MoO1 Humanity needs you !

[Horizon]

Attempt at making a scenario for MoO1

Year 2540 ,
After centuries of minor battles in which Humanity was victorious, the last great war is about to begin and the end may not be a happy one.

Humanity have colonised some worlds and encountered 3 different alien species.

-The Meklar, technology enhanced beings, that were relatively friendly, with those aliens we managed to get high economy contracts and a non-aggression treaty. For a long time we exchanged precious (to us) technologies against their pitifull inventions, and to show our good spirit toward them we even gave them gifts. But never they accepted an alliance with us.
How foolish we have been to trust and trade with them.

-The Alkaris, strange bird-like aliens, that immediately felt threatened by our mutual contact and waged war against our worlds. We managed to get victories after victories and defeated their ambitions on our territory. After trying some last showdowns, they finally submitted to our might and stayed away from us.
What a terrible mistake for us to leave them alive in their homeworld by pure benevolence.

-The Silicoids, minerals creatures, despite their worlds were located in our immediate frontier we never really made any contact, both our empire seemed to co-exist peacefully. Until a point on which the Silicoid leader threatened us, arguing about our ships being to close to the frontier. It was of course a complete lie, as in fact there were fleets of Silicoids in that location that seemed to prepare something..
Despite we were already at war with the Alkaris, we managed to destroy the Silicoids fleets and even conquer their Homeworld. Sparing their last world to leave them be was certainly an error we would pay later.

While the Alkaris and Silicoids were pushed away and were not a threat anymore, the Meklars used this time they were at peace and helped by us to expand theirs empire to an impressive size for the known universe. While we at first we were not concerned by their empire, various changes to their political stance made us worried about the future of the galaxy.
Refusing to enter into a glorious alliance with us was already suspicious, but a recent unprovoked skirmish proved that the Meklars were not as friendly as they told us, all their diplomacy was in fact a mascarade for their real goal : conquering the universe.

Unfortunately the Meklar fleet is currently more powerfull than our own forces, the upcoming conflict willcertainly be catastrophic for our worlds, but if we want to survive we must prevail.

So join the war effort : save the Humanity !

After this roleplay presentation describing what happened previous the game year 2540, here is the situation :

the map of the universe at year 2540


modified map of the universe to see the empires situations easily :


this is the current Human fleet :


this is the Meklar fleet that is in my radars range (consider that it may not be the full fleet, half of the universe is not under my radar range)


Here is the status of the 4 species ingame


So at this point of year 2540 , Humanity got into serious problems with the Meklars, as in the upcoming turns making immediate war with them is not really in the advantage of the humans.
Despite the slight advantage in fire power some ships of the human fleet have other several of the cyborgs ones, the meklars will be able to quickly get better weapon technology and adding to their superior number the situation will be critical.

I am not a good player, i usually make lot of mistakes playing more by instinct than trying top exploit game mechanics, but in that game understand that i never attacked the Meklar and even helper them in trade -on purpose- and spared the existence of the Silicoids and Alkaris on purpose too.
My goal was to create a kind of "scenario" game in which Humanity would have a overall equal opponent and some minor powers trying to survive along an unavoidable conflict so you try to ally with them (difficult though as Humanity hammered them in the first part of the game and they may not be happy with you anymore )

So i share this scenario if someone is interested into this challenge, the difficulty level is relatively easy -but- the current balance of power in 2540 will make not make the main war easy at all as the main enemy is actually in possession of a huge fleet bigger than yours and that technology level will soon be better than yours.

Additional information that could prove usefull to help Humanity war effort : Orion has not been conquered by anyone yet in 2540, the Guardian is always there.

This is the save game on filefront (i attached it to this post too for more convenience):
http://files.filefront.com/SAVE1zip/;8946753;/fileinfo.html

If anyone defeat the Meklars, i would be happy to read any AAR about how they managed this, not being an expert players of MoO1 i am always willing to learn more strategy with the game.
An additional challenge for people defeating the Meklar would be to post a screenshot of the year of the Meklar defeat, to see who can achieve the Meklar destruction quicker.

 

[Sullla]

I might take a look at this one. Could you state which difficulty level the game is being played on? On anything but Impossible, that looks like a very winnable game. Actually doesn't even look all that bad for Impossible, to be honest. I've seen much worse bar graphs than that:



Now that's a runaway AI! (Did manage to win that game, but it was a rather epic story!)

 

[vmxa]

Note sure where you are in the tech tree, but nukes are probably not worth anything at the point you seemed to be at.

BTW I have never seen the AI take down the Guardian in M001. I nearly always leave it till I have them down to occ, before hitting, just to see what extra techs I will get. So it is not like they do not have plenty of time to go after Orion, if they wanted it.

 

[vmxa]

First question I would ask is why you are putting 20% into spying and then have them hide?

I would only do one races at a time and run it around 4.4%. If you merely wanted to know what they have, them put the investment in for one turn.

 

[vmxa]

Horizon, thanks for your post as it is always good to see people playing Moo.

I gave a glance at the save and wrote a few items for your consideration.

Cut off spying on Meks and set the ones you have to espionage. Cut bird spying to 4.4 and set them to work. Reason, they have low computer techs, so you have a better chance to get steals. You need some +pop and they have +20.

Once you get their stuff, then, consider Meks.

I see you have two planets with no one on them, so one is Orion and the other is not allowed, so why design any colony ships?

Design a missile ships with 2 shot stingers, so they might actually do some damage, if they every get used. Nukes are not going to bother anyone now.

Currently paying over 21% for ship support for ships that probably can do nothing at this stage.

Sol has no bases, Guradis has none either, but it is poor,
Tau Cygni has just gotten started and no money was put into it and you are sitting on 700BC+.

Several planets are putting more into Eco than they can use?

Ship relocation from planets that are not even building ships?

You have a terran (cryslon) and it is not being stood up either?

One planet that is rich, also has no bases.

When you are not real productive, I would not build huge ships. They take too long to build and will be obsolete soon. Better to make some wasp types with NPG or Ion cannon or whatever you have.

Make several designs, if needed to allow scrapping for improved designs as tech is available.

 

[Horizon]

I might take a look at this one. Could you state which difficulty level the game is being played on? On anything but Impossible, that looks like a very winnable game. Actually doesn't even look all that bad for Impossible, to be honest. I've seen much worse bar graphs than that:

I think the game difficulty was set at easy.
I did this in order to create my scenario, i wanted to have a major power roughly equal to mine and few minor powers floating around, impossible AI usually get me overwhelmed very quickly and so it would have not be possible for me to get this situation done as controlling the expansion of the minor powers would have been just impossible for me.

But, despite i usually won my games at this level of difficulty, after building this situation and then starting from this scenario, i must admit with a bit of shame that trying several strategies, i have been unable to defeat the Meklars so far.
I think i never met such opposition in a supposed "easy" game, but when building the scenarios i wanted it to be like this, so i can't complain but the Meklar are actually performing better than i expected them to.

Your Impossible AI status in the screenshot and AAR would have certainly cleaned the universe of my presence in few turns, he he.

Capturing Orion seems to trigger even more Meklar fury, as after getting Orion techs, the Meklar just walked over my supposed glorious fleet (i believe it is in that specific game that the AI teached me how much repulsor beams are usefull)

Thanks for the hints about this game situation vmxa, it will certainly prove to be usefull for me as after several attempts those dreaded Meklars are crushing me, avoiding getting defeated in the council is already an additional difficulty as the minor powers usually vote Meklar or abstain.

First question I would ask is why you are putting 20% into spying and then have them hide?

I believe that i am hiding them so i don't trigger the enemy fury too soon, as my fleet is really not ready for the Meklar one at year 2540, i am mostly waiting war to be declared to sabotage Meklar bases.
Maybe i am overlooking a game mechanism, but isn't it good to hide them if you don't want to get the AI rushing to you too soon ?

BTW I have never seen the AI take down the Guardian in M001. I nearly always leave it till I have them down to occ, before hitting, just to see what extra techs I will get. So it is not like they do not have plenty of time to go after Orion, if they wanted it.

I thought the AI would go to Orion like they do in MoO2 , is it dependant of the difficulty, or does the AI just avoid Orion because it is not coded to capture it ?
For my scenario i decided to not conquer Orion so players wanting to try this game would have the possibility to try to get the extra techs if it fits their game style or not in the case they don't want what could be an edge over the AI (but considering the strenght of the Meklar in upcoming years after 2540 , Orion may prove usefull).

Sol has no bases

For most of the game i must admit that Sol has been my main ship building base (only recently another of my world took the lead), and until recent years, no AI had enough range to reach Sol , so i directed all the production to either research and ship building.

For the ship relocation, it is a remnant of the war with the Silicoid, when i produced ships to the frontier with them, before destroying their fleet and capturing their world.
I did not changed it since because i just forgot , being mostly at peace with everyone at the beginning of the scenario.

support/spying

You are right, i thought i was not making an efficient usage of my money, but with your pointings, it is more obvious. I believe that not facing a strong AI gave me bad routines, as now that the Meklar is more powerfull than the usual easy AI i feel the pain.

You have a terran (cryslon) and it is not being stood up either?

Yes you are right, and it is a bit of spoiler, i left Cryson a bit unprotected but i had a reason when making the save for the scenario start.
After experimenting a bit before making the final save for the scenario start, i noticed that the AI like potentially good planet when it tries to expand, and Cryson , former Silicoid homeworld is a very good planet.

So by leaving it unprotected at the beginning of the scenario, in fact i made sure that the Meklar will want it.
This way, if the player does not send reinforcement, a nasty surprise will come to Cryson soon enough, i don't want to define "soon enough" to leave the player discover it by himself, but at the start of this scenario, it is possible to avoid the nasty surprise if you send forces to protect Cryson.

Better to make some wasp types with NPG or Ion cannon or whatever you have.

In this scenario, going to the swarm of fighters strategy (ion and blasters are available if i remember well) is particularly efficient when trying to take Orion quick after 2540.

 

[vmxa]

Horizon, the thing to do is to not not spend the money spying, if you do not want to get caught. That money could pay for something useful. If you just want to know what they have, then do one turn and stop the spending. That is enough to see the tech they have.

My point on the ships, is that Ion Cannons will fit twice as many as Blasters and cost 3BC less. So you get more guns into the action.

Once they start using Repulsors, I am not sure it makes sense to use popguns at all. Missile bees are likely to do better.

 

[vmxa]

Played it out a ways, till I had eliminated the Coids and the Birds. Got XX planet shields up and Gates. Adv Soil from the Meks applied. Just piling up ships, till a class XV shield buster tech comes along.

No torps or bombs so far, may have to go see the Guardian to get death rays. It is easy level as I hit a key and got the master notes thing.

 

[vmxa]

Some notes:

Game went quite slowly. Eventually the Meks ask for a NAP and I had already gotten Soil up on all, but one poor planet. All planets had missiles.

Need to get a planetary shield to feel safe. I still had trades with all races at this point.

Got a NAP with Coids.

Bird declare, but send nothing.

Dropped the fleet on them and goodbye Birds, got three techs. All shipping there now and cash pumped into it.

Once Altair started making bases, I scrapped the blaster ships and dropped my maint down to 2%. Will start new design when the auto blasters come online, soon. Then will go after Coids.

Got an early break through on planetary XX shields and Meks warn me. Looks like they may be first instead. I have Antidote already and with shields, they will probably not be tough.

Will want some gates soon, just in case.

Coids declare, I had just started making auto blaster ships. Only the poor planets have not gotten up the class xx shields and even they have class X done.

Had to kill off coids as I do not have rad tech.

Crazy level. Meks complain about my stealing and then ask for an increase in trade, sure why not. I don't have any XV class shield buster anyway.

Got Adv Soil from Meks, oh my. Gates up in many places now. Stop steals.

 

[Sullla]

I thought I would take a stab at this - a good challenge for a lazy Friday afternoon. No pictures, sorry, because I want to get this done before my Friday evening starts!

(2540) OK, let's try and turn this game around! First up, I check what's being researched. In Computers, we have Robotics III and IV, not bad at all! Construction has Duralloy and working on Improved Industrial 6, also seems pretty good there. Overall tech level is kinda low though; let me put it this way - you won't see me having Construction and Planetology (!) as my two lowest tech levels very often! In Force Fields, we have no Planetary Shield tech - ugh! That's a major hole. I'm hoping that there were just some techs missing there, and not a conscious choice to avoid researching them.

Planetology field is a disaster though. Improved Eco is nice to have, but we don't have any terraforming beyond +10 (in 2540?!?) and even though we already have Controlled Toxic, we're researching Controlled Inferno, which literally does nothing for us? Say what? There's also only a single tick of spending going into this field - crazy, since Planetology is possibly the single most important research field in the game!

Propulsion tech looks pretty good (Impulse Drives and Star Gates), so we can dial spending down for a while there. Weapons have some odd choices; we have no bombs at all, yet we're researching Pulsons, even though we just got Stingers? No gun better than Blasters? I certainly would have picked to research a bomb or a better gun over the Fusion Rifle, especially since we already had Hand Lasers. Oh well. I drastically dial down Weapons and Propulsion research, bumping up Planetology and Construction significantly.

Next up, the Races tab. As vmxa said, uh, what's with all the spying? The birds don't have much of anything we want anyway (and have TERRIBLE Computer tech), so there's no need for so much expenditure. One or two spies can pick their tree clean. I leave one click there for now, hoping to nab Terraforming +20. (By the way, you also need to set the spies to "Espionage" to have them DO anything!) The Meklar do have some good stuff, most especially their Planetary Shield techs (V and X). I'll try to grab them, and possibly their Terraforming +30 or Megabolt Cannon as well. But the borgs have good Computer tech as usual, so it won't be a cakewalk until we get more Computer tech of their own. Finally, despite all this spending on espionage, we still don't have any picture of what techs the Silicoids have! I put a single click into them, using the "Hide" option for "see what they've got" spying.

Planet-wise, quite a few worlds are pumping Ecology spending to no purpose whatsoever (like Sol). I pulled an extra 100BC at the homeworld just by checking the slider. Several worlds have no bases, so I do some defense construction there just to get a baseline number going for safety. All immature worlds start crash-building factories; not maxing out the productivity of your worlds is just silly. Sometimes it's justified if there's an immediate priority - but that's not the case here. Our two Rich planets will feed money into the reserve, which will be used to stand up our Poor planets and new conquests (e.g. Cryslon) faster.

We have a Toxic Rich world that's only size 10 - but hasn't terraformed to size 20! That's doubling the size of the planet! I correct this oversight immediately.

Fleet costs are killing us right now, so I scrap the Frigate design (speed 1 is way too slow) and the Dreadnought. Actually, everything gets scrapped except the 5 Dreadstars, which will have to hold onto our point worlds for now. This drops ship costs down to 9.7%, which is a lot more bearable. (In one turn, our overhead costs went from ~50% down to 15%. The economy was stagnating under spying and fleet burdens! Time to kick-start more factory development and build a better, stronger fleet later on.) Scrapping those ships also pours about 3000BC into the reserves to develop our planets faster.

To give you an idea of what I mean, Cryslon went from building factories at 10/turn, to 27/turn after economic savings and reserve funding. Now THAT'S how you stand up a planet!

 

[Sullla]

(2541) On the very first interturn, we get a chance to steal Alkari tech. The only thing they have of use is Planetology, so let's go for that. Instead of +20, we grab Death Spores. Bad luck, but at least if we get another theft option, now we'll grab the one we want. Tau Cygni, the tiny Rich planet, is halfway done its terraforming, so I send 10 colonists from nearby (maxed out) Centauri, which will regrow them this turn using the Eco slider.

(2542) We discover ECM V and get new Computer tech options. To advance the tree, I have the option of ECM VI or Robotics V. Since we just learned a jamming tech, I take the Robotics option (yay, more factories!) Only 15k research points?! Wow, these tech costs sure seem cheap compared to Impossible! We also desperately need a better Battle Computer (nothing beyond BCII!), but we'll hopefully be able to grab one of them at the next tech level. Always better to keep advancing up to the next rung of the ladder if possible. Sol now has 5 bases and can crash more if threatened, so it goes over to research. Guaradas, the Poor planet in the northeast near the birds, maxes factories this turn and will start building bases. I'd like to have 10-15 there to feel safe, especially since it's a Poor planet and can't crash-build bases very fast, even with reserve spending.

Research has hit 1000BC/turn and will go higher as more planets max out factories. (It was ~400/turn when I took over two turns ago, FYI.)

(2543) Another tech theft with the birdies. (That's two in three turns, you'll note. This is why you've got to turn on Espionage - if you've got the spies, use 'em!) Since we can take Terraforming +20, we do! Now it's time to add another 10m people and 40 factories on each world. Makes a really big difference at tiny Rich Tau Cygni, which goes from size 20 to size 30!

Of course the birds get angry and declare war, but their fleet ain't exactly intimidating. The Meklar do have a large fleet building at their isolated world in our territory; the only places it could attack would be our Poor or Ultra Poor locations, and if they take them away, so be it. Not too worried overall though.

(2544) Another Alkari tech theft. The only thing left of use is more Computer tech, to bump up our overall level, so I take that and grab ECM II. We also discover Improved Industrial 6 (woo! gonna stand up some factories bigtime now!) and can only select II5 as the next option (boo!) A better armor than Duralloy would have been nice. Our core worlds will remax population/factories this turn at the new, boosted levels. (With our new, cheaper factories Cryslon is now pumping 55/turn, with reserves help! It was at 10/turn just four turns ago. Wow.)

(2545) We clean the last Alkari Computer tech, ECM I. All three core worlds max out again, as predicted.

(2546) First chance to steal Meklar tech offered! Maybe those extra pickups from the birds helped out. We most want a Planetary shield tech, so I go for Force Fields. No such luck - we get Personal Deflectors instead. Out of nowhere, the Meklar bomb our tiny Rich world! Nuts. They will pay for this crime! For the moment, however, there's not much we can do. Need to finish some more infrastructure work before getting into fleet building.

(2547) We get hit with the Comet event at Neptunus. Ugh, ugly time for this, because the Meklar are sending a fleet after Cryslon and trying to invade Tau Cygni! Well, we can't do much about the tiny little Rich world, but we CAN give them a bloody nose at Cryslon. (Why else do you think I've been pumping factories there for the past seven turns with reserve spending?) Three Dreadstars are sent to Cryslon, and a crash-building base program initiated. I'll be able to have 15 bases stood up by the time the Meklar fleet arrives there, and we'll just see what they think about THAT!

I also design a Stinger missile boat, Medium size, warp 5, combat speed 3 (Inertial Stabilizer, where are you?) There's a glaring hole in that attack level is only 2, but it should still have some punch. Routing these ships to Neptunus to ward off that Comet event first before considering offensive action.

(2548) Hit in EVERY field on a tech theft against the Meklar. Wow, must be a deep penetration. We go for Force Fields again... Repulsor Beam, darn! We've now stolen every Force Field tech they own EXCEPT the two Planetary Shield techs. Unbelievable! Well, guaranteed to get one with another penetration in that field, heh. They also have Terraforming +30 and +40, so we'll want to grab more techs there as well.

Tau Cygni was captured from us, as expected. We'll get it back once we manage to shore up our own defensive situation.

(2549) Meklar ships are sporting Fusion Beams and Megabolt Cannon; these are not insignificant weapons, but they only have 15 Large ships attacking at Cryslon. Not enough to be decisive. With the help of the Dreadstars, we fight them off without losses.

Controlled Inferno finally pops (it was over 40%!) and we can now choose a new Planetology tech. Terraforming +40 is an option and will advance the tree, so I spring for that ASAP. Cryslon is finally maxed and can do some research. From this point forward, we're looking pretty safe on the military front.

(2550) The Meklar pull 12/20 votes in the Galactic Council (everyone voting against us), but don't have enough to grab the win. Whew! There will be no more opportunity to lose this game, fortunately; by the time of the next vote, we should be comfortably out in front.

 

[Sullla]

(2552) Comet destroyed. Since the borgs haven't left any ships in orbit over Tau Cygni, time to go get it back! Military preparations begun on this turn.

(2553) We take back Tau Cygni, but a major Meklar fleet is incoming. Very unlikely I'll be able to hold onto it. In other news, spying has caused everyone to declare war on us. Yeah, yeah - as if we weren't already in that situation at the last council vote!

(2554) Yep, Tau Cygni is completely destroyed. No losses to our fleet though, and I managed to take out about a half-dozen Meklar Large designs before retreating. All around, not too shabby.

Overall, there are some nasty tech holes in this game. Waste cleanup remains a huge problem. Eight planets, and three of them are Poor or Ultra Poor also hurts a lot.

(2559) The Meklars attacked at Cryslon again; their force was not trivial, but with 25+ bases, I smoked them pretty easily. Meanwhile, I lead my own attack against the isolated Meklar world of Incendius (the one by itself in the southwest). Size 60 Rich, what a nice prize!

We capture 270 factories at Incendius and loot Terraforming +40, Fusion Bomb (woot! although a little weak against Meklar's Planetary Shield X) and four lesser techs.

(2363) Finally, we manage to steal Planetary Shield tech from the Meklar (even if it is the lesser V model). Once I get these built, my planets will be largely safe from attack, allowing me to send the fleet forward aggressively.

(2570) Tau Cygni retaken, picking up Planetary Shield X AND Advanced Eco Restoration in the process! That's a huge deal, drastically cutting our waste costs. Now if we can just get a decent Battle Computer and a bomb, we can put this game to bed.

(2572) Finally lifted the tech I wanted from the Silicoids, Inertial Stabilizer yeah! Framed it on the Meklar too, adding insult to injury.

(2575) Everyone votes against us in the coucil vote, but we have enough population to block an election easily (11 out of 23 votes). Just waiting on Pulson missile research to come in, then I can purge the galaxy of the Meklar. The AI has actually stopped attacking, because their designs can't even scratch my defenses, sitting behind Planetary Shield X technology. It is most amusing.

(2580) Pulson missiles discovered, on the same turn that we lift Battle Computer III from the Silicoids (hey, it's better than BCII!) Now it's time to go for the juggular. I design a Medium Pulson ship, warp 5, combat speed 3 (IS wouldn't quite fit, drat!) Every non-Poor planet begins cranking these things like crazy.

(2581) 81 missile boats produced. Yeah, let's keep doing this for a dozen turns and see how well the AI stands up to 500 or so Pulson launchers!

(2585) Capture Phyco, one of the weaker Meklar worlds. We fail to loot much of importance, but the borgs do come begging for a peace treaty - which I reject.

Altair invaded and captured, eliminating the birds. They didn't have a single gropo tech (Titanium Combat Armor) - how's that even POSSIBLE this late in the game?

(2593) Capture Phantos, the Meklar planet in the nebula. Goodies here include Andrium Armor (woo!) and the fabulous Gauss Autocannon. Those two, plus the High Energy Focus we're almost done researching, will make for a tremendous Huge gunship... or would, if the game weren't about to end at the next vote!

(2595) Esper captured, Nordia bombed out of existance. The Silicoids came begging for peace, and I was able to turn them around into an ally. They'll vote for me in the next election for sure. I didn't want to eliminate them, as that would plunge me into Final War with the Meklar.

(2598) Soil Enrichment discovered - and what great timing! Now I can grow up my non-hostile planets for the upcoming election.

(2599) We should capture one more planet between turns, plus grow a ton of colonists from Soil Enrichment. With the vote from the Silicoids, it should be enough to put us over the top. Let's see!

Ha, we win in a LANDSLIDE! The Meklar only had 5 votes to our 17! (Silicoids had a single vote, which they cast for us. We finished with 18/23 total.) Game over, with a Conquest victory in 2600. Download the zipped save to see the final result for yourself.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/HNYs.zip

Overall, a nice little challenge, nothing too difficult. The biggest obstacles to winning faster were 1) lack of decent Computers tech (this significantly reduced missile hits, damage, and initative!) 2) lack of any kind of bomb technology. If Antimatter Bomb had been in the tree, this game could have been won a LOT sooner. As it is, winning in 2575 is probably doable, if you act more aggressively at the start. I'm just generally a careful player, so I made sure my own territory was impregnable before moving onto the offensive. Thanks for the game, and I hope this was instructive!

 

[Sullla]

OK, two screenshots (you know I couldn't resist!)

Final Turn Galactic Map:



Final Vote:



Best wishes in the future, Horizon.

 

[vmxa]

Hit Orion an design huge to hold death rays. Meks have recently begged off of the NAP.
I have about 9k on hand to pump Orion up quickly.

Meks attacked and bust the few ships I had, but lost many of theirs as my huge ships took a lot of pounding before losing.

Next attack was destroyed and I then took down Incedius and stood it up quickly as it was rich. Orion is filling the bulbs in a hurry.

The end is a given now as I can just squeeze them down at my own pace.

They send in ships to Orion, but the bases take down two stacks, before they retreat. They left after I retreated my lone dither ship, that never fired a shot.
Grabbed Phantos.

Note this game could be won in many way and quickly, if you like. I like to drag them out as I like to take all planets. So I will just grab planets and never vote for the council. Won't be any votes anyway as no one els is around but the Meks.

Once I research the whole tree I usually finish off the game, unless it is a large map, then I may allow a vote or just go on a flatten all planets run.

Note did not scrap all the ships off the bat as I wanted to have them to prevent any attacks, before I could get the planets up. I did not want to build any at that point anyway.

 

[Horizon]

First i must say that i appreciate a lot those replies and comments, i find them not only a nice reading but they are very helpfull for me to learn more about the mechanics of the game and how to get over a very bad situation.

Considering the heavy beating i was taking at trying to survive in this scenario, i was a bit deseperate after trying different kinds of strategy just to be finally fall in front of the Meklars or when i managed to hold them to just be defeated by the council vote (the Alkaris and Silicoid certainly did not liked the way i walked over their empire before the year 2540).

I think the most horrible event in one of my attempts was late in the game for which i managed to barely hold my important worlds in front of the constant enemy assault fleets.
My main "planet fortress " (it was Vega) with 56 bases built (only stingers) protected by 6 Dreadstars and 82 destroyers (built as missiles-only vessels with stingers) had been crushed in a single battle by an impressive Meklar armada.

Of course my entirely broken economy and over-expenses as both of you pointed out, and my lack of efficient spying gave the Meklar the time to create that kind of huge armada while i was struggling to reinforce my frontier and try to build more base on my worlds.

The lack of planetary shield proved indeed to be another huge failure, as the 56 bases on Vega went down rather quickly when the Meklar armada closed by the planet, pushing my defense fleet around with their pulsar and tearing them apart with their mighty guns.

On another situation i managed, using the spies to steal during the 3 first years after 2540 the 2 main weapons technology of the Meklar with them being disturbed by it.

Unfortunately, bad choice for me was to try to build huge warship again fitted with the stolen tech. The time my crippled factories (as you noticed) managed to deliver their products, the Meklar got even more ships and destroyed my few warship without letting them to fire once.

And how to qualify this one in which a space amoeba appeared soon after the beginning of the scenario and killed everyone in Sol system while my fleets were busy fighting the Meklars on Cryslon.

So all i can say is congratulations vmxa and Sullla, my hat off to you , your aar and the different ways you managed to get Humanity out of the doomed hole i left them into really impressed me, the situation of the start of the scenario sounded like a lost cause.

No wonder you can stand your way in those impossible AI games i can read here.

Thank you a lot for playing, i hope playing a scenario like this was enjoyable even if not up to the difficulty of the Impossible AI challenges.
For me just reading your replies served as a good lesson on how to improve my strategies and fix the obvious lack of economy building i have in most of my games.

 

[vmxa]

We are glad to have you post. I like to get games to mess around with as it means I will have something different.

I finally ended up dusting the hostile planets as I had no radiated tech anyway and no need for the small toxic and Inferno planets. Just captured all the rest.

I elected to not spy on the Meks for a long time, so as to not risk attacks. Once I researched XX shields, then I knew they were no longer a threat.

Being Human, meant the Meks were more willing to play nice. Once I had a fleet they were not going to do anything, until I forced them.

If it was not at the easy level, the AI may have been more aggressive.

As you can see lots of bases with no shields, is not good enough so late in the game.

Basically you can either build lots of smaller ships or fewer larger ships. Both ways are ok, it just depends on what you have at hand and how soon you need ships.

I say that as it takes a lot of production to build huge hulls. I would not attempt it on less than Ultra planet, before getting lots of pop and factories.

Since it was late in the tech tree and you had several good planets, I switched from large to huge to hold the death ray. Once Maulers came in, I switched to them.

You can use many ways, that is one of the good things about the game.

 

[Sullla]

Yes, it was indeed a fun little challenge, so thanks again for sharing it with us. You can see a difference just in the playstyle between vmxa and myself; I pretty much always win the game at the first possible opportunity, while he likes to win from a position of total dominance. I technically didn't even have the strongest fleet at the end of my game, although those bar graphs can be a bit misleading sometimes.

The lack of planetary shield proved indeed to be another huge failure, as the 56 bases on Vega went down rather quickly when the Meklar armada closed by the planet, pushing my defense fleet around with their pulsar and tearing them apart with their mighty guns.

That was indeed a rather serious hole in the tree, missing both of the first two Planetary Shield techs. You can see that I placed a very high priority on finding an upgrade ASAP. Still, one of the great things about Master of Orion is that there's always a hole somewhere on the tree; in this game you had very strong missile tech, for example, when that can be a crippling disadvantage a lot of the time.

Waste cleanup techs were another major shortfall. I was a little surprised that vmxa didn't mention them more. Sure, Improved Eco is great, but none of the next two options were available (Enhanced/Advanced Eco both missing) and *ALL* of the Waste Reduction techs in the Construction tree were also no-shows. I saw a huge boost in my economy when I looted Advanced Eco - from the Meklar, of all races! (Wouldn't expect that from the Planetology-challenged borgs.)

vmxa looks like he did most of his fighting with Huge ships. I'm a big fan of them as well, especially with improved armor and the Automated Repair special, but with no gun better than Blasters, it wasn't really an option in my game. By the time I looted the Gauss Autocannon, the game was already over. Instead, I used nothing but Medium missile boats, one 5-rack of Pulsons each. I probably built close to 1000 of them in the final twenty turns of that game. That wouldn't cut it on Impossible, not with the humongous base counts that the AI racks up, but their bases are almost non-existant on this difficulty level. (On Impossible, they will build one base for every 3 population points. Here, it was more like one for every 10.) I was actually surprised at how poorly the Pulsons performed, due almost certainly to the low Battle Computer level I was running. I'm used to having attack level 6 or 7 when using Pulsons, and here it was only 3 - you bet that made a big difference!

For me just reading your replies served as a good lesson on how to improve my strategies and fix the obvious lack of economy building i have in most of my games.

The key to success is to analyze your greatest needs and then devise a strategy to achieve them. Tactically, this game isn't really all that complicated, once you figure out how the various components fit together. Strategically though... it's a masterpiece. There's always more than one way to do things, and competing priorities that can't all be achieved at once. The only way to get better is through practice. I had a lot of fun doing that, of course! Good luck.

 

[vmxa]

Yeah Eco stuff was missing. Late in the game I was still getting Eco techs from capturing planets that could be applied. That is unusual, normally you get them, but they are obsolete.

I bypassed the missile fleets at first, thinking they would have lots of bases and they had scatter VII. So I expected to need so many that I decided to just play nice as long as I could.

I was still thinking like an impossible level in terms of production. Then I realized that they were not building them or fleets.

Anyway I seldom play Humans, so I wanted to see how long the AI would stay cordial. It was funny that the weakest races was first to jump.

The other thing was I was not real sure if stingers would even do anything and it was a long time before Pulson's came online.

The one question I had was did you use and editor to set up the tech? I was confused to some of the stuff already known.

 

[Horizon]

The one question I had was did you use and editor to set up the tech? I was confused to some of the stuff already known.

No i did not use an editor, i built the scenario by simply playing up to the point the game situation was fitting perfectly the idea i had in mind (Human pitted against a major power, and 2 minor power floating around).

I never used any editor because i simply did not knew such thing existed for MoO1, but after reading your post and then locating some, it sure would have make building the scenario a very lot easier instead of using tons of saves until i reached a situation similar to my scenario idea.

I made a lot of saves at various stardates, testing some ideas to see what could be the AI reaction to some moves or unit locations.
By example, as explained earlier : after testing i noticed that by leaving Cryslon, very good planet, undefended up to 2540 will trigger the Meklar AI in wanting to get it despite it was not very aggressive toward me before, leading the AI into being more aggressive than it is in usual easy level.
Usually, in my easy level games, the AI is not that aggressive. So i had to find some tricks to get it be.
Meklars and Humans had good relationship before i made the starting save for the scenario, i built this good relationship to leave the Meklar expanding instead of having it wasting its fleets into fighting me while i was ahead in the game, whan i walking over the Silicoids and Alkaris to force them to be minor powers.

Now for the research choices : from the start of the game up to 2540 i made most of he research nearly randomly when they appeared instead of picking what i usually think is best for me.

In my scenario idea i wanted the player Human empire not being more advanced in firepower/colony than the direct main enemy, basically i did not wanted to maximize the human tech power at the year the scenario is beginning.

Because to be able to build my scenario, the game level was already setup at easy and in that level it is easy to get ahead in term of tech level, it would have not been very interesting to begin in 2540 with the usual tech advantages you can have on the AI in easy level.

So i thought that the nearly randomness of the research choices would be adding a nice twist to the upcoming battles as the techs available to the human in 2540 would then not be the usual expected techs and may not always be the best you could have at this point.

But i was frankly suprised by the Meklar AI to go that well in 2540.

Even if i left them alone for so many turns, they performed better than i thought considering the easy level i used, and instead of making both main empire roughly equal to get the scenario setup so the player would not be in lead easily, my random research choice gave the Human side a disadvantage.

Actually i did not expected this scenario to turn into being that difficult for me to take on, i can manage to get victories at that difficulty level without that much problems (while the other difficulty level continue to have the AI walking over me due my usual inefficient economy choices as easy is way more forgiving for this), the random picking for the techs may not have been entirely a good idea, but in the end it seems to allow a more challenging game than usual for an easy level game .

Now, trying to beat my own scenario using those nice hints i read here and there

 

[Horizon]

Finally, Humanity has prevailed, i failed so many time i can't count them.

That's the 1st time i have so many problems in a game setup on easy, certainly the research randomness i made to setup the scenario was perfect to create this extra difficulty.

but at least i managed to get a victory on this scenario, thanks to the death spores that i usually never use .

Here is the AAR, written in a "roleplay" way :

Introduction
-------------
Humanity was nearly crushed , not having been able to shield all its system in time, it was a question of years before the Meklars genocided the last of the humans.
But when everything was thought to be lost, a human scientist discovered the basics of time travelling.

Developping the technology, the human Emperor thought that it was the only solution to ensure Humanity future : changing the unfortunate events that had lead us into the situation dooming our worlds.

After activating the device, the Emperor was projected back in time and strangely merged with his younger self. In a strange turn of events the new Emperor retained memories of the dark future and decided he would act differently this time...
(or how to explain the save/load system of the game to go back to the situation from the save offered in the 1st post )

During centuries of repeated global wars, Humanity was either crushed or survived barely to reach a stalemate status. The Emperor always repeating the processus of rewinding the time flow, finally reached a decision that would prove to be the most unexpected option for a benevolent Humanity empire.

The Emperor came to the conclusion that our great enemy did not deserved our benevolence, as the machines were unable to understand the concept at all and were not willing to anyways, and the threat was even greater than just destroying Humanity, it was life as we defined it that was threatened.

So this time, stealing the planetary shield technology from the Meklars, Humanity managed to protect their systems from the never ending fleets and their dreaded machine weaponry while deploying intense missile barrages. It was very close as in a different timeline a simple month of delay would have meant the loss of important worlds.

But unfortunately it was not possible everywhere and the small world Tau Cygni we were trying to terraform was obliterated without any mercy, and later it was the turn of the poor world Gorra to suffer the same fate.

Fortunately in this new temporal cycle thanks to the re-merged Emperor change of strategy, Cryslon that was previously the major target for the machines, defeated the various enemies coming to burn it.
This major victory made the Emperor more confident in his long term planning.

The Alkaris progressively understood the threat the Meklars made on our shared universe and offered us a non agression pact, the Alkari leaders even offered a bounty on the Meklar heads.

Then following the Emperor directives, Humanity created a weapon so horrible that the universe would have fallen if the owner was not our benevolent empire.
The scientists called it "death spores", an immense achievement for Humanity as it would prove to be the ultimate weapon against the machines, by being able to destroy not only their massive mecha armies stationned on their conquered worlds but it would burn the planets environment so much that even if the Meklar went back they would never be able to gather that much productivity again without terraforming entirely those worlds.

The Emperor ordered the massive production of small frigates equipped with the famous Impulse drive that made us so proud and armed only with those new bomb technology to allow the powerfull engine to take place.

This relatively cheap cost and profile allowed hundred of those Destroyers to be built in few years and the whole imperial factories were then only dedicaced at building fleets of small vessels.
The pilots were amongst the bravest of their kinds, as they perfectly knew lot of them would die against the cyborg missile defenses and the heavily superior amount of Meklar fleets.

3 fleets of Destroyers with their deadly payload managed in quick hit&run tactics to burn entirely several Meklar worlds. Our Alkaris friends were not happy with the Death Spore technology destroying more than the machines, as we guessed they wanted to get those worlds, but they closed their eyes as they knew it was necessary.


Being long time slaves of the Meklars, the Silicoids declared war on us, those living rock fools could have put life itself in jeopardy with the help they gave by just obeying their machine masters. None is more blind than the one that refuse to see.

The Emperor denied us the right to burn the Silicoids in the same time as the Meklar machines, the Silicoids were fools he said, but soon enough they would see the errors of their way and would revolt against the malevolent machine empire of the Meklars.

Our beloved leader was again proved right, when after several key Meklar systems were destroyed by our bomber fleets , we lost contact with the machines, the Silicoid leaders decided to contact us and offered a valid peace.

During that time, Humanity was researching a way to push the war inside of the far away Meklar empire, for too long the Meklar fleets have been harrasing and murdering human lifes in our systems, it was time to make them pay.

Humanity invaded 2 Meklar worlds, Phyco and Incedius, that were already burned by our bombers, but that were recolonised by the Meklars.
Indeed these were important worlds located in our own empire frontier, if the Meklars could keep those worlds they could launch their attacks again deep within Humanity pride.

Interesting technology discoveries were made on newly conquered machine factories, after learning of the Meklar powers, we would be soon able to make some ground breaking researches that would be able to change the future of Humanity, from the dark despair to a bright new hope.

To use them as an extra shield between our rival forces, the Emperor ordered to let the silicoids populate some of the burned Meklar worlds, their rocky nature would allow them to use those worlds wisely.

Year 2640, Humanity was coming back after some many horrible fates in other now lost timelines.



Unfortunately, there is always some evil in the heart of life forms, and the treacherous Alkaris leaders broke our non aggression pact and decided to call a war on Humanity.
But the Emperor decided to ignore the Alkaris crazy avian lords, after all their mouths were in fact a lot bigger than their real strengths and fighting them would have only served the real enemy : the Meklar.

In an interesting turn of event, an assault fleet of human transport was sent to Mu Delphi , an away Meklar world, but in the same time the most important Meklar target for us, Mu Delphi was the pivotal gate we needed to strike deep inside the Meklar machine hell.
Without this system the Meklar war industry was beyond our reach.

Our bomber fleets were joining their forces, the final battle was at hand, a combat that would decide the future of the galaxy, finally Humanity had a possible future, and it was a glorious one in the hand of our brave pilots.
The invasion of Mu Delphi was successfull.



The Human huge fleet splitted into 2 parts, one that would attack the Meklar world of Phantos, located inside of a nebula near our frontier, and the other would cripple a Meklar border world , a world previously entirely out of reach of our righteous fury but made opened by our new Mu Delphi conquest.

The border world was destroyed by our bombers, despite the losses caused enemy missile barrage and defending ships, the pilots managed to get a splendid victory.
In Phantos a terrible tragedy happened, the Meklar had developped a terrible weapon, that not only slowed down our bomber fleet, but paralysed them totally, unable to even retreat in deep space.

Our bombers having absolutely no way to fight an enemy fleet or retreat were crushed, 200 ships disappeared, annihilated by the Meklar secret weapon effect.

This terrible blow to our combat effort would not be made in vain, the Emperor decided that our scientist would have to focus on a new way to reach the world target , something to bypass the fantastic Meklar weapons by moving quicker than them.

A sad time, as the Alkaris more treacherous than ever burned one of our border system, the one we had just captured recently from the Meklar.

Humanity had forgiven the Alkaris too many time, the birds-like beings had murdered enough humans. The Emperor spoke : "We will accept no more of the peace you begged for multiple times, now we will rid the universe of you traitors, those that are paving the way to the machine life extermination plan will be defeated.".

And so it was war.
But again it seems universal justice has its own way, before Humanity would prepare to invade the Alkaris homeworld to teach them a lesson, the Meklar crushed their worlds and genocided the avian race entirely. Another crime from the machine, but the Alkaris brought their fate on themselves, Humanity warned them enough.

Finally, the human scientists created the engine the Emperor was dreaming about, an engine so powerfull that it could bend the space itself to allow some kind of instant teleportation. It was named after the chief of the scientist department, Dr Sub .... and would be known as "Sub Space teleporter".

The design departement created a spaceship even scifi writers never thought to be possible, and soon we had warships able to attack a world , and retreat without the Meklar being able to launch a counter measure.
Massive production of the new kind of small warship began, carrying the death spores in a new method.

During that time, our last bomber fleet burned Esper, the other Meklar border world, this time the machine industry was really crippled, their huge and all powerfull fleets were not able to be maintened and lots were scrapped.
The primary threat was ended, it was not fear anymore in the heart of Humanity, but hope of a bright and glorious future.

Phantos was selected as the perfect target to experiment our new Ghost warships , we remembered the Meklar annihilated our great bomber fleet before in that system.
The Ghosts proved the awesome power of the new engine and crushed the planet in front of the strong fleet orbiting the Meklar world and retreated with very few losses.

Another warship , named Spectre using the same kind of technology as the Ghost, but equipped to destroy enemy warships was created, knowing perfectly that huge enemy fleets needed to be destroyed to pave the way for incoming invasions. We needed guns and we got plenty of them.


But Meklon, the Meklar throne world was out of our reach, the Emperor had many ways in his mind to find the correct path. Soon the war would get the final chapter played.
History was a circle, again the theory proved true, the Silicoids foolishly allied themselves with the threat to all life.
The Emperor was sad, as he perfectly knew what he had to do with the Silicoids now, because the Meklar were able to come back into our space by using the rocky beigns.

Silicoids were the last remnants of life in the universe, out of the Humanity. So it was decided to destroy only the necessary Silicoids systems to put a final end to the Meklar threat, we would have to preserve the other Silicoids worlds even against themselves.

It was a perfect time to test our new transport teleporters, a variation of our Sub Space ones, that allowed us to launch dozen of invasion barges with more chances of surviving the defenses, so Silicoids lifes could be spared as we didn't needed to bombard them heavily.

In deep space a strange amoeba creature was moving, some kind of space monster from old legends was coming, hopefully it would pose a problem to the Meklar, helping our war effort without even knowing it.

To prepare the future, an extremely large fleet of our Spectres attacked again the last Meklar border world, Esper that the Meklar recolonised and re-enforced.
3 huge Meklar behemots were orbiting, warships like never we faced in open combat so far, but the Spectres clearly dominated the situation and broke those monsters with the superior engines we gave them.
The whole sky of Esper was illuminated with those planet sized warship explosions.

Invasion transports arrived soon enough after and made a clean sweep of the planet ground defenders, Esper was perfect for the Emperor war plan, it was opening the gate to Meklon, the evil machine throne world.
Life had a future, never again the mechanised imitations would threaten us all again.

The strange space creature annihilated a Meklar world, while the Meklar fleet was away trying to take down our system in Phantos.
As we said, universal justice has its own way.

Esper proved to be a challenge, the missile barrages remained a huge threat to our invasion transport, but hopefully we would be able to go through this. Optimistic prevision proved true some days later when half of the invasion force managed to break through the missile barrage and captured Esper, the gate to Meklon.

Oh, the Meklars tried to retake Esper, assault barges after assault barges, Humanity brave defenders managed to resist each waves, and the Meklar were unable to close again the gates to their home system.

But that defense was only possible due to the recent space gate network Humanity decided to build around its systems, to allow quick travel, the technology was available to us since hundred of years, but we always prefered to use our time elsewhere.
The gate system proved extremely usefull in Esper situation.

The Ghost bomber fleet was now on the move, soon enough the Meklar threat would be history, this timeline proved that the Emperor was right, Humanity had really a chance, but it had to be helped a bit by technology.

Lyae was the first Meklar home world to fall, to serve as an example for all the human deaths in the hand of the machines.

The situation was now favorable in 2718 for Humanity, never the Emperor would have dreamed that not only we could destroy the Meklars, but would be in position to put the known universe under our benevolent rule.




In 2725 , the Silicoids were always unreasonnable and refused to enter into the Alliance we proposed them.
As a direct consequence, the Meklars murdered them all while our fleets were too far to stop them.
The Emperor hoped they would learn of their mistakes, unfortunately it was too late for them (in fact i refused the "ruling" after being elected, but to fit this event to the AAR the meklar are the lone enemy now)

Hyboria fell soon enough to our massive planetary bombardment, no more mechanised units were seen on the surface.

Only Meklon the throne world of the mechanised threat was always there, but the Humanity fleet

made sure the universe was getting rid of the Meklars, once for all.

The war ended in 2734, Humanity survived.

Unfortunately none else.

It was a fun scenario finally, a good amount of difficulty for someone like me while not being impossible, a big change from my other easy game.
2734 for the end game, I sure took my time to get to there he he.