Time to take the time-honored Always War variant started by Arathorn to a new game. Thanks to Smegged for taking the first shot at this in single player!

Here are the game parameters.

Version: GalCiv 1.2
Party: War Party (+50% hitpoints)
Bonus picks: 3 picks each weapons (+30%) and sensors (+4). Two picks soldiering (+20%). One pick each courage (+25%) and morale (+10%).
Galaxy Stats: Large, tight, common
Difficulty: Painful (All Intelligent AI--std alignment)
All victory conditions DISABLED. (None of them amount to AI victory anyway, so why bother?)

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: (almost) ALWAYS WAR!

You must leave the UP at the start of the game. You must declare war on all MAJOR opponents as soon as possible.* You may make no trades with MAJORS. You may never, ever make peace with any MAJOR. Until you control all of the galaxy or are wiped from the galaxy, there will always be war without end.

*Unlike Civ3, there is not a diplomatic means to declare war, except by offering to attack one race while in contact with another race. We will have to play this one by ear. This is (almost) Always War, since we are allowing diplomatic relations with the minors. With this size map, the war declaration is likely to occur via diplomatic communications with a minor civ, or attacking an enemy ship once starfighters or corvettes are present.

Note also that by leaving the UP--there is NO TRADE between planet, even with minors.

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.

Here is the roster so far:

Bam-Bam
Smegged
Isit
Zed-F
(open)
(open)

Signups are open over at the GalCiv General forum (http://www.galciv.com/forum/asp). Ideally, I would like 6 players, but I will take a minimum of 5.

- Bam-Bam

Here we go.

I rejected two starts--one with a minor in the starting sector, and one with the Alterians just two sectors away.

Earth is a PQ19, with a PQ13 in Sol as well. Our starting position is in the middle of the galaxy, with no influence spotted. There is a PQ16 in Sol's sector.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2178a.jpg

January

I send the colony ship southeast, since we can pluck the PQ16 with our first built colony ship. Spending to 100% military, rate set to get a colony ship in 3 (2+1), taxes set to just maintain 100% morale.

February

Surveyor picks up a +1 soldiering anomaly.

March

[dance] Check out this system!

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2178b.jpg

Oops, I cut off the PQ15. Yeah--thatsa nice-ah donut. The surveyor notes that the system to the Northeast has a PQ12.

April

Colony ship built from Earth--200M headed to the PQ16 to the northwest. Our starting colony ship spots a PQ14 system immediately southwest of the ubersystem.

May

Settle the PQ15 in the ubersystem with the 100M of original colonists. I will plop 200 or more on the PQ16s (2) and the PQ18 with colony ships from Earth.

June

Settle Lacroix (PQ16 northwest of Sol) and get this morality event.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2178c.jpg

I take the evil choice, since there does not appear to be any reason to take good choices in an AW game (oh--there's another variant--goodie-goodie AW).

July

Another 200M embark on a colony ship launched from Earth. Heading to the ubersystem for starters...

August

Surveyor spots a white dwarf junk system southeast of Sol.

September

Surveyor picks up a +2 morale anomaly.

October

Colony ships launch from Earth (200M) and Andersona (ubersystem--40M). Settle Andersona V (PQ18) and get this event.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2178d.jpg

Not incredible, but nice to have production bonus on a nice sized planet. Surveyor spots another junk system in the sector southeast of Andersona.

November

Lacroix launches a 75M colony ship. Colony ship launched from Andersona last month spots a junk system to the south. Surveyor spots a PQ17 system east southeast of Andersona. Colony ship rerouted.

December

Drengin and Alterian influence spotted to the east. Surveyor spots a PQ13 east of the PQ17,

End of year

Earth launched another 200M colony ship. Take a look at the map. We have Alterians to the east, and Drengin to the southeast, with a whole lot of space open to our west.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2179map.jpg

I have marked the Alterian and Drengin home sectors. PQ 14/13s marked in white, PQ15+ marked in yellow. The highlighted ship is our Hero, and there are 3 colony ships in flight. We are at an alignment of 40--which is demonic in 1.2 :rolleyes:. We also have the evil interface, which I thought was supposed to occur at alignment of 30. Perhaps the latest download fixes that.

Roster:

Bam-Bam (just played)
Smegged
Isit
Zed-F
open
open

Whoever has the urge, pick up the game. Final roster will be set based on the order in which folks pick up the game the first go-round.

Good luck to the next player!

And the save...

(almost) ALWAYS WAR! (http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2179ad.zip)

Note to the next player. I forgot to leave the UP at the start of my turns. Please do so immediately upon loading.

Sorry for the oversight.

Got it.

In this game, the PQ 13 planets are only last resorts. Settling them will suck money (and therefore production) out of our larger planets. Also, by the looks of the map, our space is going to be limited to within 3 sectors south and east. There is nothing but space to the west. If we get lucky, and are forceful with expansion, we may get some more planets to the south, but our first priority should be the pq 17, followed by as much southerly expansion as possible.

You are right on with the comments on PQ13s. I would also hold off on the 14s for the first round of settling.

By the way--thank goodness Zed talked me into sensor picks. I am playing an AW game without them (using my original proposal), and it is getting ugly. I just researched frigates, but lost about 5 or so corvettes to attacks out of the fog. Those kind of losses are not sustainable.

One more thing for this game--I think we should limit our trading with the minors to tech for tech--no cash involved. I forgot to mention that previously. Any objections to this additional restriction?

I didn't think minors would pay cash for tech in 1.20 anyway?

Zed, this is probably true only on maso difficulty.

A couple strategy comments/questions:

1) Often in AW Civ3 games we limit initial scouting so we don't "wake up" too many opponents right away in the early game. Should we follow the same path here? Disadvantage: less contact with minors as well. Question: will other races send freighters to us without contact, or without us being in UP?

2) When we turn research on, what do we want to research first? Specifically, do we want to delay researching Universal Translators so we can't talk to AIs until we are ready to go to war? Downside is again, no trades with minors, plus no banks... researching habitat first is kind of pointless, but we could perhaps go straight to phasers (or even corvettes??) before getting UT, have something to trade, and have some tech to build ships with just in time for war declarations.

3) Buildings... we probably don't want to build a lot of them, as most of our economy will be on unit support. Of the early social improvements, I forsee us building (in no particular order) soil, habitat, banks, entertainment networks, stadiums, stock markets, economic exchanges, manufacturing centers, shipyards. We may also build and cultural buildings if we need culture resist, but on Painful probably we won't. Earth will probably be our manufacturing capital so will also get a fusion/antimatter plant and extra +ship buildings, as well as whatever wonders/trade goods we build, with highest priority being Grav Accelerators and Eyes of the Universe.

Originally posted by JaxomCA
Zed, this is probably true only on maso difficulty.

Ah, makes sense. :)

Zed--some thoughts

on #1: We should not refrain from contact with the AIs. We want to get to them, to start the pillage process. I do not think we will see any freighters once Smegged takes care of my oversight and leaves the UP

on #2: Delaying researching the universal translator is going against the spirit of the rules. We want to declare war on them as soon as possible, in fact, I submit that if we have not met any minors, we use the 2nd major met to declare on the 1st--and so on until we can attack that last major or use a minor to declare the last war. You cannot gift an attack on a major to a major with whom you are at war. So, absent a minor or an attacking ship, the last met major will not be at war.

on #3: your list looks ok--I suspect that we may be doing partial social builds--i.e., build to complete soils-banks-ent net. everywhere, then research, repeat. We want to keep high morale--especially until all planets get above the 200M/month growth caps.

I suggest we beeline for corvettes. Build a defender for each planet and then some harassing corvettes. Research more--then maybe some axes--then rush to frigates. If we can get to frigates quickly, then we may have enough advantage to take out a few worlds quickly. We need to take a bite out of someone before battleships come online.

In Civ3 AW, you must declare as soon as you have contact, but nothing prevents you from avoiding contact. I'm not sure I agree that wanting to declare war as soon as possible is necessarily the spirit of the rules, given the elaborate maneuvers I've seen in some Civ3 AW games to avoid contact as long as possible. I suppose the question to ask is, do you really have contact if you can't communicate? It's not as if we could afford to hold off on the yellow techs very long anyway as the consequences would be pretty severe -- no govt changes, no morale improvements, no economic improvements. However, if we want to assume for this game that contact is contact, regardless of communications, then I'm ok with that. We can always try it the other way later. :)

If we beeline to corvettes, we won't get defenders right away; AFAIK, Defense Theory and Deflectors are not on the path to Corvettes, for which we need Weapons Theory -> Phasers & Photons -> Corvettes. We may not ever need defenders anyway if we can get (trade for?) Shields quickly enough, which would be fine with me. Our bonuses would give defenders a lot of HP but not much else; we need a significant offensive value for our weapons bonus to kick in.

It seems pretty clear to me that Axes > Defenders and Corvettes > Defenders for our purposes. I ran a couple tests using the simulator at the Empires forum, which showed our weapons boost gives our corvettes the edge over defenders in a one-on-one fight. Hopefully we can research Corvettes before being forced to build Star Fighters, but they should be a viable option if we're forced into building them. As far as a Battle Cruiser goes, the 5 attack boosted by weapons is nice, but it's still not very sturdy even with our HP bonus and still takes a lot of maintenance. I'd probably prefer base 3/2/3/12 Corvettes in volume to base 5/3/2/20 BCs, use them as raiders to strike targets of opportunity, and wait for Frigates/Hammers for a real ship.

Another question is, does beelining Corvettes mean in light of the wanting to get UT for war declarations as well? I suppose you're suggesting Comm Theory -> UT -> Wpn Theory -> Phaser -> Photon -> Corvette?

EDIT: I ran some more simulations, and noted that even our boosted corvettes can't go up against a regular BattleAxe with any reasonable hope of success, while a boosted BC could do so. So if we wanted to jump the gun a bit against a relatively weak opponent, we probably could stand to build a couple of BCs.

Hey everyone, just checking in. I have some thoughts about this but I don’t have time to write them out in full until tomorrow. :(

I normally use Battle Cruisers for my early offense. I do agree that we need to strike fast. I think we should aim to take over a good chunk of planets before the battleship era. Since the AI focuses on the military path we need to as well. We can’t afford to let them beat us to battleships by more then a few years. Also lets put a high priority on setting up and defending some military starbases. Eyes of the Universe, Gravity Accelerators and tri-steel need to be a top priority for us to build. Gravity Accelerators are by far the most important though.

Poor phrasing on my part. What I meant to say was to jump up the defense and weapons tree to get defenders and corvettes online quickly (i.e., first round of shipbuilding).

I see no reason not to get to the next gov't type. I am not sure what holding off on war declarations gets us--since the AIs do not get the starting bonus like Civ3, and I doubt that they will go single-mind attack like the Civ3 AI used to do.

Agree on the axes and cruisers (more importantly frigates). In the AW game I am playing, vettes do not do well when attacking defenders on planets--so more punch is needed for planetary assault.

Isit--with our sensor bonus--eyes is not as critical.

Gravity accelerators is the key trade good for us. We should aim to get battleships in the same year (unlikely) or within a year of the lead AI, at worst, or we are in for a real tough haul.

Key point about B-ships - they are SLOW! Base speed of 0. If the AI has a significant lead on us to B-ships, we go guerilla until we can catch up. Get a speed advantage by whatever means necessary, and pick only those battles that are vital to win - i.e., kill enemy transports, and keep ships in gaps between where enemy ships can reach to try to capitalize on opportunities to capture enemy worlds. Remember that if we can capture an enemy world building a type we don't have the tech for, we can build that type at that planet as long as we don't switch off of it! This can be critical - in previous games I've conquered entire empires starting from a substantially inferior military position on the basis of plundered production.

I'm not sure how the AIs feel about attacking large stacks of ships. In my (limited) previous combat experience they've seemed reluctant to attack them, but I don't have enough evidence to draw any firm conclusions. If true, we may be able to use it to our advantage.

Isit--with our sensor bonus--eyes is not as critical.

I still think it would be useful. If this game goes on for a while we could end up dealing with 7 or 8 moves a turn. If the AI gets to that point then our sensors need to be able to see that far in order to do any type of gorilla warfare. It may not be necessary in the short run but long term I think they would be useful to have if we get the chance.

As to avoiding the majors, I would try to but I think with our map start it wont be very sucessful. I say dont worry about the close ones but once we start in on one or two there is no sense looking for more trouble. :)

Zed-F: You’re totally right that we can hold off for a while even if the AI gets battleships ahead of us. On the other hand I think we can probably keep up well enough that we wont have to. Also, if we manage to get some more bonuses to our attack its possible that ships in orbit can hold off battleships. I have seen this happen at maso level when the AI builds all the defense improvements.

I haven’t noticed that the AI doesn’t like to attack stacked ships. From what I can tell they will throw ships at anything they can attack. It’s also worth noting that the combat system handles defense funny. If a transport has a higher defense then any stacked ships it will get attacked first.

This means that at some tech levels stacking ships to protect transports is pointless and even counter productive. All of our other combat ships should be stacked though. It adds a small bonus and gives us a chance to protect damaged ships. The only thing that we wouldnt want to use in a stack is ships that are raiding.

One other trick I have found for fighting the AI is to stack a sensor drone with any fleets you build. It wont get attacked until the whole stack is destroyed and the extra range it gives your sensors can allow you to steer a fleet around any ships it cant handle.

Originally posted by Zed-F
Remember that if we can capture an enemy world building a type we don't have the tech for, we can build that type at that planet as long as we don't switch off of it! This can be critical - in previous games I've conquered entire empires starting from a substantially inferior military position on the basis of plundered production.

In my last game in version 1.20, a world flipped to me and was building a ranger, which I didn't have the tech for. The ranger was almost complete and I thought I could use a couple of rangers to send on anomaly hunts. When the planet completed the ranger, the ship build order was cleared and I had to select one of the ships I knew how to build. So this strategy may not work anymore. I say "may" because I am not 100% certain I didn't cause the clearing by a mouse click or something. Since it was the only planet I got that was building something I could use, I have not seen the situation again in the rest of the game.

Ok, my turn was mainly filled with lots of next turns and settling planets. I've also set all of our colony ships to go to their ideal planets. There is at least one system which will get more col ships than it has planets. Blend this extra colony ship into a planet with unusually low pop.

I researched weapons theory, phasers, and photons is halfway done. I suggest researching to corvettes, building a few, then researching medical -> habitat, then finally comms theory->universal translators. The period in which we build our initial PQ/moral boosters and banks is the period in which we are most vulnerable.

DO NOT SETTLE THE PQ 13/14 PLANETS.

These pics should give some indication of the events of my turn.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-arcean.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-diearcea.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-ourspace.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-popbonus.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-productionbonus.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-ultrasector.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-wholemap.JPG

Good luck to the next ruler.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2180ad.zip

Don't settle PQ 14/15? Do you mean 13/14? Presumably we still want to settle PQ15 planets, if we have 2 colony ships on the way to one...

Looks like the Arceans are the first ones on The List!

Got it (well will have it tomorrow.)

sorry, my mistake. Good luck with your turn Zed.

As I load the game, I see the anti-save/reload police have caused the Drengin to buy the Diplo Translators. Not that it really matters to us. Set up the Kolaz queue and set all our planets to it, instead of Starbase Resupply (whatever that is.) Phasers due next month.

Jan 2180: All ships on autopilot, nothing to do. Lower spending to 55%, still getting Phasers next month.

Feb 2180: Phasers complete, research started on Corvettes at 85% spending, due in 3 months. Found Xasica I, get a morality event - Bug Wars. Kill 'em all, for no bonus. Found Andersona II, get a morality event, underwater research domes. We occupy them for a +59% research bonus. Found Andersona IV, get a morality event, enslave stone age life form or live on the polar caps. Gee, tough call. We get a 41% production bonus. Found Russom III, seed pods grant pain but also increased intelligence. No pain, no gain! We get a +58% research bonus. I'm happy to get lots of big morality events, but would have preferred PQ bonuses... anyway, we are now at Evil (7), and truly deserving of our nasty reddish-Klingon interface.

Mar 2180: Due to our new research planets, I can drop spending to 76 and still get Corvettes next turn. We do so. Colonize Markus I, surprisingly no event. I think I was a bit spoiled last month... :) Hero finds a +1 to something Freeform Gas and is looking for something to do. I send it south toward a cluster of 3 planets, looking for a minor. I suppose I could try to send it to the other side of Arcean space on that mission, but I suspect it would be quite vulnerable if war were to break out... better task a Corvette for that job. If it had an attack rating, I'd attack an Arcean colony ship. AARGH! Sure there's no pirates onboard? Ah well. Arceans have impulse drive, btw, as evidenced by speed 3 colony ships.

Apr 2180: We have Corvette Technology as scheduled. Start research on Medical Theory, spending at 18%. We are actually gaining money this turn. Don't worry, I'll spend it all next turn. I want to found all planets before starting on Corvette construction, but it looks like 1 colony ship will still be enroute, oh well.

May 2180: Get Medical Theory this turn, going to Basic Environment, due next turn at 85% spending.

Jun 2180: Get Corvettes. Contemplate building some. Unfortunately it takes 3 months at our best planets, and 5 months at our worst ones, at 100% spending, to accomplish that. Yuck-er-oni! We need a government swap. Of course, we also need a bunch of other stuff right now, like some PQ improvements for starters, before our initial capital runs completely dry. I decide that gets next priority, and switch spending to social.

Jul 2180: The 3-system sector to our south probably doesn't have any minors in it as the Arceans just settled there. Not too sure where to send Hero next, I guess it can just putter around our area looking for anomalies. Expecting war to break out on either at the end of my turn or at the beginning of the next player's turn, so it shouldn't wander too far afield. IT: Drengin build Aphrodesiac.

Aug 2180: Complete some improvements, move Hero.

Sep 2180: Ditto. Ooops... move Hero into a wormhole. Funny, I thought that graphic was for a science anomaly, not a wormhole... Hero ends at the very top of the map, almost due north of our starting position. Well, I guess this will get us more contacts sooner than expected, unless we are careful to keep Hero out of sight of major influence regions. On the plus side, could open up some minor trading opportunities. Notice Yor influence to Hero's east, but nothing to the west, so we will head that way.

Oct 2180: Russom IV colonized. More improvements built. I think I will continue with basic (+PQ) infrastructure until the end of my turn, at which point we should be ready or nearly ready to switch off infrastructure and onto military or science, and we will have to drop spending to a sustainable level.

Nov 2180: Not much, move Hero.

Dec 2180: Not much, move Hero, collect a minor anomaly. IT: Hero discovers Scotty! At least this may give us some trade opportunities when we research UT. I notice we also somehow have contact with the Drengin, though I don't recall any mention of this, didn't see them pop-up during my turn, and can't see where their planets are. :confused: This seems to be a bug. I have also lowered spending to approx. break-even, next player can feel free to tweak from there. We are over 400BC in the red, but since we aren't planning to pay any bribes this is less important than it might otherwise be.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2180ad.JPG

End of year summary: Most planets are working on Habitat, a couple are complete. Options are:

research Comm Theory and UT, insert banks in the governor queue, trade tech with Scotty (hopefully getting Diplomacy for a gov't swap), declare war on Drengin and Arceans, switch spending to military, and build some Corvettes. Also prioritize finishing Habitat and getting some Banks up as we could certainly use more funds.
build military first, then Comm Theory and UT.

I prefer the former option in order to speed Corvette builds with the gov't swap and in order to decrease the risk that Scotty gets Corvettes before we can trade them to him. Right now spending is still set to 100% social but it probably would be better to switch to science; you could delay one month to let some more infra builds complete but after that Earth will run out of useful things to build (we don't need shipyards yet, for example, we need a bank first) so I would not hold off swapping off social spending longer than that.

Remember when trading that if you trade for Diplomacy, and need the +10 diplo bonus for better subsequent trades, you will have to wait one month for that diplo bonus to kick in.

The save: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2181ad.zip

ack, sorry, my fault. I meant to mention that we beat the Dregnin to the cluster of 3 uber-planets by a single turn. I was in a rush, so sorry about that :).

I got it. I will try to get my turns up tomarrow.

Our position looks good. Looks like the Arceans will present our first target.

I agree with Zed. Get the gov't swap, then declare, get our planets defended, and rush out a few corvettes for "pillage" duty.

That should give us a window for soil-bank-ent net.-habitat (or a subset), then back to get some more powerful ships (ultimately frigates) for the next warring phase.

We have Soil done (except 1 planet) and have finished or partly finished Habitat across the board, but we still need some time for Banks and Entertainment Centers. We will need some corvettes first though. Maybe ~1/2 year's worth to start, and see where we are; if that looks like enough to start with, swap to social. We do have a lot of planets to build them with. I expect it will be Bam-Bam's job to get us on the path to transports (if we don't get the tech in trade with Scotty) so we can capture the closest Arcean planets, assuming we don't get another player.

Remember that offense is our best defense. We also don't need to fight every battle, only the ones we can easily win -- so don't squander corvettes attacking Axes, for instance, unless that's the only way to nuke a transport.

Now that I think about it, we probably need at least 3 shells of corvettes, probably about equally weighted in numbers:
raiders - out looking for contacts (esp. minors) and freighters to nuke
scouts - forward defense, looking for targets of opportunity, esp. transports, and to give us advance notice of a strong force escorting transports so we can amass enough force to deal with it
home defense - the last line of defense, and reinforcements for scouts that get injured/killed in the line of duty. We don't necessarily need one for every planet, as the scouts will take some of the defense burden.

The scouts will be critical. The AI doesn't tend to mass its ships too much, so we should get chances to pick off the key targets (transports) before they get covered by enemy warships. If we wait until they approach our worlds, we are more likely to have to fight through defenders to hit the transports. Since the scouts and home defense are defending a fixed position and have to stay in their patrol zones in order to do their jobs, I expect these corvettes will get replaced with heavier ship classes in time. The raiders, not defending fixed positions, are free to avoid combat when possible. Depending on how effective they are at avoiding combat, we may wind up using corvettes in this role for a good portion of the game.

More simulator news: we will need about 2 corvettes to take out a standard battle cruiser. That's a good deal in one sense, but we don't want to have to do that too often, as there's a lot more of *them* than there are of *us*.

Puhleese can I join?

Aviator:)

Absolutely! :) In fact, in a limited time offer, if you get the game now, you can play before Isit. Since you played before Isit in SG3, IIRC, I leave the decision as to whether you want to do that to you.

EDIT: whoops, missed Isit's got it. Hope that doesn't introduce too much confusion.

As I said over at stardock--Aviator, you were the first RB type that I had in mind for this game. Welcome aboard.

I noticed that you have already patched to 1.2 based on submitted games, so you are all set. If you have the time to play now, then perhaps you can squeeze in AND Isit can play later this evening here on this side of the pond.

Zed--thanks. I couldn't remember how far we were along on our social builds. I like your thoughts about the shells of 'vettes. In fact, since 'vettes are cheaper than axes, we should build a whole lot more of them and use our offensive power as our defense. Since we have max sensors, this should be fairly easy to execute. I think I would still like some axes (1/planet) for extra insurance in high traffic areas.

If Zed objects then we can kill it....:)

But I have the game and I have a couple of hours free right now so I'll take it and get back in a couple of hours.

And thanks guys...:love:

Aviator

No worries, Aviator. You are always welcome. And it's no BS that you were one of the folks I wanted on board for this effort. I think always war is right up your alley.

Allllright we have a bug.

I can load Turn 1 ok
I can load Turn 2 ok

But turn 3..........

Lokkee here..


bug 1 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-bug2.jpg)

So I changed the social build only to find a planet looked like..

bug 2 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-bug1.jpg)

Where do you want me to go ?

Aviator

Whoa. Hold off on your turns. I will post this in the Stardock bug thread with links to the pics. Could you save where you are at and email it to Carielf?

thanks.

I have posted about this in the GalCiv v1.2 bug forum. I will look at the save tonight and see if I can reproduce the problem. As for now--let's keep you on hold, Aviator, and let Isit run with the game--seeing if he can finish the turns.

Odd. I have submitted two 1.2 games with no problems, and I know you have submitted one as well.

I have e-mailed Carielf, but it's Zed's save game I can't load. Can you?

Aviator

That is a strange one. I am up to six 1.2 games and I have yet to come across one bug. I am loading up the save now, I will see if I get the same problems.

On another note, welcome to the game aviator99_uk! I am glad you decided to join up. :)

I am at work, so I cannot say. Peace Phoenix clued me into a compatability problem between 1.20.086 and 1.20.085 games. I wonder...could everyone on the team chime in to what version of 1.20 is installed. I started the game in 1.20.085 (first released version of 1.20, not the update).

I suspect that we have a TKO here folks, which means we'll have to start again.

Check out this (http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&id=142016) thread at Stardock.

I'm on 85...... 86 is available. (1.2.0.xx)

I guess as I can load Turns 1 & 2 they are 85 and Zed is already on 86 perhaps ?

Aviator

I get the same bug. Our planets have lost all their improvements and gain terraforming. Since we are not very far in I would suggest a restart. I am running 1.20.085, 1.20.086 is the most current version.

