This obviously is a carrier.

3.) Recon scout -- cutter or corvette, with 1x3 pd missiles, 1 std mount gun, and 1 high-focus scanning array.

I build as many packs of these ships (6 gun boats, 6 carriers, 2 scouts) as my economy will support. 3-4 packs of these ships will take out all enemy fleets. 8-10 packs of these ships will take out 2-4 orbital worlds with "minor" (10-30 ships) casulties. 10 packs of these ships will take out 6-9 orbital worlds with major (40-90 ships) casulties

After turn 250, economies have improved and I can build fleets with the following 4 types of ships:

1.) LR battle cruiser, armed with 1x4 or 2x3 of the best and heaviest missiles I can build, along with 1 or 2 of the best spinal weapons I can build and 2-8 lightning field pd guns and the best shields I can build with small or standard generators. This ship will get upgraded to a dreadnought or superdreadnought over time, with a few more spinal guns.

2.) LR light cruiser, armed with 9-11 interceptor fighters and 4 lightning field guns and no shields. Obviously a carrier

3.) LR battle cruiser with as many of the best and heaviest missiles I can put on there (usually 3x3 or 3x4) with 2-6 lightning field generators

4.) Recon scout corvette with 1x3 pd missiles, std gun (usually something continuous and miniaturized), and high focus array

I build packs of these, 6 battle cruisers (ideally a mix of 3+3 gun / missile only) plus 6 light cruisers plus 2 scouts. Again, 3-4 packs of these take out all enemy fleets, and packs of 6-10 will take out 2-4 orbital worlds with very minor (10-20) losses. 6-9 orbital worlds still tend to put a hurt on my fleets, but maybe only 20-30 ships on a good round. I tend to just watch the space battles and let the AI go to town. I make all of my ships (except the picket scouts, which need to be recon) the LR type, so I can just mix and match all my packs in the quickest amount of time, as I am continually assembling and losing fleets.

So to me, conquering the enemy becomes quite the battle of attrition. As long as I can keep up my 10-pack fleets, I can conquer all of the enemies worlds. Though it does take a while, and I need to keep building ships.

I have no idea if my designs are optimal or even good, but it seems to work for me and I seem to be able to crank out a lot of these throughout the game. Since the game is heavily defensively favored, it seems to me that affordable and disposable attack ships is the way to go.

I know a lot of people knock the cost effectiveness of spinal weapons vs. heavy mount weapons, but if you calculate damage per second per space used, I think the spinal ratios are the highest. Since you are optimizing to both maximize damage and minimize space, I like the spinal weapons. The heavy mount weapons take up too much space. Missiles seem to shred everything they go up against, but eventually run out. So I like having at least some ships with both missiles and guns.

Good luck all, this will be my last opportunity to check in until next Wednesday.

Darken.Rahl

Diplomacy:
Contact was re-establish with the Meklar and the Ithkul. War was immediately declared on the Ithkul while a few attempts at making TA with the Meklar failed. TA were improved with Ivaquaria the fish whenever possible. A couple of attempts at trading tech failed.

Military:
All of the warp 4 designs were made obsolete and a new series of warp 5 designs were introduced.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/rbmsg1_tb_ship170.jpg

The CVCR5 is a cruiser size carrier with 13 neutron cannon space control fighters. IFLC5 is a light cruiser size missile barge with 4 hercular missiles mounted on light chassis. PDFR5 is a frigate size point defense ship, be careful where you use them, they are as slow as the carrier or IF ships. All of the previous ships will be completely blind if you don't put some HvyScout5 with them. In 4-5 turns, you will have enough ships to build the following task forces:
Carrier armada with 5 CVCR5 in the core, 5 PDFR5 as escorts and 5 HvyScout5 as pickets,
IF armada with 5 IFLC5 in the core, 5 PDFR5 as escorts and 5 HvyScout5 as pickets.

These 2 armada would form the core of a fleet capable of taking out planetary bases but they need gun ship support to handle enemy ships and fighters. SRLC5 is a light cruiser size short range stealth attack ship, you will have 5 of them built in 4-5 turns. You should build 5 more and 5 Recon5 stealth picket ships to make a stealth armada. You should also design and build a LC or CR size long range gun ship based on the newly acquire graviton beam. You should build 10 of them and 5 Recon5 to be their eyes. That will give us a 4 task force fleet capable of taking out planetary defenses with moderate losses. That is, we will be able to capture 1 world, two at most, with this fleet. There are no other ships queued to be built after the current batch, you should check the build queue on the 6 top industrial worlds to put in your new designs before the current batch completes. All of the warp 4 ships who were in the reserve are now part of an armada called "Mix pack4" above Ganagweh. They could try to attack the Ithkul world at Esra, but I think Esra is the Ithkul home world so our armada would get shredded to pieces. It may be a better idea to hold on it until our warp 5 navy is up and running.

Science:
Graviton beam, class IV shields and a new system drive were discovered in this round. Our under cover agents also found the plans to the fighter graviton beam. You may want to upgrade the warp 5 designs to warp 5a as the next warp engine will not come in soon.

Under cover:
Not much happened except for our agents stealing some fish technology. There is still one scientific spy in Trilarian territory.

Economy:
Empire tax was drop from 11% to 5% so that our productive planets could raise their taxes from 23% to 30% and generate enough local money to be productive. If you raise the empire tax, you will have to lower the planet tax on each world to avoid unrest.

Colonization:
I made no effort to colonize new worlds as most of our production went into making a half decent navy. There will be a colony ship coming out soon, it should be sent to Alrai if we want to have contact with the NO before the end of the game.



Final SitRep
Not much to report, except there is at least one foreign spy at work in our empire.

Turn 171 save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/rbmsg1_teamb_turn171.zip)

P.S.: We have a strange situation above Slkim. We have a colony there, so do the Trilarian and the Sakkra. We have 0 ships above the planet but the fish have 4 ships. Every turn, you can take control of these ships and bombard the Sakkra colony if you want. I did for most of my round. :)

Roster:

Jaxom
Darken -> skipped, will take it after Sulla
Vek -> up
Sulla -> on deck

Darken, I don't think the designers put in a carrier mission and an indirect fire mission just for show. If you watch the combat, the AI will do a much better job if you use the proper mission types. Heck, even if you take control of the combat, you will do a much better job if you can tell what the task force is meant to be.

The strength of planetary defenses is currently artificially boosted by the PD bug. Your ships are supposed to try to shoot down some of the incoming missiles, and sometimes you can force them to do it by making sure they don't have another "priority" such as an attack target. Other times, nothing you can do will help.

The idea that these bases represent "10 to 15 cruisers" is an exageration. The missile bases and orbitals, thanks to PD bug, represent a big punch you can often do nothing about, and they destroy a lot of ships in the current version that won't be dying once this bug is fixed. Likewise, the player's ability to decimate enemy ships and facilities, and most notably the guardians, with missiles, will also be curtailed.

MOO3 IS intended to tilt toward defense. Until the PD bug is fixed in a patch, though, all players should realize there is distortion in the combat engine and that planetary missile bases in particular represent a massive threat. The beam and fighter bases are less big of a deal.

To a certain extent, at the moment, the best answer for the PD bug is to use it yourself. If you are going after heavily defended AI planets, bring enough missiles to kill their bases quickly, you'd lose at most one TF to the PD bug. It may also help to include one "point defense" ship in your larger TF's that has some PD missile racks on board, plus appropriate-speed engines so as not to slow the TF. (The autobuild automatically builds ships with IF and Carrier missions with less than full speed engines, unless you change the engine yourself).

Once again, I'm sorry the AI is overly defensive, that the PD bug disrupts combat, that the MBQ and other items add tedium. The best advice I could offer for the moment is not to try to attack well defended planets. "Island Hop" and hit the softer targets, or maintain space superiority with blockades, until you have what it takes to take on the planet fortresses.


- Sirian

Originally posted by Sirian
Once again, I'm sorry the AI is overly defensive, that the PD bug disrupts combat, that the MBQ and other items add tedium. The best advice I could offer for the moment is not to try to attack well defended planets. "Island Hop" and hit the softer targets, or maintain space superiority with blockades, until you have what it takes to take on the planet fortresses.

No need to apologize, it's certainly not your fault that there are some inbalances in the game. :D At the moment, I'm still trying to figure out what these are and how to deal with them. That last post was the best explanation of the point defense bug that I've yet read, and it made a lot of sense to me. Now I at least understand why we had the combat results we did in that last battle; almost all of our losses were indeed caused by missile volleys. And we had 5 PD ships in the main attacking TF - I guess they didn't quite do their job, hehe. :cool:

Hey, I'm up. : ) Ok, I've got it and will post asap

--Vek

Or not.

As it turns out, I really do not have time to play out my turns without completly rushing everything. I wont really have any time to play until at least Wednesday. Skip me

--Vek

Sulla, if you see it and have time for the game, take it up.

There were many skips on this game, usually a sign of lack of interest in the game. Or maybe I am not doing a good job at leading the team. In any case, let us all know whether you want to see the game to completion or if we should call it a quit. I'd prefer we see it through, with the NO in 7th position on the power factor, it won't be that long to complete anyway.

If some of you want to quit, no hard feeling. If some want to join in, you are welcome. From the start I felt we should have 5 players on the team but there was not enough players available at the time. So even if all members of the team want to go on, I wouldn't mind adding a 5th player if anybody is interested.

It is not so much lack of interest for me as it is lack of time. I just got off March Break, so my teachers have decided to make up for lost time with extra homework. It has just been busy the past week.

I should be ok for my next turn, however.

--Vek

Alright, will take it and see what I can do. It feels like I was just up however... :crazyeye:

(171) I spend most of the first turn going through the high-industry worlds and setting up more ships for them to build when the current batch finishes. Since I don't want to mess with Jaxom's ship designs, I order more of the same designs to be built on our top planets. By the way, we are due to get Warp VI engines in just two more tech levels, so there's no need to redesign ships until that point. I order the colony ship due next turn to Alrai II so we will re-establish contact with the New Orions. As a final note, I design a new LR Crusier based upon Graviton beams, as requested by Jaxom, and order some of them to be built as well. Hoping for a quiet turn here.

(172) Hehe, bombarding with allied ships is fun. Isn't it nice of our fishy buddies to let us use them? Don't worry, we won't do anything irresponsible with them... :mischief: A new leader shows up, one that boosts military at the price of higher taxes. Doesn't look too useful to me, but at least it will give our enemy spies another target. The Trilarians propose an exchange of some old techs; they want us to give them Hackers in return for a laser and Hard Beam tech. That's fine with me; go ahead and mindlessly build army support units. Warp V engines are fast! - our colony ship can pass through two systems in two turns. I've never played a game past about turn 150 before though, so all of the techs I'm seeing are new to me. According to the SitRep, we are not being bothered by spies and are causing some problems with the one we sent out to the fishies. It all sounds good to me.

(173) Just tweaking our planets to get more efficiency from them. Our navy is developing nicely, up to 20 of the new ship designs as the large shipx5 builds come in.

(175) We reach Mathematics level 24; the next warp drive tech is at level 25 (Warp VI). We can also now see the Warp VII engines down the road at level 29. Wow - that must make for some pretty fast ships! :)

(176) A new scientific spy becomes available and is inserted into the territory of our fishy friends. An enemy spy is bothering us; if he doesn't go away in a couple of turns I will up our repression tactics. Everything quiet on all fronts.

(177) Spies continue to bug us, so I up the Oppressometer to the next level. Our planets seem pretty content, we shouldn't see any of them start rioting - I hope.

(178) We steal Hydrogen Fuel Cells from the Ivaquarians! Too bad that we already have the much better Irridium Fuel Cells powering our ships. :lol: Our brutal oppression has worked; we are "putting the squeeze" on all captured spies. Since our planets still seem happy, I keep the Oppressometer up.

(180) Sign a new research deal with the Trilarians. The population of that Sakkra planet I've been bombarding every turn is down to only 17; it won't be around much longer. Other than that, everything is quiet.

(181) Out of the blue, the New Orions show up with a fleet in the Skilim system and blast several of the Trilarian ships I have been controlling there to pieces. Then they disappear before the beginning of the new turn. Strange behavior there. :confused: Colony ships land at Cephee I and Alrai II; Alrai has become a formal colony and needs to have its DEAs zoned out. Cephee is still in sub-colony status and needs to have migration set to it. A new leader showed up this turn too; we may want to dismiss him since he decreases factory output. Our fleet is growing very quickly, and by the end of the next turn we should be able to hit any target we want. We should be getting a new engine tech in about 7-10 more turns, so next player may get to design new ships. Everything looks great - except that we have no idea what to do to win. Maybe hitting the Harvesters would help (?) In any case, it's wide open for the next player to decide what to do. :)

RBMoo1B Turn181 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1B_Turn181.zip)

Our reserves at the moment. We have several more x5 of the capital ships due in the next 5 turns.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1B_Turn181.png

I would post who's up next here, except that I really don't know. Hopefully someone else can clear that up. :D

EDIT: Bah, the upload file feature isn't working. I will keeping checking these boards and try to get it to work.

Well, I think Jaxom is up, but I have some time (Test today, but no major assignments for the next little while) I can take the game if he wants.

--Vek

The game will wait for Darken's return on Wednesday. Vek, if you think you have enough time to play a round, go ahead.

Nice turn Sulla, weird stuff about the NO.

Finally got the files uploaded, the game can be downloaded now in my above post. Also, anyone who has not read some of Sirian's recent strategy posts in the RBMoo1A team thread may want to do so - they are highly informative. :)

A few points about the O-meter.

Sulla, you seem to think the only cost of the O-meter is increased unrest. I am not sure but I think the O-meter setting has no impact on unrest as long as it is between your race tolerance. The real cost of the O-meter is on the heavy foot of government (HFOG). The HFOG is somewhat like inflation except it is random. Every turn, there is a chance HFOG will rise and that chance is raised by 10% for every notch on the O-meter. The effect of a higher HFOG is a higher cost to everything you build, most notably ships.

How do you combat the rise of the HFOG? Well, some techs reduce the effect of HFOG but it is not clear wheather it is a one time reduction or a permanent factor. Changing government sets a new HFOG which is the average between the value at the time of the switch and 1. The change of government raises unrest throughout your empire for 5 turns so this is where there is a link between unrest and O-meter. However, since the AI never changes government, it is somewhat exploitative to do it only to reduce HFOG.

This is not meant to critique what you did on your turn but your report seemed to imply you were not fully aware of the effect of the O-meter.

Although I started out advocating heavy use of the O-meter, largely because that worked so well in MOO1, to pump the security up to max every now and then, for one turn only, and clear out everyone's nest of spies, in MOO3 it is both futile and counter productive.

The real hurt from spying comes from destroyed government buildings: system seats, imperial seat. Those really sting! I have taken to going heavy on the diplo spies to counter this and heavy on political spies if I have any leaders. (And if they get killed anyway, I send my politicos out after enemy leaders). I usually try to keep one social spy on duty, and the rest I put to scientific spies both for protection and tech theft attempts.

And other than that, I just keep the O-meter low or medium (for my race/government) and eat the various bits of damage. Keeping extra diplo spies on hand helps stop the worst kind of damage quickly enough, in most cases.

If you lose your Imperial Seat to a very early spy, though, wow, can that be catastrophic to your growth curve or what? Slouchie! :)


- Sirian

Tell me about it. In my second game before I really knew what I was doing, enemy spies had destroyed my Imperial and System seat of government on my capital before turn 10 (I started in the Senate). THAT was painful! :)

That would be the benefice of raising the O-meter, to fight enemy spies. Each notch up is worth 5 defensive spies but each defensive spy only has a chance at catching an enemy spy so raising the O-meter improves your chance of catching those spies. In my most recent game, the NO stole 3 techs from me in 3 consecutive turns despite me having 6 scientific spies at home, 1 of them being a 10/10 cloak and dagger and 2 others above 8 in both category. Then my research was disrupted 3 turns in a row and finally a research building was destroyed before I caught the SINGLE NO scientific spy. During all those turns my O-meter was at the maximum tolerable level for my race/government, which was 6. I had a save game from about 10 turns earlier so I loaded it to try out various things. On my first try, I sent my 6 scientific spies to the Trilarian empire and reduced my O-meter to the minimum. All of my spies were caught and all but one were killed on the following turn. The remaining spy escaped, disrupted research for one turn and was killed on the next turn. Meanwhile, my almost inexistant counter-intelligence service caught 3 NO spies and 1 trilarian without any of them doing any damage. As with many other things in MOO3, luck is too much of a factor in spying activities, making any kind of actions you take almost meaningless.

I was playing the Eoladi in that game and could have won the senate victory by turn 150 if I had not disabled it. Of course, being the only empire besides the NO in the senate allowed a very early senate win but I have no credit on that, luck decided I was the only empire in the senate. I was playing that game to try out the X victory and I found out the X victory is also mostly about luck, with little planning required on the player's part. The game ended around turn 450 when I discovered the last X. I am still not sure how much weight luck has on diplomacy and I still hope it has little impact. If I should find out that a random event could destroy your diplomatic relations or dramatically improve them, that would be the final nail in MOO's coffin, as far as I am concerned.

The original design of the events engine provided for such a possibility, though it would have been a rare occurrance. I don't know whether/how much this would have changed when they redesigned events, however.

I'll wait.

--Vek

Hello all ! I am back from my travels, and have Got It.

I will try to play and post tomorrow evening. Have to catch up on what has been going on first, though.

Darken.Rahl

EDIT: "tomorrow evening" = Thursday evening, for those out there who may be as confused as to date and time as I am right now.

Ok, I guess I am after you?

--Vek

First off, Jaxom, I think you are doing a fine job as team leader, and I don't think our team is losing interest. I think we all had RL committments to attend to the last week or so, but are back on track. Besides, we are still 40-50 turns ahead of the other 2 groups, so that says to me we are moving along well.

Onwards to my round:

Turn 181: Inheriting our turn and looking around, it looks to me like we have our work cut out for us. We have an OK economy, but our military is definitely a little weak. We need to build it up. We need to settle all worlds that we can, and pick a direction to expand in. Since we have declared war on the Ithkul in the past, I recommend that we expand in their direction. I can get us started on this road, but we will all have to continue this 1 front war if we are to be successful.
I change our Finance -- military-political economy to limited war from peace through strength since we need ships ! And lots of them !
I change our Finance -- budget policy from savings to balanced since we have 35k in the bank
I look at the empire tax level sitting there lonely at 5% and am severely tempted to adjust it back to a more social 11%, but leave it alone, and visualize Jaxom having a nervous twitch just knowing I'm looking at this :)
Our O-Meter is on its highest level, and unrest is mounting ! I knock it down to its middle of the road level
Our spy queue is low ! I queue up military, econ, and diplo spies
A diplo check shows peace with all, and an alliance with Ivaq
HFOG is 2.1. This is OK for now, but our next leader may want to consider changing governments to something else and then back to Corporate to improve this.
Ivaq is at #1 in the Power Rankings, we are #3. Ivaq is at War with Gaulrdu (#9) and the New Orions ! (#8). We will not be sending any military assistance to Ivaq, since he is in the #1 spot and could walk away with the game at some point soon. We want his enemies to slow his growth. If that makes us bad allies, I'm OK with that.
The Ithkul, on the other hand, are Power Ranking #10, are close to us and offer a nice expansion path, and favor worlds that we like too. They make a fine case for Public Enemy #1. I propose we devote the next 40 turns to taking as many of their worlds as possible.
I adjust the MBQs. There are many planets without planetary shields, so I have all of those planets build shields. I queue up 5 packs of ships on all other worlds, with ship type varying depending on how much production the world has.

Turn 182: We re-establish contact with the New Orions
By bringing down the O-Meter, unrest is now 0 across the board. I reduce unrest spending and increase military spending.

Turn 183: The Meklar GD-602-SYAM cry out for vengeance and announce trade sanctions. Why ? What did we do to them ?
We kill a GD-602-SYAM spy
Cephee I is colonized -- I allocate DEAs to be a nice mining world (very rich)

Turn 184: I deploy a carrier pack of 1 x SRLC5, 4 x CVCR5, 1 x LRCrusr5, 4x IFLC5, 2 x PDFR5 escort, and 2 x HvyScout5 picket at Phobeus to send to Nicrom to pave the way for our Ithkul invasion. Current plan is to build more colony ships and outgrow the Ithkul outpost. Now just awaiting colony ships, due in 3-6 turns.

Turn 185: Pete, a 10/10/45/100 scientific spy is ready. I would send Pete into action, but we have no defensive Scientific spies, so home he stays.

Inter-Turn: Combat occurs at Namaro. We have 6 ships, and are attacked by Gaulrdu with 3. We choose to Watch and Intercept his fleet, and we kill all 3 of his ships taking 0 losses of our own. Go away froggy, and don't come back !

Turn 186: Ivaq wants to trade our Cloning Complex for his AP fighter mass driver, Personal Deflector, and Sublight drives. Well, lets think about that. Ivaq is a fast growing species currently #1 in the Power Rankings. And we have Personal Absorption and faster drives, so we really don't get much out of the trade. No thanks. But I will counter offer you Cloning Complex for Plasma Cannon, Robo Miners, and Missile armor. Let's just say I'll be a bit surprised if he accepts our counter.

Turn 187: GD-602-SYAM (Meklar) declares war on us. Ok, fine. You'll just undeclare a few turns later.
Deploy our 3 ship colony squadron at Phobeus for the Red2 Nicrom outpost take-over

Turn 188: Ivaq rejects our counter offer. No real surprise there.
Nicrom turns into a full colony. Darn, there goes the colony attempt. Time for the Mobiles to get on the Bus now !
We blockade Nicrom

Turn 189: Ion Drives (Warp Level 6) are ready. The Ithkul aren't too far away from our main deployment point at Phobeus, so I don't redesign any ships yet.
Solocka 7 is colonized. The Ithkul from Phobeus 2 seem to have colonized it. I zone it to be a badly needed Industry world.
We send the Invasion Bus at Phobeus to Nicrom !

Turn 190: We kill a Sariar spy
629 of our humans migrate to the Ithkul colony of Solocka. I wonder what kind of weird cult they belong to.

Inter-Turn: We conquer Nicrom with no casulties !

Turn 191: Gauss Cannon is ready

Notes for Next Player (Vek, right ?):

1.) Adjust the Nicrom I build queues and DEAs. Also, don't forget to disband the army at some point, but probably not until at least a planetary shield is built
2.) Continue the fight against the Ithkul ! I HIGHLY advise skipping Esra or else destroying the fleet but NOT attacking the planets. We have a very small fleet now, but many more ships are on the way in the next 5-20 turns.
3.) There are lots of colony ships on the way. You could focus on colonizing many of the systems we share with Ivaq. We need big planets with lots of industry badly.
4.) There is a 3 ship squadron of colony ships at Phobeus -- do something with them. They were going to Nicrom but then the Invasion Bus had to go there instead.
5.) Think about a new gunship design. We have lvl 6 drives, and gauss cannons now
6.) Good luck !

The game is here:

RBMoo1B_Turn191 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1B_Turn191.zip)

Darken.Rahl

Ok. Got it. Let the Bug squashing begin!

--Vek

Man, I hate school. Work Work Work

Anyway, very little happened during my turn, however:

A leader died. (Yay?)
We now have 60 ships around Esra. Attack at own risk.

Not much else. Some terrorism, but nothing severe. I'd like to write a lengthy report but I have an Essay due tomorrow. *sigh*

Here is the turn:

Turn 201 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMOO1_Team_B_Turn201.zip)

I believe Jaxom is up next, but it would be helpful if he could post a team roster. With all of the switching around, I no longer know who comes up when in the order. :)

Turn 201

Economy:
We are running a high deficit of 6k per turns yet we have only 40k in the bank so I balance the budget to have a slight surplus. We have enough generation 5 ships to build a credible navy and we need some techs before designing a generation 6 navy, notably class V shields and phaser beams. I change our military policy to peace through strength and our budget policy to saving. I check on the most productive planets and raise the research sliders while making sure they can build the biggest hull for the next ship generation.

Diplomacy:
Economic and research TA are improved with Ivaquaria, our budget says we make almost half of our income from those TA. I want to make TAs with the lizards but there are a couple of planets we could steal from them so I wait for now.

Undercover:
We have a trio of scientific spies, they are all inserted in the Meklar empire as they don't like us and have many techs we don't have. These spies manage to steal a pollution control tech and a level 20 spying tech.

Science:
The empire research slider is tripled so that we can get the up coming techs sooner and design better ships. Class V shields, Phaser Beams and Dolomite Crystals are discovered around turn 205.

Colonization:
3 idle colony ships are sent to Alya II, a magnate planet, which is colonized and reveals a Darlok population with some Ithkul on it.

Military:
We have a strong fleet above Esra, but the task forces contains mixed mission type ships. I can't use a TF properly if I don't know what ships are in there so I disband generation 5 task forces to reorganize the navy. The generation 4 mix pack is sent back to Nicrom to provide cover for the 3 troop ships I send there. 5 turns later, the following task forces are created at Ganagweh:

- 2 IF armada composed of at least 6 IF ships, 6 PD ships and 6 recon ships;
- 2 Carrier armada composed of at least 6 carrier ships, 6 PD ships and 6 recon ships;
- a LR armada composed of 12 LR ships and 6 recon ships;
- a SR armada composed of 12 SR ships and 6 recon ships.

LR and SR task forces don't need PD ships as they will fire at missiles with their own beam weapons. At this point I noticed our LR ships are using standard mount. LR ships should always use the longest range weapon available, otherwise they are simply SR ships. The 6 armada are sent to Esra to take over the Ithkul capital. A troop ship is sent to Herculis with the balance of our pseudo LR gun ships to take over a lizard colony which is being blockaded by a fish fleet.


Turn 207
This turn is a turning point in our game as many events happened. We gain contact with all other empires, we are back into the Senate! A look at the current balance of power:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/rbmsg1_tb_senate208.jpg

There is a total war law against us so everybody declares war on us the following turn, except for the fish, the lizard and the NO. I try to pass a bill to cease the total war but I can't select the target empire. The bill shows the NO as the target, I believe this is a bug.


Diplomacy:
I votes Yea on the ban on nuclear weapons, we don't need them. I second the motion to invite Beonomi in the Senate. He is the lonely Psilon and we have a good chance of making an alliance with him. Ivaquaria is friendly with many empires, our best chance at making another friend is with Dekalip, the Tachidi. I declare a cease fire but it is turned down. If you intend on making progress with the Tachidi, you have to "Declare" your actions to them and should respond "coldly" to his offers. I give him Magazine to make some progress, using a declare stance.

Undercover:
With all these hostile empires, I raise the O-meter by 2 notches. We do catch some NO, Meklar and Sariar spies.

Science:
No military techs will come in for a while, so I design a whole fleet of generation 6 ships, all of them have at least one cloaking device. The capital ships are battleship size and the support ships are light cruiser size. The remaining gen 5 ships in reserve (16 of them, mostly recon ships) are sent on an antarean expedition.

Economy:
With a whole new navy of generation 6 ships to build, I set our policy to Limited war and Balanced budget. The empire level sliders are re-balanced to put more money in ships and less in science.

Colonization:
A couple of gen 6 colony ships are sent toward Trilarian systems where we can get a reasonable planet.

Military:
The fish capture the lizard colony at Herculis so the troop ship was re directed toward Slkim where we take over a lizard world which had just regained colony status. Some gen 4 ships are moved toward Phelot to secure our new western frontier.

The battle of Esra: the first round see our ships take over Esra IV which was defended by 3 planetary bases and about 30 system ships. As we have cloaking tech, our ships started the battle from the extreme edge of the battle map. The planet never saw our ships and all defenses were destroyed without taking a single casualty. Our mobile corps easily took over the planet in 1 round. Esra III is attacked on the next turn and we loose 2 ships taking down 3 bases, 6 orbitals and 12 system ships. We control 2 regions and there will be more ground combat on the next turn.


Final SitRep

Diplomacy:
Dekalip has stopped his war against us, you should try to make a TA with him, using a "Declare" stance. You should also offer them some gift if they won't accept a TA. Don't forget to "declare" it is a gift :)

Beonomi should be in the senate next turn, make sure you try to get him on our side. I think the correct stance for the Psilon is "Reason/Polite" but I am not sure. In any case, don't beg with the Psilon, they really don't like that.

Military:
We have troops on Esra III, the fight should complete on your first turn. There is a colony ship above Esra, you should make sure it lands on Esra I to steal that outpost from the Ithkul.

Economy:
Most planets have queued up a lot of generation 6 ships, make sure the Mob centers are built quickly on Phelot and Esra. With our gen 6 ships, we should be able to take on a guardian. There is one south of Phelot and another east of Yaddith.



Turn 211 save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/rbmsg1_teamb_turn211.zip)

Roster:

Jaxom
Sulla -> Up
Darken -> On deck
Kaervek -> below deck

Strong round ! Putting the hurt on Esra as well as getting us back into the Senate.

Nicely done ! I can't wait for my turn.

It seems that we could either continue to expand into the Ithkul's territory or start attacking our longtime ally Ivaq in order to make up the differential between Ivaq's Senate Votes and our own position. I would certainly vote to continue the campaign against the Ithkul (and others in the Western hemisphere if we end up defeating the Ithkul) and maintain our alliance with Ivaq.

Darken.Rahl

The Trilarian have many friends. Actually, I think they are only at war with the lizard and have TA or better with everybody else. If we attack them, we will likely be kicked out of the Senate again and loose to their senate win. I think we should move on the Ithkul worlds and take them out of the game. We will need many more troop ships that what I put in the build queue so we should have a planet getting them troop ships out by 5-packs continuously. We should also have a planet to build our best troop, currently the mobile, by 10-packs continuously. Esra III had 14 Ithkul marines on it, I don't expect to see more ground troops on Ithkul worlds but we should start using army size troops to be on the safe side. I think there are no other empires in the western hemisphere, so there are plenty of systems to gain control of over there.

About the HFOG, I don't think we should switch government just to cut our HFOG. The AI doesn't know how to do that and it feels cheezy. Unless you have a good reason to switch government (like better manufacturing or research) there is no point in doing a switch. I think we have the best government we can have as most of our worlds are limited by the amount of tax revenue and the Corporate government is the best concerning tax revenue.

We're back in the senate...but everyone has declared total war on us...? Meh, ok then

Yes, let's keep attacking the Ithkul. Try to expand that way.

Now a question: When do votes for the Senate Presidency come up? Once every how many turns?

And below deck....ouch, that hurts.

I think the vote comes in once every 20 or 21 turns. If it is 20 turns, then there should be a vote at the end of the next round.

In the Senate! [party]

At total war with everyone else! :eek: :cry: :eek:

Got it, will see what I can do. Senate victory will be far easier to win now that we're actually in the thing! If we can expand some more via Ithkul, and get Ivaquaria + one other race to vote for us... that could be enough to win. We'll see. :)

A data patch will come out today or tomorrow (April 10 or 11). Some of the changes will not take effect until a new game is started while others will take effect immediatly, notably the improved military AI. We have to decide what to do about the patch in regards to our SG, I see 3 options.


Continue the game to completion without the data patch. Since the patch will only replace spreadsheet.mob, you can shuffle the old and new spreadsheets if you are skilled enough with Windows and have enough discipline to make sure you use the correct version for the SG.

Install the data patch and continue the current game. We may encounter some weird stuff since only part of the patch will be effective but it makes life simpler for those who want to use the patch in their other games.

Consider the current game a draw and start a new game with the data patch. Many of the most interesting new features will not take effect until we have a code patch but the AI would present a credible threat, at least in regard to space superiority. On the other hand, QSI hope to release the code patch by the end of April so it is unlikely we will be able to complete this new game, as I am sure we will all want to install the code patch the day it comes out.


I vote for choice 2 as I prefer not to shuffle the game data files around but I can live with choice 1.

For all I know, our game could be over before we put our hands on the data patch, in which case I would vote for choice 3. :)

2 works for me. Nothing wrong with weird stuff

--Vek

I would vote for option 2 also.

Darken.Rahl

I played this turn before installing the patch, but the next player should definitely do so.

(211) After looking around a bit, I notice we have 108 ships over Esra. Whooee, but that's a lot of punch! I mark Esra I, the Ithkul outpost, for colonization by our colony ship. I go through all of our planets with more than 300 industry and fix them up to avoid wasteful spending. (Many of our top industry worlds were spending lots of money on economic development, with nothing to develop, thanks to the viceroy AIs temporarily upping the sliders and then never resetting them). There's nothing to change to the build queues because the entire generation 6 fleet has been queued up ahead of time by Jaxom. We "declare" an economic TA with the Tachidi and "state" for a cease-fire with the Sillicoids and Imsaeis. Let's see what happens with that. It looks like the Psilons are narrowly going to make it into the Senate - due only to our vote, as it turns out! I hope they can be our new best friends. :love:

(212) Despite outnumbering the Ithkul about 10:1, with mobiles against marines/militia no less, we are only able to take one region of the planet. Esra I is colonized and zoned out. The Tachidi counter our offer of an economic TA with one of their own, which we "coldly" accept. I hope they like that. :) There is a bill proposed to condemn Ivaquaria (good thing I checked the Senate! shouldn't there be a popup when new bills are initiated?), we vote "nay", naturally. Membership for the Meklar has been proposed but not seconded; if it comes up to a vote we will definitely want to vote that down (the machines hate us).

(213) A combined Vomnast/Sariar force tries at attack us at Milonni; they are ripped apart by the planet's defense bases and the HawkDefense3 group stationed there. More comically, the Ithkul try to send a colony ship into the Esra system. Hmmm, guess what happened there? ;)

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1B_fleet5.png

Esra III conquered, this time with no problems after being softened up a bit with bombardment. The Beononi (Psilons) got into the Senate! Another race with whom we have good (or at least non-bad) relations. We can now talk to them as a result; I propose an economic TA. The Tachidi accept our TA, and so I ask for a research one with them. To clarify, here's our relations currently with the others:
Good (over 100) - Ivaquaria (Trilarian), Beononi (Psilon), Dekalip (Tachidi)
Average (around 0) - Gaulrdu (Sakkra), Sariar (Imsaies)
Hateful (well under -100) - Ramuctha (Ithkul), Vomnast (Sillicoid), Meklar
We should probably try to cultivate relations with the lizards to try for a Senate win. I'll leave that decision up to the team though.

Colony created at Uruk V, many more G+ planets there open for colonization. I also go through and set migration to all of our small, new planets. More pop = Senate victory, after all. Since we have no Colony ship designs at the moment, I create a new one and put some into the queues of low-industry planets. The condemn Ivaquaria bill died in the Senate, as did the one to give the Meklar membership. There is a new one proposing total war against the New Orions; I'll ignore seconding it and see what happens.

(214) The Psilons accept our TA, so I propose a research one. We renew our TA with the Trilarians. Our massive fleet, having subdued the Ithkul homeworld, now move onto the next planet to the west. The transports will follow behind the fleet in a few more turns.

(215) The Skilim system was attacked and our one Hawk Defense there killed by Sillicoid forces. I don't think we have any need to fear them though; they won't attack the planet and should leave next turn. Milonni again defended itself easily from attack with its system ships. In the Ezra system, an Ithkul colony ship slipped past our forces when I clicked the wrong button and established a new colony there. If only I could reload to the last turn without losing all of what I did... I hope that the "nothing you did on the last turn gets saved" issue is fixed in a patch. What happened to our Bus6 design? It's been obsoleted? Why? Inheriting a game with no transport or colony ships is pretty weird, I tell you. :) I guess the idea was to cut them out so the AI wouldn't autobuild them. But sometimes you want to build some, you know? I design a new one, which I hope was the same as the previous Bus6 (Light Cruiser size, 5 troop pods.) Our tech tree is reading NEGATIVE percentages to research the next level of technology; does anyone know what this means? I haven't a clue.

(216) We crush the system defenses in the Silnth system with ease; next turn the Mobilization Center in Ezra will complete and our transports can head there to start taking over the planets. The Sillicoids are continuing to be a pain in the Slkim system, but with no offensive ships in the reserve box and no system with a mobilization center anywhere even close by, we'll just have to let them blockade us there for now. Slkim is a pretty useless system to us anyway. I ask for another cease-fire with the rocks though to try and get them to leave. The Psilons ask for a non-aggression pact, and since they are much too far away for us to invade, I grant it. A bill praising the Trilarians has come up, I second it in hopes of upping relations with our buddies.

(218) We capture Ezra VII from the Ithkul with ease; I should thank them for saving us the trouble of sending a colony ship. :D Resistance has been crushed in the Silnth system, a transport is due in two turns to take over the only Ithkul planet there. Another generation 5 fleet is on the way to attack the Sillicoids bothering Slkim. The Meklar end their war with us this turn, for no reason. I vote "yay" on the Praise Ivaquaria bill. (Our relative percentage of Senate votes is very slowly rising as we take over Harvester worlds, by the way. We should target a Senate member next to decrease their vote total while increasing ours.)

(219) Lots of diplomacy. The Senate convenes to elect a new president, and the choice is between the New Orions and our Trilarian friends. We vote for the Orions, of course! The vote could easily go to the fishies though regardless of what we do. In other news, the Meklar re-declare war on us. The Tachidi propose a non-aggression pact with us, which I think we should accept in order to possibly get their votes. I agree to the NA pact; we wouldn't want to attack them anyway.

(220) The Ithkul have been evicted from Silnth in an easy battle. The Vomnast (Sillicoids) have also been kicked out of Slkim, ending the blockade there. Unfortunately now they have shown up in the Uruk system, so our fleet in the area heads back to that system. Diplomatically, war with the Sariar (Imsaies) has ended, so I immediately try to sign them to an economic TA. Even better, a random event lowers our HFOG! I suppose the best news of all is that the New Orions are still president of the Senate - in other words, the game goes on! And here's something strange: the Trilarians voted AGAINST the Praise Ivaquaria bill! What could be the possible motivation for that?

(221) Oops, I accidently played out the 221 turn. Rather than lose all I did, I'll just finish this one, heh. Instructions to follow...

(222) And I pass off here. Whew, that only took 3 hours to play!

- There are two colony ships which will be landing in the Uruk system next turn. They need to be manually assigned to planets, since the auto-targeting system sent both to the same planet earlier and I had to cancel the AI orders. There is a third colony ship just above that, in Psi Leonis, which also needs to go to the Uruk system. I had to park it there momentarily due to the Vomnast ships in the Uruk system. Fortunately there are 3 G+ worlds in the Uruk system where all of them can colonize.

- There were no diplomatic messages on Turn 222 to deal with, only standard buildings completing.

- The first part of the Generation 6 fleet should complete on the next turn. It will still take about 25 more turns to be up to "kick-ass" mode like our generation 5 fleet though. Our big fleet should be sent north to the next Ithkul planet in line right away.

- The "big picture" for the game is finally clear to me. We need to advance through the rest of the Ithkul heartland, then use wormholes to travel across the galaxy and crush the Vomnast. The rocks hate us, will always hate us, and have the third-highest vote total after the fish and us. Although they are seemingly on the other side of the galaxy, we can get there easily and fairly safely via a wormhole route I've drawn out. We should be ready to hit them just about the time our generation 6 fleet completes, and with our two huge fleets working together, we'll be in VERY good shape. Goal should be a Senate victory around turn 300. I can finally see a definite plan for once in this game, and it looks good! :)

RBMoo1B Turn222 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1B_Turn222.zip)

And our map:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1B_map222.jpg

The yellow box is the Ithkul core worlds, where our big fleet is currently located. Just outside that box is a clear path of Sillicoid planets (in blue) leading to a wormhole. That goes to the center of the map, where there are three more Sillicoid planets, leading to a second wormhole to the SE corner of the galaxy. That's the Vomnast core territory, highlighted in a blue box. We have a clear and easy path there, in other words. If we can take over their systems, we will stand a good chance of winning the vote. It sounds like a plan to me - does anyone else concur?

Great turn Sulla, good job making new friends.

I made the bus and colony ship obsolete after queueing the needed number because I don't like having to remove them from the build queues. It is even more important with the colony ship because the viceroi AI will build them on non-human planets and we have no way of knowing what pop is in the colony ship. When I took the game, there was a colony ship coming out of our Ithkul planet, it would have wasted the planet I was sending it to if I did not notice where it was built. What I do in my private games is, design a colony ship and queue 3-5 on worlds of my original race then make it obsolete. When I need more colony ships, I click on "hide obsolete" to see the obsolete design, find the colony ship and make it obsolete again. This makes it "unobsolete" and it can be queued up again. Once I have queued up enough new colony ships, I make it obsolete again. I do the same with the bus design, because I want the low industry worlds to build troops or system ships instead of endless supplies of troop ships.

The negative percentage in research could be due to me forgetting to remove Colin's mod before playing my round. :smoke: If it is indeed the case, then we have put in more RP during my round then what was needed for the next level, I hope this doesn't screw up the rest of our game, sorry about that. This is a very annoying feature of MOO III. The directory structure hints at the possibility of having multiple mod versions (because of the "classic_01" directory level) yet I find no method of telling the game what mod to use. The option screen should have a place to select the directory branch I want to use for a particular game and the save game should store that information so that the game will read in the correct game when I reload it. Then for MP and SG, we would only have to make sure we use the same directory name with the same mod files in it.

The next player should design a corvette size orbital full of fighters and build some in our frontier worlds, like Slkim and Milonni. If the new techtable.txt is active in our game, such an orbital will cost less than 300 AU and packs quite a punch against single task force attacks.

I like your plan, we need many troop ships to make it succeed as we will want to capture the silicoid worlds rather than destroying them. . It might be time to design an APC type troop ship with decent shields and armor so that they can follow the navy in combat.

Roster:
Jaxom
Sulla
Darken -> Up
Vek -> On deck (watch your head on the way up :) )

P.S.: Don't forget to install the data patch before taking your turn Darken. Also, make sure you have no other mods active.

Nicely done, Sullla !

I will continue the war against the Ithkul and see about creeping up towards the Silicoids.

I'll not get a chance to play until late tonight, but will play and post at some point tonight.

I haven't been messing around with any of the mods yet, so no chance of that getting in the way. I'll get the data patch installed before my round, too.

Darken.Rahl

Sorry this took me longer than I said it would. Had to work a bit more on both Friday and this weekend than I anticipated, and then got caught up with a bit of Galactic Civilizations, too.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I installed the Data Patch before getting started.

Turn 222: I notice that our Technology Matrix remains a bit "funny": We are at lvl 24 Economics and -684% towards the next level, lvl 25 Energy and -484% towards the next level, lvl 26 math and -409% towards the next level, lvl 25 Physical Science and -192% towards the next level, and lvl 25 Social Scienes and -530% towards the next level. I am noting these numbers to see how they change over my 9 turns.

I move our colony ship at Psi Leonis to Unuk, deploy our 2 colony fleets at Unuk, deploy a small garrison force at Esra, and move our Armada of Doom from Esra to Karduin (however, we leave the transports behind until we know what we're facing at Karduin)

Turn 223: Quianne Aueri, a somewhat effective scientific leader, emerges. We like him, so we let him stay.
The Sariar empire declares war on us
We vote "Nay" on the Praise Sariar bill. Take that you warmongers !
We decide not to second the Declare Total War on the New Orions bill
We attack Karduin I with no casulties. Unfortunately, since I picked to Watch the battle, it is auto-bombarded and destroyed.

Turn 224: Ivaq asks us to improve our research TA. We say OK.
The Declare Total War on the New Orions bill fails to get anyone to second it.
We have 4 new colonies to zone -- Unuk I is made into a research colony, Unuk 2 and 3 are mixed colonies, and Silnth 3 is made into an industrial colony
We send the 2 transports to Karduin, now that we know resistence is light

Turn 225: We kill an Ithkul Colony detachment with the Esra light garrison force
We blockade Karduin so the transports can arrive
Dekalip the Tachidi tells us relations are improving
We kill a Vomnast spy

Turn 226: Sariar sends 6 ships to attack our 6 ships at Milonni. We pick Defend Planet, and there is no combat.
At Silnth, we intercept a GD-602-SYAM fleet with our 15 ships vs. their 3 ships. We defeat them, but we win with our guns as their 3 ships are able to shoot down all of our fighters
Our ground troops conquer Karduin 3 !
We deploy a 6 ship LR Flotilla at Milonni to defeat the Sariar incursion
We send the Armada of Doom along to Zibeline

Turn 227: We now have odds of 13 vs. 6 at Milonni. We like these odds, so we intercept and destroy the Sariar fleet
We insert a 10/10/35/100 Social spy on the Sariar because they have annoyed us.
Ivaq introduces a Praise Sariar bill. Even though we like Ivaq, we decline to second this one

Turn 228: The Armada of Doom notes that the 2 big fat planets at Zibeline are defenseless. Send up the ground forces !
Vomnast ends their war with us
The Praise Sariar bill finds a second. We vote Nay again.
We colonize Esra 2 and make it an industrial world

Turn 229: Our scout is attacked by Vomnast at Yaddith. We pick hold position and there is no combat. I then retreat our scout to Tukan.
We blockade the lightly populated but very big worlds at Zibeline so the ground team can conquer these worlds
Our war with Sariar has ended.
The Antaran expedition has lost a ship trying to discover a destination. Antaran expedition ? We sent one of those ?
Vomnast declares war
The Psilons ask for a Research TA. We say OK.

Turn 230: We assault Zibeline 2. Our mobile army (strength 623) is able to gain 2 regions
Sariar declares war
We kill New Orions and Vomnast spies
We colonize Esra 5 and make it an industrial world

Inter-turn: Our scout at Tukan is attacked by 3 Vomnast ships and killed.
Our ground forces conquer Zibeline 1 and Zibeline 2 ! We had numerical superiority (650 to 50), and picked high intensity, high collateral damage, and the "sweep" tactic. We didn't lose many troops in either battle.

Turn 231: Dekalip declares war
Colony ships land at Esra 6 and Esra 7
The Gaulrdu submit a Praise New Orions bill

End of turns summary:

The Ithkul are down to 6 planets: Skirnir which is close and lightly defended, Manzil which is close and heavily defended (19 system ships and I'm sure a few orbitals), Remus shared with the Dekalip which is a medium distance away and lightly defended, and a 3 world system at Saak which is deep in Dekalip territory and has medium defenses.

We have lots of ships ready, and a lot more in the queues.

Our technology is still in a sad state. We are at lvl 24 Economics and -517% towards the next level, lvl 25 Energy and -388 towards the next level, lvl 26 math and -318% towards the next level, lvl 25 Physical Science and -114% towards the next level, and lvl 25 Social Scienes and -349% towards the next level. Looks like we will climb out of the "negative research" hole, but it will take 20-40 turns.

We will conclude the war with the Ithkul somewhat soon. Options include attacking Dekalip, Vomnast, or both. I would be in favor of attacking Dekalip and saving Vomnast for later, as I believe Vomnast will be a harder nut to crack. Plus, we need to go through Dekalip to finish off the Ithkul.

Notes for Vek:

1.) There are 4 single ship colony detachments moving to Slinth, and there are 4 nice worlds to be colonized there
2.) Our Armada of Doom fleet is at Zibeline and could be used to attack Manzil or Skirmir or both
3.) You have several transports with Mobile Armies in them at Karduin
4.) Please turn migration on to Esra 6 and Esra 7. I tried to do so but of course that change was not remembered in the save game.

And the Save Game file

RBMoo1B_Turn231 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1B_Turn231.zip)

Darken.Rahl

Originally posted by Darken.Rahl
We will conclude the war with the Ithkul somewhat soon. Options include attacking Dekalip, Vomnast, or both. I would be in favor of attacking Dekalip and saving Vomnast for later, as I believe Vomnast will be a harder nut to crack. Plus, we need to go through Dekalip to finish off the Ithkul.

Darken.Rahl

Yes, but the Tachidi have maintained good relations with us and might even vote for us in the Senate. The Sillicoids (Vomnast) hate our guts and have a much larger share of the votes than the Dekalip. We have tons of enemies already; why pick a fight with an ally? I outlined a fairly straight-forward path to reach Vomnast in my turn summary, and even if we don't want to attack them, we'd be better off fighting the nearby Sariar. Either lizards or rocks would be a good fight (lessening their vote total while increasing ours); fighting the bugs wouldn't seem to be as wise to me. And we don't have to kill the Ithkul after all, just getting them down to a few tiny scattered planets should be plenty. :)

That's true, I forgot about the Sariar. They would make a fine target, too.

Right now (as of Turn 231), the Dekalip have declared war on us, so they are officially not an ally, even though our Casus Belli with them is +32 and our Current Relations are +85. I guess it is probably one of the many 1-turn wars the AI does, but they declared, we did not.

Our relations with the Silicoids are definitely worse: -70 Casus Belli, and -116 Current Relations.

You're right, we don't have to destroy the Ithkul entirely, we can just leave them in a severly weakened state. I tend to get a bit focused on total annihilation when there are no other immediately pressing threats. It definitely is not necessary from an overall strategic perspective.

I guess the whole "Declare Total War on RBMoo 1B" active Senate bill could be complicating the Dekalip's view of us, as they did say they liked our actions once during my round.

Darken.Rahl

Good job exterminating the leeches Darken. The research situation is weird but I think we can finish the game anyway.

I have found something interesting the spreadsheet. It looks like each Ithkul population is worth 0.6 vote in the senate while humanoid population (Human, Evon and Psilon) are worth 1.15 vote. It may be a better strategy to glass the Ithkul worlds and pluck down our own human colonies. We have enough terraforming techs to turn yellow-yellow worlds into green-green. If we do that, we have to be careful not to let the Viceroy build colony ships on our non-human worlds. The best way to do that is to put 5-packs of colony ships in some of our human world then obsolete the colony ship design. Rinse and repeat as necessary.

The "Declare total war" is a wash. There should be a diplomatic mean to remove that law but I can't find one. If it is by desgin then it is a weak design and I hope QSI considers giving us the diplomatic tools to combat diplomatic wars. If it was not the designers intent, then I guess the "Cease total war" bill is broken and need fixing.

We do have an Antarean expedition, read my last report. :) In short, when I deployed the generation 5 navy of doom (g5NOD for short :) ) there were some left over ships, mostly recon ships. To avoid seeing those obsolete ships pop up in our future g6NOD and ruin our cloaking cover, I was about to scrap them. I figured I might as well send them on a wild goose chase and get some use out of them.

I agree with Sulla on the strategic evaluation, we have enough enemies as it is so we are better off attacking those who already hate our guts. Besides, I'd like to see if we can turn Dekalip into a strong ally. Sulla did a great job at that during his round, let's build on the solid foundation he laid for us. Dekalip probably declared war on us because of an alliance with Sariar, did you check their diplomatic status? Maybe we need to propose a total war bill on Sariar but I think Ivaquaria is allied with Sariar as well. In any case, we still have plenty of work to do on the Ithkul and we have a straight route into silicoid territory, once Mob centers are built in our new Ithkul possessions.

Milloni seems to come under frequent attack, it might be a good idea to design a frigate size orbital and build some on Milloni. With the data patch, missiles are far less effective. Design the orbital with fighters or LR guns. Unfortunatly, we have no mounts bigger than spinal so fighters seems like the way to go.

Roster:
Jaxom -> On deck
Sulla
Darken
Kaervek -> Up, have fun!

*smacks head coming up from below deck*

Ow

Alrighty, I've got it. Not sure how much time I am going to have, but I will make a go at it


--Vek

Hi! My name is Ragnoff (obviously! <grin>) and Jaxom as said I could join your SG team in progress. I have had moo3 since release, love it in spite of its flaws (which I do see as being fixed in the data and the next code patch) and have play several games to completion (all senate victories or losses). I am reading through this thread and should be caught up later tonight.

I was intrigued by this idea of succession games, I just discoverd RB last night, and was very excited by the idea!!!

Not sure what else to say via intro, I have downloaded the updated patch (4/15) and cannot wait to get involved!

Hello Ragnoff, welcome to our nightmare :)

To all others, I said before that I'd like to have a fifth player so if nobody objects, Ragnoff will take the game after Kaervek.

No objections here, having a fifth player is always welcome. Good luck with the first Imperium game if you choose to play that as well. :)

I am going to try the imperium game as well as this one. I see these as explorations at this point rather than compititions, although my understanding is that usually the teams in a SG ar competing with one another a d the imperiums will be scored, I do not know what is used for comparison!

Anyway... A couple points about this SG...

It looks like the total war against us was what kicked us out of the senate in the days of our forfathers (or at least the days of our grandfathers). A side effect of TW is immediate exoulsion if you were a senate member. Obviously we can get back in in spite of the ongoing war, but that bill will cause relations to be hestitant even with those who would otherwise be longtime allies. If we can get the war to end, Dekalip (Tachidi) may become a stonger ally.

There is a bill in the Orion senate call "Cease Total (or Limited) War Against... that appears as the last bill only when a limited or total war exisits, otherwise it is not visable. It may be that we cannot propose such a lifting if we are the target of the war, but I will look into this if Vek has not done so.

Defensive spies, many on IGmoo forums believe that when spies are on defence, and type of spy is as good as any other, the misson is irrelevant on defence. This is rumored to come from a dev, but I was not able to find that orriginal post (I have not tlooked to hard, I will try again)

Additionally, the manual states that instead of cloak being the spies defensive ability and dager offensive, that these are both offensive stats. Dagger is how likely a spy will complet his mission, cloak is how good they are at staying hidden. Thus, a high dagger low cloak will do a lot of damae, but get caught very quickly, while a high cloak low dagger may remain in the enemy empire for a longer time, but is less liekly any given turn to accomplish something. Low both should stay on defense, as they are both ineffective and easily caught, and the high both are those ones who kill several leaders or blow up a number of things in a row! I realize these are different assumptions about spies (especially about type not mattering on defense) than the team is currently operating under, and I am not 100% certain I am right, but this seems to gel with my experiance. Thoughts?

Finally, if I understand it, we are going for a senate victory, and while we have enough votes that we can likely keep the NO in power for now, we cannot be a candidate ourselves untill we have the highers population. We are increasing or popluation both through developement and conquest. If this is the case, then begining to conquer someone besides the harvesters makes sences, as each harvest pop point is only worth .6 of a vote in the senate (we are capturing them and not exterminating them, right?). I also understand that we have nto desided on the next opponent, but are favoring either Vomnast (Sillicoid), Gaulrdu (Sakkra), or Sariar (Imsaies).

I had some other thoughts after reading the thread last night (was up to late to post) but they seem to have slipped my mind.. I will post if/when I remember..

I am going to try the imperium game as well as this one. I see these as explorations at this point rather than compititions, although my understanding is that usually the teams in a SG ar competing with one another a d the imperiums will be scored, I do not know what is used for comparison!

Anyway... A couple points about this SG...

It looks like the total war against us was what kicked us out of the senate in the days of our forfathers (or at least the days of our grandfathers). A side effect of TW is immediate exoulsion if you were a senate member. Obviously we can get back in in spite of the ongoing war, but that bill will cause relations to be hestitant even with those who would otherwise be longtime allies. If we can get the war to end, Dekalip (Tachidi) may become a stonger ally.

There is a bill in the Orion senate call "Cease Total (or Limited) War Against... that appears as the last bill only when a limited or total war exisits, otherwise it is not visable. It may be that we cannot propose such a lifting if we are the target of the war, but I will look into this if Vek has not done so.

Defensive spies, many on IGmoo forums believe that when spies are on defence, and type of spy is as good as any other, the misson is irrelevant on defence. This is rumored to come from a dev, but I was not able to find that orriginal post (I have not tlooked to hard, I will try again)

Additionally, the manual states that instead of cloak being the spies defensive ability and dager offensive, that these are both offensive stats. Dagger is how likely a spy will complet his mission, cloak is how good they are at staying hidden. Thus, a high dagger low cloak will do a lot of damae, but get caught very quickly, while a high cloak low dagger may remain in the enemy empire for a longer time, but is less liekly any given turn to accomplish something. Low both should stay on defense, as they are both ineffective and easily caught, and the high both are those ones who kill several leaders or blow up a number of things in a row! I realize these are different assumptions about spies (especially about type not mattering on defense) than the team is currently operating under, and I am not 100% certain I am right, but this seems to gel with my experiance. Thoughts?

Finally, if I understand it, we are going for a senate victory, and while we have enough votes that we can likely keep the NO in power for now, we cannot be a candidate ourselves untill we have the highest population. We are increasing or popluation both through developement and conquest. If this is the case, then begining to conquer someone besides the harvesters makes sences, as each harvest pop point is only worth .6 of a vote in the senate (we are capturing them and not exterminating them, right?). I also understand that we have nto desided on the next opponent, but are favoring either Vomnast (Sillicoid), Gaulrdu (Sakkra), or Sariar (Imsaies).

I had some other thoughts after reading the thread last night (was up to late to post) but they seem to have slipped my mind.. I will post if/when I remember..

Welcome to the game. Remember: We are normal. It's the rest of the world that is crazy

Also: I am not going to be able to play until Friday (Passover). Either you can skip me or wait a few days, doesn't make a difference to me. If Rag wants to play now, I can take my turn after him.

--Vek

Edit: Haha! Corner again

Caught it, playing now (Fri afternoon) so hopefully I can get this doen and vek can do another tonight.

Ragnoff

It is a great honor and a great responsibility, being nominated to the office of CEO of B team. Several days were spent examining the current position and carefully reading notes from the prior CEO before any move to act was made. Specifically, careful molestation of the current position of both ourselves are potential enemies and allies. One thing of note, although not as significant as other problems, certainly vexing is that I am not as skilled in reporting as other CEOs. I do not know how to set the colored text that so easily designated a separate actions, hopefully I shall learn.

231
I begin by examining migration is requested by the previous CEO, migration is set for both Esra 6 & 7. In doing so, I noticed that migration is still center a great many of worlds are already highly populated, I make it my first mission to examine our tourists and relocation office, with the intention to encourage migration to those worlds that are lowering population and are understaffed in running their glorious economies. Five planets with populations over 20 had migration orders canceled, while all planets with populations of less than 10 have migration orders set, excepting only those three that are totally dominated by harvesters. A less squeamish CEO may not have difficulty encouraging our most populous race, humans, to move to a world where the dominant species considers them menu items, but I was not able to give such orders.

My second set of orders regard diplomacy, something that seems to be hotly discussed by the executive council. I decided to attempt to minimize the impact of the total war bill by attempting to get cease-fire declared by all races except for the dreaded harvesters. To Beononi (Psylons) I offer an intelligence agreement, mostly so we can learn the extent of their worlds.. At least at first, the easily my early goals, re-establish peace with his many empires as possible and strengthening our relationships with Beononi and Ivaquaria. Dekalip is allied with Beononi and Ivaquaria, and thus I believe we should work to attempt to re-establish relationships there. However Sariar is allied with both Vomnast and Gaulrdu, some of any industry of them become our next target, relations with the others will worsen and evolve into war. I consider these three a triumvirate of opposition, and will not work hard to regain any of their regard. In fact, I seriously considering attempting to get them removed from the Senate. However, I hold on such drastic measure at this point.

As far as imperial finances go, we are hugely ahead here, with the balance of almost 77,000 AU. I switch our policy to spending and dump a fair amount of additional money into R&D, hoping to jumpstart our research again. I'll monitor this over the early years of my stewardship.

Militarily, I concur that we do not need to completely eliminate the harvesters, four of their planets are in Dekalip territory, and therefore are their problem. However, Manzil & Skirmir will fall. 1 IF Armada, 1 transport fleet and a squadron of short-range defenders are sent to the under defended Skirnir, while the rest of the fleet of do and another army are sent to Manzil.

time...
passes (232)

Military - 12 orbitals defended Manzil - many loaded with missiles, and initial incoming way of of missiles and fighters seemed overwhelming, however, it was not until the third wave that was unleashed by the enemy forces that our short-ranged Armada finally succumbed to the last vessel. By this time, their system fleet was so much floating space junk, half their orbitals as well as all planetary installations had been leveled, the outcome of the battle was assured, and the remaining orbitals salvos could not penetrate the point defense fire. The world is highly developed, in spite of the additional risk to our space forces, bombing was not authorized. Hopefully the armies would be able to take this planet in the next battle.

Cloak&Dagger - we lost our last leader due to assassins.
Diplomacy - the voted appraising New Orions, hoping to raise our relationship with them in order to get them to seize the total war against us, seconded a junk tracking law to see other ships more accurately, and accepted a defensive alliance offer to us by Beononi (psi)

Colonization 2 G+ and one Y1g-rich world in Silnth are setteled, their zoning is left to local vicroys.

time...
passes (233)

Military -- Vomnast forces appear above Slkim and a short-range Armada was created at Alya to track the invaders down... the battle for Manzil continues.. over five orbitals were rebuilt, however their carrier orbitals, and their fighters were insufficient to penetrate armor and our shields in the time it took us to destroy them.

Science -- telepathic training has been completed, they should give our spies a boost.

Diplomacy -- Beononi (psi) accepts our intelligence offer, Sariar agrees to cease-fire, we remain at war with the other empires.

Cloak & Daggar -- We are still suffering unrest from foreign agents, and losing a few buildings.

Colonization -- Both outposts at Esra develop into colonies.

time...
passes (234)

Military - the battle for Manzil continues.. five orbitals were rebuilt again, and a third of our doomsday fleet was lost, primarily picket and passport ships from each of our Armadas. However, on this turn the ground invasion of both of the Harvester worlds begins - a foothold is established Both worlds.

Diplomacy - we attract a new leader - Saust Hessara -we will add 15 percent toward diplomacy, additionally our war with the Mecklars had ended (like peace).

time...
passes (235)

Military -- While we successfully conquered Skirnir, the battle for Manzil does poorly, new troops should arrive soon.

Construction -- as has been happening all through my term as CEO, many clients are completing improvements. Additionally, a number of colonies ships standby and are ready to use. I have obsoleted the colony design, but not removed any currently in progress from the ques. I do not know where these colonies ships were intended to be deployed, but the next CEO will have a number of them in reserve and ready.

Diplomacy -- unfortunately those empires that we were at peace with three declared their wars, and Dekalip continues to refuse to cease-fire. Only our allies stand firm, and becoming concerned about maintaining friendships I offer Beononi a full alliance.

time...
passes (236)

Military -- our garrison force in Phelot suffered losses repelling a Vomnast attack, while the force bombarding Slkim has been destroyed. The second army are arriving at Manzil turns the tide, the planet is captured. The harvesters are no longer a threat to us. I move the short-range Armada which finally track down the invaders to the system of Aeient.. This is an empty system that will prevent Vomnast from hitting the our northern colonies through the wormhole. He has colonies on this side of that blockade system, specifically at Miram and Phi Bootis. If we decided to war against the Rock Lords, these two systems must be conquered. I decided to leave all deployed armies on the conquered harvester systems for now, the next CEO can determine attaches to disband those armies.

Diplomacy -- our diplomatic leader was short-lived, assassins took him down. Nevertheless, a white peace ends our war with Dekalip and I move quickly to offer him agreements attempting to secure the peace. Meanwhile a jump lane tracking law passes and the NO are praised in spite of their objection. Tiring of the constant interference of Vomnast, I asked the Senate to declare total war against him.

time...
passes (237)

Diplomacy - the few remaining harvester planets are so far from our systems we have lost contact with that empire. I accept a nonaggression pact offered by Dekalip

Colonization - one planet in Manzil is green to us, and colonies ships are sent to the system.

time...
passes (238)

Exploration -- incredible mailers, the entire expedition has made a partial archeological discovery!!!!! (note to corportate staff, I have no clue what we do next).

Cloak & Dagger -- two spies of the Rock people have been discovered, how did they possibly hide themselves our society?

Colonization -- Unrest from the newly captured harvester planets is all but gone.

time...
passes (239)

Construction - the choice to limit collateral damage when capturing Manzil proved to be as hourlong. The world industry is largely intact in the mobilization center will be rebuilt by the next cycle. This gives us a mobilization center on the front lines if we choose to invade Vomnast. And other news, another large number of colonies ships were completed. I do not know how many moreare in the ques, but we should have enough to found several very successful colonies.

time...
passes (240)

Colonization -- rechecked migration orders, migration to some system uses incredible, they have risen by over Chen population points in my turns alone. Again, it is for the next CEO to decide whether the low density Harvester worlds shall be marked for colonization.

Diplomacy -- Basic trade, research, and nonaggression treaties have been concluded with Dekalip.

End of an age!!!!!
As I began turn 241, I was presented with a vote for the Orion Senate. The vote was between US and the leader of the Ivaquaria... that means this is the very last turn of the game (I thought). I presumed that the New Orions are too insignificant to maintain control of the Senate, however they may have the deciding vote in who succeeds them. I saved the game at this point. Our Antarian Expedition made another partial archeological discovery, and a large number of improvements were built throughout the planets are empire, but aside from mobilization centers at both Manzil and Silnth, nothing of consequence was built this turn.

I cannot resist voting for our human empire and simply advancing to the next cycle, as it seemed all other entries in this report may have been reduced too insignificance. I find myself to be significantly mistaken, as on the following turn we receiving notice at a new Orion to maintain control of the Senate! Check air victory conditions, we garnered 15 percent of the Senate vote, and I am assuming that our allies also had under 50 percent. So while the vote was between ourselves and our allies, neither side mustered the 50 percent vote needed to displace the New Orions. Both challengers failed probably due to many empires abstaining from the vote!!! In any case, I did not actually taking actions on turn to 41, I had just simply wanted to see if the game was over. So use save 241 save above, (I would still be sure to vote for ourselves just in case that matter).

For my successor:
1) You have diplomatic offers to consider.
2) The Armadas at Manzil should probably be disbanded in rebuilt, as most of them are down to 10-12 ships. Also at this system is the colony ship detachment that can be landed on the green planets in that system. Finally the transport squadron that is there does contain a full mobile army, but the transport ships are older, slower transports. That can be disbanded and upgraded to newer transport ships or left as is.
3) New expansion target. We need a much larger population, and thus we need a new target for expansion. Although we are currently not at war with Vomnast and the rock people do to a white peace. I guess as you'll see that read declare immediately. Additionally, it seems that we are likely in a permanent state of war with the Meclars and with Sariar of the Imsaeis. This last enemy still shows very good relations with us, so they may be dragged in other alliance with the other too. If this is so, it might still be possible to avert that war. As Vomnast is the only one of our enemies who has actually sent small fleets against us, I suggest that we turn our efforts in his direction.

I do hope you enjoyed this report, I had a lot of fun playing these turns and writing this report!
Turn 241 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1B_Turn241.zip)

Interesting

I've got it. I'll play it tonight or tomorrow.

--Vek

Sirian has been seriously offensive and degrading to me on the IGmoo board because, as far as I can tell, I disagreed with his crusade for a tech pace slowdown. I cannot be a part of a board or game supported and run by someone who acts in this manner, so I am terminating my account on RBmoo. I do appologize toyou, my new teammates, and want you to know I did not intend this.

Good luck!!! I will still follow this thread, and I hope you give them hell.

Ragnoff

Sorry to hear that Rag. Feel free to come back if you want to.

Anyway, on to my report

Military: I have started the war on the Rocks. We have almost 90 ships in that area, the next few people should be able to steamroll over the Rocks and claim those star systems.

Economy: There have been some unrest problems, so I have lowered taxes on a few planets. No major unrest, and we still have plenty of cash, so all is good.

Espionage: Spies are terrorizing our citizens. I didn't touch the Oppressometer, but the next person (Jaxom?) might want to. So far, it is not *too* bad, but it may get worse

Diplomacy: I have really been trying to make friends with people. Relationships with the Ivaq are still good, and I think the Sariar are coming around. It would be a good idea to befriend as many people as possible, as I assume we are going for a senate win?

Now for a question: What is up with the Cease Total War thing? Does someone else have to say stop?

Well, those were my turns. The next few people are going to have fun smashing Rocks. There is nothing like seeing 83 ships unload on a planet. :die:

Here is the turn: Turn 251 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMOO1B_Turn_251.zip)

More advances made on Vonmast with little losses. A few obsolete technologies were stolen from them and we are slowly getting out of the research hole. Sariar, Dekalip and Beonomi kept declaring war and breaking our treaties but I kept on making new treaties with them at the first occasion. A look at our new possessions in former Vonmast territory.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/rbmsg1_tb_gains261.jpg

This include a look at the voting power from my first and last turn. During my watch, I proposed a bill to declare total war on Vonmast, the bill became law by a wide margin. Silicoid planets joined our cause in Proxima, Ungal, Bootis and Phi Bootis. Miram was partly taken over.

Miram still has one Silicoid planet, I ran out of troops. You can send a new troop transport from Phi Bootis which just built its mobilization center. Unuk, SW of Phi Bootis, needs some piracy control, try to send some ships that way. Check the MBQ our top industry worlds, try to build the same ship type in 5-packs when one finish. A battle will occur at Onoalagona on the next turn, it should be an easy win. I think we should press on the rocks after regrouping our ships over Bootis.

If you re-organize our TF, please try not to mix gen 5 with gen 6. Also, do put more than 2 recon ships, I had trouble finding the enemy ships with our gen 6 TF. I recommend using 5 PD ships and 5 recon ships with our IF and carriers. LR and SR gunships don't need PD ships, put more gunships. Try not to mix SR and LR ships, this negates the power of a specialize design.

Turn 261 save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/rbmsg1_teamb_turn261.zip)

Jaxom
Sulla -> Up
Darken -> On deck
Ragnoff
Vek

@Ragnoff: it's your loss, not ours. If you reconsider, leave a message before Darken post his turn. Otherwise, we'll go back to a 4 player rotation.

Have fun!

One more thing...

I forgot to mention in my round report that our Antarean expedition made a discovery and is now on its way back home with an Antarean X.

An "X", huh? Never seen what that entails before, neat! :)

Will try to play sometime tonight, continuing our attack on Vomnast.

You are correct, it would be my loss not to continue, I plead temporary insanity. I was under the (incorrect) assumption the RBmoo was Sirian's show. While I still do not think I could be on a team with him, he is not on this team, and I would like to continue.

It was simply amazing to me that we had a vote between our allies and ourselves for the role of president and the NO kept it because niether had 50% of the vote!

BTW, I do not know if you are checking the IGmoo boards, but the patch there looks great!

Ragnoff

I planned to play tonight, right after the NHL game between the Stars and Mighty Ducks finished. Six hours and five overtime periods later when the game finally ended (4th-longest ever), it was a little too late to get to the next turn. :)

I'll have it finished within the next 24 hours though, never fear.

I forgot to mention in my round report that our Antarean expedition made a discovery and is now on its way back home with an Antarean X.

X-cellent. :hammer: Once you have it secured, time to X-amine it. Please provide screens. I don't believe Sulla is the only one with no X-perience in this area. :lol:

- Sirian

Well it could take up to 50 turns before the fleet turns back in, the game might be over by then. One thing our team players should watch for, on the turn the expedition returns, you should raise the O-meter to the max tolerance. An X can be stolen and we have many unfriendly neighbors spying on us.

(0) 261 Set up a transport to invade the last Sillicoid planet on Miram. I send all the generation 6 ships there to Bootis to prepare for the next push forward, while leaving the mixed gen 5/6 TF (a bad call there, I have to say) over the hostile planet to ensure no ships can get in or out of the system. Not to be picky, but why is Manzil VII - our #2 industry world - working on a HAWK Defense? We might want to produce some capital ships out of there. I go through our planets list and laboriously change production where appropriate, mostly just incresing funding where the silly viceroys cut it to build a DEA improvement and never slotted it back up again. We have a ton of ships in our reserves, but unfortunately not enough to form a new task force of anything; we need more of our big capital ships for that. With that done, I end the turn.

(1) 262 We occupy Onoalagona with ease, but the fleet I had left behind on Miriam is unable to defeat the planetary defense base there. The main TF there was a short-range attack one - a group which had been slowed down to a system speed of 300. I don't know who organized that TF, but no short-range attack TF should ever be that slow. Time ran out before we managed to reach the other planet. God that was boring to watch. A leader of ours dies and another one show up randomly. Do they serve ANY point in this game? Dekalip refuses to accept our cease-fire... and then ends the war anyway for no reason. Diplomacy in this game needs some major work still, I tell you. We discover an Antaran X this turn, though! Sweet! We are currently research X#3; I have no idea exactly what this means, but hopefully we will discover it soon. Create a temporary short-range TF to go clean up the Miriam system, while sending some outdated ships to serve as police force in the Unuk system. I had mistakenly thought that there was a transport force already headed to Onoalagona; since there wasn't, I create one this turn and send it that way.

(2) 263 Despite crushing all the ships in the Onoalagona system, there are now magically more ships there this turn. I must confess that I do not understand this game at times. How did they get there? They're system ships, not starships, so they must have been produced since last turn (?) Dekalip redeclares war on us this turn...

OK, that's it. This game makes no freakin sense whatsoever. The declare/undeclare/redeclare war thing here is just the straw on the camel's back. I'm truly sorry, but this game is just an absolute waste of time to play out. These turns are not fun at all for me, they've become an enormously un-entertaining drain on my time. I'm trying very hard to like Moo3, but it is not liking me back. I hate do this, but I just don't want to continue. I'm finding myself making excuses to do anything other than play these turns; this morning I chose to solve differential equasions over playing this game. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to. :eek: That says to me that I've lost the fun factor completely. It's a shame too, but the release version of this game is just SO bad that I can't stomach playing it any longer. The data patch doesn't do jack from my limited observations so far either. When a game supposedly for entertainment value is driving you to do actual work, it's not worth it anymore.

Please drop me from the roster. I want to say it's nothing any of you have done, I've learned quite a bit from this game and had a good time in the early going. :) My beef is with the game itself, at least the unmodded version. I'm going to try IMP1 and see if that goes better; if not, I'm done with Moo3 until the first major patch comes out. Best of luck, and I'll still be following this thread to see what happens. :goodjob:

(I'm not posting a save, as I didn't do anything other than screw up a few orders.)

Jaxom
Darken <<< UP NOW
Ragnoff <<< on deck
Vek

I am sorry you feel that way Sulla, I hoped you would stick with us until the end. Hopefully, the code patch will make the game more interesting, but I don't think it will truly shine until the 3rd patch, if we ever get there.

In any case, I played from turn 261 to check a couple of things. Manzil was wroking on an Hawk to complete its own piracy control fleet. It was almost ready to join our top industry world in building capital ships.

You had transports going to Onoalagona, they were probably destroyed in the battle. I took control of the battle and lost one transport but our fleet prevailed and Onoalagona was taken over.

I didn't move the navy away from Miram since the system was not cleared. So I defeated the planetary bases easily and took over the planet.

All this was too little, too late however. On turn 263 a senate vote was called, which resulted in this...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/rbmsg1_tb_loss264.jpg

I guess we started our push forward too late, Ivaquaria was too far ahead. It is really annoying not to see how the votes were cast, it leaves a feeling of "So what, we loose."

Thanks to all for playing this game, let's hope we have a better game to play by the end of May.

Well, that is less fun than optimal. Though I guess losing to our ally is better to losing to an enemy.

I enjoyed playing with this team. Jaxom, I thought our "discussions" were fruitful, and highly educational at least for me. Sullla and Vek, I thought you played your turns very well.

I don't like losing much, but I am glad this game has come to an end. I agree strongly with Sullla that the game is marginally playable and certainly not very fun in its current form. Though I still think I probably would prefer to play Moo3 than solve diffy-Q's "for the heck of it" :)

While I continue to hold out hope that the code patch will improve the fun factor for me, I have compensated by playing a lot of Galactic Civilizations instead lately.

Thanks a lot for the experience, team. Hopefully we will play together again if the game ever gets fixed.

Darken.Rahl

Ouch. That hurts.

Well, I guess that is that. It has been good fun. : ) And I have definatly learned alot. I enjoyed playing with you guys. If Senate Victory had been off, we would have smoked them all.

:die:

Well, time to time IMP1 and see how that goes.

--Vek

Hey, guys. Kudos on seeing the game all the way through. :goodjob:

I know it was a mixed bag. Imp1 doesn't address all of these problems or even most of them, but most of them ARE being addressed in the upcoming patch, and in the mean time, the comparisons and discussions from Imp1 -- whether you participate or just lurk -- will bring a lot of things to daylight, reveal some of what is broken, why it's broken, and whether or not the broken things are being addressed in the patch. My run at the game is over, and I can honestly say I had fun with it.

I hope you all had some fun with the SG. I'll try to make sure we learn the lessons available here, so that any future SG's provide a better experience -- and that is also part of why I shifted from pushing a second SG into giving the tournament its first shot.

I enjoyed following along with your results here. Thanks!


- Sirian

Ha! Figures I would play up to turn 263 and then be too frustrated to continue. Even one more turn and I could have lost the game myself without making Jaxom jump in. :lol:

Yeah it was fun, but we definitely fell too far behind in the early stages. I don't think Moo3 is particularly well suited to SG play, at least not in the easy way that Civ3 is. Irregardless of the outcome, the game was highly educational for me and I'm sure everyone involved. I'll be giving IMP1 a go to see how things play out, and I hope the game comparisons will prove revealing on what works well in the game and what doesn't. I just hope I can "get into" that game and avoid a repeat of what happened here.

Best of luck to all of you! :)

A note from a lurker:

I started following this SG (all three teams) from the beginning. I'd read several reviews of MOO3 and I wanted to get a feel for the game before I bought it. The reviews were mixed and certainly the frustration levels of the players here seemed high.

Somewhere inside MOO3 is a good game. Unfortunately, it hasn't struggled out yet. QS will have to wait a while longer before they get my $29.95.

Thank you all for providing me with an interesting and entertaining overview of the game. :wavey: