This is the Shadow Thread for the Realms Beyond Galactic Civilizations Succesion Game #5: Training Day


* We're going to have some blurred results because of players finding out things in their versions of the game when they explore in different directions and do different things. This will lead to foreknowledge of some game data that would not be accessible in a normal game. This is unavoidable here, but I ask that players give thought to this and make whatever effort they deem appropriate to base their decisions on what is known in the Official Game. Don't bend over backward, just... pay attention. We are aiming here more at learning than winning, but you don't want to get used to having bonus information.

* The OFFICIAL GAME thread is for the Official Game. Make Sense? :lol: What shall be posted there is the reports and results of the player who is Up on each turn, along with my critique and any questions and answers players have in regard to those results.

* This thread will handle everything else, including the turn reports of all players not Up on that turn, all critiques of these reports, and even my own reports from my shadow turns.

* Players who are UP should avoid reading any further in the shadow thread once others start posting shadow reports from the same turn. IE, it's OK to refer back to the shadow thread as a reference, but I ask that you not do so when you're Up, especially in regard to finding out what others have done on the turn you're about to play, so that your official turn results will be as "pure" as you can manage under these conditions.


Everybody is shadowing the game but not part of the Roster, or who in on the Roster but NOT currently "Up", should post their turn reports here. This will include me, when I am not Up.

The next post will contain succession game directions, lifted from the directions Sirian posted for RBGC SG2.

How to Play Your Turn

Each player plays one year, twelve month-long turns. Your turn starts and ends in January of each game year. After you move all of your active ships in December, your last month in office, the game moves to January. You should issue new build orders through the production cycle, as that is still part of your turn, but as soon as production ends and the calendar shows January of the next year, save your turn with all ships unmoved.

How to take Screen Shots

Since we are playing in Windows, you can use the PrntScrn key at any time while playing to dump the screen to the clipboard. You may then Alt-Tab or use the Windows key to reach your desktop. Open a graphics program of your choice and paste the image from the clipboard into a file and save it. It is a good idea to use jpegs, which save on file space and which download faster. Using moderate jpeg compression will further save space without compromising a lot of image quality. After you are done playing your turn, you should crop your screenshots, saving only the most relevant portions of the image, to reduce the image size to get rid of unnecessary portions and keep only the parts that are relevant to supporting your report.


Naming Convention for Files

1) Savegames

Official Turns: no need to do anything special. Just "rbgc5-21xxad.sav. For OFFICIAL TURNS ONLY. .

Shadow Turns: Name them "rbgc5-name-21xxad.sav"
Examples:

rbgc5-Brackard-2179ad.sav
rbgc5-G-Force-2180ad.sav
rbgc5-Rojo96-2181.sav
rbgc5-observerxyz-2184ad.sav

That's the naming convention for the save games. When uploading to civfanatics, please zip the save files and follow these conventions for the zipfiles and your screenshots

2) Uploaded files

For Official Turns: gamename-date+alphanumeric char.extension
Examples:

rbgc5-2179ad.zip (that would be the savegame from the first turn, zipped)
rbgc5-2178a.jpg (first screenshot for the year 2178)
rbgc5-2178b.jpg (second screenshot from 2178)


For Shadow Turns: gamename-shadow-yourname-date.extension

rbgc5-shadow-Brackard-2179ad.zip (savegame from Brackard's 1st turn)
rbgc5-shadow-G-Force-2178a.jpg (1st screenshot from G-Force's 1st shadow turn)
rbgc5-shadow-observerxyz-2181ad.zip (savegame from an observer's shadow turn)


CivFanatics has had problems in the past with file extension with caps. Use lowercase to avoid this problem (not sure if it still exists).


How to Zip and Unzip the Saved Game

Using Winzip is recommended. Since the savegame file is now a single files--this should be a piece of cake.

How to Upload Files to CivFanatics

At the bottom of each forum page are some banner ads, between which are sandwiched notifications and a row of links. You need to use the far right hand link, Upload File. This opens a new window where you can upload up to three files per window to the file server: just browse, select and go. That simple. You will get a confirmation message after the files are uploaded.


How to Use Uploaded Files

In your forum posts, you can link to images (anywhere on the net, frankly, but here on the CFC file server for our purposes) and to files using vB code. There are helpful shortcuts above the message window where you write your post. Click on IMG and then type in the URL of the image you want to show. Click on http:// and type in your link text, then the URL for your zip file containing your zipped saved game, to pass the baton to the next player.

I keep a utility text file on my desktop containing one line:

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

That's the URL of the current CFC File Server active folder. When it fills up, they'll close that one and open uploads7, etc. All I have to do to keep it current is keep the upload folder number current. Then any time I post a turn for an SG, I open my temp text file, copy the URL, and paste it into every IMG or http:// command I decide to use. With the folder address ready to paste, all I have to do then is type the correct filename. The IMG button will produce the commands to display your image file (screenshots, etc) and the http button will create a hyperlink for you.

This may sound like a lot to learn, but it's not really. You do it once or twice and you'll have it mastered, since the parts you have to take responsibility for are short and consistent. Once you know how, it becomes a piece of cake.

CFC will link anywhere, but since they offer a file server for use in combination with the forum (and it is primarily used to support modmakers and succession game players) you might as well use it. The ability to use images largely unregulated, and to upload saved game files, sets CFC apart as a unique site on the net. However, for all this hospitality, it is still in our interests to conserve space, so please crop your screenshots and choose wisely on which details you decide to illustrate.

You can also type in the IMG and zip file links by hand the commands are (use brackets instead of braces)

{img}http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/filename.jpg{/img}
{url}http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/filename.zip{/url}

G-Force checking in ;)

Year 1 will be shadowed over the weekend. Whoohoo! Let the games begin!

Ok, so I open up the game. What do we have here?

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr1-start.jpg

Initial system sol is a double system with a 15/16. Nice. That’s a good start. In view (thanks to improved sensors) we have another system with 3 colonizable planets. A 15/15/14. I will end up waiting on the 14 until a bit later when I’m ready to start social spending.

Also on the map. Hmmm….light blue influence to the west. The Altrians are close. I don’t ever use the numeric culture scouting, (I really think that’s cheap), but I do know when the light blue shows up on your screen, the enemy is close. So what does this mean? It means that I have to worry about the enemy almost immediately. Early, early game will concentrate on the landgrab. Here’s my proposed plan of attack:

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr1-planet.jpg

The red box is for all intensive purposes, behind enemy lines. I will be concentrating on planets in the yellow box and hoping that the Altarians move westward. My immediate priority, the triple system in view. I can NOT afford to let the Altarians take that. Otherwise, I’m screwed. It lays almost exactly halfway between the Altarians and my space. My guess of the Altarian homeworld is one of the red dots, but I believe the 3 systems 2 sectors west contain their home base. Teching is a bit out of the question at the moment, but I’ll need to concentrate on diplomacy, military almost immediately. The Altarians have a knack for coming at the weak. I refuse to be weak. So, with that being said:

I set overall spending to 100%. I can live with the slight deficite. Military is set to 100% and I begin producing colony ships. Taxes are moved to 53% with morale still at 100%.

Year 1 –
January
Colony ship forwarded to the triple 15/15/14 system.
Survey ship heads south to explore.

February
Taxes to 52%
Morale at 100%
Colony ship moves
Survey ship south: Hyadea: worthless

March
Taxes at 52%
Morale 100%
Colony ship moves
Survey ship west – exploring

April
Colony ship built at Sol
Load it up with 100M, head it NW to follow survey ship and the colony ship.
At worst, populate additional planet at Cherryh, at best, find another colonizable planet NW.
Taxes 51%
Morale 100%
Arcturus I surveyed – size 9, surveyor to head south
Colony ship colonizes Cherryh IV, set production to colony ship

May
Colony ship suveys Unikalhai – class 14 & 16 – have a chance to make it! Go, go go
Surveyor continues south

June
Damn forgot to check taxes last turn. Dropped them to 43%
100% morale.
Colony ship moves towards Unikalhai
Surveyor moves south

July
Taxes 43%
100% morale
Colony ship built at Sol, load 100M, move NE, colony ship will pop out of Cherryh here shortly for any additional planets south. Unikalhai will be mine. No colony ships in sight. Surveyor to the south.

August
Maestro & Lacroix surveyed. Maestro has a 16/14. Lacroix worthless. Ship coming out of Cherryh IV will go to Maestro. Unikalhai colonized. Production set to colony ships.

September
Taxes droped to 42%, morale 100%.
Colony ship pops at Cherryh. Load up 50M, head them towards Maestro.
Survey ship to the SE to the next series of planets

October
Scout Alcionus. Nothing there. However, Torian influence pops up. I see green. I’ve had no events yet, but it looks like I’ll have to take every good event in order to get along with my neighbors in the short term.

November
Don’t touch taxes/morale. One planet left to the south. The other colony ship continues NE. Survey ship comes across Caranoid colony ship. They are headed towards Maestro. Damn. It’s going to be close. Damn close. I turn the grid on to measure. I’m 10 spaces away in a direct line. The Caranoids are 12 away. I have yet to move this turn. I have them beat.

IBT: Caranoids try to make contact, but we have no translators.

December
IBTaxes/morale good. Unikalhai spits out a colony ship. I put 20M on and off we go. Headed? TBD. Rhea surveyed to NE. Nothing. Colony ship continues NE.

January:
Another colony ship pops out of.Sol. I will use these two ships to colonize the double worlds at Sol and Cherryh.

End of year map:
Blue dots represent current colonies
Green dots represent dead worlds
Yellow dot is the colony ship on its way to Maestro (circled in blue)
Yellow circles represent current ship positions: surveyor to the south, colony ship to the N and NE.
Red dot shows caranoid homeworld
Purple dot is the caranoid colony ship

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr1-planetlist.jpg

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr1-eoymap.jpg

Brackard Year 1 (http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/rbgc5-brackard-yr1.zip)

Bam Bam, I hope this is about what you're looking for? I thought the turn went as well as could be expected, but we'll see. ;)

Quick note-since you are not uploading files (which is ok if you want to use your own bandwidth), it will be easy to find your files. The save should have been named rbgc5-brackard-2179ad.zip. Minor detail, but keeping with the game years helps me keep track. Thanks. My comments on your turn will be posted when the others' turns are posted.

Jan 2178
Set research on communication theory and have social build to soil enhancement.
Set tax rate at 52% keeping approval rating at 100%
Set spend rate at 100% and set income distribution slider as:
Military 100%, Social 0%, Research 0% to allow for focus on colony ships.
Net income is at -4 and colony ship should complete in 3 turns.
Set governor to social projects. Initial is soil enhancement.
Earth PQ 20
Sol IV PQ 16

Looking around the map I notice Altarian influence coming from the west in sector 6-10.
I assume Altarian home world to be the system in sector 5-9 or 5-10.
Due to sensors, we can make out system Cherryh in sector 7-11 with 5 planets. 2 at PQ 15 and 1 at PQ 14.

I now try to determine where I send my colony ship and hero. I notice 3 systems in sector 6-10 (2 sectors from me and in Altarian influence), and sparse concentraion of systems to northeast and east with more to south. The 3 systems in 6-10 looks inviting.
Cons: Altarian influence and Altarians closer allowing quicker access.
Pros: Extended range, possibility of taking system away from Altarian forcing them to head west.

I decide to head west to sector 6-10 and check out system in in sector 7-10 along the way. I send hero southwest towards sector 6-12.

Feb 2178
With colony ship, note system (Unukalhai) in sector 7-10 to have 2 planets: PQ 16 & 14. Do I settle now or do I push on to 6-10. I elect to push on as I am curious as to what is in 6-10 and can always double back to Unukalhai. Hero notes that second system (Arcturus) in Sector 7-11 has 1 planet PQ 9.

Mar 2178
Ships move. Hero sensors pick up system (Hyadea) in sector 8-11 to have nothing.

Apr 2178
Colony ship is built. I load up 100 colonists and send the to Cherryh in sector 7-11.
Ships move.

May 2178
Hero inspects anomoly and gets 25% research to tech in queue.

Jun 2178
Ships move.

Jul 2178
Colony ship is built. Send 100 colonist to check out system northeast in sector 9-9.
Note Torion influence in sector 5-12. Home in 4-13?
Altarian inluence expands into 5-10, 6-9 making me believ home world is in sector 5-9.
Colony ship heading to 6-10 notes first system (Midgard PQ 8).

Aug 2178
Altarian influence expands into 5-9 & 6-8. Colony ship spots second system (Devra) in 6-10 and notes a PQ 13 and 1. Not looking good, but decide to press on for third. Settle
Cherryh and set military build to colony ship and set governor. Hero checks out free gas and gets 2% to morale.

Sept 2178
Ships move.

Oct 2178
See 2 Altarian colony ships in 6-10. Note 3rd system (Phecda) is PQ 1. This mission was a bust and was a wasted effort. Head colony ship back to 7-10 to settle Unukalhai. Note system in 7-12 (Alcinous) having 1 planet PQ 13.

Nov 2178
Ships move.

Dec 2178
Hero sees Carinoids colony ship in 6-12 and also notes a Torion system (Hoth) located in thast sector. Appears Carinoids home is in 7-13 and Torion in 4-13. Have hero inspect gas for 1% to soldier bonus ?? (clicked too fast). Will pick up one other before deciding to head east.

Jan 2178
Earth builds colony ship and will direct 100 colonists to sector 10-11. Colony ship near sector 9-9 notes system in that sector (Rhea) to have nothing and is directed to system in 9-8.

Take snapshot of tactical map showing movement and location of ships.
Note that approval rating at 85% and Net income at -11. Spent my time taking notes on everything and forgot to check things. Need to pay more attention.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2179a.jpg

C represents colony ships
H is Hero.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2179ad.zip

BamBam, can I offer some comments when I feel I can contribute something or is it something you'd rather reserve for yourself as the game moderator?

The first year always goes by so quickly:

I started by changing taxes and spending, 100% military

In may I colonized Cherryh, I too noticed the Altarian and met them in september and in that month I also colonized Unukalhai. (Will consider renaming that system ;) )

In october a colony ship is ready at Cherryh and it is send south, the 3rd colony ship from earth is only heading down.

End status is as following:

http://users.pandora.be/gforce2/Images/rbgc5-shadow-G-Force-2178a.JPG

G-Force

Jaxom--I would generally like to keep the focus on the players' play and my comments. However, I do not have perfect knowledge of the game, and so general comments from you (or other knowledgable RB folks) are welcome. Just be selective when you make your comments, and there should not be a problem. For this first round, please hold comments until all have reported in, or when I have posted my comments.

Thanks.

Blacksmoke checking in

Jan 2178

military 100%
sent colony ship to sector 7-11un

March hero discover anomolie for 2% morale

Apr sent colony ship to 7-10

Jun colonize planet in sector 7-10

Jul - new colony ship

Aug colonize plant with 30% starship bonus

Sept economic resource in sector 10-9

Oct sent colony ship to 10-9

Dec colony sent

Bam Bam

Sorry I did not post my game file. I am having trouble change it to a zip file. I will work on it tonight

Think I'll have to keep an eye on this sg, seeing as how I brought galciv a while ago. :)

All are welcome, Thrawn. You might even find a home over at Stardock--one of the top empires (players that band together--their scores count toward empire standings) has a Star Wars theme.

blacksmoke--you can upload the .sav file, if you are having too much trouble with zipping the file. Are you using WinZip?

Comments on Brackard's turn.

Starting position evaluation: Good. You hit on the important points. Interesting to note that you can see the Alterian influence here. I could not see that on my initial month--must be another of those Stardock save/reload features :rolleyes: Good practice in saving the PQ14 in the Cherryh system for later--one note, however, since PQ14s do not cost maintenance, there is no particular reason to hold back if that's the only planet around. I would not send more than 50M to a PQ14.

Your view on where to concentrate is ok. Usually when I spot influence, I try to scout and/or send my colony ships that way to swipe a yellow star out from under the AI's nose. That's a technique many of us have used in most 4X games--expand towards the enemy, so that you can lay claim to border worlds. Your tactic to grab the southern portions is not wrong--just can be a problem if the AIs grab close by systems if you do not aggressively expand their way.

One other problem I see with your opener--and this has been debated in many forums--not settling the PQ15 on Sol. I will do that 99 times out of 100, because it gives you a jump on more colonly ships, and that PQ15/15/14 that you can see is not in any great danger. That other system will also do better with a larger number of colonists, so that the impact of its own colonly ship production is not as bad. Building colonly ships out of a 2-plante system takes population from both planets--so that with two planets producing colonly ships out of Sol, you will get more colonly ships with higher numbers of colonists--this will give a boost to the empire's growth curve. One thing to your credit--spotting influence (which I did not on the first turn) may lead you to immediately settle that star in sight, so like I said--this is not a :smoke: choice, but could have been better.

You did misread the influence a bit, since it is not possible for any of the planets in the painted system to be the Alterian home planet--if it were, you would see colored influence in the sectors closer to you. Influence from a starting planet extends to adjacent sectors. The only logical choice of the Alterian homeworld is the single planet sectors to the north or northwest.

You missed a chance to spot the PQ16 system to the Northwest with a single space move of your surveyor to the northwest. That could have cost you that system.

Good moves on the colonly ship timing, and keeping morale at 100% for the double speed growth (6% vs. 3%). That's good micromanagement. I have become so anti-micromanagement lately that I often neglect that in the opening turns.

I see a problem with the numbers you are loading on your colony ships. 100M is too low with all these yellow stars in reach. All you are doing is allowing Earth to grow to a point where you have to keep lowering taxes to keep 100% morale. Better to load up the colony ships with 150-200M and keep Earth around 1B pop.

This choice limits your ability to put good numbers on colony ships from Cherryh and Unukhalai for further expansion. Earth will always have a higher pop in the early game--better to spread that out immediately and boost the growth curves of settled planets. This is especially important when Earth is PQ18 or PQ17, since it will start to become your morale-limited planet.

Your choice of scouting to the south in this case would have worked out better than my opener (sometimes it's better to be lucky than good :) ). There were no good systems to the West, so the averages did not work.

Contact with a minor first is a good thing.

Overall, you had a solid turn. Most of the things I have pointed out are marginal (5% or so) type improvements, other than the number of colonists coming out of Earth. That one is significant. Lack of initial colonists on a common map chokes your empires initial growth.

Good report, lots of detail for me (the team and the lurkers) to understand your decisions.

Let's see how you do for the team at the helm of the official game next year. :eek: :lol:

Initial read of the game looks good. Your production setup is spot on. Your read of the influence situation is also spot on.

Now for the bad--I smell a bit of the pungent week in not settling either the PQ16 in Sol, Cherryh, or Unukhalai with your initial colonly ship :smoke:. The best move is to settle the Sol planet, so that you can be pumping out colonly ships with 150M colonists ~50% faster from Sol. The next best moves would have been to settle either of the systems. As you played it, your colony ship production is being choked for a gambit to steal a system from the Alterians. You have the right idea to settle in the direction of the Alterians, but better to get the ships pumping, settle systems in range and scout with the long-reach sensors of the surveyor. The surveyor can spot Unukhalai (NW PQ16) with ONE move NW.

You also fall into the same problem as Brackard with your choice to only send 100M colonists out of Earth. More suppression of your empire's growth. Choosing to take the research anomaly for such a cheap tech (comm theory, 50rp) means you got 12 rp out of that choice. Methinks you were partaking of the pungent weed. :smoke:

Good call on the Alterian homeworld location.

Your use of the surveyor is suspect. You missed the opportunity to scout a bunch of systems to the south by picking up anomalies. Practices vary, but I usually use the surveyor (especially with sensor picks) to scout systems until I am nearly done my initial landgrab. The good sensor reach with the max sensor picks makes the surveyor a very powerful scouting tool.

IF you take a look at Brackard's game (and my turns when posted), you will see how your choices limited your growth curve. Brackard has settled two systems (two planets) for a total of three planets with 5 colony ships in transit. In contrast, you have settled only one world, and only have four colony ships in transit (one of which was the initial ship). Brackard and I were able to put out 50% more colony ships during the year. Your scouting also led to early contact with the Alterians and Torians. That's not a big problem, but better to hold off on contact with the majors, if possible. I prefer to make contact with my freighters (if I can) on larger maps. Early contact on maso means that relations are going to sour that much quicker if trade routes are not in place.

Last note--you made a succession game :nono: by moving the colony ship produced out of Earth in January 2179. The autopilot moved the ship and took that choice out of the next player's hands. No harm for a shadow turn, but make sure you watch this for your official turn. Not a big deal, just minor SG etiquette.

Overall, your turn was average. You gambled a lot on the western push, and shot snakeyes. Forturnately, you were going to keep Urukhalai. Taking that research anomaly was :smoke: Sending more colonists out of Earth would have sped your growth curve empire wide. As it stands now, you have a population of 117M on Cherryh, with colony ship due next turn. You will not be able to load many on a colony ship without stunting that planet's growth.

Take heart--you did make some good choices, and after all, you are here to learn. I played many a game where I only loaded 100M on colony ships, and wasted research anomalies on 50rp techs. Your report was clear, and I was able to quickly pick up your logic for decisions. A couple of more screenshots could help in a regular SG, where not everyone is playing the same turn.

I am unable to provide a whole lot of comments, because your report lacks a whole lot of detail, and I do not have a save game to investigate the current situation.

Same comments as above--I would have used the initial colony ship to settle the PQ 16 in the Sol system.

Looks like your settling pattern is not bad--you have settled the two yellows close by, and have 4? colony ships travelling about.

Meeting the Alterians is not ideal, but not a showstopper.

Guessing by looking at your population curve, I suspect you have been pulling 100M from Earth for each colony ship. Same comments as the last two players apply.

Without more information from you (and the savegame), I cannot offer you more feedback. I STRONGLY encourage you to add more detail to your reports, and the savegames are a MUST HAVE. You will only get out of this what you put in--I cannot stress this enough. This game is labor intensive for me, but that labor is well rewarded when I see the same effort put into each players' turns and reports.

Well,

What I said to G-Force goes double here. The only feedback I can offer is for you to put some effort into your reporting. You did state that you were having trouble with the savegame, so I'll give you a pass on that one.

Look, I do not wish to be harsh to any of you participating here. So this is the last time I will rant about reporting and savegames. With 4 of you participating, I have at least 4x the effort that any one of you is putting in to the game. My time is not well served (and neither is yours) if I do not have something worth commenting on. Your learning is directly proportional to the quality of the report. [end rant]

Ok, let us not speak of that again :)

Even if you do not post lots of screenshots, detailed explanation of your moves, your thinking, and rationale (along with the savegame) will give me plenty to go on. Thanks in advance. I know you will give me more to go on next round.

Bam-Bam

Not sure I got your reference to the pungent weed, but I am assuming that wherever it was stated, it meant my decision stunk?

I also take it then that the surveyor's responsibilty is to not dawdle during the land grab phase by picking up space stuff, but to focus on scouting. At what point can we consider picking stuff up and do you use auto survey?

In terms of colonizing, should we be colonizing systems as soon as we see them, or dependant on circumstances, can we bypass to push ahead? If we can bypass, what would be good circumstances to do so?

Realized my mistake with the colony ship for Jan 2179, so no need to worry here for the remainder of the game.

Rojo--the reference to the pungent weed is an old Civ3 succession game reference. It refers to a certain herb, that when smoked, produces a noticable odor. The decision making of people when smoking that weed is "less than ideal". :lol: Another way to say it is "What were you smoking?" The use of weedy or :smoke: or the stronger [pimp] designators means the decision was faulty. The term is often used too heavily (I have been guilty of that). Don't take it personally. I think it was originally used by Sirian in describing a move by Charis (another RB Civ legend). Charis was prioritizing the irrigation of desert over improvement of more useful terrain (Civ 3).

For your other questions: I keep the surveyor on manual for much of the game, or I use auto survey and check up on it. I like to save the research anomalies for high-value techs--preferably when I am not researching, or have just started.

I rarely bypass a yellow star, unless the colonly ship has few colonists and one with a larger number can get there safely. As I said in my turns, I probably should have passed on the 2nd PQ15 in the Cherryh system to send that ship south. Probably still would have missed that system Brackard saw, but I would have left us in a better position to grab another system to the south.

I will bypass PQ14s to press on, unless I know I am coming to a limit in my range.

Again--I use the term frequently, and I may seem somewhat tough in my criticisms. That's the way I am--I am a STRONG proponent of lots of constructive criticism. That's how I learn. Remember, I am critiquing your play (as reported to me) NOT YOU. I think highly of anyone willing to participate in a training succession game.

Sorry for the save, I made the zip but negelcted to link to it :(

savegame (http://users.pandora.be/gforce2/Galciv/Succession/TrainingGForce.zip)

I also neglected to immediatly colonize the PQ 16 in Sol, so you don't have to mention that again ;)

G-Force

Now I'll offer my comment because it is burning my tongue. :) It is about the tax rate at the beginning of the game, consider this a macro-management tip.

I know it is mostly said to raise the tax as high as Earth can support but in practice I find it is better to leave the tax rate low. Before you have banks, raising taxes will bring very little extra income and requires constant monitoring to keep 100% morale. So here is what I do: if Earth is a pq 20 or better, I set a 40% tax rate, 35% for a pq19, and 30% for lower than pq19. This will cut your income by 5bc at most but will let you zip through the initial year without having to worry about morale. By the time Earth's morale begin to drop, it probably has enough population to get no extra benefit from a higher growth rate.

Earth's morale falling below 100 is an important signal, it is time to begin serious research and switch to social spending to get those banks online. After banks and entertainment networks are built, you can raise taxes to 50% again but this time it will bring in significant income and will not require constant monitoring of morale.

Note: the tax rates I mention are good for a gigantic map where the colony rush last longer. On smaller maps, or if I expect a very short rush, I would set the tax rate 5% higher.

I thought of this by seeing Brackard and Rojo's report one after the other. Brackard's note made me think he spent a lot of time monitoring the tax rate; Rojo's comment about forgetting to check morale illustrates what happen when you don't.

Now back to your regular programmming. ;)

May as well say that I'm lurking, and its not my intent to take anything away from Bam_Bam but........

@Brackard-- I think you played a good turn, 1.9B pop, 3 planets colonised, 5 colony ships in flight (sort of) 2 of which should find systems, in my book that's a good enough start for anyone :)

I doubt I could have done better, and I'd probably be at war with someone by now :shotgun:

EDIT: I would stress the point Bam-Bam made, its well worth considering the 'value' of changing research topic or not activating a research anomaly. Its nice to put 25%s into a high cost research topic so that you can get it quickly when you want to, gaining 25% of something you can reserarch in a turn anyway is a tad wasteful.

Aviator

Good point Jaxom. I usually do not mess much with tax rate in the beginning--mainly because I have little taste for micromanagement these days (wonder why I have trouble going back to Civ3 :hmm: ).

A few clairifications on moves I made during my turn and ratinoale based on Bam Bam's comments. When it's early game and I see alien influence, the last thing I want to do is make contact. This is one reason I chose to go south as opposed to moving west. Even if I had correctly guessed the homeworld of the Altarians, I would have probably moved South.

Points taken about initial colony ships and population. Again, even if I knew the Alt homeworld was another sector away, I probably would have grabbed Cherryh first before colonizing the 2nd Sol planet, so I did learn something there.

My rational on the population sent was trying to keep the population above 1B. I remember there being a 'magic' number in one of the earlier SG that if you went below this number, colony ships took an extra turn to produce. I don't remember what it was, but I believe it was the 1B mark.

Jasxom: as far as taxes, I normally don't go to that extreme as well, but I figured if I didn't do it, I'd get a "tsk, tsk." Damned if you do, damned if you don't. ;p

Last but not least, I'll need to double check which anaomly speeds research. I don't want to accidentally trip it while scouting.

You can pop out 150M+ (even in a single planet Sol system) and keep the population of Earth right at 1B. Having a second planet there allows you to pop out 33-50% more colony ships with >150M colonists. If I have a colonizable planet in the Sol system, I will generally take it immediately for exactly that reason. Another thing to think of is what to do if you have a better planet (higher PQ than Earth) in sight immediately. What I will do (assuming that there is only one habitable planet in the Sol system) is send the colony ship out searching for other habitable worlds and load the first produced colony ship with ~900M to transfer the majority of Earth's starting pop to the higher PQ world. Note that I will only do that if there is a short transit (couple of months or so) between the two systems.

Jaxom is spot on. A couple of extra bc really doesn't matter that much. What you want is to keep Earth at 100% morale, so that you can keep the colony ships coming with 150M+ colonists.

Great feedback from people. Definintely exposes blunders I made and shows that these mistakes made in lower level games, while it does not affect me overall in those games, will hinder me in games at higher levels.

Just with this 1 year, I have already learned a fair bit. Looking forward to the next few years.

I find 120 million colonist to be a good number. This allow for growth on Earth and the new colony will produce 10 units on a pq15 while Earth is producing 17. This waste fewer production and the new colony can pop a 30 million colonist every 5 turns or a scout every 3 turns. I then use those small colony ship to setle pq 14s, or to settle wasteland to extend temporaly extend my range.

When I find a planet with a much better pq than Earth, I will settle it with whatever colony ship finds it, no point in risking loosing it. As soon as I feel I have enough colony ship in flight, I will send at least a million colonist from Earth, regardless of how far this planet is.

Ok, here is my second year shadow. Lets we what we have.

Jan 2179
Opening statement tells us that the Drengin are the strongest.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2179aa.jpg

Tactical map shows the Alatrian influence to the west and Torian influence to SW of us. 2 colony ships have been built, 1 in flight to the NE and the surveyor in Altarian space.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2179b1.jpg

Tax rate is at 48%
Spend Rate 86%
Approval Rating 95%
Net Income -22
862 in Treasury

I decide to drop tax rate. Even though 41% is good enough to attain 100% approval rating, I drop 39% to give a buffer. I keep the spend rate at 86%.

I pull surveyor from Altarian space by heading SE.
Sol Colony ship I head East while I send the Unukalhai ship south.Colony ship in sector 8-10 I continue on its Northeastern trek.

Feb 2179
Move ships

Mar 2179
Cherryh II builds colony ship. I load with 75 Colonists and head SE. Colony ship spots Rhea system in sector 9-9 but it has nothing. Push north.

Apr 2179
Earth builds colony ship which I load with 150 colonists and head NE.
Sol IV builds colony ship, load with 150, and head East.
Cherryh IV builds colony ship, load 75 colonists and head SE.
I have picked these expansion routes as I have nothing directly north, there is influence west and SW of me and most accessible planets lie in the NE to South range.

May 2179
Move ships

June 2179
Unukalhai builds colony ship, load 75 and I decide to send east.
Spot Hyadea System in 8-11 which has nothing.
Morale on all planets is 100%.

July 2179
Get Mid year report showing we are the most populous civ.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2179c1.jpg

We also meet a Carinoids colony ship in sector 7-12 which appears to be heading east. Homeworld appears to be in 7-13.
Earth builds colony ship, load 200 colonists and head E/NE direction.

I change spending from 100% military to 100 Research as I have 9 colony ships in flight and we are 16 months in the game. I ensure Communication Theory is set.

Aug 2179
We get Communication Theory and I select Universal Translator.
Surveyor spots Alcinous System in 7-12 (13) and keeping with Bam-Bam's method set a rally point for this planet.
Colony ship spots Lacroix system in 8-12 but it holds nothing. Another colony ships spots Maestro system also in 8-12 (16/14) but is is already owned by the Carinoids. Bummer, I will have to push further south.

Sept 2179
Get Universal Translator and select Diplomacy.
Move ships and spot Severus System in 9-8 (12/2) and set rally point. Push colony ship towards sector 11-8. Send surveyor North.

Oct 2179
Get Diplomacy and select Trade. Switch Government.

Nov 2179
Move ships and spot Xasica Ssytem in 10-11 (13/10) and set rally point. Also note first resource (Economy) in sector 9-8 and set rally point.

Dec 2179
Election Month and we retain our seats.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2179d1.jpg

We get Trade and select Industrial Theory.

End of year report.
Moral still 100% on all planets,
9 colony ships still in flight (not lucky in finding any yellow stars),
Surveyor heading north and Carinoids only empire we have contact with.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2179e.jpg

Rojo Shadow 2180 save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2180ad.zip)

Bam - Bam

here is my round one file i hope

Time for a little reorientation. Torians to the southwest, Alterians to the west-northwest. Room to colonize south, but no known yellow start in sight. The two rally points I set on the PQ 13 and PQ12 are malfunctioning--I cannot see them, but I can call them up by pressing "x" (autopilot to rally point). Hmm--must be a 1.2 bug.

Reduce taxes to 40%--thats puts all planets @ 100% morale. May need to lower some more for the PQ15s, if I want to keep them on double growth. That puts us @ -27 bct with 100% spending--all to military. Three colony ships in flight, with two due in 2, one in 3, and one in 4.

January

Northeast colony ship heads northeast. Colony ship launched from Sol heads south. Colony ship from Unukalhai heads east-northeast. Surveyor, in Alterian space, heads north-northwest.

February

:sleep: Ship movement

March

Colony ship from Cherryh II launched with 75M. Heads south. Remaining ships continue on track. Colony ship in the northeast scouts Rhea, a planetless system. Southernmost colony ship spots Hyadia, a planetless white star.

April

Earth, Sol IV, and Cherryh IV produce colony ships with 175M, 150M, and 50M colonists. Cherryh IV production switched to scout, to allow this system to grow some population. Milary resource tagged north of Unukalhai. Colony ships from Sol sent eastward, ship from Cherryh send south.

May

More ship movement. Economic resource tagged in Sector 10-9.

June

Colony ship with 70M souls launches from Unukalhai. I have 8 colony ships in flight, with two more due in the next two turns, when I will switch to research for a bit. When to switch to research is not an exact science. I usually switch when I have around 10 ships in flight, less if it is a rare map. The habitability, map size, and influence are all keys to this decision. You also have to look at your overall treasury. I like to switch from research to social spending in the 200bc to 100bc range, so I can still use some of that initial reserve to boost that initial round of social builds (soil, habitability, banks, etc). Our northesternmost colony ship spots Sivil, a yellow star with a PQ15. That will give us a nice range boost to the north and east--I may have to rethink stopping the land grab. We meet a Caranoid colony ship.

July

Colony ship from Earth launched with 175M colonists. Cherryh IV produces a scout. As I suspected, the Carinoids grabbed Maestro--only Brackards push to the south in his shadow turn would have grabbed that for us. Since we see a Carinoid colony ship heading west down this way, there must be another yellow out there. The AIs start with full knowledge of where all yellow stars are in the galaxy, so spotting and tailing an AI colony ship can be a good tactic for beelining to a yellow star--assuming they don't get impulse drives first. Colony ship from Sol heads northeast.

August

Colony ship from Cherryh with 75M souls. Colonize Sivil with no event. Colony ship production here will take 5 months, so I choose to keep going with that. Spot Lacroix, a planetless system to the south. Sol IV changed to scout from colony ship production.

September

Sol IV completes a scout.

October

Earth launhes a 180M colony ship. Cherryh launches a scout.

November

50M colony ship from Unukalhai.

December

Scout from Sol IV. PQ12 system spotted and marked in sector 7-8.

End of Year

200M, 100M, and 75M colony ships from Earth, Cherryh, and Sivil. Scout from Cherryh. Spending shifted to research. Time to roll out SiBCaT (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=1531297#post1531297), or Sirian'sBonus Caluation Technique. We have a 20% bonus to research. Comm theory on a huge map is 50rp (plus some for cushin), so I set spending to get aroudn 44rp. Bonus research is free, so with our bonus, we SHOULD have a total of 52rp, which will give us the tech in a month. Time to check the planets to see if we have put enought fat into our number. Bonus research is calculated planet by planet, and rounded DOWN. Looking at the planets, we only have 5 rp of bonus research shown.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-BamBam-2179a.jpg

Look at the individual planetary screen for the information. See the spending in research here on Earth is 10 + 1. The ten rp is what we are paying, and the +1 is the free reseach our +20% research bonus is giving us on this planet.

Time to dial up the spending to 46rp. Looking at the planets, we have 6 bonus rp, for a total of 52rp, which will net us comm theory in 1 turn. Read Sirian's explination of how the game monitors bonus research--that will give you some more pointers on how to use SiBCaT. We can discuss this more if you like after this round of comments.

Here is our current situation.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-BamBam-2179b.jpg

You can see that the Alterian influence has grown (or we can see more of it). I popped a hyperspace anomaly (surveyor is on auto right now). I have more autopilots than I would normally have for a SG, but since no one will be following this turn, no flogging necessary. :p

This was a pretting boring turn for me--hopefully the next year will be a bit more interesting.

The game (http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-BamBam-2180ad.zip)

Originally posted by Bam-Bam
When to switch to research is not an exact science. I usually switch when I have around 10 ships in flight, less if it is a rare map. The habitability, map size, and influence are all keys to this decision.

After you meet the first minor, you should definately research comm theory and universal translator at the best possible pace. You then take a look at what the minor has and research something he doesn't have, usually med theory or industrial theory. You can research all those techs in 2 turns each with only 3 planets, 1 turn each if you have more than 3 planets. 9 times out of 10, you will get diplomacy or trade basically for free, both of them if you have some diplomacy picks.


Initial assessment:

Colony ship in section 8-10 Send to section 9-8
Colony ship at Sol send to section 10-9

Reason : To possibly expand the territory where the are planets

Colony ship at Unakaihai send to section 7-12

Reason possible block from torain???

Hero section 6-10 move to 6-12

Jan 2179 - go with assess plan

Feb 2179 no action needed

March 2179
New colony ship at Cherryh send to section 8-12
Change Hero direction to section 4-9

Reason I did not think about the Hero ship opportunities

Apr 2179
New colony ship at Cherryh send to PQ13 planet in section 6-10
Reason to build influence

Sol
New colony ship send to section 10-11
New colony ship send to section 11-10

Change from colony ship to constructor at planet Sol
Reason: To be able capitalize on resources when discover

May 2179 no action needed

Jun 2179
Colonize planet on Unukalhia

July 2179
Discover the Cariniods in section 8-12

Aug 2179
No action needed

Sep 2179
New colony ship at Cherryh send to section 11-12
New Colony ship at Cherryh send to section 11-8

Change to mil 40% research 40% (weapon) social 20%

Reason for the change is not to fell too behind in research and allow time to expand territory with the colony in flight. I did not cut the mil to 0% due the fact I building constructor at Sol

Oct 2179
Discover the Altarian in section 5-9

November 2179
Started to research communication
Colonize plant on Alcinous PQ13

December 2179 - no action

Ok folks. I am a bit slow on the comments for this round. My wife is sick with pneumonia, and I have had bronchitis for the last week. Comments will go up NLT tomorrow eveing, which will also give G-Force some more time.

From then on, we will change the timing to speed things up a bit. Games posted in 48 hours, and comments and discussion complete in 72 hours.

Sorry for being late, work for college was murder this week. Any way:

JAN: We are the wealthiest, colony ship from earthis send to sector 10-11, the colony ship from Unuk is send to its own PQ14

FEB: ship moves

MAR: Cherryh builds col: launched with 100M heading SE, We discover a system with no planets in 9-9

APR: 3 more cols produced, loaded with an average of 140M, Our surveyor gets an additional 4HP

MAY: ship moves

JUN: Yellow star located in sector 10-9 (2 planets: 15 & 4), taxes changed for 100% morale, surveyor gets us a +5% espionage bonus

JUL: we meet the Altarians who we don't understand, we find out we're the most populous, another col from Earth

AUG: we meet the Carninoids in sector 8-12: it'll be unlike that there will be any good systems still free in there, col from Cherryh

We have enough cols for the moment: research to 100%, spending to 70 with gives a shortage of 25BC

SEP: we get weapons theory (forgot to change it) -> communication theory, We colonize Sivil(10-9): no morality events

OCT: communication theory -> universal translator

NOV: universal translator -> diplomacy

DEC: located a tech resource, but it's taken by the Altarians (placed a waypoint)

I also notice a militairy and economy resource still free, I add the waypoints

JAN: diplomcay researched -> enact republic -> going for trade

End game screenshots:

http://users.pandora.be/gforce2/Galciv/Succession/Jan2180.GIF

http://users.pandora.be/gforce2/Galciv/Succession/Jan2180Sidebar.GIF

Savegame: here (http://users.pandora.be/gforce2/Galciv/Succession/RBGC_SG5_2180_GForce.zip)

G-Force

Opening: Good call on reducing the tax rate. I was not paying much attention at the end of my turns.

Loading and expansion looks good, though I would have taken a bit of a detour with the northeasternmost colony ship before heading north. Not a big deal, since there is not any influence showing that way.

Your timing on starting research looks good, but I wonder why you kept going up the diplo tree. I bet the Caranoids already had diplomacy and/or trade, so a better choice would have been to research med theory or ind. theory, and trade for these techs. If I have met a minor, it it VERY rare that I will research these techs myself, since they are the first that he AIs go for.

EDIT: Looking at the save, you are up diplo and trade on the caranoids. I rarely see that, so I will temper my comments. Still should have pulled the trigger on trades before ending your turn. You are also suffering from overspending. You have spending set to 91rp, and the tech you are researching (ind. theory) only costs 50rp. Not good. Re-read my discussion on tech spending in my report, and visit the link to SiBCaT.

In fact, you made no tech trades at all. Not good. Like Jaxom said above, sometimes meeting a minor is a call for turning on research, even if it is just to see what they have after comm. theory and universal translator. That way you are not duplicating research. Trading tech-for-tech with the minors (and majors) is very powerful, and can save many months of research. Minors are most useful in the early game; they rarely tend to be strong enough later to net mucho techs. The early game is when trading with them makes the most sense.

Final call--expanion and timing of the transition were good, but you missed opportunities to shave months off our time to get to improving our worlds by ignoring tech trading.

A little more detail here, so I can comment a little more.

First thing, on your switching spending priorities. I would recommend that you look at keeping focus on 100% in one area (mil, social, or research) until you finish the task. For example, we go 100% mil for the land grab, 100% research for the initial tech rush, then 100% social to build up the planets a bit, and grab some trade goods if possible. Splitting spending during the period that you are spending down the reserve is dangerous. You want that reserve to net you at least your landgrab, and usually you want it to get you through the first round of techs (up to controlled grav, advanced trade, and the like). Ideally, you will have a bit left to boost the initial social queue (soil, habitat, banks) such that you can then self-sustain at 60-80% while the trade routes complete.

Keeping up the military spending to pop out a constructor this early is a waste.

The three-way that you have at the end of your turns, with -50+bc/turn will get you in debt with not a whole lot accomplished.

Your choice of directions for settling were good, but choosing to settle the PQ13s now is a mistake. You will be spending maintenance for basic life support on them until they get to PQ14. Better to keep a 20-30M colony ship there and settle right at the start of the social spending phase. I also see colony ships with 687M and 342M. You have taken over 1B population from the Sol system and set them out into space. Earth is left with only 580M population. That is devistating to your growth curve here. :smoke:

Your choice of weapons tech as your initial tech is also questionable. Best to beeline to Comm theory and universal translator first, then check what the AIs have so that you do not research anything they have. Somemilitary techs you will have to self-research (deflectors, battleships), and some can be bypassed (e.g., you can trade for shields more easily than deflectors, for some reason, so you do not need to get deflectors).

Looking at your spending, you are putting 34bc into research for universal translator, which only costs 25bc. Also, with our 20% bonus reasearch, you could even cut back spending to 22 or 23 bct (see my turn for an explination on how to handle bonus research). If you do not know the costs for techs, I am sure that you can find the link to javascouts database, or Brackard could post his tech spreadsheet. Wasting money on research in the early game only puts you in debt faster with less accomplished, forcing you to cut spending earlier.

I also see you picked two evil choices on morality events. With the alterians and torians our only major contacts at this point, this was a bad call, especially for starship bonuses on PQ13 and PQ15 worlds.

Definately room for improvement here, but that's why we're playing this game. Keep your chin up, you have another couple of shadow rounds before you take the helm.

Good--some more meat in the report, and a savegame to boot.

You settling directions looked good, but you pulled too many colonists off Cherryh. Both planets are now below 100M. That will stunt your growth curve. I try to keep settled worlds close to the size of the colony ship that settled them.

Oops on not changing off weapons theory. I guess I did not do my normal move of changing that right at the beginning. One month is not a killer.

You also chose not to trade, and funny thing is--NEITHER of the AIs have diplomacy?? I cannot remember the last time I saw that. You would not want to go much further without pulling the trigger on trades. It is rare indeed when I do not trade up the diplo-trade tree.

Your spending is not in line with the tech you are researching, and it is not clear what thought you have put into how our bonus research affects the amount you need to spend on research. Trade costs 130 rp; you are spending 92bc (plus another 11rp in bonus research), with trade due in 2 months. You could either bump up the spending to get the tech in a month or throttle back to spend 59bc (plus 8rp of bonus research) to get the tech in 2 turns. That would save 66bc over 2 turns from the spending you have now. It pays to be frugal with your research in the early game (if not always), since you are riding that initial 1000bc bank account.

Your colony ship push to the east was stong--that will likely get a world or two (or three).

Overall good work on the colony push--with the exception of taking too many colonists of the smaller worlds. Good work on knowing the power of focusing all spending in one area to get the quicker benefits. Tech trading should have been done, and you seem to have wasted some credits by overspending on research.

For everybody's reference, here's a copy of the tech tree with associated costs based on Javascout's site:

Tech Tree (http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galcivtech.xls)

edit: fixed link

:thanx: Brackard!

Ok, I have read the SiBCaT link, downloaded the tech sheet from Brackard and have read your report and I am definitely in need of some answers.

I see alot of reference to not being wasteful in spending for research. I was always under the assumption that what was overspent was carried over for the next turn. I guess what I am reading is that this is not the case though I do see reference to the cache in Sirian's post. Does this mean that only the bonus rp is cached and not what we have overspent?

Also looking at an example from Sirian's post I am not sure how this cache works. He gives the example of where 1600 is remaining to be researched and using SiBCaT determines it to be around 1200 to be spent. He pushes it to 1250 to make sure and voila... new tech has been researched next turn. He then goes on to say that he now has 400 cached? How can that be if we just used it to bring the total up to the 1600. Isn't this bonus rp being used twice or did I misunderstand something?

Lets take your example for comm theory. You have put spending at 46 which gives us 6 bonus for a total of 52. Comm theory only requires 50. Does this mean 2 rp get cached for next turn or does 6 get cached as per Sirian?

Next thing is that the extra cash we saved due to using SiBCaT, can now be used for Social or Military. However, I would assume that this is not used during the early game when we are focusing 100% on any one area and should be saved up due to our lack of funds?

Am I making any sense anywhere?

Rojo

I'm with you Rojo. I printed out Sirian's SiBCaT and am working through exactly what he did.

Let's start with the basics. (Bam-Bam, others, if I'm wrong, plesae let me know!)

There is no carryover regarding research. The cache that is being described is the notice GalCiv gives us regarding the amount of research that is being done based on the current level of research. If you don't do research the previous turn, there is no cache. If you increase/decrease research spending, the level in your cahce does not match so you need to adjust for the difference.

Looking over what Sirian did, it seems like it would just be plain easier to manage research based on the total cost as opposed to the differences based on cache? Especially since you know your tech +%?

Let's take an example for illustration. I can research up to 60rpt, with a +20% research bonus. I am researching a 200 cost tech.

With our 20% bonus, we actually only need to research 100/120 * 200 or 166 research points. We go two turns at full for 120 leaving us with 46 research points. We now reduce our research spending to 50 rp and we should have it. (if i read this correctly, which isn't guaranteed).

Is this correct anybody in the know?

Answer #1: Whatever is leftover between what you spent and how much was needed for a tech is NOT carried over. There is no carry over cash of research points.

On SiBCaT: This tool is about correctly predicting when a tech will come in while spending right about what is needed to complete the tech. The cache that Sirian writes about is the game's INDICATION (and remembering) of how much BONUS research you have. The game keeps a memory of the amount of bonus research you spent LAST MONTH (that's the cache to which Sirian refers). So, if you spent 70rp and had 10rp of bonus research last month, the game would tell you that you will complete a 160 rp tech in 1 (+1) months. What the game does not tell you is how much your bonus research will be if you CHANGE the spending. Thus, Sirian's technique is about how to calculate your BONUS research, without resorting to counting every planet every time (very tedious--but I did it in my example on my last shadow turn).

On your calculation, Brackard the 167 rp (not 166) is the amount of PAID research we would theoretically have to put into a 200rp tech with a 20% bonus (200/1.2). You must pad that amount to account for round-downs at individual planets, and for the game "feature" that requires slightly above the amounts quoted in Javascript's database. (for example, I have ALWAYS had to spend at least 51rp for med/ind/comm theory (50rp tech) on huge maps). Take a look at the example in my shadow turn. Theoretically, I should only have to spend 42rp to get comm theory in one turn (50rp/1.2). If you look at my shadow turn, I even padded that by 2 rp to a spend rate of 44rp, and would have been short. At 44rp spending, I was only getting 5rp of bonus due to the rounding. That is why you need to pad the numbers (but not too much). At 46rp spending, I got 6rp of bonus, thus ensuring I will get the tech in a turn.

Go ahead and load up the game--it will tell you that the tech is due in 1 (+1) months. Press turn--and the tech will come in. Trust SiBCaT, not the game's calculation of what bonus research is.

Brackard, your calc is about right. You might want to keep that spending at 60rp for the last month as your padding. Having only 6 rp of padding may not be enough based on the round-down effects.

I chided several people for "wasting" money on their research--that was for cases where the base spending was 20rp or more per month greater than the base cost for the tech being researched.

Does this make more sense?

Yes it does... thank you. I will have to try this out a few times and see the results to ensure I truly understand what was said.

Another thing to note -- it is not always easy to determine what the bonus will be just by looking at your racial +tech% attribute. Recall that different planets can have different improvements on them; if they do, some will net you more bonus research than others for the same base spending. The game's internal bonus research cache correctly calculates this for you, but you have to use SiBCaT to make use of it.

OTOH, if it's too much bother, don't sweat it too much. I've found that, as a practical matter, guesstimating works well enough most of the time, so long as you have a rough awareness of what bonus research is and how it works, and so long as you are willing to accept the occasional less than perfect result.

Watching out for your research spending is important only in the first 2-3 years, while you are spending your initial 1000 bc without a way to replenish it. Once you have solid economy going, it is not as important if you overspend. Besides, by the time you have a strong enough economy, tech research will take multiple turns and you only waste money on the last turn.

For these reasons, I never take a research bonus since I would mostly end up wasting it. I also don't build research buildings until I am ready for continuous, long research.

BamBam, the cost of techs increases slightly the more tech you know, that is why the early techs cost 51 then 52 then 53 instead of the base 50.

Yeah, I rarely play the technologists, and I rarely take a research bonus as well. Of course, I have a little emotional tie to the technologist party, since it was the party I took to my first maso win.

You are right about the value of watching tech spending in the early game. That was the point I was making in the last shadow round (and not just about research spending)---MIND YOUR USE OF THE INITIAL 1000bc!

Thanks for the info about the tech cost increase--I hadn't really noticed it.

I DO build the initial research center, but do not research the computer techs until much later--there is always something more important in that middle phase, at least for me.

Ok. Here we are. I do not generally start social so early, but we are 3 months away from having soil complete everywhere, and a banking center on earth. I can lower spending to 51% and keep the same ETAs on all projects--done. That saves 16bc/turn (bct). With our research bonus, that means I can get another 50bc tech out of our initial bankroll.

January

Set the freighters on autopilot for the Alterian and Torian homeworld. I take a gamble and hold off on trading trade to the Caranoids--Cold fusion and defense theory are not worth it. I do not like only having 2 colony ships about--there is lots more systems to grab. If there is another yellow down toward Maestro, we are screwed, since there is a Caranoid colony ship there.

February

Soil completes on 4 planets. Hero picks up +1 weapons anomaly. Easternmost colony ships spots Piers, a 16/14 yellow system.

March

Two more planets complete soil.

April

The last planet completes soil, and a banking center is built on Earth. The caranoids have deflectors and defense theory now, but I cannot get deflectors without cash, and trade for defense and cold fusion is not worth it. Change spending to 100% military to get a some more colony ships out.

May

Settle PQ16 in the Piers system and get this event.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2180a.jpg

I pick the good option, with the goodie-goodies as our closest neighbors. Morality is 56. The Hero picks up 2 points to its defenses (swish) from a march madness anomaly.

June

Colony ship with 175M souls launches from Unukalhai. It heads northeast.

July

Colony ships launch from Earth and Cherryh with 200M colonists. Sivil launches a 175M loaded colony ship, and cherryh launches our third freighter. Switch from 100% military to research, but not before buying another colony ship at our new world, Piers for 88 + 8 for 63 months (from Mitrosoft? :lol: ). This is a lot of cash, but gives us a nice shot at some more worlds without commiting us to military spending for 3 more months. I RARELY do this, because I ususally spam out the colony ships in the early game. But in this case I will make an exception--there are a LOT of systems to the east, and NO influence spotted there.

The Caranoids have some better trading opportunities...including this deal.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2180b.jpg

I decide to pass. Why is that? Well, they want 54bc to throw defense theory on the table. I can research that in a month, with a 20bc surplus. One month delay is not really worth it, especially for a tech that we do not need, since we can trade for techs further along in the military branch. I could take the industrial and cold fusion for trade with some influence points, but I am going to wait and see if they pull Impulse drive, which we should be able to get for trade straight-up.

You've gotta love the round-down. In theory, I should be able to set research to 44 or 46 (from the example on my last turn) and get med theory in a month. Not so fast. We are a republic now, and we have more planets--so research spending is spread out. In fact, at a spending of 50rp, only earth pulls in any bonus research (+1). There it's set. Med theory will complete in a turn with 50 +1 and a 35bct surplus. Colony ships are sent east and northeast.

August

Sure enough, med theory completes, and we launch that purchased colony ship from Piers with 130M colonists.

September

:lol: Guess it's time to :whipped: the teacher. I forgot to change my research target, and pulled weapons theory. At least I had the spending rate set right on. This sets up a nice trade with the Caranoids.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2180c.jpg

This one I'll take. I could probably take a few more ip in the deal, but I find that to be tedious. On maso in the early game, the AIs have so much more influence that getting a couple of ips here and there in tech trades does not make a difference in the voting. Note also how we are making out in this deal--two 50rp techs for a 50 rp tech and a 100rp tech. The minors usually give the player a better deal--certainly better than you will get from the majors without any influence bonus.

Next tech I want is Basic Environment (220rp). I set spending to 68rp, which should give us the tech in 3 months with our current bonus (only 7 rp). I also drop taxes to boost growth for the smaller worlds. Earth is over 3.4B, so keeping it at 100% morale begins to loose effect with the 200M/month cap on growth. Having 100% morale does no good for growth for planets above 6.67B, since 3% (normal growth) will give 200M/month.

The hero picks up a 5% boost to our spying ability.

October

:sleep:

November

I have to bump research spending up a notch (70rp) to get Basic environment next turn. Remember, the game does remember the last turn's bonus. The game was telling me I needed two more months at 68rp, and that the tech would come in next month with 70rp. When going UP in research spending, the game will never give underestimate the time needed to complete the next tech.

December

Sure enough, basic environment learned. The Caranoids have Impulse drive, which they give up for trade. I set up for Interstellar Refining next, due in two months with a 22bct deficit. I put habitat in the queue ahead of entertainment centers, and put manu centers at the end of the queue. Our northeasternmost colony ship spots Umera, a yellow system with a PQ16 planet.

End of Year

Have to bump up spending a bit to pull refining next turn. We are running a 27bct deficit, with 105bc in the bank. My next move would be to swich to social, and get habitat, entertainment centers, and manu centers going, as well as getting the econ capital up on earth. There still is no influence spotted to the east.

Here is a shot of the tactical map.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2180d.jpg

Planets (all but 2)

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2180e.jpg

and Domestic situation.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2180f.jpg

I have been staying at 100% morale, although I do not necessarily do that in every game. I like to keep taxes fairly high (50% +), and once you are below 100%, there is no benefit to staying in the 90s, so I will run taxes up when it gets too costly to maintain them low for 100% morale. I then prioritize the big morale improvements (stadiums, stock markets, teleporters, and the like) to get back to 100%. But once planets are over 3.4B, the value of 100% morale decreases until is does no good above 6.67B.

The Shadow Game (http://civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-BamBam-2181ad.zip)

Since I just finished my shadow round, I’m up to speed in regards to how everything is working, so I continue on the way I was going. My main goal this round was to begin the basic social projects (soil and banks) to get the economy kicking. Then I was heading back to research.

So let’s see what we start with:

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr3-start.jpg

For the round, freighters were auto piloted to NW/SW Altarians/Torians.

January: Movement only

February: Unulkalhai I, Cherryh I & II finish soil enhancement. Piers is scounted by colony ship heading east. PQ16/14. Was this what the Caranoid ship was heading towards? It didn’t colonize the PQ14.

March: Sol IV, Unulkalhai II Soil Enhancement

April: Bank Earth, Soil Civil

May: Piers II colonized, no event.

June: Earth entertainment center, Unulkalhai I, Cherryh II banks, Econ capital queued for Earth.

July: Cherryh I, bank. Nesro scouted. Worthless.

August: Sol IV, Unulkalhai II, Civil I banks completed. This finishes the first round of social. The economy should be kicking up a bit here shortly. Moving back to research now. Time to start working on the micromanaging research. Let’s start with the greens. Medical Theory. 50 RP. Cut spending down to 23% (100% research)

September: Medical Theory comes in, and we make a bit of money in the low spending month. Enough to keep us in the green. Next, Basic Environment. 220 RP. Can’t get it in one turn, set it for two, spending up to 54%.

October: Movement. Military resource discovered to the NW.

November: Basic Env. Comes in. Hero makes contact with Alexians (who was exploring down South). Set research as is to Imp. Env. Should come in Feb.

Alexians:
Up: Def Theory
Down: Medical Theory, Basic Env.

Caranoids:
Up: Cold Fusion, Def Theory, Industrial Theory
Down: Med Theory, Basic Env.

I decide not to trade anything at the present time. There didn’t seem to be anything worth it at the moment.

December:
Nothing.

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr3-end.jpg

And the game: Link (http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/rbgc5-brackard-2180ad.zip)

Bam - Bam,

After reading yours and other post I have some additional questions.

In the past I always use the initial government thoughout the game. I notice that we have already switch government type once. How often do you go with switch government type? Do you have a problem with moral vs benefit of additonal income?

In your turn I notice that you switch production to scout vs going to other ship type. What is the rational for this decision?

The change of spending priorities from Military to research. What you recommend on Gig map?

Do you ever split spending at any point of the game or is iit 100% in given area?

Your comment on my colony ship size. I notice that you go between 50 to 200. How do you determine the size.

My choice of weapon research was my mistake. I forgot to look at
research after change spending to it.

Morality- In the past I played as evil empire. Are you advising that I should play to a more netural empire at the higher levels

The rule for research RPT do not carry over each turn. Does it apply to social and military.

Lastly do you void the anomolities with your Hero ship. If not when I do you start?

Thanks you for input and look forwards to the response.

I will post my round 3 tonight or tommorrow. I currently debate to how approach the turn. I see that I have to three options
1.switch back to military production to build some more colony ship for the North, NE and E
2. Continue Social production due the fact we have some Soil E.
3. Research something to Trade with Cariniod

Am I missing anything??

Jan 2180
Opening remark shows that Yor is strongest. We have met the Cariniods, and see influence to the west and southwest representing Altarians and Torians respectively. We are currently at 100 social spending with most planets working soil enhancement.

Tax rate: 39%
Spend rate: 62%
Approval: 97%

We have 2 freighters and 2 colony ships to work with. We have too few colony ships in circulation so I have the option to change back to Military to pump them out or continue with the social spending. I opt for the latter and decide to change spend rate to 51% which will still allow us to get the social improvements within the same time span.

I send 1 freighter each to Altarian and Torian home worlds. Cololny ship in the east I continue to push east and the remaining colony ship I send SE to sector 11-12

Feb 2180
4 soil enhancements are built and governors kick in. Surveyor picks up improvement for weaponry and I continue to send him SE. Colony ship in east spots the Piers system (16/14).

Mar 2180
Ships move and 2 more soil enhancements built.

Apr 2180
Earth builds Bank Center and another soil enhancment built. I change spending to 100% military to pump out colony ships. I change tax rate to 50% and spend rate to 87%. This allows me to pump out a freighter and many colony ships over 3 turns.

May 2180
Unukalhai builds colony ship and loads up 100 colonists and head NE. I settle Piers but no event.

June 2180
Earth builds colony ship and send 300 colonist east. Unukalhai also build a colony ship and I load this one up with 100 colonits and send NE.

July 2180
Mid year report
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc-shadow-Rojo-2180a.jpg

Sol builds freighter and I send this packing north.
Sivil builds colony ship. Load 75 colonists and head NE.
Cherryh builds 3 colony ships. (hmmm...should have had that spread out). load 75/75/150 and send NE, NE, E.

Switch spending to 100% research and verify that Med Theory is selected. Spend rate reduced to 25% (52rp). Tax rate put to 35% to keep approval at 100%.

Aug 2180
Med Theory researched. Switch to Basic Environment Control. Dial in SiBCaT and determine for 220 with 20% research bonus, I need to spend about 183. I set spend rate at 32% giving 66rp which should allow me to get it within 3 turns.

I call up the Carinioids to see if they are willing to trade. They are, and I take the following deal:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc-shadow-Rojo-2180b.jpg

Sept 2180
Ships move and surveyor spots Nesro sytem in sector 9-13 but it has nothing.

Oct 2180
Ships move.

Nov 2180
Get Basic Environment control. Switch to Improved Environment Control. bump up spend rate to 36% which should allow us to get this within 3 turns. I check in again with the Carinoids and they have some additional items to offer. I make the following trade with them:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc-shadow-Rojo-2180c.jpg

Dec 2180
Meet the Alexians on the Decius system down south, and they have nothing to offer. Here are end of year screen shots.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc-shadow-Rojo-2180d.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc-shadow-Rojo-2180e.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc-shadow-Rojo-2180f.jpg

Save game (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2181ad.zip)

Originally posted by blacksmoke
Bam - Bam,

After reading yours and other post I have some additional questions.

1) In the past I always use the initial government thoughout the game. I notice that we have already switch government type once. How often do you go with switch government type? Do you have a problem with moral vs benefit of additonal income?

2) In your turn I notice that you switch production to scout vs going to other ship type. What is the rational for this decision?

3) The change of spending priorities from Military to research. What you recommend on Gig map?

4) Do you ever split spending at any point of the game or is iit 100% in given area?

5) Your comment on my colony ship size. I notice that you go between 50 to 200. How do you determine the size.

6) My choice of weapon research was my mistake. I forgot to look at
research after change spending to it.

7) Morality- In the past I played as evil empire. Are you advising that I should play to a more netural empire at the higher levels

8) The rule for research RPT do not carry over each turn. Does it apply to social and military.

9) Lastly do you void the anomolities with your Hero ship. If not when I do you start?

Thanks you for input and look forwards to the response.


Answers:

1) I always immediately switch to the next higher government when it is available. In my game, I only switched to republic. I reloaded a save and switched back to imperial to illustrate a point about wasting funds on research. Switching governments allows for increased spend rates at each planet. In other words, think of your economy as a balance between income and spending capacity. Later in the game, we will be getting trade income that augments (or perhaps even overtakes) our income from taxes. Unless we increase the spending capacity of our planets (think of this like the horsepower of our economic engine), then all the income will just go into our treasury--not doing us any good for building social improvements, researching, or building ships. Ideally, we would like to have the capacity to spend up to our current income, with a modest surplus. There are three ways to increase spending capacity--more planets, social improvements that increase production and research capacity, and improved government.

2) I switched to scout to allow the planet to recover some population. I switched a planet in Cherryh, because that 2-planet (at the time) system was a bit drained in population from pumping out colony ships from two worlds.

3) I change spending to research when I feel I have enough colony ships enroute to settle worlds at a reasonable distance. I would switch more quickly if I have met a minor or another major. Jaxom may have more thoughts on this--he's our gigantic map guru at RB.

4) I split spending later in the game when I am researching--I usually only split between two. For example, I will set research as my priority, then send the remainder of my spending to social or military. That's usually in the late 2180s and beyond (if the game goes that long). Others have different thoughts and techniques, I am sure. My thoughts are to concentrate the force of the economy on one area to get that benefit (new tech, new improvements, new ships) more quickly.

5) Size of colony ships is largely based on the base system population. For the Sol (starting) system, I can usually pump out 150M ships and keep base population above 1B. For settled worlds, I like to keep the base pop around the size of the original settlement (100-200M).

6) See my last shadow turn--I did the same thing, only later :lol:

7) No. My comments on your choice of morality was that our only known neighbors are the two known good civs. Taking all evil choices will ensure that our relations with them will be poor, and will likely result in them attacking us.

8) Spending for a specific social improvement stays attached to that improvent. For example, if you spend 30bc toward Gravity Accelerators, and switch to a bank, your spending toward the Gravity Accelerators will be saved, but you will have to start from scratch on the bank. For military, spending is saved, and is transferred to the new ship if you change projects. For example, if you have spend halfway to a colony ship, and switch to a freightor, your spending on the colony ship will transfer to the freighter. Any excess spent in a turn over the amount needed to complete the improvement or ship on a planet is lost.

9) I use the survey ship to scout worlds, picking up anomalies in its direct path (except for research and wormholes) until I think its usefulness as a scout is no longer needed. I then usually switch to auto-survey, checking on the ship regularly to try and get the best benefit out of research anomalies.

Bam - Bam

Thank you for your reply - I might have more question when I have more time I think about your respone.

No problem blacksmoke---just get your latest turn up by this evening--my comments will be going up, and we will be moving on to the next round.

Jan 2180

One Freighter to Torian
One Freighter to Altarian
One Colony ship to section 9-8
One Colony ship to section 11-10
Hero to the south

Feb 2180
4 planets completed soil enhancement

March 2180
2 planets completed soil enhancement
cut spending to 50%
Hero hit anomalies and now in section 10-11 Direct it to section 11-12

Apr 2180
1 Bank
1 Soil Enhancement

May 2180
Ship movement

Jun 2180
Ship movement

July 2180

Switch to 100 military (need more colony ship for possible planet in the east, NE and N

Change direction of colony to setcion 11-11 PQ16 planet Peirs

Aug 2180
Hero to the south


Sept 2180
Colony ship to section 11-8

Oct 2180
Colonize Planet Piers

Nov 2180
Frieghter to Carnoid (Questionable decision probably would have been better to send towards Altarian)

Dec 2180
Colony to section 12-6

Here is the game file sorry

Looks to be a fairly solid turn. You stayed on social a bit longer than I chose, but that is more a matter personal preferences. Building a bit in to the econ capital on Earth is not a bad thing. With no contact with the majors, jumping up the tech tree three months earlier is unlikely to make a big difference.

As far as not trading, in a normal sucession game, it would make sense to pull the trigger on a med. theory for cold fusion trade, but in a solo game, where there is not a reload penalty--waiting until something better showed up makes sense. Shame to not get a chance to trade away trade--that is a good tech to trade away--and one that I rarely get a chance to sell.

The one flaw I see in your turns is your management of tech. You started improved environment, a 320rp tech. Looking at the save, you are spending @ 116rp/turn, and the game says that you only need to spend 66rp to complete the tech. You could probably set this to 58-60 and complete it next month. You did not mention that you would cut back on research for the last turn, so I am not sure if you had thought of this. If you were to continue playing, you would have sent an extra 50bc or so off to never-never land. It pays to keep track of this, especially in the early game.

Overall, solid turn. Your tax setting is right on--the planets not at 100% morale are the below PQ15base worlds. Getting them up to 100% would require ~30bct less in tax income.

First, you did not upload your save game to the server. Please check this. Good practice is to check the link on your post and see that you download a file (I know, I have done this too many times to count in Civ3 succession games--usually a bad name on the link). In this case, the server only has your 6 image files that correctly show in your post.

Your tax rate at the start looks good--there is not a way to keep those less than base PQ15worlds happy without more improvements. Good call on reducing spending, while keeping the same ETA on the improvements.

You picked the same time to switch to military as I did. Hard to fault you there :lol: , but spending longer would not have been a bad thing.

I like the switch to get some more colony ships--wonder why? :hmm:

I am not sure about 300M on a colony ship out of earth--that will be a morale burden at a PQ15 or less world.

You spent a whole 2 bc too much on medical theory--guess you won't get to pipe in with your 2bc :lol: Seriously, I am just pulling your chain--couldn't resist the 2 bc gag. :rolleyes:

Good use of SiBCaT for Basic Environment. Now the bad...your trade with the Caranoids was not so good. You gave away a tech (Trade) that could have easily gotten something better. Defense theory is not worth getting at this stage, and the number of influence points being offered should have told you to wait--ip's are just not worth it, and if you are getting over a hundred in an early game trade, you need to hold out for something better.

Same thing with Basic environment. If you had waited on the first trade, you could have traded med theory and trade for ind theory, cold fusion, and impulse drive. That would have left basic environment for more trading. Prop theory and defense theory are not worth trading anything good away, since they give nothing (unlike ind theory that gives manufacturing centers), and their followon techs can easily be bought. In this case, you already have cold fusion, so prop theory is worth nothing.

Good call on your spend rate for improved environment, but I am not sure this is the next tech worth getting. That's a judement call. I rarely research that tech since it's value is limited--10% growth is only worth something before you hit the 200M caps. Not much bang for three months of research.

Overall your economic choices and exploring/colonizing look good, but your trading needs some work. Not a bad turn. You are ready for your Official Game turn. :D

Save game has been loaded. I apologize and will remember to check in the future.

Not a bad turn here. Your tax settings look good, and your spend rates are ok, actually you could have spend more. I am not sure why you are still on military, or why you are building a constructor at Earth. We are too poor (and isolated) to be really worrying about resources just yet. This is not a big priority. You have enough freighters moving, and about the right number of colony ships. You are building constructors on a lot of planets. Probably could have moved to research a month or two ago.

There is no mention of you looking for trade opportunities. They are now gone in your game--the Caranoids know all of our techs. When you have an advantage in some specific techs, it pays to be mindful and watch the diplomatic screens for trade opportunities. Not a huge problem, but you lost the opportunity to gain something from our advantage with Trade.

One last thought--you should be looking to be spending at or just higher than what we are taking in. Believe me, once the trade routes start building up, we will be able to put some coins away.

Overall, not a bad turn. You stuck with social and military longer than I would prefer, and you missed opportunities on the trade front.

Improved environmen is a good tech to research at this stage of the game. You have many worlds way below 3 billion in pop and you can't keep them at 100% morale so the added 10% growth rate will be worth it. The tech is also ignored by the AI but brings good trading value. In my games, I rarely research it anymore unless I have some leftover money to spend on research and there is no other tech the AI will neglect long enough for me to get it first.

On the official thread, you put the hammer on G-Force for trading for cold fusion. I find it is an important tech to acquire in trade as soon as possible since it opens up the way to interstellar refining, another tech the AI never research.

My thoughts on holding out on trading: The AI rarely/never researches the improved enviro tech (in my experience). The techs are missing aren't going anywhere. Seeing as I would have moved back over to colony ship production for a new colony ship or two, there wasn't any hurry for me to grab those techs. It would have given the AI a bit more time to research a few other itmes for me to take a look at when I got back around to researching and trading.

Regarding the spending, yes I had looked at it and know I would have adjusted spending.

As far as social spending, what I really wanted to do is get banks/soil on all my first round planets. (Civil counts as 2nd round). Earth managed to get through soil/banks/entertainment center during that time, and I knew that would probably be where i would have my Econ capital, so I went ahead and started progress there while the rest of my colonies finished soil/bank.

Jaxom--I agree that cold fusion is a worthwile tech. What I did not like was that he could have gotten more from Trade. The minor AIs were willing to give up cold fusion for a first level tech such as med theory or ind theory. For example, in my shadow, I was able to get Cold Fusion and Industrial Tech for Med. Theory and Weapons Theory. Cold fusion IS important for exactly the reason you mentioned.

@Bam-Bam I won't have the time to play the next year, so don't wait for me to report in. Just letting you know so that you don't hold up the game for me.

G-Force

As it doesn't seem to have been mentioned I hope Bam-Bam won't mind if I raise a "training" topic.

Here's a question to make people think:

To colonise this type of map there are (at least) two basic methods.
1) build loads of CSs at Sol and send them out.
2) build CSs at the new colonies. (BTW my preference)

We saw Bam-Bam with over a dozen CSs in flight at the end of turn 2 (I think it was) which is an example of 1.

I don't believe this necessarily has a 'right' or a 'wrong' answer, but what are the pros & cons gentlemen?

Aviator

Ok, initial thoughts:

1) Lots of CS at Sol and send them out:
Pros: Additional colonies never suffer from loss of population. Sol will be the only colony supplying CS population. Relatively quick turnaround of colony ships from Sol.
Cons: Potential for oversupply of colony ships. Potential for population to be useless while in transit versus productive (and taxpaying) at the planet.

2) Building CS at new colonies.
Pros: You know relatively how many colony ships will be needed through your explorations. Sol quickly becomes a powerful planet with no loss of population. Population is in transit for less time.
Cons: Stunted growth at new colonies because of new CS production (and population). The new CS will be smaller than those from Sol unless you dessimate new colony population. CS will take a bit longer to produce at these new colonies.

Having all ships originate from Sol could lead to a slower expansion dependant on how you expand as you will have longer and longer trips to make to reach the outskirts of your realm, while those planets that have just settled are on the edge and can cover more ground quicker.

My 2 cents.

I probably approach this round wrong we will see.

Initial

Colony ship in flight 1
Freighter in flight 2

Torain
Impluse Drive

We have
Dip, Ind Theory, Trade


Carniods
Deflector

We have
Ind Theory, Medical Theory


Jan 2181
switch to 100 research
cut spending to 50%
Research Basic Environment Control

Rational: Base on comment we should started research sooner. I went for Basic Environment Control for the pop Bonus and Habit

Feb 2181
ship movement

March 2181
Complete research and new research Nano Electronics
Trade with Carnoid Bas Env Control for Impluse Drive

Apr
Complete research
100 Social

May
ship movement

June
send colony ship to section 13-11

Jul
Ship movement

Aug
ship movement

Sept
2MC done ->Habit

Oct
Election - we held
Send Freighter to Hoth

Nov
Alarian Communication
Send Freighter to Alcyone

Dec

Vote evil 1 trade route

Okay, so we are at the break even point. Nothing left in the bank. Goals this turn, increase the bankroll, get a few more colony ships out, and get research going. I want the greens and blues if possible. So off we go. And oh, like I said, the Torians are screwed. With only two planets, it’s only a matter of time.

Before we start researching, let’s take a look at the trading picture:

Torains: down impulse drive (300), up: ind theory (50), trade (130), diplomacy (120) that’s exactly a 1-1 on cost. 59 IP,

Caranoids: down deflectors (an AI do not trade tech), up med theory, ind theory. No trades here.

We are slightly less diplomatic but I go ahead and pull the trigger on the impulse drive. That will speed up our freighters and colony ships. Nothing done with the Caranoids.

Jan: Can’t purchase colony ship, move to research. Survey heading E. First up, Med Theory, 50 RP. 100/120 * 50 = 42 RP. Set to 45 sp.

Feb: Oops, weapon theory researched. Let’s try again. Basic Env. Control. 220 RP. *100/120 = 183RP Set to 67 for 3 turns. 20 income coming in.

Mar: Movment

April: Movment

May: Comes in. Switch to Imp Env Control . 320 *100/120 = 266. Spending set to 94 for 3 turns.

June: Movement

July: Movement

Aug: Freighter hits, 5 extra/month. Research missed. Spending cut down to minimal research. Gives us some reserves at least. Tactitus surveyed. Worthless.

Sep: Imp Enviro comes in. Interstellar refining next. 200 * 100/120. =166. Research set to 60 points.

Oct: Meet the Altarians. Have vote. Win with 100%!! Nice. They are up deflectors and shields. We don’t need deflectors, and shields were expensive. Decided not to try this offhand. Meet the Alexians. They have nothing on us tech wise.

Nov: Nothing, but we do see Yor influence to the NE.

Dec: Missed Imp Enviro. Again, drop refining spending to minimal. Puts more money in the account. Need to learn to adjust spending up a bit for researching.

Jan: Interstellar refining comes in, freighter hits altarians (on autopilot, would have taken off for my turn).

Save (http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/RBGC5-brackard-2181.zip)

Let's think deeper.
CSs can only be built with Mil spend. Quick CSs implies 100% Mil spend. 100% Mil spend applies to all planets. Do we want to build CSs at all planets? Is this wasteful? If we do one blast of CSs we may never need to go back to Mil spend for years. If we want to build CSs quickly at new colonies we have to spend far longer on Mil spend to the detriment of Social & Research, everywhere. Can this be worth it?

Unfortunately, I do not know how all the numbers work yet in terms of population versus morale versus income. I have seen mention of caps and such and how after a certain amount of pop, morale will decrease, but beyond that, I have not figured it out.

However, CS can be purchased if need be. You could leave military spending long enough for the major planets to pump something out, and buy the rest, thereby allowing to move over to Social or Research a little quicker.

Building CS at all planets is not necessarily wasteful as the spending stays in the queue if you switch, so you could just focus for a few rounds.

I would say that leaving military spending longer to get the CS out would be worth it dependant on size of map, influence detected, access to systems and what contact we already have etc.

Make any sense?

A second round of mil spending will need to be completed anyway for freighters. This will be accomplished from your highest growth planets while your secondary planets build CS. Any additional planets can begin prebuilds for constructors (if nothing else). Wasteful? A little maybe, but I don't see it being any less wasteful than having a CS with 150M running around without a destination?

After 4 or 5 years into the game, if I need a colony ship to claim a newly discovered yellow star, I simply buy it from the closest planet. If I don't have enough cash to buy it, a turn or 2 of 0% spending should bring in enough money to buy a colony ship.

But as Brackard said, just after you get trade and do a military rush for some freighters, you should get enough colony ships out to complete the landgrab.

Oh, on a gigantic map, I typically have 10-15 colony ships with 30 to 100 million pop in each of them just sleeping in space because they ran out of planets to colonize. And that's after grabbing all the 14's I could find. I never bother with 13 or 12 unless I need a range extension or want to culture flip some AI worlds.

hmm--first action is to get the economy in the black. Taxes raised and spending cut. Torians will offer impulse for diplomacy, Trade, and ind. theory. WOW, how generous of you, ET! :rolleyes:

January

Switch spending to 100% research. SiBCaT says that spending 106rp will get Basic Environment in 2 turns.

February

Caranoids learn impulse drive and will give it up for the theories of industry and medicine. Hero boosts its weapons by a point.

March

Basic environment comes in. We are short on colony ships, time to build a few. Come to think of it, I should have done this right away :smoke:

April

:sleep:

May

Unukalhai colony ship with 175M.

June

Earth and Unukalhai 175M colony ships. Hero picks up another weapons boost.

July

Colony ships launch from Sivil and Cherryh (x2)with 200M colonists.

I buy the last two months of production out of piers for 62bc + 4 bct for 48 months. Spending shifted to social. I put Habitat in the queue right after banks. Junk system spotted NE if Piers.

August

Colony ship from Piers with 175M colonists.

September

Piers completes a bank. We meet the Alterians.

October

Earth completes habitat and starts econ capital. I'd like a manu capital before trade good building. We have a nice trade available with the goodies...

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2181a.jpg

I could have traded impulse instead of propulsion theory and trade, but I want them to stay slower and have freighters running around. Hero picks up a 2% bonus to our overall ship attack.

November

:sleep:

December

Habitat completes on six planets. ET learns something useful...

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2181b.jpg

Of course, I pulled the trigger on that trade, and noticed this...

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2181c.jpg

They must have traded for it, because they were short on advanced gravity, controlled gravity's prerequisite. Ah well.

Time for a UP vote

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2181d.jpg

Junk white star spotted up north.

End of Year

We meet the Alexians, who have nothing on us tech wise. Another habitat completes. Only Piers lacks habitat, due in 2. I would let it complete, if I were to continue playing these turns. We are in a commanding lead of the civs we know.

Here is a shot of the tactical map.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2181e.jpg

Notice the Drengin influence up north.

Not much more to say. Despite some misteps, this game is well on its way. Our population growth and land grab have been good, and we will likely net a few more planets to the east and south.

The Shadow Game (http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2182ad.zip)

Your rationale for how to start the turn makes sense. I picked the same tech--it is one of the first ones I go for after diplo-trade.

You timed it right--two months, but I cannot directly tell how well you are managing the funds. Since you left the turn with about the same debt as the start, I can infer that you are watching the pennies. :D

Trading basic environment for impulse is a bit too generous, but not a game breaker. There was not much else for you to trade at that point. Perhaps you could have waited on the trade until after Nano Electronics came in. Like a said, not a huge deal, but they're paying me to evaluate your moves, right? :lol:

You placed habitat in the queue right after soil. That's a good place. Another alternative is to put it after the banks. Both are equally valid.

I would have curtailed the social spending earlier, in favor of putting out a few more colony ships. There is not a great need to get manufacturing centers everywhere--you cannot support 100% spending now, and manu centers just allow you to spend more per turn on social and ships. You have plenty of time to complete the diplo translators. Better to get a few more colony ships out (along with another freighter), and research nano-metal composition (manu capital), interstellar refining (fusion plants) and advanced trade--and either trading or researching controlled gravity (gravity accelerators).

You also did not pull the trigger on some available trades with the Alterians. You could have gotten shields (battleaxes) for prop theory, diplomacy, and trade. Shields could then be used to get advanced grav. from the caranoids, or you could hold off until they get contolled grav. (better).

Overall solid turn. Only a few tweaks to be made. You are more than ready for your run at the helm next year. If you can--see if you can up the detail for the official game turn. Thanks.

Good analysis at the start of the turn. I chose not to pull the trigger on the trade with the Torians, secure in the knowledge that I could get a better deal from the minors. Your analysis is good--speed the ships enroute. That could mean another colony in a pinch.

You were a bit sloppy on the use of SiBCaT. Remember, it's finicky--good to check after the first month (of two) or second (of three) month of research. The game will correctly account for how much bonus research is occurring at your current spending level. If the game then says that you will not get the tech in one or two turns (as appropriate), then you need to up the research spending.

:lol: How many of us have been bitten by the Weapons theory gaffe?

I chided others a bit for staying on the social spending too long. You stayed on the research a bit too long. You could have pumped out habititat everywhere, and gotten a few more colony ships moving (and a freighter). At this level, we are not WAY behind on tech (in fact we are leading, for the most part), so continuing to pump research is not necessarily needed at this point. With all those unclaimed systems to the east and south--better to get the ships rolling now.

You could have traded for shields with impulse drive, med theory, and interstellar refining. Given that lineup, I might have passed, too. I got a much better trade--Trade, diplomacy, and prop theory--which are techs I want them to have (and they prioritize usually).

You went one month too long. Not a problem for a shadow.

Overall solid turn.

You know, I never even CONSIDERED rechecking research after the first turn to see if I was on course for my proposed time lapsing. You are absolutely right. Ok, I feel a bit silly on that one.

On another note, Rojo, I thought you had an extremely good turn. Much better than what I would have done this turn. Nice job. :)

Wow.

Great starting position for this turn. Taking a look at our situation, we will basically own the southern portion of the map. I also note a Torian Constructor headed towards what I’m guessing one of ‘our’ resources. Guess there’s not much to do about that at the moment.

Goals for this turn:

1) I will go ahead and colonize Thebes (what a system!)
2) Move ahead and reserah Imp Env. To get pop up on all the newer systems
3) Move ahead into social improvements

But first, let’s see what we have on the trading front:

Torians:
+Ind theory (50), Basic Env (220), Inter Refining (200)
-Controlled gravity (300), Deflectors (x)

Altarians:
+ A lot
- Delfectors (x), Shields (500)

Alex:
+ A lot
Controlled Gravity (300)

Caranoids:
+ Int Refining (200)
- Deflectors (x)

Interests: Shields and controlled gravity. Neither seems to be a high priority right now, but let’s take a look. (I’m not planning on starting military, and range isn’t really an issue at the moment)

With Altarians: Trade (130), Ind Theory (50), Cold Fusion (100) for Shields (500) and 60 IP? Yeah, I’ll take it.

With Alex: Med Thry (50), Ind Thry (50), for Controlled Grav (300) and 50 IP. Yeah, I’ll take that too.

We’ll see what Bam-Bam has to say about those. :p

Jan: Ok, change over to the research page. Change to Imp Env Control. 100/120 *320 = 266. Change spending to 92 so should be done in April. Move a bunch of colony ships. Colonize Thebes. Get a free ship. There you go then. Also notice we haven’t had any espionage on either Torians or Altarians. I move it up to the first notch for now.

Feb: Freighter hits with Altarians. Ship movement.

Mar: Kwin build Econ Cap. Sarveyus surveyed up north. PQ 12, actually tempted to colonize. I’ll keep pressing North. Check research, looks good for next month.

Apr: Imp Env comes in. Switch over to social. We have most systems roughly 50% of the way through man centers. I believe habitat is right behind this on the scale. Seeing as we are at 100% morale, I think we can go ahead and keep the order the way it is. Earth will be working on Econ Cap after habitat. Torains are going after the military resource. Dren influence spotted to the North (west of the Yor influence)

May: Sidal, a 16/15/14 colonized. Good lord do we have a solid planet base. Redirecting a few colony ships to finish colonizing Thebes and Sidal.

June: Our freighter to Torians hit. Continue social work.

July: Earth completes Habitat. Moves to Econ Cap (we need the money). Two other planets finish manu centers and move to habitat imp.

Aug: Another Manu center comes in. Caranoid freighter arrives. Check trading opportunities, majors seem to be moving up the weapons tree. Minors not moving at all. No trades made.

Sep: 1 more manu comes in. Will persue another 2 rounds of social. It seems that a ton will come in during that time.

Oct: A manufacturing center, 2 soils, 2 habs come in. The Dren complete Aphros trade good. Greeeeat….. Tech resource scouted south of Alexians planets.

Nov: Alva PQ16, and Beetlegeuse PQ16 scouted way up North towards the Yor. I simply don’t believe how many planets there are for us here. Looks like we’ll need ANOTHER round of colony ships, especially if you throw in the PQ 14’s. Beetlegeuse settled. 2 manus, soil, habitat complete. Switch to military. Need another colony ship out of Beetlegeuse. The other planets set to start spitting out Battle Axes. We’ll start needing those in the north soon enough. (or for taking the minors, we shall see)

Dec: Thebes III settled. Jotunheim PQ15 spotted. And the landgrab freakin continues! Slight correction in building orders. Thebes II and Sidal to build colony ships to colonize their own systems. Major Dren influence moving in from the NW.

Altarians: Friendly, no change in tech
Torians: Warm, no change in tech
Alex/Caranoids: no change

Ending map

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr4-end.jpg



I know the trainees have received some kicking in regards to what we’ve been researching as opposed to what the AI generally researches. Do you have a rough guide on what the AI generally likes to research so we can at least get that series of kicks out of the way? ;)

Brackard 2182 (http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/rbgc5-brackard-2182.zip)

Brackard - Thanks for the compliment.

I still made a few mistakes but overall I felt I had done an adequate job of the official game. I managed to avoid Bam-Bam's pungent weed! :D

Rojo (2182 - 2183)

Jan 2182
Opening shot:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2182a.jpg

We have met the Carinoids and Alexians, and we are Neutral with the Altarians and Warm with the Torions. We see Yor influence NE. We are currently at 100 research.

Tax rate: 39%
Spend rate: 37%
Approval: 100%

Net Income: 12bc
Treasury: 24

We have 2 freighters and 9 colony ships on the move. I change to 100% social and I increase Spend rate to 41% which will help push out Mfg Centers and Habitats sooner. I leave some of the planets producing Mfg Centers, as they will be able to produce them sooner than habitat improvements, which should allow habitat improvements be pushed out quicker.

