OSG1 - Team One - Da n00bz

[Garath]

OK, let's do this!

Unfortunately, the first point on loading the game is that I still can't design ships in this game: my private games are fine, but even redownloading the game and restarting the computer had no effect on this one. I don't think I'll be able to design ships anymore in this SG. If that's too big a problem, feel free to drop me from the roster.

First order of business is to check over the realm:
1. I put some more spying into the Psilons, as usual they have some nice stuff.
2. I will wipe out the Alkari, we're unlikely by now to be able to get back in with the Silicoids or Psilons anyway, and their fleet is still large enough to be annoying if I don't.
3. Most of the place is re-maxing factories, so I leave them alone.
4. There is an unsightly white blot at Klystron, in the middle of my territory. It must die! (I know it's Ultra Poor, but it costs me almost nothing to take it, and if they want to waste time sending a fleet all the way in to retake it, they're welcome to.
5. There are no enemies anywhere near Cryslon, and it's standing up bases pretty fast now, so I send the 3 Ion Cruisers there to Denubius in the South, the Silicoids appear to be almost empty there. I'll send some tropps to go with them in a turn or so.
6. I take the alliance with the Darloks. Pretty much seems to have come down to the two sides now.

OK, let's go:

2461: Fleet arrives at Ajax, the Merculites wipe out the bases there quite spectacularly. I don't bomb Ajax, as it's the last, with quite a lot of factories (300+). Continue bombing Morrig. Capture Klystron. A few planets start maxing factories, mostly they go back on ship construction. I send 80 or so troops to arrive at Ajax in 3 turns, which should be more than enough to take, and leave a fair few to build up from. Troops also sent to Denubius, I'll have captured it by the time the Silicoid transports arrive from halfway across the galaxy. Send a few ships from Ukko to the *actual* last Alkari colony, having now seen it, Tau Cygni in the north. Troops to follow to coincide with the arrival, there are no bases there.

2462: Defend Darrian against not much Silicoid. I feel like I could really do with a better beam weapon, though, the Ion4s aren't really doing all that much damage. Wwell, the Megabolt Cannon is coming in, unfortunately I won't be able to make use of it though. Sirian should have it by his turn. I switch some planets off building them onto Bombers and stingers, though, since they are probably obsolete soon.

2463:Capture Denubius. Run out of time before this evening, but I've been writing this as I go, so I'll post this and get the rest up later.

Garath

 

[Garath]

Too much family...

anyway:

2463(cont): Send the fleet on from Phantos to Rich Omicron, Phantos has stood up enough bases now. I feel confident enough to send troops as well, due in 3 turns.

2464: space fleet at Ajax negligible. Alkaris attack Ukko slightly, but are easily fended off. Ajax captured for the loss of 40 of our troops against 135 of theirs, and ECM Jammer IV stolen. Several planets finish Soil Enrichment. Psilons come calling to try to get me to break off my current alliances. Surprisingly, I'm not having any of that.

2465: Reduced Waste 40% comes in (only choice Improved Industrial 4), and I tell everywhere to reduce spending automatically, before realising that there are currently a load of planets on Soil Oops. On the plus side, we finally capture Tau Cygni, eliminating those pesky Alkari. While I'm faffing around with all the planets, I realise that a lot of them are currently building factories at part speed, or are low on colonists, and I set them up to fix as many of those as I can by the end of my turn, at the expense of some research for a bit (in fact, most of the research. There's a lot to be done). Oh, and I finally bombed Morrig into the ground.

2466: capture Omicron. The Psilons have some decent gropo techs, the losses are more significant against them. Still only about 1:2, but worth noting. We could do with a couple of steals from them.

2467, 2468: nothing much of note, just a lot of planets maxing either colonists or factories.

2469: mess up slightly, leaving Ukko without amazing cover, and lose 11 merculites when the Psilons attack it. Not all that big though. Discover Zoctan to be empty of bases, send troops in. The Psilon Star Blade ship is really rather scary, Large with 15 or so Antimatter bombs and 7 death spores. And there seem to be several small fleets of them floating around, and I *still* don't know where they're headed. More bases all round at the front, I say!

2470: 6 Star Blades hit the 7 bases at Altair, the most I could stand up in time. Which aren't nearly enough. I only kill one before they're on the planet with their Inertail stabilisers, and they only take 2 rounds to kill all the bases. And then they shell Altair into the ground. Grrrr... Impulse Drives came in, Range 10 the only option.

Not, perhaps, the best situation I could have left you with Sirian. I apologise. On the plus side, there's absolutely no way we're going to lose from control of over half the galaxy. Might we even win on your vote?

Here's the game: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/BigRed-2470(team1).zip

Garath

 

[Sirian]

Looks like those parentheses jacked up the link. I found the file so you don't have to fix the link, but be warned, no parentheses in future zipfile names. They cause problems.

As far as your results, losing Altair is not a disaster. If the Psilons have a decent fleet out there, we either move more slowly or we accept that they'll turn a few sites into spuds. As long as our core holds and theirs is diminishing, we're going in the right direction.

Pound some dirt. Boots on the ground. Knock some heads. Mix it up!

I've got the game now. I'll be back later.


- Sirian

 

[Sirian]

Guys I've got a problem. For business reasons, I had to upgrade my Internet Explorer from version 5 to version 6. This has broken the "fix" I had in place to enable EMS memory under WinME. At present, I cannot run MOO1 on my main computer.

I will work around this one way or another, but I may not get to it in a timely fashion. Go ahead and skip past me.

Charis... you're up!


I had intended to open Imp3 on Monday, but I may have to push that back a week. We'll see.


- Sirian

 

[Charis]

This has broken the "fix" I had in place to enable EMS memory under WinME. At present, I cannot run MOO1 on my main computer.

Got it...
Charis

 

[Charis]

First post in the 'new' forum, so let's give this a try. BTW, they request
that attachments under 500 KB in size be posted via the 'attach' feature, NOT the 'upload page'. There is now a very handy 'remove old attachments' feature on the board, although larger files should still go via upload.
---

SitRep: We're at war with Psilons and Silicoids.
Psilons are up: ECM III, Adv Scanner; Personal Suit; ; Automated Repair, Zortium, Andrium;
Atm Terraform; Anti-Matter bomb and hard beam. (We have SIX spies vs them! Yummy)
Silicoids are only up ECM III, and others have nothing on us.
OMG we are **way** ahead on pop and planets, and distincts tops in fleet and total power.
Though the CFC forum is down, RB forum says min victory is conquest. This n00b must
check what that means... can vote yourself emperor on your votes alone (2/3), as opposed
to domination with 50%. We may just be there?! Taking a few more Psilon planets, or
glassing them, should do it. The look at the galaxy map is as impressive as I've ever
seen

2470 - I see troops en route for Zoctan, and a huge fleet of ours in orbit there.
Past Zoctan, there are no explored Psilon systems, but these are in close range:
Beta City, Mobas, Xendalla, Escalon, Guradas. Not knowing what's there I send
at least a small ship to each to see.
IBT - NW-most yellow star is Orion, I get to see the 6000hp guardian! (eep!)
At Nimzer, we wipe out 12 invading star wings, 7 escape. Closeby we drive off a ship.
At Yarrow, Psilon spies detroy 19 factories. SW scout blue system Beta Ceti.
Also scout Cygni in the south, a dead system. We have the choice to bombard Zoctan,
with 40 pop and 60 facs, but with 40 bears en route, no need. We demolished them,
losing only 4 (!) in the process, 10:1 kill ratio. A new tech from this: ECM Jam III.
Finally, 5 systems complete their terraforming.

2471 - Troops send to pound the ground at Beta Ceti.
IBT - We see 12 star blazers defending 105 Mobas and must run away.
New tech comes in FF: Class X Planetary shield, start on Repulsor beam. Also start
Pulsars in wpns. Capture Beta Ceti, with 9 of 26 surviving against about 30. In the
attack we learn atmospheric terraforming.

2472 - Omicron sends troops against Morrig. IBT - We see on Guradas (pop 17) only
one medium Star blazer defender, no bases.
At Escalon(125) is a single large star blade (with death spores and bombs only), and
4 bases with scatter packs. Insufficient force, so we retreat.
Xendalla(100) has a Coronna, 5 Star Blades, 18 Star Blazers, 24 Star wings.
ECM 5 comes in, we start improved Robotics 5. Morrig is captured with no losses (8 on 2)

2473 - Move ships to the front. IBT -

We scout Willow of Silicoids, size 17 tundra pop 49?. Scout Aurora pop 38 of 11.
A Mako or 2 slip by and attacks Klystron, destroying 1 factory, whoops.

<-- the URL for the img surrounded by IMG tag, doesn't work

Hmmm... if I use 'attachments', I can't really position them mid-post, can I? That won't do
for multiple picture storytelling, but for now, I'll close with an attachment of a galaxy map... (below is 'attachment' jpg)

Charis

 

[Charis]

2474 - Most key cities finish their Class X planet shields.
I think the vote is in the bag, and I'm sure we're over 2/3. Hit next turn...
Actually, first I'll exit and switch to DosBox for what I hope will be a good
screenshot. (I don't normally play using that as it's VERY choppy)

IBT - Here's the vote result...

 

[Charis]

IBT - We park in Guradas, and bombard Willow and Aurora. Also, a steal comes in
vs Psilon, and we chose weapons. Anti-matter bomb is the result.
IBT - 10 Psilon for Psilon, 4 Silicoid votes for Psilon, 3 Sakkra votes for us (!),
1 Darlok vote for the Bulrathi! How many total votes?
56, and we have 38. The conquest limit of 2/3 is... 37.33. We have 67.86% Bingo!

We accept the ruling, and an honor guard escorts us to Orion!
The Galactic Imperium has been reformed, by da Bears!

Excellent game guys!! That was quite a bit of fun. I learned alot but didn't feel
completely useless

Here's the save in 2474 before the vote, in case anyone wanted to press on further,
or to see the vote/win for themselves.

(I'm trying to attach a final img and the 2474 final save... seems to work well..
doh, the image doesn't show up as an image 8-\ )


Charis

 

[Sirian]

Great job, Charis. Wow, the game's already over?

I'm glad I had to pass it on, so you'd get another go-round. The cosmos sometimes works in mysterious ways.

BTW, they request that attachments under 500 KB in size be posted via the 'attach' feature, NOT the 'upload page'. There is now a very handy 'remove old attachments' feature on the board, although larger files should still go via upload.

That sucks. That positively, absolutely STINKS.

I am not writing whole posts then attaching a slew of pictures at the end. That will just not happen. I will not crimp my style. My answer to this will be either to continue to use the uploads folder (why fix something that ain't broken?) or to make one reply per screenshot. The effect of images is to illustrate the commentary. The pics belong inside the post, with commentary before the image, and commentary after the image. If I have to stretch my commentary out across a lot (A LOT) more posts, just to retain control over where in the commentary a particular image appears, I'll do that.

This is a significant DOWNGRADE in the forum capability, IMO. This is just plain bad news for the SG community, as far as image handling goes.


- Sirian

 

[Zed-F]

I'm pretty sure they won't object too strenuously if some of us prefer to continue using the uploads folder.

As regards the game, congratulations on a solid game! Interestingly, the net effect of early warfare in your game was not much different from our relatively peaceful expansion (at least until someone chose unwisely.) Was that because the AIs expanded less aggressively in our game, or because the fact that we concentrated less on shipbuilding meant that we were able to expand faster ourselves?

We did lag behind your game for a while in terms of tech, due to the fact that we were not at war and hence not stealing/capturing as much tech, but we did ultimately capture a bunch of tech that way once war was declared.

Any other thoughts?

 

[Charis]

Regarding the uploads... I think Zed is right in that the uploads folder is still available. They've changed the standalone 'upload' page to have one file at a time instead of doing 3 at once, but you can still do that for inline pics.

The new 'addition', and reason they're leaning towards attachments is because now in your control panel there is a "manage attachements" feature where you can see every attachment/post you've made and can delete them. I probably deleted 20+MB of attachments because now 'I could'.

I might think something like this would work fine:
- "Upload" as before all img's (compressed as usual, for smaller file size)
- "Attach" non-images, ie the save files.

As for game comparison, I'm looking forward to expert commentary, and will now have to read through the 'other game' in detail

Charis

 

[Justus II]

So, we actually got the Sakkra to see the light? Good game, good refresher on the power of ground combat, I had been taking that somewhat for granted in the first Imperium, but a small advantage adds up quick. An important lesson, even if you're not 'da Bears', because it's easy to overlook the Gropo techs, but they do have a good payoff. More tech steals, faster to stand up defenses on new conquests, etc.

Thanks to the team, and to Sirian for hosting the SG, good idea to get the ball rolling. Now I also have to check out our "mirror mirror" universe.

 

[Isit]

Good game everyone. I am looking forward to reading through the other team's thread.

 

[Ozymandous]

That sucks. That positively, absolutely STINKS.

I am not writing whole posts then attaching a slew of pictures at the end. That will just not happen. I will not crimp my style. My answer to this will be either to continue to use the uploads folder (why fix something that ain't broken?) or to make one reply per screenshot. The effect of images is to illustrate the commentary. The pics belong inside the post, with commentary before the image, and commentary after the image. If I have to stretch my commentary out across a lot (A LOT) more posts, just to retain control over where in the commentary a particular image appears, I'll do that.

This is a significant DOWNGRADE in the forum capability, IMO. This is just plain bad news for the SG community, as far as image handling goes.


- Sirian

Or... You host the images yourself and insert them where needed into the document. That would also work.

 

[Sirian]

Charis's suggestion sounds good. The save files tend to be large for civ (remember when they were, like, a couple of MEGS each?)

Zed, the range tech you pulled from the artifact created a different strategic situation for your team. We chose to settle south prior to teching for westward expansion, and that delay on moving west let the AI's grab planets they didn't reach in time in your game. Thus you were actually ahead of us on land. We ended up having to fight for lands you scored much more easily by getting the drop on the AI's with rapid westward expansion. I think there are some interesting and valuable strategic implications to that.


- Sirian