This is a succession game sponsored by Realms Beyond. In a succession game, members of a team take turns at the helm of a single player game, playing a specified number of turns before passing the game to the next player. This game will involve three teams, each playing with a different stragetic slant toward a different victory condition, each on the same map from the same start file. Our team in this thread is the Good Team. We will be playing Galactic Civilizations (http://www.galciv.com/index.asp) with the following specifications:

Version: 1.13
Difficulty: Masochistic (All Incredible AI's)
Map Size: Large
Habitability: Occasional
Star Clusters: Loose
Political Party: Pacifists
Bonus Picks: 3 picks Sensors and Range, 1 pick Defense, Repair, Trade, Weapons
Victory: All conditions enabled

24 hours "got it" notification
48 total hours to play and report a turn
Twelve Turns (one year) per player.
Autoturn: On.
Changeover: At the beginning of the first turn of each year.

VARIANT RULES:
None--Just win, Baby!

The only tactic that is definately banned is the Bait Rape Exploit

Surprise attacks, even coordinated surprise attacks, are allowed. Bribing AI's to war on one another is allowed. Bribing AI's to fight, for the express purpose of luring away your target's fleet, so that you can deliver a deathblow surprise attack on undefended colonies is not allowed. This is a gross hole in the AI that (we hope) will eventually be fixed.

As usual, no reloads for strategic errors--a reload for a misclick is ok.

I think everyone here is familiar with how to upload screenshots and savegames, but look here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=1549792#post1549792) for an excellent description of the basics.

Team Roster:

Bam-Bam
Zed
Aviator
Isit
open

Here are links for those who may be interested in GalCiv or Realms Beyond.

Galactic Civilizations (http://www.galciv.com/index.asp)

Realms Beyond GalCiv Page (http://www.realmsbeyond.net/galciv/index.html)

RBGC Forum (feel free to decline any ad related postings) (http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/237344)

Realms Beyond Empire Thread (http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GE&id=130960), for Realms Beyond players, at Stardock

RB Metaverse Empire (http://www.galciv.com/metaverse/empires.asp?id=555)

Like the last round of games, we have guests from other empires, who are welcome to post links to their resources and introductory information about their empires. We all hope that everyone playing and watching has as good a time as we have had in the last two games.


- Bam-Bam

Here we go, folks! Welcome to the first RB GalCiv Masochistic Succession Game.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-start.jpg

Let's see, Earth is a PQ18, and Sol has another PQ13 in the system. The start immediately to Southwest is worthless (PQ10/8/crap), and we have a morale resource within spitting distance. Looking at the tactical view...

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-start2.jpg

We can see Yor influence two sectors north of us. That leaves the single planet three sectors north of us as the Yor homeworld, since starting influence extends only to adjacent sectors. Our sensor range must not be allowing us to see the sector two north and one east, since that surely has Yor influence from the starting location. All this can be done without resorting to influence scouting using F8.

Oh yeah, and that white star is junk, too.

January

Spending set to 100% military/91% rate/40% taxes for colony ships every third month @ 100 morale on Earth. Colony ship sent north, surveyor sent Southeast.


February

:sleep:

March

Our surveyor discovers another morale resource to our southeast, and our northbound colony ship spots a yellow star (PQ16).

April

First colony ship completes--100M loaded. Second star in the north adjacent sector is a PQ10. New colony ship heads northwest.

May

Colonize Nestor (PQ16 north of Sol sector). Set queue to Kolaz (as was done for Earth) and begin colony ship production.


June

:sleep:

July

Another colony ship completes. PQ15 spotted in sector NW of Sol. Our surveyor runs across this anomoly

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2178a.jpg

The surveyor also reveals an empty white star system. New colony ship heads west.

August

Spot Arcean influence to the Southeast (where our surveyor is heading. Looks like their home is in Sector 8-7 (4 planets) based on the technique used above. First

September

Nut and honey.

October

Two colony ships complete. The sector NW of Sol has another PQ15--Nestor colony ship enroute. Colonize Jotunheim, getting this event.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2178b.jpg

I take the neutral option--we haven't yet seen our good friends, but a starship event on a PQ15 is not worth the morality hit, IMO. PQ event or production event (or this event on a PQ20 planet) would be a different story. As if on cue, we spot Altarian influence to the west. Surveyor spots a double PQ15 to the SW. Colony ship just built from Earth enroute.

November

Ship movement--nothing of note.

December

Ship movement

End of Year 2183

Colony ship completes @ Earth. Launched with 100M.

The NW colony ship is enroute to Quatrale. I suggest clicking it to Autopilot so that it will settle in January (I have noticed that autopiloting will give +1 movement when enroute to a planet). The SW colony ship is enroute to the double PQ15. There is a colony ship heading west from Sol and one just launched from Sol I suggest sending the recently launched colony ship to the double PQ15.

Here is our situation.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2179map.jpg

The C is for colony ship, S is for surveyor. Yellow stars marked--everything else is crap.

Notice I gave two alternatives to the Alterian start--I am not sure which one it is, but they definately have a colonized planet in each of those sectors.

Good luck to Zed!

Roster:

Bam-Bam (just played)
Zed-F (UP)
Aviator (ON DECK)
Isit
OPEN

Just Win, Baby! (http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2179ad.zip)

Got it, will likely play tomorrow...

Just clocking on.

Aviator.

A look at the save file:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im001.jpg

Shows a LARGE Alt pie segment with thin Yor and Arch segments,

Does this mean that the Alts have a multiple planet homeworld sector which they colonised fast getting a good economy going, whereas the other two are as we are ?

If so then as they are close neighbours should we consider a "good" morality strategy ? Or is it too early to tell?

Otherwise I am absolutely amazed at the start we have here. :rolleyes: In almost any game I would have played on these setings I would have regarded myself lucky to get any planet and certainly wouldn't have expected to get 3 in the first year.:worship: AI's must be traveling at 3 to our 2 by now and as they know where to go normally It'd be ctl-N beconing by now.:( At this level the only picks that work for me are speed (vital) & sensors (desirable) & influence or possibly diplomacy (useful). As we started I would have said impossible, but what did I know...........

The next year will be very interesting.:ack:

Aviator

Yes---this did turn out to be a good start. After the last game, I do really like putting 3 picks to sensors. :D

As far as maso games go--I have only used speed picks on gigantic maps. While I have played max diplo games, I think I have been all over the map on other bonus picks. I have tried to deliberately vary my picks and choice of political party (I have won with each party twice) so that I do not become too dependent on one strategy. No foolin--this is the first start I rolled. I have been lucky with starts recently--my last two gig masos (one complete and one in progress), I have pulled a whole lot of space with lots of room between me and the majors. I thinks it's karma, because I have been stuck with 3 planets on both huge and gigantic maps. :lol:

That said--my picks on a gigantic map would be 8 to speed and 2 to sensors. That +2 speed on a gigantic map is tremendously helpful--especially when playing with loose or scattered stars.

We may be well served to play good--though, in this situation, I usually stay neutral unless BOTH the Altarians and Torians are strong. Of course, though my profile doesn't show it completely yet--I am mostly an neutral-evil player. I have never played a pure good game. I am willing to listen to alternate ideas, of course.

Just checking in here. :)

So you guys know, I have only played three games at this level and they were all on a tiny map with a fast military win. I am still working out how to survive on a larger map in which you can’t just rush in and take out the AI's systems in the first couple of years.

Any comments or suggestions you guys have for me would be most welcome. Also any after my turn comments you had would also be welcome. I hope to come out of this game with a better idea of how to play at meso level. :)

Isit--don't worry about it too much. Your level of play in the last SG means that you are ready. You've been stomping crippling, so it seems, so taking it up a notch should not be a real problem.

We have an excellent position here--better than many I have gotten. No "screw you" map draw here. With a large map, we will not be immediately harassed (I have found mediums to be the worst). No worries--we are all here to play and learn.

Isit--Playing maso isn't easy, and failure is only a bad move away in the early years. Things you can predict are, if you are weak (offensively) the Dren and your opposite morality AIs will attack you early on, its very easy to get 3 hostiles by year 3, and unless you get enough resources (systems etc) in the land grab years you will fail in the medium term (or later) if one of the AIs becomes very dominant early on (or later).

Here it looks like the Alt could be on a high roll already, and the Dren are already becoming powerful, unfortunately they don't seem to be neighbours (to each other) so they may start hunting the small fry first, if we align to good that may keep the Alt off our backs, but align to evil doesn't have quite the same effect on the Dren, hence my tendency (here) to lean towards good on morality pics.

It looks like we are going to have to tread carefully and diplomatically while we build to avoid early conflict, especially with the Alt who look like they could be very powerful neighbours.

Bam-Bam-- I don't do gigantic, I find even at maso I can play to a formula and be successful most/some of the time. On smaller maps I find it much more chalenging, especially with more planets to colonise, the land grab becomes truly vital and this is why I always value speed v. highly and sensors highly as picks. As I said I have started games with the same settings and never got another planet in the land grab, :cry: and would doubtless have been wiped out by year 4 if it wasn't just a game (and alowed me to have another go).

For my style of play speed is by far the single most important pick on any size map, and I always try to get Grav Alt & Eyes of Uni to give me that vital edge, especially if you are starting from a weak (but not unplayable) position and I confess that I find it dificult (at maso impossible) to go cold turkey off the speed kick :arrow: so this will be interesting for me............ Otherwise I would agree that you can play any political party and it makes little to no odds at all to me either.

Aviator

I've not yet tried speed picks on map sizes smaller than huge.

Hmm. I need to add that to the to-do list. :lol:


if you are weak (offensively) the Dren and your opposite morality AIs will attack you early on

Actually, Stardock changed military strength a few patches back to include defensive rating. Offensive still counts more, but ONLY because offensive rating is artificially boosted for orbiting ships.

Also, economy is factored in the weakness assessment. Thus you can have zero or near zero military and not be bothered, if your economy is strong enough and you can get some trade going.

Now what you DO need military for, and for which only military will do, is to end the extortion threats. However, if you can pay them, or get the AI's too busy with one another to have time for you, then you can still run no military for quiite some time, particularly if the Drengin are far away.

This is one more reason I like defenders and especially vettes in the early game. Vettes in orbit give more military rating bang for your bc. It doesn't take that many cutouts to avoid falling to the back of the pack on military rating, at least for a while. Still, until you have those PQ boosters in place on all your core worlds, it hurts your growth curve too much to make a military run unless you are going on a rush attack.


Speed is a powerful pick, but I regularly play without it even on huge maps. I find it tough to do so on gigantic, but I've got no problems on anything smaller, so you will learn to adapt. You have all your teammates to help support you.


I see that BamBam has reserved for me the opportunity to lead the first unboosted-sensors SG. :D


- Sirian

Aviator--the variety's the reason why I have not become wedded to any particular strategy (other than I am partial to terror stars :D ). On most maso games, the main decision point in the early game is when to shift from military to research/social; that is, when do you feel you have enough colony ships in space to meet your early expansion needs but not extending too far that you will meet the majors too early. That's at least how I play it, but it's less of a concern on bigger maps. I like to meet majors when my first freighters are nearing their territory.

I have played gigantic with no speed boost--definately a whole different ballgame. As far as grav. acc--I will always build/trade for them as soon as possible. Same with Aphrodisiac.

And yes Sirian--I toyed with the idea of a "journey of the blind" 1st maso SG, but decided that I wanted a bit of an edge here--thus full sensors picks and a move to large map in lieu of medium.

BTW--do you plan on opening the first "blind maso bluff" game concurrent with the release of 1.2? That would be a worthy theme. :lol:

Nota Bene: Team--please hold off on patching to 1.19 on Friday--we want to finish this game in 1.13, hopefully before 1.2 comes out next week.

- Bam-Bam

A chalenge I (often) play:

Never build any military other than constructors, freighters, and colony ships. what you get from white rocks is acceptable, in fact often vital. ;)

So far I've won on all map sizes I've tried up to painful, but only some maps at maso, needless to say its a culture type victory but I turn culture off, so it plays out as a military victory, and although I've never tried this gambit of getting two AIs into a fight, I suppose that would be acceptable in such a scenario.

I suppose that gives insight into my lack of understanding of the nuances of the military. :crazyeye:

We all play a diferent game, that's its beauty. :love:

Aviator

I was going to say if you can't fill the fifth slot then count me in -- but I plan to patch to 1.19 tomorrow and start a new huge/maso game. Ah decisions, decisions. The start DOES look good so far. :goodjob:

I see now that Jaxom may claim the fifth spot, so that makes life simpler. I'll watch this one and add my comments/questions. Maybe I can ghost-write for Jaxom... :lol:

TBC

Pre-turn: Look around at the state of the empire, all is pretty much as expected for this stage of the game. Set up the Kolaz build queue, though we only have 2 things to put into it as of yet, and set research to Comm Theory though we are not spending anything there yet. We have only been sending 100M colonists per ship out of Sol, so the population there is already starting to grow to the point where morale is a concern; Sol is in fact the limiting factor on our taxes. Raise taxes to 40% and set propaganda at Earth to 50% (3bc). This will need to be revisited once we start our social builds and build some PQ/morale improvements; generally speaking we don't want to be spending cash on propaganda at our best planets, but for now this is the best solution to local morale issues there.

Jan: We colonize Quatrale, which gives the following event:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2179ad-Jan01.JPG

I could take a big morality drop for a big production bonus, but I am not interested in that with potentially powerful Altarians right next door; I'd rather stay neutral for now. Still, I'm not taking the neutral path if it has a worse penalty than the good path! A -2% production penalty is trivial, however, and only worth 1 morality point. It will take 6 months for a colony ship, though, and the planet can't really afford the population loss yet, so I set it to build a scout first. The new colony ship heads SE for now toward Dubhe, the double planet system, but I may divert it south if I spot another habitable system in that direction.

I consider sending the surveyor westward to scout the chain of stars heading in that direction; if so the question is whether it turns SW now, or keeps going SE to scout the two planets in that direction (toward Arcean space) first. I don't want to wake up any majors too early, but there's also the question of whether scouting that western chain directly with colony ships and allowing the surveyor to continue outward might not result in better overall intelligence. I decide to scout the two planets to the SE first before turning south (and possibly west.)

Feb: Our cultural borders expand, and we make contact with the Yor. They still seem to be stuck on their homeworld:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2179ad-Feb01.JPG

Our SW-bound colony ship explores Geta, which is useless. Travelling further west would be to travel ever deeper into Altarian-claimed space, so I elect to turn the ship a bit more southward. Our surveyor, however, discovers Betelgeuse, which has a PQ14, and Octavia, which has nothing useful.

March: The Yor have managed to settle a second system. Jotunheim and Nestor have produced colony ships. The Nestor ship launches with 20M pop heading in the general direction of Betelgeuse, while the Jotunheim ship also launches with 20M pop and heads NW into uncharted space north of the Altarians, looking for unclaimed worlds.

April: The Yor have colonized another system, this time to our NW. I also see a Drengin colony ship peeking out of the fog to the SW of our surveyor. It looks like it is heading to Dubhe, and might well beat us. It's 11 moves away, while ours is 13 before taking its move for this turn. If we are lucky and the Drengin don't have/get Impulse engines, we might have a chance... but odds are if the Drengin don't have engines yet, they will soon, so it doesn't look good.

Our Jotunheim ship will require over a year to reach the NW corner of the map. I'm now unconvinced that we can get up there before the Yor & Altarians snag everything worthwhile, and the newly-completed scout out of Quatrale can do a better job of scouting out Yor space. Sol has also completed a colony ship, but there is still a small hope of being able to grab planets to our south. The fact that Altarian influence has not expanded into our territory yet suggests the next sector to Jotunheim's west doesn't contain any PQ15s, so perhaps there's a PQ13-14 there it can snag. Sol's colony ship launches with 20M and heads south, also looking for PQ13-14s.

It looks like we are too far away from everything else too be able to win any more races, and I don't want to settle many PQ13-14s in what looks like it will be pretty deep in enemy territory, hard to defend culturally and militarily. We have 6 colony ships outbound and I doubt we will have that many viable targets for them. I turn off military and start us on research.

May: Bad news...

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2179ad-May01.JPG

The Drengin are now only 8 tiles away from Dubhe, meaning they have impulse engines as expected. We will lose this race. Currently they have only 2 systems, but I doubt we can beat them to anything south of Dubhe, meaning Betelgeuse is a lost cause as well for being too deep in Drengin territory. That doesn't leave many options for our colony ships, though there may be a couple PQ13-14s on the fringes of our space it may be safe to grab. The colony ship from Nestor is now earmarked for PQ13 Sol IV. The NW colony ship has had no luck so far, having found that neither Hatch nor Hyadea have useful planets. Options for our colony ships on the way to Dubhe are very limited, due to the vast expanse of nothingness between us and the Arceans; I turn them SW and hope for somewhere to settle not too far away from our core and too close to Drengin space.

In other news, we research Comm Theory and start on Translators.

June: UT researched, next up is Diplomacy. Some good news: We discover Devoa in Altarian-influence space, which has 2 PQ14s and a PQ13. If we hurry some colony ships in this direction we may be able to claim this system. We will have to fight an influence battle to keep it, but it is right next to a sector with two PQ15 planets of ours so I'm not too worried.

Talk to the Drengin and Yor, to see what they have. Somehow the Drengin are still missing Deflectors! They will surely research them soon, however. At max research rate it will take us at least 3 months to research Deflectors, and another month if we have to research Defense Theory first. Drengin are also missing Comm Theory, though it's not worth much to them -- a 3/99 discount on Defense Theory, for instance. I'm pretty sure that the Drengin can come up with Deflectors within 4 months. What about getting Medical Theory and trading it plus Comm Theory for Diplomacy or Trade? It's worth a shot.

July: The Drengin are suddenly up to 4 systems and have yet to colonize Dubhe. We also meet the Arceans, who have just 2 systems, one in the middle of what soon will be Drengin space! I guess Alva was one tile closer to their homeworld than Dubhe, but Dubhe would have been a better choice for them... In diplo news, now everyone we know has Comm Theory, so I guess no 2-for-1 trade will be possible. Options are research Basic Environment and swap that plus Medical Theory around for Diplomacy/Trade, or self-research Diplomacy first. We will try the former this time as it looks like we have a shot at getting good value for it.

Our SW colony ship spots a 3rd morale resource a couple sectors SW of Sol.

August: zzz...

September: We meet an Altarian freighter heading NE, either for us or for Yor space, and get contact. The Altarians have a nice compact empire of 4 systems, and their pop curve is looking good. It's still looking like the Altarians and Drengin are the top dogs, and both are about equally powerful so far. We will see if that continues to hold as time goes on.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2179ad-Sep01.JPG

We also settle Devoa I (PQ14) and get the following event:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2179ad-Sep02.JPG

I could take a 1-point good or evil shift, but we have both Altarians and Drengin on our border, plus the Yor up north; I don't want to push too far in any one direction alignment-wise for the moment. I suppose I could have taken the good path as a buffer in case we got a PQ event we really did want to take, but enh...

October: It looks like the Arceans beat the Drengin to Dubhe by about 1 turn, good for them! :) Our surveyor spots an influence resource way down SE in Arcean/Drengin space. Otherwise, it's pretty much just moving ships. We get Basic Environment next month, and while the Altarians already have it, none of the others have so much as Medical Theory, so here's hoping something good comes of this gambit...

November: Basic Environment comes in. For sure I want Diplomacy and Trade, after that I'll start looking for other goodies like Phasers, Impulse Drives, and so on.

Arceans have: Cold Fusion, Defense Theory, Deflectors, Industrial Theory, Trade
Drengin have: Artificial Gravity, Cold Fusion, Controlled Gravity, Defense Theory, Deflectors, Diplomacy, Impulse Drive, Industrial Theory, Propulsion Theory, Trade, Weapons Theory
Yor have: Cold Fusion, Defense Theory, Deflectors, Diplomacy, Impulse Drive, Industrial Theory, Propulsion Theory, Trade
Altarians have: Cold Fusion, Defense Theory, Deflectors, Diplomacy, Impulse Drive, Industrial Theory, Propulsion Theory, Trade

Thus, the following trades are made:
Basic Environment, Medical Theory to Drengin for Artificial Gravity, Weapons Theory, 12 IP
Artificial Gravity, Weapons Theory 1bc/7mo to Altarians for Diplomacy
Artificial Gravity, Basic Environment, Medical Theory to Arceans for Trade, Cold Fusion, 15 IP
Artificial Gravity, Medical Theory to Yor for Industrial Theory

I could have gotten more value out of the Drengin if I had been willing to spend 3/99 to upgrade to Controlled Gravity, but am not really sure the results would have been worth it. I might have been able to get Impulse Drive from the Yor if so, but it's hard to say. The deals were getting awfully stingy toward the end. Research set to Nano-metal composition in forever, and several new improvements added to the Kolaz queue. Revolt to Republic. I go back onto military builds to get some freighters out.

December: Ship movement.

Year-end summary:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2179ad-Dec01.JPG

Our last 2 southbound colony ships have explored all the planets along the Drengin border without finding any PQ13-14 planets, though there was a PQ12. These ships each have 100M people onboard and I suppose will have to return to our core. Alternatively they could continue to wander around as scouts, looking for PQ13-14 planets near minors and away from strongly enemy held sectors. We have another 2 colony ships en-route to Devoa with 20M colonists apiece, plus one with 100M sitting next to Sol IV which should colonize as soon as we have pumped out a few freighters. I recommend 2 more months of freighter builds to get us to a total of 5 before colonizing Sol IV and starting our social push.

Our surveyor is heading to the SE corner to look for minors, while our scout is heading to the NE corner. We are building another scout at Devoa for the NW corner, which should also be done right away.

The save file: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2180ad.zip

Good luck, Aviator!

Bam-Bam
Zed-F << just played
Aviator << UP
Isit << On Deck
OPEN

I'm in, more later.

Aviator

and so on

First thoughts:

The land grab is over, we got a lot in the first year and then it fell to zilch as the AIs did their thing. As they are now all travelling at 3 they can cover 3 squares in a year and on ‘large’ that means that anything worth colonising has already got a faster ship heading towards it well before now. Range doesn’t allow us to get to the far flung systems and it probably isn’t worth trying to get a stepping stone in place because its just tooooo late anyway. At least we didn’t come up with a totally dry hole which has certainly happened to me before on these kind of settings.

Our stats show us to have the weakest military and the weakest economy which means that we are already hanging out a shingle saying ‘target’, we haven’t found any minors yet, who are probably scattered in corners with a planet or two each, and we are bleeding cash with no obvious way of replacing it. Right now all the majors are still neutral so all is not yet lost but it doesn’t look good, the two major players have opposing alignments but probably won’t think about taking each other on when there is easy meat like us on the plate. At this level where the AIs get sooo much more bang for every buck they have, and with the abundance of resource they have available, its obvious that they will all easily outstrip us very quickly and would take us out like ants if they declare war in the next few years, my favourite gameplay with speed picks allows me to survive an early war but without it we couldn’t survive.

So strategy has to be to try and avoid looking like the easy meat we are, and not pissing anyone off.

The Dren are likely to turn mean anyway so I think its best to snuggle up to the Alts and hope someone else (Toria?) takes on the Dren, so freighters to Alt and good picks on colonising if available, research towards corvette and see if we can look defended before we get trashed, it will be a while before we can be aggressive if ever.

Start position:
start position (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im002.jpg)
start relations (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im003.jpg)
start economy and military (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im004.jpg)
Jan

Vary spend to get freighter & spare next turn, rest to social & research.

Feb

News : Yor take Diplo Trans
They also expand with a 4th planet to the NE (well they did have 6 colony ships in flight)

And Monkey boy comes knocking with a very big stick.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im005.jpg
I never give in to demands so our relationship goes cool.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im006.jpg
Expected, but I hope that we can stave off war for a little bit longer.

Military to 0, social & research 50:50

Mar

Soil at Sol completed and I never got the what to do next screen, went investigating and found banking already selected then realised, Governors of course! Did it get the right choice I wonder? and look to see that we are on 16bc income with 100 morale and decide that habit or bank would be bank in this instance so leave it (this time).

Apr

:sleep:

May

Get Nano elec research complete and see if we can do any trades.
Dren swap it for propulsion which I take and hope that will keep Monkey boy happy. No one else will deal anything, as we will get Zero grav by the end of the year I leave it and hope for better then.

June

Colonise devoa3 and the Alts send us a freighter.
Then the Yor decide to come knocking.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im007.jpg
And we now have 2 neutral & 2 cool and are looking more like a turkey.


more later.

Continued

July

Colonise Devoa4 and get a morality roll but pick up only 2 points for 52.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im009.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im008.jpg
If it wasn’t for bad luck we’d have no luck at all

Turn down the spend as our economy is right down the toilet (and I can’t see any way out of that) as our freighters won’t make a significant contribution even when they get to their nearest destination sometime next year maybe.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im010.jpg

Aug

zzz

Sep

Altaria gets an Economic Capital
We get soil on Devoa1

Oct

zzz

Nov

Our Hero gets a corvette from a white rock and now we can look fierce. :sniper:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im012.jpg

Dec

Scottlinglas get Econ Capital
We get Zero grav research and tout it about but there are no deals going, nada.
But at least the Alts go Warm !! [party]
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im011.jpg

Jan

Drengin get an Econ Cap
And we finally meet a minor !! it’s the Carinoids. :dance:
And there is at last a tech deal to be done, but its down to someone else.

Here is the final map and the final military and economy.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im013.jpg
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im014.jpg


We are pretty much in the hole (possibly the weakest as everyone else will be growing at 160% of our rate) and the target sign is still up in neon, we just need to keep a very low profile and prey that no-one picks on us for several years.

The game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc_sg3_2181.zip)

Aviator

Not caving in to the Yor was a bad move, it would cost a 1000 gold to fix the relations from cool to neutral, he wasn't asking for that much. Why go looking for war when war will come looking for you soon enough? The ugly Ape was asking for too much, so you did well with him.

Well its never worked for me in the past. :( They just come back a month or two later and bleed you dry, after telling their mates who come knocking as well.:eek:

I've never found a good strategy for handling the blackmail, other than trying not to let yourself get so vulnerable and when once they start to bleed you dry the chance of building back to any kind of strength just isn't there.

Its the second time you refuse them they get pissed off.

Aviator

Yes this is pretty nasty. We are a ways into the red with a weak economy and its a sure bet someone is going to come looking for tribute the moment I load up the game.

My thought is to rush to corvettes or some other combat ship and do a quick military build to get us a bit more competitive in that area and to stop the tribute demands, followed by a social build.

I probably wont have time to play until late this evening so any suggestions you guys want to throw in would be welcome. :)

P.S. aviator99_uk could you please post a shot of our economics screen? It would be nice to know if we can afford to give out a 500 credit tribute when I load the game.

Isit-- I'd deal with the Cari for the pre-cursors to corvettes (and maybe shields) and then do as you sugest and see what happens.

I haven't tried a re-load so best of luck with the first screen.

Aviator

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im016.jpg

Isit, 500 credit will not improve relations unless you buy the diplo.translator first and wait a month for its effect to kick in. But then it still won't be enough to improve relations with the Yor, who owns the diplo.translator.

Aviator, the sooner you get realtion sto warn, the sooner tribute demands will stop, even without any military. If relations are warm, or even friendly, they sometime come for a small tribute and it is always better to cave-in then. Unless you are looking for a fight, then it doesn't matter if relations drop to hostile.

Never managed to get relations anywhere near warm (except by alignment) in any game I've played, until well into the end game when they all seem to be quite friendly. Thats why I found the aliance win in RBGCSG2 mind blowing. Often find myself at war with 1 or 2 or even 3 majors at once and found strategies to cope with that. Caving in to the blackmail just never worked for me :( and I've never found an easy way out of it.:confused: That's why I'm here seeing what others do & why.

Aviator

I usually get out of it by concentrating 100% on building up my economy. At this point of the game I usually forget tech for a while, the only thing I need it for is to sell to Alex. 100% social until Earth has both PQ improvements, bank, entertainment, and maybe a manufacturing center. When I run out of things to build, then I go 100% on research, and not for cheapo techs like Nano Electronics or Zero-G research either -- I go either for more expensive techs like Advanced Diplomacy or Interstellar Business that I can get good value out of trading to everybody, or for something I really need to pump up my economy even faster. I left research on Nano-Metal Composition for a reason -- it enables our manufacturing capital, which will get us in the wonder race once we find some minor cash, and it trades reasonably well.

I'd say trading Nano E for propulsion research was a mistake, since (a) it gives up our monopoly on nano electronics (b) propulsion research doesn't do anything as we already have both techs it leads to, and (c) we can get propulsion theory easily enough from a minor. If you wanted improved relations with the Drengin it has to be a gift, not a trade in his favour, though Nano E is too small to be a meaningful gift.

EDIT: This is of course not to imply that you aren't a good player, we all have stuff to learn. In hindsight I think I ought to have gone Diplomacy->Medical Theory->Basic Environment as it would have only taken 1 turn more but we would likely have gotten a significantly better deal on our tech trades.

Isit -- Forgot to mention Don't worry about the Yor, their economy is bust, they have had no manufacturing spend or technology spend for the last year. (They probably bought the Diplo trans) Which also was probably why they tried strongarming me, the AIs often seem to buy wonders but I've never myself.

Zed-F -- I would agree with the strategy of building up the economy, just don't see how its going to happen. Personally don't do Nano-metal until I can see that I can build a Manu centre and that seems a long way away, and trading it is something I don't do as I hate to see AIs get manu ctrs so early on. (and I rarely push the sliders to 100% one thing or another), but I agree that any diplo research is worthwhile early on which is why I would value it as a pick.

My desire to get the PQs up meant I wanted a lot of social spend and wouldn't have seen Nano metal that year so nothing to trade unless........ Whether the trade with the dren was worthwhile, wasn't sure at the time, just rarely been so hamstrung unable to get anyone to trade anything, probably because our diplo is low, and we haven't found the minors.:(

Aviator

Isit, 500 credit will not improve relations unless you buy the diplo.translator first and wait a month for its effect to kick in. But then it still won't be enough to improve relations with the Yor, who owns the diplo.translator.

I was thinking more along the lines of a demand I would get upon loading the game not a gift. :)

Zed: Your strategy sounds interesting. In most of the Maso games I have lost I have had a strong focus on military and tech. That frequently seems to be a losing game since the AI produces so much faster then you. Looking at the spending screen I agree that our economy needs to be the #1 priority. We could go for tech and military but doing so would so cripple us that it would be a dead end path. I will focus on getting the basic improvements in place and finding the remaining minor races.

To my mind this still seems a bit of a gamble. With no military at all I dont see how we can keep the stonger AI from declaring war. On the other hand I dont see that our economy has the omph to do much of a military run and shifting focus there would put us even more in the red.

Regarding the tribute: I am sure that someone is going to demand upon loading the game but I don’t think we will be able to give it. 150 would put us below –500, which is something we can’t afford to do.

Hey don't call me a good player:nono: I've never managed a maso win on anything over occasional habitability:(, higher than that the AIs just get too big too fast, and I end up in the place we are in now needing to build both economy and military and failing. My strategies have all tended to move away from military to the point where (from the right picks) you play without military and boost the economy, but that's not the pics we have here so I don't know what's apropriate, I'm just muddlin' along.:crazyeye:

Aviator

Putting the sliders to 100% is a good habit to get into in GalCiv. Look at it this way:

Say you need 3 turns to build a key improvement at 100% social production, and 3 turns to research a key tech at 100% research. If you build both simultaneously, you will take 6 turns at 50% social/50% research. OTOH, if you build the social improvement first at 100%, you will get the benefit of that improvement going earlier. Perhaps that improvement will shorten your research time to 2 months, or improve your economy so you can better afford 100% research. The best policy is to put as much as you need to of your economy in one area to accomplish key objectives, and then either save whatever's left over (e.g. if money's tight) or allocate it to a secondary priority. Hence, when I start my social push, everything is going to social to get my colonies up and productive ASAP, and research takes a hike. Improving my economy first, rather than in parallel, means my research will be more effective when I do get there.

One thing to be careful of in SGs is the "I must make an impact in my turn" bug. In Civ SGs, this has been known to be the cause of some of the most disastrous blunders ever made. Don't be afraid to have a turn where nothing really happens, you just quietly build away and keep the empire on an even keel! So what if all you did was build a bunch of social improvements, you didn't research anything or make any tech trades. What you did do was set up the next player with a stronger economy and leave the game in a better position. Even if you did start research, but didn't have time to complete it, that's ok as well, the next player will appreciate the head start on an important project.

As far as building a manufacturing capital early, well I've found it to be a really strong move. I try to build a manu capital as early as possible so I can let my capital focus on wonder building while the rest of my colonies (esp. the PQ13-14s) are growing up. An early manu capital is even more beneficial to your overall growth curve than an early economic capital since it will let you snag more wonders & trade goods.

The techs I prefer not to trade away are those following Nano Electronics that I know the AI won't usually research on their own. Anything the AI will tend to research in fairly short order before they lock themselves into the military tech path is fair game to trade in my books, and that includes Nano metal composition. You might as well trade it if they are going to self-research it soon enough anyway!

As far as building up the economy, the most important things we need for that are (a) Aphrodesiac, and (b) time. Really that's all there is to it -- population is economic power. Trade routes help as well, of course, and minor cash is important for the early wonder race to allow us to snag Aphrodesiac first or at least trade for it. But really at this point it's about making sure our population keeps growing and waiting for the AIs to falter, or doing something to make them falter. If necessary, we can always play the bribe to war card, though I haven't had to do that in any of my solo games yet. If we make sure the Drengin are busy with someone else, they likely will continue to ignore us, however small and juicy a morsel we might be, until we're a bit too big to swallow.

A note: I usually try not to let myself stay in the red very long on maso. The ability to bribe an AI or sweeten a tech deal with a long-term payment is very important, and you can't do that if you don't have any cash on hand. We need to get up to a double digit positive cash balance soon. If that means a couple months of no spending, so be it, but hopefully we can at least get out from under the PQ13 maintenance penalty first.

In general terms, you play the same way without strong diplo/economic picks at this point in the game as you would play with them, it just takes a bit longer to get your economy going and relations normalized. If you are taking a strong military bent on your starting picks, you want war, and you want a navy, but you still have to have an economy that will support it. You always have to prioritize the economy and social development early in the game, or you can't afford to maintain a navy or research useful techs. Remember the AI respects a strong economy as much as a strong military. A few cutouts are helpful, but can wait until your economy is not sucking wind so badly. Our timing in RBGC2-N for building military ships was about right, and this isn't significantly different in maso games -- getting our starting colonies up to the point where we have something worth defending takes priority over building that defense.

The aphrodisiac is overrated. Any planets above 1.7billion pop will grow at the maximum rate at 100% morale. Any planets above 3.4 billion pop will do the same even at less than 100% morale. It takes only 9 turns to go from 1.7 to 3.4, growing 200 million per turns. By the time you are ready to build the aphrodisiac with a reasonable chance of success, most of your planets will be over 1.7 billion pop or close to it.

You are unlikely to build many wonders. The built-in protection against reload will make the AI cash-rush a wonder almost everytime the game is loaded. This "feature" will be quite annoying for a SG.

Zed-- What I meant when I said I rarely put sliders to 100% was simply that if it takes 3 turns to build a widget at 100% move the slider back until it takes 4 slide it on a bit (and some for luck) you still get a widget in 3 but the surplus is going somewhere else where its useful instead of wherever. So sliders to 100% only when it needs 100% to do the job. Not just because, to me that's sloppy play. Same reason why I don't use governors, they lead to sloppy play (opinion).

Otherwise the points you make so eloquently are 'common sense'

Does anyone know where the surplus does go, or is it wasted?

Aviator

PS never gone for manu cap until I had manu ctr and fusion first, (and then you can often get the early wonders in 3 or 4 months), must look and see if there is merit to your play in my play.

Jaxom-- *Aphrodisiac* I agree totaly, never bother with it myself unless I've nothing better to do.

Aviator

The aphrodisiac is overrated.
If so, we just need time. :) Actually, I often have several planets well under that threshold when I build Aphrodesiac as I usually build it first, after a manu capital, using minor cash, assuming Diplo Translators are already gone. The cap is good to know for future reference though.

EDIT - I should mention that since I usually play on med-small maps, Alex isn't hard to find, and thus I can usually get some minor cash sometime during my initial social push. That might not apply at the larger maps you tend to prefer.

You are unlikely to build many wonders. The built-in protection against reload will make the AI cash-rush a wonder almost everytime the game is loaded. This "feature" will be quite annoying for a SG.
Yes, it is annoying, though we managed to build a lot of wonders anyway in RBGC2-N. It's a bit of a crapshoot but there isn't much we can do about it. There are certain wonders and trade goods that are worth going after anyway. Even if I were to agree that Aphrodesiac is not worthwhile, I still would want to make an effort to deny Grav Accelerators to the AI. A speed advantage in wartime is invaluable.

Aviator - I prefer to build manu center after manu capital if possible, of the other two it depends on which tech I get when and how strong my economy is. I use 100% during the initial social push because I don't have a specific planet or small group of planets I want to optimize spending for; I want everyone to build as fast as possible. If I tried to optimize that I'd be putting less than 5% of my funding somewhere other than social, which is small enough not to be worth it. There is also the matter of population growth during production sometimes meaning you can shave a turn off something by using 100% spending, where you couldn't shave that turn using optimized spending. I'll also cash rush buildings that are almost completed for very small sums (e.g. 8bc) in order to save a turn for that planet.

AFAIK, surplus spending above and beyond what is needed to complete an improvement is wasted, just as a planet with an idle queue wastes money. This is not always a bad thing, if there is nothing else available that you want that planet to have.

Originally posted by Zed-F
The ability to bribe an AI or sweeten a tech deal with a long-term payment is very important,


Never done that myself, why's it so important to your play style ?

Aviator

Originally posted by Zed-F
I still would want to make an effort to deny Grav Accelerators to the AI. A speed advantage in wartime is invaluable.

Totaly totaly totaly agree with you there brother.

Aviator

Never done that myself, why's it so important to your play style ?

For one thing, you can give a gift of cash over time to improve relations, preventing you from needing to go to war. Something like a 10bc/99 turn gift may hurt a bit initially depending on how strong your economy is but you can usually make up the lost income quickly enough through population growth and maturing trade routes.

For another, you can bribe an AI to go to war with another AI. This will often mean that an AI that is unfriendly can be diverted to pester someone else and not bother you.

For a third, sometimes there is a tech that you really want for its benefits or its trade value, but you can't quite afford it. A small bct payment over a long period of time can sometimes be enough to get that deal clinched. That alone can be enough to get you to tech parity in some circumstances.

So sliders to 100% only when it needs 100% to do the job. Not just because, to me that's sloppy play.

Agreed that wasting resources is not ideal. However, it is much easier to run 100% spending into one category and dial the spending RATE up and down, than it is to keep the spending rate fixed and split the spending. Trying to finesse the split is painful because the sliders behave fussy when you are doing split spending. You have to go up and move the rate slider a tick to force "accuracy" from the split in terms of getting the readouts to match what the actual spending will be.

Here's what I do. Most of the time, I do not have spending at 100% and still making a profit. If I do, I need to increase capacity: build more industrial improvements, research upgrades, improve the government, or settle more of those PQ12-14 class planets to give me another place to spend the extra money.

If I have no way to increase the spending and I'm STILL pulling in surplus at max spending, then I am probably playing on a Rare or Uncommon habitability. Trust me, on Abundant setting, the trade is a relatively minor factor and you will not be parked at max spending rate all game long unless you skip all the borderline PQ worlds.

When max spending runs a deficit, then you don't want to split the spending AT ALL. You set it to 100% on your focus, and you dial the rate up and down each turn. Use SIrian's Bonus CAlculation Technique to manage research under these conditions, if you have any research bonuses in play. For everything else, you can trust the readouts. On some turns, you won't need to spend as much and you can lower the rate and bring in some extra cash. That cash will go right back out the door on turns where you benefit from spending more than your income can sustain. You have to have the discipline not to overdo the deficit spending, but that comes with practice.

Ideal is to be able to just barely spend all your income each turn. Too much over that, and the extra cash just goes to waste (unless you are saving for terror stars). Too far under, and you are paying for useless production-boosting improvements. Thus it it is usually unwise to build too many research facilities in the late game. If you are unable to sustain research spending at the max rate, you've already got all you can use.

Thus, you seemed to be saying that total spending RATE is untouchable, and therefore keeping spending ratios at 100% is often wasteful. Well, what demands that the spending rate not be changed? That seems to be the point you are missing.


- Sirian


PS: Hey, if this SG wasn't hard, it would not be special. :)

Glory goes only to risk takers. Fortune favors the bold. May fortune and glory grace your efforts.

Sirian--:worship: Use SIrian's Bonus CAlculation Technique available in wallmart? :worship:

Many good points well made, and yes I have played mostly on rare & uncommon and am looking for techniques relevant to the areas I fail in i.e occasional & higher. And I doubt that more than the tech cap has ever got the higher research facilities in late game in any of my last 30 games, and I had come to the conclusion that too many production constructors in too many starbases meant economic death. Not least because you have to scrap the whole starbase!

Aviator

Originally posted by Zed-F
For another, you can bribe an AI to go to war with another AI. This will often mean that an AI that is unfriendly can be diverted to pester someone else and not bother you.

Never tried this myself, RBGCSG2 was the first time I saw this used (by a team mate), and wasn't sure that the resulting 'war' was worth the drain on our economy.

Any evidence of what provoking a war is actually worth(?) as opposed to just handing the cash over directly ?

Aviator

Originally posted by Zed-F

Aviator - I prefer to build manu center after manu capital if possible, of the other two it depends on which tech I get when and how strong my economy is.
There is also the matter of population growth during production sometimes meaning you can shave a turn off something by using 100% spending, where you couldn't shave that turn using optimized spending. I'll also cash rush buildings that are almost completed for very small sums (e.g. 8bc) in order to save a turn for that planet.


Manu ctr is the first tech, and fusion has the 3bc penalty which sometimes just cannot be afforded, so how long does it take and/or cost to go your route?

Couple of good points there which I hadn't thought of.

Aviator

Well, I haven't had occasion to do this recently, but the general idea is that by getting the AIs to beat up on one another, (a) they will be less likely to start a new war with you as the AIs usually don't like being in more than one war at a time if they can avoid it, (b) they will have fewer ships to send your way if they do want to make trouble, (c) you can use the other AI's ships as shelter for your own, and (d) one AI may start blowing up colony ships and transports around the other AI's planets, weakening one of them significantly.

Sorry I don't have any specific anecdotes for you, though of course the team E game is one example.

EDIT: You could look at this link, if it would help, of an old game where I bought wars a couple of times. The first time it didn't have the intended effect, while the second time it did. That might give a little insight into some of the benefits and risks.

http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/thread?forumid=237344&messageid=1072459113

Well, I haven't had occasion to do this recently, but the general idea is that by getting the AIs to beat up on one another, (a) they will be less likely to start a new war with you as the AIs usually don't like being in more than one war at a time if they can avoid it, (b) they will have fewer ships to send your way if they do want to make trouble, (c) you can use the other AI's ships as shelter for your own, and (d) one AI may start blowing up colony ships and transports around the other AI's planets, weakening one of them significantly.

E. You get more trade from the AIs since when they go to war they usually need to redo a few trade routes.

F. The AIs will go to war more often vs. each other once you get them started. If you never buy a war they will still go but I have large and gigantic maps where due to me starting wars early the AI never traded and never stopped fighting. On one map I had an 8 way war going for over 100 turns in the late game. :D

Granted this tends to happen only on huge or larger maps where it’s really hard to wipe out an established AI but it still leads to more AI infighting on the smaller maps. The main question with this is whether its worth the cost or not. On most maso games I have played the cost to bribe them to war is crippling to my economy.

My turns are done but I am going to rest my tired eyes before I put them up. Good info on this thread. I am already learning a lot.
:)

Originally posted by Zed-F
I should mention that since I usually play on med-small maps, Alex isn't hard to find, and thus I can usually get some minor cash sometime during my initial social push. That might not apply at the larger maps you tend to prefer.

For the past 10 games or so, I make do without Alex cash unless I have a very bad start. I don't research much, comm theory, universal translator, med theory, basic environment. Diplomacy and trade I almost always trade for. Unless I am very isolated, I trade for controlled gravity as soon as possible and research interstellar refining. After that, I don't research anything until I have built all the wonders I can. While building wonders, I often buy techs like interstellar business and sensors, sometimes even interstellar marketing, giving me more wonders to build. If a couple a worlds have nothing more to builds, it's not a problem. If many worlds have nothing to build then I will do a 100% run on research until I have some useful buildings to build.


Originally posted by Zed-F
Yes, it is annoying, though we managed to build a lot of wonders anyway in RBGC2-N. It's a bit of a crapshoot but there isn't much we can do about it.

You built many wonders because you had monopoly, or near monopoly on the wonder techs. That will not be the case in a maso game. Nope, there isn't much you can do about it.


Originally posted by Zed-F
There are certain wonders and trade goods that are worth going after anyway. Even if I were to agree that Aphrodesiac is not worthwhile, I still would want to make an effort to deny Grav Accelerators to the AI. A speed advantage in wartime is invaluable.

If I have many pq20+, I will try to get galactic stock exchange first but I often fail on that one. If not, diplo. translator is my first choice followed by gravity accelerator. After that wonders take precedence over trade goods. I put a high priority on the eye of the universe, I hate being in the dark :)

Originally posted by Zed-F
I prefer to build manu center after manu capital if possible, of the other two it depends on which tech I get when and how strong my economy is.

I think it is more efficient to build fusion, manuf center and finally manuf. capital. Fusion planets you pay in full, 50bc. Having a fusion planet built, you set a production iof 22+3 and pay 88 bc for the manuf center. Then you set a production of 33+17 and pay 132 bc for the manuf. capital. If you build the manufacturing capital first, you pay the full 200bc, I don't think the free production will make up for this extra 78bc.

Paying hard cash for starting a war is only worth it if you expect to receive more trade. Starting wars using a marginal tech is very much worthwhile as it lowers relations between the two AI. The Altarian and Drengin will go at each other eventually, but bribing them to fight will make sure they go at each other before taking over your empire. The Yor and Torian might fight each other, but if they connect some freighters, they will not unless you prode them.

Originally posted by Isit
On most maso games I have played the cost to bribe them to war is crippling to my economy.


Just had a look at some old save games where I gave up to see if this might be of any use...... probably worked out why I never use it........I'm trying to get the two AIs you most want to fight to fight ..... Dren and Alt..........and I can't even get the payment screen green if I gave them everything (cash, all planets except sol, ships etc), forever, with all techs and trade goods! and looking at the AIs I could get to fight it just doesn't seem to have any kind of strategic point!

I'll experiment some more but.........
Is it a rare event to be able to get the right AIs to fight or what?

Aviator

Just had a look at some old save games where I gave up to see if this might be of any use...... probably worked out why I never use it........I'm trying to get the two AIs you most want to fight to fight ..... Dren and Alt..........and I can't even get the payment screen green if I gave them everything (cash, all planets except sol, ships etc), forever, with all techs and trade goods! and looking at the AIs I could get to fight it just doesn't seem to have any kind of strategic point!

I play so few maso games that I am probably not the one to comment on this. I have noticed the same thing though. It’s pretty hard to bribe them to war at maso level. It’s much easier at crippling where I usually play. Also if the two majors are already been trading for a while that can make it hard to impossible.

I think its best to buy war early. If you try to do it later the majors will already have trade and better relations built up and you wont have much luck.

Also note that you cant EVER get a major to declare war on a power stronger then them even if you offer them everything you own. Instead bribe the stronger to go to war with the weaker. In your example I would guess that this is your problem.

My goals for this turn:

1. Get our economy back in order

2. Keep the peace


Jan 2181


Sure enough upon loading the game the Drengin Empire stops by for their yearly share of “protection money”. (1000 credits or so if I remember right)

Since paying this would put our economy at forced 0% spending for many turns this is an easy no. We simply can’t afford it even if we wanted to pay them off. That drops them down to wary.

My first priority is going to be getting the PQ improvements up on our planets. Looking at our finances if we switch to 100% social our “break even” spending rate will be at 30%. On our nice money sink of a PQ 13 planet that will get soil enrichment done in 5 turns. I elect to set spending at 55%, which will continue to drive us into the red but will give us some important improvements in 3 turns. After that I will have to drop down spending to get us back in the black.

I am leaving the governor setup as is but I am changing around build orders to give us moral and PQ boosting improvements in those 3 turns rather then banking centers.

Looking at the trade situation we don’t have a monopoly on any techs. The Carnoids don’t have 3 techs we have. They would trade us nano-metal for basic environment control and since all the major’s have this tech I think it’s a good deal to save several turns at full research. We also pick up impulse drive which will up our speed, handy for our freighters and a needed tech for battleships. The final trade is zero gravity, basic environmental and nano electronics for nano-metal, impulse drive and 100 IP.

No other trades look good to me at this point.

Our scout and survey ship are ordered to scout for any more minor races.

Freighter orders are confirmed. I personally would have sent at least one into Drengin space but it would take to long to reorder them at this point. This may work out well if the Altarian end up being a strong race.


Feb 2181


Banking center complete.

More ship movement.


March 2181

We meet a Scotty freighter! It might even be heading to one of our planets.

Habit improvement complete.

Scotty is quite a bit behind on the galactic tech race. We pick up advanced trade, shields and 77 IP. The Yor are also lacking a lot of tech we have but do to their diplomatic translators we can’t get anything good and we don’t have enough to get the translators from them at this point.

Just to get the most out of our new advanced trade tech I give it to the Carnoids for photons, phasers, battle armor, defense theory, controlled gravity and 299 IP. This will allow us to build gravity accelerators at some point and gives us a few turns head start in our military research.

Even with 5 techs the Yor wont budge on the translators. We may have to wait until we can offer some cash to collect them.


April 2181

We meet the last major race, the Torian Confederation.

Habitat improvement done on Nestor II

Soil on Devoa IV

Spending bumped down to a break even point which is now at 35%.

The Torian Confederation brings no new trade opportunities.


May 2181

Habitat and banking center complete.

Relations continue to be tense. With our third trade route open I elect to send one of our freighters in Drengin space to setup a route with them.


June 2181

Ship movement


July 2181

Our first trade route connects to the Altarin Empire. Starting income is 5BC a turn.

Our income is up to 15BC a turn. Playing with the slider there seems to be a “jump” at 31% where one of our projects jumps up by 3 turns. Therefore I set spending to 32% to help bring us out of the red quicker.

A manufacturing center is complete on Earth.

Earth is set to build a manufacturing capital and spending is tweaked up by 1% to save a turn on several projects.

More ship movement.


August 2181

We meet the Alexians!

We are very lucky. The Alexians have almost NO techs. We can trade a large amount of techs for a large amount of cash. I explore a number of options for getting some cash but finally settle on trading them everything they don’t have for 49BC for 50 months. I am not sure if this is the best way to handle this but our economy really needs a boost and none of these techs are items that the majors don’t have.

This gives our economy a massive shot in the arm. I elect not to increase spending for the moment. I feel the next leader will be better served by getting out of this debt then by building a few more improvements.

More ship movement.

The colony ship that found the Alexians also finds a PQ 14 world right next door. The Macedonia seems to be isolated from any other minors and influence in that system is minimal. I decide to colonize it. Our colony ship in the SE is ordered back to our core worlds to put its 100M colonists back onto a world. Our western colony ship continues to head to the NW corner of the map in hopes that there is a PQ 14 or 13 that is isolated from the Yor.

Damn the image limit and on to part two! :D

EDIT: hmmmm my screenshot program seems to have decided to save images with nothing in them. I will have to cut out all my images but the end ones which I can regrab. :cry:

Originally posted by Isit
Also note that you cant EVER get a major to declare war on a power stronger then them even if you offer them everything you own.

It is possible to do that. On maso, it costs between 5000 and 10000 bc or 50 to 100 bc per turn for 99 turns, depending on your diplomacy rating compare to theirs.

It is usually not worth the cost, but I had to do it once or twice when the stronger AI didn't want to fight the weaker one and I wanted to make sure they would not become allies.

Otherwise, it costs between a 1000 and 2000 bc to start a war. This is much less than it would cost to buy a single starbase. :)

It is possible to do that. On maso, it costs between 5000 and 10000 bc or 50 to 100 bc per turn for 99 turns, depending on your diplomacy rating compare to theirs.

Well thats new info to me. Probably not worth it most of the time but with a run away good alliance or something I can see the use. Thanks for the info. :D

Most of time I just apply the bribe to the stronger empire.

September 2181


Entertainment network built.

I tweak our tax rate down a tad to get several planets to 100 moral.

More ship movement.

Our corvette docks at Sol.


October 2181

More ship movement.

We settle Macedonia III.


November 2181

More ship movement.

Our survey ship has been on manual movement collecting anomalies. Our scout colony ship has found some research anomalies to the west by our new colony. I am going to leapfrog anomalies in that direction. When we start up our research push we might want to keep these in mind if they still exist.


December 2181

I tweak spending up to 35%

More ship movement.


January 2181

The united planets meets and votes on the monster space park. I select our empire and surprisingly enough we win it!.

We few more PQ improvements finish.

Game saved and zipped.


Ending notes:

My final map pic got messed up so I will just write it out. It doesn’t show much at this point anyways.

For the moment our economy seems to be picking up. We are dead last in both the military and economy graphs but we have the basic PQ enhancements in and are 6 turns from a manufacturing capital on earth. We have are finally into the black with 100 income a turn at 35% spending.

As far as tech goes we are behind but not by a horrible amount. The AI has gone mainly for a military tech spree so some higher end economic techs might allow us to trade over for military. I will leave the final call on this someone with more experience in meso play then I.

Diplomatically the Yor and Torian are both at cool. The Drengin continues to be wary. The Arcean Empire is neutral and the Altarians are at warm.

Pops on our major planets are getting to be fairly high but many of our smaller planets remain below 1 billion.

Our second trade route will open this turn if the next leader manually orders the freighter to move. Our 3rd freighter is heading down into Drengin space.

All in all things continue to remain stable on most fronts but we continue to be behind the AI in most areas.

The Yor still have the diplomatic translators. Now that we have some cash we might want to look into getting them.

The Drengin still have the largest military followed by the Torians. I would expect another tribute demand from the Drengin on the next load. A refusal will probably knock them down to hostile. We had better hope they don’t demand a star system!

Also, we might explore the possibility of bringing the Torian and Drengin to war. They are close enough to do some damage to each other but if this is worth it or not depends on the cost. I will leave this one as well to someone with more maso experience then I.

The governor lists and research goal will need to be reset by the next leader. Since I was doing things by hand they haven’t been updated and are not setup correctly.

Sorry about the lack of screenshots. I think I know what I did wrong. I hope this writeup illustrates things adequately without them. Let me know if you need any more info to make sense of things

Good luck to the next leader!

The game:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc_sg3_2182.zip

Isit, you have zipped and uploaded the save from 2181, i.e. at the start of your turn.

It should be fixed now. Sorry about that I clearly wasn’t paying enough attention to my directories. :crazyeye: I had uploaded my backup of the starting save for my turn rather then my end of turn save.

Originally posted by JaxomCA
This is much less than it would cost to buy a single starbase. :)

That's also something I've never seen the economic point of. Why buy a starbase for a cripling ammount (?) even the best resource can't be worth it.......... can it?

Aviator

Just looked at the save file to see if I could get any of the obvious AIs to fight each other...........

Failed... Never saw a green screen even giving them the farm for 10000 months.

Someone else like to tell me where I'm going wrong, or why they don't want to fight ? 'cos this is normal for my games.

Aviator

Which ones did you try to get to fight? For example if you were going to go Drengin vs. Torian you would want to bribe the Drengin because they are stronger. If you do that it should just be a matter of offering them money over time. Just set the slider to 99 turns and keep upping the ammount until they bite.

Nope, with our cash the Dren will only go for Torians if you offer planets, just doesn't seem worth it to me.

Aviator

Originally posted by aviator99_uk


Manu ctr is the first tech, and fusion has the 3bc penalty which sometimes just cannot be afforded, so how long does it take and/or cost to go your route?

Couple of good points there which I hadn't thought of.

Aviator

Manu capital is 200pp for a +100% production bonus, while manu center is 100pp for +25% production bonus. Capital is far more bang for the buck and will let you finish off the center much faster. You may not be able to afford fusion plants everywhere, but certainly if you're going to build one anywhere the manu capital is the place to do it, as that's going to be your prime wonder race winner. Paying maintenance on *one* fusion plant is never a problem. The only question is whether it's better to speed up the fusion plant with the capital, or speed up the capital with the fusion plant. Assuming all techs are available, the likely case is that the manu capital will cut fusion plant build time from 2 months to 1, while building the plant first will cut capital build time from about 5 months to 4. In that case I build the capital first to save a few pennies on fusion plant maintenance.

Again, the specifics depend on which techs I pick up when -- i.e. how much research the other majors/minors do that I can pick up in trade. Usually I won't even try to pick up any of these techs until after I have finished soil, habitat, bank, and entertainment on Earth. Getting a manu capital is one of my first goals once I've gotten at least the PQ improvements on most/all of my worlds, however.

If not, diplo. translator is my first choice followed by gravity accelerator. After that wonders take precedence over trade goods. I put a high priority on the eye of the universe, I hate being in the dark :)
Righto on diplo translator, that's always 1st if it hasn't already been taken. In the past I have built Aphrodesiac 2nd and Grav Accelerators 3rd, but that policy will in future depend on where I am relative to the pop growth cap. Of course if I have lots of places building wonders/trade goods in parallel, I'll take as many as possible anyway.

I think it is more efficient to build fusion, manuf center and finally manuf. capital. Fusion planets you pay in full, 50bc. Having a fusion planet built, you set a production iof 22+3 and pay 88 bc for the manuf center. Then you set a production of 33+17 and pay 132 bc for the manuf. capital. If you build the manufacturing capital first, you pay the full 200bc, I don't think the free production will make up for this extra 78bc. [/B]
Don't forget the extra turns of maintenance you pay building the plant and center first. Also, you may not be able to easily tailor your production if you have other stuff you also want to build elsewhere. I suppose which order is best depends on whether cash or turns of production is the priority. I'm pretty sure that going by production-turns, the capital first will win out.

Originally posted by aviator99_uk


That's also something I've never seen the economic point of. Why buy a starbase for a cripling ammount (?) even the best resource can't be worth it.......... can it?

Aviator

Depends on what you are spending, and why you need the starbase. Buying starbases just for the heck of it doesn't make sense unless the race you're buying from is leaving the game anyway (i.e. someone just took their last planet,) in which case you have nothing to lose by selling them tech/trade goods, or even bct for 99 months since you'll only pay one month's worth. This is somewhat exploitative, as it's effectively something for nothing, but it's in the game.

Nevertheless, it can make sense to buy starbases that contribute directly to your planned win condition, especially if they are not in locations suitable for poaching. Buying a lot of research starbases can make going for high tech a lot easier, and if you're going for tech anyway you can usually trade tech for the bases. Buying influence starbases can drastically cut down the amount of work (drudgery) needed for a cultural victory. If you plan to go to war with a major rival with a large mil rating, buying his military resources is a double whammy to his navy and can make life a lot simpler. The fact that you get to keep the modules on the base can save a lot of time building it up. Granted, in the war case, it may be more effective just to take out his bases and replace with your own, but if war is not in your game plan, sometimes there's no other easy way to get ahold of critical resources.

Originally posted by aviator99_uk
That's also something I've never seen the economic point of. Why buy a starbase for a cripling ammount (?) even the best resource can't be worth it.......... can it?

If you are filthy rich, buying a fully mined and defended starbase is well worth the money. But the best buy is getting a starbase from the weakest AI by trading techs the other AIs already have. Then it basically costs nothing for you.

Originally posted by Zed-F
I'm pretty sure that going by production-turns, the capital first will win out.

Probably not because you will have to research nano-metal yourself if you want to build the manuf capital first. If you go the other way, there is a good chance you can buy nano-metal from the AI, maybe even a minor.


I got the save but I can't play until tomorrow. I haven't slept in more than 36 hours due to a bad cold so my current priority is to get some sleep :)

Glad to have you on board Jaxom. :)

Nevertheless, it can make sense to buy starbases that contribute directly to your planned win condition, especially if they are not in locations suitable for poaching.

I only tend to buy influence starbases, either to take them away from a major that has too many or to aid in pulling off the win. They can really add up on the larger maps. I had one gigantic/abundant map I played where I ended up buying 4 starbases. Needless to say once they started taking effect I won pretty quick. :D I do like the idea of buying military starbases though. I will have to try that next time I play a warlike game.

I have bought starbases--mainly for getting a turning point in a culture war, or for a research kick if going for a tech win. Obviously te latter one has not happened too often for me, since I have only won one tech game (which I reloaded after puking over the score).

Wow--I stay away from the boards for a half a day, and this SG turns into a clone of the endless discussion SG crew from RBP6. All we need is Charis to pick up GalCiv, and well have 30 posts between turns. :p

I could see some concern after our economy was in the tank, and we were getting fleeced. We look to be in good shape. Would have been a longer crawl without finding Alex, but now we have a nice source for economy boosts while we get our trade network going.

I have to agree with Jaxom on the production improvement order--I almost always go fusion-manu center--manu capital. I like the free production bonus helping out the bigger builds.

Ok--some team business

Roster

Bam-Bam (on deck)
Zed
Aviator
Isit
Jaxom (UP) Get some :sleep: man!

Originally posted by JaxomCA


It is possible to do that. On maso, it costs between 5000 and 10000 bc or 50 to 100 bc per turn for 99 turns, depending on your diplomacy rating compare to theirs.

It is usually not worth the cost, but I had to do it once or twice when the stronger AI didn't want to fight the weaker one and I wanted to make sure they would not become allies.

Otherwise, it costs between a 1000 and 2000 bc to start a war. This is much less than it would cost to buy a single starbase. :)

Which begs the question, of the several bribe options:

1) ~1000bc for improved relations
2) ~10bc/99mo for the same (but is it really?)
3) ~10-20bc/99mo to start a war

Which is the better move? I know this choice is situation specific, but I'd like to see the thinking process.

Be seeing you...

---> TBC (Them Bribery Choices)

I would never pay cash up front in the early game, and probably not later either, so (1) is out.

I haven't tested bribing for improved relations vs. bribing to declare war at all, let alone extensively. Someone who has played more games than I would have to give general guidelines on that score. I will say that you want to watch out for one AI becoming a runaway when formenting wars.

Probably not because you will have to research nano-metal yourself if you want to build the manuf capital first. If you go the other way, there is a good chance you can buy nano-metal from the AI, maybe even a minor.
Well, I did say depending on which techs I got in what order... :)

TBS, if you let relations deteriorate, you are more likely to face tribute demands. I figure it's better to pay the tribute before somebody comes knocking. If I have a big treasury and a budget surplus, I prefer to pay cash upfront. Otherwise I pay over 99 months. I always improve relations to friendly with most civs before considering starting a war. Paying cash over 99 months to start a war is generally a bad idea since the war won't last that long and you may need to start another one. I usually wait until I have a decent technologic lead before stirring up troubles. I never research the goverment techs since the AI always gets them before me, but as soon as one AI discovers Star Democracy, I buy it and take a closer look at what kind of troubles I might create with it.

I managed to grab a couple hours of uneasy sleep, I should turn in my report before the end of the day.

Preturn: Upon loading, Lord Kona shows up for his annual human bashing event.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3_2182_visit.jpg

Let me think about it, hmmm…, NO! He leaves in a very hostile mood. If nothing is done this year, he will declare war on the next reload.

I take a look at the governor's queue and push habitat ahead of banks, remove manufacturing center from the list and add economic exchange. We can't currently support extra capacity but we could use more cash. I notice we don't have interstellar refining so I set 100% research at 50% spending to get it in two turns.

My predecessor, President Isit, did a fine job of getting us out of the red, time to put us back into the red. :D Seriously, here is the diplomatic situation:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3_2182_diplomacy.jpg



January

The Yor owns the diplomatic translators and are lacking many techs. There is even a few techs I could acquire which they don't know. Let's see what they want for the trade good: all our techs plus 31 per month for 99 months won't cut it. Now a big decision has to be made. If we take a military path, we can do fine without the diplo translator. But we will be at war with the Drengin at the beginning of the next year and I think it's too early to take them on. If we take a more peaceful path, getting the diplo translator is a must, and now is the time to get it will the Yor lacks many of the techs we know. I decide to take us down a peaceful path and buy the translator at all cost. A visit to the various minors for a trading round:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3_2182_trade1.jpg

I take hard cash from the Alexians because I need a bigger treasury NOW to have the ability to close the deals. This lets me find out that the Yor wants 137 per month for 99 months for the diplo translator, hmm, expensive! The price drops to 96 for 99 months if I include all our techs, so this is what I do and close the deal. I could do more trades, but I might as well wait one turn for the diplo translator effect to kick in.

A quick check of the military projects shows a couple of small planets building freighters. I change this to constructors and change Earth to freighter. I prefer to have all my freighters come out of the best planet. In this game it is even better than usual, since there is a resource on each side of Earth's sector. If we grab these, we can build trade modules in the starbase at no extra costs. So Earth should build nothing but freighters until we have at least 10 of them, maybe even 15.

There is a colony ship heading for Earth with 100 million colonist. Earth is already at 60 morale, so these colonists won't make a difference. I re direct the colony ship to scout in the SE.

There is a freighter about to connect to an Altarian planet, we already have one trade route with them so I re direct this freighter to Yor's space. We can set straight lines trade routes with the Altarian, the Yor and the Alexians, I think we should do it and eventually build trade starbases along the way.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3_2182_freighters.jpg

The red lines indicates what should be our first 5 trade routes. The small brown square indicates where we should build trade starbases. If we do build trade starbase toward the Altarian, then obviously all further freighters after the first 5 should be sent that way. We could also setup a straight line trade route with the Alexians and send all our trade there. But the Alexians have a tendency to easily succumb to culture so they don't make good long-term trade partners.

After this extensive housekeeping, President Jaxom is finally ready to take office.

February

The Arcean builds the Galactic exhibition, hmm, that's bad. There are a couple of pq 14 in Arcean space I had planned to settle, but now they are very likely to flip away so settling them will have to be delayed. A drengin freighter connects to Earth, 2 more are visible in that area, as well as one each from the Scotts and the Carinoids. Looks like our economy is about to get a serious boost.

Time to do some real tech trading, here goes!

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3_2182_trade2.jpg

I then sold each tech individually to the Alexians for a total of 68 bc per month for 50 months. When selling for cash, it is better to sell each tech individually as this will bring in more cash overall.

Now time to fix some relations. Giving cultural trade to Toria raise them to warm, giving cultural trade+corvette tech+warp drive+energy channeling to Yor brings them to warm too, gosh I was hoping for friendly. I could give some techs to Altaria to try and raise them to friendly, but our trade and alignment will be enough to do that. I have nothing to give to Arcean or the Drengin, so I give the Drengin 6 bc over 99 months and they are now wary. Hmmm I can't give more right now, but I will have to find more gifts for the ugly ape before my turn is over.

We are now even in tech with Toria and the Drengin, and down interstellar tactics on Arcean and Altarian. We have a few techs the Yor and the Altarian don'T have, so more trading opportunities may arise.

March

Another Drengin freighter connects with Earth and we discover interstellar refining. I open up Earth to find out we don't even have the entertainment network built. That is bad, very bad. I thought our morale and population was low for this stage of the game, but since I often have morale picks I figured that it was a normal situation. While some may disagree on the build orders for the manufacturing enhancements, the entertainment network should be build ASAP on Earth, even before the pq enhancements. Taxes and morale are always limited by Earth for the first 10 years. I now schedule the entertainment network and adjust spending to get it next turn at 100% social.

Research is set to Trade organization for now, but with 0% spending it will not progress. I do that so I don't have to micro manage the Hero. If he picks up research anomalies, they will be useful.

The Altarians are now neutral, so I gift them anti-matter and warp drive and get them back to warm.

April

Entertainment completes on Earth, schedule fusion power planet. I adjust spending to get a slightly negative balance, since our income will now grow through trade, and adjust military and social spending to get the plant in two turns. This will get us a freighter in 4 turns.

May

A gift of 11 bc over 99 months raise the Drengin to cool. Cool :)

June

Fusion plant built, schedule manufacturing capital and adjust sliders to get a freighter out next turn. We could have 4 trade routes but have only 3 freighters in flight. I check all planets for propaganda and find Earth is spending 4bc/month. This is useless now has Earth is well pass the cap on pop growth. I do add propaganda on our two worst planets, this let me raise tax rate to 40% with 100% morale everywhere but Earth. We now have a positive cash flow.

July

Many manufacturing capitals are built across the galaxy. An Altarian freighter connects, good. Spending raised to 85% to a slight deficit, sliders adjusted to get the capital as soon as possible, that is in 2 turns. The newly built freighter is sent toward Arcean space.

I acquire turbo phasers from Altaria for interstellar refining and 11 over 99 months (the drengin broke our monopoly on interstellar refining). I sell turbo phasers to the Alexians for 10 bc over 50 months.

August

The Scotts complete a galactic stock exchange. Oh well, better a minor than a major. The Drengins are now neutral so the trade boost to relations has kicked in. Good, we should be ok with the Drengin for the time being, specially since we have a freighter heading their way. The Torians have dropped to neutral, I give them turbo phasers and they are back to warm.

Our scout spots a pq14 in the NW near Carinoid space, a colony ship is directed that way. I create way points near each of the pq14 I can see, so when you build a colony ship, pick the most convenient one way point to get the colony ship there. Note that two of them are within Arcean space, who built the Galactic exhibition, so we don't want to settle these until we have some influence bonuses.

September

The manufacturing capital completes, schedule Grav accelerator. Raise taxes as much as we can tolerate, 100% social, spending at 83% to complete the project in 5 turns. This leaves a slight deficit of 15 bc per month, but this deficit should disappear as our freighters connect to their destinations.

The Torians have dropped to neutral again, drats! Ok, the freighter heading for Arcea is diverted toward Toria. The next freighter should head for Arcea. The Drengins have picked up intestellar tactics and defensive phasers.

The SE colony ships spots another pq 14 between arcean and torian space, hmm, might be a risky place to settle for now, I will let the next leader decide.

October

Darn ET, Toria builds grav. accelerator. Earth switches to economic capital since there are no other important trade goods. ET want 24 bc over 99 months for the trade goods, too expensive for now. The next leader should watch for a good tech trade opportunity to lower the price.

The Scotts have a gift for us! They have picked up interstellar tactics and agree on a trade for all our techs. Too bad the Alexians are now broke, could have made some nice cash there. We are now even in techs with everybody but the Drengins, who have picked up sensors now, and we have many techs ahead of the Yor.

November

A research anomaly removes 25% off the research cost of Trade organizations.

December

The economic capital completes, embassy scheduled to complete next turn. The next leader will get to build one of the remaining trade goods.

January 2183

The Altarians build frictionless clothing, only aphrodisiac and tri-strontium steel are still available. I set Earth to economic exchange and adjust spending to get another freighter next turn.

I suggest completing the freighter then do a 100% research run to get Trade organizations in 6 turns. That will give us a good value trading tech to acquire the trade goods built by the AI.

Toria dropped to cool, not cool. Altaria is up to friendly, that's good. Drengins are neutral but this should raise a bit as they have at least 2 trade routes with us and we have one connecting soon. The Yors are warm, we have plenty of possible gift if needed and a freighter will connect next turn, so this relationship is now stable. The Arcean are neutral and we have nothing to give them. The next leader should look for an opportunity to improve this to warm, maybe using Trade organizations.




A look at the map:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3_2182_finalmap.jpg

FT indicates freighters currently in flight. The green squares indicates available pq 14. Note there is already a colony ship en route to the NW pq 14. There is also a colony ship in the SE corner, it can still scout a little before heading for one of the pq 14. I don'T know if we should settle the one between arcea and toria, might be a flip risk.


And here is the save. (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3_2183.zip) Good luck!

Interesting..............

Many, many points I don't understand about your play style, not that it may not be appropriate for the position we are in. :) (only said that 'cos of the way you flamed me earlier)

You'r placing a lot of emphasis on building relations to (presumably) avoid war at all cost it seems; as I'm sure we all know it is relatively trivial to 'defeat' the (stupid) AI in a war if you have a speed superiority, and we don't have a speed superiority in this game; so I must bow to greater experience, never having been in this kind of position (vulnerable in a war) at least for as long as I can remember, but I have to wonder if it can ever work in the long term......

And you place an amazing (to me) ammount of priority in freighters and trade with majors, (is this pacifist or economics?) when they always seem to me to have big drawbacks (probably because I'm at war with majors most of the time) and they always seem to get more out of trading with you than you get out of trading with them, I mostly trade with minors and spend a lot of effort making sure the minors don't get defeated by a major,( I often give minors dreadnought tech for free, whereas I wouldn't give a major the parsley off last Friday's fish). I only allow trade with a major in the end game when its nice to hit the embargo button and see the guy die.;)

A deeper explanation of the thinking behind this (to me unusual/unorthodox/bizzare) strategy would be much appreciated.

Crying shame about the Grav acc. 'twas my last hope.

Aviator

The start of the turn--testiment to Jaxom's relations-improving reign. :goodjob:

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2183a.jpg

We have positive cash flow @ 80% spending, even with 140bct heading out the door (and 126bct coming back in). Trade income is starting to improve, so all in all, we are in a reasonable postion. Drengins and Arceans are neutral, Yor warm, Alterian friendly, and Torians cool. Time to cozy up to ET. Looks like economic exchanges are the order of the day--since I agree with Jaxom on their value vs. three other improvements--we'll stay here for a bit until it is time to research Trade Org.

January

Surveyor goes back to auto-survey, and the colony ship in Torian space busts some more fog.

February

Earth completes its freighter--spending set to 100% social. Freighter sent to the Arcean planet recommended by Jaxom. Freighter connects to the Yor.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2183b.jpg

Colonize Arcturus (PQ14) in the northwest by Carinoids. Get a morality event

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2183c.jpg

I see no value in moving either way, so I picked the modest bonus, staying at a morality of 52. The Torians connect a freighter--that should help relations.

March

The only major with whom we do not have active trading is the Arceans, our 3rd freighter is a month or two from monkey-boy, and the freighters heading to Arcea and to Toria will likely connect either at the end of my year or the beginning of Zed's year. The Yor connect a freighter, and the Torians complete Tri-Strontium Steel trade good.

April

Macedonia gets cable TV. The new trade routes allow me to bump up spending to get Earth's Economic Exchange done one month quicker, while staying in the black. Monkey-boy builds Eyes of the Universe.

May

Earth completes its economic exchange and starts aphrodisiac. I know this one is not the best trade good, but its the only one left, and I want to finish a couple of builds. Our SE colony ship finds a PQ14/13 right next to the Torian econ/manu capital. I am not ready to settle here yet until we have a bit more influence boost. Our surveyor picks up a +1% econ anomoly. Connect a freighter with Monkey-boy, and the Torians send us another freighter.

June

Arcturus completes Soil.

July

Nestor II completes an econ exchange.

August

Jotunheim II--econ ex. I had spotted a spatial anomoly--sent our surveyor that way, and get this reward.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2183d.jpg

That's 50% of trade orgs for free.

September

Last kid picked completes.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2183e.jpg

Nestor II gets an embassy, Quatrale II an econ exchange, and Arcturus habitat.

Spending shifted to 82% reseach to Trade Orgs., due in four, with remaining to social. I put one click to each civ on esponiage, since we are over 80bct in the black at 100% spending. We get a freighter from the Alexians, and then we get this news.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2183f.jpg

That should keep ET off our back.

October

Our surveyor picks up two +5% espionage events.

November

Yawn

December

Yawn

End of Year 2183

Trade orgs. learned. Take a look at what's available for trade.

The Alterians will part with Interstellar Business and Marketing for Trade Orgs and 3bct for 85 months. We can get defensive phasors, high density metals, and Interstellar Business from the Scotties for Trade Org. So I recommend trading with the Scotties first, then Alterians, so that we do not have to shell out any cash. Both the Drengins and Alterians have Battleship tech, but the others have bubkus (Torians have Def. phasors and sensor on us). The trades should open up our ability to buy grav. acc. and tri-strontium from Toria, as well as maybe a gift to boost relations. Yor and Arcea have NADA on us--same with the minors. Monkey boy has sensors and Instant communication, both of which we can get from him for Trade Org.

So I suggest trading with Scotties, Alterians, and Drengin, then Torians. That should give us lots of tech to barter with Toria for the trade goods and improved relations. We can then gift to Arcea and Yor if/when needed.

We are in great shape here. The only tech we should be down after the trading should be battleship tech. After the tech trades, we can research Interstellar capitalism for stock markets, and then build the Restaurant and ultra spices. We should then look to putting some cutouts up, as most of the AI will have battle ships by then.

Here is what the map looks like.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2184map.jpg

Autopiloted ships are the freighters heading to Toria and Arcea in the Souteast, the scout in the north, and the surveyor on autopilot. The highlighted ship is a colony ship busting fog until we get some influence boost to settle in Torian or Arcean space. I have done NO bribing, and the relations have not changed. Altarians are friendly, Yor are warm, Drengin and Arceans are neutral, and the Torians are cool. Sliders and research target will need to be adjusted after the tech trading. Right now we are 132bct in the black at 100% spending.

Maso-trading time! (http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2184ad.zip)

Got it, will hopefully have some time tomorrow.

Just to follow up on Jaxom (and he can speak more on it) and my strategy here.

I almost never send my freighters to minors. Why? I play maso, larger maps, and relations are key. I want to keep the AIs off my back, which lets ME pick when I want to either go to war, culture push them, or blow up their planets with terror stars. I also love to poach like crazy when the AIs are bashing each other's heads in. The poor sap who is down on his luck will feel the brunt of my combat transports :hammer: I build lots of excess freighters (though I neglected that on my turn here--oops) so that I can activate trade with other majors (or minors) if I find my routes interupted by war (or if I lose 5 planets to the fundies :mad: )

Jaxoms straight-line philosophy is to build all freighters out of your best planet, then line up trade starbases along the route(s). This has tremendous economic potential, and only 10bct per starbase. Maxtipherous used to do this exclusively with a local route to a minor.

Another reason I do not trade with minors--I like to poach them after their initial trade value withers. Once past battleships, there is usually only one minor that keeps up on tech (maybe) with the leaders. The rest are just :scan: targets. :lol:

Good relations also helps with demands, and makes the AIs more inclined to send their freighters your way.

Also, if I remember correctly, one of Jaxom's favorite non-culture push, non-terror star military technique is to ally the galaxy against the dominant AI--kill them, then rinse and repeat.

I find for larger maso games, and tougher maps, that keeping out of unnecessary wars is the key for me. War is then declared on my choosing, with minimal impact to my economy, but perhaps devistating impacts to the AI economy. I also play out nearly every map I start, so I have had a couple of VERY rough games (have you ever heard the "losing" soundtrack in the game?) that I have had to scratch and claw to avoid a war. I am deliquent in writing an after action report to a great game I had, where I probably shelled out a half a million bc to keep a runaway AI from crushing me like a beer can until my culture overwhelmed the galaxy.

None of this means I am a better player--just that some of us may have seen some different in-game conditions where lots of warring with the majors early is not the norm.

I repeat--we are in an outstanding position here. The AI-AI wars should be kicking up a notch (I expect one between the Drengin and Alterians to start soon), so we can poach some resources and start to figure out how we would like to win the game.

- Bam-Bam

Originally posted by aviator99_uk
Interesting..............

Many, many points I don't understand about your play style, not that it may not be appropriate for the position we are in. :) (only said that 'cos of the way you flamed me earlier)


Huh? When did I flame you?


Originally posted by aviator99_uk
And you place an amazing (to me) ammount of priority in freighters and trade with majors, (is this pacifist or economics?) when they always seem to me to have big drawbacks (probably because I'm at war with majors most of the time) and they always seem to get more out of trading with you than you get out of trading with them, I mostly trade with minors and spend a lot of effort making sure the minors don't get defeated by a major,( I often give minors dreadnought tech for free, whereas I wouldn't give a major the parsley off last Friday's fish).


That is an economics priority. The sooner the freighters connect, the sooner you reach 100% spending. That is also a tick from playing gigantic maps all the time as I do, it can take years and years before a freighter reaches its destination so I build at least 5 of them before starting the social push. Sending one freighter to each major may help each of them a bit more than it helps us, but it stabilizes relations so you rarely have to give them anything to stay on good terms. This doesn't mean we can't get into wars, it means we get to choose who, when and where we get into war. Letting relations deteriorate until the AI declare on you means the war might start when you have other priorities and are not ready to effectively fight them. Sending more than one freighter to a major is not necessary. In my games, I usually send the remaining 10 freighters to the strongest minor. Why 10 if I already have 5 trade routes? Well over time you may loose some trade routes to the majors, which you can instantly replace by one of the freighters near the minor. 10 freighters costs 500bc to build, same as 1 battleship.

As I stated in the report, if we are going a pure military path, then the diplo translator was not necessary and I would not have spent a dime on improving relations if I had choosen that path. I chose the peaceful path, thus buying the diplo was a must, so was buying up better relations. Once the AI is at warm or better, tribute demands become far less frequent even if you have zero military.

Now if you read carefully what I did to raise relations, you will find that I didn't spend much money on it. I mostly gave techs, dishing out 6bc for 99 months on the Drengin since they had all the techs already and were already hostile to us. If you keep the techs to deny them to the majors, they get all of them anyway before long, and you get nothing out of the techs.


Originally posted by aviator99_uk
Crying shame about the Grav acc. 'twas my last hope.


Nothing is stopping us from buying it from Toria. Sure we won't have a speed advantage on them, but we will have one on all the other AIs.

Bam-Bam, I understand it is proper SG etiquette to leave end of turn trades to the next player but this may not work too well in Galciv. All the AIs will enter a trading round when the game is loaded so many opportunities will be lost.. I wanted to mention this in my report, but I forgot about it while playing my turns. :)

...just that some of us may have seen some different in-game conditions where lots of warring with the majors early is not the norm.

The best part of playing a game like is that you get forced into situations that you might not ever get into during your normal style of game. I tend to go for an earlier military build up then most you seem to do. This may be a factor of map size/maso level but I have used it on gigantic maps before and I look forward to trying it out on some larger maso maps. :D

That being said I have learned a whole new style of game from this go around. A largely military free early game is totally new to me but I am eager to learn it.

(only said that 'cos of the way you flamed me earlier)

I haven’t seen anything but a (very) spirited discussion of various play styles. I take this game as an opportunity to learn a new style of play. Maybe next time around we can show these pacifists a more military style of play. :ar15:

I think the bottom line is that by playing in a different style then you normally do you get a chance to improve your game and learn a few tricks you can use regardless of style. :)

It's not about pacifism.

Maybe next time around we can show these pacifists a more military style of play.


I think Bam-Bam is far more incline to the military style than I am. He does understand the importance of building a strong economy before going all aggressive. It is even more important at maso difficulty. The AI gets tons of bonuses so even if you research straight to the basic military techs, the AI will get there way ahead of you and will have built many ships before you get your first one out. The AI will have more population, making early invasions a costly business.

That is the strong suit of Galciv, early aggression doesn't payoff. Sure you may cripple or even kill off one major civ, but you will fall behind all the other majors. In too many games, early aggression is key to victory, I am glad it is not this way in Galciv.

I think Bam-Bam is far more incline to the military style than I am. He does understand the importance of building a strong economy before going all aggressive. It is even more important at maso difficulty. The AI gets tons of bonuses so even if you research straight to the basic military techs, the AI will get there way ahead of you and will have built many ships before you get your first one out. The AI will have more population, making early invasions a costly business.

I do agree that an early military rush will cripple you later. I don’t think I have ever gotten one started before battleships and I certainly wouldn’t suggest pushing ahead before you have a strong economic base to work with. Its probably not early aggression in any sense other then that its the earliest I can do it!

I find a military conquest makes for a very interesting game. It frequently involves going deep into the hole in the hopes that you can capture and hold enough systems to put you in the lead once your pop grows back.

In my typical maso game at the point we are at I would be going for battleship tech. I find that if trades are well handled you can even beat most of the majors to battleship tech. Once I got that I would focus on building enough battleships and transports to take a good bite out of a hostile empire. While I am building up my combat fleet I would focus on getting most of the other AIs to declare war on my target. ( Or my target on them.) Once I take 2-3 systems out of a major it would be a slugfest for a number of turns while I seek peace. Most of the time the price for peace is very high and I need to blow up most of their fleet in order to make them see reason. Clearly without a strong economy the game would be over at this point.

In the end I end up with a horrid economy and behind in several key techs but given a few turns to build back my pop I am typically in good shape with several new PQ 20 level planets to grow into. After building back up I typical grab dreadnaught tech and repeat. After a few rounds of this my empire is so much bigger then any of the AI's and my active fleet so much larger that I can keep them at bay while I repopulate and play catch up on social building and research, even if they have a generation lead on me in warship tech.

I can’t say for sure if this would prove effective on this map and in this situation but I have found this strategy to work well on tiny-medium meso games.

It is also a strategy that works better when you have a runaway AI. It’s a lot harder to do when most of the majors are at an even level. If however, one major seems to be dominating to the point where he outstrips everyone else this strategy seems to work well. Caught in a 3-way war and just having lost several key systems and a good chunk of their pop can bring a runaway civ to its knees. The last maso game I used this in the Torian's had more then double my pop and 6 planets to my 2. ( I really shouldnt have brought the Yor into it as a distraction when a UP vote just got them a PQ 18 between the Torian's two main systems. ) :crazyeye:

I am not sure if this is something that you would classify as early aggression or not. Regardless, we are well on our way to a much more peaceful victory in this game. :)

Ah, nope, battleship is not early aggression :)

By early aggression I meant, get impulse drive for transports and corvettes for ship busting.

Originally posted by JaxomCA
Not caving in to the Yor was a bad move, it would cost a 1000 gold to fix the relations from cool to neutral, he wasn't asking for that much. Why go looking for war when war will come looking for you soon enough?

Felt warm to me......... maybe I'm just sensitive.:)

My play style has been badly corrupted by exploiting the AIs speed weakness. Sitting pretty with the knowledge that my entire empire can be made invulnerable by a handful of sensor drones or scouts is obviously exploitative but so again is buying goods from the grave and knowing what the AI is going to research. Stupid AI :lol:

Main reason why I'm here is to see how others cope with maso without the speed weakness. Which I agree does make winning on the very big maps fairly formulaic in execution which is why I haven't done the very big maps for a long time.


Aviator

Sorry you took that as a flame, it was not intended that way. Maybe I should have added "in my opinion" somewhere in there.

A flame it was not, a critic it was. :)


:eek:

Who's playing Jedi mind trick on me? :mutant:

Accepted.:) Still believe (in my opinion) it was a valid play though, and I sure haven't quite got my head round why everyone seems woried about being at war, just what is everyone's problem with it ?:wallbash:

Aviator

Preturn, 2184AD:

I wish Bam-Bam had pulled the trigger on trades before finishing his turn, as I expect the trade situation will look quite different from what it was when he ended his turn due to extra AI trades. We shall see.

Arceans: We are up Trade Org, Interstellar Refining. Nothing to trade back.
Yor: We are up those plus a couple more. Nothing to trade back.
Torians: We are up Trade Org, down Def Phasors & Sensors.
Altarians: Up Trade Org, down Battleship, HD Metals, Interstellar Business, Interstellar Marketing
Drengin: Up Trade Org, down Battleship, HD Metals, Def Phasors, Instant Communications, Sensors
Scotty: Up Trade Org, down HD Metals, Interstellar Business, Def Phasors
Carinoids: Up a few techs, nothing to trade back.
Alexians: Up a few techs, nothing to trade back.

We are lucky, that sounds a lot like the way it was before the save/load. Nevertheless, I think I can do better than Bam-Bam's proposed trades; I think we can get Frictionless Clothing from Altarians as well if we trade them the Drengin techs too.

Trade Org to Drengin for Def Phasors, Instant Communications, Sensors. (Forgot IP)
Trade Org, Instant Communications, Sensors, Aphrodesiac to Altarians for Interstellar Marketing, Frictionless Clothing, 165 IP. Altarians are already at the pop growth cap on all planets, so Aphro should do nothing for them.
Trade Org to Scotty for HD Metals, Interstellar Business, 1435 IP.
Trade Org, HD Metals, Interstellar Business, Interstellar Marketing to Torians for Gravity Accelerators, Tri-Strontium Steel, 10 IP.

I could gift Torians Aphro and Instant Comms and hope for a relations improvement, but I think I will hold off until closer to the end of my turn. Research set to Interstellar Capitalism, due in 3+1. I also want to pick up Nano-Frequency electronics for Multimedia centers. Adjust the governor list to re-add secondary priority projects to the list; there's no reason to leave these off the list entirely.

-----

Q1: We hold a vote & win 73 seats. Bust some fog with our colony ships. Otherwise, I've been working on the research projects...

Q2: Relations with Torians are now up to warm! :) Possibly due to our recent trades, or trade routes kicking in. Our own freighter to Toria arrives, which should help relations as well. Our freighter to Arcea also arrives. The Altarians smell blood and declare war on the Arceans. We get a free scout from an anomaly, discover Interstellar Capitalism, and start on Stock Exchanges at several worlds, while investing a small amount into Nano-Frequency Electronics.

Q3: We get a Trade report, we are 2nd behind the Altarians in total trade. Nano-Frequency Electronics comes in & Media centers get added to the build queue. We have several choices from here as to what to research. I set research to Conglomerates in case we pick up any research anomalies, but turn research off. The Drengin have eliminated Alex's defenders, but no sign of a transport yet. We should be wary as our colony at Macedonia could be vulnerable to being flipped if the Drengin capture Alex's homeworld. We may want to build a transport or two to take the planet first, but timing will be crucial as we don't want to end Alex's tribute payments prematurely. We find a PQ13 up in the NE corner of the map a fair distance away from the Yor's closest planet, so I send our eastern colony ship (which hasn't found any better place to go and has explored all the stars in its region) in that direction.

We have an income of 240bc more than we can spend. I think it's time to bump up the priority of production improvements.

Q4: Earth completes stock market and has already finished an Antimatter plant. I could build a Media Center, but decide to go for the Restaurant instead. We lose our trade route from Alex to Drengin piracy. Torians and Yor make peace. Drengin builds a political capital, which alerts me to the fact that they have Star Democracy. The Torians also have Star Democracy, but the Altarians don't. I don't want to trade away any of our monopoly techs and give the AI the ability to build more morale improvements, but we have a large income surplus right now which we might as well make use of.

Torians have: Alliances, Battleship, Gravity Mastering, Star Democracy.
Altarians have: Advanced Diplomacy, Advanced Engineering, Alliances, Battleship, Exotic Alloys, Gravity Mastering, Tristrontium Alloy.
Drengin have: 1D Phasing, Alliances, Battleship, Exotic Alloy, Gravity Mastering, Star Democracy.

Trading time:

To Torians: 29/99 bct for Star Democracy.
To Altarians: Star Democracy for Tristrontium Alloy, Advanced Diplomacy, 130 IP.
To Drengin: Advanced Diplomacy, Tristrontium Alloy, 12/92 bct for Exotic Alloys, 1D Phasing.
To Torians: Exotic Alloys and Tristrontium Alloy, 8/0 bct for Gravity Mastering and Alliances.

We are now at tech parity other than Battleships. Government is switched to Star Democracy. Restaurant of Eternity is due next month, and can be followed up with Ultra Spices. If it were me, research-wise I'd go for Interstellar Negotiation -> Extravaganza for Stadiums next, but that's up to the next players. We also have several wonder techs available that could be grabbed, such as Brain Wave Mapping, Nanobots, and Xeno Propaganda.

Relations are quite stable, with the Good races at Friendly, the Evil races at Warm, and the Arceans at Neutral. I don't anticipate much in the way of demands anytime soon. The Drengin seem to be the big dog at the moment, and are leading in pretty much every category, with the Altarians second.

Save file: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2185ad.zip

Sorry there are no pictures, but we're mostly in builder mode and not much is changing on the political map at the moment, so there's not much to show.

EDIT: Improved formatting.

Bam-Bam
Zed-F << just played
Aviator << UP
Isit << On Deck
Jaxom

got it

Aviator

Originally posted by aviator99_uk
Accepted.:) Still believe (in my opinion) it was a valid play though, and I sure haven't quite got my head round why everyone seems woried about being at war, just what is everyone's problem with it ?:wallbash:

Aviator
If we allow relations to sour and are forced to go to war, that means we have to take time away from building up our economy to build a navy. Better to build a strong economy first, so we can build up our navy on our own terms and strike a massive blow when we are ready, than be forced to act before we are ready.

Notice the cash surplus and the tax rate and experiment with lower tax rates to boost pop and get production done quicker (presumably more taxpayers make light work :))

Jan
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im102.jpg
Hero gets +4 hit points and I see an ‘unexplained’ and a Dren transport (heading Alex way)
As we are doing a lot of social build I do the PQ13 colonise in the NW
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im101.jpg
Feb
Espionage Dren > low
Mar
zzz
Apr
Earth gets Ultra spices
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im103.jpg
zzz
May
Torians build a political cap. Decide to get research going so do Inter Neg
Jun
Researched Nanobots for Harm Xtals
Jul
half year report (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im104.jpg)
zzz
Aug
Earth gets Ultra spices
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im105.jpg
zzz
Sep
zzz
Oct
Yor declare War on poor ol Alex
Altarians build Political Cap
Nov
Corvette pops up on a rock Hero visited.
Dec
Shock horror!
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im106.jpg
I had moved the scout down to look out for the transport hero had seen, and finished a starfighter in Macedonia to keep an eye on the back door, (should have been a scout but I built a starfighter out of habit) and out of the fog lumbers a couple of Dren Transport heading for Alex. Weigh up the issue, I personally would fight to keep any minor healthy wealthy and firmly in the game, but failing that I would rather poach than see them taken so I look at Macedonia and pay for a Transport (575+25 for 10) to be built next turn, its going to be 8 to 1 but its not impossible that we could take the Alex homeworld, so long as we have at least a speed of 2 we can click ‘go to’ and invade in Jan. (must look back in the thread and see who got Eyes of Uni.)
Trades:
Minors:
Scotty Battleships for Star Dem, 1Dphase, sensors, nano freq, grav mast, exotic alloy, aphrodisiac & ultra spice.
Majors:
Arcean are being pummelled by Alt and Tor but have Energy focus which no one has, and Adv eng which everyone has, they don’t have star democracy which everyone else has, so we trade.
Alt Tor and Dren are all exactly the same they have Basic repair and LS build and don’t have a range of stuff including Energy Focus which the Arceans will probably give up soon to save their leathery hides so I trade Alt Energy focus and Nano freq for LS build and Tor En Focus for Basic Repair.
I picked up about 4K IP with all trades, is there a council soon………

council (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im107.jpg)


The game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBGC_SG3_2185.zip)

Aviator

Originally posted by Zed-F

If we allow relations to sour and are forced to go to war, that means we have to take time away from building up our economy to build a navy. Better to build a strong economy first, so we can build up our navy on our own terms and strike a massive blow when we are ready, than be forced to act before we are ready.

But.... Who needs a Navy ? A handful of starfighters will alow you to prevent the AI invading even with Overlords.

The AI is seriously broken with ship speed ! It always builds more powerful ships, and then sends them after faster ships which it can never catch ! lookit this..

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im000.jpg

One starfighter (speed=8) which probably poped out of a white rock, leading a gaggle of speed 3 & 4 ships to the 'realms beyond' forever. You do the math on the economics of it..........

The AI never builds a fast ship to catch a fast ship! Even though ships come with all the diferent speed ranges.

Since I reported how to get half a dozen overlords a zillion parsecs away with a freebe ship on the euro board we have started playing "no navy" games, just rely on what pops out of white rocks. Its a competition to see who can get the most overlords in the farthest corner of the universe with one free ship..........

Have a go! dangle a star fighter in front of your worst enemy and see how far you can take him..

Relations can get as sour as h**l for all I care. Until the AI wakes up to ship speed (version 1.x) its easy to lead them by the nose wherever the h**l you want them, normally into someone else's back yard that they happen to be at war with..........

It all came from me feeling that the initial land grab was 'unfair' and using ship speed as a pick to balance that, and then finding the AI is so predictably stupid that you need to strap 'no building ships' rules round that to re-balance the game...

Obviously our play style(s) have evolved (very) diferently as we diverged at a very early branch in evolutionary terms. This is probably why I find this SG so interesting and unusual.

Aviator

Hmm I guess its my turn already then. Its going fast this weekend. I have the game and I will try to play out my turns tonight.

Yeah, that is somewhat equivalent to what we would call "puppet strings" in RB -- moving units around to cause the AI to send its units on wild goose chases or constantly shift targets so they don't do anything useful. Relying on any given weakness in the AI is something we try to avoid; if you rely too heavily on it, your game will suffer when that weakness gets addressed.

If a move is too strong, our typical response is to voluntarily refrain from using it. Sounds like stringing the AI along like this is something we would try to avoid using systematically, though of course there will be isolated instances where things just work out that way.

Well first things first. Monkey boy comes around for his yearly “protection money”. 1000 is a bit steep for my tastes. I guess we have some relations to burn but for now I agree.


January 2186

The game is in an interesting state. We are fairly stable and are nearing the time when we will want to start thinking about winning the game. I think I will get and build stadiums with the first part of my turn. That will finish off a good chunk of social building and let us focus on either a culture or alliance win. Since there is nothing vital in the build order I switch spending over to 100% research.

First off I will try to grab the Alexians before the Drengin do. Its tight odds at 22 to 3 so we will need a lucky roll to grab it. I have an unlucky roll and lose by 986 million troops at 23 to 3. Sorry guys.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/failed.jpg

The nearest Drengin transport is 2 moves away. Does the AI get the +1 move that we get from auto pilot? I don’t know but I figure it’s worth 1000 credits to find out. It sure would be nice to get that planet rather then let the Drengin have it. I rush a transport and cross my fingers.


February 2186

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/madepeace.jpg

Alright, we all know the AI is stupid at times but making peace when you have a transport 1 turn away from their sole system really takes the cake. Heck they even have a frigate right next door! Looks like the Altarians rushed a defender in that system. Defense 4 vs. attack 4 is all well and good but our fighter only has 14 hp to the defenders 25. I could rush build a combat ship but I think we have spent enough as it is.

I would much prefer that the Alexians stick around for a bit longer. I contact them and make peace. I will keep the transport docked nearby however for when one of the majors tries again. What a funny situation.


March 2186

Nothing happening. The galaxy is in an ideal state. Each major save us has at least one war going. Torian Vs. Yor looks pretty even but Altarian vs. Drengin is trouble waiting to happen. Given enough time the Drengin will probably break through and finish them off. That would give them way to large a lead on everyone else for my peace of mind. I doubt it will happen soon but it is something to keep an eye on.


April 2186

We finish research on extravaganza.

I add stadiums to the governor and manually order most of our planets to build them. Spending is shifted to 100% social. Just for the heck of it I sell a few non-monopoly military techs to the alexians for 65BC for 33 turns. We might as well milk these guys while we have the chance.


May 2186

We get a morality event.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/moralityevent.jpg

With no big bonuses at stake and no reason to tick off the Drengin, I pick the neutral route.


June 2186

The Drengin send us a freighter. Most of our planets finish their stadiums. I will keep spending up until all of them do.

Our espionage level vs. the Drengin hits medium.


July 2186

Our espionage level vs. everyone else hits medium.

The last of our planets finishes building stadiums. Nothing else that is in the queue is vital enough to keep on social spending. Moral is at or near 100% on all our planets. I shift back to 100% research and start working toward cultural maximization. Zeno propaganda is next for the wonder it grants.


August 2186

More ship movement


September 2186

Zeno propaganda is done. I set sol to build the propaganda machine and crank social spending up to 100%. It will be done in 3 (really 4) turns. I tweak the build orders on a few other planets.


October 2186

We get another morality event. I again chose the neutral path.

We get another event this turn. Our spies help the Carnoids steal all the Drengin empires tech. The only tech the Drengin have that we don’t is hyperspace. Just for the heck of it I trade them nanobots and ultra spices for it.


November 2186

Nothing happening.


December 2186

Nothing happens yet again.


January 2186

Sol finishes the propaganda machine. Sol is directed to build a hyperion manufacturing center.

Game saved.


Notes:

We continue to do very well. Due to how the game handles reloads the next leader can expect to get a demand upon loading.

I have started us upon the path to a cultural victory. A few more turn of research can get us party palaces for our star bases. We are not over committed though so if someone else wants to take us in a different direction we are ready for it.

The Altarins got a late year rush going and are now the #1 military power in the galaxy. Unfortunately for them they are in a two front war with both the Drengin and the Yor. All the majors are still fighting amongst themselves so the game is wide open for us to make our move.

We have 2047 in the bank.

Final screen:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/finalscreen.jpg

The game:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBGC_SG3_2186.zip

Good luck! :D

That map looks familiar..................:confused:
Ah... better thanks

Originally posted by Zed-F
Yeah, that is somewhat equivalent to what we would call "puppet strings" in RB -- moving units around to cause the AI to send its units on wild goose chases or constantly shift targets so they don't do anything useful. Relying on any given weakness in the AI is something we try to avoid; if you rely too heavily on it, your game will suffer when that weakness gets addressed.

If a move is too strong, our typical response is to voluntarily refrain from using it. Sounds like stringing the AI along like this is something we would try to avoid using systematically, though of course there will be isolated instances where things just work out that way.

It is an equivalent but we haven't really worked out an appropriate 'rule' other than don't do unless its for fun (a no navy game), but the AI is tenacious and if a speed 3 hammer sets its beady eye on your speed 3 sensor drone it will follow it to the ends of the universe (literally) so what are you supposed to do? sacrifice it, take it a set distance away and then sacrifice it, or what? Its a real pain trying to decide 'honourable' and 'dastardly' measures when the AI is so tenaciously stupid... excuse me sir did you dangle that sensor drone deliberately between you and the enemy, or was it on picket duty. etc etc etc
If all your ships are uniformly faster you can at least break the lock eventually, and claim that you are acting fairly but you have just taken the enemy away to wherever.

And who's to say its less honourable than buying grave goods?

Suprised you haven't come across this one. Opinions welcome.

Aviator

It seems a bit close to exploiting for my tastes. I suppose it all depends on intent.

If you have a drone out on picket and a ship starts chasing it would be silly to stop running. On the other hand if you set out to totally neutralize an AIs power via this tactic it would be exploiting a bug or flaw, which is something that I wouldn’t do.

We have an exploit/dastardy/honourable list of tactics for Civ3. We will probably have a similar one for GalCiv, but we have been waiting for the expansion to come out and for the organization of our first tournaments to put it together; for now we are amassing data on what's what by playing the game. I'm pretty sure that buying stuff from the grave and puppet strings are both candidates for being put on the exploit list, along with several other things. For instance, buying freighters early in the game, buying someone's transports & invading with their own troops, etc.

As far as "what qualifies as puppet strings" goes, what counts is the intention. In Civ3, when any AI is in a 2+ front war, a certain amount of puppet strings is inevitable. However, the player can also deliberately create opportunities for puppet string AI logic to take effect. If the AI decides on its own to chase down your defenseless sensor drone and you decline to let it get killed, that's one thing. If you deliberately dangle several carrots with the intention of baiting off the enemy's entire fleet, that's something else. The idea with avoiding puppet strings isn't to eliminate circumstances where the AI sends units on foolish missions, but to avoid deliberately creating circumstances where it will choose to do so.

In the scenario you described, if you're prosecuting a "normal" kind of war, odds are your sensor drone will withdraw to a position of strength so that you can eliminate the threat following it, not lead the pursuer on a wild goose chase halfway across the known galaxy -- after all, you had the sensor drone in the area for a reason, right? It can't fulfill its original mission if it's acting as bait.

Wow, fast turnaround!

Time to vote people, how do we go about winning this game?


Aviator, I find the Galciv system of combat and conquest is very weak, it requires no strategy and little tactics to win any war. So I tend to avoid the boring (to me) part of military conquest and concentrate on the parts I like about the game, diplomacy and economics. But even those two aspects have many holes since you can buy anything and everything, and you can generate way too much cash within the game.

Having a network of sensor drones around your territory would be a sound tactical decision. This means these drones will be the closest things to the enemy and will be the first targets, locking them away from the real targets. The AI should really ignore soft targets like drones and transports unless they strikable within the current move. The only alternative for us would be to consider sensor drones as static structures, once they reach their destination, they can't be move.

Buying from the grave is also abusive, unless it is done with hard cash. A simple principle we apply, if you can get something for nothing, it is abusive.

Here is another one for you, survey majors planets, select a major with enough transports in orbit to capture all planets in one turn. Buy that major's fleet paying with anything but hard cash, best to use cash per turn over 99 turns. Invade and capture all his planets, you debt disappear. Repeat until there are no more majors.

You certainly know about the terror star alpha strike method. People complained that it shouldn't be possible to build a terror star if you lack the cash, so stardock removed the ability to do so. Will this make teror star alpha-strike harder to do? Not the least, it will only take longer to generate the needed cash. On a gigantic map, I typically make 4000 to 6000 bc per turn if I turn off spending, so terror star alpha strike will still be the easiest and fastest method to win the game as a military conquest.

Stardock really should reverse the scoring multipliers for victory type, make the tech win 10X and the military conquest 5X. That way, the score would at least reflect how much of a real life time investment you put into the game.

Wow, that was long-winded! Well turn in your votes, I won't play my turn until tomorrow night. All options are opened to us now, it's only a matter of how we want to finish this.

One more thing about buying from the grave.

I like that the majors stick around one turn after loosing their last planet. In a couple of games, I gave planets to both the Drengin and Yor who were wiped out by the Fundies. Then I allied them and we proceeded to eliminate the goodies from the galaxy. Only the possibility to buy with cash per turn should be remove in that case. In the same way, the AI should only sell ships for hard cash, if they sell them at all.

Sorry you took that as a flame, it was not intended that way. Maybe I should have added "in my opinion" somewhere in there.

Bah. :)


Good show so far, guys.

Perhaps what is needed to make these games harder is to get rid of credit altogether. Gold per turn is what leaves the Civ3 AI's in an exploitable position, and what renders doing your own research a moot point. BC's per turn has different effects in GalCiv, but does give the player access to way more buying power than all cash would, and if taken to extremems, becomes "way too much buying power" and unbalances the game.

I have hopes that gpt will not be handled the same in Civ4. The game makers are learning from what we're able to do with their designs (or do TO them) and the games keep getting better. I don't know if Stardock is watching these SG's, but I do know that the Civ team pays attention to what the top civ players are doing and able to do.


- Sirian

Jaxom said that making players pay for the terror stars up front won't make it any harder, and he's right. I've been exploiting some of the from-the-grave exploits in the late game just to be lazy and get the game over faster, in the mop up phase. I won't really miss these if they are taken out. It's the same principle. You can't get any easier than "can't lose". Once you reach the can't lose position, the chief reason NOT to use available exploits would be to preserve comparison value to others who are also not using the exploits.

This WILL BE the situation come tourney time. In order to make results fair, we will define a list of tactics and rule some out of bounds. Some others may be questionable, but we will rule on them as either in or out. Some that are particularly gruesome but hard to pin down, or any effect that has both legitimate and illegitimate applications, we will probably leave on the table with the caveat that they are "frowned upon" if you overdo it, and you should use them at your own judgement, but realize that if some believe you've abused them you'll get comments to that effect.


The main concern is effective game balance. A secondary concern is what fits the context of the game universe. Tertiary is the intent of the designers, as best we can divine it. The key is having everybody playing by the same set of rules, with the same sets of tactics on or off the table, so that comparisons are between apples and other apples, and yield fair measurements.

Most events will have additional restrictions, scenario rules. Some scenario rules will be wild or wacky and heavily artificial: variant rules. This will add spice, variety and flavor.


SG players are helping contribute to this process by having these discussions. One more reason not to sit on the sidelines lurking all the time. :cooool:


- Sirian

Finish:
It's my opinion that the way this game has been played so far could lead to the acusation it has followed the simple definition of :"Diplomacy is saying 'nice doggy' while you find a big stick" if we were to go for fleet action and military conquest now, it seems to me that from this build up the only honourably correct route to a quick victory would be Alliance, a military victory from here would be distasteful to me, although I am willing to listen to arguments about cultural, assuming we don't want to wait out a tech victory.

If we had wanted to win with a diferent ending, we should have been more consistent towards a final goal. (opinion)

Aviator

Originally posted by JaxomCA
Aviator, I find the Galciv system of combat and conquest is very weak, it requires no strategy and little tactics to win any war. So I tend to avoid the boring (to me) part of military conquest and concentrate on the parts I like about the game, diplomacy and economics. But even those two aspects have many holes since you can buy anything and everything, and you can generate way too much cash within the game.


No arguments there, but the starting point from a military action strategy point of view is quite rich, and can be improved no doubt by improving areas where the AI is broken, but in the meantime some of us who like fleet action are trying to balance the game within the existing AI with OKs & not-OKs to prevent unreal tactics but there is a lot of debate to be had.

Avaitor

Whatever flows most easily, quickly, & naturally from our current position. :)

For quickness and ease I would say a cultural or alliance win. I think a tech would take to long and a military, while fun, would also be a prolonged affair.

Preturn: President Jaxom take his place in the presidential palace and finds some memos from his predecessors. One vote against a military conquest, one vote for culture or alliance, one vote for whatever flows most smoothly. :beer: I decide to keep all our options open, so I will try to keep relations at warm or better and will get us going on the research path to cultural conquest.

I have barely set my buttocks on the chair and the vidphone begins flashing wildly, playing some kind of bad opera song. Of course, dear Lord Kona never misses his yearly human bashing.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3_2187_visit.jpg

Sure monkey boy, we are all for a good peace keeping efforts, here help yourself to our treasury. Well he did mean it, I receive news that the Drengin and Altarian have made peace right after hanging up!



January 2187
Checking out the governor's I update Gen.Kuperman build list and send him to manage Earth. I remove the harmony generator from that list and schedule the Political capital on Earth. After building this, Earth will never need another morale building. There are some interesting pq 14 to garb, we now have enough influence to grab them, so I order a few colony ships here and there and set military spending to 40%, split the rest between social and research. I institute a new taxation program, raising taxes to 50%. This produces some unhappiness but we gain little for having 100% morale at this point. On the other hand, we can always find a use for cash.

There are no good trades to be made, I could sell some techs to the Alexians but they will flip to us soon so I see no need to do it. Our intelligence experts tell us that star federation will be available for purchase soon.

February
A colony ship is sent with 20 million colonist toward a 14 in Arcean space.

March
Another 20 mil colony ship sent toward Torian space, a constructor from Earth sent to grab the nearby morale resource.

April
We discover brain wave mapping, research set to cultural focus, mostly for the +10 trade it provides.
Another 20 mil colony ship sent to Arcean space, a constructor is sent to claim a research resource near Arcean space.
The Drengin get hostile with the Alexians, will have to keep an eye out on that.

May
One last colony ship sent toward Torian space, some sensor drones scheduled so we can put an eye out. :rolleyes:
The Yor have fallen to neutral, they are researching Battleship and are the only civ without this tech. I give them the tech, we are now friendly with the robots.
A couple of constructors complete, they are sent to the various free resources I can spot.
Earth completes its political capital, begins construction of the virtual reality module.

June
Monkey boy is overacting and declares war on the Scotts. There are a couple of Altarian starbases I'd like to see destroyed near our space, so I do this:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3_2187_buywar.jpg

That is not a big deal, we now have a 220 bc a month budget surplus. Military spending raised to 69% to get a constructor out every other turn from Earth, time to build a production/trade starbase in Earth's sector.

July
Some sensor drones begin watching the action.

August
System Dester settled near Yor space, an entertainment network is paid cash to get them going.

September
Some discoveries come in for the aliens, resulting in these trades:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3_2187_trade1.jpg

The Drengin have been researching star federation for a while now, I give it to them raising relations to friendly. Earth schedules the Galactic monument, social spending adjusted to get it as soon as possible, in 3 turns.

October

An event while colonizing near Arcean's space. I take the middle road.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3_2187_event1.jpg

A couple of constructors upgrade Earth's starbase to improve production.

November
Only now do I realize that a trade route to the Altarian is not coming from Earth, also one to the Drengin. We have 0 freighters in flight, the next leader should look into getting some 5 freighters out of Earth and replace the obsolete trade routes.

Cultural focus is discovered, research set to Genetic mapping.

December

Earth builds a Galactic monument and returns to the virtual reality module. Spending adjusted to speed up research.

ET beats us to a morale resource, I park the constructor near the new starbase. We steal a different morale resource from the Altarian, their starbase was blown up by monkey boy.

January 2188
Nothing special.




The situation:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3_2187_finalmap.jpg

We are about halfway to cultural victory. We shouldn't need many starbases to make it, even without party palace. Arcea is warm, Toria is close, all others are friendly, so alliance is not difficult to reach even doing a 5-way alliance should be possible.

There are some constructors parked near alien starbases, when you see a X pop up on the map, take a look around and we may already have a constructor ready to take over.

Here is the save. (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3_2188.zip)

Everything looks good--lowest relations is warm (Arcea), with the Torians at close and everyone else friendly. We are tops in influence, with Drengin next. Methinks it is time for the influence techs (Artificial Satellites/Planets/Terror Star). Will refresh the trade routes with freighters from Sol. The lone influece resource that we know of is held by the Yor.

Q1

Build some freighters, constructors, and one last colony ship. Decide that I do not feel like waiting for someone to blast that Yor influence starbase to smithereenies, so I send lots of tech to the droids for that influence resource. Nearby constructors routed to get this one all mined up. Two chances at free research come up empty. Switch to all research to get the influence techs faster, after completing 2 freighters out of Sol.

Q2

Retain the Senate with 67 votes. Re-instate military spending to take up the excess left over from research. Poach a morale resource.

Here is what everyone is talking about...

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2188a.jpg

Q3

You take the good with the bad. The good.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2188b.jpg

Oh wait--that's not our planet! :rolleyes:

And the Bad (or is it the Ugly :hmm: )

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2188c.jpg

Yawn..such tribute...

Learn Artificial Satellites. A few sensor drones complete, and I turn everyone over to constructors, except Earth. I built another colony ship to take a PQ12 in the southern part of alterian space to help our influence in the planetless southeast quadrant. Figure out why monkey-boy is 2nd in influence--he has an influence resource south of his planets. Marked and a sensor drone is guarding it.

Won't someone please think of the squirrels??

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2188d.jpg

Neutral choice taken.

Q4

I notice a free influence resource by an Arcean planet. A constructor is rushed to get there quickly. Trade route with Alterians refreshed with a freighter from Sol.
I choose to park the freighter at Monkey-boy's planet, since there is still a straight-line route from the existing route, and it is in the max trade period. Another research anomoly gives up nothing. We get the influence resource.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2189map.jpg

Note where I have the box--that is where the Torians just took out an Arcean planet. It happens to be one of our trade planets, so we now have two routes with ET. Note also that with the loss of their influence resource (and perhaps a wonder?), the Arcean planets are within our cultural control. Just a matter of time.

Autopiloted ships--two colony (one about to colonize a PQ12 in south alterian land), and several constructors heading for our NE influence resource. The next batch of constructors should head for the recently obtained influence resource.

Also note: I have set the sliders to get Terror Stars next month with 25% military spending. Trust SIBCAT, even though when reloading the research assistant will swear that it will take two months.

Bam-Bam (just played)
Zed (up)
Aviator (on deck)
Isit
Jaxom

Influential (http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2189ad.zip)

got it...

Looks like the consensus is to head toward cultural victory. This promises to be a quiet turn. However, I don't have much time to play so this might be a tad sloppy, sorry.

Q1: Terror Stars comes in as expected. Set spending to 50/50 military/research, start research on Cultural Maximization. We do have a couple of influence resources so we will probably want Nano-Rig Excavation next.

Q2: Realize we have Historical Preserve available, the AI will build it soon if we do not. Set spending to social to complete it quickly at Earth. We get the following offer from the Arceans:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2189ad-may01.JPG

Since we are already building Tir-Quan training, I take them up on it. I am lazy as I am in a hurry to complete my turn and neglect to shop Genetic Mapping around, oops. Several constructors arrive at the influence resource in the NE corner and we start mining it in earnest.

Q3: Complete Historical Preserve and Tir-Quan Training. Spending is reset for constructors and Cultural Maximization.

Q4: We complete Cultural Maximization, research Drones, and set research to Nano Mining (for Nano-Rig Extraction.) Other than that, mostly just building constructors. We start mining the influence resource in the south of the map as well as constructors have started to arrive there. We also have a stack of 7 constructors near Jotunheim ready to be sent somewhere to build a cultural palace. Where to send it will likely largely depend on whose trade routes we want to keep around, up to Aviator to figure that out.

The save: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc3-2190ad.zip

Bam-Bam
Zed (just played)
Aviator (up)
Isit (on deck)
Jaxom

got it.. but won't be able to play as its gone midnight my time..
:sleep:
aviator

start
start (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im201.jpg)
Monkey face comes knocking but……… wants to trade drones for cloaking, sure pal I’ll go for that.
Drengin happy! (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im202.jpg)
What other trades can be done?

Decide to mop up the outstanding techs by trading B W Map, Cult Max, & Drones to Cari for 2D, Adv Bat Arm, Mega P, Org Arm, and Plan def, and complete with the same to Arcea for Conglom & Energy Mag. Now there are no techs discovered we don’t have.

Modify the build list a bit, Virtual Re Mods were being built in a couple of places and ponder if there are any changes worth doing………….

Decide that as Conglom will soak up the only parked freighter so we could do with a few more, so set earth to freighters and modify sliders to give freighters in 0 and put the rest into social and research.
Most planets are producing a fairly hefty negative contribution so no point in building manufacturing starbases just yet, and our economy could be vulnerable to losing trade routes if we were asked to ally with someone and then got dragged into conflict, so more economy with more people and spread the influence.

The 7 const stack is close to Alt space but gut reaction wants me to put that in Arcean space because they are the least friendly, and we don’t do any trade with them, and they feel vulnerable to me.

Q1 & Q2
Morality roll (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im203.jpg)
council elections (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im204.jpg)
half year (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im205.jpg)
:sleep:

Q3
Nano Mine comes in and route const to Inf s/bs to get the extra 10%
Select Mol Med for transporters
Space monsters!
monster mash (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im213.jpg)
Q4
Jaxsom’s prediction fulfilled
end of Alex (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im214.jpg)
Notice that Alt has Mol Med so trade for Conglom select transporters which we can get before year end. Contemplate dealing with Cari: everything for Ranger but leave it.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im206.jpg
Planets in danger of flip
Yor (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im207.jpg)
Arcea (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im208.jpg)
Others
Alt (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im209.jpg)
ET (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im210.jpg)
ET (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im211.jpg)
Arc (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbsg3_av_im212.jpg)

The Game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc_sg3_2191.zip)

Aviator

Looks like we will need to concentrate some cultural smackdown on monkey-boy & on droids if we are going to win this in jig time. We have colonized planets near everyone else but not near them. We should also see if we can snag those free resources in the NE corner...

We should be able to clean this up relatively quickly. We only need nine more sectors under our cultural control to trigger the clock. There are eleven (2 by the Yor and 9 by monkey-boy) sectors under enemy control that do not contain enemy planets. Sounds like a few cultural starbases ought to do the trick. We ought to go straight military--pumping out 6packs (we lack the tech for party palaces, but cultural maximizing gives all the modules but the palace) to assimilate the planetless areas. Isit and Jaxom ought to at least get the clock started, which means that Jaxom should be able to then run out the clock.

EDIT: Oh, and one more thing (TM). There is an open resource by Drengin. That IS an influence resource, which is the only thing that was propping his sorry butt up (culturally speaking). We should snatch that up ASAP. With that, we may not even need the 6packs. Still, there is nothing worth it at this point for social or research spending.

Got it. I will try to play by tonight.

Well its time to finish this game off. This report is brief because at this point nothing much happens. Just a bunch of constructors and movement orders. I agree with Bam-Bam. I will make up groups of constructors and focus on grabbing the open sectors with no AI planets in them. Just a few will get us the win.

Q1

It’s nice to start off a turn without the Drengin demanding some blood money.

We grab another influence resource.

Military spending set to 100%. Every planet ordered to build a constructor.

In May I get the 12 turns left message. I know it hasn’t been mentioned but I am just going to play it out. I hope nobody minds me doing this but passing the game would simply add an extra half year to its length and even then the next person would have to go over because of the 2 turn recalculation.

Q2-Q5

We have constructors heading to most open sectors so I set spending to 50-50 research and social just for the heck of it.

A few planets flip over to our side and a morality event comes up. I select neutral.

In June 2192 we achieve a cultural victory!

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/finalwintext.jpg

Our final stats from the turn before the win:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/finalstats.jpg

Our summery screen:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/finalsummery.jpg

Here is the map from our final turn:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/finalwinmap.jpg

The final save:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc_sg3_final.zip

Well done Isit, it wasn't mention for this game but the way the cultural countdown works, you did the right thing.

Congratulations to us, thanks for sharing your time with me in this game. :goodjob:

Time for a little [dance] and [party]

Great work team! :goodjob: Another first for RB and our guest from the European alliance.

Isit--you did exactly what I wanted--played out when the clock started. Thanks for taking this one out.

We made this look easy, folks. Stay tuned for the next sucession game. I will probably run it after the 1.2 patch comes out, unless someone else gets an itch.

Thanks again for another fun time!

Aviator smiles at the sight of the upturned alien faces all hailing with adoration at the new rulers of the universe.........

But when starbases cost so much would this still be possible he muses......... :scan:

Aviator

WE had 11 starbases at the end of your turns, aviator. I am not sure how many Isit built. Isit, could you enlighten us?

We could have done without all the resource starbases except for the influence ones.

I think cultural victory is still valid in the new patch--just a bit more difficult (which is appropriate).

We didn't need that many starbases; without paying 10bc/turn for each, it probably wouldn't have been a problem. Good game, all!

Great game everyone! I had a blast. :beer:

I think I added 3 or 4 starbases on my turn. It might be a little trickier with the new patch but some of the 11 we had going in could have been scraped during my turns when planets flipped. Of course it’s also going to depend on game settings going in. Tight clusters and a higher habitability rating would make it a lot harder to sweep up unpopulated sectors.

Also, does anyone have any interest in submitting this game? If nobody else wants to I will.

Also, does anyone have any interest in submitting this game? If nobody else wants to I will.

Go ahead, Isit. You will need to edit in your id in the files using a hex editor. See the link on this (http://realmsbeyond.net/galciv) page to help you along.

Bam-Bam