RBGC SG3: (almost) ALWAYS WAR!

[smegged]

I think the ability to trade with the minors makes this game a whole lot different than the one Smegged played.

I think there were several things that changed the way the game was played. Most importantly was the fact that we did not settle any PQ 13/14 worlds. They placed a HUGE drain on my economy, and meant that spending could not be made very high.

Secondly, trading for tech from the minors is a big deal. It gained us somewhere between 10 and 15 techs that we would not have had otherwise.

Thirdly, Gravity Accelerators and Eyes made a big difference. I could get neither in my game (due to my poor economy due to me settling PQ 13/14 worlds). In retrospect, I made a lot of mistakes in my solo game. Mistakes that this game avoided. The larger map I think also made it slightly easier. Habitability did not play that much of a difference, since I managed to secure (proportionally) as many worlds as I did in this game.

Finally, and one of the things that I think made the BIGGEST difference in this game was the unintentional baiting by not defending our worlds. In my solo game I ensured that every planet was defended at all times. Consequently, the AI never stripped off population by building transports for me to shoot down. By not building a defensive military, we also saved a good 6-8 turns on my game (possibly more).

I think that from my experience with both games, the absolute BEST military unit in an AW game is the Frigate. It's cheap to build, maintainance on it is low, and it's both powerful and fast (and has range). To try and blitz like we did with Battleships would be a lot slower (and therefore more difficult).

Oh, and one more thing. In my solo game, I ran into the second largest major (the Altarians in that game) much later than we ran into the Arceans in our game. By that stage, they had already secured some trade routes, built up their core worlds, and had a strong economy. They were about the same size as the Arceans were in this game, however they occupied space that was in the corner of the map, was further away, and was more protected by the other AI than what we experienced in our game. They were basically impregnible by the time I contacted them, which is what Arcea would have been if we had spent half the game without contact with them.

Well played guys, I've enjoyed the stimulating discussion and the fun we've had with the game.

-Smegged

 

[Zed-F]

One of the reasons SG teams often show better results than single-player games is precisely because of discussions both before and during the game that highlight good strategy/tactics, expose AI weaknesses, and correct play errors. I think we can attribute a lot of the success for this game to the fact that we had a good plan going in and executed on it. Kudos to the team, for the team effort at coming up with that plan!

 

[Zed-F]

Finally, and one of the things that I think made the BIGGEST difference in this game was the unintentional baiting by not defending our worlds. In my solo game I ensured that every planet was defended at all times. Consequently, the AI never stripped off population by building transports for me to shoot down. By not building a defensive military, we also saved a good 6-8 turns on my game (possibly more).

I agree that that likely made a substantial difference in that it encouraged the AI to shoot itself in its own foot. I'm not sure where to go with this. It's correct that our baiting of the AI transports by leaving worlds undefended was unintentional; however, it exposed a substantial weakness in the AI, taking advantage of which might be one of those moves that is "too strong" and needs to be curtailed. But forcing every world to have a defender seems somewhat of a kludgey solution. If your war plan calls for a strong forward defense, why would you want to have defenders in the back lines just sitting around doing nothing and eating up maintenance costs? In a Civ3 AW game, a big portion of early defense is shifting garrisons around to where they are most needed at any given time, and leaving cities temporarily or even semi-permanently undefended is par for the course; hence why a city spacing of three tiles (for 1-turn road movement) is strongly desirable in that setting. I don't really care for the "a defender in every port" concept but I don't have a better idea either. Thoughts, anyone?

I think that from my experience with both games, the absolute BEST military unit in an AW game is the Frigate. It's cheap to build, maintainance on it is low, and it's both powerful and fast (and has range). To try and blitz like we did with Battleships would be a lot slower (and therefore more difficult).

We showed the AI the true power of Frigates this time around, and offensive raiding certainly plays to the unit's strengths -- the Hammer is rightfully better at defending, but if you're planning to hunt for targets all over the map, the extra speed of the Frigate is certainly useful. I'd hesitate to call it the best unit, though. I still like Corvettes for ultra-fast raiders, especially because they are so cheap for maintenance and can cover a lot of the map, burning enemy AI production by making them waste time building freighters and constructors. However, since they are so fragile, you really need Eyes to make the most use of them. Still, I think we under-emphasized these a bit too much in this game; we only built 4 to start with, stopping when we had military parity with rather than miltary superiority over the AI empires, and never really used them much for raiding until after we had already pumped out a few frigates. We used our corvettes too conservatively, leaving them home for defense; we might have been better off to build at least a dozen and to have sent most of them out raiding to get an even earlier start at burning AI production on wasted constructors, freighters, and transports. One big advantage of doing so that didn't really register with us until we finally did start to go on the offense was simply how strong a highly experienced unit, even a lowly corvette, can be! If we had started raiding earlier, we would have wound up with a number of level 4 and 5 corvettes that would actually have a reasonable chance of escaping a trap and returning home to repair, where a level 0 or 1 corvette would have been destroyed. For that reason, it might not be a bad idea to actually seek out some level of enemy conflict with our raiders, to get them more experience as well as cause the AI empires to spend yet more valuable time building throwaway defenders instead of pumping economy or tech.

Well played guys, I've enjoyed the stimulating discussion and the fun we've had with the game.

Ditto, and glad you had fun!

 

[aviator99_uk]

Intersting discussion, btw the game isn't quite over yet

To offer my 2c:
Consider how Isit was able to do soooo much damage in such a short period of time....

Hypothesis:
It cost us toooo little to build a toooo highly successful invasion force.

It costs us and the AI the same to build so why was it so succesful then?
1) Its extreeeeeemly easy to invade with inferior numbers (generally).
2) Its extreeeemly easy to build an invasion fleet of transports.
3) The AI defends itself extreeeeemly poorly.

If you have a speed advantage you can:
1) Attack multiple times per turn, allowing invasion with minimal suport.
2) Protect the fleet from counter attack.
(It is easy to make it much more dificult by limiting the speed of a transport)

However, let's ask Isit if it was an enjoyable turn, I would venture to suggest he may well say that it was, he may even say its the only way to go. (I can't see why more people don't play the game this way, it is fun)

So are you looking for a game which has chalenge, or fun? Because with this Mk 1 AI its easy to have fun, but its ability to provide a chalenge for this kind of game is somewhat dubious (opinion). I would love to see MP though, and as someone who has a home network (damit I am a hardware engineer), put half a dozen machines on it I think that would rock big time.

Aviator

 

[Zed-F]

Crushing the AI is fun once or even a few times, but if you don't have challenge, it gets boring, at least IMHO. And, you're right, the AI isn't terribly challenging to play against. That's why we look for ways to up the challenge, such as playing variants. There are a couple easy ways we can make this variant tougher, though, so it's just a matter of finding the right balance such that even with the AI stupidity, it still makes for a challenging but fun game.

 

[Zed-F]

I guess Aaberg is up...

 

[aviator99_uk]

Well by my watch He's missed his 24hr 'got it', and he did say he was busy...............

 

[Zed-F]

Up to Bam-Bam if he wants to enforce the skip. Maybe a post on the Stardock board will wake him up...

 

[Bam-Bam]

I'll post on the stardock board. Skip will happen if I do not see turns by tonight 600pm EST (11pm GMT).

 

[Aaberg41]

I'm sorry i didn't post earlier. I wont be able to play before tomorrow and can't post the game before around 11 pm (GMT) tomorrow night. If you wanna skip me thats okay by me.

 

[Bam-Bam]

Right. I will have the turns up this evening.

 

[Bam-Bam]

I'll be a bit short on words. I played an extra 6 months to close out the victory. I built WAY too many transports--our invastion advantage was never less than 14-2.

We invade the Alterians in March 2189.



So long, goodies.



Four down, two to go.

Next it is on to the Arcean worlds.

May 2189



July 2189



So much for their nine lives...



...to be continued

 

[Bam-Bam]

We pause briefly to pay homage to our capital navy!



Before getting on with the war. Five down, one to go. Time to smash a few machines.

January 2190



February 2190



June 2190



Bye Bye machines



Victory for the Realms Beyond War Machine!



Check this out--I think the jump in the curve was when we started mass producing frigates and transports.



Great game folks! I enjoyed it tremendously. Let's talk more about how to make this a bit more challenging.

 

[Zed-F]

Good game all, with some good info learned as well.

 

[smegged]

What was the score

 

[aviator99_uk]

A good game.

Now I must load Isit's boom-fest and see what the other possible outcomes are, still think that it should be possible to maybe take out Dren, Alt and Arc on that turn, who knows.... Isit certainly had some fun, and did a good job.

EDIT: Almost, the closest I got was Yor with 4 planets left. Not so much challenge... but a lot of fun.

Aviator

 

[Sirian]

Good show, guys. Lots of interesting things discovered.

- Sirian

 

[Bam-Bam]

Smegged--The meta score was around 11,400 or so. I looked at it and then moved on to the military graph. I can get a more exact figure if you wish.

Is the team up for another go? I see the next game going in one of two directions.

1) Same conditions--AI set to genius levels (crippling)
2) Same difficulty, party and bonus picks--but war on the majors and the minors.

Any thoughts?

 

[Isit]

Either one sounds good. I think both would add a bit more challenge to the game. I am unsure which would add more though. Either way I am up for another round.

This has been a fun game.

 

[aviator99_uk]

I'll play.....(If there was ever any doubt)


Aviator