Any hints for a newbie?

[vmxa]

That is why I pointed that out. I do it to make the games harder and to not have to bother talking to the AI. That is why I mostly play AW in Civ. I hope I did not say not to colonize as many as you can, only that in his game, if he did not get trades and did not get the vote, he had many planets that we hung out to dry as he also had no fleet.

 

[vmxa]

Elerians and custom races are in Moo2.

 

[Megafrost]

I'll keep all this in mind. I'm currently in the middle of trying my first Impossible game. Will say more when I finish.

 

[vmxa]

Cutting out trades, tech exchanges, and alliances neuters the diplomatic side of Master of Orion. (It also often makes the game much harder, since the player can usually work diplomacy much better than the AI.)

That line about how it works better for the human, is why I do not like it. You can often just abuse the AI with the diplomacy. Players strive to make a trade for the sole purpose of getting browny points and delaying attacks or getting votes to go their way.

Moo2 was much worse as you could just get a small leg up on ships and demand their pants.

So to me the diplomacy is just broken and should be neutered. I would have loved it, if I could strike a tech trade and it would stay in place for the whole game and we could "all just get along", but as it is you cannot.

You can get them to last much longer as a Human, but in the end they break down.

You also can get them to war or ally too easy, I just ignore the whole thing. This is much easier in Moo2, you just go repulsive and they cannot make talks and you cannot do anything diplomatically.

Anyway Sulla feel free to criticize, I do not take it personally and I am always in the market to learn or be convinced. Disagreements are not criticism per se, I can disagree and still like and respect someone.

I have been know to disagree with my own position from time to time, not to mention being wrong and or confused.

 

[Megafrost]

Finished my first Impossible game. Psilons (to ease transition), 5 opponents, Medium galaxy, color red. (My favorite settings)

Short version:

Spoiler :

Runaway humans stole the election

Long version:

Spoiler :

First things first, I take a look at my galaxy:

I don't expect that yellow star to my northeast to have an AI on it, but I have to be prepared for the possiblity that the next two closest yellow stars each have AIs on them.

I could send the colony ship north blind and risk getting a less-than-ideal planet, or I could wait for scouts to explore both systems before I send out the colony, and potentially lose planets to the north that I could've gotten otherwise if I had made a bold grab.

Being my first impossible game, I decide to take the safe route. Explore the systems first, but build a few more scouts now so that I can blockade systems from early AI scouts.

Scouts explore the system to my north:

That's a really good system. Should I wait for the other scout to report back? I hate keeping my colony ship at Mentar not doing anything. This planet is good enough, I'll send it now.

Next turn, scouts reveal that I made the right choice:

One turn later I settle Tauri, transport 17 colonists from Mentar, and order enough scouts to cover all the systems in range. While my two colonies build up factories, I get the following picture of my surrounding area:

My scouts chased away Klackon scouts at the three colonys in the upper right of my scouting area, and I scouted a Bulrathi colony to the north. Circled are my guesses at homeworld locations.

This is bad. Klackons are right on top of me already, which means that I'm going to need to get going just to grab these few planets near me. Expansion beyond that is going to be difficult, since the bugs will likely cut me off.

After maxing my industry on Mentar, I take a look at my research options and sigh in relief.

I need range 5 to grab that Terran planet near the Klackon border. I prioritize propulsion spending, but also leave some in construction and planetology (since my economy will need all the help it can get).

Mentar starts churning out colony ships. My other colony reaches half factories, and since it'll be shipping out lots of population, I stop there and have it start building some laser ships so I can defend myself from brush wars.

Unfortunately, it probably won't be long before these brush wars turn hot.

I establish 75 BC/year trade treaties to give them one less reason to attack me. Improved Terraforming pops at 26%, opening Controlled Dead and Death Spores. I take the obvious choice of Controlled Dead.

Colonizing the fertile planet brings me contact with the Klackons who are, well,

Trapped in a corner by two races who will look for any reason to declare war on me? This does not look good for me. Scouts find a planet that looks like a hot potato:

The Mrrshan owned it when I first explored it. Now they don't. The Bulrathi are apparantly at war with the Meklars, the Humans and the Mrrshan. I'm taking another look at the galaxy map:

The three races I haven't met yet have all got to be in the circled areas somewhere. Somebody is going to have some HUGE backlines, unless I somehow manage to get to those systems and stake my own claim. I'm not so worried about the Bulrathi now because with 3 wars going on already, they'll be loathe to declare it on me.

Klackon colony of Exis turns rich. Why?! They don't need the help! Then GNN reports that Humans have 6 systems. I hope this doesn't turn into an early diplomatic defeat. After grabbing all the systems within reach, I sit back and build up what I have.

25 years of minimal investment into spying have brought me this piece of news:

They have fusion bombs already?!?! Am I not going to get a single break this game? I up my trade agreements and establish non-aggression pacts with the bears and the bugs. Nothing much happens, while I build up my colonies and then their defenses.

The early diplomatic defeat begins looking more likely:

Same year, the elections are held. If the Bulrathi hadn't been at war with everyone, I would've lost this one for sure:

I try and break up the Klackon-Human alliance, but the Klackons won't hear of it. My construction tree has so far failed to offer me any cheaper factories, so I trade the Klackons range 5 fuel for improved industry 9.

A few short years later, the next election is even closer:

I don't even have contact with the damned apes yet. The best I can hope for right now is that Galactic World War I begins soon, and people stop voting for the humans just because they look pretty. Hyper-X rockets have popped and my three worlds near the Bulrathi border have a few missile bases up, so I begin spying on the computer-challenged bears.

Then I realize that I don't want to turn my one friend in the galaxy against me, so I shift spying over to the Klackons.

The Mrrshan temporarily re-establish control over the ultra poor planet and we meet for the first time. I take another look at the map.

The Bulrathi and Mrrshan have been totally stunted, and even the Klackons have only 5 systems. The Humans have probably been colonizing the entire eastern half of the galaxy uncontested.

I foolishly set up trade treaties with the Mrrshan, forgetting that they will not hold that ultra poor planet for long.

I no longer have any hope that I'll be able to defend my systems if I get into a hot war.

I'm missing planetary shields. But maybe I won't need the shields. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to be left alone. I still have hope, don't I?

Apparantly not. And this is three years before the next election!

Desparate, I give deep space scanner to the Mrrshan and then ask them to break their alliance with the humans. They refuse. Game over. There was nothing I could do except to sit back and watch helplessly as the Humans effortlessly took the throne.

Not much I could do about this. I'd taken every planet I could. Attacking the Bulrathi would only have turned them against me sooner, and the Klackons would be impossible to attack thanks to their planetary shields and repulsor beams. I take one final look at the graphs:

I'm competitive with the other stunted empires. I can only imagine what I would've been able to do if I hadn't been stunted myself. The only reason I lost this game was bad luck. I'll get you next time, Gadget!

 

[vmxa]

Will read the long version tomorrow, but for sure the Humans can get votes. I hate to see them n a good start location. Better if they get shunted off in a corner and are not up for election.

 

[jmas]

Nice writeup Megafrost, and it looks like you played well in the face of adversity. Since you posted that info about your game, I have a few questions:

Was Deep Space Scanner the only tech you could give to the Mrrshan? Those tech offerings move relations up one full level on average (for example, Neutral to Relaxed), though it's proportional depending on whether your tech gift is equal to, higher than, or lower in level than their current tech level in that area. Also tech gifts add +5 each permanently to races' "Core Reaction" (a number that figures into most AI diplomatic considerations) towards you as explained in the strategy guide. Related to that, what "flavor" of Mrrshan were in this game (e.g. Ruthless Militarist or whatever)? You mentioned the characteristics of the Klackon and Bulrathi but not the Mrrs. Xenophobic races add -50 to their "Core Reaction" and halve positive diplo effects such as the one-level-per-tech gift I described earlier, so they are very difficult to negotiate with. If the Mrrs were Xenophobes then the game setup you had was just that much harder.

And last, how did you make that image with the overlapping pictures of the various technology choice boxes? That was a nice touch.

 

[Megafrost]

Mrrshan were xenophobic militarists. Deep space scanner wasn't the only tech I could've given them, but I wasn't keen on giving them technology they could use against me (I believe my other options were hyper-X rockets, sub-light drives, duralloy armor and personal deflection shield). Not that giving them anything else would've helped. I loaded my final save, gave them everything I had, and they still refused to break alliance and voted for the apes.

I use Paintshop Pro 6 for my image-editing. It has this nice option for cutting out a section of one image and pasting it in another.

 

[jmas]

The Xenophobia would explain why even giving them all of your tech didn't change the outcome of your audience with them (and by extension, the outcome of the game).

By the way, in the graph it looks like you did especially well relative to the Klackons with their worker productivity bonus (plus the 50% production bonus all AI players get on impossible). In a game I recently played on Hard (where the AI bonus is "only" 25%), the Klackons had a "Production" bar nearly the length of my Sakkras' bar for a very long time even though I had high Planetology tech (increasing my worker productivity) and was basically a runaway race due to a favorable map setup. I crunched some numbers relating to our respective populations, worker productivities, and numbers of factories and couldn't figure out how their bar was even close to mine. And in case anyone mentions it, yes, I know the Production graph is logarithmic, I just think that my lead should have been even more apparent on the graph than it was. But enough about that; nice showing in the graphs.

Thanks for sharing about Paintshop Pro, that is a nice feature.

 

[Sullla]

Thanks for sharing, Megafrost. Sorry to hear it didn't work out though. Anyway, here are the long and short comments on your game.

Short: That was a horribly unbalanced map, and you had very little chance to win. When the diplomacy broke in favor of the Humans, it practically sealed the deal. MOO doesn't try to balance the starting positions, so it's going to happen sometimes.

Long: There were some things you could have done differently that might have helped a bit, though unlikely to change the overall outcome.

Being my first impossible game, I decide to take the safe route. Explore the systems first, but build a few more scouts now so that I can blockade systems from early AI scouts.

I always send the colony ship to the most promising-looking planet immediately, although this is more of a personal preference than anything else. Still, by waiting two turns for scouts to report, then two turns to send colony ship, you only come out marginally ahead of moving colony ship on the first turn (2 turns), then moving it again to the "better" planet (4 turns) assuming you made the wrong choice. AND you can use one of those scouts to investigate another unexplored planet. I think the math generally supports moving the colony ship right away, if only by a tiny margin.

One turn later I settle Tauri, transport 17 colonists from Mentar, and order enough scouts to cover all the systems in range.

Now this was, I believe, a mistake. Not in terms of sending 17 colonists, but sending them all at once. Remember that the homeworld only begins with 40m population on Hard/Impossible. Assuming that it grew to roughly 50m in the intervening turns, that still dropped the population down close to 30m, stunting the development of industry significantly. I would have sent the same 17m colonists, but done so in small batches of 3m each turn over a period of several turns. This hurts the homeworld less, at the cost of slowing the development of the second colony - which is clearly worth it in the early game.

After maxing my industry on Mentar, I take a look at my research options and sigh in relief.

Another minor issue. If you look at the games of a lot of the veterans players, you'll see that they usually only open a couple of tech fields at the start of the game - Planetology and Propulsion being the biggies. I think you get more of a bang early in the game by concentrating research in these fields, then going back and opening up the rest at a later date. You don't really NEED Weapons or Force Field tech until later on, so why invest scanty RPs in them until you do?

Mentar starts churning out colony ships. My other colony reaches half factories, and since it'll be shipping out lots of population, I stop there and have it start building some laser ships so I can defend myself from brush wars.

This generally looked like a good plan. I probably wouldn't even have opened the tech fields until I had produced colony ships for both of the nearby worlds, but that's more of a personal preference. I do think the Terran world to the east was safer than you made it out to be in the report; if it was Range 5 to you, it was probably Range 6 or more to the Klackons, and we all know how good they aren't at researching Propulsion tech.

Diplomatically, there wasn't a whole lot you could do, since you couldn't even talk to the Humans or Meklar, and the Erratic Bulrathi chose the worst possible moment to declare war. Unfortunately, the Humans will luck into those early-game cheese victories sometimes, with little you can do about it. Overall though, this was pretty well-played, and you're likely to do well with a less brutal map draw. Based on your info, it sounds like the Meklar started at one of the two yellows in the extreme north, and the Humans had free run on the entire eastern galaxy.

I hope you enjoyed this Kobaiyashi Maru scenario...

 

[vmxa]

I had the same thoughts as Sulla. Go ahead and send out the colony ship. To me you can either sent out as many pop as you can replace with no additional econ spending or even wait a bit to build the home world.

Look at the screen when you double click the planet and you will see how many pop it will add, usually 3 at this stage. So you can send them out as you do not have enough factories to keep everyone busy anyway.

I am fine either way, but dropping down to 23 pop will cost you. On the tech, you have no need for Force or Weapons at the start, because if you do, you are dead anyway.

 

[Megafrost]

Thanks again for the tips. Just one thing I want to make a comment about:

Another minor issue. If you look at the games of a lot of the veterans players, you'll see that they usually only open a couple of tech fields at the start of the game - Planetology and Propulsion being the biggies. I think you get more of a bang early in the game by concentrating research in these fields, then going back and opening up the rest at a later date. You don't really NEED Weapons or Force Field tech until later on, so why invest scanty RPs in them until you do?

Most of the time when I start building colony ships, I can spare a few ticks towards research without affecting the building time. If I'm only just opening the fields then, any extra RP beyond the 3 needed to open go to waste, right? If I already have the RP, I figure I should make the most of it and open every field.

 

[Sullla]

Most of the time when I start building colony ships, I can spare a few ticks towards research without affecting the building time. If I'm only just opening the fields then, any extra RP beyond the 3 needed to open go to waste, right? If I already have the RP, I figure I should make the most of it and open every field.

That's correct, and you may want to see what your options are (perfectly valid strategy). I'm operating here on the principle of trying to avoid wasting any RP at all.

 

[sargon0]

Magafrost: You only need 2 RP to open a tech field and you lose 10% that first turn (and subsequent turns if you cease further investment). So extra investment is not wasted in fields you expect to continue. I'd rather have extra investment in Planetology & Propulsion than check fields I know I will not pursue yet.


jmas: AI production bonus on hard is 50% & 100% on impossible, not as advertised.

 

[vmxa]

sargon0, where is that reported? The guide says 25 and 50.

 

[Megafrost]

I think the computer may get production bonuses on Average as well, or at the very least, begin with funds already in the planetary reserve. I had an Average game where the apes colonized a third planet in 2308, and a Human player can't possibly build a colony ship that quickly unless you cheat to double production on your home world.

 

[sargon0]

vmxa, the production bonuses I quote are my own analysis from savefiles. When you start an impossible game you can see the player homeworld total productivity of 51 compared to AI homeworld total productivity of 102 (normal races).


Megafrost, AI productivity bonus on average is 25% but note AI races get free colony ships on impossible and probably other levels as well.

 

[vmxa]

I know what the players gets, but I don't know of anyway to check on the AI production. If you are agreeing that it is 25% on Hard, then that is what I understood. It is the 50 and 100% you mentioned, that I was unclear about.

Everyone gets a free colony ship and 2 scouts, are you saying they get more than that to start? I have not seen that and it is easy to check by using the GALAXY cheat.

 

[RefSteel]

AI races get free colony ships on impossible and probably other levels as well.

I've seen references to this elsewhere on this forum (sometimes as "AI colships do not disappear when forming a colony") - and it seems like it must be right, based on AI behavior - but do you know the exact mechanics of this? Do you mean that the AI starts the game with >1 initial (free) colships, or that colships appear at AI worlds at semi-random times throughout the game without apparent cost to the AI in question, or (as my above paraphrase implies) are they "free" in the sense that it costs the AI nothing (no lost ship) to build a colony?

 

[Megafrost]

*sigh*

Tried a second Impossible game, playing as Klackons. Drew another corner start, and while I did grab a much bigger chunk than last time, it wasn't enough to prevent the AIs from unanimously voting the Psilons into office. Even though they were only allied with the Humans and I was not at war with anyone.

Don't feel like saying anything else at the moment except to show the graphs 10 years before the election: