RBGC SG3: (almost) ALWAYS WAR!

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

Here are the game parameters.

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

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

Variant Rules: (almost) ALWAYS WAR!

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

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

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

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

I think everyone here is familiar with how to upload screenshots and savegames, but look here for an excellent description of the basics.

Here is the roster so far:

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

Signups are open over at the GalCiv General forum. Ideally, I would like 6 players, but I will take a minimum of 5.

- Bam-Bam

Here we go.

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

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



January

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

February

Surveyor picks up a +1 soldiering anomaly.

March

[dance] Check out this system!



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

April

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

May

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

June

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



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

July

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

August

Surveyor spots a white dwarf junk system southeast of Sol.

September

Surveyor picks up a +2 morale anomaly.

October

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



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

November

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

December

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

End of year

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



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

Roster:

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

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

Good luck to the next player!

And the save...

(almost) ALWAYS WAR!

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

Sorry for the oversight.

Got it.

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

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

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

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

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

Zed, this is probably true only on maso difficulty.

A couple strategy comments/questions:

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

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

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

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

Click to expand...

Ah, makes sense.

Zed--some thoughts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click to expand...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click to expand...

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

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

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

DO NOT SETTLE THE PQ 13/14 PLANETS.

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















Good luck to the next ruler.

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

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

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

Got it (well will have it tomorrow.)