Alright, open MOO, set up the game, and hit start. The first thing I do is check out the map:
I usually look at the opponent list first. Humans and Silicoids are a risk for an early council loss, plus the Rocks necessitate guarding "our" hostile worlds if they start near us. Klackons are always dangerous, and the Mrrshan and Bulrathi can mean trouble for early war, especially since as the Sakkra, we will have bad relations with them. We've drawn a corner start, meaning expansion will be vital to break out and grab our share of land. The line of yellow stars through the center of the map, likely to contain several homeworlds, makes that doubly important.
We have two starting planets in range, the white N of Sssla, and the green to the E. Right off the bat, we have a difficult choice. The green has much better odds of having a habitable planet, while the white star brings other stars within range. The two stars look to be ~4 parsecs apart. I can either send the col ship immediately to one of them, or wait and scout. If I wait and scout, then the first colony gets delayed by 3 turns (which is significant). If I send to the white, I could get very lucky and land a habitable world in good position, but the odds are definitely not good for that, and mostly likely I'll end up settling the green anyway, but 4 turns later. So I went with the higher odds, and sent the col ship to the green. It's always a good idea to save before sending that first col ship. Once in a blue moon, that first star will be Orion, which will pretty much skunk your game. RB rules is if that happens, reload, burn a scout by sending it to Orion, THEN send the col ship to any other options.
The other decision I have to make is where to send the scouts. They should go to the likely habitable (green, red, yellow) stars most likely to be scouted by AI's. In this case, I chose the green to the NW, and as most other stars were out of range, the white star to the N.
Now for three turns of factory building. I usually don't build scouts right of the gate unless I'm on a cramped small map on Hard or Impossible. Our ships arrive, and what do we find? A desert 50 at the white star (Helos) and a size 75 Toxic rich at the green (Toranor). Of course the game decided to give me the unlikely result after all that discussion on odds
Nothing to do, but send the colony ship to Helos, where it will settle in 4 turns.
Often the second colony is founded on turn 2 or 3, which is the time to build and dispatch some scout 2's:
That second scout is identical to the ones provided at the start, only it costs 2 BC less. Not sure why this is the case, but it is. Colony ships follow this rule as well. I can build 4 scouts for the remaining planets in range in one turn, and I squeezed 1 more off for Toranor in case the Silicoids are nearby. After another round of factories, I belatedly realized I'll need scouts for the worlds that come in range when Helos settles, and built 3 more.
Helos is indeed settled in 2307. With the colony ship's maintenance gone, I can pump two clicks on Sssla away from clean up to factories; this will always be the case. Now I need to decide how many settlers to send. Pop growth is determined by a bell curve equation, with max growth occurring when the planet is half-full, and least growth both near zero and pop max. A good target to shoot for is landing 1/3 of the planet's max (including the two initial settlers). At 1/3 of max pop, the growth starts to become significant, and that mark usually has factories and pop completing at about the same time. Because we're the lizards and founded Helos so late, Sssla already has 75 pop, so I can easily send 15 to Helos. Normally, I don't like to drop the homeworld under 45 with transports, so I'll send the colonists in batches, and only after building scout ships. Those initial scouts are very important, and on Hard and Impossible, the homeworld starts at 40 pop anyway, and needs a few turns to grow. It's also important to micro the eco slider during transport; after scheduling the colonists, I need to bump up two clicks spending to avoid waste. Next turn, I'll be able to drop it a click.
The next few turns see factory construction at Sssla, and scouting reports coming in from the field. Starting at the green NW of Sssla, we have:
*Hyades, Ocean 45
*The purple is Zoctan, a radiated size 10. Beat a Human scout there by one turn, so Sol is almost certainly in that yellow star N of it.
*The green to our SE had a size 60 artifacts!
(Romulas)
Nice tech to pull. It's a bonus, without being gamebreaking. Like Civ3 and settlers from huts, pulling range or planetology tech from an artifacts planet can mean a runaway start.
*The white star to our SW is Yarrow, a size 30 Tundra
*Finally, the red SW of Yarrow is Denubius, a size 80 steppe.
All in all, some pretty good land here. I haven't seen any rock scouts yet, so we should be able to land that toxic world no problem.
With our initial scout reports back, it's time to open up some of the tech fields. It's always a good idea to wait until most of your scouts report back, so you know what propulsion tech you want, and if you need Controlled Barren. Here, we don't need Barren, and Range 4 is sufficient to get to all of the stars we've seen in initial range. It takes 3BC to open a tech field, and initial investment in any new tech is quartered, so it's a good idea to open with as close to the minimal amount as possible. I like to start with Construction, Planetology, and Propulsion. Early waste reduction is critical to the economy, so I like to know if 80% is on hand. Terra +10 is the best bang-for-the-buck tech in the game, and Improved Eco is the best bang-for-the-buck clean up tech. Propulsion is usually the most important tech to research early on. Each click on the tech screen is a 2% allocation. An easy way to measure out equal amounts is to hit "=" on the tech screen; this will set all fields equal. Then, you can simply dump weapons, computers, and shields into one of the other for a perfect 1/3. 12BC from Sssla, and here's what we have:
We missed on RW80%, but we will have 60%, which we can see because we got Duralloy from the Artifacts world. No choices for Planetology or Propulsion. We got our Range 4, but missing +10 and Improved Eco is a bit of bad luck. Helos is a bit immature still, and Range 4 will research quickly, so I'm going to hold off on starting that for a few turns.
Our second wave of scouts reports back. We chase a Mrrshan scout away from the yellow to our W, and find Escalon, a size 100 Terran; very nice! Sol is indeed the yellow star to our N, and W of Sol is Firma, a size 45 artifacts. It's 5 parsecs from Helos, and only 4 from Sol, so the apes will undoubtedly land that. On Impossible, I'd be building LR laser ships to hold Escalon. Here, I'm going to see if I can nab it by squeezing out an early Range 4, and two col ships (one for Hyades, which is 4 parsecs from Escalon).
I wait until Helos can pull about 20 RP on the tech slider before setting up research into Range 4. Tech investment in MOO has "interest" that works in kind of a quirky way. Basically, every BC invested on a given turn up to 7.5% of all RP invested in the tech to date is tripled. For instance, say that you had invested 100RP in a given tech. This turn, the first 7.5BC you invest will be tripled. So, if you invest 10BC more, you get 7*3 + 3, or 24RP for a total of 124RP (I believe MOO FLOORs this calculation). Next turn, you can triple up to 125 * .075, or 9 BC. So you can research a tech for much less than its cost, at the expense of taking much longer to do it, and a LOT of micromanagement. You won't see me use this trick past the first one or two techs, certainly not after I start researching more than one tech at once.
After doing this a few times, I've gotten a feel for doing it without calculation. Basically, I start with an investment from Sssla alone of ~70 BC (69 to be exact here). That allows 5BC to be tripled. Next turn, I put Sssla back on factories, and assign 5BC from Helos to research, leaving the rest in factories, and I note how many factories I can build at that level. Now, each progressive turn, I keep the factory construction rate about the same, which increases the research level at Helos by 1-3 every turn. While not exact, this approximates the curve pretty well, especially for cheap techs. Once the bulb gets close to being full, I'll start adding more, until I'm at full research when the percentages hit.
While Helos is researching/building factories, I'm constructing factories at Sssla. Like most 4X games, growth curve is very important in MOO. A few turns of factories early on can make the difference later between getting to worlds, researching that key tech sooner, building those needed military ships to fend off a sneak attack in time, etc.
The bulb for Range 4 was almost full come 2320, and I didn't want to leave that mid-stride, so I took another 10 turns. I built 4 scouts out of Sssla for when Range hit, then started on a colony ship. I figured Range 4 had about 5 turns, and that's how long it would take Sssla to build it. Turns out I hit it right on the money; the ship completed in 2326, the same turn Range 4 popped
My choice for tech was an interesting one. I could take Nuclear Engines, or Inertial Stabilizer. I took IS, hoping for Sublights in the next rung. The AI highly prizes IS, and will thus trade quite a bit for it.
The first col ship will reach Hyades in 5 turns, so I set Sssla to build another col ship in 5 turns, and put Helos back on factories for growth. There aren't any other techs worth sacrificing the curve for. IIT9 might be nice, but in this situation, I think I would only pause to research a clean-up tech or IT+10.
So here we are at 2330. Hyades will be colonized next turn, and Escalon's ship will be done. The Humans did indeed grab Firma, bringing 18 mediums with their col ship. Scouts are on their way to two new systems up North. Next up on the agenda for Snaproll:
*There are 4 scouts at Hyades. Once the planet is colonized, send them anywhere we haven't gone yet that's within 7 parsecs. Make sure to leave a ship at Hyades; otherwise, the AI will scout the planet if it can and send troops.
*Send colonists from Helos to Hyades once it's up, bringing it to 1/3. Helos should be kept on factories for now to get it up to speed.
*Sssla should go back on factories after finishing the next ship, and max out before the next ones. The only thing more important than maxing factories in Moo is staking claim to a fair share of worlds in disputed territory. We can't colonize Denubius anyway without Range 7 or Tundra bases. The only thing that would stop me from doing that is if our scout finds an amazing planet at the red NW of Hyades.
*Once Sssla is maxed, a col ship needs to be built for Romulas.
*After that, we'll need to assess the situation. If the Mrrshan are boxed in and really close to Escalon, we may need some laser ships to hold the planet. If not, we can research Controlled Barren; we need to see if Tundra is in our tree, and with Duralloy, that should give us enough tech for an LR colony ship.
Roster:
dathon <-- just played
Snaproll <-- UP NOW
mostly_harmless <-- on deck
Zed-F
Ignatious
Azoth
It's good SG etiquette to post the roster, noting who's up and on deck. And just so everybody knows, standard rules are to post an "I got it" within 24 hours, play and post within 48 of that. Save for this game is slot 3.
I know this was a very long read, but I have no idea where everybody is in their knowledge, so I just laid everything out as explicitly as possible. I'm really hoping this game has a lot of questions and discussion. There is no dumb question! Going to be a good time.
dathon
Turns forthcoming tomorrow night or Monday.
As for between turnsets, might be a good idea to wait a little bit for some comments, especially here at the beginning. That way everybody gets a chance to consider what went right/what was sub-optimal.