Votes on priorities for the coming year:
- Infrastructure: Smegged, Isit, Bam-Bam
- Military: Aviator suggests Drenin.
- No comment: Aaberg
How about some of each?
Though, if I'm going on offense, I don't want to attack the Drengin just now; that would leave us with some awkward to defend borders. Snagging the bottom side of the map sounds like a much better deal. We'll see what I can put together. Initial screen says that we are the most powerful, which is nice to hear. However, it also says we are doing 3 percent of the trade in the galaxy!
Say what? It appears Scotty can send us trade, even though we are not in the UP, as we have one route from them. I also note they have Interstellar Business, which would give us the ability to build Ultra Spices.
Drengin want peace. DENIED!
Jan 2186: I plop down some waypoints on resources so we will know where they are later if some other races plant bases on them. This is the tiny down arrow button on the upper right hand side of the screen for anyone who doesn't know. What are all our corvettes doing at home?? Shouldn't they be out looking for raiding opportunities now that we have a number of frigates for local defense & offensive prosecution?
The plan: Send the corvettes out to do their jobs and harass the enemy rather than sit at home. We have a significant Frigate force for home defense and are building more. Swap several frigates over to transport production. The plan is to get as much stuff done within a 2-month window as possible and then switch off military to research for sensors followed by social for building Eyes, Tri-stromtium, and Stock Exchange. I should be able to build 5 transports in that time without straining too much, which is not as many as I'd like but will have to do for now. We have a speed advantage; if we blitz quickly we should be able to put a significant hurt on the Arceans in exchange for little retaliation.
IT: We meet the Yor, who have freighters flying around near our corvettes. One of our corvettes gets ambushed by an enemy starfighter and damaged, but not killed. Heads back to base for repairs. This is why we need Eyes...
Feb 2186: Declare war on the Yor by way of destroying a freighter. Destroy two Altarian transports. IT: Scotty builds Tri-Strontium; at least we can buy it from him.
Mar 2186: Drop spending and switch funding to research. I may get a couple of cheap wonder techs, we will see how long they take to research. I'm not interested in spending a long time, but Nanobots for Harmony Crystals and +10 soldiering would be nice. Advanced Repair would be good too but it would probably take longer than I want to spend. Not much killing this round, but I spot a couple of juicy targets. IT: We spot a Carinoid freighter and make contact!
Apr 2186: Trading opportunities exist with the Carinoids as we have several techs they lack. We are able to pick up Warp Drive (more speed, Cap'n!), Interstellar Business, and Energy Focusing for five obsolete techs. We trade Scotty Energy Focusing and Gravity Accelerators for Tri-Strontium Steel (stronger hulls, Cap'n!) Things are looking good militarily speaking, the other AIs are well behind the power curve. We are paying quite a bit for fleet maintenance so it's a good thing I'm planning to do something with it. We take out a Drengin transport with a corvette, but it might be in a bit of trouble as there are Drengin ships closing in. Another corvette destroys an Altarian constructor. A frigate in Altarian space destroys a couple freighters. IT: Our corvette staves off a Star Fighter but now needs repairs, so will head for home, destroying a freighter on the way.
May 2186: We now have completed Sensors and Nanobots, time to switch to social. We start Eyes at Xasica but we are in dire need of funding right now as I can barely manage 40% spending. I start Multimedia Centers everywhere to try and get our morale up a bit so we can hold more pop; we're nowhere close to 4xPQ income levels yet. Xasica starts Eyes instead. I kill another Torian freighter and a Star Fighter with a different corvette but I suspect it is going to get dogpiled on. IT: We're in luck, our corvette only gets attacked by one enemy ship, defeating it. It will return to base for repairs.
June-Jul 2186: Destroying more enemy ships... IT: Torians want a peace treaty. DENIED!
Aug 2186: Wounded frigate destroys an Arcean Battle Axe after having killed off a number of smaller ships. It's approaching 1/2 hp so I will send it home. Altarian Battle Cruiser comes out of hiding (biggest ship I've seen yet) so I whack it with the Frigate wandering through their territory. That ship's getting a bit damaged too so I send it homeward. A stack of 4 transports and 4 frigates has formed near Xasica. That should be enough to take a couple Arcean core worlds. I already have another transport and frigate on the way to the colony south of our core.
Sep 2186: While killing a fully loaded Arcean transport near their colony south of our core, which should make taking that world relatively easy, spot a Alexian freighter. Bag another Yor constructor with a corvette. IT: We make contact with Alex. Torians want another peace treaty. Are you DEAF? REJECTED!
Oct 2186: Alex is on a lone star system in the bottom left corner of the galaxy, what a lovely start.
As befits his starting location, he is utterly useless.
Nov 2186: Things don't look good for the attack on the colony south of our core. I underestimated how large the colony would have grown by now; it turns out the planet is a PQ32 and has grown a huge population! The good news was our single transport of 1 Billion killed 9.5 Billion of the enemy; the bad news was the planet had 11.8 Billion on it. We will have to be more judicious with our main invasion fleet. IT: Scotty builds Frictionless Clothing -- another good we can buy.
Dec 2186: I pump up spending for one turn so we can complete Eyes before the save/reload penalty has a chance to bite us on it. This will put us about 300 in the red but that can be fixed on the next player's turn. While killing a couple of Arcean Battle Axes (we now have a significantly damaged frigate in Arcean space) I spot a couple of their core worlds and notice they have much less population; I see two with about 1.5 Billion and one with about 5.5 Billion, all of which should fall pretty easily to a single transport apiece. We spot an I-league transport. IT: We make contact with the I-league.
End-of-turn cleanup & diplomacy: Eyes of the Universe comes in, and wow can we see a long ways now.
This should make our raiders' jobs much easier. Set spending back down to 40%. I-League have built Ultra Spices but are missing several techs. I trade them 4 obsolete techs for the spices. Get Zero-G Manufacturing from Carinoids for Zero-G Research. Can't get Frictionless Clothing from Scotty yet, though. A couple of planets complete builds and are started on Galactic Stock Exchange and Harmony Crystals, but these will take a while; feel free to veto.
Note to next player: Don't trade away Nanobots. Otherwise, have fun invading Arcean space. Resistance has been spotty and light. Our damaged Corvettes have been using Weber as their repair base, while Xasica and Sol are our repair bases for frigates.
Note to the team: This looks like it is going to be pretty much a cakewalk from here on out. Though our economy could be in better shape, the AI is busy killing itself by sending its population out on unprotected transports to get shot down -- that is, in Civ3 terms, they are self-pillaging as they go along. As a result I don't anticipate the AI's economic progress will be much faster than ours.
Here is the save:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads6/rbgc4-2187ad.zip
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