I check in with everyone to see what they have to offer.
Carinoids:
+ Deflectors
- Interstellar Refining

Alexians:
+ Controlled Gravity
- Artificial Gravity, Basic Environment Control, Cold Fusion, Impulse Drive, Industrial Theory, Interstellar Refining, Medical Theory, Propulsion Theory

Torians
+ Controlled Gravity, Deflectors
- Basic Environment Control, Industrial Theory, Interstellar Refining

Altarians
+ Deflectors, Shields
- Artificial Gravity, Basic Environment Control, Cold Fusion, Diplomacy, Impulse Drive, Industrial Theory, Interstellar Refining, Medical Theory, Trade

I make the following trades:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2182b.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2182c.jpg

I settle Thebes. I find a scout and send it north. Freighter arrives at Altarian home world.

Feb 2182
I increase spend rate to 45%. Ships move.

Mar 2182
Get a report that the Kwilasians have builtan economic capital. We spot Tiberius System (12) in secotr 11-12 but will bypass. Also spot Sidal system (16/15/14) and head for it.
Get message about trouble between 2 majors:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2182e.jpg

April 2182
2 Mfg Centers and 1 Habitat Improvement built. Drop spend rate to 42% to keep net income above 0.

May 2182
Spot Drengin influence coming from north. We settle Sidal system. Freighter arrives at Torian home world. Increase spend rate to 44%.

June 2182
2 Mfg Centers Built and 2 Habitat Improvements built.

July 2182
Mid year report:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2182d.jpg

2 Habitat Improvments built, 2 Soil Improvements built, and Earth builds Fusion center. I change earth to work on Diplomatic Translators. I also change spend rate to 48%.

I check in with everyone for any trades and the best that anyone has to offer is Weapons Theory and Deflectors. I pass on the trades. More Drengin influence showing in the North. We spot Lacaille System (nothing), Beltegeuse (16) and Alva (16), all in the same sector NE. Head for Beltegeuse.

Aug 2182
Ships Move

Sept 2182
Spend rate increased to 52%. Find soldiering bonus. I decide to keep on with Social spending as we are ahead in Techs. I could change to Military to help Sidal and Thebes produce colony ships for its own systems, but prefer to build social.
We settle Beltegeuse and get an event. I decide to take neutral at this time.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2182f.jpg

Oct 2182
2 Habitat Improvements and 1 fusion center built. I switch Cherryh IV to build Gravity Accellerators. Alterians have Phasers, Photons and weapons theory to offer, but I hold off.

Nov 2182
More social built. Unukalhai set to build aphrodisiacs. Drop spend rate to 50%. Spot Jotunheim system (15/13) and send colony ship in that direction. Get economy bonus and fins an influence resource.

Dec 2182
More social built. Thindor system (20) spotted in secotr 11-6. Head colony ship in that direction.

Jan 2183
We have 3 systems that we will be able to settle within the next 2 turns, and will need to review where to focus our spending.

Year end shots:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2182g.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2182h.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2182i.jpg

Game Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbsg5-shadow-Rojo-2183ad.zip)

delay
Hello team

I am sorry that will be delay this turn. Our small company had I change in ownership yesterday. The new owner has put some demands on me. It might be better if Bam-Bam or someelse takes my turns.

I will try keep everyone inform

Blacksmoke

Done. Consider this a swap. I will post the official game turn this evening. Comments to be up not later than tomorrow evening. Blacksmoke can then take my spot, and we will then revert back to the normal rotation.

Trades look good. I would have used med theory vs. ind theory in the Alterian trade (gives them less). I did not include ip (I almost never do--too much tedium for me :D ). Alexian trade is good. Good job recognizing that the better deal for controlled grav will be with the minor.

Good idea bumping up the espionage. I didn't, but it cannot hurt at this point. I usually start bumping up espionage after I get three or more trade routes completed, but that's a personal preference.

I see you settled the big boy at Thebes. This is another judgement call. Since the colony ship there was only 77M, I chose to pick one of the PQ15s first. Again, preference, but settling the PQ15s later with larger colony ships will make those planets the morale drag on the empire.

Your priority on manu centers vs. habitat is wrong. Habitat is FAR more important than manu centers at this point. I thought the governor was set to have these complete first. I have my game set on that the governor vetos current builds, so I was sure to get the habitats going first.

I am not sure what the rush is to finish settling systems we have already claimed. Better to finish scouting/claiming new worlds.

No need to fret over someone getting aphrodisiac. That is one of the most overrated trade goods. It's impact is limited because of the 200M/month growth cap.

I do not believe we need to be building axes quite yet. Better to pump out a few more colony ships, and some freighters.

Overall solid turn. The two areas that I would say you need to improve for this turn is to put colony ships to NEW systems to complete the system grab, and to hold off on the axe building.

EDIT: I have to give you a :smoke: on having planets building news networks. These should only be built on planets that are in danger of flipping from AI cultural influence.

Good opening analysis, with one exception. You should have vetoed the manu centers and got the planets producing their habitats right away. Overall, you will get the habitat sooner (better tax income and morale) by producing it first rather than waiting for the manu center. The manu centers are not that important at this stage.

Good trades. Nothing to fault here.

Your scouting and settling looks good. You found the PQ20 up north, and even have another colony ship going north to grab the other PQ16. Good work. Same comment go on which planet to settle in Thebes, but this is a preference issue.

I have to diagreeon having earth build diplo translators before econ capital. With no manu capital in place here, you would have other planets building wasted improvements while waiting for this to complete. Better to get the econ capital, and then build a manu capital and burn through trade goods and wonders.

I cannot take great fault with you taking a neutral choice, other than I thought we were angling to the good with our two neighbors being good?

Lastly, having other planets build trade goods at this point is wasteful. I would also not be building embassies, since I rarely builld them until the middle of the game, if at all.

Overall, solid turn, with one main exception on your choice of trade good/social builds.

As far as the manu centers go, the only reason I finished them up was because morale wasn't a problem. In my average game, I will have habitat before manu's. Seeing as I wasn't having morale problems, I figured I'd go ahead and finish the manus currently in process then head back to habs. The fact that I didn't change them in the governer, I'll take that hit. News networks are generally the very last thing I build. I honestly don't remmeber selecting them.

My switch to Battle Axes was basically a place holder. Should I have continued building colony ships?

I would have pumped one or two more colony ships out of the Unukalhai, and Cherryh systems (Cherryh system mainly because that would take pop off the PQ14 start planet). I would also have built some freighters out of Sol.

We don't yet need defense--our relations with the known majors are good, and better to send out the freighters towards the evils.

I'd have to recheck the planet listing on your save--I thought that you had put some turns into building news networks. I RARELY ever build them in any game.

@Bam-Bam, schoolwork returns to normal, holiday coming up. I'll play my shadowturns again.

I see you switched, so I'll be taking your save then for starting.

G-Force

If you thought some of my earlier years were questionable, you will find the the next ones will be as well. I honestly will admit that this is the part of the game where I am truly weakest as I am unsure where to focus.

At what point do you determine what strategy to employ in terms of Military, Alliance, Culture and Tech Victories? I know some people prefer to play one style or the other, but I like to keep my options open and will play it by ear. When do we as part of this training decide which strategy to work or do we work all simultaneously?

If there is no preference I would like to focus on a Military victory as I am a wimp when it comes to this style as I tend to wait until I have an overwhelming advantage. I would love to see the various strategies people employ, what risks people are willing to take and when to proceed. I definitely want to be critiqued on my moves.

Let me know what everyone feels about this or if we just let it play out as each person see's fit.

I'm actually with you on this one Rojo. If you look at my record, I have a WHOLE bunch of alliance victories, a tech victory, and zero miltiary victories. Let's shoot for the military victory. We definitely have the planet base to do it.

Ok. I do not have a problem going for a military victory, but let's hear from the rest of the squad. It's a bit early to directly push down that path, so we have a few years of basic infrastructure building and tech reseach to get behind us. During that time, I would like to hear from the other members regarding victory types.

In the meantime, I would like each of the folks to articulate how their moves are setting up for pursuit of a military victory.

This is where I have the problems. I typically go for social builds that boost production, research in areas to help improve soldiering bonuses, population growths and try to get wonders or goods to improve the same. I try to insure I have a good economic base and push towards battleship tech and work with that. I have rarely gone beyond this level, maybe to dreadnought.

I sit back and bribe the others to fight each other while they leave me alone to build up by me stopping on research and working social and then moving all to 100% military. Once they are weak enough, I pick one major and try to take out as many planets of theirs in one strike. Once I have finished off one major, I regroup my combat transports and do the same tactic to the next person and so forth.

I leave all the minors alone and use them for my economic base to support my armadas. Very straight forward, but at the levels I previously played, it worked. Lots of room for improvment and that is what I am looking at learning.

I do not know if that is what you were looking for.

A militairy victory is fine by me. It's always fun when you got Excaliburs and they don't :)

G-Force

Military - victory is okay with me

Ok, we open this puppy up:

We’ve got a few colony ships on the way towards their destinations, a few more planets needing colonizing, and in the process of completing some social builds which includes the Econ capital on Earth. (should help bring in some much needed cash).

Although I’m generally a research freak, I’m actually thinking another round of military for a few more ships might be in order. We have quite a few double/triple planets that still need work and quite a few 13/14’s if we decide to use those as well. (Why not)

As far as the military victory goes, we need to push for a few trade goods such as Tristonium steel (I believe) and gravity accelerators. That means pushing towards the appropriate tecs, tri-stronium alloy and controlled gravity (which we have). We will also need a good size population base for invasions. This would indicate that we need to grab as many planets as possible, if nothing else for use in invasion forces. Look out PQ13/14 planets, here we come. This will also make the growth techs/trade goods more valuable. Because of our massive landgrab, our initial social/research push has been delayed, but if we can make it out of the slump, we’ll be just about unstoppable. Or those are my initial thoughts anyway.

Let’s take a look at the research side for trades:

Torians:
+ weapon theory, photons, deflectors
- interstellar refining, 0 grav research

Altarians:
+ weapon theory, photons, deflectors, phasers, battle armor
- interstellar refining, 0 grav research

Alex: Nothing to offer
Caranoids: deflectors, photosns

No trades made.

Jan: Free ship, moving to Beetlegeuse (most likely where needed) Anderson scouted PQ14. Tagged. Jotunhem PQ15 settled.

Feb: Research, 2 fusion, manu, and Econ capital come in. 1 more turn of social to go. Grav accelerators and Diplo set up in social queue for two planets. 17 months to complete apiece. I didn’t really know what else to queue. Thebes 2 settled with 150M. Thought it was more. Got this event.


http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr5-event1.jpg

Chose the good option. Settled Pithra I. Got this event.

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr5-event2.jpg

Ouch, on the PQ. I chose neutral.

Mar: Alexians freighter hits. 2 fusions, 2 habs, and a soil complete. Amber I, PQ15 scouted. Colony ship en route.

April: 2 researches and a fusion hit. I have several planets without anything viable to move on in social, so I’ll have to stop right here. Moving over to military spending. Looking at our colony ship needs:

Needed:
2 colony ships at Sidal: PQ15/14 (east)
2 colony ship at Thebes PQ15 (east)
1 colony ship at Alva PQ16 (way up north, immediately)
1 colony ship at Piers PQ14 (central)
1 colony ship at Anderson (possibly one of the two already down there)
So that’s a minimum of 5-6 colony ships

So looking at my military spending graph, let’s see what we have here: The worst needs are in the north. Beetlegeuse, Umera, and Thindor having build times of colony ships of 3, 4 and 4 turns. Ugh. That will be difficult. I’ll have another army from the rest of the fleet by that time. Sivil will have a colony ship out next turn. Good. That will be the best we can do for the NE. The others can wait from planets currently in construction.

Due May:
Sivil: Load with 200M, head to Alva (PQ16)
Unukalhai colony ship: load up with 200M, head to Thebes (PQ18)

Due June:
Freighters: Earth, Sol IV, head up north to Dren/Yor
Cherryh I: Load with 100M, head to Sidal
Cherryh IV: Load with 150M, head NE

Due July:
Piers: Load with 50M, move to Piers (same system)

Due August:
Umera I: Load with 100M, head to Alva area, explore NE (or switch with the Sivil CS depending on distance)

Due September:
Beeltegeuse: load with 50M, explore E
Thindor: load with 50M, explore N

We’ll need some additional ships, but we’ll need to switch back over to social/research here shortly.

May: Meet the Kwinlisians. 3 colony ships produced.
Unukalhai: 200M to Thebes PQ15
Sivil: 200M to Alva
Cherrryh II: missed this one, 150M to Sidal PQ14

Kwin: up phasers, deflectors, wpn thry, down a lot

June: CS
Cherryh I: 150M to Sidal
Cherryh IV: 150M NE
Colonize Amber – event below, chose neutral

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr5-event3.jpg

July: Dren pull in diplo translators
2 CS
Sivil: 200M, heading NE
Piers: 100M settled the PQ14, pirate event, chose the good side
In the above CS calculations, I didn’t take into account the small amount of time for some of the quicker planets, thus the multiple CS per planet. Good stuff. So with that being said, I can take off the last month. I only have 1 more month of CS production before back to research.

August: Umera, load 100M, head E Move the ship. Autoturn moves into next turn before I have a chance to change spending. Damn.

September: 3 colony ships produced.
Sivil – load with 100M head NE
Beetlegeuse – load with 50M for exploration
Thindor – load with 50M for exploration

Change spending first. 100% research Nano-metal comp. 500 needed, 416 dial up sibcat. Spending set to 230 for 2 turns. We COULD get it in one turn, but would take huge financial loss.

October: ships move

November: Gladstone scouted down in the bottom corner. Colony ship in route.
Vote: we win, 95 votes. Research comes in. Next up: Imp Env, spending set to make it for next turn.

December: Imp Enviro comes in. Gladstone settled, no event. Research set to adv trade for the extra trade routes for the freighters in progress.

Take a look at end of turn trades:
Alex: they are up adv trade and the weapons tree techs, let’s see what they want for adv trade (even though we’re one month in already, yeah, I’ll take the smack for this one).
Shields (500) & Basic enviro (220) for adv trade (900). Well, they won’t move from those two techs for adv trade, let’s see if we can get something else from them: phasers (250). Sure what the hell. I’ll take it.

Kwils would trade, but it was a bit uneven, so I declined for the moment. Same with Caranoids. Same with the majors.

Close with Torians, Friendly with Altarians.

End of year map and populations graphs:

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr5-end.jpg

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr5-pop.jpg

edit: Save (http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/rbgc5-brackard-2183.zip)

Well, if nothing else out of this training game, I'm increasing my reporting abilites for any future SG. ;)

Brackard, you seem to put a lot of emphasis on each tech value when setting up trades. Trading is not about research value, it is more about what do you get and how much it really costs you. A good trade is one where you get something you need NOW and you pay with techs the AI will get sooner or later anyway. A very good trade is one where you trade away to same techs to multiple AI. This reduce the trading ability between AI by making sure they stay roughly equal in techs.

I never research advance trade, I always acquire it from one of the AI, even paying bc per turn to get it. The economic exchange is a useful building with no maintenance cost, so I always use it to fill up the build queue of planets while my main worlds are building up wonders. It also allow an extra trade route, the sooner you connect your trade routes, the more money you make, so trade techs are always worth a lot more than the cost to research.

Actually, I rarely research any of the trade techs except xeno-intimidation when I go evil. I will research a trade tech if I have a freighter ready to connect and I can't get a trade tech from any AI. Of course, that is mostly applicable on maso, where the AIs can research much faster than the player.

I guess this is where I'm stumbling in the dark then Jaxom. In my SP games, I rarely trade. I generally go through long periods of research followed by long periods of social builds. (Maybe THIS is why I never have time to put out military). If I make it, I generally have a big enough tech lead that it doesn't matter and I start spitting out military like nobody's busness.

When I do trade, I trade generally like I did in my turn: "Hmmm...this looks good. Let's see what else I can get" My goal in trading, getting everything I possibly could. Obviously, I'd trade the same tech to everyone to get as much as I could but my goals are more in the general: "get all the tech you can". This is why I accounted for the cost of techs when doing my trading.

My other problem here is I have no idea which techs the AI researches and which ones they don't. If I KNEW the AI made a B-line down the trade tree, I wouldn't worry about it and go for more optional techs. The only techs I know that I snag early are the early med techs. Outside of that, it's open season. I don't even know if this is the right thing to do?

So for you and Bam-Bam: What is your general research strategy? I don't need a tech by tech guide, but in general, which way do you go based on what you know about how the AI researches?

As I said in my official turn last time, the trainees will keep getting kicked for poor research choices. I have no idea on what the proper research choices are based on what you konw the AI is choosing that I don't.

After looking over your response again, I think you're saying I made the right move, just for the wrong reasons. lol

Brackard - You are not the only one that has a problem with understanding what the AI researches. This information would indeed be useful for us.

I am like you in that I try to get as much tech from the AI in the trades, though I do try to avoid trading certain techs.

I am expecting to see a few pungent weeds from Bam-Bam over the next few years, but hey... that is why I signed up for this training, to learn as much as I can and improve my play. As a matter of fact, based upon the feedback we have received to date, I have already started to put this to good use in my personal games.

Ah, right, I was saying you made the right move, I only wanted to point out that research cost is not the only thing to consider when trading.

Most AIs research all the early techs but they tend to go for basic environment last, sso this one is always one of my early priorities since I can get some good trades out of it. The trade route techs seems to have a high priority with many AIs, they usually go for them right after the same tier military tech, so I avoid spending research on these techs. These techs spread around rather quickly so I get all I can from everybody as soon as I have one. If there is nothing to have, I give them the tech to score brownie points and hope for more trade routes coming my way.

I usually research very few techs myself, less than half the tech for a whole game, when I do research it's as fast as possible. That is, 100% research for time intensive techs or as much as needed to get a tech in one turn otherwise.

My favored research path in the early game is:

[list=1]
comm. theory, universal translator. I put leftover spending in those techs until I meet someone. When I have one contact, I complete those ASAP.
med. theory, industrial theory, basic environment. This obviously depends on what techs my contacts know already.
I turn off research until I can trade for cold fusion. Then I research interstellar refining.
I turn off research until I run out of wonders to build.
[/list=1]

As you can see, many key techs are missing in that list. I trade for all those techs in most cases. There are exceptions depending on the setup. Sometimes I am all alone and I have to research diplomacy and trade myself. Other times, there are many stars just outside my reach and I can't extend my range even by using the worst planet available. In that case I will research up to controlled gravity as quickly as possible, trading for prerequisite techs if possible.

The Altarian likes interstellar business and marketing, so I get them through trades. Most AIs will eventually research advance diplomacy but I put a high priority on stadiums so I will go straight for Extravaganza after the early wonder building phase.

In the mid-game, I will go for gravity mastering (more range) and hyperspace (more speed + hyperion manufacturing) unless the Arcean are in decent shape, they go for these techs early. At this point, I take the time to put 300 bc in espionnage on the 2 races with the most systems. This way, I can see what they are researching so I can better plan my research. When one of the AIs begins instant communications, he will get it, then Alliance and then Star Democracy. I pay bc per turn for each of these techs as soon as they are available. Once I have Star Democracy, I will research Star Federation as quickly as possible, otherwise an AI might get it first and build the galactic monument in only a few turns.

I never research what I call the metal serie (high density metals, advance engineering, tri-strontium, exotic alloy and large scale building). I pay bc per turn for Large scale building to the first AI to get it, then trade it for all the other metal techs to the second AI when he begins researching it.

I also never research military techs, the minors will get them soon enough, at least up to Dreadnoughts if they live long enough. Then again, my style doesn't involve much fighting so I never find myself in need of firepower. In a more military game, I would trade or buy the prerequisite to dreadnoughts and research that as fast as possible.

Wow, that was long-winded, I hope you find something of use in here. :)

I have a little bit different take on what Jaxom does. I find that the AIs in most of my games seem to lag on the trade techs beyond Advanced trade. I usually can get good trade value out of trade org. and cultural trade. Besides, I want the AIs to be sending me their trade routes. Just some more food for thought. Jaxom is spot on about the military techs at maso. It is a rare game indeed where I self-research battleships or dreads.

Well I send 2 or 3 freighters to the closest neighbor but I send one freighter toward each major. On a gigantic map, it can take almost 10 years to reach the furthest one. Besides, I am a wonder junkie, I HAVE to build each and every wonder/trade good. :D So by the time I should be researching cultural trade, I am much too busy trying to complete the early wonders. And after cultural trade, I generally have such a surplus that I am in no hurry to get extra trade routes. I take my time and explore every system of a given major before choosing where to connect a trade route. :)

Also, the fact that I build so few buildings means I don't have an urgent need for most techs.

Rojo (2183 - 2184)

Not as much detail this turn.

Jan 2183
Keep spending as is. Keep social spending on. Settle Jotunheim and pick a star fighter.

Feb 2183
Economic Capital built as well as a variety of other social builds. Since I am running of things to build of value for some of the planets, I switch to 100 research.

I check in with everyone for trades, but most only offer weapons theory, photons and phasers. I pass on trades for now.

Settle Pithra and get following event:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2183a.jpg

I pick the good one keeping with our good theme.

I also decide to send one of the colony ships up north east instead of settling into one of the other planets in Thebes. Wise choice??

Mar 2183
Ships move.

Apr 2183
Spot Anderson (14) by I bypass and continue to head SE.

May 2183
Meet Kwilasians. Get Advanced Trade and switch to Nano Metal Composition. Add Economic Exchange to queue. Spot Amber system (15) and feel there is still nothing worth trading for.

June 2183
Settle Amber and get following event:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2183b.jpg

I pcik good option once again.

July 2183
Get Nano Metal Composition and switch to Nano Electronics. I switch to 100% Social and boost spend rate to 63%.

Earth will get Diplo Trans in 10, Cherryh Gravity accelerators in 14 and Unukalhai Galactic Stock exchange in 15. I could boost taxes and spend rate but we are low in cash and I keep things the way they are.

Aug 2183 - Sept 2183
Many socials are built.

Oct 2183
Spot Galdstone (15) and should settle nect turn.

Nov 2183
Drengin come on scene and make following demand:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2183c.jpg

Because we are good, I cave in to his demands to keep the peace.

Alexians get Diplo Translators and Torians get Aphrodisiacs. We win election and I switch Earth the MFG Capital.

I decide to do the following trade with the Carinoids:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2183d.jpg

Since we have given this to the Drengin, I figure I might as well get something for this elsewhere. Drengin have Corvette technology and deflectors up on us. Everyone else just has deflectors and Altarians have space Militarization.

I settle Gladstone.

Dec 2183 - Jan 2183
More Social Builds.

Ok not a strong year for me. Some systems can still produce colony ships to fill in their systems and we can build some freighters. Not sure how to proceed from here.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2183e.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2183f.jpg

Shadow Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2184ad.zip)

Sorry for the delay folks. Still having a bit of medical fun from my allergic reaction earlier in the week.

Hmm. This looks familiar. If I recall correctly, I planned to keep the social builds for another two months. Looking more at the map, I want some colony ships NOW, so I will switch off social after the economic capital completes in a month.

January

Our Hero picks up a sensor drone from an anomaly. Send it on auto to the northeast. Settle PQ15 in Jotunheim system, getting this event.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2183a.jpg

Yeah, I'm all for playing good, but I am not about a -27% PQ penalty. Neutral it is.

February

Economic capital completes, along with some other social builds. Time for some more colony ships. All military. A mix of freighters (Sol system), axes (Cherryh), and colony ships (outerworlds). Settle the PQ15 in the Pithra system, getting this event.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2183b.jpg

Since we are bent on military conquest--why not take a neutral PQ bonus event, right?

Settle PQ20 at Thebes and get this event--this time taking the good choice.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2183c.jpg

A freighter arrives from the Alexians.

March

Unukalhai produces a 200M colony ship and switches to an axe.

April

We meet the Kwailasians. Some more colony ships, and two freighter out of the Sol system. We spot another yellow start to the southeast.

May

Some more axes and colony ships.

June

One more freighter, some axes and a colony ship. Switch to partial research--nano-metal for manu capital, while keeping military up to complete four colony ships in the outer worlds. Settle Amber (PQ15) with no event.

July

We get another freighter from Sol, and four colony ships. Swich to 100% research. Time to wake up SiBCaT, and set spending to get the remainder of Nano-metal in a month. Settle PQ15 at Thebes, taking a no-effect neutral choice (no -30% morale penalty here). Settle Alva in the NE, taking the same neutral morality event choice. Find ANOTHER PQ16 yellow within our taking up north. Oh my God, we have so many planets!

August

Sure enough, Nano-metal comes in. Switch to 100% social. Manu capital at Earth. But first, time for some trades.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2183d.jpg

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2183e.jpg

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2183f.jpg

Put econ exchanges at the end of the queue, and off we go.

September

Bunch of socials complete. Spot yet another yellow star, at the far southeast of the galaxy. I never would have imagined such a massive land grab!

Settle PQ16 at Lasitus (northeast) and get this event, good choice taken.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2183g.jpg

October

More social stuff. The Alexians complete the Diplo Translators--guess we'll have to buy it off them.

November

Believe it or not, we scout two non-yellow systems, with a yellow one right next to them :lol: Settle PQ15 Gladstone (SE corner), no event.

December

More social.

End of Year

Complete the manu capital on Earth--switch to Galactic Stock Exchange. We meet the Scottlingas. Make a trade with the Kwailasians.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2183h.jpg

That doesn't open up anything, but it was trading techs we had already traded away.

By the way, we now have 22 planets, with some more settling of a PQ15/14 in a claimed system and another PQ15 star to settle. This is amazing. I have never had a land grab like this....

Here is the tactical map. Just look at all those blue dots!

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2183i.jpg

The Shadow Game (http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2184ad.zip)

Brackard, solid turn.

EDIT: Remaining comments moved to the Official Game thread.

Not a bad round, but I think you missed an opportunity to do another round of settling. Look at that Drengin colony ship about to poach a yellow star from us. Not good.

A better approach would have been to finish the social and then punch some colony ships, followed off by one or two techs (nano-metal in particular), then back to social.

Too bad about the demand. Not a bad choice to cave. I would not have made the trade with the Caranoids. They can still build trade goods in this patch, so giving them the ability to build a manu capital is not worth the techs you got. It is not normally a bad thing to trade a single tech to everyone--I just try to hold off on nano-metal until I have the manu capital built before the AI. Though not quite as obcessive about wonders/trade goods as Jaxom claims :p , I do like getting most of them.

Good settling to the southeast, but your lack of military builds would cost you at least a system (of course, had you played from your shadow round last time--you would have already had a ship up there, so don't feel too bad). Playing the game like this can make you a bit schitzophrenic (sp), since you are rarely playing from your own turn. That's part of the learning experience, too.

You mused on whether to send a colony ship to the northeast--YES YES! There's gold (systems) in them there hills! Ok, bad pun, but not sending ships there loses out on the opportunity to grab some yellows that could be in those clusters.

Not bad--this game is a bit strange--rarely do I see three rounds of colony ship building. Good luck in the next turn--you will be up in the official game unless we hear from G-Force in 24 hours.

Have no fear, I'm here :)

G-Force

Rojo (2184 - 2185)

Jan 2184

Lots of contact, colony ships on the go, freighter ships on the go.
Tax rate: 42%
Spend Rate: 48%
Approval 90%
100% Research

Check in with people for possible trades.
Kwilasians and Torians have the most to offer, so I make the following trade with Kwilasians:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2184a.jpg

After this trade I am only under by Deflectors and Space Militarization. I could have gotten these but I would have had to give what was remaining plus the kitchen sink and considering I can probably reasearch this within 1 turn, not worth it.

I check to see what we currently have researching, which was weapons theory? but I switch to Nano Electronics. I decide to switch spending to 100% social. I boost spend rate to 65%. I verify build queues on the planets and notice some have nothing in their queue, so I plug in Econ Exchange. Earth I put to MFG Capital.

I check around and notice that some systems have colony ships that have been built but have not been launched. I launch 75 colonists from Thindor and head North. I also launch 75 from Betelgeuse and head NE.

Feb 2184
Meet the Drengin. They have Corvette technology and Deflectors on us and minus a bunch of stuff.

Spot Lasitus system (16/13) and it is a race between the Drengin and me, but I will win. Spot Epsilon (13).

I settle Alva and get following event:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2184b.jpg

I go neutral.

Mar 2184
Encounter Yor but they also only have deflectors on us.
Spot Aldra (14) just north of Lasitus. Spot Freya (6) and Umeria(16).

I settle Lasitus.

April 2184
Move Ships

May 2184
Setle Umeria and get event:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2184c.jpg

I go neutral. Spot Apeori (15/15/12) and head there.

June 2184
Earth builds mfg capital. I switch to Grav Accelerators build in 6 turns.

July 2184
Meet scottlingas.Just have Deflectors and Space militarization.

Boost spend rate to 80% to get Grav Accelerators in 4 turns.

Aug 2184
It is a race between 5 colony ships to settle Apeori! 3 from the Yor, 1 from the Drengin and 1 from us. I get in just in time to settle and get the folowing event:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2184d.jpg

I take good event. With all the colony ships flaoting around from the Yor and Drengin, not sure how many more systems we will get.

I check in for trades, but other than Corvette, Deflectors and Space Militarization, nothing else. We still have some Techs in hanf to work with. I could change where focus will go but in want Grav Accelerators and so stick with 100% social.

Sept 2184
Split freighters to have 1 go to Drengin and 1 to Yor.

Oct 2184
Ships move

Nov 2184
We get Grav Accelerators. Switch to GSE for earth. I decide that it is best to build military and change spend rate back down to 65% and 100% military. I build battle axes on fringes and some of the bigger planets, and constructors on the rest.

Dec 2184
3 battle axes built and 1 constructor. I semnd Constructor to Military resource up in the NE.

Jan 2184
1 battle axe built.

Year end comments. We are close with Altarians and Torians and neutral with Drengin and Yor. I could have continued with social and maybe get GSE, but I chose to put up some military and pump out constructors to pick up resources. Not sure if I should have kept on focusing on Research at the beginning, but I felt that after the inital trade, we were in good shape and could have easily taken the lead in we wanted to, but I felt I could take the time to build up the social.

I also just noticed that I missed 1 system (Silva) that had a colony ship in orbit so that was a missed opportunity. Not sure what it would have been able to get, but I missed it.

Year end snapshots:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2184e.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2184f.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2184g.jpg

Rojo Shadow Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2185ad.zip)

Year 2184

Preturn – So let’s take another look at where we are and where we are going. We have another 7 or so colony ships en route. (I actually note a Torian ship heading in the same direction as our colony ships). Research-wise, we are behind by a few techs in the weapons field to both the Torians and Altarians. Seeing as we are friends with both (friendly and close) this doesn’t really concern me.

Available for social builds include the following trade goods: Aprhodisiac, Frictionless clothing, Gravity Accelerators, and Tri-tronium steel.

Wonders available: Galactic Stock Exchange

If we persue the military victory, we will definitely need gravity accelerators (speed) and tri-tronium steel (ship HP). However, even on our best planet (Earth), each of these will take 16-19 months apiece. In addition, I played my first game with the Galactic Stock Exchange and it made a HUGE difference. I’d like to get that as well. In order to pull this off, we’ll need some additional building capacity. I believe I will begin by putting up the manufacturing capital on earth. This doubles our production at the planet and should half the amount of time it takes for the wonders/trade goods. However, before we begin our social spree, I’m going to research for a few months. I want as many planets building social as possible, so I’ll give the colony ships a few turns to move before I begin spending.

January: Move econ exchange to bottom of governor. Queue up one notch espionage to Altarians/Torians. Tag a military resource to the NE. Research set to Nano Electronics, +diplomacy/trade. None of the majors have it. 100/120 * 120 = 100. The remainder set to the social build to keep our treasury to no movmenet.

Feb: Nano comes in. Set for instant communications: 500 * 100/120 = 416. 1 soil enhancement comes in. Set research to come in 2 turns.

Mar: Alva settled, no event. 2 research labs, 1 fusion, 1 man cener, 1 bank come in.

Apr: I come in contact with the Dren. A colony ship is heading east to the cluster of three stars over there. It’s a shame I have 3 colony ships closer to the group than he does.
The Dren are up a few weapon techs, but nothing earth shattering. They do have the Diplo Translators though… Changing route for the colony ships to outpace the Dren ship towards the group of stars. Tag an econ resource scouted with my colony ship.

May: Weapons theory researched. ::sigh:: That’s ok, I needed it anyway, I guess. Fortunately, I didn’t have the entire slider on research so some was wasted but not the whole farm. Freighters (2) diveted to the dren systems for trade. I hope to get there pretty quick to improve relations. I don’t think I’ll make it in time though. Apeori scouted. A 15/15 system. The Dren will lose out on this one as well.

June: Delfectors learned. Turn research to xeno trade for another trade route. Should be good for trading too. Speaking of trading, let’s go back to the trading table and see what we have:

Torians: still up a bit of the weapon tree
Altarians: same
Dren: Same
Alex: none,
Caranoids: phasers for energy channeling. I accept.
Kwin: I trade Art gravity, int refining, zero grav research for photons, space mil, battle armor.

Not the best trade, but this puts us as tech parity with everyone (except Dren who are up Corvette) and up quite a bit of tech otherwise. Time to move on to pure social build I believe. I switch over to 100% social.

July: We meet the Yor. 1 hab, 1 soil, 1 res, 2 banks, 1 fusion, 1 entertianment completed. We settle Apeoria and beat the Yor to the system by one turn. We got the sea creature event, but only a –1% pop penalty for good. Went ahead and did it. The Yor had TWO colony ships in route to snag both planets in the system. We are up a TON of tech to the Yor.

August: Man capital complete on earth, 4 soil, 1 hab, 1 lab completed. Umeria scouted. Ship en route. Man capital completed on earth. We meet the Scottinglas. They have nothing to offer.

Sep: Earth set up for Galactic Stock exchange to come in 5 turns. The manu capital was a smart move. I am coming out AHEAD even with building the capital. It’s amazing what happens when you think sometimes. Umeria settled, no event. And I believe our aggressive outgoing landgrabbing is officially over. All we have to do now is settle in the empty planets on systems we already own. ;)

Oct: 1 bank, 1 hab, 2 ent centers. Moving ahead with social builds.

Nov: 1 bank, 1 hab complete

Dec: 1 bank, 1 soil, 1 ent center

End of year trades: Torians/Yor/Dren/Alexians, up corvette, Altarians/Kwil up turbo phasers. They are all down a ton of tech. I don’t do anything right now.

For next turn: Galactic Stock Exchange due in 2 (+1). Then we can move on to trade goods if we like. Each one of those was coming in in 5 turns a piece or so from Earth. Ok, one thing I forgot to do, I have 3 colony ships in the vicinity of Umeria and I dind't send a single one of them to colonize the second planet. My bad. We currently have 22 SETTLED planets with another 3 or 4 to go. Not bad for an initial landgrab. Call me crazy, but I believe we've just about gotten to that 'winning position'.

Jan: 1 ent, 4 habs, 1 man, 1 soil. Rest is up to the next emperor.

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr6-end.jpg

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr6-pop.jpg

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/yr6-tact.jpg

Save: (http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/rbgc5-brackard-2184.zip)

Bam-Bam - You doing ok? Still suffering from your Alergic reactions? Just wondering as we have not heard from you.

Sorry folks. I got sucked into another game--hard. Comments will be up this evening, but I will skip my shadow for this round.

Yeah, I noticed that Bam-bam looking at the RB forums. I was going to say something, but you fessed up. :p

Another solid round. Nice work to finish up the landgrab. Social was the right call at the beginning of the round. Good catch getting most of the colony ships out of orbit. My one main critique is that you should have stayed on social to get the Galactic Stock Exchange. With all these worlds, such a boost to economy would be big. We have a strong enough economy that the AIs will take some pause before threatening---notice you got none from Monkey boy? Military strength and friendly relations are most important to fend off threats from the AI, but economic power also contributes to eliminating the tribute demands. Overall solid turn. No wonder you have two maso wins under your belt.

Some good reasoning at the start--but I have to pull out the :smoke: on your choice to go down the research path. You could have had the manu capital up in a few months, grav accelerators complete and over halfway to Galactic Stock Exchange. The techs you researched did not give you any immediate benefit, so prioritizing them over pumping out the wonders/trade goods was not a good move.

Right call on the manu capital. Good reasoning there.

Welcome to the OIRWT Club :lol: (oops, I researched weapons theory). By the way--it has no value to you now--we already have shields. More :smoke: on researching deflectors. Are we really going to build any Defenders, when we have axes available already?

Besides, we are going for a military win, and defense means nothing in this game---unlike Master of Orion, this game is all about OFFENCE.

Yeah, our land grab kicked some serious butt!

Overall--you've had better turns. This wouldn't burn us here, taking research on a non-critical tech over the wonder/trade good rush will cost you something on maso.

Believe it or not, I had wanted to go for GSE, but actually thought I would get blasted for focusing on the wonders/trade goods. Go figure that this was the right move.

My computer decided to crap out last night, so I had to take it in today. (posting from my mother in law's PC) I most likely won't be posting turns for this round and most likely next round as well. I'll still be watching through the PC at work, but won't be able to play. In case you wanted to know, I'd be spending the ENTIRE round working on social (Focus you know....) so it wouldn't have been that exciting of a round anyway. ;)

I'll catch up when my PC is back (including any missed turns).

Ack. Sorry to hear that Brackard. Knock on wood, I have yet to have a PC crap out on me completely. Thanks for the head's up.

Notice we have a lot in the bank. I think I can take care of that. :mischief: Switch research to Nano-Frequency electronics (multimedia centers), and tailor spending to get manu capital and nano-frequency due next month.

January

Send the corvette to scout out Yor space.

February

Manu capital completes. Time to mop up the remaining wonders/trade goods. Add multimedia centers to the queue. Galactic stock exchange on Earth--with a hefty deficit (we have 1800bc in the bank) to get it in four. Nothing really worth trading yet--going to send around cultural trade when the Galactic Stock Exchange is due the next turn.

March

Buncha social stuff. Settle Thebes III (PQ15) and get this event.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2185a.jpg

Take the neutral choice, even though it's a penalty. I want to have access to the good techs for extra trade worth.

April

More social stuff. Settle PQ15 on Sidal with no event.

May

Even more social stuff. Settle PQ14 on Sidal with no event.

June

Good news!

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2185b.jpg

More social stuff. Change Earth to Galactic Exhibition, due in four months. I see no reason to nab PQ13s, so I send one of our colony ships to boost Umeria's pop.

July

Social stuff. Tag one freighter to the Yor, one to monkey-boy.

August

Three guesses of what get's built, and the first two do not count. Caranoids build the Aphrodisiac.

September

More social. Squirrel Event on Sol. No need for a morale penalty there--neutral.

http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2185c.jpg

October

Galactic Exhibition completes. Dial down the spending, as the last two wonders took us down to about 100bc. Oh yeah, I'm a spender. Earth goes to Tri-Strontium Steel TG, due in 7.

November

Alterians declare on the Yor. Wonder why? Besides the good-evil problem, the Yor are the only ones besides us that do not have Interstellar Tactics.

December

Drengin declare war on the Torians. Surprised? Go shopping for some tech. Kwalaisians have the best deal--Advanced trade for energy channeling, space militization, and turbo phasors.

End of Year

A couple of econ exchanges complete. Tri-Strontium due in 4. That would be the last one I would build here. Soon time to grab some resources, push to battleships, and kick some alien butt.

The Shadow Game (http://civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-bambam-2186ad.zip)

Rojo (2186 - 2187)

Jan 2186
Tax rate: 42%
Spend rate: 88%
Net Income: -100bc
Treasury: 110
Approval: 85%

Currently we are on 100% social spending. We will get Tri-Strontium Steel next turn. I continue for 1 more turn on social.

Relations are Close with Torians, friendly with Altarians and neutral with both the Yor and Drengin. The Altarians are at war with the Yor.

I check in for trades, but nothing of value with anyone as they just have Corvette, Deflectors and Interstellar Tactics on us. We still have some techs to work with.

I send the surveyor to Torian neck of woods. My assumption here is that they are the first targets as they appear to be the weakest.

Feb 2186
We get Tri-Strontium Steel. Decision time. I see that there are some resources available for us to take just north of Alva. 1 military and 1 econ. The military is enticing especially if we want to go for military victory. I decide that it is time to go military spending to pick up these resources before someone else does. The closest planets can only build a constructor within 5 turns. I change spend rate to 73% to allow us to get a positive income of 30 bc per turn. We will need the cash to build the various starbases. This will still allow us to get a constructor from Thindor within 5 turns.

I send starfighter from earth to probe Torian space. I send Freighter in Drengin space to go to Artemis ( 2 planet system).

Mar 2186
2 constructors built (earth and unukalhai). I send 1 each to the Torian military starbase at secotr 7-9 and send the other to the influence resource in sector 13-12. Freighter connects to Artemis:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2186a.jpg

Apr 2186
More constructors built. Send on to various resources.

May 2186
Nothing

June 2186
More constructors built. Send to the various resources.

July 2186
Thindor builds constructor and I send to military resource. Betelguese will be able to build constructor next turn. I decide to dial in SiBCaT for Interstellar Tactics. It tells me that we need only spend 672 to get it in 2 turns. I boost spending to 78% and split income distribution to 56% Military and 44% Research. This will still allow Betelgeuse to get constructor and allow other constructors to be built and won't break the bank too much. Research says I will get Tactics in 3 turns but I am trusting in SiBCaT to be correct at spending 352 bc.

Aug 2186
Betelguese builds constructor which I send to econ resource just north. I am asked to build starbase on influence resource but I decline at the moment as we do not have much money in the bank. The influence resource is well in our space and I want to ensure we get the resources north of Alva first. I also get prompted to build on military resource north of Alva to which I give the okay.

Sept 2186
We get Interstellar Tactics and we meet the Arceans. I check in with everyone to see if there are any trades available. Most still have the same techs as they did when we began. However the Scottlingas have a new one: Warp Drive. Pre-requisite for Battleship. I see if they are interested in trading for it and make the following deal:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2186b.jpg

The Drengin have Defensive Phasers and Zero-Gravity Manufacturing and are willing to make the following deal:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2186c.jpg

However since cash is important for the moment, I decide to skip on the trade as every little bit will help us.

I switch research to Battleship and drop spend rate to 60% to bring in some income for other starbases. I put spending to 100% Research and Battleship can be had in 6 turns.

Oct 2186
Freighter in Yor space connects to Cobra (another 2 planet system). We build a starbase on the econ resource north of Alva. Starting to cost money.

Nov 2186
We build starbase on influence resource previously declined.

Dec 2186
Drengin now have sensors, but I still decline any trades.

Year end shots:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2186d.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2186e.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2186f.jpg

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2186g.jpg

Parting comments: We are doing well population wise but will need to beef up military once we get Battleship Tech. Relationships are good and we are only second to Drengin in Techs at moment, but this can be changed quite quickly.

Shadow Save (http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/rbgc5-shadow-Rojo-2187ad.zip)

Just letting everyone know I'm still computerless. Err, more like still without GalCiv. I've been avoiding the boards to avoid spoiliers. I'm hoping to get it back by tomorrow? I'll let you konw.

Edit: Discovered it was a nice hard drive crash. Recoverable data is TBD.

I will sit this shadowturn out.

G-Force

Ok. Another good turn. When you commented in the official thread about how our approaches were different, I guessed that this was your approach. Both are viable. You did good work squeezing in tactics at the end of your constructor build, and good work getting warp drive for basically peanuts. I probably could have traded for it to, but did not look for trades.

Your rationale for your choices is sound, but here is why I think grabbing some more tech is worthwhile. The techs I chose included tactics and warp drive (speed), which are prereqs for battleships. You got the same, and only researched one, so I think you did very well here. I also picked up the next government tech, which gives an economy and production boost. Hyperspace (speed) also opens up the hyperion manu center, which will further boost our ability to spam death knights and dreads out of earth more quickly. Democracy and alliances are also good techs to trade--or at least they give good value, though we may not be pursuing that route here.

The most important reason I chose not to spam constructors at this time is that we really only need military resources. Everything else is icing on the cake, but also is a drain away from resources to produce real attack ships. My thinking is to boost the economy/production base sufficiently that the few number of constructors can be built simultaneously with the fleet. If the AIs happen to settle the military resource(s), we can take it from them with a capital ship, followed closely by a constructor stack. There are also other things you can do with a few constructor stacks during warfare, but we'll leave that for future discussions.

So, overall you played a good turn, but an alternate method could allow for the same production of constructors (albeit later) during a shorter period of time. Overall, I think we are talking a 60-40 or 55-45 type of difference in advantage here, so both choices are nearly equivalent.

It is also a question of style. My strategy tends to emphasize consolidation and then application of overwhelming local or overal force, depending on the relative strengths. We have a large production and population advantage--why not take a year to make that and absolutely overwhelming advantage such that the war is completely decided before it starts? The reality is that there are many ways to skin proverbial cat.

Thanks for the explanation.

So I will watch the boards and see when we start up again, Hopefully Brackard will be up and running soon.

Aye. Brackard has the con for the next official round. When he claims it, lets all try to post shadows in a day, and get this puppy started again.

(Note this is Shadow round for a turn or two back)

Ok, it's been awhile since I've been on.

I've had to reload Galciv, my ftp client, and a compressing agent this evening, just to get a chance to play. Oh, and this report is being written in notepad. I'm still trying to find my copy of MS Office. I haven't taken a real look at what everybody has done, so my upcoming reports will be from an 'unspoiled' state.

Now, off to the game.

We've got a whole bunch of money in the bank which I intend to use. The manufacturing Capital is due on earth next turn, the GSE in 19? No, that won't work. I'll end up changing that. Trade goods: Tri-tronium steel, aphrodesiac, and frictionless clothing are all still up for grabs. I intend to go for the tri-tronium steel.

We are currently the most powerful civilization. Tech-wise, we are down a few military techs. The Yor have grav accelerators, the Dren have diplo. The minors are worthless.

Still one trade route each with Alt and Torians.

Jan: I adjust spending to 100%, this increases time to get GSE to 11. Whoa, we're at 60% social. Let's readjust here. 100% social. GSE now down to 6. Off we go. Espionage set on all majors at 5bc.

Feb: Man capital comes in, along with 2 other improvements. Tri-stronim steel set for 4 months at earth.

Mar: More improvments come in. Waiting on the big stuff. Thebes III settled, pirate event, good option. (don't do business with pirates)

Apr: Social spending continues. Colony ship changed course to Hestia, a PQ 14 in Yor space. Sidal IV settled. No event.

May: Sidal II settled, no event. Social spending continued.

June: Tri-Tronium Steel produced at Earth. We are rated 110/100 on technology. We haven't spent on tech on what seems like forever.

July: Set earth to Frictionless clothing in 3. GSE due in 0. Spending cut back to keep GSE at 0. Will move on something different next.

Aug: GSE produced. Okay, my primary mission this round was completed with half a round left. What's next? Frictionless clothing seems like a waste for 3 (now 5) rounds of social spending. We are still neutral to friendly with everybody. I might as well continue my infrastructure push. I move ahead with research to get 0 grav manufaturing. This will allow us to get anti-matter plants. 200 rp needed, *100/120 = 166, set to 225 at 25% spending (100% research)

Sep: 0 grav gained. Social spree continues. Anti-matter planet put at bottom of governor. Spending set to 65% or neutral.

Oct: Caranoids grab Aprhodisiac. Glad I wasn't pushing for that one.

Nov: Adjust spending to get Frictionless in 2(+1). We win vote with 67 votes. Keep social going.

Dec: Social spending continues.

End of round: Frictionless due next year. Then we move on to other stuff. Technology-wise, we continue to fall a bit behind in the military branch, but our budget is enourmous. It won't take long to catch up. No real trades made at this time. Nothing overly exciting this round.

http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/end-2186.jpg

And the save (http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/rbgc5-brack-2185.zip)

(Note: shadow round)

Year 2186.

Hey look at that, we're still the most powerful in the galaxy.

Pre-turn, okay looking over what we have, we have 0 turns till Tri-tronium steel. We'll spend at least one turn to finish that off. Another note, we have quite a few planets that aren't building ANYTHING. Time to start teching here to give them something to do. Spending adjusted so that we could get Tri tronium next round but limit the bleeding. Espionage set to 1st tick on everyone.

Jan: Tri-tronium steel comes in. Okay, time to look at the battleship race:

We are:
-warp drive, interstellar tactics to Dren, Altarians
-interstellar tactics to Yor, Torians

In other words, we are losing the battleship race. A big thing? Not really, but still, it's about that time to get down to business.

The Dren have diplos, so it's almost worthless talking to them, let's try the altarians: my goal is to get warp from the altarians and trade it for interstellar....

Well, the Altarians are willing to trade for warp drive, at the cost of tri-stronium and improved enviro. I couldn't get interstellar tactics at all. We can research nearly 700 rp a round. war drive is 900 and would take 2 turns. Tactics, 800 and would be tihgt (800*100/120) = 666. Would have to run a slight deficite to guaranty getting in it one round. Battleship: 4500 * 100/120 = 3750. Thus taking around 7 rounds. I should be able to pull in battleship this year. Let's do it. The trading would only save us a round. Not worth it.

Feb: Surveying around.

Mar: Warp drive comes in. Try tossing it around, interstellar tactics is a no go for trading. Money is tight. Decide to go 2 rounds for interstellar tactics.

Apr: Surveying around.

May: Interstellar tactics comes in. Time for battleship. Dren up 0 grav manufacturing, meaning they weren't going for battleship. Poor dren. (yeah right). Battleship due in 6 or so. Will see how close we are and adjust accordingly to keep us in the +.

June: I look for the rest of my hard drive.

July: torian build econ cap, we are rated 121/100 on tech. Battleship due in 3.

Aug: New minor in the area.

Sep: We learn battleship. Whoa, I must have adjusted spending. I didnd't think it'd been in this fast. We are the first. Time to get a few other techs in before mass production begins. Let's start with 0 grav. Costs 166. Spending adjusted for no waste.

Oct: dren: econ cap, alt: man cap 0 grav comes in. Set for alliances, run slight deficite to get in 1 turn.

Nov: Dren and Torians: WAR!! Shooting for Star Dem in 1+1 turn. From there, on to destory, well the Dren!! Nobody else has Battleship.

Dec: Still looking for my hard drive.

Jan: Star Dem comes in. Low espionage on all parties comes in.

Let the games begin.

And the save (http://www.kingwoodcable.com/brackard/games/galciv/train/rbgc5-brack-2186.zip)

I can't hit another round tonight, but I'll hit it here shortly. I apologize for the delay.

Hello? Anybody still out here?

Yup I am still here. Did not realize you were back up and running. I figured you would be out of commision for the week. I assume, that is what everyone was probably thinking as Bam-Bam stated we would take a break until your problem was resolved.

Can we hold off until the weekend before starting up again folks? Let me know as I'll watch the boards more often now that Brackard is back.

Ok. Brackard has posted his last shadow rounds, and the official game turn. I owe comments on all and my last shadow round. Rojo owes one shadow round. Let's say Saturday for the turns and Sunday for all comments and start the next round. Rojo will play the next official game turn (unless G-Force is still around).

As far as the rest of the game goes--I will be MIA on vacation from May 3-15. I can also say that my GalCiv interest has severly waned since I started up this game. Couple this to the reality that both Brackard and Rojo have been playing at a maso level in recent turns--there may not be all that great value continuing after a 2-week break. I do not want to abandon the game, but the real question is what return are we getting in our time invested in the game. I look forward to your thoughts on this.

You could not have brought this up at a better time. I have vacation scheduled 4/28-5/5, and business trip 5/10-5/14. So, that two weeks would be pretty light for me as well. I'm never one to give up on the game, and I've really enjoyed this so far.

However, I wouldn't mind scrapping this game if everyone decides there's nothing further to gain. We are currently in a position in the game where the risk of losing is very, very unlikely so calling it a game isn't necessarily a bad thing. Bam-Bam, I have to admit I have learned a ton out of this game and want to thank you for hosting it.

Now if we scrap this game, what's the likelihood of getting together towards the end of May for a maso SG? I'm sure playing in the real thing would make a bit of difference (for me at least). AP should be out around then as well. Shall we call it quits till next month?

Ok, it looks like the concensus is that we call it here. It appears that the people playing most are us 3 and as you have stated Bam-Bam, I have graduated to Maso and would prefer to focus my skills in that area. However in saying that, I have to say that I would not have graduated to Maso if not for this training game. I learned such a great deal in the early game, that it allowed me to attempt Maso.

I also would like to participate in a Maso SG and certainly want to move to AP. If you are game Bam-Bam, it appears you have 2 people already interested in a Maso SG in the May timeframe.