Yes, the improvements of all kinds are saved by IDs, rather than by name. So that accounts for people's save games getting messed up. I didn't even think of it to warn you guys because I didn't actually change the code.

Thats from CariElf.

I would speculate that someone here is running the new version and the ID numbers of our improvements got messed up in the conversion. I would guess that updating everyone to the newest version and restarting would fix the issue.

I suspect I have 1.20.086, since I only upgraded a couple days ago, not having previously played a 1.20 game. In fact I didn't realize there was more than one version of 1.20 going. I am at work and can't check for sure, however.

Sucky, that. :(

If everyone upgrades to 86, would that potentially fix it, and we could keep going from here? Might be worth a shot, if not then we restart.

EDIT: Actually, having read Bam-Bam's linked thread, I am somewhat optimistic that just upgrading to 86 might work. Since we did not start building any planetary improvements until my turn, we don't have any improvements built under the 85 ID numbering scheme. If everyone upgrades to the 86 ID numbering scheme, the improvements should show up correctly. If there are no other issues besides improvements ID numbering, we should be ok.

Another tactics thought -- at some point we may want to think about the possibility of building one or more military starbases. I have not analyzed this thoroughly yet from a cost/benefit standpoint, but am throwing it out as an idea. The idea with a military starbase is that it takes the role of catapults in Civ3 - it acts as a force magnifier, so that you can fight more battles with fewer losses, improving your kill ratio so you can do more with less. In theory this allows you to more easily concentrate on other tasks (like research/social spending) while your existing military holds off (gasses, in Civ3 terms) the enemy. Testing with the simulator shows that even modest bonuses from the SB can give significant results in unit survivability.

One problem is, Civ3 catapults are mobile, SBs are not (except with Terror Star tech.) We would need to formulate a plan to lure enemy ships to strong points for destruction. Another problem is, starbases are moderately resource-intensive. If we want to try this, we will have to make a commitment to it at some point, and we will have to time when to make that commitment fairly carefully.

Sir, Sir, It works!:)

Aviator

P.S. I'm not doing anything until ......

Obviously if you are going to build a military starbase, you're going to want to do it in a planet sector where you can increase various other attributes as well? Social/military build increases? It would also make sense since the planets will be a constant target.

Testing with the simulator shows that even modest bonuses from the SB can give significant results in unit survivability.

I think terrorstar tech is a great idea. If we get to that point in the game a fully upgraded terrorstar could act as a mobile "fleet core" providing massive bonuses to our fleet. Until that point I it might make sense to build a few starbase but since they are hard to defend, I would suggest only fortifying the starbases we build on things like military resources.Building one "behind" a front line planet to provide economic and military bonus might be worth a try. We would have to control that sector to keep the starbase alive. Even a few ships slipping through could take it down.


aviator99_uk: That’s great news! I am on a four-day weekend ATM so just let me know what you want to do with your turn. Go ahead and go ahead of me if you like, or if you’re not going to be able to play for a while I can slip mine in. Just let me know.

Remember that Terror Stars are really slow. I hope that by the time we get around to researching Terror Star tech, we won't really need starbases to go on offense anymore. :) Still, the possibility is there, if we have no better options.

IMHO, regarding resource starbases, I expect the key will be to know what is behind the lines, and what is in front of the lines (i.e. the main thrust of the AI attack.) We probably will not want to construct starbases ahead of the front lines, they are too hard to defend. Starbases at the front lines are a bit risky, but potentially possible to protect. Starbases behind the front lines will be much easier to protect as they will rarely get attacked.

Right now, the front lines are our core systems, and there is nowhere that is behind the lines. A good portion of the game will be defined by the effort to capture territory and move the front lines, to increase the amount of safe areas where we can plant resource starbases. For instance, eliminating the Arceans first is important as it will render the entire SW corner of the map "behind the lines" -- the AI will probably prefer to send its ships at closer targets (like our home systems, or our raiders) rather than bother with stuff in the far corner of the galaxy.

Edit: correcting acronym.

Originally posted by Brackard
Obviously if you are going to build a military starbase, you're going to want to do it in a planet sector where you can increase various other attributes as well? Social/military build increases? It would also make sense since the planets will be a constant target.

I agree. As important as the +production potential is the fact that SBs in our core systems will be easier to defend due to short supply lines (i.e. they are at the front lines, rather than ahead of the front lines.)

A key point is we will still want to make an effort to funnel attackers to attack in specific sectors where we have starbases, and not just generally rely on the fact that they will want to target our planets. I don't think we want to afford to build SBs to cover each of our core systems, though it may come to that if our luring efforts are unsuccessful. The good news is many of our core sectors have multiple planets in them to benefit from ancillary economic modules on our military bases.

Remember that Terror Stars are really slow.

Very true. It’s still a cool idea, even if it isn’t very practical. :D

When I say behind the front lines I mean the front lines in any given sector. If we know which direction the AI ships are coming from we can put the starbase "behind" the planet and away from where the ships are coming in. That will either make the AI go for the planet first or give us time to launch intercepting ships if they do go for the starbase.

Originally posted by aviator99_uk
Sir, Sir, It works!:)

Aviator

P.S. I'm not doing anything until ......

Great! Go ahead and take your turn, then, or let Isit know if you can't just now. Even if we ultimately decide that the game is tainted and start over anyway, you might as well if you have the time and nothing more important to do.

More good news, Aaberg should be joining us shortly, our sixth player! :cool:

Very true. It’s still a cool idea, even if it isn’t very practical. :D

Agreed. :cool:

When I say behind the front lines I mean the front lines in any given sector. If we know which direction the AI ships are coming from we can put the starbase "behind" the planet and away from where the ships are coming in. That will either make the AI go for the planet first or give us time to launch intercepting ships if they do go for the starbase.
Right, although that's not the same sense I'm using "front lines" in. I'm referring to a more global front lines for the entire map, rather than just within our home sectors. Your proposal is similar to what I had in mind for starbase locations within our home sectors, but I don't think we should get too comfortable with the idea that the AI won't go past our planets to attack an SB in the same sector, especially if the AI thinks the planet is more strongly defended than the SB. While it probably won't go after targets several sectors behind the lines, it will likely consider going after targets a few tiles behind the lines.

Aviator--play your turn.
Good news about the fix--looks like it's better to be lucky than good.

Zed--right on about the starbases. That cluster of 3 sector looks pretty ripe for a production/military starbase. Your thoughts on gassing are dead on. I have read of some others' exploits where this tactic was used successfully.

As far as mobility, for our planets that are not exactly big-ship productive--what's to say we cannot send out the fleet with a pack of constructors--say 6pack (two +1 attack with cold fusion tech, and Battle stations x3 for +1,+2,& +3 attack). That would give a total of +8 attack, which, when combined with speed (grav acc) and out max sensors, should allow for some devistating combat results.

By the way, we now have a full crew. Aaberg signed up over at Stardock.

Final Roster:
Bam-Bam
Smegged
Zed
Aviator (playing)
Isit (on deck)
Aaberg

Note: Everyone needs to be on the 1.20.086 patch--the latest available via stardock central, to avoid the bugs Aviator saw earlier today.

OK guys. I'm happy that 86 works.

Isit-- Thanks for the go Ahead, right now we have 3 inches of Snow all about so things are being canceled due to SnoClo. So I have won a bunch of free time. I'll take my turn now and post it today (hour or two) which means that you may be able to get a year in later today (your time);)

Only thing I have'nt seen mentioned about what's needed soon is to get the manufacturing base established with manu ctrs & Fusion plants to start cranking out those 'vettes.:D

Aviator

As far as mobility, for our planets that are not exactly big-ship productive--what's to say we cannot send out the fleet with a pack of constructors--say 6pack (two +1 attack with cold fusion tech, and Battle stations x3 for +1,+2,& +3 attack). That would give a total of +8 attack, which, when combined with speed (grav acc) and out max sensors, should allow for some devistating combat results. [/B]

Is this on one starbase or two? Sorry, I found your phrasing slightly confusing, my bad for not being more familiar with the specifics of SB military upgrades (I suppose I could look it up at Javascout's page.) I would prefer not to build more than one SB per sector if we can avoid it, smacks too much of bombing.

As for being big-ship productive, that only applies once we get to Battleships. Right now, constructors are big ships. :) We may need more discussion on timing of when to do this. A constructor is equivalent to a Frigate in terms of construction cost, so we probably want to wait until at least then, but do we want to wait all the way to battleships? That seems like a long time...

Originally posted by aviator99_uk
Only thing I have'nt seen mentioned about what's needed soon is to get the manufacturing base established with manu ctrs & Fusion plants to start cranking out those 'vettes.:D

Right now, the question is not so much how to get more manufacturing, as how to get more income. :) I think the government swap plus pop growth will be pretty effective at improving our ability to build corvettes. After all, they are pretty small items, only needing 50pp apiece; once you get them down to 2 turns build time, it's relatively hard to reduce it to a single turn.

We will eventually want manufacturing plants at our planets, once we get the tech, but it's not a priority at the moment. However, I think we are planning to forego fusion plants except at our manufacturing capital for the moment, as the upkeep is too high and we need those funds for fleet maintenance costs.

One other thing we haven't discussed much recently is timing on when to go after our manufacturing capital and grav accelerators. I think this will need to be before we get Interstellar Tactics, but I'm not sure whether we want to try to snag the two nearby Arcean planets first. I suspect much will depend on what techs we can get from minors in the near future.

How about something like baiting the AI to come to you? What if you stripped a few planets of all defenders (in a sector with a maxed starbase) but had the entire defense force in the area? You would receive the starbase bonus and also not have to worry about hunting the enemy down? Just tossing ideas out on the table.

One other thing we haven't discussed much recently is timing on when to go after our manufacturing capital and grav accelerators.

That’s really the question. I think any early strikes we do need to come after we get grav accelerators. If we take a few planets but lose the race to this trade good then we may end up winning the battle but losing the war.

Zed--that was for one starbase.

The five attack improvements that are available with cold fusion and space militarization are

Stationary Turrets +1 (cold fusion)
Fusion Cannons +1 (cold fusion)

Battle Stations +1 (space mil)
Battle Stations Mk II +2 (space mil)
Battle Stations Mk III +3 (space mil)

Dread Drones +2 and Microfighers +2 come with Nanobots, and build on to the turrets/cannons chain

Agree on need for Grav Acc before conquest. We cannot let this one get snagged by a major. Good thing this is not AP, where minors are not supposed to build trade goods/wonders (even though they are due to some bugginess). I have an AP game going where Monkey boy rushed the translator within the first two years of the game.

Originally posted by Brackard
How about something like baiting the AI to come to you? What if you stripped a few planets of all defenders (in a sector with a maxed starbase) but had the entire defense force in the area? You would receive the starbase bonus and also not have to worry about hunting the enemy down? Just tossing ideas out on the table.
I don't know. :confused: AFAIK, the AI often chooses to target the closest enemy unit with its warships, so we can rotate scouts who have attracted attention back to the core, luring enemy units on the way, then rotate other scouts out. However, I'm not sure how often the AI re-evaluates its ships' targets. Every turn?

I guess we will find out.

Thanks for letting me play :yeah:

Have just finished catching up on this thread. This looks truly challenging and i can't wait to get started.

Just a few thoughts:

Manufacturing boosters: I have never played a game in which i haven't had trade income, but i would suspect that this means that we won't be able to get a high enough income to keep spending at a 100% before mid, late game. Anybody with experience on this ?

I have played abundent games where the local economy dwarfed trade, which is one of the reasons I bumped up the habitability from what Smegged did in his first AW attempt.

I suspect that cashflow is going to be our biggest problem, since we are in the business off offloading citizens to "expand our way of life" to other worlds. That means we have to conserve our units and inflict massive losses on the enemy. Civ3 AW focused on 10:1 type casualty ratios or thereabouts.

We are going to limit our manufacturing builds on our non-manu capital world. We cannot afford social maintenance except for morale/economy boosters that allow us to keep taxes >50% (and to counter enemy destabilization efforts). We also cannot afford to spend too much time social building, since we will need to keep pace with the AIs on tech--making sure they do not get a significant jump on capital ships.

All and all, this is going to be one fun ride.

Aviator studies the galactic map and wonders where to find his enemy, pausing briefly to look at the production reports spilling over his desk he calls his chief minister of weapon production over and quietly whispers that a year to make a corvette is far too long……….

JAN
start (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-001.jpg)
set comm. Theory

Feb
set UT
Hero gets + 4 hitpoints.

Mar
Trade with Scotty:
Trade 1 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-002.jpg)
set Industrial Theory
Apr
Move some planets onto Manu Ctrs, good production uplift when the population gets there, for little support cost. Make sure that the main planets are keeping 100% Morale.

May
:sleep:
June
:sleep:
July
half year blurb (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-003.jpg)

Someone tells me that Scotty has built an economic Capital.

Aug
set for Nano Elec (Personally I do like grabbing Eyes if I can, even with sensors + 4)

Sep
:sleep:
Oct
:sleep:
Nov

Trade Scotty Int. Refining for Alt Grav
Trade 2 (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-004.jpg)

Dec

Time to go and prod a few slaves into action

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-005.jpg


The Game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc_sg4_2182.zip)

Conclusion: nice to get a bit more manufacturing before we need it and it’s a pity Hero is still attack=0

Over to you Isit :scan:

Aviator

PS Hi Aaberg:)

I got it. I will try to get my turns up within a couple of hours. :)

Now everyone here realizes this is a 24/48 rule right. That's 24/48 HOURS not minutes right? ;)

Aviator, did you declare war vs. the Arceans and Drengin? If not, Isit will need to do so. (Gift Scotty with the war declarations.)

Note: why waste your time with inf. points in the trading? We left the UP LONG ago. Just a thought to save time.

Nice to pull a bunch of techs from the minors. That's more funds we can push into our pirate 'vette force.

We should trade or research controlled gravity soon--time to get the accelerators, then lauch our speed demon 'vette forces for some serious enemy harassment while we build up our core.

This is all about conservation--we need to squeeze the most out of our war machine, and then keep it running.

Aye--forgot about that, Zed. We will brook no further delay--the targets must know we are coming for them!

Isit-- You'll need to consider bringing another governor out, we won't be able to balance the books with Fusion plants all over. Meant to do it but forgot.

Aviator

Originally posted by Brackard
Now everyone here realizes this is a 24/48 rule right. That's 24/48 HOURS not minutes right? ;)

Aye. We be an enthusiastic bunch. Our friends from across the pond can also help boost the speed of the game, which is why Zed suggested Aviator play now, since it is evening in the UK, and soon to be evening in the US.

Oh, and one more thing (TM)

Mr. Ford is no longer an alien scum spy.

Zed-- Would you believe I totally forgot to even look. Somehow I was already assuming we were at war.:crazyeye:

My mistake, sorry.

Aviator

I was only using the IP points out of habit as an indicator that I had phasors and photons round the right way, no point in giving the stuff away, the fewer IPs they'll give you the tighter the trade.

Aviator

Firsts things first, I go to war with both the Drengin and the Arcean.

My main goal for my turns will be to get grav accelerators and keep us from getting kicked around too much.


Jan

Aviator has balanced out the spending bars masterfully so I simply move the Hero and watch the turn go by.


Feb

Earth now has a manufacturing center. I set the bars to 65% research and 35% military. Our front line planets need some ships ASAP. A single transport could take our systems and we have no ships to prevent that.


March

Hero moves again.


April

We get controlled gravity!

It’s not looking good. Even at 100% social and spending (which we cant maintain) it would take 17 months to build grav accelerators on our best planet! Our Morale is pretty good so I think I will just focus on continuing to build up our economy and defense. I go to 50% research and 50% military. All our planets are building corvettes. I am split between working on the battleship path or nano-metal. I decide to go for nano-metal. The two AIs are well behind us in tech and I think grav accelerators will be vital to us later on. The manufacturing capital we get with nano-metal may be key to getting them before anything else.


May

Just moved the hero some more.


June

The hero continues to pick up anomalies.


July

More hero type stuff.


August

Our first two corvettes are done!

I move one to the south and one to the north to keep watch over our frontier planets.

On another note, I turn off auto turn. I have had it get me in trouble when I am moving large fleets of ships. I will also move any ships by hand. I have had way to many ships blown up on autopilot to trust it with this tight a game.


September

Nano-metal is done, as are two more corvettes. I think they will be enough to defend us for now so I go to 100% social. Manufacturing center is setup on Xasica, which is tied with Earth for social production but is higher PQ meaning it will go higher as Earth's moral drops off.

I set all the other planets to build banking centers which I hope will help get our spending up. Manufacturing capital will be done in 8 turns at current spending. Fortunately neither of the AIs we know of has controlled gravity yet. That doesn’t meant another major doesn’t but it gives me some hope.


October

I start Hero creeping down the west side of the map, looking for anomalies.


November

More ship movement


December

We meet the Alarians. I had hoped to avoid meeting them for a while but I guess destroying a freighter isn’t a bad way to start off our war with them.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/swg3aboutotattack.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/swg3attcking.jpg


Jan

Game saved.


Notes:

The Arcean empire now has controlled gravity.

I had hoped to get further into it then I did but it was not to be. Hopefully they will dally on starting gravity accelerators. If they don’t then we should focus all our efforts on destroying them and hope they don’t pass it off to many other races. Most of our planets have their banking centers done.The next leader will need to switch the governors around, as we should be building anything production related other then a manufacturing center.

Our economy is starting to stabilize a bit. Once our planets finish building banking centers and entertainment networks there won’t be much left to build.

Our fleet:

Our fleet is currently deployed to protect our planets. We have two corvettes by the Drengin and two by the Arcean. I would suggest sending one from each group into enemy lands to target trade.

In particular lets get one up by the Altarian and try to prevent them from getting trade through to the southern majors.

I hope this screenshot helps to illistrate how our fleet is deployed and my suggestions.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/sg3militarynap.jpg

A few other maps and screens of note:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/sg3finalmap.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/sg3finalecon.jpg

The game:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc_sg4_2183.zip

Good luck!

Got it....i won't be able to post it any sooner than in 12-13 hours.

Hope thats okay.

No problem, Aaberg!

EDIT: I just loaded the save, and found why Corvettes have been taking a long time to build. We are still Imperial! Aviator forgot to swap to Republic when he traded for Diplomacy. We will want to switch to Republic as soon as your turns start, Aaberg.

Funny thing is, the fast pace of the game is biting us back slightly, as we don't have a chance to check for these sorts of minor errors before they propagate. :) I'll still take the fast pace, however! I much prefer that to a game that drags.

@Isit: Going for Nano-Metal was absolutely the right call! We need to maximize our odds of getting Grav Accelerators before some AI buys them on the turn break. However, I think you uploaded the wrong save. I checked the save you uploaded and it's the same as the one Aviator uploaded at the end of his turn.

Everyone should try to remember to check for trades before your turn ends, or the AI may snatch them on the turn break due to the save/reload penalty.

One of these games I will get a post and game uploaded without any mistakes. :crazyeye:

The correct game should be up now.

Can I offer some sugestions for 'rules of engagement' which some of us have been working towards to prevent unfair exploitation of the weakest points in the AI.


Observations:

The AI will build more powerful ships as it gets them and never seems to deliberately build anything else unless it is desperate to defend a planet and hasn't got the cash to buy what it would normally build.

The AI will almost always follow a ship forever if it is 2 parsec away, this means that a starfighter at speed 15 can easily lure a speed 5 overlord to the farthest corner by being 2 parsec in front and only moving 5 each turn.

So to avoid claims of downright simple cheating:

The Lure:

Ships of inferior strength which you want to retreat must do so with their full movement (unless that puts them in harms way). To 'Lure' the enemy on you must therefore use multiple ships in a fairly complex 'follow my leader' way which gives the AI maximum oportunity to break off and disengage. It's quite likely the AI will follow the original target until it is significantly out of range before looking for another target and attempting to pass it on to another lure is quite a skill.
It is acceptable (but 'dastardly') to attempt to lure the enemy into the teritory of another civ that it is at war with.
It is totally unacceptable to simply move a high speed ship in a circular North, East, South, West (or reciprocal) directions whilst keeping a slower but stronger enemy vessel executing the same circular movement inside it.

The Impass:

Ships of inferior strength and of identical speed can retreat until the edge of the map is reached, and if the AI hasn't broken off by then you will probably be toast.

The Invasion fleet:

The AI will occasionally send Transports to undefended planets deep in your teritory and this is an acceptable Lure, it is necessary and acceptable to defend that planet as you see fit, and if the AI stops its fleet in your space and doesn't move it's ships out of harms way then tough.
It is unacceptable to move a high speed defender from one planet to another in order to force the AI into never-ending oscillations.

Comments?

Aviator

Ok, checking the correct save, I see most things look good. We still need to swap to Republic, though, and we should take Fusion Plants out of the governor build queue -- we will need that cash for ship upkeep, not fusion plant upkeep. About the only places we will want Fusion Plants are Xasica II and Earth. We should also bump up Entertainment Center in priority; Manufacturing Center should really come after it, since our problem right now is getting more income, not spending it faster.

We only have 4 corvettes out, yet are not that far behind the others on the military power graph. So far, so good. Fortunately, we have several corvettes that are near completion. I think we'd like to get more than just a couple raiders out soon, but Grav Accelerators has to be top priority right now. Snagging Tristrontium from Earth is also a possibility - Eyes can wait a bit since the AI rarely researches Sensors quickly.

Originally posted by Zed-F
EDIT: I just loaded the save, and found why Corvettes have been taking a long time to build. We are still Imperial! Aviator forgot to swap to Republic when he traded for Diplomacy.


Ooops. :blush:

Aviator

Originally posted by aviator99_uk
Can I offer some sugestions for 'rules of engagement' which some of us have been working towards to prevent unfair exploitation of the weakest points in the AI.
<snip> see above for the remainder of the post...

I think that much of this can be avoided simply by remembering that a ship is in a given region for a purpose, as follows:
Our raiders are not deliberately luring enemy ships -- they are on a search and destroy mission for soft targets. They should try to avoid combat when faced with a superior opponent, but not at the expense of being unable to fulfill their primary mission. Raider corvettes are expendable; if we lose a few by virtue of being in an exposed position after taking out a freighter route, so be it. That said, we do want to conserve resources, so if you think you can avoid combat and still whack the freighter, that's the right call.
Our scouts are going to be acting as bait to some degree, but not to the point of diverting enemy ships indefinitely. Rather, they are going to be luring enemy ships to positions of strength (i.e. concentrations of our own fleet) so they can be destroyed. We can afford to have a large fleet of enemy ships flying around temporarily (sans transports) if we can't currently defeat them, but not indefinitely, and we'd prefer to avoid the situation in the first place. Since our scouts are going to be operating fairly close to home, I don't see a short lure to our own fleet as problematic. It's the equivalent of setting an ambush and trailing bait, a classic war tactic. We're not avoiding the fight, just fighting on our terms, rather than the enemy's.
Our home fleet is, of course, not going to act as bait at all. If we are temporarily outmatched to the point where our home fleet has to withdraw from our planets to avoid destruction, (a) we're in trouble already, and (b) they will have to stay fairly close to use guerilla tactics and try to prevent transport incursions. I don't see luring being a problem here.
I think the key to avoiding an odor of fromage will be to remember the ship's mission when moving it, and to act according to that mission.

Well spoken, Aviator and Zed.

The key to avoiding GalCiv "AI du fromage" when it comes to ship combat tactics is to stick to OUR MISSIONS. Since we are not John Cleese looking for cheese, then even if our tactics lure the AI for a bit, it is because we are on our primary missions of raiding, scouting and setting traps where we can bring a decisive force to bear on the enemy. That is Sun Tzu, not cheese. It is also exactly how a good AW game plays in Civ--setting up kill zones to bleed the enemy while strengthening the homeland for a massive breakout.

What remains to be seen in this type of game for GalCiv is what the equivalent to artillery (probably starbases) and cavalry (not sure) is. That makes this game (and the solo one I am playing at present) very interesting, indeed.

And, had I mentioned how glad I am that you persuaded me to take sensor picks, Zed? :thanx:

I can see where Zed is coming from, but.........

The objective is to invade the enemy. Engaging his fleet is secondary. Consequently a favourite tactic is highly mobile invasion fleets (and deception by lure), most majors die with the vast majority of their fleet intact, but no planets. :cool:

To that end all ships are multi-purpose and ships are not necesarily in a region for a given purpose, a transport can be used as a scout, a lure, or an invader if its fast enough (but not a raider, we use starfighters for that). Zed's tactics are possibly workable, but quite limiting, and quite unnecessary. (opinion)
Abuse can come by using starfighters to deliberately lure the enemy's newly built avatars away while invading his axes & defenders using AMM & CTs which works time and again against the AI, you never have to kill a ship not in orbit (unless its invading you) which is acceptable if done within the 'rules' and many would say that its a waste of resource unecesarily taking out an enemy fleet.
Hence my offering of RoE.

There is only one primary mission, to enable a sucessful invasion, without that there is no purpose, the secondary mission is to keep our own productive planets from being invaded, secondary planets can be sacrificed or abandoned or allowed to 'flip' back in time, all else is just for fun. ;)

Thinking Civ isn't necessarily right (and I have played lots of Civ from 1 to C3C).

Aviator

I am fine with a simple set of rules. The only thing I don’t want to see is whole fleets of ships chasing one of ours around the map for the purpose of neutralizing that major’s fleet.

I have a major problem with one corvette luring away a major’s fleet. Its a fine line but I think what Zed was getting at was that if ships start following our ships while our ships are out doing their thing then that’s fine.

What is not fine is if we go out with a ship for the purpose of luring the enemy’s fleet away. Luring them into a trap is a different matter of course.

I am sure our raiding ships are going to gather quite a following. :D I don’t have a problem with this so long as they don’t start running circles around the edge of the map.

Ok, now we're talking offense, not defense or raiding. What I was talking about in the previous post is mostly about defense, gassing the enemy -- what we do before we are ready to take to the offense, or when our offense is working in another sector against another opponent. While we are working on taking out the Arceans, we will probably still have to contend with attacks on our home sectors from other opponents; hence, we will still need defense.

Speaking from experience, you don't necessarily need to deliberately lure units out of the way (chase-my-starfighter style) in order to only hit units in orbit and nothing else on your way in. It's called good positioning of your attack fleet -- especially if you have a speed advantage. Now, obviously this would be much easier to do in a sneak attack, which we will not have the luxury of. Still, speed advantage is still quite powerful when it comes to picking where the battle will take place, and against what, even if you have not lured enemy ships away. You still have the option to perform feints (trying to draw opposing ships out of position or into an irrelevant combat) and harassing attacks designed to coerce the opponent into weakening his defensive position.

So, how do we ensure we take on offensive operations sans fromage in the form of unnecessary luring? Without luring, it seems clear that, "wasteful" or not, we will have to take out at least some portion of the enemy fleet to ensure our transports don't get attacked. So, the solution is simple -- we proceed with a straightforward invasion, making sure to bring more than enough force to accomplish our objective.

How much force that is depends on our objective. Obviously, for our first goal of capturing the two nearby Arcean worlds, we will need a lot less force than we will for our next objective, to capture the rest of the Arcean home sectors. Regardless, we play it in a straightforward fashion. We don't necessarily need to wipe out every enemy ship, but we do need to wipe out any enemy ship that threatens our mission -- that is, the invasion and capture of whatever planets we intend to invade. This will mean any enemy transports that could take those worlds back, any enemy ships that looks likely to be able to successfully attack our transports or is blocking the area we want to move our transports to, etc. It doesn't include enemy ships that put themselves out of the fight through silly maneuvering, through attacks against other opponents (AI-AI skirmishes), or through taking the bait on a feint.

Really, even on offense, it comes down to focussing on the mission, and doing what it would logically take in a realistic combat scenario to ensure its success. Remembering that one simple rule is enough to quash any accusations of "cheating." Even if you save a ship or two because the enemy never gets to complete an attack on a feinting ship, the fact that you have brought more than enough force to accomplish the objective means the loss of the ship ultimately would not have made a difference. There is a big difference between a credible fleet using good tactics on one hand, and a full-blown chase-my-starfighter bait-and-switch lure on the other. Good players can spot the difference easily.

What remains to be seen in this type of game for GalCiv is what the equivalent to artillery (probably starbases) and cavalry (not sure) is. That makes this game (and the solo one I am playing at present) very interesting, indeed.
Well I'll stick with starbases = artillery until someone proposes a better model. As for cavalry... well, cavalry is just a fast attack unit. Pretty much any reasonably tough ship with a speed advantage qualifies. Whether that speed advantage is through tech, trade goods, or starbase acceleration is up to you. You could consider Rangers with an inherent base speed of 3 as your cavalry unit, if you like -- it's faster than any other capital ship short of Excaliburs.

And, had I mentioned how glad I am that you persuaded me to take sensor picks, Zed? :thanx:
You're welcome! :D Good intelligence is always useful.

I meant less the literal, what is the speedy attacker like cav in Civ3. More to the point, what I meant was --what is the gamebreaker in AW for GalCiv, like cav is in Civ3 AW...

Ah. Well, since we have no experience in GalCiv AW (yet), it's hard to say... :)

If I had to guess, it would be AMMs. They are cheap, can be built easily at smaller planets and will blast a hole through enemy defenders quite readily, allowing your transports a window of opportunity to invade unimpeded.

Zed-- You know me, a good defence is an even better offence:D

AMMs become a game breaker only if they are fast, the perfect standoff weapon,:) or you have to be able to use 'floods' of slower ones as they can be knocked down by a well aimed spitball.:( given the AI gets its act together and has something like a fast Phoenix available, it can take out half a dozen in a turn without getting a scratch.:cry: so slow ones need to be used quite diferently to fast ones. Its really speed that is the game breaker, and anything which is fast can be used quite potently, a +2 speed pic with Grav acc allows a tough ship to attack many more times per month and becomes a massive force multiplier. The economics of it stack up as well, for any given maintenance cost you can potentially destroy much more of the AIs capital base.

AMMs main attraction is as Zed said, cheap & powerful both for defence and offence. I dare say the weapon we will be most dependant on later, especially for active defence, one does tend to be relieved at having something that can counter those 200 hitpoint 25 defence CTs that the AI always seems to manage to produce somehow.:p

What I haven't seen anyone mention so far is the need we have very, very soon to get some agressive ships (even SFs will do) marauding the constructors the AI will be sending out to the resources, this deprives the AI of bonuses before they become the harder to hit SBs, and gets some ships up the experience curve and a level 5 'vette or SF can do good damage later, a level 5 Frigate can take out a level 0 BS if the AI ever makes any.

Aviator

I left the office (right know my only online possibility) without having loaded the game yesterday. Which i'm sorry for.

That of course meant that i am back on work now and won't be able to play the next 12 hours (and wont be able to post before in 24 hours).

If anybody feels liked it, i wont mind skipping this turn - so that we can get them game rolling.

@Aviator -- that's part of our raiders' job, good to point it out though, constructors are definitely on our soft target list. We don't have enough corvettes right now by any measure... but we do need to get Grav Accelerators done. Fortunately we have a large number of almost-complete corvettes so it wouldn't be too hard to pop out a bunch at once. I'll leave timing on corvette construction vs. Grav Accelerator construction up to the next player.

@Aaberg: Well it's just morning here now, I don't think anyone on this side of the pond could play in the next 12 hours either, unless they had today off. Someone here could play and post tonight, but if we do that you won't be able to pick up the game in this 12-hour period of being at work either.

Tomorrow is Saturday, which often means a fair amount of progress can get made. If you can complete and post your game by tomorrow morning, that should be sufficient to make good use of the day. I'd say go ahead and take your turn if you think that's acheiveable.

@The Team: Another note -- Peace Phoenix pointed out that the AI may have got some colonies with funny builds on them as a result of the 85-86 patch issue. Just because we didn't build anything in the first 2 years of the game, doesn't mean they did not. So, I'm not sure what to do about that. We can destroy any wonky improvement on any planet we capture, but what will it do to the AI's progress? Does it matter if they built terraforming or info nets? Will they go back and re-build important early improvements like Soil that they already built once?

Should we restart or just keep going and deal with the situation on captured planets as we capture them?

Originally posted by Zed-F

Should we restart or just keep going and deal with the situation on captured planets as we capture them?
If it happens; abandon the planet and alow the AI to send nice soft colony ships to blast.:sniper:

Seriously though this could be a problem,:eek: is the AI sitting there right now scratching its little silicon head wondering why it has a bunch of Info Nets? And what to research to get soil etc ? :confused: Trouble is we can't ask it.

Aviator

If it happens; abandon the planet
No need for something that drastic, we can just scrap the offending improvement. :)

The more I think about it, the more I'm thinking, what else have we not thought about yet which may have an impact on the game? While I don't think that anything has happened that would materially invalidate any learnings we could get from this game, if we continue as is we are taking a chance that something will crop up later that would invalidate our learnings.

We're still fairly early in the game. If we want to restart to be sure our learnings from the game are accurate, now's the time. I'd leave it up to Bam-Bam whether to restart on the same or on a new map.

Restart the game?? Alright, I understand the concern here but there is an easy way to tell if it’s going to be a problem. I went in and rushed a transport in our game and took over a couple of planets. Their build orders are fine. No buildings they shouldn’t have and basic improvements are in place.

Note: In order to get no spoilers I simply hit the end turn, moving only a transport and a corvette. I know we are trying to avoid spoilers but since my turn wont come up for several more years, I don’t think I learned anything of use in the 8 months it took me to take over two planets.

Well i will leave work early and the game should be up in around 4 hours.

Originally posted by Isit
I don’t think I learned anything of use in the 8 months it took me to take over two planets.

You mean other than the fact that we can rush a transports and take over two planets? :lol:

Seriously, that is a reasonable test. Let's keep with this one. If we have any positive evidence that there was a problem with the patching , only then do we declare TKO. Besides, we just might have to do this again :hammer:

Aaberg, you are within the notional 48 hours to post your turns, so no worries. I am exhausted from a business trip today, so delaying my turns until tomorrow is a good thing.

Ok, forge ahead it is then. :)

Starting considerations:

Options:

1) Get Gravity Accelators
Okay i sorted our planets by social production and find that Andersona IV is the one with the highest production capacity. Currently 21+3 building a Fusion power planet in 2 (3) turns
which should bring it to 21+7 and 18 turns for Grav.Acc. a total of 21 turns

Xasica II (currently producing Manufacturing Capital) is at 20+3 and 4(5) turns short of finishing Man.Capital, which should bring it to 20+23 and 12 turns to Grav.Acc. a total of 17 turns.
Xasica it is then.

This would mean producing nothing else and thereby setting us back in relation to Military tech and defense.
We could trade for Advanced trade and have remaining planets produce Economic Exchanges.
But in terms of defence this would leaves up with Corvettes for the next 17 months

The option is to go for Deflectors and shields to be able to produce BattleAxes for defence first and then switch to Social prod.
This would bring us even further back in the race for Frigattes

2) Produce a few more corvettes and then go for Frigattes to be able to hit the Arceans fast.
Battle Armor(100), Deflectors(200), Space Militarization(200),
Shields(500), Energy channeling(220) and Interstellar tactics (800bc). Total 2020 bc.

I believe it would take just around the same time to get ready to hit the Arceans as it will to get Grav. Acc., both will give us strategic advantages.

Since we can't count on also getting Tir-Qai Tranning it would probably be costy - population wise - to hit the Arceans.

I fear the later consequences of the Arceans growing strong er, but we might still be able to get Frigattes before them, so option 1) it is.

Jan 2183.

Changed production Man.Centers to Entertainment Networks.
Shift production to 50% military and 50% Social to get 2 more Corvettes.

Move ships around

Feb 2183

Shift production back to 100% Social.
Encounter Drengin corvette, can't get out of range - 1 corvette lost

Mar 2183

Shift production to research 80 and Social 20, to get Zero gravity research to trade the Scottlingas for advanced trade

April 2183

Nano, Phasers and Zero gravity proved not to be enough. Slider shifted to res 40 and soc 60

May 2183

Trade Scottlingas for advanced trade (Phaser, zero grav. research, Nano Electronics and Stellar).
Shift Andersona IV to Tri-strontium steel 19 turns (20)

Shift prod. to 100% social.

Encounter Arcean Transport (defense 4, HP 33). I Attack and win (cost 8 HP of 18)
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBGC4_2183_pic1.JPG

Jun 2183

Move ships

Jul 2183

Move ships
Encounter another Arcean transport. Attack and die.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBGC4_2183_pic2.JPG

Aug 2183

Shift Xasica to Grav. Acc. 10 turns (11)
Discored moral ressource in sector 2-3

Sep 2183
Another Arcean transport, dies
and a Altarain Corvette

Oct 2183

Ship movement

Nov 2183

Attack Altarian fighter, Drengin Corvette appear

Dec 2183
Attack and destroyes Drengin Corvette.

Jan 2183 is ready.

Well i can see know that my above calculations didn't take into account that our population and thereby our production capacity where going to grow.
Even with the small side tracks Grav.Acc. is down to 4 turns left now.
All ai has developed shields, so far we have not falle terribly behind on the techs.

Tri-strotntium steel is still 11 turns away, its a nice (+25%) HP bonus, but i can feel the pressure from the AI's growing, so i think we shoudl start focusing on getting Frigattes.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBGC4_2183_pic3.JPG

www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBGC_SG4_2184.zip (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBGC_SG4_2184.zip)

Right. Cash is not there, but we can get the accelerators in 4 (+1) at breakeven spending.

Q1

All's quiet.

Pop a space shark.

Q2

Still quiet. Locate a morale and econ resource and mark it with a rally point. Frag a couple of arcean transports--taking our raiding corvette to level two and 9/18 hp.

Then we get this message.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2184b.jpg

[dance] We be fast, and they be slow!

Q3

Research and debt elimination time.
Deflectors,
Antimatter, which gives this trade

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2184c.jpg

Q4

Basic repair, which opens up this trade

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2184d.jpg

Frag a couple of arcean star fighters.

Nano-frequency electronics, which opens up this trade

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2184a.jpg

Add multimedia center to the queue, ahead of economic exchange, and switch planets off exchanges for this.

Interstellar Tactics due in 2 (+1) with a 39bct surplus.

End of Year

Look who's come to dinner.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2184e.jpg

I gift Scotty war, so the number is now four

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2185map.jpg

Frigates are 1 (+1) away at 57% spending.

We should crank a few 'vettes and a frigate or two ( for invasion) along with transports. Since we now have repair, make sure we are getting our veteran ships healed. We are in good shape. Smegged should kick a couple of Arcean planets, and perhaps get the next morale improvement built.

Roster:
Bam-Bam (just played)
Smegged (UP)
Zed-F
Aviator
Isit
Aaberg

Good luck to Smegged! :hammer:

And the save...

ALWAYS WAR! (http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2185ad.zip)

Bam-Bam, on your final map I see a yellow dot close to our southern most system. Going into the save its a transport thats only a few moves from that system. We had better get a ship built there to defend it.

Good catch. I did not pore over the tactical map at the end of my turns. He just showed up out of the fog. Frigates can wait so that we can pump out a 'vette there.

If your planet has much more than 1 billion in population, it may be cheaper for you to let the transport attempt to land. However it is much less of a risk to get an offensive ship there and destroy the transport before it lands or even worse, starts flying between your numerous undefended planets.

Got it

I may take a while to play though with all my 21st birthday celebrations and uni starting up again over the next two days.

-Smegged

:bday:

Happy 21st Smegged! Watch out for too much DHABB! No worries about the timing.

Yes, happy birthday Smegged!. Just dont drink and play. :D

Happy birthday Smegged. Hope you have fun

21 Wow! :bday:

:bday: to you Smegged...

Umm--have we switched to republic yet? Aaberg's screenie shows us as imperial, and I forgot to check. Smegged, please remedy.

Grumble grumble. I have to fix everything around here. First it was those pesky united pooheads, and now it's these stinking barbaric governments.

Thanks for all the well wishing, I had a great birthday. I have been so busy since last friday that I haven't had a chance to get on my computer, let alone play galciv. Fortunately I should have some time tomorrow to get some in. In the meantime, I need some well earned sleep.

Hey, Smegged, whassup? It's well past your 48, do you have the game ready?

Zed and others. I really am committed to this game. I really want to play it out to its conclusion. However, my turn came up at the very worst time possible for me (party stuff + return to uni + doctor/orthodontist appointments + RL commitments). Over the last 5 days I have had a grand total of one hour of free time for computer stuff, which I used to check email and write my last post. I will, however, definately have time to play within the next 24 hours. So if my grace period can be extended until then, I would be most greatful. If, however, you wish to run with the game without me I also understand.

-Smegged

Consider the :whipped: applied. We will await your report in a day.

For all--if any of us sees similar issues--then ask for a skip.

My turn went smoothly. The very first turn, I rushbuilt a corvette to take out the transport coming from the Arceans. The 160 bc cost was worth it, since it got us to frigates one turn earlier.

About April I remembered to change governments (which is slack since I reread all the notes people had posted just before this turn).

As soon as we got Frigates, I changed all of our worlds from corvettes to frigates and started full military production. This is the result:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/firstinvasion.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/secondinvasion.JPG

Some other significant events occured on my turn. In the screeney I just posted it doesn't list that we also stole another tech in our second invasion (I forgot to press printscreen and paste it). I also traded cultural trade for advanced engineering and turbo phasers.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/turndetails.JPG

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/tactical.JPG

The next leader will note that they have a few frigates at their disposal. They have one of two options for their turn. The first is that they use the frigates for homeland defense, spend one turn researching sensors, then build as many wonders/trade goods as possible. This may yeild us the Eyes of the Universe, the Galactic Stock Exchange and Tri Stronium Steel, all of which are absolutely vital for our chances of victory. This would also catch our new worlds up with the others. One of the captured worlds was also building a manufacturing capital, so if we let it build we would have two.

The second option is that the next leader keeps pressing our advantage with Frigates into Arcean space. This may be our only time that we have a military tech lead over the AI. We could significantly hurt Arcea by doing this.

Personally, I prefer the first option. The Galactic Stock Exchange is the next most important wonder other than the ones we already have. Eyes would give us an extreme tactical advantage, and Tri Stronium Steel would give our ships huge advantages in combat.

However, if successfully executed, our push into Arcean space could yeild us another 3-4 worlds.

Both options are risky, may not work, and once the path has been chosen there is no going back. This is going to be a crucial set of turns for our civ. If we chose wrongly the game is going to be much harder. If we chose correctly the game may be much easier. Either way, I'm glad that I'm not the one to make the choice :).

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2186ad.zip

The last few paragraphs, for ease of reading for those people who have 1024x768 resolution or less.

The next leader will note that they have a few frigates at their disposal. They have one of two options for their turn. The first is that they use the frigates for homeland defense, spend one turn researching sensors, then build as many wonders/trade goods as possible. This may yeild us the Eyes of the Universe, the Galactic Stock Exchange and Tri Stronium Steel, all of which are absolutely vital for our chances of victory. This would also catch our new worlds up with the others. One of the captured worlds was also building a manufacturing capital, so if we let it build we would have two.

The second option is that the next leader keeps pressing our advantage with Frigates into Arcean space. This may be our only time that we have a military tech lead over the AI. We could significantly hurt Arcea by doing this.

Personally, I prefer the first option. The Galactic Stock Exchange is the next most important wonder other than the ones we already have. Eyes would give us an extreme tactical advantage, and Tri Stronium Steel would give our ships huge advantages in combat.

However, if successfully executed, our push into Arcean space could yeild us another 3-4 worlds.

Both options are risky, may not work, and once the path has been chosen there is no going back. This is going to be a crucial set of turns for our civ. If we chose wrongly the game is going to be much harder. If we chose correctly the game may be much easier. Either way, I'm glad that I'm not the one to make the choice .

Bam-Bam
Smegged (just played)
Zed-F (UP)
Aviator
Isit
Aaberg

Before playing, I would suggest some discussion about our next move. Do we expose our queen to try and acheive a quick mate, or do we move our pawns for better board control?

One more thing.

I would have asked for a skip in hindsight. However, when my turn came up, it appeared that I would have more time than I did. So I apologise for the delay, and hopefully I won't have so much on my plate next time I'm up :).

-Smegged

It happens. I am glad the game is up and going again. :)

I think we should place a high priority on getting eyes of the universe. As this game gets on into the later stages movement rates are going to be higher then our sensor range unless we grab this wonder. If we let movement outstrip our sensors then we lose our major edge in combat and limit our ability to raid behind enemy lines. As for the stock exchange, I never build it. I think we would be better served to use the 5 turns it would take to build it for other things.

I would suggest switching to social for long enough to get the eyes and then going back on the offensive. We also need to start working toward battleships so that we get it around the same time as the AI does. Ideally we could push our advantage vs. the Arceans at the same time but keeping up in tech needs to come first. We will quickly get creamed if we don’t get battleships before or with the AI.

Social. Get the eyes, complete the 2nd manu capital and try to pull galactic stock exchange and Tri-strontium. With only tax income the galactic stock exchange will be of GREAT benefit. Tri-strontium is great for us and is useful for denial purposes. Eyes are essential.

Will look into getting this tomorrow...

Originally posted by Bam-Bam
With only tax income the galactic stock exchange will be of GREAT benefit.

Well the tax revenu is still capped at 4x pq even if you have no trade coming in. Unless you build few morale buildings and keep high morale by going the low tax rate way, the GSE is almost useless after you get stock markets.

Well done Smegged, grabbing those two arcean planets has given us a much sounder tactical board to play off.

(Sound of paper clips being idly tossed about while thought bubbles quietly pop, brain in gear flag set)

Eyes will give us a great tactical advantage which could be made up for with sensor drones at a pinch, but its a clutzy way to provide what eyes can do for us. Only Scotty has nano elec so no one else is even close to building it yet, so there is some more time in our favour, some 'vettes on picket duty may work as a short term stand in.

Gal stock ex may be better in our hands than someone elses, it can give the AI a significant boost to manufacture at maso level at this point in a game, but its not as vital here, and I'm fairly relaxed about not having it.

But my heart (black and evil) is telling me that now has to be the time to try and weaken the enemy.

Our transports are quite slow and from Xasica (say) will take a while to get to further Arcean space and the next two planets are probably 7B or 11B if we went after the big ones, could be interesting. The Drengin seem to be quite weak, possibly they bought their two wonders and its sent their economy into free fall, but with Aphro they could become quite a threat quite quickly. I'm inclined to press our military advantage but would consider an attack against the Dren at sauron 3B(ish) worth considering, it may give us the oportunity to mop up the outlying Drengin planets which have quite low populations before CTs become the norm for invasion.

I would have to vote for a strike against the Dren and see if we can pick up some easy meat worth developing before we have to ramp social for Eyes etc. (brain in gear flag reset) :sleep:

I'd have to disagree Aviator (don't take this personally though!). If we wish to upgrade our production in the future, the GSX is crucial. We are going to be losing a LOT of population to invasions. The GSX will help with getting revenue from all our new worlds, and any old worlds that have had 5-10 bill stripped from them.

We also may lose Eyes if any AI (including the minors) gets the tech this round to a rushbuy at the start of the next round. Frictionless clothing and the Galactic Exhibition are still available also, both of which could be useful to us in the future. That extra 10% moral boost is going to be VITAL in de-stabilisation prevention. Tri Stronium is already 3/4 built at one of our worlds. We should at least push for that in the next 12 turns (if Zed decides on a mil push, he could possibly cash rush it to help us out). Every military boost is VITAL to our survivability. Especially when Death Knights come around, since they take FOREVER to build.

Another point to consider is that many of our core worlds finished building frigates at the start of January, so the next batch won't be coming off the shelves until halfway through the next turn anyway. The more I think about this, the more I think it would be worthwhile getting sensors and then finishing all the trade goods/wonders we can. Hopefully the reload police pick up the Galactic Exhibition if anything this turn. That's the one trade good/wonder that won't benefit us.

-Smegged

@smegged-- Its OK to disagree. What I like about SGs is the fact that you can pick up any point and play it out from there as your play style demands and see if it was a good or bad call, or a better or worse ending as it were.

What you say may have merit, not saying it doesn't, its just not the way I would play it. (opinion) Monkey boy looks like easy meat and I fancy the feel of broken bodies under the feet of my stormtroopers......

(gosh did I say that) :rolleyes:

Even with the 4x limit on income from taxes, we are likely to be in the population growth trade for a while before we get to interstellar capitalism. I suspect we will push to capital ships first, too. That means there is a significant period where the GalStockEx will give us a boost (as well as denying the boost to our enemies). I also think eyes will be huge boon--we want to have sensor coverage that is greater than enemy movement, so we are avoiding out-of-the-fog attacks.

As far as heated debate and disagreements go--folks on this team have been involved in at least one or two SGs, so we should all be used to debates on our course of action.

Humourously enough, this little debate can be related quite easily to modern politics. Do we focus internally on improving our own economy, or do we have an external focus and try to improve our economy due to external means. External means in this case being at the pointy end of a phase pistol.

Just the ticket [plasma] sustainable only while expanding, but thats ok by me........:D

Ok, now I've got it.

Votes on priorities for the coming year:
- Infrastructure: Smegged, Isit, Bam-Bam
- Military: Aviator suggests Drenin.
- No comment: Aaberg

How about some of each? :) Though, if I'm going on offense, I don't want to attack the Drengin just now; that would leave us with some awkward to defend borders. Snagging the bottom side of the map sounds like a much better deal. We'll see what I can put together. Initial screen says that we are the most powerful, which is nice to hear. However, it also says we are doing 3 percent of the trade in the galaxy! :confused: Say what? It appears Scotty can send us trade, even though we are not in the UP, as we have one route from them. I also note they have Interstellar Business, which would give us the ability to build Ultra Spices.

Drengin want peace. DENIED!

Jan 2186: I plop down some waypoints on resources so we will know where they are later if some other races plant bases on them. This is the tiny down arrow button on the upper right hand side of the screen for anyone who doesn't know. What are all our corvettes doing at home?? Shouldn't they be out looking for raiding opportunities now that we have a number of frigates for local defense & offensive prosecution?

The plan: Send the corvettes out to do their jobs and harass the enemy rather than sit at home. We have a significant Frigate force for home defense and are building more. Swap several frigates over to transport production. The plan is to get as much stuff done within a 2-month window as possible and then switch off military to research for sensors followed by social for building Eyes, Tri-stromtium, and Stock Exchange. I should be able to build 5 transports in that time without straining too much, which is not as many as I'd like but will have to do for now. We have a speed advantage; if we blitz quickly we should be able to put a significant hurt on the Arceans in exchange for little retaliation.

IT: We meet the Yor, who have freighters flying around near our corvettes. One of our corvettes gets ambushed by an enemy starfighter and damaged, but not killed. Heads back to base for repairs. This is why we need Eyes...

Feb 2186: Declare war on the Yor by way of destroying a freighter. Destroy two Altarian transports. IT: Scotty builds Tri-Strontium; at least we can buy it from him.

Mar 2186: Drop spending and switch funding to research. I may get a couple of cheap wonder techs, we will see how long they take to research. I'm not interested in spending a long time, but Nanobots for Harmony Crystals and +10 soldiering would be nice. Advanced Repair would be good too but it would probably take longer than I want to spend. Not much killing this round, but I spot a couple of juicy targets. IT: We spot a Carinoid freighter and make contact!

Apr 2186: Trading opportunities exist with the Carinoids as we have several techs they lack. We are able to pick up Warp Drive (more speed, Cap'n!), Interstellar Business, and Energy Focusing for five obsolete techs. We trade Scotty Energy Focusing and Gravity Accelerators for Tri-Strontium Steel (stronger hulls, Cap'n!) Things are looking good militarily speaking, the other AIs are well behind the power curve. We are paying quite a bit for fleet maintenance so it's a good thing I'm planning to do something with it. We take out a Drengin transport with a corvette, but it might be in a bit of trouble as there are Drengin ships closing in. Another corvette destroys an Altarian constructor. A frigate in Altarian space destroys a couple freighters. IT: Our corvette staves off a Star Fighter but now needs repairs, so will head for home, destroying a freighter on the way.

May 2186: We now have completed Sensors and Nanobots, time to switch to social. We start Eyes at Xasica but we are in dire need of funding right now as I can barely manage 40% spending. I start Multimedia Centers everywhere to try and get our morale up a bit so we can hold more pop; we're nowhere close to 4xPQ income levels yet. Xasica starts Eyes instead. I kill another Torian freighter and a Star Fighter with a different corvette but I suspect it is going to get dogpiled on. IT: We're in luck, our corvette only gets attacked by one enemy ship, defeating it. It will return to base for repairs.

June-Jul 2186: Destroying more enemy ships... IT: Torians want a peace treaty. DENIED!

Aug 2186: Wounded frigate destroys an Arcean Battle Axe after having killed off a number of smaller ships. It's approaching 1/2 hp so I will send it home. Altarian Battle Cruiser comes out of hiding (biggest ship I've seen yet) so I whack it with the Frigate wandering through their territory. That ship's getting a bit damaged too so I send it homeward. A stack of 4 transports and 4 frigates has formed near Xasica. That should be enough to take a couple Arcean core worlds. I already have another transport and frigate on the way to the colony south of our core.

Sep 2186: While killing a fully loaded Arcean transport near their colony south of our core, which should make taking that world relatively easy, spot a Alexian freighter. Bag another Yor constructor with a corvette. IT: We make contact with Alex. Torians want another peace treaty. Are you DEAF? REJECTED!

Oct 2186: Alex is on a lone star system in the bottom left corner of the galaxy, what a lovely start. :) As befits his starting location, he is utterly useless.

Nov 2186: Things don't look good for the attack on the colony south of our core. I underestimated how large the colony would have grown by now; it turns out the planet is a PQ32 and has grown a huge population! The good news was our single transport of 1 Billion killed 9.5 Billion of the enemy; the bad news was the planet had 11.8 Billion on it. We will have to be more judicious with our main invasion fleet. IT: Scotty builds Frictionless Clothing -- another good we can buy.

Dec 2186: I pump up spending for one turn so we can complete Eyes before the save/reload penalty has a chance to bite us on it. This will put us about 300 in the red but that can be fixed on the next player's turn. While killing a couple of Arcean Battle Axes (we now have a significantly damaged frigate in Arcean space) I spot a couple of their core worlds and notice they have much less population; I see two with about 1.5 Billion and one with about 5.5 Billion, all of which should fall pretty easily to a single transport apiece. We spot an I-league transport. IT: We make contact with the I-league.

End-of-turn cleanup & diplomacy: Eyes of the Universe comes in, and wow can we see a long ways now. :) This should make our raiders' jobs much easier. Set spending back down to 40%. I-League have built Ultra Spices but are missing several techs. I trade them 4 obsolete techs for the spices. Get Zero-G Manufacturing from Carinoids for Zero-G Research. Can't get Frictionless Clothing from Scotty yet, though. A couple of planets complete builds and are started on Galactic Stock Exchange and Harmony Crystals, but these will take a while; feel free to veto.

Note to next player: Don't trade away Nanobots. Otherwise, have fun invading Arcean space. Resistance has been spotty and light. Our damaged Corvettes have been using Weber as their repair base, while Xasica and Sol are our repair bases for frigates.

Note to the team: This looks like it is going to be pretty much a cakewalk from here on out. Though our economy could be in better shape, the AI is busy killing itself by sending its population out on unprotected transports to get shot down -- that is, in Civ3 terms, they are self-pillaging as they go along. As a result I don't anticipate the AI's economic progress will be much faster than ours.


Here is the save:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2187ad.zip

I'm up, expect to be able to play today.

I'm sorry i haven't been able to participate in the debate (work has been keeping me busy, busy, busy :( )

I wouldn't have had much to say that hasen't already been said, but...
I do agree that we should try to take out Arceans, as it has been said that would our homeworlds easier to defend and they are also the ones with the largest number of planets, so eventually they will grow strong if we don't take them out.

Nice progress btw :goodjob:

Another note: we might want to consider diverting one of the transports heading to the Arcean core back toward the PQ32 world. That puppy sure would be nice to have, and we don't want to let it build up a big pop again before we send the next transport. Either way, we should try to put some priority on taking it.

EDIT: We do NOT need more frigates right now, we are having troubles with unit maintenance costs as is. And no excuses needed if RL is keeping you busy, Aaberg; we've all been there! :)

Nice work, Zed. We look to be in great shape here. I think the ability to trade with the minors makes this game a whole lot different than the one Smegged played. The bonus picks for sensors also makes a world of difference.

Good luck to Aviator the bloodthirsty.

start
start (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-101.jpg)
Well done to the previous leader. (I did say invading an 11B planet would be interesting).
no way monkey boy (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-102.jpg)
trades:
Trade Cari Nano freq elec and basic repair for Hi density metals.
I notice that although Scotty won’t part with his wonder I could make him attack the Yor, interesting..

Q1
Ships killed:
Alt : Freighter (2), freighter, B.cruiser, corvette, transport NOTE they have Frigates (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-103.jpg)
Dren: transport, constructor
Arc : Freighter, freighter(2)
Invade Ditla (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-104.jpg)
Invade Ditla (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-110.jpg)
Invade Severus (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-105.jpg)

Q2
Invade Ancros (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-106.jpg)
Invade Ancros (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-107.jpg)
Invade Nestor (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-108.jpg)
Invade Nestor (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-109.jpg)

Ships killed:
Alt: Transport (3), Freighter(2), corvette, defender, Colony ship, sensor drone, B.axe
Yor: Constructor(2)
Dren: corvette(2),constructor(3),freighter(2), corvette
Arc: constructor, transport(2), corvette
Tor: Starfighter
Council Election (I want the pacifists against that wall now)
Alt builds a starbase resuply (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-111.jpg)
ET begs (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-112.jpg)
Half year report (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-113.jpg)

Q3
Ships killed:
Alt: Constructor, freighter(3), corvette
Dren: Corvette, transport(2),constructor, freighter(2)
Arc: freighter, constructor
Yor: corvette,constructor,freighter
ET wimps out. (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-114.jpg)

Q4
Alt builds Galactic Stock exchange (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-115.jpg)
And come begging (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-116.jpg)
Invade Hoth (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-117.jpg)
Invade Hoth (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-118.jpg)

Ships killed:
Alt: Constructor, freighter(3), corvette
Dren: Corvette, B.cruiser(2),B.axe,freighter(2),constructor
Yor:freighter, corvette,

Total lost: None

Situation:
Scotty has Battleship technology.

Invasion fleet for the first 5 drengin worlds on its way, Sauron can be taken this month.

Invasion of the last Arc worlds is going to be a bit patchy, you can do Devra in a couple of months and Hyadea in about 3 but use the transport in flight to pick up the malcontents in Hoth and use them for the invasion, there is only 1 transport heading towards the old ET worlds which should be enough to take out the big planet but you are going to have to scrabble about to get a final transport. Arc has built only 1 ship in the last 6 months.

Invasion Fleet for Sander is about 2 months away.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-av-119.jpg

The Game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBGC_SG4_2188.zip)

Aviator

Originally posted by Zed-F
Another note: we might want to consider diverting one of the transports heading to the Arcean core back toward the PQ32 world. That puppy sure would be nice to have, and we don't want to let it build up a big pop again before we send the next transport. Either way, we should try to put some priority on taking it.

I didn't do that, but the 1.5 B on its way should do it this turn.

Originally posted by Zed-F

EDIT: We do NOT need more frigates right now, we are having troubles with unit maintenance costs as is. And no excuses needed if RL is keeping you busy, Aaberg; we've all been there! :)

I realised that and turned most planets over to Transports, there were a few that had frigates beyond transport size so I let them finish as frigates. I think it was about 19 or 20 Transports I built which was keeping populations down so that morale wasn't a big deal, except where we invaded a planet and had several 100 on a size 16 and they went red face. You just cannot have too many transports. ;)

Isit should be able to eliminate the Drengin and hurt the Altarians but may not be able to scrabble a last transport to finish Arceans, (have some good fun my friend) before the enemy starts to produce frigates in any quantity. With luck we may be able to finish it before the majors can actually build a capital ship.

The only tech I researched was Hyper and the extra speed+1 will click in next turn.


Aviator

I got it.

While I play I thought everyone might enjoy this. Tis a thing of beauty.

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

I'm gonna stick my neck out and say that the game could be closed off in the next 2 or 3 turns, and won't come back to me. Looking at what needs to be done I would think that with a bit of luck (and speed) then it is possible to take out, or force surrender, on Dren/Alt/Arc with what is on the board, but I would expect to lose some frigates doing it.

I would be relaxed about the majors getting BS's because I don't think they have the resources to finish any, not quickly anyway, and we may well capture the technology and maybe a ship on the stocks. We won't have enough transports to take out the Yor, but to do that we probably need to build a few CTs after we have rolled up through the Dren and Alt.

Anyone want to open a book on the date of the finish? :scan:

@Isit-- So kind of you to say so. :love:

Aviator

I would not be surprised if this finishes soon. We have a big advantage in that our troops are pretty good and, importantly, we know how to escort them properly, unlike the braindead AI. :) We also have a substantial advantage in ship capability, especially as our frigates gain experience mopping up the AI small fry. I would not be surprised that even if the AIs do manage to somehow put out a couple capital ships, we could take them out with our frigates with minimal losses. The AI's just don't have enough economy to do more than that, with us crippling their trade and them self-pillaging their own worlds.

Next challenge: Maso always war! :) Or maybe always war even against minors...

The Drengin sue for peace. Silly monkey boys.

We have enough ships and transports to take a major chunk of out of most of the major races. I am going to focus to grabbing as many planets as I can and starting research on battleship tech. Because of the sheer amount to ship movement I will only mention the highlights in this report.

Spending is at 35% and I will leave it there until we are in the black. We might want to rush something at some point.


Jan

We take Sauron from the Drengin.

We shoot up a few transports and couple of freighters.


Feb

We take Sander from the Altarians

We take Hyadea from the Arceans.

We take Devra from the Arceans, a nice PQ 31 planet.

We take Petroni from the Arceans.


March

We take Bevora from the Drengin.

At this point we are starting to run low on transports. I am starting to see battle cruisers and other, tougher, ships so I am going to play things safe and focus on getting battleships rather then press any harder with our current attack.


April

We take Thuban from the Drengin.


May

Nothing much. Just a few more ships blown out of space.


June

The Arcean get a brief moment of hope as the Drengin surrender to them! They have more lives then a cat.

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

We take Arcadius from the Arcean.


July

Take a look at this train! They have been chasing one of our raiding ships for a couple of turns now. Time to lure them into a little trap. Hehe

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

We take Amcor from the Arceans.


August

One corvette and a frigate took out that whole train. We lost the corvette and the frigate got down to 3 hp.


September

More ships blow up.


October

We get battleship tech. I got to 50-50 military/research. I choose to research advanced repair as our ships are healing too slowly on the front lines.

Our planets are ordered to build a mix of ships including battleships, frigates and transports.


November

We take Gabriel from the Altarians.

Our first new transports come off the line and are ordered north.

We take Sivil from the Altarians.


October

More fighting. I finish off some transports heading to our systems.


December

Our system, Sander, Defects to the I-league. I lower taxes slightly to combat this but several of our systems are still vulnerable. At this point I don’t think it’s a major issue. We have more then enough planets to finish this even if we lose some.

We take Anteras from the Altarians.


January

I cancel all auto move orders. Some transports are finished and launched. We get advanced repair and I shift spending to 100% military.


Notes:

We only have 6 systems left to take to win the game. The fighting is getting fairly heavy as frigates and battle cruisers make it to the front. I have many frigates orbiting planets to repair. Thats why we look so thin on ships. We should only need a few more transports and ships to finish this game.

I might also add that I had a great time playing this turn. It blew up more ships in two months then I normally do in two games! Well done with the setup Aviator! I had everything I needed to bring flaming death to our enemies. :D

The map:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/finalmap3_5.jpg

The game:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/RBGC_SG4_2189.zip

Yep--looked at the save. This one is in the bag. It's all a matter of how fast we can get transports to that Yor planet in the northeast corner. Great playing folks. Guess we have to think about how to make this more difficult. Perhaps a complete AW game--no trading, and war to be made on the minors?

BTW, we are getting over 200bct in trade income. I am 99% sure taht this is from trade routes that the minors established with our enemies before we made them our worlds.

@Isit-- Sure looks like you had fun.:goodjob:

When its over I think I'll play that year myself (just for the hell of it):thumbsup:

Aviator

We have 7 trade routes setup from minor races. One is to our starting system and the other 6 are to planets we conquered.

I think the ability to trade with the minors makes this game a whole lot different than the one Smegged played.

I think there were several things that changed the way the game was played. Most importantly was the fact that we did not settle any PQ 13/14 worlds. They placed a HUGE drain on my economy, and meant that spending could not be made very high.

Secondly, trading for tech from the minors is a big deal. It gained us somewhere between 10 and 15 techs that we would not have had otherwise.

Thirdly, Gravity Accelerators and Eyes made a big difference. I could get neither in my game (due to my poor economy due to me settling PQ 13/14 worlds). In retrospect, I made a lot of mistakes in my solo game. Mistakes that this game avoided. The larger map I think also made it slightly easier. Habitability did not play that much of a difference, since I managed to secure (proportionally) as many worlds as I did in this game.

Finally, and one of the things that I think made the BIGGEST difference in this game was the unintentional baiting by not defending our worlds. In my solo game I ensured that every planet was defended at all times. Consequently, the AI never stripped off population by building transports for me to shoot down. By not building a defensive military, we also saved a good 6-8 turns on my game (possibly more).

I think that from my experience with both games, the absolute BEST military unit in an AW game is the Frigate. It's cheap to build, maintainance on it is low, and it's both powerful and fast (and has range). To try and blitz like we did with Battleships would be a lot slower (and therefore more difficult).

Oh, and one more thing. In my solo game, I ran into the second largest major (the Altarians in that game) much later than we ran into the Arceans in our game. By that stage, they had already secured some trade routes, built up their core worlds, and had a strong economy. They were about the same size as the Arceans were in this game, however they occupied space that was in the corner of the map, was further away, and was more protected by the other AI than what we experienced in our game. They were basically impregnible by the time I contacted them, which is what Arcea would have been if we had spent half the game without contact with them.

Well played guys, I've enjoyed the stimulating discussion and the fun we've had with the game.

-Smegged

One of the reasons SG teams often show better results than single-player games is precisely because of discussions both before and during the game that highlight good strategy/tactics, expose AI weaknesses, and correct play errors. I think we can attribute a lot of the success for this game to the fact that we had a good plan going in and executed on it. Kudos to the team, for the team effort at coming up with that plan!

Finally, and one of the things that I think made the BIGGEST difference in this game was the unintentional baiting by not defending our worlds. In my solo game I ensured that every planet was defended at all times. Consequently, the AI never stripped off population by building transports for me to shoot down. By not building a defensive military, we also saved a good 6-8 turns on my game (possibly more).
I agree that that likely made a substantial difference in that it encouraged the AI to shoot itself in its own foot. I'm not sure where to go with this. It's correct that our baiting of the AI transports by leaving worlds undefended was unintentional; however, it exposed a substantial weakness in the AI, taking advantage of which might be one of those moves that is "too strong" and needs to be curtailed. But forcing every world to have a defender seems somewhat of a kludgey solution. If your war plan calls for a strong forward defense, why would you want to have defenders in the back lines just sitting around doing nothing and eating up maintenance costs? In a Civ3 AW game, a big portion of early defense is shifting garrisons around to where they are most needed at any given time, and leaving cities temporarily or even semi-permanently undefended is par for the course; hence why a city spacing of three tiles (for 1-turn road movement) is strongly desirable in that setting. I don't really care for the "a defender in every port" concept but I don't have a better idea either. Thoughts, anyone?

I think that from my experience with both games, the absolute BEST military unit in an AW game is the Frigate. It's cheap to build, maintainance on it is low, and it's both powerful and fast (and has range). To try and blitz like we did with Battleships would be a lot slower (and therefore more difficult).
We showed the AI the true power of Frigates this time around, and offensive raiding certainly plays to the unit's strengths -- the Hammer is rightfully better at defending, but if you're planning to hunt for targets all over the map, the extra speed of the Frigate is certainly useful. I'd hesitate to call it the best unit, though. I still like Corvettes for ultra-fast raiders, especially because they are so cheap for maintenance and can cover a lot of the map, burning enemy AI production by making them waste time building freighters and constructors. However, since they are so fragile, you really need Eyes to make the most use of them. Still, I think we under-emphasized these a bit too much in this game; we only built 4 to start with, stopping when we had military parity with rather than miltary superiority over the AI empires, and never really used them much for raiding until after we had already pumped out a few frigates. We used our corvettes too conservatively, leaving them home for defense; we might have been better off to build at least a dozen and to have sent most of them out raiding to get an even earlier start at burning AI production on wasted constructors, freighters, and transports. One big advantage of doing so that didn't really register with us until we finally did start to go on the offense was simply how strong a highly experienced unit, even a lowly corvette, can be! If we had started raiding earlier, we would have wound up with a number of level 4 and 5 corvettes that would actually have a reasonable chance of escaping a trap and returning home to repair, where a level 0 or 1 corvette would have been destroyed. For that reason, it might not be a bad idea to actually seek out some level of enemy conflict with our raiders, to get them more experience as well as cause the AI empires to spend yet more valuable time building throwaway defenders instead of pumping economy or tech.

Well played guys, I've enjoyed the stimulating discussion and the fun we've had with the game.
Ditto, and glad you had fun! :)

Intersting discussion, btw the game isn't quite over yet :lol:

To offer my 2c:
Consider how Isit was able to do soooo much damage in such a short period of time....

Hypothesis:
It cost us toooo little to build a toooo highly successful invasion force.

It costs us and the AI the same to build so why was it so succesful then?
1) Its extreeeeeemly easy to invade with inferior numbers (generally).
2) Its extreeeemly easy to build an invasion fleet of transports.
3) The AI defends itself extreeeeemly poorly.

If you have a speed advantage you can:
1) Attack multiple times per turn, allowing invasion with minimal suport.
2) Protect the fleet from counter attack.
(It is easy to make it much more dificult by limiting the speed of a transport)

However, let's ask Isit if it was an enjoyable turn, I would venture to suggest he may well say that it was, he may even say its the only way to go. (I can't see why more people don't play the game this way, it is fun)

So are you looking for a game which has chalenge, or fun? Because with this Mk 1 AI its easy to have fun, but its ability to provide a chalenge for this kind of game is somewhat dubious (opinion). I would love to see MP though, and as someone who has a home network (damit I am a hardware engineer), put half a dozen machines on it I think that would rock big time.

Aviator

Crushing the AI is fun once or even a few times, but if you don't have challenge, it gets boring, at least IMHO. :) And, you're right, the AI isn't terribly challenging to play against. That's why we look for ways to up the challenge, such as playing variants. There are a couple easy ways we can make this variant tougher, though, so it's just a matter of finding the right balance such that even with the AI stupidity, it still makes for a challenging but fun game.

I guess Aaberg is up...

Well by my watch He's missed his 24hr 'got it', and he did say he was busy...............

Up to Bam-Bam if he wants to enforce the skip. Maybe a post on the Stardock board will wake him up...

I'll post on the stardock board. Skip will happen if I do not see turns by tonight 600pm EST (11pm GMT).

I'm sorry i didn't post earlier. I wont be able to play before tomorrow and can't post the game before around 11 pm (GMT) tomorrow night. If you wanna skip me thats okay by me.

Right. I will have the turns up this evening.

I'll be a bit short on words. I played an extra 6 months to close out the victory. I built WAY too many transports--our invastion advantage was never less than 14-2.

We invade the Alterians in March 2189.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2189a.jpg

So long, goodies.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2189b.jpg

Four down, two to go.

Next it is on to the Arcean worlds.

May 2189

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2189c.jpg

July 2189

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2189d.jpg

So much for their nine lives...

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2189e.jpg

...to be continued

We pause briefly to pay homage to our capital navy!

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2189f.jpg

Before getting on with the war. Five down, one to go. Time to smash a few machines.

January 2190

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2189g.jpg

February 2190

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2189h.jpg

June 2190

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2189i.jpg

Bye Bye machines

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2189j.jpg

Victory for the Realms Beyond War Machine!

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2189k.jpg

Check this out--I think the jump in the curve was when we started mass producing frigates and transports.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2189l.jpg

Great game folks! I enjoyed it tremendously. Let's talk more about how to make this a bit more challenging.

Good game all, with some good info learned as well.

What was the score :lol:

A good game.

Now I must load Isit's boom-fest and see what the other possible outcomes are, still think that it should be possible to maybe take out Dren, Alt and Arc on that turn, who knows.... Isit certainly had some fun, and did a good job.

EDIT: Almost, the closest I got was Yor with 4 planets left. Not so much challenge... but a lot of fun.:)

Aviator

Good show, guys. Lots of interesting things discovered.

- Sirian

Smegged--The meta score was around 11,400 or so. I looked at it and then moved on to the military graph. I can get a more exact figure if you wish.

Is the team up for another go? I see the next game going in one of two directions.

1) Same conditions--AI set to genius levels (crippling)
2) Same difficulty, party and bonus picks--but war on the majors and the minors.

Any thoughts?

Either one sounds good. I think both would add a bit more challenge to the game. I am unsure which would add more though. Either way I am up for another round.

This has been a fun game. :)

I'll play.....(If there was ever any doubt) ;)


Aviator

I'm not sure that crippling is enough of a jump up to make that big a difference. If we're going to bump up difficulty I'd rather go straight to Maso. There is also a 3rd option of playing a different variant first, such as a tactless variant, a no-research variant, or what have you. I don't mind another AW game now since this one was much easier than anticipated, hopefully we should be able to learn even more the next time... but we don't want to overdo it at the expense of other good ideas.

Hopefully we can start another game soonish, any of the above is fine with me. :hammer:

Originally posted by Zed-F
I don't mind another AW game now since this one was much easier than anticipated
A convert :love:

Heh. :) I'm still not a big fan of high-unit-count games, but my definition of high unit count starts at around 100 units in play. I don't think we ever got that high this time, or if we did it was after my last turn.

Now, a huge or gigantic map, that might be another story...

I'd rather sit this one out. Computer games are losing their lustre for me at the moment. Going to the Gym, playing cards with friends, university, cricket practice and church commitments all rank above games playing, and at the moment I've barely got enought time for all of those things!

Good luck and have fun though :).

BTW, I was kidding about the score thing Bam Bam. Hence the :lol:

Oops. If I had caught that, then my response would have been. Humans 5, Aliens 0 :lol: