Ha! First SG and already we're almost playing a variant game -- stock humans, reportedly the weakest civ in the game (on the basis of race picks, anyway!)

Scenario Information:

Difficulty: Normal
Race: Humans
Galaxy: Medium Cluster Galaxy
Starlanes: Short, Few
Random Events: Normal
Specials: Average
Computer Players: 8
Combat and Turn timers: Off
Victory Conditions: All
Senate Start: Random (not rerolled)


TEAM C: Medium Cluster Galaxy

Zed - Host
Drasca
Brackard
Kylearan
Meldor (should be ready in time to play)


Rules, copied from the team A thread:

* 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.


I guess since I'm first up I get first crack at putting together some default Dev plans and so forth, though feel free to change. Not having played Humans (or indeed any humanoid) yet, we'll see what happens. We are still firmly in the exploratory phase of learning the game, so feel free to try anything wild and wacky you like if you think you can figure out some useful info about the game as a result!

Will start the game tonight. Objectives: Max out infrastructure on the homeworld (concentrating on production for colony ship building) and pump out a couple scouts/blockaders.

First, some notes on government.
Government types description - Representative:
http://www.ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=272420&highlight=government+stats
We want high industry, mining, and military at the start, so I choose to switch to Republic.


Ok, starting off, adjusting our empire:

Tech - mostly even across the board.
Finance - Lower our taxes a bit to combat unrest, set military to peace thru strength.
Empire - No contacts with anyone, so set oppressometer to minimum. Zoning to specialized, government to republic, forced labour off. Default dev plans set.
Personnel - start training spies.
Foreign - no contacts yet.
Shipyards - Obsolete a bunch of ships. Design a new scout, carrier, and system defense ship, all of which are slow carriers with extra fighters/point def and less thrusters. Nomenclature: LnRcnW1T03 - means Lancer, Recon, Warp 1, Thrusters 300 (max right now is 1500)
Planets - Starting out we have a G2y10(rich), a G1g7(rich,hostile gas), a SSg4(very rich,high bio) and a couple large red planets in our home system. We need more people so I colonize the SSg4 planet first for the highest growth rate. Our homeworld starts on more infrastructure: Industry and Mining DEAs for the most part.
Ships - Our wimpy starting scouts set off to explore. I keep them bunched together so they can be guaranteed to kill any single enemy wimpy scout they come across.

Events of note:
Turn 3 - We discover Exis system, which has a magnate race (Audrieh) on a Red planet. We get a free outpost on Exis 2, I wonder if this is due to the magnate or due to our pop just deciding it looks like a neat place to live. Exis2 happens to be G2 to us, fairly large, and good for some bioharvesting, but will take some time to build up the first pop point.
Turn 7 - We explore Meshapo system and find a splinter colony, on a medium sized rich world. Coolness! :)
Turn 9 - We get another new outpost for free on Moyo 2, which is the G2y10(rich) planet. Again, will have to wait for it to become a full colony.
Turn 11 - We explore the Nimbus system and find a second magnate race, this time Darloks.
Turn 15 - We explore the Yorkjough system with our initial scouts, which looks like a nice choke point sealing off this access route to our space. I have another (new) scout coming up from another direction so I will hold position here to prevent anyone from claiming the system before we can. We also discover the Sol system, and boy does it suck. :( The Darloks might like it.
Turn 16 - We destroy a rival scout in Yorkjough, 2:1 odds is good. :)
Turn 17 - Destroy enemy colony ship in Yorkjough.
Turn 21 - Sitrep says Pirates in Moyo IV system, and our scouts relief arrived so I sent the 2 wimpy scouts off through a wormhole, this turn they arrived at Eta Arae on the far side of the map.

Guys, this looks like a rockin' start! I have a few scouts up to secure access points to our empire and explore further from there, and am building stacks of colony ships to go claim those magnates. (Building in groups of 5, need 4 to claim a magnate, so the 5th can be used at discretion.) Unfortunately the Hostile Gases on Moyo 3 (the G1g7(rich) planet) makes it unlikely that we will want to colonize there soon, that's a real bugger of a special, but we may get a free outpost there at some point anyway. We are a bit short on minerals and not hugely great on food either but this should hopefully fix itself shortly as there ought to be some more mining and farming DEAs coming out soon. Our biggest problem in the short term is going to be coming up with the pop to man those DEAs so try not to expand too fast.

Our empire so far:


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1C_21.png.png


And the save file (sorry bout the funny name):


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1C_21.zip.zip

Cool. Downloading the file as I type. Better get out my legal pad and take notes.

All right. Listing what I did.

Slight terminology-- CV means carrier.

Turn 21.
Found we had a mining shortage. Switched Around DEA's so that mining would complete first, then industry. Also switched the Research DEA's atop a Rare petrochemicals bonus to Industry. According to Readme.txt, industry gains 20% Efficiency bonus, even though only research and trade are in the description. Also Switched around other planned DEA's for similar results, including governmental & recreational DEA's. Mucho macho DEA maximization.

Spy recruitment started again.

Much moving of scout ships. Recon-CV at Yorkjough went N to explore starlane, moved 2 recons from wormhole to cover Yorkjough blockade.

Scrapped 5x colony ships. I prefer getting each colony ship when it arrives, and using it immediately. 4 colony pods are not necessarily required to gain the magnate, just one population point-- which can be achieved through natural growth & migration as well as colony pods at our leisure.

Turned off migration to one 5 population planet. Migration works on a one-to-one planet basis. Homeworld was the only planet emigrating. 5 population planet now migrating. Two migration events will be triggerred now.

Switched System Carriers ---> System Colonies. Farmer's gambit I admit, but there didn't seem much point to system defending our "Ring" formation of star-systems. Opted for faster colonization instead of early defense & enemy interception in home colony systems.

T22.
Sent Obsolete scout ships to scout southward to Castor, leaving the Yorkjough nexus unguarded until the other Recon-CV.

T23.
Phaser Rifles, woohoo!

Zibel is a dead end. That means the key to leaving and defending our home "Ring" of systems is York.

Space Combat: Dapaklop sends in his short range ship to Yorkjoygh. We lost one Recon CV attempting to intercept.

Additional: Potential combat at Selia. We see Aluluran? is a trilarian. I know it from my last game. He wouldn't attack me. Option to assault or blockade. Took blockade, in hopes to build relations with the Triliarian later. Prediction worked. No combat.

T25.
Hurried production of colony ship, saving a turn, by increasing military queue money allocation. Made a dummy "send colony" command at York, to enable task force creation at time of production.

T27
We have explored Selia! Trilarians have .5 a population point in a G1 world in Selia. There are 2 G1, 2 Y1 worlds in selia worth taking-- whether directly or from the Trilarian through outcolonizing him on the .5 population world.

Scouts are then sent west. Found Trilarian homeworld. Cede control and blocade. No Combat. Inra is just as nice... and with just as many Trilarians on it. What to do what to do?

T30
Raised Oppressometer a notch in preperation for spy-craft. Colony ship is approaching Nimbus for next emperor to decide what to do. Green 1 planet, or Magnate. No diplomatic contacts or decisions yet. I suspect the next turn does the trick.

Trilarians have gone to York, but our blockade is in place. They want the gas giant. I can see it now. Will the next emporer give it to them? There will be definite diplomatic contact afterward.

To the next emporer, go to York and uncheck colonize this button for the Yellow class planet.

http://www.angelfire.com/pa2/myhome/MAP1.jpg

The dot-map above shows green for excellent planets, yellow for so-so and magnate civs (except for York, which is strategic value) good for outposts to settle and migrate to. Note the arrows. An Insectoid ship has gotten into our ring, but we guard the only exit. He shall not live. I'm beginning to fall asleep. Yellow arrow shows where the Triliarian colony ship is is on turn 31, trying to land/colonize a gas giant there.

And let's not forget: the saved game (http://www.angelfire.com/pa2/myhome/rbmoo1ct31.zip)

Gee I hoped that worked.

[b]ETA: We have a new leader, a Nommo. Eitrana Eiqua. How could I forget? Well, too early in the morning. She's got +10 mining output, and +6% factory output. Very nice for early game.

If we destroy the colony ship before we have diplomatic contact, I don't think it hurts our relations with the nation in question...

The system ships are needed to combat piracy, to help with unrest reduction. Piracy is a big problem right now.

Got it. Will play tonight and have it up tomorrow.

Turned off migration to one 5 population planet. Migration works on a one-to-one planet basis.

Not sure about that. For Team A, we had four worlds, migration turned on for three of them, and getting migration immigrant messages on all three every turn. I believe there's a distance delay between the "source" world and the "arrival" world, and there's no delay at all for same-system migration.

Now I suppose it COULD be possible that one-to-one is the case, as you say. But if so, we had Home going to B, B to C, C to D, with each planet gaining some net improvement. I did wait for Team A homeworld to climb to about 10 pop before I turned migration on, but you've got to consider that pop growth curve lost at home by starting sooner is gained at all the colonies by getting out from under the slow penalty at the start much sooner. Then even as you leave migration on to them, they also emigrate some of their pop to even more distant colonies.

The more I see of migration, the more I think it's better to get going sooner rather than later, and to leave it on almost all the way to the max growth curve point (half full), at which point turning it off will leave only the emigration, which will come in big chunks.

Anywho... turning it off at size 5 will mean slower growth, as the 5 is emigrating, not just immigrating.

What might be interesting is to try a game with NO migration turned on and see how much harder it is. We'll save that for variant time, though. :)


- Sirian

Oh. My head. I hoped that post made enough sense. I didn't exactly take the time to polish it up.

Colony Ship at York: Maybe, But since we need to blockade that system anyhow, it is possible to indefinitely blockade their colony ship. iirc, that ship also had an armed escort. A simple blockade toward a non-aggressive race seems best to me, but it'd definitely be interesting to see what will work. Up to Brackard now. Destroy, Delay, or ignore (and let them settle).

Migration delay? There's a thought. I migrated based on what I knew. Yes, core planets are growing slower for others to go faster. I didn't take a growth at habitiability vs population , so I don't really know whether the overall empire growth is faster or slower due to what I did.

Yes, system ships are to combat piracy, which in turn combats unrest. Except I opted to place unrest-reducing DEA's instead. Piracy gets worse (for me) as my empire and populations grow, but is at a DEA managable level right now.

Finances: At the start, I switched finances to focus entirely on Planetary grants to build up infrastructure of our worlds. 36 AU into research per turn isn't that much for research, but into early building-- lots.

Castor over to the left is Gas Giant Central. If the trilarians are allowed to see it, they'll want it badly. If we conquer one of their planets, through outpopulation (send the colony ship over to selia and place it atop their outpost and migrate--no need to. Green 1 planet). We can use their population preferences to our advantage. Does anyone know if colony ships retain the racial balance of the worlds they were created in? or is it just the dominant race. There's so much to learn.

Oh my head. My glasses. Where are they?

P.S. I didn't figure out how the upload system works around here. Someone will have to clue me in. I used some of my own webspace to host the files.

ETA: You can migrate to uncontrolled planets in your same system. We can do this to Exis if we wanted.

I believe I read that a colony ship retains the same population ratio as the planet it was built on.

Drasca: I made the colx5 thinking we needed 4 col ships for a magnate. Now doesn't seem that way according to RBMoo1A. So, switching to 1xcol at a time is probably the right move, though it costs us about 4 turns of production.

We could also think about building a SysOutpost ship from exis 2. I vote the magnate on nimbus 2. Gives us much more pop more quickly, which lets us grow that much faster, and claim planets with lousy environments for us. Free outposts too! :)

D'oh Lost first post.

Zed: That magnate race is on a Red habitability class planet. Colony ships only give 1/4 a pop point for Reds. Uncontrolled planets require 1 population point to be taken over. However, you don't need to put that 1 pop in one go.

As for Exis. We can migrate people if we already have a colony in the system. Categorize View the planets by population, and check uncontrolled. Migrate people there.

I vote for Selia for a few reasons. I don't want to tell Brackard what to do, but this is my reasoning:

First off, logistics--the order of things.
The colony ship is already 1/2 way to Selia, there's another colony ship about to be completed in a turn or two. We can grab Selia (on top of the Trilarian Outpost) and then the Nimbus Magnate race a lot faster than going for Nimbus then Selia. Each colony ship would have to travel 2 star lanes, instead taking Nimbus now and waiting for the 2nd colony ship to travel 4.

Secondly, We can take their planet in one go. They have an outpost with 1/2 a pop point on a Green 2 planet, blockaded by us. Green means we get the full colony population point and we can nab those guys in one fling. Waiting later means they might send reinforcements to take out our blockade and make their own. I want those fish and gas bags. If it were me, I'd want to establish a foothold into the center of the galaxy. The Trilarians are in the way. We can take over their planet in one go. I'd do it.

Moreover, Magnate races aren't the only ones that build outposts. Any race not your own and in your control will. Gas bags, Sakkra, etc. Harvesters will eat your race if there's no food. Not sure if they do it even without food.

The only real concern is that there isn't a whole lot of food around. We have a small surplus, and the conquered/magnate races will grow *fast*. There are a lot of toxic planets, not a whole lot of fertile ones and we don't have much/any terraforming or biological DEA add-on technology.

Beyond that, we don't have a military. We have a couple Recon CV's with lasers. No missle ships, no beams. I like sitting duck fortresses a lot, but not when there's no staple fleet, and when this map is a lot smaller than I'm used to.

There's one more concern. We must blockade Castor, and York. They're too valuable to our enemies, and we can use them once we've gotten some gas-bags of our own. I'd love to expand more, but our ships are slow, we're cornered and we're stretching the limits of our current military and military production. I'm an aggressive expander.

This could easily get bad if we are blocked in. I might be just paranoid, or overly demanding of our ability to expand compared to the enemy's ability to-- but I don't want a pocket empire equipped for exploration and expansion, but stopped and chopped. We're surrounded by 2 potential enemies. There's that wormhole, and the single string to the west. Each enemy will cause blockade trouble in at least one system. Since we're closed in, that means York, Castor and Selia are Extremely important strategic ports. If we can't expand, we'll have to fight out way out.

There's a problem with the carrier battles I've had. We've lost mainly because we've been up close to the enemy in each. Maybe we need focus detection arrays to get distance between us and the enemy. Bombardment-Slow Carriers don't work well up close, nor if there are just a few fighters. We need missles, or sensors.

Originally posted by Drasca
Zed: That magnate race is on a Red habitability class planet. Colony ships only give 1/4 a pop point for Reds.

According to the ubiquitous MilitaryAI.txt, it's 0.35 of a pop point for R2, 0.5 for R1, 0.65 for Y2, 0.8 for Y1, and 1.1 for G+. If these numbers are correct, you need 3 colony ships for R2, 2 for R1,Y2,Y1.

Outpost ships are listed at 0.05 for everything.

Originally posted by Jaffa Tamarin


According to the ubiquitous MilitaryAI.txt, it's 0.35 of a pop point for R2, 0.5 for R1, 0.65 for Y2, 0.8 for Y1, and 1.1 for G+. If these numbers are correct, you need 3 colony ships for R2, 2 for R1,Y2,Y1.

Outpost ships are listed at 0.05 for everything.

Thanks Jaffa. Those help a lot.

I'm still both scared and adrenaline thrilled. I've never been boxed in before. I've always had some avenue to gamble on, but this is too much vulnerability spread in York and Selia. I've never had a system able to go to 5 different others, one being a wormhole. That's dangerous. There is a lot of good soil around, but not for tilling. I just feel trapped from this Ring system corner of the galaxy. We're quite set in terms of expansion, but I feel behind somehow. Maybe I'm overcompensating for something I have no control over. We are on our way to being the dominant power of the galaxy, but the hurdles are large and numerous--some we might not even notice and take care of until nearly too late.

Ok, having seen some more stuff on this in other threads, Selia sounds good as well. Especially if it's already on the way.

If the slow CVs are not working, we can always obsolete them for now and design new ones. :) Once we get a few important planets colonized we can swap over to military on our homeworld and colonize/outpost more slowly from our secondary planets.

My focus for this turn was to do two things. I wanted to finish up infrastructure on existing worlds, and shore up defenses at York. So before turn, I adjusted a few sliders/production lines to infrastructure/warship accordingly. I also wanted to get rid of the bug ship that was hovering over Exis. As to the situation at York, I looked at some of the worlds that Aualanvua was taking. They were taking worlds that were green to us. I wasn’t going to take the chance that Aua take the York yellow world, so the blockade would continue.

Turn 31: Blockade continues over York between Aualanvua and us. No combat. The bugs decide to join the party. We have a three way blockade!! Nice. Autofire Fighter laser and Fighter Fusion cannon researched. Scout at Irra continues scouting outbound.

Turn 32: I decide to try and take the Darlock magnate at Nimubs. Colony ship lands. We’ll need some more work there before it becomes a colony. (Although population says 6000+?) The threeway blockade continues at York. The bugs finished their blockade of Exis. I’m not sure exactly WHERE that ship went as I never saw it again, and I didn’t destroy it either.

Turn 33: Bugs leave York. Blockade continues. I decide to send a colony ship to York to meet up with a few armed scouts I currently have in production and should be out in a turn or two.

Turn 34: Scout Tristan: G2r3, G1y5, Y1y11 Contraband/Thriving Eco owned by Aual. Blockade continues at York.

Turn 35: 2 light recons come off the line. Create a task force for them. I plan on sending them to York to deal with the ‘situation’. Blockade continues. Quark miniturazation/laser miniturazation II researched.

Turn 36: York: Aualanvua brings in another ship (colony I believe). No combat at York. The bugs are back as well. Moyo III is colonized. Class I shields are researched. Two recons are sent to York. And then the following from a passing group of tourists…

“Hey pilot, what’s the deal with all those ships surrounding the york system?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t we find out?”
“But there are 7 ships surrounding that system, and only 3 of them look to be ours.”
“So?”
“Well, okay then. Everybody ready?”

And so the brave pilot crash lands on the planet and starts the York I colony. Y2g5 – rare metals, active volcanoes. Still an outpost, but on it’s way. Go figure.

Turn 37: Threeway blockade continues at York. Nothing special.

Turn 38: Lt Recon produced. Nothing special. Threeway blockade continues.

Turn 39: Quayal scouted. All red. Threeway blockade continues. Carrier produced.

Turn 40: Bugs bring in another ship to York. Blockade continues. Carrier produced. And another conversation like the below:

“Hey Ma?”
“Yes Paw.”
“I’m really tired of living here on this nice, lush green paradise where everything is easy and handed to you on a silver platter”
::sigh:: “I kinda like it here Paw.”
“Aren’t you ready for another ADVENTURE!”
“Paw…..you didn’t do anything rash….
“Think of it now…the new frontier….the trials and tribulations…the ADVENTURE. Isn’t that romantic?”
“Paw!!!”
“I can feel it now..the danger…the unexpected…”
“PAAWWWWW!!!!! WHAT DID YOU DO?”
“Oh. What did I do? Oh, nothing special. I just spent our life savings to buy a transport to Yoth. You know the system don’t you? The system where we need special suits just to breath, and the soil is so toxic, you need to wear special shoes or it will eat through your skin? You know that planet don’t you?”
::SOB::
“So you get the rest of your family and get packed. We leave tomorrow.”

And so the outpost of Yoth was formed. I really can’t figure this one out. It can’t be the Audreth (plants). They are similar to Humans in climate. I don’t THINK it could be the Darlocks. We don’t have full control of that system yet…but maybe? I don’t know but it is colonized. It’s a R2g – rich/toxic.

Turn 41 Sitrep:
System colony ship produced on Meshapo. Nothing else special.

Okay, I left most of our core colonies a DEA or two away from completion (if they aren’t already.) There are 2 carriers and a lt recon ready for task force if needed. A colony ship is ETA 1 from York. This can be redirected to the Darlocks if deemed necessary. 2 light recons are ETA 4 or 5 from York. Unrest or very manageable at the moment and I didn’t adjust any ship designs. Once we get York defended thoroughly, we might think about hitting research heavy the next few turns and start thinking about ship redesigns. Food was looking good, but minerals were beginning to get tight so you’ll need to watch that this turn. And I think that’s all the damage I could do this round so have fun Kylearan.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmoo1c41.jpg

Zed
Drasca
Brackard
Kylearan <- UP
Meldor <- On deck

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmoo1c41.zip

Ok, I didn’t look at Drascas post before I took my turns last night. Anyway, there is another colony ship on the way that you can do whatever you need to with. (1 ETA from York.) As I sat down to this last nigh, I was thinking “cool, this shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes or so….” 2 hours later, I finish up and my wife gives me a dirty look. My response “It was just 10 turns!!” That didn’t go over very well. ;) I’ll know better next time.

Edit: Hey, got the map to work!! Whoohoo!

Looks like the Trilarian outpost in Selia hasn't been colonized yet, we still have the opportunity to go nab it out from under them.

That's good. I hope they don't send their own ships to eliminate ours though.
Nabbing it will hurt diplomatic relations, but it is worth it.

Watch out for Castor, west of York, the 5-6 pack of red gas giants which are green to Trilarians. They'll want it badly once they see it. Either blockade or let them colonize and prepare a transport with troops for invasion. It is too far out of their way for them to defend easily. We can get to York and intercept long before they can mount a counter-attack.

I think at this point we should have double the planets of all other opponents. So long as we can hold what we take, we're set to go.

Oh yeah. York was my fault. I left a "send colony here" to York, and only briefly mentioned it, w/o uploading the picture pointing out "Turn this off." I meant it to get colony task forces built the same turn they're created, and manually resend colony ships. Uh. Oops. :mischief:

-Drasca

"York was my fault. I left a "send colony here" to York, and only briefly mentioned it, w/o uploading the picture pointing out "Turn this off." I meant it to get colony task forces built the same turn they're created, and manually resend colony ships. Uh. Oops. "

That's the funny thing about it. I turned that off when I first loaded everything up. Before I started my first turn, I didn't have a single "colony go here" sign anywhere. Besides, wouldn't a colony ship have been stopped by the blockade?

I just found it really strange.

Dang. You're right then. We're getting free hugh-mahn outposts. Weird.

The reason I worry about food is because of Darloks and Trilarian/Etherean population growth on Gas Giants. They grow fast and large. They'll easily take up 100 food in a few dozen turns. Plus, those systems are mainly toxic, and not farming friendly.

Zed
Drasca
Brackard
Kylearan << UP
Meldor << On Deck

Kylarean, where are you? There is usually a 24/48 rule: a 24 hour period for you to post "got it", followed by a 48 hour period to post results. We need to know if you need to be skipped this time around! If we don't hear from you today, then Meldor takes over.

EDIT: Ok, went back and checked the SG thread on RBMoo, and saw you won't be able to play until tomorrow. Pity we didn't notice/recall this sooner. :)

Meldor, if you post "got it" before Ky does (today or tomorrow), we'll swap you and Ky in the order this time around. If Ky posts "got it" first, then we'll go with the current order.

Hi Team C,

I fear I have to be dropped completely from this game. :( A close relative of mine has passed away, and I have been away for the last days to attend to the funeral and to deal with some related issues. Unfortunately, things have turned out to be more complex than I had expected, and I fear I won't have much time for gaming in the near future.

I'm very sorry that your waiting for me has unnecessairily delayed this SG for so long! I have really looked forward to my first SG, but things went different from what I had planned. I hope I can join you in one of the next SGs - if you'll still have me then, that is. :(

Have fun and good luck with the game, and sorry again.

-Kylearan

Kylearan,

On behalf of everyone else, I extend my thoughts and prayers to you in this tough time. Do not think that we would hold anything agianst you, or that you have caused us any undue problems. Take your time and do what is more important after all. If and when you are ready to rejoin us, be asssured it will be with open arms. No apology needed.

Got it.....

Don't yet know how much of this is important or not.

41 Minor adjustments, Add military spy to cue.

42 Spy Shiloh is now trained. The blockaid continues at York. We construct a Basic Systems Module at Exis II, and an Industry DEA at Exis I. Emigration continues. I send the colony ship on to Selia.

43 We intercept an Aualanvua scout at York. Continue to Blockaid the Dapaklop and Kar-Zinoraur. A colony ship arrives at Meshapo V. We complete a minig DEA on Exis I and have more migration.

44 Enter Voross (North of Quayal) and the Asalg are already there, we blockaid and no battle insues. The scout pushes on to the next system. Voross has two G2 planets. A CV completes at Moyo I. We finish an Industry DEA at Moyo II, a Mining DEA at Mpyp III, and Bio DEAs at both Exis I and II. A colony on Nimbus I is created. We finish Level 3 Econ. They interception of the scout must have scared the other two off as both are gone now. We have a brief mineral shortage but that will correct itself next turn. I send both of the scout towards Selia. The scout at Voross heads north.

45 We now have diplo contact with the Dapaklop empire. A mining DEA finishes on Moyo II, Space Environmental Module on Exis II, and a mining DEA on Exis I. The mineral shortage is no more. I send a TA Economic at State to Dapaklop.

46 We intercept another Aualanvua scout at York. We don't want them slipping through to see anything beyond. We finish a Mining DEA at Moyo II. Lvl3 Social Arts is complete.

47 The new military spy is now ready for work. The next recruitment is set to Economic. Dapaklop formally accepts our treaty. I leave it at this for now.

48 The Asalg take out our scout when it enters the Hourdus system north of Voroos. There are 6 planets in this system and they are on only one of them.The colony ship lands at Selia III. We finish a CV at Moyo II, a Bio DEA at Exis II, a mining DEA at Exis I and a Basic Systems module at Nimbus I. Lvl3 Energy is completed. I put down two Bio in a Thriving Eco Arable plains region, 1 ine on a mountain and of course one industry.

49 The Aualanvua attack the planet Selia III, we lose both scouts but they have no ground forces. The people protest Autofire and add 14 turns to its completion. We get contact with the Chachan Empire and the Aualanvua. We finish a System Seat on Meshapo I. slight unrest hits Selia II (duh) and Exis II. A recreation DEA is due there next turn so I don't react. We complete Lvl3 Biology and Math & Computers. I send the current York Taskforce towards Selia as there is a second taskforce due ther in 2 turns.

50 A Recreation DEA complets on Exis II. We kill a Daraklop spy. I send a TA Econ to both new contacts. We finish Lvl4 Social, Lvl3 Physical and Lvl4Econ. 33 hardy souls show up on Selia IV.

51 Sitrep:
Industry DEA completes on Exis I and Moyo III. More emigration ensues.

Ther is a new taskforce at York strength 6. A strength 5 taskforce is due to arrive in Selia in 3 turns. The Aualanvua have left the Selia system for now. I didn't set a new spy type, we still need a second Social. The Exis II colony ship was intended for the Magnet Civ.

Saved Game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1C_Turn_0051.zip)

The people protest Autofire and add 14 turns to its completion.

This is another one of those ambiguous, confusing, misleading game elements.

A) The "protest" message is screwed up. This is essentially a message informing you that there has been a project overrun, and that a research project is going to take extra time. I think the protest message was supposed to be one of several messages of different flavors explaining this, but for some reason we only get the same one over and over.

B) The delay is not "an additional" X number of turns. The delay is usually minor, and the number of turns mentioned is the total number expected to take to get there. The message doesn't mention that you may have had 11 to go before the overrun, now increased to 14, for example.


This game really could have used a professional writer on the staff. A lot of the writing is really awful. This is only one example. User interface impelementation is even worse, with so many uninformative and poorly explained and ambiguous or confusing messages and game elements.

On an up note, as I am playing with the difficulty mod I made and going through the first test game, I am understanding more and more about the guts of the game, and having more fun. Let me repeat that: I am having MORE fun with the game as I go. I'll try to write up some kind of report by the weekend to detail more of what I have learned, over at RBMoo.


- Sirian

Would get it, but CivFanatics uploads don't seem to be cooperating. Will try again tomorrow.

Originally posted by Sirian

This game really could have used a professional writer on the staff. A lot of the writing is really awful.

I could not agree more. This manual is one I would tell anyone to avoid at all costs, and I myself have not read more than a few select pages of it. All the information overload created from the manual, master's notes and everything else unnecessarily steeps the learning curve. A great deal of the information isn't even useful or relevant, because they're either "under-the-hood" or hardwired so the player isn't in control. Since you already stated, "avoid reading Master notes, manual etc" I thought it'd be redudant me to reiterate the point. The layout of writing simply stinks and is extremely indigestable even to the hardcore reader.

Ok, got it now. Will likely get to it tomorrow, but possibly tonight or Sat.

Zed, as I am new at this you may take this with a big grain of salt but....

The Aulanvua only have two systems and a couple of planets. Would it be worth taking them out to 1) rid us of a rival for the planets, 2) expand our choke point out to the two systems, Sedia and Caster (??), 3) get them while they are weak.

Would there be any negative consequences? Do the other AI races not like you taking them out?

Turn 51:

We look like we're going to have a food shortage here soon if something doesn't change, we don't have a lot of arable worlds and we'll soon have lots of Darloks and Eoladi to feed. We are also seriously falling behind in tech, largely due to the lack of Research DEAs. A lot of our planets are running on autopilot and letting the AI decide what DEAs to build. I don't trust it. :) I manually readjust spending, DEA construction, and military construction for all our planets. Our economy isn't doing so hot, we lack cash to build anything in a reasonable amount of time. I switch us back to Corporate government for the bioharvest boost and to hopefully improve our finances.

Next up, diplomacy. Assuming we'd like the opportunity to join the senate, we need to make friends with some of our neighbors. Right now we're a bit friendly towards the Tachidi Dapaklop and neutral toward the Eoladi Aualavua, and hostile towards the Chachan Silicoids. I don't think we'll have much luck convincing the Silicoids to be friendly, but it's possible the Eoladi and Tachidi could make good allies, especially since they have the highest growth rates of those senate members we know of. I start trying to get trade and research treaties going with them.

Third, intelligence. We have no spies in our queue! This is not good -- spying is one of our strengths, we should make use of it. We also have a strange distribution of what spies we do have, with no diplomatic spies and one almost-dead social spy on one hand, and several military and science spies on the other. Our spy situation suffers from a lack of consistency. I suggest a simple spying strategy that can be easily be maintained without a lot of coordination between players. For a single player game I might try something a bit more intricate but in this case I suggest we simply build one of each type of spy in succession from Military -> Science, as per the order in the drop-down list, and keep the youngest spy (those with higher luck) of each type at home while sending the older, more expendable spies out on missions. This will consistently leave us with a reasonably solid protective net against enemy spies and still let us get a significant amount of offensive spying done. To that end, I insert several of our redundant spies in the Silicoid empire since they are the ones we care least about annoying. We are missing a couple key early techs, including Soil Enrichment, Deep Extraction Mining, which hopefully we can acquire either by spying or by diplomacy.

Lastly, I notice that our military consists entirely of glass jaw carrier ships, mainly scouts but also a couple of light cruisers. They are getting obsolete quickly, and we have already seen that glass jaw scouts can't stand up to regular scouts in combat; they just don't have the firepower. I'm also unclear on why we have multiple scouts tied up in task forces when they could be out scouting and we could have stronger garrison ships at our chokepoints. Probably a matter of competing priorities -- still, nothing we have right now is sufficient to form a useful garrison on its own. The best weapons tech we currently have is autofire mass drivers, so I plan to whip up a design for some CLs based on that technology once the mass driver miniaturization tech comes in. I would rather build fusion beam armed ships, but that tech isn't in our tree either, though at least we will get fighter fusions later.

Turn 51-55: Our spies score an early success and steal Soil Enrichment from the Silicoids. Bonus! Food should be much less of a problem now; though we could still use Deep Extraction Mining, at least there are lots of mineral-rich worlds around our sector. The Silicoids do eventually weed our spies out, though. Enemy spies prove a bit of a nuisance, I bump our oppresometer up to 6 for one turn and clear a couple of them out. This sends unrest through the roof, of course, so I immediately bump it back down to 3 (our racial tolerance, even though 4 is average for corporate.) Switching to corporate government seems to have helped our economy significantly as we can support a higher tax rate; though it's still not as good as I'd like, it's improving. Our colonization effort is going pretty slowly as we're out of nearby green worlds to settle, and even our homeworld takes a significant amount of time to build a colony ship. There are a couple still in the works but after that I'm thinking we should switch to outposts and turn auto-colonization on. Our pair of scouts arrive at Selia and stick around to protect it, but so far it doesn't look like the Eoladi Aualavua are too interested in harrassing it.

Turn 56-60: We get contact with a neighbor 2 jumps to the west of Castor. (We have outposts in the intervening system as well.) Well, hello... it's the leeches!
*sound of a gun turret swivelling*
Guess who just became enemy number one in the court of public opinion. Our scout in the area is on blockade duty until we can get some reinforcements down that way. We have one lone spy that is ready for a mission but he accomplishes nothing. We've finally finished mass driver miniaturization so I design some new light cruiser gunships and begin construction. Of course over the next little while we'll get Cruisers, Quark Cannon, Nuclear Engine, and eventually Fighter Fusions, so redesigns of our ships as those techs come in are in order. I leave our system ships as glass jaw carriers on the theory that since all system ships form one big TF anyway, a fast gunship system ship force is pretty much a pipe dream. I'm not sure that this is the best approach but since we need those system ships more for piracy prevention than for system defense in most cases we can't arbitrarily scrap them to speed up our system ship TFs. Probably our main defensive forces (if we need any) will have to be starship TFs. So, now we have a couple planets working on gunship CLs, a couple smaller planets working on outpost ships for auto-colonization, and most everything else still working on DEA construction. We're running a significant food surplus at the moment but I don't think we should grow complacent about it since we still have a lot of upcoming growth at our Darlok and Eoladi colonies. A more pressing concern right at the moment is minerals, where our surplus is pretty small, but we do have a couple upcoming mining colonies that haven't really got off the ground yet. Deep Extraction Mining would help a lot as well. I have tried a couple trades for it but so far no-one has bitten. I've also had some modest success getting some trade/research agreements going with the Eoladi Aualavua, but the Tachidi Dapaklop have so far stonewalled me. A couple token attempts to negotiate with the Silicoid Chachan have similarly been rebuffed, and I didn't even try with the Ithkul.


Our new border:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/14Mar2003_21_37_49.png



Save file:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/RBMoo1C_Turn_0061.zip

Negative consequences to going after the Aualavua? Well, it depends on whether we want to make buddy-buddy and try to get in the senate or not. As long as we're at war with them, our rep will suffer with anyone who is friendly to them. However, once they're gone, that diplomatic penalty magically goes away.

Really we're not in shape to go after anyone just yet. We're a tech race, not a production race. We need a tech advantage if we're going to go a-conquerin', and we're in a tech deficit atm. I think we still need to focus on building up a significant fleet, including transports and troops, as well as setting up shop just about everywhere we can for the moment. Hopefully our Eoladi, Darlok, and Audrieh colonists can help us fill up planets we colonize with human-built outpost ships. I suspect we'll need to go around the roster another time before we're getting close to being ready to go on the offensive. It's possible you might see action on your turn, Meldor, if we send out our (small) Retro-engine fleet to do battle while we build up a Nuclear-engine fleet, but that's likely to be it. If so, I'll leave it up to you guys to decide on the target. However, we really need to get a couple colonies going up toward the galactic core if we are to have any hopes of joining the senate, which means freeing up our scouts for exploration among other things. This suggests to me that the first call for our retro fleet is going to be blockade duty, not attacking, and our first offensive fleet will likely be a Nuclear Engine one.

Got it. I should have a report by Sunday night. Maybe a little earlier or later.

Hmm. The concerns I posed earlier seem realized. I'm an expansionist at heart, I take territory, let my empire win with sheer numbers and make sure my opponents can't stand in my way. I don't know if I can be diplomatic with Aualavua, but I'll see what I can do.

In my other games, I've always left Homeworlds alone because they weren't worth the resources to take over. If I do opt to conquer, I won't be likely be totally eliminating everything. Harvesters seem like the enemy of choice, but they are too far away from any core worlds to build ships yet. Mobilization centers aren't likely on yet. If there's an avenue to out-expand and develop, I'll take it.

Re your earlier concerns:

I'd say we're not likely to have a food crisis immediately, since we do have enough planets with one good food region for a pair of bioharvest DEAs, that with Soil Enrichment that should feed our empire for a goodly while. Hopefully by the time food starts to get really short we should be in the process of getting the next Bioharvest improvement tech. Still, it's something to keep an eye on.

The other concern of no military, well, we're working on it. :) I was kind of surprised no-one took the opportunity to redesign our scouts since they are so ineffective without support, but at least we have some gunships in the works now, even if they don't have the tech I'd prefer to be using. We still need to work our way out of this tech hole if we're going to be serious about going on the offensive, however.

Relations are good enough that we should still be able to get some ships through Tachidi and Eolaidi territory if we do want to colonize something closer to the core. The biggest problem in that regard (and it also hurts as far as military goes) is our homeworld is in a bit of a backwater and our engines are not fast enough to get anywhere in an expeditious manner. We really need a mobilization center in York. :) Too bad we don't have the tech yet...

No time tonight. Will post report monday afternoon.


Monday night Edit:
I am having difficulty uploading, and alternatively finding Brackard's email. I'll try emailing the file to someone else.

Testing

Edit: If I can't find a way to upload within a few hours of this post edit, my turn will likely have to be skipped. I'll refrain from discussion of this turn until then.

Second Edit: I am unable to upload by any means at this time. I do not understand why. :confused: My turn will likely be skipped. Arrrrrr :mad:

Hey Drasca, if you like, e-mail it to me and I'll take it and upload it for everyone else.

Heh: need the e-mail address:

brackard@kingwoodcable.com

Here's a dumb question, are you using a pop-up stopper? I usually go to upload, it doesn't work, and then I realize I have a pop-up stopper enabled...

Anyway, worse comes to worst you could email it to Griz and ask her to put it up at RB for download from there until we get this sorted out.

Woohoo! it worked today!
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbmoo1c71.zip

SG1-C , that titlle reminds me of the show Stargate: SG1 each time. Only now we are traveling the stars with our own ships, dealing with leeches (Harvesters), bugs (Tachidi), silicoid life and interstellar life our own way. The shape-changing, Darlocks and sentient planet life have we've encounted and made part of our empire have adjusted well to space travel. Their presence extends our imperial reach to planets we humans could not otherwise prosper on.

My predecessor prepared for an impending population boom and food supply shortage. I took note of this. We have several times the number of planets occupied than our neighbors. Those fledgling colonies will eventually prosper.

Military: We had no effective assault force. I tried to change that. Viceroys were a pain though, kept on changing military back to 0-1%. We have a formidable fleet by Brackard's turn, and an usably overwhelming one by Meldor's. There were at least 2 revisions of the short-ranged attack force, discluding any warp upgrades in-between. Brackard, use the weapons miniturization tech that will come shortly.

The following sums up all space combat in my reign: Blockades at Waage, more blockades because Harvesters didn't choose to send ships to defend at all, and defend planet from Ethereans at Selia with no combat, letting their gun-ships pass through to Trilar.

Diplomacy: I threw in a lot of awax diplomatic economic, trade and research agreements. A few worked. One relation backfired badly, and I'm not sure why-- possibly a diplomatic spy.

DEA management: I placed at least 1 military, government and 2 recreational on each sized 10+ planet. They'll soon gain a lot of unrest once people start filling in. There was plenty of room for both industry and research on those. I noticed we're barely filling our mineral needs, and that may be the next concern if no mineral techs come along.

Research: Funds were redirected to research, and so were a good number of DEA's. The most important tech gained is Mobilization centers. Sliders were readjusted so Physical sciences, to gain decent missles and Mob centers would be possible.

Turn 61-63
--Initially modified short-range 2 mass drivers to use autofire and ECM, instead of 4 standard MD's and ECCM. Depend on Recon for ECCM.
--Nuclear Engines and Quark cannons came and refitted all the designs with those
--Redirected Outpost ship to explore Trilar
--Sent Awax Diplomatic exchanges
--Inserted our Scientific spy in hopes of rebalancing tech loss, and queued more spies. Our insterted spy died.
--Saw ~16k saved in our treasury, while only making and using about 2k each.
--Manually started deficit spending in Finances screen, adding to mainly research, 1% to military and reducing planetary grants slightly. Finances were reset to be balanced by the end of my 10 turns.
--Send recon ship to blockade Waage, the Harvester system neighboring ours to slow them down. They have 2 colonies and one outpost, hopefully I can reduce that population.
--Blockade at Waage start.

Turn 64-65

--Our Leader was killed! We mourn her death.
--However, A new leader has popped up in her place. One that befits our current need: A scientist with bonuses all round.
--Blockade at Waage continues
--Mobilization centers tech will come in 3 turns!
--The ships Zed built are coming online, and being sent to York one at a time.


Turn 66- 67

--Our Agents killed spies from Harvesters, Insects, and just about everyone.
--New full fledged colony at Nimbus, to celebrate we've included holiday resort and laxed alchohol rules for youngers as incentive to migrate there. Land grants paved the way for migration to all feldging outposts and colonies.
--York's Recon CV's begin their trip to Selia, in case Brackard wishes to start conquest of Ethereans.
--Blockades of Harvesters at Waage continue

Turn 68-69

--Spaceports! Mobilization centers! Migration is checked abound to non-human similar environments (D'oh. I keep on forgetting "Similar environments" being checked is default).
--Military % spending on planets is reset over and again.
--Frontier planets are set to build Mobilization centers as priority.
--Those already building something else don't need to be scrapped. They can be clicked and dragged behind the others. They're rearranged in priority (which to build first) without disturbing how much they're already completed by clicking and dragging. I wish I knew this the first time. This is a neat feature and superior to immutable build lists of before.

--Tachidi declare war. Ah well.
--More blockades

Turn 70-71

--Another Leader! A diplomatic Nommo.
--I finally notice and turned off automatic AI colonization. Why didn't I check before? Maybe this isn't necessary by now, but it is turned off. Only now do I notice we have planets in a whole order higher than most of our competitors.

Quark Cannons miniturization
Fighter Fusion Cannons
More spies killed.

Current military situation as it stands:
Our Recon CV's are stationed at Selia, awaiting your orders Brackard.

A scout ship is continually blockading Waage, minimizing Harvesters neighborly expansion, while a Colony ship is one starlane away ready to capitilize on their colonies and outposts being undermanned and controllable through outpopulation.

Gunships are at York, or heading there--along with a few outpost ships. Decision whether to send toward Harvesters or join our Recon CV's Ethereans is ultimately yours Brackard.

In the meantime, we need to discuss a battle-plan. What'll be? Leeches or Fish? Or Insects that've declared war on us, now that I think about it--wormholing from York? We can contain 2 while doing full front war with the other. Let's pick one.

Tachidi Pros and Cons:
--We could use insectoids in our racial pool, tachidi are the base fastest growing.
--They're also in the Senate, which has both has pros if we conquer them and delay their victory and diplomatic consequences if they're in good terms with others.
--Their territory is the other end of the galaxy through a wormhole. This could mean meeting a lot of other empires quickly.
--They're technically the closest due to the WH taking only one turn to move through.

Harvester:
--Seem longest to get to. Most difficult to send quick reinforcements to. We're over-extending our reach most attacking these guys. I speculate their empire is much like ours in that it is contained in a tiny pocket of the galaxy. This is pure speculation though.
--Their worlds are similar to ours, and we could capture them without much consequence to our people.
--Possibly a diplomatic bonus to other races if we pick a fight with Harvesters.
--Known to have a lot of systems, but fewer worlds. There's a lot of territory at stake. Their defenses are likely spread thin.


Ethereans:
--Diplomatic consequences with their allies if we attack them
--We already have decent relations with them. May be squandering if we attack now. Maybe not.
--Opens up a lot of center-territory to expand and meet other empires, but may be over-extending our reach, less so than with Harvesters though.

Other?:
--Silicoids are around somewhere. They don't like us much.
--To get to Silicoids, we have to go through others.

Zed
Drasca
Brackard <- UP
Meldor <- On deck

Got it.

Looking through the report, I was thinking that humans received a negative morale boost from military DEA as opposed to having government DEA? I could have been somewhere else when I read that....

As to the dragging of partially complete items on the PBQ..very nice. Learned something new there.

As to which way to go: I'm generally of the mind of the path of least reistance. The leeches and/or the bugs would be on the top of my list. Hit the leeches as and when we can, the bugs with the majority of our force. Reason being, the bugs might have the most influence in the senate.

If we have good influence with the Ethereans, I don't see any reason to start something up with them. In fact, I think I'm going to do everything I can to bring relations higher. Full alliances are very nice in terms of being able to colonize in the other's systems.

Anyway, if anybody else has comments, let me know, otherwise, I'll move forward with what I think best.

Heh, well it looks to me like the Tachidi have Chosen Unwisely. Our supply lines are shortest there and with our slow engines this is important. I think we'll have to save the Harvesters until our worlds on that front are a bit more mature. Going after the bugs also gets us in a position to monitor the senate (maybe get participation, though this is looking increasingly unlikely.) If we can keep them cut down to size, and box the Eoladi in to a couple systems, then maybe we can prevent them from growing fast enough to challenge the NOs vote-wise for a while. A small effort to capture one harvester planet/system would be nice so we can pop their fave planets, but only if we can do it without endangering our own systems.

Zed, I find flaw with the "keeping Eoladi boxed in" thought. If anything, we're the ones boxed in. We do split their empire with Selia, but they're the ones who can explore and expand, just not into our territory.

They can go beyond to systems past Trilar and yonder over past own home system. They're closer to the core of the galaxy than we are, and have more access to the rest even if they can't get past our fence.

My opinion is that they're all viable targets, just a matter of where we're going to expand into and what goals we want to achieve.
--Tachidi are a delectable target for full assault.
--Harvesters... see below.

Harvesters: We can take one harvester colony with little consequence (maybe war and worsed relations with the already diplomatically repulsive Harvesters). There's a colony ship next to the blockaded Harvester system of Waage. They have one planet classified as outpost, and the rest potentially conquerable by outpopulation too. The whole star system is conquerable this way, so long as they're not self-sufficient yet. Win without firing a single shot--almost the epitome of Sun Tzu's Art of War's opening lines.

I do believe we have enough resources for a two-front war. :nuke: We have approximately 4x the number of planets any other empire has. It'd almost be foolish :D not to start a second war at some point as we're finishing up the first, as our supply lines only extend so far into other empires. What I don't know is to project how many turns into the future conquering Tachidi would take. Probably past Brackard's turn, but it looks like we will have enough production power (due to sheer population numbers) to go full blast conquest mode soon. Core Planets making capital ships, less developed making ground forces and smaller recon and colony/outpost ships.

I want to hear meldor's opinion on this too, as he'll be facing the brunt of the war after Brackard's opening moves are made.

All this discussion is fun. I want more :lol:

-Drasca

Aside: The things we do in these empire gets to be chillingly disturbing. There are many real life parallels that come at the cost of innumerable lives. I don't think I'd want to handle making those decisions for real.

What I mean, Drasca, is grab systems on the other side of the ones they have, and prevent them from expanding further. :) Do unto them as they have done unto us, if you will. Don't know whether that will work but it might be worth an effort; we got Selia from them after all.

OTOH, we could just absorb them after we are done with the Tachidi. :)

Oh :D That's what you meant. Time for our military commanders :ar15: to go to war :tank:

And so the new elected official takes the reigns and runs. My goals this turn were to begin the assaults on the bugs and the leeches. I was not going to confront the Euladi quite yet. They were friendly with us. I was going to continue pushing that relationship as much as I could. Looking through some of the systems, it looks like the rocks and the Euladi shared quite a few systems. Intersting. Food was in good shape, minerals were in decent shape. Let’s begin.

Turn 71:
There was an outpost ship sitting at Altais. Moved it towards Waage to begin countering the leech presence down there. There was an outpost I hoped to counter. I moved the entire contingent sitting at York through the wormhole to Et Area of the bugs. I believe there was only one colony here. Proposed a trade alliance with the Euladi. In order to take on the bugs, put together a ground force.
Forces: Lots of infantry - check
Size: Enough for several large scale assaults. Check.
Transports: Check – oh wait a second…no transports. None. Zilch.

Scratch the ground assault for now. We’ll just blockade for the time being. The new engines should be in time any turn now, so I’ll wait for those and then design new transport ships. I figured it’d be better to wait than design transports, stick them on production, only to have new drives come out at the time the ships got off the line.

Turn 72:
Trade goes through to Euladi, propose research. Euladi blockade at Selia. Blockade at Waage continues. Nothing spactacular. I put together task force of 2x outpost ships.

Turn 73:
An orbital or defense ship goes up at Et Area. Send outpost ships to York. Increase presence at Et Area.

Turn 74:
Incoming Euladi to Selia with Carrier and colony ships. The blockade at Eta Area doesn’t seem to be working. The colony continues to grow. They must be self supporting? Relations improve with Euladi.

Turn 75:
RESEARCH ALERT!! RESEARCH ALERT!! WHOOOP!! WHOOOOOP!!
Ok, that’s over with….sub light drives. Bout freakin time. Ok, try redesigning ships, can’t quite yet. Must have to wait till next turn. Unrest at Castor (pirates) lower tax rate for time being. Trilar explored: 1 planet R2g8 which the Eulade have colonized. On to the SE. Mobilization center put on queue for York, though it’ll take a few turns. Maybe Zed will get to see it to completion. Not quite sure how long we’ve had this because I don’t remember seeing this come through on the research alert? We also got Duralloy.

Turn 76:
Design Transport ship. Pretty obvious naming. Something along the lines of Tran4Cr2 or something like that. It carries 4 troop pods at engine speed of 2. I was forced to downgrade system engines in order to get 4 troop pods on there. Set the PBQ at Exis II to build 2 of them back to back. Set all the rest of the starships to obsolete. I’ll let the planets finish building their current queue then we’ll see where we’re at. Another 3 starships were completed this turn. Rail gun researched.

Turn 77:
Outpost ship at Waage III colonizes. It’s now a race to see who colonizes it first. Euladi ships continue to move through Selia towards the center of the galaxy. (Euladi)

Turn 78:
Set up another outpost x2 task force for outcolonization efforts.

Turn 79:
Moved outpost TF to York.

Turn 80:
Transport ready. Set up a Transport TF. I also setup a SR attack TF including 4 SR attack and a recon.

Turn 81:
Nothing important on the sit rep. 2 tasks forces built.

We did have some spy activity and other research projects come in, but nothing of major significance. Btw, we have a great collection of spies. Nicely done keeping the spies coming.

Important things for Meldor:
1) I’m not sure if I set the TF at Moyo to head towards York. These are the goodies, so make sure you have fun with them.
2) There are currently no warships in design. We need to design new warships. I give you the honor. I wanted to have all the research finished while the rest of the ships halfway through the build got off the line. Most of the builds should be finished/close to finishing.
3) You have two outpost TF of 2x outpost ships each currently headed to York. Use these to outcolonize as you see fit. (One headed towards the leeches would be good).
4) Check the auto colonizing on the Empire tab. Drasca turned it off, I thought about turning it on, but don't remember if I did or didn't.
5) You should have another Transport coming off of Exis in your first few turns. Make sure to get the ground forces set up and moving out. You'll probably need to queue up some more transports here shortly.
6) Watch the Mob center at York. Make sure the Viceroy doesn't screw with the funding there. It is going to take a little while in the first place. We don't need him deciding that planetary gardens are more important and reallocating monies.

Other general things. Spies were queued up when I finished, mostly scientific. Insert these to see if we can get some free tech. Et Area has two system ships and/or orbitals. I have a feeling it’s going to take a little bit to crack. So make sure you have enough if you decide to hit it. (although it might take time to get there in which case Zed will hit it).

SG1-C Turn 81 (http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/sg1-ct81.zip)

Zed <- On deck
Drasca
Brackard
Meldor <- UP

Just a map of where we're at:

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/moo3mapt81.jpg

See it but can't play until tomorrow earlist.

81 Protest of material Proceesor now due in 6

82 Kill Kar-Zinoruar spy. Kill Aualanvua spy. Send outpost ships to Waage and Eta Arae.

83 Unity Defense is ready. Heavy Mount starts due in 5.

84 Suprise Heavy mount comes in 4 turns early. The system sounth east of Beta Lupi is a dead end.

85 Material processors come in early. Kar-Zinoraur attack and defeat us at Waage.

86 We are attacked at Waage III but it seems to do no damage.

87 Unrest at Castor 1, 3, and 5. Slip oppressometer up a notch.

88 ECCMII finishes. Defeat the Daraklop at York.

89 Cross-cultural Refence Library finishes. Still have unrest at Castor. Adjust taxes.

90 We take Eta Arae IV.

91 Unrest continues at Caster. I haven't been able to control it. We will probably need a ship there full time now. The transport TF is disbanded and put in the penalty box for 4 truns for some reason. Must be a bug.

I did design some ships, but that is not my strong suit. so they may need scraping. Of course that was before we got the new goodies, so that would be a double reason.

Saved Game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1C_Turn_0091.zip)

Ok, got it. Probably will not be able to play tonight though.

On an unrelated note, there has been talk of starting up an RBMoo2 SG using Colin's difficulty mod. Brackard and I have expressed interest, but both of us have reservations about time commitments. IIRC, Drasca, you have already been experimenting with the mod.

I wanted to gauge interest in switching to that mod, starting a new RBMoo2 SG when that game begins, and abandoning this one at that time. I'd also like to fill out our roster again as I'd prefer 5-6 ppl for an SG. This may be a bit of a case of learning to swim by jumping in the deep end since I haven't played the difficulty mod at all yet, but I get the sense from the slow pace of this game that the interest level as it is isn't all that high anyway, and a step up to a bigger challenge might be good for keeping us focussed. OTOH, if people are more comfortable playing this game out to a conclusion, I'm perfectly willing to keep going on this one. (I'll join an RBMoo2 game anyway, if I can find one with enough players that my turn doesn't come up that often.)

Abonding this game would be my preference, but I won't be the one to quit the team on my first SG. So I'll stick with this until completion or until the group decides to abandon the game and move on to RBMooSG2 or other games.

Either way is fine with me. I am normally against leaving an SG unfinished, but it if it is in danger of dying from lack of interest then so be it.

If people are still interested in the SG, then I wouldn't leave it unfinished either. I've also been in SGs that have died of neglect, and I consider this to be something quite different, in that we won't quit this game unless everyone agrees to it. I'd also be fully of the expectation that everyone here would have dibs on a spot in an RBMoo2 SG that subsequently got started, assuming people are so inclined.

I don't know that the game is in danger of dying from lack of interest, but that's certainly one interpretation of the slow pace we've had to this point. Please feel free to correct me if you think that interpretation is wrong. :)

The flame is low. Maybe it is time to stoke the fire anew. I'm an aggressive expansionist, but I alone am not enough to make this SG great. Since Colin's Mod is the newest thing that's swept and raised eyebrows, I say let's give it a go and ride the wave.

I do want to do a SG, but not in the Sitrep format. I find it redundant. There are more important things to discuss for SG reports. Among them:

Military Ship design
--Purpose
----Anti-Piracy, Defense, Assault, Recon, Crunch Power (Missle ships)
--Place among other ships
----Glass jawed sitting duck with Firepower?
----Swashbuckling Gunship shooting down everything that comes to it?
----Cloak and Dagger stealth forces
----Cloaked Transports / Colony ships especially
Planetary Production Focuses
--Industry & Research specialized planet placement
--Tax levels, unrest, and more
Military movement
--where we're going
--what's the task force purpose
----blockade, assault, harassment, etc
--What we're doing. Gambles, risks.
Technology
--Only the few technologies that matter. Most are only useful under-the-hood without our involvement.
----Mobilization Centers,
----Missle chasis and Gun mounts.
-------New weapons
-------Miniturization & extra's (autofire)
----New Ground force types
----Cloaking tech
----Detection Technology
----Others you personally find important

I'd love to hear any of the above or whatever you're particularly interested in (for example, Diplomacy is one I'm not terribly great or interested at). The sit-rep style was a platform to start, but now that Sirian's voiced his reservations about it, I'm voicing my own and showing what I like to hear. Charis has voiced what he wanted to see in SG1-A, and that was great. These are mine.

On a direct game related note:

There is an experimental ship design I find interesting. I find on missle ships Point defense chasis (smaller chasis) missles are more useful than the larger chasised versions for fighting comparable armored enemies for the following reasons:

--More "overwhelming the point defense" by massed numbers effect due to Point defense chasis missles taking up less space.
--It only takes so much damage to kill one ships, the rest is overkill. Higher damaging chasis may do more damage, but may not be necessary. We can get away with less.
--Listed Reload speed other innate advantage

A frigate may carry 14 point defense missles or 2 standard missles iirc. They do comparable damage, but no-where do I see a larger missle chasis taking more damage. If this is the case, overwhelming missle firepower may be better in the form of a swarm of small missle-fire rather than a few super-large rockets.

As with my other designs tune-ups (I am hestitant to say variants) that people on the RBMoo board are familiar with, a word of caution and grain of salt should be taken. This is an experimental specialized ship design, to be used among a balanced combined force. Not best alone.

I've put additional point defense missle-firepower on my carriers and gunships before, thinking it'd work as anti-missle point defense at first. Extra PD size class chasis work great as extra firepower on gunships, but this time making a missle barge consisting of mostly of smaller classed missles.

Advocating Slower ships, Carrier Battle-groups, and high ECM has been put on the list of things I'm known for. Trading Larger for smaller is next on the list. Sirian made a convincing arguement for lighter mounts in beam weapons, and I've reconsidered use of missle weapon sizes. Used Point defense classed missles on a smaller scale successfully before, now it may be time to up the ante try my hand at a full blown Point defense missle barge.

Well, I've been trying to avoid the PD-bug so far so have not experimented with missiles much. However, I did notice that it is *much* more expensive to outfit a ship with a lot of small nuclear missiles than to outfit it with standard nuclear missiles -- it seems you pay a hefty premium per warhead, regardless of the size of the chassis. Is the extra effectiveness worth the price? Does this "warhead cost factor" decline relative to total ship purchase price as tech improves?

Working late tonight, will not get a chance to play. If Drasca wants to take a turn now, go for it; otherwise, will probably get to it Wednesday (unless something else comes up...)

I also can't tonight, though I wish I had checked in on these forums earlier. Brackard?

If Zed or Drasca hasn't picked it up by the time I get home tonight, I'll grab it.

Well, it's Wednesday now, so I have it. :)

Some minor comments for Meldor re:your turn, you mentioned transports being disbanded -- that's a consequence of you landing their troops to take Eta Arae IV. Unrest at Castor is probably due to piracy at least in part; there's lots of pop in that system now but no anti-pirate ships.

Tasks for this turn: fix unrest at Castor (and generally), defend outposts at Waage and re-establish blockade, pursue Tachidi assaults, maintain relations with Eoladi.

Economy/Colonization: A few new planets got outposts in the Eta Arae system we just captured. We also have gotten a couple auto-outposts as a result of Tachidi migration. Although we have auto-colonization on, I'm not sure it's working as I haven't seen any noew outpost TFs getting formed. Mostly I left our economy alone (and partially on auto-pilot.) We have a couple planets coming along nicely now and will have a couple big ones besides our current main producer at Exis in fairly short order. Built a few system ships at Castor to help with the piracy problem, and there are more in the queue. I also had our task force on the way to Waage stop over there for a few turns to prevent the planets from heading into revolt.

Intelligence: I left our spies at home since we seem to be in the tech lead at the moment. We have 3 scientific spies and a lot of other spies but most of them are going to die relatively soon, so we need to keep up with the training cycle. We're soon going to be short a diplomatic spy as a result of a lapse in training them. An uneventful turn overall as far as intelligence goes.

Diplomacy:Tried to get some more long-overdue trade and research treaties going with the Eoladi, pretty much successfully. They are expanding pretty rapidly now relative to the other AIs, however, and have 7 planets. Nothing much happening on other fronts, though we did contact some Trilarians on the other side of the Tachidi. (I believe they are also at war with the Tachidi Dapaklop.)

Tech/Ship Design: We got a couple new miniaturization technologies and some new detection/ECM tech. I designed new ships with Mass Drivers and have them under construction, a couple are already in our reserves but we need more to field a credible force. I stuck with light cruisers even though we have the tech for battle cruisers since (a) none of our shipyards are ready for ships bigger than CLs, whereas we have a number of CL-capable yards, and (b) CLs are considerably faster to build. For now I stuck with the usual gunship supported by recon ship and glass jaw carrier models, and didn't build any indirect fire models, but of course that's open to change if that's what's needed. I also redesigned our patrol (designation Pt -- i.e. anti-piracy) ship and added an actual defensive system ship design.

Military: We captured the Micarus system with 2 planets, facting only light resistance; there is just one Tachidi outpost remaining in that system that is being starved. The only remaining nearby Tachidi system, Khumba, is their home system, and with a fleet of 10 system ships our expeditionary force is not anywhere near ready to crack that nut. Our fleet on the leech front is on the way to Waage, eta of just a couple turns, with our two outpost ships in the area immediately behind. Otherwise, we have a couple ships out exploring, including an outpost ship heading to Paquient that needs to be assigned something to colonize.


http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/27Mar2003_01_52_41.png

Save file:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1C_Turn_0101.zip

EDIT: Our new ships have Rail Guns, not Mass Drivers. :)

got it.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1C Turn 0111.zip

Finance: Unrest was high. Dipped into savings, high deficit spending for a few turns to eliminate the "double punishment" for having high unrest--production cost and cost to remove unrest.

Tech priority spending temporarily rearranged to grab many Bio and Physical techs easily within reach. Spending on social and mathematics neglected. There was a tech gap between researching tech levels where no techs would be researched.

Spycraft: Our leaders are all dead! No need to keep our political spies home then. Sent Low-luck spies out. The pope, the cheese and nessie went into an enemy bar...
More spies recruited.

Planetary Economy
"Rush" built a Mobilization center at Selia, placing it ahead in priority. Thought it more important than system ships, as core planets make ships and can send to Selia as reinforcements within a turn while Selia is only one planet's production.

Planetary Shield generators were added to many military queues to help reduce unrest later on.

Military: Campaign at Harvester's Waage only marginally successful. We have space superiority. Military Transports didn't each hold full corps, they require 2 for a full corps. Sent transports to hold a single division each (4 troops total)--bad idea. Ground forces were not enough, except to capture some ground in some cases. Recommend building more troop transports and sending them in largest groups possible (corps and armies).

Campaign vs the Tachidi is a success, but I do not recommend attacking their homeworld. They have too many ships, and containment is far more viable. Every planet they control (not including outposts) is in their home system. They can be contained.

Trilarians (not the Ethereans): They have a lot of system defense, getting past them would be difficult.

We have the most planets, so long as we make sure our enemies do not grow in sufficient numbers to win Senate, we will win-- but we were played an uneasy hand to do that. Trilarians, Ethereans and Tachidi, Oh my! Those are are just about the highest population groups.

-Drasca

Diplomacy: Attempts were made to sign Non-aggression pacts with our Etherean neighbors, but they were consistently refused. However, other agreements were made and our current relations (except for casus belli) are better than ever with Ethereans.

I like the new turn reports. Makes more sense and not quite as tedious as having to note everything that has happened. Note I will try to get this tonight, but I'm expecting to AFK for a day or two here in the near future. If I don't get this by tomorrow, skip me and I'll grab it next time around.

Quick notes:
- If casus belli with the Eoladi continues to deteriorate, we will eventually be at war with them, regardless of our current relations.
- You don't need to send fully-populated corps or armies on your transports, just create corps or armies with 16 elements (as much as will fit on one of our current transports) and land as many as you think you need (1 or 2, usually.) The number of troops that you land on the planet is the important factor, not what size blocks those troops are organized in.
- If we are going to contain the Tachidi, we can disband some of our expedition force over there and get them somewhere more useful (like the Harvester front), though we will need to keep some back to defend Micarius
- We need a mob center in Altais (or even better, Waage, but Altais is more likely). One in Micarius would be nice too.

Got it.

Ok, not a whole lot going on my turn but here goes:

Spycraft: Nada. Produced a few new spies, and the usual killing/capturing that goes along with it. A did start producing a few political spies to help protect a leader if/when they come along....

Diplomacy: Continued working with the Etherians, but still couldn't get a NAP. Everyone else pretty much denied anything I tried to propose.

Military: Conquered a planet that was already in progress when I inherited. Waage V is now ours. Two more colonies to go that we are starving. I have a few transports on the way fully loaded to continue on towards the interior. The Harvesters have begun to reinforce Waage pretty heavily, so I disbanded two carriers from Micarius that we'll re TF at Altais. I believe the Harvesters have 4 ships there plus planetary defenses. Shouldn't be a problem after we starve away thier colonies.

Explored Thoth. Few colonies there worth taking if it weren't for the rocks (I believe) that were living there. I blockaded for a few turns until a good 5 +/- ships showed up. I went ahead and retreated for now.

Also, I obsoleted transports for now. I had to manually readjust several planets seveal times to get them off of transports. And even then I still think we have more than enough for the time being. Having the gropos are nice though.

We had a few new military techs come online (Class III shields for one), but military was coming off the line so slowly, I didn't redesign any ships for the time being.

Unrest: I have one carrier TF outside of Altais. Pirates are in the area. We'll need system ships there to protect.

Very soon we'll need to do a system by system look at the DEA's. We've got 300+ food margin, and we could really use some of that going to factories if possible. Same could be said with minerals.

And I believe that's all I've got for the moment so here's the save game:

Turn 121 RBMoo1C (http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/RBMoo1C_Turn_0121.zip)

Edit: Forgot to mention tech status

I have it

Here it is.....

Spycraft: Inserted one and built another. I forgot to cue up the next one so it needs to be done befroe the next turn.

Military: Took out the opposing fleet at Waage. This seemed to give us positive results elsewhere. Our war with the Daraklop ended. There is one task force headed for Waage and one that is headed for York. I set the second to stop there to geive the next person flexibilty in where they want it to go.

Diplomatic: I tried to improve relations but was rebuffed. I tried several times to get improves ta econ with Eoladi and were rejected. As soon as I took out the fleet at Waage, they ask us for improved ta econ, I took it.

Technology: As I am new I don't know what of this gets you excited. Completed:
Personal Absorbtion
Missle Shield Generator
Cloaking Device
Improved Quark Cannon
Titanium
Fighter Neutron Cannon
Hercular Warhead
Merculite Warhead
Continous Neutron Blaster
Regional Deflectors
Psi-Signature Damping Field
Armour

Saved Game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1C_Turn_0131.zip)

It's already 9pm, I can't do justice to my turn tonight, and I will be working late tomorrow and Thursday so will likely not have opportunity to take my turn then either. Please skip me or swap me with Drasca.

Got it. I'll try to do this wednesday evening and a report soon-after. If not then, by thursday afternoon.

Edited: because there's no such thing as a Wendnesday, no matter how much Wendy's french fries packaging may tell you so.

A wave of Industrialism has come forward, as new races find they can be materially-rich and respected citizens if they're productive. The people, insects and leeches, freed from being driven into forced labor now find they can sell their labor for goods and material wealth they can call their own.

The political system hasn't been left unawares and a new Imperial leader has arisen. The first thing he sees..

No unrest? Savings in the bank? Core planets left uncolonized? Backwoods ship designs and lowly Light Cruisers classes are the best we can do? We'll see about that. The age of the Baron Tycoon has come. :king: Spend spend spend!
Military
We'll want Mob's here in Micarius, and Waage? What? There's no industrial base to build them in time?!?! :mad: Little to no Military spending all about? The local viceroys have been building what they want. Time to rein them in check. I want shipyards everywhere!

No more of these piddling light cruisers. Bigger is better! I want mining colonies and factory cities everywhere! Couple a' military bases and dem governmental facilities to keep 'em in check and runn'in smooth right, see here.

Big BB Battleships! Scrap those old designs. Cloaking? Hmm. Cloaking transports with some of them space control fighters be nice. Cloaking on others be standard later hopefully. Fer now let's grab some Missle ships with lots o' guns, big fast gunships and some of them carriers as well. It'll be a root'in tootin mighty vast navy that'll control the galaxy yes-sir-ee.

Our old LR ships tried to assault Kurah without checking for planetary defenses. Big mistake. Only light casualties though. Remember, always check for system defenses by clicking on control combat and "System view" first. Our current forces are blockading it in a good old standoff vs their one starship stationed there.

Exploration
Let's send some of them ships to explore the galaxy--through the native Trilar's backyard of course. No gunfights unless they draw first, but darned toot'in we'll take on them leeches savages in the south.

Dead end at Ibis. Great planets. Them more civilized savages, the Ethereans are a horde! 70+ max population planets! Really tempting to invade. We've got more galaxy than anyone else, but the grass is always greener on the other side-- and we're just the ones to take it.

Expansion
What's this I hear about unused land? Saddle up onto the system colony ships, they're earmarked for the first most productive colonists about. I'll increase subsidized building and give land grants to the first people that make it there. Can't have unused space. We're going to tame that vast untapped wilderness. System colony ships everywhere, mark them planets for colonization. Make it a priority! Let's empty them banks.

Diplomacy We'll try reason and pleading once. It failed. No more. We'll demand and declare our way through agreements. Hah! Darned right! Them cowards finally show their place and agree to some trade agreements. Still too damned disobedient to accept a non-agression pact.

Notes to next player
Check out the ship designs. I've made slow defensive carriers, missle ships with half weapons space for autofire guns, fast Cavalry gunships, Aegis cruiser type BB Anti-air support with some Electronic warfare ECM & ECCM as well as sensors, and Recon with 4/4/1 ratio of ECM/ECCM/Detector. Need more cloak later imo, but for now transports cloak, have 8 troop pods, and have some fighter support.

Big 10-packs of Armour were also produced in preperation for war. They're placed just in front of actual capital ships production queue wise so extra production is placed into the ships. Armour is the best you can get until Battleloids, which may not come at all.

Ethereans are getting more and more tempting to invade. They have little military, and big planets. Our Ships-of-the-Line are the best in the galaxy and we have many in reserve. Make sure we keep pumping out SotL and we'll most definitely conquer our neighbors.

The Tachidi aren't quite contained, because they have one planet out there, but for all practical purposes they are.

Problem is, we're the ones contained. If we don't pull out full conquest mode on our neighbors soon (within 30 turns), we're going to let the galaxy be populated by the enemy. I believed I've started the ball going and picked up some momentum with new fleets, shipyards and ship designs. Its up to the rest of you to keep our monstrous human empire rolling.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1C Turn 0141.zip

Brackard if you can pick it up tonight (thursday) and produce Friday. We'll do that. If not, please reply tonight and we'll resume with Zed picking it up Friday and then your turn Brackard on Friday-Sat.

That sound good and fairly unconfusing?

If (Brackard Picks up Thursday)
--- Post on Friday
--- Then Zed's on Deck
--- Meldor's Below Deck
Else
---Zed up on Friday
---Post ~ Sat/Sun
---Brackard on Deck
---Meldor below Deck

Ok, got it.

Just a FYI: I will be AFK for the next few days or so, and sporadic for the next week or 2. So please skip my turn this time around, and don't fret to skip over me next turn if my 24 hour time limit runs out. If I would have caught it before Zed, I would have played tonight, but it wasn't to be. ;)

No, I'm not copping out of the game, just tough to get time in for the next 10-14 days. Thanks for understanding.

-Brack

So it isn't a lack of interest. We're just all very very busy!

Busy doesn't even begin to describe the current situation. :p

Sorry I've been a bit slow getting to this; hopefully I will get a chance to take care of it tonight. Since everyone seems to be busy this is hopefully not a problem, but let me know if you want me to skip. Otherwise I'll just play my turn when I get a chance.

Notes for Turns 141-151:

Economy: Mostly on autopilot. I microed several of our highest industry planets to a small degree to maintain ship production at a decent pace but wasn't overly consistent about it and the AI kept overriding my settings so it may not have had as much effect as I would have liked. Smaller planets were left to do what they would. Made sure a Mob Center was in the queue at Micarius I. We may need another look at unrest globally, there were a few events concerning this near the end of my turn, so there could be a couple hot spots to improve by adding more anti-piracy patrols or building planetary shields.

Intelligence: Nada. Ignored this for my turn, though I made sure at least the queue would not run out before I decided to do this. Please fill it up again with whatever seems appropriate -- I think Drasca had all scientific spies, are we moving to a policy of only building those? If we want to steal more tech and don't think the spy type matters on defense then we might as well. Again, it looks like there may be a couple enemy spies loose in our empire causing unrest, so we may need to crank the oppressometer for a couple turns or something.

Diplomacy: Nada. I didn't bother making nice with the Eoladi for reasons you will see shortly... [plasma] We might try making nice with the fishies but they are #2 on the powergraph after us. We made contact with a couple new races, notably the New Orions and some Cybernetics on the west side of the galaxy who are on the other side of the leeches helping us to block them in. They are #4 and #3 on the powergraph respectively, while the Eoladi are trailing them. This means that the Eoladi aren't really our ultimate target, and that we have 2 possible contenders for a senate vote win sometime in the near future unless (a) we get into the senate, (b) we give some planets to the NOs, (c) we start to make serious inroads on the 'bots and the fishies, or (d) all of the above.

Tech/Ship designs: Nada. I ignored these for the most part since Drasca just made some new ships. However, we just got plasma cannons and ion pulse cannons, and should be getting our hands on autofire ion pulse cannons, fighter ion pulse cannons, gauss autocannons, and fighter gauss autocannons. It might be nice to think about designing some new ships when they come in. Since Brackard is busy, if meldor is up next followed by Drasca, then Drasca will likely get the chance to do the redesign. I have 2 suggestions for next time: (a) we need to have *some* smaller ship/orbital design for MP duty (i.e. suppressing piracy) and (b) we probably should design our ships a couple sizes smaller than the largest we can theoretially build, so as to be able to pump out ships fairly quickly. We are going to need a *lot* more soon, and being able to hit in multiple directions at once to deny a senate victory is likely to be important. Basically this means we should stick with BBs and BCs for the time being -- I haven't seen any of the AIs fielding anything that big anyway. I did redesign our carrier to use interceptors rather than space superiority fighters since what reading I have done on fighters suggests that the benefits SS fighters have over interceptors are buggy to begin with and even if they were not would not be worth the size cost.

Military: This is where I spent the bulk of my attention. By front:

Dapaklop (Tachidi) -- still mostly bottled up in their home system of Khumba, though they have one or two outposts elsewhere; they don't seem to be worth worrying about. So they get everyone else mad at us, big deal. :) We seem destined to be the big bullies on the block this game anyway. They did send a small probe of 3 ships at Micarius, which concerned me for a bit since while we have 5 ships at Micarius they are mostly obsolescent crap (hence the Mob Center at Micarius I -- Mic II is better defended but doesn't have a military DEA.) We should probably send one or two newer ships here once the mob center is built.

Kar-Zinoraur (Harvesters) -- kept them bottled up at Kurah, continued starving their outposts at Kurah and Waage. I think Karaken (next in line) is their home system. I didn't press the offensive on this front as the ships we have there are obsolescent crap and moreover are poorly organized in terms of the composition of one of the task forces. We need some real warships there in order to have a hope of taking on their homeworld defenses. However, I didn't send any that way, because I sent them all to fight the...

Aulavuana (Eoladi) -- the closest neighbor of any significant size, #5 on the power graph. Created a LR TF and 2 carrier TFs, sent one carrier TF up toward Trilar and Alkurhah to rendezvous with our LR TF in the area, sent the other carrier TF and the newly organized LR TF (with all our best new ships) towards Irra (the Eoladi homeworld) and Tristan. I also created about 7-8 transport TFs with armour and mobiles for the purpose of assaulting these planets with army-sized formations. Summary results: the enemy used quite a few missiles, but with careful control and some luck we were not bitten too badly by the PD bug. We did not lose any warships at Irra, though we lost 2 older transports (we got to land the troops from them anyway, however.) Due to having lost a couple transports I decided to unload both armies at Irra, which proved to be a good decision (the battle took 4 turns anyway!) I organized another army in another transport TF from a new transport to send to Tristan, as well as a single BB for guard duty and outpost starvation at Irra, and sent the assault force to Tristan. Again, here I faced significant planetary defenses, but was lucky not to get bit by the PD bug, and lost no ships. We still have both of these TFs stationed here pending capture of the planet (troops are on the ground.) On the northern front, our first battle at Trilar was a costly one; though we ultimately won the battle, it cost us our (older) LR TF; fortunately it bought the fighters from the carrier TF enough time to take out the planet before the carrier TF came under threat. One army landed there and took the planet easily. The carrier TF then proceeded to Alkurhah and took out the lone space superiority base there relatively easily. We landed an army and have captured that planet as well. To sum up, we have conquered the core of the Eoladi empire and their oldest worlds, and have thus broken their backs. Mopping up might take some time since they still have quite a few planets a considerable distance from our closest Mob Center at Selia, but this is just an exercise in cleaning up unless they have a surprise for us (like a built-up world where we aren't expecting one -- a splinter colony perhaps?) I don't see a lot of ships hanging out at any of their planets but it's really the planetary defenses that can cause problems if they have missile bases and/or beam bases. Orbitals with missiles can be a pain too, and the Eoladi seem to like missiles.

Other fronts -- We now have the makings of a fair-sized LR TF in our reserves, but we are missing carriers and IF ships. I strongly recommend sending at least one carrier/IF TF and one LR/SR TF together when attacking an enemy planet with significant defenders (e.g. planetary bases other than fighter base.) You need to send something that can get to and take out the enemy planetary defenses rapidly (i.e. fighters/missiles), while your LR/SR TF is there to shoot down enemy flotsam, intercept enemy SR/LR TFs, and generally guard the rest of your formation.

The carriers are being built at Exis II, our second best planet in terms of production, but the AI seems to love countermanding my military spending orders there so they are coming along slowly. To compensate somewhat I set Meshapo III, our top producer, to building IF ships. Of course we need PD ships to protect them as well and those are coming slowly. We also have a few recon ships kicking about to help with spotting the enemy. One other area where we are currently a bit short if transport ships; though we have quite a few, the fact that they have to sit in the delay box for several turns once they reach their destination (and the fact that victorious armies which are disbanded also go in the delay box for a number of turns) means you need an abundance of them relative to warships, if you have enough force to steamroller the enemy systems. As far as conquering the Eoladi goes we are liekly to be limited by transport capacity more than by warships, unless they have a big surprise for us. Against the larger races like the fishes and the bots, we will probably need more warships to start with. Anyway, more transports are in the queue on a couple of our smaller planets. We will also need more troops as we take casualties conquering planets.

Our new acquisitions:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBM001C_0151_1.png

Save file:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1C_Turn_0151.zip

24 hrs has passed, Brackard stated earlier he's sporadic this week. Meldor, can you pick this up?

Tomorrow night at the earliest.

That doesn't sound like a "got it" to me. I guess it's open season, whoever posts "got it" next has it. Since I just played, I'll exclude myself from the crush of people ready to sign up. :p

With only 4 people, these sort of rough patches where a couple people get busy can be hard on team momentum (such as it is), but I guess there's no option but to work through them. In theory RBMoo2 should be starting up soon anyway, so it may all be moot.

I didn't realize I was up or I would've posted "skip me" earlier.

Had baby issues last week, test tonight, paper due next week and I should be free and clear for the remainder of the game.

Can't wait to get back in!

Be veerrry veerry quiet. We're hunt'in wabbits. *points at the sign that says Rabbit season, and on the flip side, Duck season*

Got it. =)

Question, install the patch or not? I am assuming everyone wants to install the patch, esp. if we're going to migrate en masse to RBMoo2, but I thought I'd confirm....

Here's one vote for installing the patch.

oh shoot. that reminds me, I forgot to remove my mods before and during my turn. The saved game is botched. Its open game season, whoever picks up gets it. *flips the sign, from wabbit season to duck season*

Initial information of Power Rankng, in relation to #Systems owned and Senate status still stands.

Senate Voting members:
2 Eritrea-Trilarian
6 Chachan-Geode
8 Asala-Saurian
9 Dapaklop-Tachidi

Non-Senate:
3 KYUP - Cyberteknik
10 Kar- Harvesters

Zed is quite right about Trilarians as a Senate Victory Threat. Cybertekniks have 12 known star systems
We have 15, the last few from conquest-- more densely populated of course.

From sheer territory alone, the Cybertekniks look like they'er the other threat to beat-- and the empire is at least was large as ours.

Brackard if you want to pick up please do. I'm thoroughly dissappointed I forgot to remove my mods and don't think it'd be fair of me to repeat the turns to send a modified saved game.

Why not? Since I just played the last set, you're the only one likely to be able to get any turns in anytime soon, unless we hear something from Meldor of Brackard...

If you like, you might re-play your turns, and if we don't hear from Brackard or Meldor in the next day that they have it, post them.

Not quite out of the dark tunnel yet. Anything after this upcoming Thursday I'm game. But until then, I'm just a spectator.

Drasca, feel free to redo the turns. It makes no sense not to. We all know this is more of a getting wet game anyway and the rules will be changing radically here shortly.

Go for it.

Are we playing hot potato? Who is up and should be playing?

Its open season. Anyone that has time can pick it up. I really don't want to redo turns for both ethics and "its a pain-in-the-arse" to redo reasons. Arrr.

If you've got the time, grab that sizzling hot potato and run with it.

I should be able to play tonight. Should I patch before I play?

Yeah, go ahead and patch.

OK, making potato salad......got it

I am officially back in the world of the living. My 14 days of hell are over. Whoohoo!! I'll jump back in as needed or wait till my turn whichever comes first.

No word from Meldor yet... the rule is 24/48, so if we don't hear from him soon, you should grab it, otherwise you can take it after him.

Man, first no one wants it, now you can't even finish a turn.....


Economy: Not much done here, I did lower taxes at AlkurhahII to limit unrest until a ship force can be brought in.

Intelligence: Built a couple of spys. Upped the oppressometer a notch to get rid of some pests. Killed 2 Daraklop, 1 New Orion and 1 VZ-573-XYUP spy. Tries to insert a science spy into the Asalgs but couldn't.

Diplomacy: We meet the Sakkqa Emipre (Asalg). The Eulodians declared peace (I ignored it.

Tech/Ship designs: Nada. The only thing that came in was Gatling Lasers and ECCM III. We also got system Stocks Exchanges. I didn't mess with any designs.

Military:

Dapaklop (Tachidi) -- They attempted one break out and were repulsed. We need to get a newer TF here as they seem to be getting a little more serious.

Kar-Zinoraur (Harvesters) -- They stayed bottled up at Kurah, but they are starting to send bigger and beigger TFs through to try and break our hold. I have a small TF on the way for more support. Continued to starve them down.

Aulavuana (Eoladi) -- Tristan is now ours. It took a couple of turns but we were able to finally beet them down. There are ships in route to the next system.

Other fronts -- The Asalg kept sending in a couple of ships that I intercepted after they turned down diplomatic overtures. The G6 Yellow off of Crux has a Gaurdian in system, we retreated without loss.

Saved game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1C_Turn_0161.zip)

Got it.

Meldor, we weren't pressuring you. But it is kind of amusing..

You take it.
No you take it.
No, please be my guest you take it.
Ok, if you insist...

Wait a second, wasn't it my turn?
But you just gave it to me.
BUT IT'S MY TURN!!1!1111 Give IT TO ME!!1!!111

Ok, enough babbling...

Are you finished yet, I can't wait to take another turn.....

Lol, here you go:

Economy: Economy looked to be doing ok without my help so I didn't touch anything here.

Intelligence: Queued up a bunch more spies, all scientific. Inserted all scientifc spies into the VZ-573-KYUP territory. Stole a few techs and caused some havoc.

Diplomacy: Ok, looking over the gameplan, I saw that the Eritriaa (bugs) were number two on the power graph and were in the senate. The easiest way to win this puppy would probably be via the vote. But to do that, we need to get on the Senate. So I began to increase relations with these bugs as much as possible. They were also in war with the VZ-573-KYUP so I began harrassing them and will begin waring with them shortly. I have every econ/research going with the bugs, but can't seem to get a NAP yet. Need a bit more gifting or such to pull that off.

Tech: A few techs came in, but nothing of extreme importance (to my knowledge)

Military: Had a good bit going on here. Taking a look around, there was a good looking leech planet in bug space that only need to be invaded. (at Sardonyx). Green 2, size 11. Unfortunately, it starved to below invasion point before my transport got there. (damn bug..you should still be able to invade). Since we still don't have a NAP with the bugs, blockade Sardonyx to get this planet. The Kurah system (leeches) was oficially starved. The fleet was reifnorced there as well. You have an invasion force ready for the next step. I also reinforced the Micarus system with a carrier and recon task force after being almost taken out there. Whoever created those carrier ships...nice job. Those things are mean!! We also have task forces at Tristan and Galec for border protection.

All in all, this was a fun set of turns.

RBMoo1C Turn 171 (http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/rbmoo1ct171.zip)

Zed <--- UP
Drasca <---on deck
Brackard
Meldor

Ok, back from a weekend out of town. Got it.

We seem to have suffered from a bit of a lack of focus over the last several turns... I find we have trade treaties going with the Aulavuana, are we still at war & they never cancelled them, or are we now at peace? I don't see a lot of progress made since I started that conflict.

The fishes are our only real friends, yet they are the ones with the best (only, really) shot at a senate victory. Ostensibly they are at war with the robots, but a quick check of their relations shows they are actually on fairly good terms with them other than the current fracas. We, on the other hand, have lousy relations with the robots. The usual lizard-fish dynamic is present but the lizards and the fish seem to be ignoring one another at the moment. The fishes are upset with the bugs, so I guess they are a safe target to go after, but that fight would not last long and wouldn't really get us anywhere significantly closer to overall victory.

Important Question: What is our overall plan here? Do we make nice with the fishes and try to get them to vote us into the senate? Do we try to knock them down a peg or two, and put the axe to pretty much any plans to get into the senate? Do we try to give the NOs an outlying system or two to get them back ahead of the fishes on the powergraph? Inquiring minds want to know!

I want some opinions before I go ahead very much with my turn.

Hmmm....per my turn, I thought to try to get on good turns with the fishies to get into the senate, but I see where you're going. It's very possible the fishies will win the vote before we ever had a chance, all the while we are whilttling away the fishies' competition.

Assuming we hit the fishies though, that means we go for a conquest victory which could make for a long, long game. ;)

Your call.

I thought I was pursuing a war with the Aulavuana, I took one of there systems and was sending TFs to take the next one. They delcared peace and I never accepted it (that I recall).

I am willing to go either way. Getting into the Senate at this point may be hard for us.

BTW, I guess team A has stipped playing their game do to the problems not covered by the data patch.

skip, finals week is looming...

Well, ok. It doesn't look like there's a strong opinion out there on what path to pursue.

I guess the options are to either hold off on hitting them and hope they vote us into the senate, or else to hit them now. While I don't think we would have too much problem taking away several of their colonies if we hit them sooner rather than later, it would take some time to get a significant amount of force over to their neck of the woods. Plus, I don't really care for attacking someone we are on good terms with if there's any way around it. (Whether there really is any way around it is, of course, open to debate.)

For now I guess I will hold off; we already have 3 fronts so I will instead try to mop up on those some. I may give the NOs an out-of-the-way system or two to see if I can curry some favour and to give them a pop boost so they don't lose any upcoming senate votes for the next while.

I'll try to play some more tonight.

EDIT: Had to work late tonight, will have to try again tomorrow.

I just wanted to wish you all good luck, and good perseverence. You remain RGMoo SG1's last hope for victory.

Team A cashed in their chips, and we on Team B were defeated in the Senate.

So I'd just like to say Good Luck, We're All Counting On You.

Darken.Rahl

Ha! Counting on us to do what, exactly??? We're not even in the senate yet! :)

Ok, well I played my turns, here's the skinny...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1C_0181_01.png

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1C_Turn_0181.zip

Most of my turn was taken up with subduing the Tachidi. I didn't like the construction of the 2 fleets we had there (one with all recon and no teeth, the other with all carriers and no support) so I disbanded them and built a new IF fleet instead. The ships from those two TFs should now be back in our reserves. The Tachidi used to have 6 planets in the Khumba system; they are now down to 1 and it should fall by next turn as it has a mobile corps on it which has nearly conquered the planet. Please remember to disband all ground troops in that system once it is clear; I already disbanded the main armour armies that I used on the larger planets but there are probably a couple of mobile corps around in system that still need to be disbanded.

I also tried to get some concentration of our forces happening in Aulavuana territory so we'd have enough ships in one spot to be able to take out enemy planets having missile batteries. Our ships in the area are pretty much all at Malec now and assaulting the two large Aulavuana planets there, with 2 armour armies on the way (again, remember to disband the armies after the planets are conquered.) I built a mob center at Trilar so we should be able to get more transports going in that area in a reasonable amount of time as we get the opportunity.

I ignored the Kar-Zinoaur leeches again I'm afraid. A single LR TF there won't cut it on its own; we need some significant carrier presence in the area if we're going to be serious about assaulting planets with missile bases. I didn't bother to try to send any down there as we really didn't have enough on hand at the start of my turn and it seems like a very low priority front at the moment. We could probably spare a couple carriers with an appropriate escort of Pd/Lr and Rcn ships if we wanted to now, but the next leader may decide we have bigger fish to fry...

We now have a significant number of ships in our reserves, probably enough to form a carrier armada (incl. some escorts and recon) though I didn't check, as well as a fair number of transports and enough armour for several armour armies at once. They are all warp 3 ships though so they are not super fast. Fortunately, we were recently able to steal Impulse Drives (warp 5) from the robots so I went ahead and redesigned all our ships except the colony and outpost ships. I got rid of the PD class since we can just use LR ships instead. These ships all incorporate cloaking technology and use mainly Autofire Ion Cannons for defense which should give them quite a punch and good PD capability (assuming the PD bug doesn't strike.) The carriers are using a large swarm of Ion Cannon fighters with a smaller number of Gauss Cannon fighters added in for extra punch.

Given the fate of RBMoo1B, I am seriously thinking about taking the fight to the Icthys, even though they are the closest thing we have to friends. :( I didn't bother to give the NOs any planets but the Zibal system is a good possibility since it's out of the way and only has 2 planets in it. In order to go after the Icthys we will probably have to go south from Misarius through Alcyone to Sirrah. From there we should be able to go south to Indu San which I believe is their capital (it has something like 22 system ships in it.) If you do build a carrier armada and start in on this path try to be careful about picking off the system ships (preferably by attacking planets without missile bases) before you attack the planets with missile bases. Also, it might be helpful to bring along a sacrificial TF if you are thinking of going up against a heavily defended target to absorb the first missile strike; the AI will seems to send the first missile strike against a colony or transport ship if one is around, which might save your attackers a big beating and give them time to take out the bases before a second volley can be launched. Another thing to consider is that even with a fairly large reserve of transport ships and armour armies, it takes time for planets to be conquered and for ships/armies to make it back out of the delay box and then back to the front, so more never hurts. Try to keep building mob centers close to the front when possible (i.e. you capture an enemy planet with significant industrial output.)

I'm not sure how much further we can take this. If we do go after the Icthys, will that ruin our chances of getting in the Senate? Now I'm not 100% sure considering the Aulavuana still seem to like us even though we are slowly absorbing their territory. If, on the other hand, our relations with the Icthys do in fact go down the tubes, I'm not really interested in going for a total conquest win. At the rate we're going, the code patch will be out long before we can even consider getting that far. :)

Anyway, I guess we'll just keep going and see what happens.

Ok, Drasca said he has finals this week so skip him. My last final is tomorrow, so I'll hit it on Tuesday night and should get it posted shortly thereafter.

Since I believe we are all in consensus that we don't really want to go for a conquest victory, I'll continue to push to get into the senate and work from there.

If you're going to push to get into the senate, does that mean you are not going to attack the Icthys? If that's the case, what are your plans for countering a senate loss before we get invited to join the senate?

In any case, we should endeavour to keep expanding our pop base (by conquest) so that if we do get invited to join the senate, we have enough votes to prevent a loss as experienced by RBMoo1B. If we are not going to attack the Icthys then we should continue working on the Eoladi; the Harvesters are not doing any harm bottled up in their little corner and their votes are not worth as much in the senate anyway.

That was my question. Do we push to get into the senate for fear of having to push for a conquest victory? Or do we throw that into the wind and push through the bugs like there's no tomorrow? Matters not to me.

Bugs are not an issue, they are gone as of your 1st turn... you mean the Icthys(fish) I guess?

Well until my last turn no-one wanted to take a firm stand on it. I agree that it would be nice if we got voted into the senate to prevent us having to go for an X or a conquest victory, but right now I don't see that happening any time soon. The problem is, the biggest player in the senate is the Icthys, and they are also pretty much our only potential friends in the senate. As such, if they are in a position to get us into the senate, they are also in a position to win the game by senate vote. If we had several friends in the senate who might get us in, but who hate one another and would never vote for one of them to lead the senate, then we could afford to try to wait it out, but that situation does not obtain. Hence, I don't think we can afford to wait and see what happens on the senate front.

If we can't wait and see on the senate front, that means we need to do something about the Icthys now and cut them down to size. That was why I was outlining attack plans in my last turn's post. We may also need to give the NOs some more vote power so they don't lose a senate vote too soon -- hence my comments about gifting them out-of-the-way systems (without giving them anything too juicy.)

I think the message from RBMoo1B is pretty clear -- we have a fixed if unknown deadline to prevent a senate loss, and if we don't take action to that effect enough in advance of that deadline we WILL lose by senate. I don't think we can take the chance that it might not happen and trust to the random chance of some other civ getting us in; we need to take our fate into our own hands and actively try to prevent a senate loss. If that forces us down the path to and X victory or a conquest victory instead, sobeit. Once we have got the senate situation under closer control, we can start thinking about building some fleets to go X-hunting.

Bugs...fishies...leeches, whatever. They're all alien to me. ;)

Conisder war on the fishies declared. Let the rumble begin! I believe you're right as far as giving the NO a system. Last time I checked, the fishies were only in war with the robots. The robots didn't have much left in terms of power. I'll see what damage I can inflict when I hit it tonight.

Peace is overrated. What we need is war. Lots of it. Every front. Bring it on.

Ok, let’s do this on a front by front basis.

Leeches: I assaulted the leech planet of Karaken with the forces we currently had in place. We took no casualties, as in zero. We took over a planet, disbanded ground forces, and created a few new forces to head on over there for the next planet party. I have to admit, I had a ground battle here that I actually LOST!! This was the first time I’d ever lost a ground battle. Reinforcements should be there this turn to try again. The leeches hold 5 planets or so. This system, and one more system to go, and that should be the end of the leech prescence.

Eoladi: I believe Malec is now ours. This was just a matter of getting a few transports out there to do the grunt work of taking the planets. I believe the closest mob was at Trilar so it was a bit of a hike.

Rocks: The rocks aren’t happy with us either. They decided to try invading from Thoth to Trilar. They had a TF of 16 ships on the way. I hastily constructed a TF with some of our older designs and whatever we had on hand at the time. It ended up being 2 TF, one of carriers, 1 of indirect. It was ugly. We annihilated them. No losses. I moved the forces onto Thoth where they will blockade until time to move on. Do not assault there quite yet, I don’t think we have the firepower to take these yet.

Icthys: And so the war of the superpowers has begun. I moved the TF from Khumba (after disbanding gropos there) down through Alcyone to Sirrah. Alcyone also has a Mob there so I created a carrier and LR attack TF there as well as several gropos. We now have a very solid assault force that I moved into Sirrah. It wasn’t pretty for the fishies. We conquered both planets there. We now have lanes open to Indu and Tabit. Indu only has 2 planets for the fishies with a lane on to Tabit. Tabit has 5 planets and 22 ships or so. From what I’ve encountered so far, that isn’t a problem. You should also have a few transports ready in this assault group as well. I didn’t start the assault yet, I figured I’d let the next leader have this fun. I really think Tabit is a viable target but take your pick.

Misc: Near the leech front, we have an open lane into our system at Frell. However, that system seems to be contested by 3 different factions, so I’m not overly worried at the moment. We also made contact with the Psilons and another race I don’t remember at the moment. Neither were of any real concern for the time being. I didn’t make any diplo but the Psilons are in cahoots with the Icthys. As planets have been conquered I’ve gone ahead and disbanded them back into the pool.

Unrest: With the large number of planets that have been conquered in the last 20 turns or so, unrest is popping up everywhere. I wasn’t going to sit my TF there to cure it, so I cut down taxes in those areas in hopes that it would help. The next leader will need to take a look because I had some problems here. Is there anything else I could do outside of lowering taxes?

Diplomacy: Who needs diplomacy? Diplomacy consists of being on the bad end of a big stick!

Oh, and I guess we need the save file:

RBMOO1C Turn 191 (http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/rbmoo1ct191.zip)

Meldor <---UP!!
Zed <---on deck
Drasca
Brackard

No, no, no, diplomacy is the art of talking until you find a bigger rock, or so it was said.

I see it and will have it in the queue.

Good job on your turn, Brackard! I didn't think we'd be advised to try the leeches' planets without carrier support, but I guess either those 2 old carriers from Waage were enough to wax the planetary bases or the leeches were sufficiently behind in tech that they couldn't dent our BBs before our BBs managed to close the range. I guess it's also possible that you haven't yet assaulted a heavily defended leech planet, but I doubt it. :)

You usually don't want your new ships sitting around fighting pirates, but you have to have something there to combat piracy or the systems you conquer will just go into revolt. This requires a bit of logistical planning to get police starships in to cover off piracy in systems you've conquered until such time as they can get their own anti-piracy stuff built, and can get to be a bit of a headache but that's just something that comes with the job of being a conquerer. We should have most of our shipbuilding planets building real military, while a few build cheap police starships (e.g. CAs/CLs) for anti-piracy duties in conquered systems. These police starships should have older, cheaper weapons on standard/light mounts, but modded up to the gills (esp. autofire) so that they are reasonably effective, and should have little in the way of specials or EW. Using weapons & systems that are relatively cheap but bulky means these police ships can still be effective against the occasional small force of AI raiders, but won't cost a lot and we can pump them out in quantity. We can then use these in addition to any broken TFs we might have kicking around to fight pirates, rather than tying up our fresh assault TFs on police duty.

One of the things we might want to consider doing to normalize our ship construction rate is to pick some set of our most developed worlds to do our shipbuilding, set the sliders to some fixed percentages, and turn off the econ AI to prevent it from changing them and dropping our military queue to 1%. Don't know how you feel about this though; you have to keep an eye on the MBQ (which you were probably doing anyway) but you also have to remember when any planetary queue tech becomes available to slot it in there manually. The various DEA improvements will still take care of themselves as long as there's funding allocated.

Another thing that really helps is prioritizing mob centers in newly conquered systems that are a couple jumps away from our current closest mob center. In order to do this as easily as possible, it is very important to capture the most populated enemy planet in that system first, as you can only build a mob center on the first planet you control in a system. That is, don't even try to capture any other planets until the biggest one is under your control; you never know when the ground combat AI is going to pull a reverse on you, so don't take chances. It's probably too late to do that with the Harvesters but we don't really need a mob center there anytime soon anyway.

EDIT: How are you guys finding the game going at 10 turns per player? I was thinking that with MOO, 20 turns per player might make for more natural breakpoints, and less of a rush to "get something done" on your turn. This seems to be more of a problem than in Civ SGs to me because travel times and logistics are a much bigger factor. In Civ, the front can be as wide as the land allows so it's easy to attack mulitple things at once and you can generally send stuff "to the front" without worrying too much about where exactly they need to go -- or if in the industrial age, rails mean you just go straight where needed. In MOO, the starlanes and required concentration/coordination of various forces makes for a much greater logistical burden on the attacker, and also tends to greatly slow down the seeming pace of conquest. Also, it seems to be considerably more difficult to communicate game state in MOO than in Civ, which might make having fewer handoffs between players something to be desired.

Would you prefer to be running 20-cycle turns?

Feeling a bit sheepish here, but how do you tell your gropos exactly which planet to land on?

I select the target planet during the ship attack phase for that system. If you win the battle, your troops if any will drop at the same planet. During the phase where you have the option to bombard and land troops, it's helpful to take a look at the enemy deployed troops number, so you know if you have brought enough forces or not (assuming you know what the contents of your own troop transports are, which can be a problem in an SG.) Keep in mind that that number does not include any militia the planet might be able to come up with -- and how much of those there will be depends on pop size of the planet.

20 turn cycles?? 20 turn cycles???

I'd hate to see what kind of @#$% you'd end up with after 20 turns of my playing. Half the empire is in unrest. The entire fleet is two generations behind in tech. Spies are running around rampid around the empire. But I did conquer a few systems!! Ok, here's the empire for you Zed.

;)

Besides it's easier for me to block off time at 10 turn cycles than 20 turn cycles. It takes 60-90 minutes for 10 turns now (and I know I don't fully take care of everything). I can't imagine having to block out 3 hours for 20 turns. Once we get a bit closer to mop up, 20 turns will be fine, but I think we are still in the critical area where 10 turns is fine.

Yea, you would really be in for it with my twenty on top of his.....

Alright, 10 it is. :) Although I should note for Brackard's sake that 20 per turn would probably get more time-consuming as the game goes on if anything; it certainly would not get less time-consuming.

Ah...but you see Zed. When we are in mop up stage, there's really no danger in losing, so I don't have to care quite as much about curing that revolt on that small planet in the corner of the galaxy.

So what if we are only at 30% efficiency, we are cranking out 10x the ships of the rest of the galaxy combined. ;) What!! Our ships are 3 generations behind? That's ok, they are still 4 generations ahead of the nearest competitor.

That's why I think mop up will be a bit quicker. :)

Sorry guys, fire at work I need to fight. I can't get to this until Saturday morning. If someone wants to go before that feel free.

erm, Drasca? Finals week over?

Otherwise, Meldor, we will have to wait for you on Sat if Drasca can't take it. Brackard and I just played.



EDIT: Brackard, I checked out the save file. Tabit isn't just a viable target, it's a soft target. While there's 5 planets in the system, only 2 of them have significant populations on them, and none have more than 2 planetary bases for defense (meaning no missile bases.) One of the planets there has 50k pop units on it, meaning it's a fairly good spot to try and build a mob center at.

Indu San, on the other hand, I'm pretty sure is their capital; having 24 system ships is usually a pretty good indicator that it's an old system with lots of pop, since the only reason they'd have 24 ships there is to combat major piracy. If we can take that, they will be in serious trouble as far as production goes until they can rebuild their imperial seat of government. Plus if we kill all the system ships in there, it will mean they will have major unrest problems to cope with in that system (which we will unfortunately inherit when we capture the planets, but c'est la guerre.)

Which target should we pursue? Well, both, of course. :) The only question is in what order. I think we need to get a quick start on a mob center in Tabit to further our conquests west of there, but we might only need a smaller portion of our force there to wipe out the limited defenses they have up and guard against potential ship incursions from elsewhere while the main portion of our force strikes at Indu San.

As far as attacking at Thoth goes, I think we could probably do it. Thoth V has no planetary defenses; if we assault there, we can take on their ships in isolation before we attack planets with missile bases and such. The Silicoids are 10 tech levels behind us, and the ships you have insystem are reasonably recent BB designs; not the latest stuff, but probably better than anything the Silicoids have on hand, especially since most of their ships in Thoth are going to be old police defenses and pretty much worthless against our BBs.

As far as the fishies, I might have gotten the system names scrambled on my chicken scratch notepad. I know one of them had 5 planets, lots of ships, and looked pretty beefy. The other looked comparatively new.

As far as the rocks, I know they're designs are outdated. We took out 16 of their ships on an incoming course at Trilar with the TFs current at Thoth. If the leeches were any example, we could probably not even have to worry about it and take missle bases and all.

Wathcing those carriers in action is some fun stuff. Those fighters are an incredible swarm of death. The big ships try to cope shooting down 1 or 2, but it just doesn't matter!

Yeah, that's why I was/am a bit concerned about going after serious planetary defenses at the leech homeworld -- we don't have that kind of heavy fighter support there yet. Our LR BBs are fairly tough, but not invulnerable, and planetary beam bases pack a pretty big punch. Enough fighters will take them down with no risk to our ships, or at least we need enough fighters to distract the defenders while our gunships get in there and pound. We'll see what whoever's next can accomplish. :)

Ok, Meldor, Drasca, who wants to be up next?

one more final wednesday, sorry for being so neglectful =(

I am trying to get there. It is on the list. Unfortunately RL has gotten us all lately. I will try to get it over the next tow days.

Ok, guys, it's the weekend... surely someone can post got it now? :)

Ok, I have it

Anything happening here anybody?

Well, we are waiting for Meldor, but Civ3 seems to be higher on his to-do list atm. :undecide:

What's the general consensus, should we stick it out or bow to the (seemingly) inevitable and can the game? I'm happy to keep it up if we can get some momentum going again but it seems that neither Meldor nor Drasca are too keen on it. I know people have had exams and otherwise been busy, but this has gotten beyond ridiculous; without a bigger team we simply can't afford to have players sitting on the sidelines for weeks on end like this. The occasional skip is one thing, and perfectly acceptable -- in fact discipline in enforcing skips when appropriate is very important to a successful SG. But once you get down to the point where there's no-one left that's suitable to skip to, and no real interest on the part of the people being skipped to take up the game again, it's very hard to keep any momentum going at all.

Please vote yea or nay for continuing. If I get 2 nays, I submit we concede the game, or each play it out on our own if desired, and post the results of our shadows (if any) here.

I can' tsay as I did much beyond trying to get the unrest taken care of. We had revlot in seversl systems. I sent ships to most of them. There are suppression ships on the way to teh two remaining.

Militarily, I continues those assualts that were in place.




As for the idea of continuing this SG, I will bow to the majority.

I must apologize for my reluctance to jump in on this one. It is due mostly to the fact that I don't know htis game as well as I should. RL has not afforded me the time to spend extra hours getting to know the game the way I would like. I have therefore been reluctant to pick it up and ruin what we have going. I do have some vacation coming up here in the 23rd for two weeks. I am planning on taking this with me so I can finally get in the experience I need to know what it is I am doing. I am afriad that I am unfortunately still at the stumbleing around in the dark phase. In a lot of ways the UI on this game frustrates me, and this may also lend to the problem.

Again I apologize and will promise to do better, if you can accept that I will for the next couple of weeks be the weakest of the players.

OH yea, the save.

Saved Game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1C_Turn_0201.zip)

Heh, Meldor, if you don't feel that you know what you are doing, that's ok, neither does the AI. :crazyeye: Besides which, this is supposed to be an exploratory game; making mistakes and learning as we go are par for the course. We're still ironing out how to even run an SG for MOO, and to figure out what the basic building blocks are for getting any kind of a win in a team environment. We're not yet at the stage where we should be expecting optimized teams where all players in the game are playing at peak efficiency in an appropriately challenging game for their collective skill level -- in fact I doubt MOO3 is even capable of generating that kind of experience right now -- and we're a long way from worrying about considering player skill level when forming teams for SGs.

I still want a vote from you, however. Whether you feel you are a weak or a strong player is not what's important -- whether you feel capable of and willing to commit time to the game is.



Incidentally, the best lessons I think we can learn from RBMooI are not so much about what the game does/doesn't do, but what we need to do in order to run SGs for MOO3. While learning about what the game does is obviously useful, what the game does is likely to change a great deal over the course of the next patch(es), so any given thing we learn about the game now has indeterminate value looking into the future; what we learn about organizing MOO3 SGs and Imperiums will have a much longer life expectancy.


EDIT: I can't post got it tonight, so I'll give Drasca a bit of a window before grabbing it. If he doesn't get it, I will grab it, though I won't be able to play until Fri night or Sat.

I'm voting to continue. I tend to enjoy finishing what I start. If/when the patch comes along, we can scrap this game, but until then, let's keep it rolling.

I vote to continue, I don't like to leave things in mid-game. As long as you guys will put up with me not knowing what I should do all the time then lets push on.

One question. I was trying to make TFs to send out to fight and also to send out to re-enforce some lines and send in some troops. It was extremely frustrating trying to find an allowed combination of ships. Why can't I make a TF with whatever darn ships I want to put in it. I wanted to send some of the smaller ships to put down unrest, but couldn't make small TFs for the duty. What was I missing, or is this just something you have to deal with? What happens if you make the wrong combination of ships? We had a bunch of crusiers in one system that I couldn't do anything with because I couldn't find a way to make a TF with them?

Got it. (Drasca, where are you??)

Well, TF requirements depend on the TF size you are trying to make. Generally, ground TFs you just send whatever number of transports you need, so transport TFs are usually small enough not to need extra escorts and stuff. I have not figured out how to send different transports that arrive on the same turn after different planets -- I am not sure how the "unload troops" button works so I have been using "unload all" -- so I want my transport TFs to be small and arrive on staggered turns and anyway. Military TFs tend to be larger and thus have rules regarding formations, and those rules seem reasonable to me. The problem is when we are building a large variety of ships, if we are not building them quickly (e.g. are not controlling our ship-production centers directly and don't make an effort to figure out how to direct the AI to build them quickly) then it becomes difficult to obey formation rules for new TFs due to lack of ships.

It helps that SR and LR ships can be used as escorts. Recon ships are the only ones that can be used for recon, however. Also, LR and SR TF have fewer rules -- they don't need any ships in the escort ring since the game presumes the LR and SR ships in the core may already have enough PD to take care of themselves.

One approach to resolving this is to make sure you are always building enough of the various ship types to be able to field the TFs you need to field. Another approach is to simplify your TF design by labelling all your main fighting ships as, for instance, LR ships, regardless of what weapons they actually carry. This does not affect their ability to do damage and attack targets, but it does affect their AI for target selection, preferred combat range, and so forth. You can get away with this if you expect to fight all your important battles manually or if your numerical/quality advantage is so great that you can overwhelm the enemy regardless.

As for the cruisers in that system, either they are system ships or they are already in a TF. You can't make TFs with ships that are in play; they are always drawn from the reserves. You can't split up TFs that are in play other than by disbanding them, waiting for them to return to the reserves, and reforming them into new TFs.

I've been hanging back my opinions. The game itself doesn't interest me anymore, but this SG1 does. It is less of a matter of playing the game than discussing it. I think I'll try some crazy non-optimal stuff. Be be assured, if you guys are in it, I'll be too.

Its been a while, so I'll need to update a few things, as I've left my Moo3 unpatched and modded, but I've been lurking, just too ambivalent about my feelings on the game to post.

Turn done, file here. (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1C_Turn_0211.zip) Report, short version: captured a couple Harvester planets, captured one Eoladi planet, captured a number fo Icthy planets, troops landed on another couple Icthy planets & on one Silicoid planet. Lost a couple stacks of ships taking out the Icthy home system but it should be pretty clear now. Ran out of troops to take things over with, waiting for some to come back from the delay box.

Drasca, if you want to do wild and wacky things, that fine with me; experiment away! I'm continuing to feel like there's not much focus to the game, partly because of the turn handoffs (I'm finding them much harder to handle than in Civ mainly because of the complexity of the game), partly because we're at war on so many fronts, and partly because we still don't have a real plan going to win the game (other than maybe sole survivor.) Moreover, this game is supposed to be one big experiment anyway. Accordingly, if we louse this one up by experimenting too much it won't bother me greatly.

One thing we might want to consider for future SGs -- institute a no economic micromanagement rule. This could speed up play and make for a more civ-like feel for the handoffs. The problem is that every participant would have to be fairly familiar with how to accomplish things (like convincing the AI to build larger spaceships, build useful DEAs in the right places, etc.) using only the macromanagement tools. Also, it might put a cap on how difficult an SG we can run, though that shouldn't be a real problem for a while. Anyway, it's a thought for the future.


--------------

EDIT: Turn Summary

Economy: Lowered imperial tax to 5% and system tax to 0%. Raised planetary tax at our better-developed planets to compensate. Set empire-level financial policy to spending, it had been on savings. Went through and adjusted our larger planets to start production of more ships at a decent rate. Our best planets had been building single support troops, even though they can build battleships in just a couple turns... and probably will start to do so again once the ships I've set it to build are done. Something tells me we will need to figure out this macromanagement stuff a little better, or else turn off the econ AI, for the next game. :)

Intelligence: Our spy queue was empty so I started some more. Umm... that's it. :)

Diplomacy: I gave the Zibal system to the NOs. I had a couple offers refused by various parties. Umm... that's it. :)

Tech/Ship designs: I removed all my mods from the Classic_01 directory and that made a difference to the tech rates. We're still in the negative by a couple hundred percent on most tech areas but we're doing active research in Math and Social Sciences. Math is behind by a few levels so I set it to 25% and the rest to 15%. I considered redesigning our ships so that we only needed a couple designs, but I decided not to.

Military:
Aulavuana (Eoladi) - I finished off our conquest in the Malec system. I don't think we really need any more of their territory right now, and they are down to 7th on the powergraph, so Iidn't spend a lot of effort on this front.

Chachan (Silicoids): Destroyed all planetary defenses in the system at the cost of a few ships. We have troops on the largest planet in the system. Didn't spend a ton of effort here either.

Kar-Zinoaur (Harvesters): Sent over a modern carrier to boost our fighter presence. Destroyed all planetary defenses in the system and captured the Kar-Zinoaur homeworld. Again, not too much attention paid to this front.

Eritria (Icthys): Captured two planets in Indu San, destroyed all planetary defenses, troops en route to capture the third planet. Also captured a couple planets in Tabit. Repulsed a Pesite (Psilon) counterattack at Sirrah. This is where most of our forces are concentrated.

Other: There is an outpost formation at Trilar that should head to Paquient to suppress unrest.

---------------

Drasca, you are up, followed by Brackard. Let's try to get back on a standard 24/48 rotation, ok?

If we are back to a 24/48 rotation, then Drasca should have got the game by now... Brackard, if there's no got it post by this evening, we'll skip Drasca again and you can take your turn.

Roger that.

Got it.

It's amazing how much difference a 20 turns makes. The game looked entirely different when I opened it up again.

The only thing I really did this turn was continue assaults currently in progress. I did put together a carrier task force to use at Indu San and 5 or 6 ground transports but everything else is pretty much as it was.

War effort -

Siliciods - we finished taking the planet that was currently in progress. It was extremely close. We had one region left to take, they had 56 points of defense compared to our 48 of offense. I took them with a trap and took the planet. It was actually kind of fun.

Icthys - The entire Indu San system is now ours. I also took a Tabit planet (or two). There is still some prescence there and I have more transports just outside the system (Drasca or Meldor) waiting for orders.

All the gropos that were used in ground assaults have been disbanded and should be ready for action again shortly although I don't think we have any shortage of them....

All in all, it was a good test of ground battles. At least I can honestly say now that a statement I made on ground battles and massed assaults was incorrect. ;)

Save file can be found here (http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/rbmoo1ct221.zip)

Meldor, you are up. Drasca, if you are ready to take a turn and post got it before Meldor does, you can slip in before him.

Got it.

Don't have time for a big write up.

Attacked anything that moved.
Captured Albali III.
Lots of TFs headed for were I thought they were needed.
Got troops headed for the planets.

I will do better next time, but time is tight. I wanted to get my turns in before I left and get them posted.

The Game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1C_Turn_0231.zip)

Ok, got it.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/RBMoo1C_final.png

Some key factors in our loss:
- Not enough focus on diplomacy -- in most cases, the reasons we didn't have good relations with various AI civs was mainly due to lack of consistently trying to improve relations, and we attacked the only people who were inherently inclined to be friendly with us
- Lack of focus economically. I deliberately stayed as much away from micromanagement as I could, but I noticed that our performance was much stronger when I did micromanage than when I let the AI manage things. Probably this is in part because we did not make a strong effort to manipulate the AI into doing what we wanted -- i.e. we didn't pay much attention to development plans, the "proper" way to manage ship designs so as to convince the AI to build what you want it to build, and especially make more use of the different economy settings so that our larger planets would build more ships
- We should have started on a X victory path much sooner. I started 8 armadas on their way during my turn but it was far too late.

In general, I'd say the last 1/3 or more of the game we were mostly just going through the motions, which is understandable considering entusiasm for the pre-patch game has waned all around. Perhaps next game will be better. Still, it does seem inherently more difficult to run a MOO SG than a Civ SG, if only because there are more things to do in MOO, more things to keep track of, more things to coordinate over turn breaks. Where one player feels weak, they are more likely to neglect that area and let teammates take up the slack, but because MOO is new and not easy to learn, this makes for a much more serious problem than it is in Civ.

Anyway, it seems likely that the best course is to wait for the patch, and try again, or stick with Imperiums where at least we don't have to worry about the problems associated with handoffs, until such time as the general level of understanding of the game improves (and the game is more worth making a serious commitment to.)

Sorry for your loss but thank you for playing it through waning interest.

I had an idea to run the next Moo SG. At the moment it is very rough and need some adjustments but I think it may make the SG format more interesting. What if each player was in charge of a specific area of the game? Sort of like ministers working in their area of expertise to achieve the goals set by the emperor. In a 5 players team, it would go something like this:



One player in charge of the economy, whose task is to oversee the economic development of each planets until they achieve maturity.

Another in charge of the military. His tasks include ship design, fleet composition and prosecuting the wars requested by the emperor. He gets full control of the MBQ slider for planets designated as military shipyards.

The third player is in charge of Science. He controls the research sliders and take full control of planets designated as research centers. His tasks include keeping track of the Alien's scientific progress, key technologies missing from our tree and finding a source to acquire the missing tech.

The fourth player is in charge of foreign affairs. It is his job to deal with alien empires, either diplomatically or through undercover operations. He must staff the secret service and issue directives as to what stance to use with each Alien.

Finally the Emperor is in charge of the empire expansion. He is in charge of scouting new systems, drawing borders, deciding on a global strategy to win. He makes the final call as to who is a friend or a foe.



By focusing on a specific area of the game, each player will have a better idea of what to report on his turn. He will issue directives for the other players to follow, report and comment on previous directives given and make requests for proper funding/infrastuctures to the appropriate player.

I am not sure how well such an SG would run, obviously it would depend on the individual player involvement. I know it provides a great opportunity for role-playing and I think it should make for more interesting reports and a smoother transition between players.

Sorry for putting this in your thread. I have been thinking about this for a while and your comments triggered my desire see what others would think about this.

First of all, I'd like to thank you Zed for keeping this on course as best you could. This being my first SG, it was an...interesting experience to say the least. If nothing else, I learned that there was much, much more I need to learn to get on the same level as some of you here.

A few comments on Zed's end game notes:

The last 1/3 of the game was going through the motions: I believe that is 100% accurate. But in our current setup, that's pretty much all we had to do. We didn't have any relations with anybody. Those people we DID have good relations with were in the senate so we had to attack them. It was simply a race against time. We had more than enough in terms of ships and gropos to handle the many fronts that I personally didn't see any real reason to have to adjust much in my turns.

Based on what I've read from the Civ SG, yes, a MOO SG looks much more difficult to implement. You may be right in one aspect though from a previous post. Longer turns might be needed as well. However we lost in turn 242. So if we were playing with 20 turn "turns", with 5 people, that means each player would have gotten to play 2 or 3 times before the win/loss.

I will have to say yes, I did neglect certain aspects of the empire on my turn in areas I felt weak. Let's take ship design (and naming conventions) for instance. Holy moly. Hopefully we'll get more characters for naming, but to put together a TF of LCR15dc65x. Shoot, I was just looking for a couple carriers. ;) As to the designing of ships themselves? I'm generally going to redesign out of necessity (or if I get a better engine tech). I think if I'd have been pressured more, I'd have had more reason to HAVE to redesign ships. As it stood? There was really no reason to have to. We were always ahead in tech (8 levels at endgame?) and we generally had decent numbers of these ships at all the right places to get stuff done.

Jaxom: It would be interesting to see how that works out because the current state of the MOO SG needs to be tweaked just a tad. ;) It does sound like fun though.

All in all, I'm glad I participated here. I learned a lot and I hope I didn't drag everyone here down too much. I tell you what though, after this and the 600+ turn unfisihed Imperium, I think I'm MOO'd out for awhile. I'll wait and watch to see what happens with the patch. Thanks everyone!

@Jaxom:

Might be worth a shot. The main problems I see right now are:

- We need to have an overall strategy defined fairly early in the game. Civ SG games often specify the target victory condition at the outset. More discussion amongst team members is needed to define strategy than we have seen so far.
- We need to have an active player presence in every significant area of play and not let things sit on auto-pilot unless we have deliberately chosen to do so. If we have chosen to let stuff go on auto-pilot we need a reasonable way to ensure that things will not fall apart too badly.
- One thing that will help with both of the above is if people are more familiar with all aspects of the game and feel comfortable (a) having an opinion on strategy questions and (b) digging into understanding all areas of the game so they won't let anything slide because they don't feel comfortable with it.
- We, as a group, need to get more comfortable with the macromanagement aspect of the game. We can't afford to let the AI run without effective guidance (which happened a fair bit this game) but without a turn-by-turn understanding of what has gone on previously it's difficult to get a feel for what's going on in the game at a micro level. In Civ SGs, people often spend a good amount of time before their first turn examining all the cities and figuring out what's going on; that just won't fly here except in the earliest parts of the game.

An SG is (usually) not a competition game, and certainly is much harder to maintain continuity in. Where an Imperium can be played quite effectively relying on micro control (and in fact since it is a competition you may want to engage more in micro control if it will improve your results,) an SG is better-suited to macro control so there are fewer interface points between the players and the AI -- since players can usually only transmit relatively high-level information across turn boundaries, it makes sense that that information should be about the highest-level interfaces in the game. In general, in an SG we want simple strategies that can be executed by everyone well.

Some examples of simplifications that can be applied to the game:
- If we don't want to focus on spying for a particular game, we can build defensive spies (political/economic/diplomatic) and leave them on security -- but everyone should remember to keep filling up the spy queue. Several times I would pick up a game and find nothing in the queue, or find scientific spies sitting around uninserted into enemy empires. We need to agree to an approach beforehand and stick with it -- if it needs to be changed then it should be brought up, changes discussed, and then everyone commits to implementing them.
- Fleets should be made as simple as possible. I don't think most players want to have many different kinds of ships to juggle when building fleets. We should only have a couple of utility designs that can handle any situation, so we can be reasonably confident of having them on hand when needed. Having only a few ships to worry about also means it's easier to make sure we design them in such a way that the AI will be more likely to build them.
- Beyond the initial few colonies, we should be relying on development plans after a certain point, and everyone should understand the basics of how to use them. The same applies to the war settings.

Bottom line: your idea might be good as a training tool -- if each player has a certain area of responsability, it might help them become motivated to learn about their area of responsability and hopefully help teach others about it, as well as provide direction in the game itself. However, we want every player to have a good grasp of all areas in the game in order that intelligent suggestions can be made, so each player should ultimately try to learn how to do each others' jobs. Even so, it may still be useful to have a single person who is responsible for that area to arbitrate any discussions.