OSG 10-- Meklar Mayhem

[OlorinStormcrow]

Seeing as we lost due to an unlucky early council vote in OSG-9, we are reprising our effort on Hard difficulty.

Here's a summary of our game:

Race: Meklars
Map: Medium
Level: Hard

Our Meklars are Xenophobic, and are repulsed by the idea of mixing with other races. As a result, these variant rules will be used:

V1: Spend 4% on defensive spying per alien race we are in contact with.
V2: No trade agreements
V3: No ground invasions
V4: Abstain from all council votes

We will also add a couple more to overcome some of the quirks of the game.
V5: No starting spectator wars between AIs (we can only ask AIs to declare war on races that are already at war with us)
V6: No scout blockades

For more details about the variant rules and the reasons for them, see the thread on Realms Beyond Orion here

Each player has 72 hours to play and post for their turn. If we don't hear at least a "got it" within the first 48 hours, we'll assume you're unavailable and move on to the next person. If you'll be too busy to take your turn, let us know right away and we can either skip you or have you switch turns with another player.

If anyone else is interested in joining, we will be able to split into two teams, either at the same difficulty, or at a different level depending on what people prefer.

I have uploaded a saved game from slot 3 of the beginning of the game in case anyone wants to see the map. I'll post my turnlog shortly.

I've also mixed up the roster since last time. Liquidated, Zed-F, and dathon have all played in OSGs prior to 9, while myself, Yuri, Stuporman and piR8 are new to OSGs. I've alternated the vets in with the rest of us. I've also put piR8 near the front since the rest of us each got a turn at OSG9.

Roster:
Olorin << 20 turns
Zed-F << 20 turns
piR8 << 10 turns (from now on)
dathon
Stuporman
Liquidated
Yuri

With 7 players, there will be a long delay between turns. If your turn comes up and you know you won't be able to get to it very soon, please offer to trade with someone for that round so that we can keep the game moving.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

Pre-Game:

Good thing we downgraded difficulty to Hard. We are facing the Psilons and Klackons, two of the best races, along with the Silicoids, Mrrshan, and Sakkra. The Mrrshan tend not to be a big player because they pick too many fights, unfortunately, they are the first race we will see scouts from. Hopefully they are not our first contact. We want to avoid an early war if at all possible. The Silicoids and Sakkra each have expansion bonuses, but we need to hope that they are the ones isolated in the NW quadrant. If either the Klackons or Psilons start with that much real estate, it will be very difficult to overcome them.


First 20 years:

Three choices of planets within 3 parsecs. I send the colony ship to the yellow and the scouts to the others.

Odds are against the Meklars, the Yellow hosts Draconis, a Barren 45 planet.

I redirect the colony ship to the better of the other two, the white star, Morrig which has an Arid 65 planet. The red star is Uxmai, with a Terran 80 Poor planet.

2304: I redesign the fighter to get it cheaper, and produce two. I send one each to cover Morrig and Uxmai.
2308: Morrig has finally been founded. I send in 20 pop from Meklon.
2309: I design a medium LR Laser and start building one to cover Dolz.
2311: First LR Laser sent to Dolz. Back to factories for a bit.
2315: Second LR Laser produced, sent to unknown (at the time) Proxima.
2318: LR Laser chases a Mrrshan scout away from Dolz.

The map shows all the planets in range and what planets they have if any. The LR Laser for Proxima will arrive next turn, I've also covered Meklon and Morrig with Lasers.

One of our scouts is headed to Dolz to join the LR Laser there in preparation for more scouting when new colonies/tech become available. The other is headed for Draconis.

Post-Game:

Meklon and Morrig are busy with factories. Meklon is not as far along as I'd like, but I wanted to be sure to build enough armed ships to blockade our border. The next move is probably to build a colony ship once Meklon can do so in a decent number of turns. I recommend colonizing poor Uxmai first. It will extend our scouting range a little, but more importantly, it will bring Dolz to 3 parsec range. Obviously that would be the next planet to colonize to secure more coreward real estate. Herculis can be taken at any time, but Vulcan and Rha both need Range 5. Thankfully they are both in our back side. Vulcan should probably be blockaded with a LR Laser soon to prevent enemy scouts from scanning it.

Hopefully Range 5 is available in our tree, as Range 4 doesn't seem to get us anything. Controlled Barren would also be a great early tech for us to colonize Draconis. If the yellow west of Proxima is not a homeworld, we might be able to work around to it and the two blues near the nebula. There is a decent void preventing the AI in the NW from getting to them quickly.

It's likely to be much too crowded south of Dolz to go any further that way. It also means that Dolz will need more defenders if the AIs send anything other than scouts at it.

The nice thing about this draw of mainly medium sized planets is that it might keep us in 3rd place in pop at the beginning, which is the best way to prevent early vote fiascos like our last one.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

First turn done, so Zed's up.

Roster:
Olorin << just played
Zed-F << up now (20 turns, 2320-2340)
piR8 << on deck (10 turns, 2340-2350)
dathon
Stuporman
Liquidated
Yuri


piR8, if you have any questions, let us know.

 

[dathon78]

Checking in.

I would have been tempted to colonize Uxmai first, especially since that was a gateway planet to the south. Yes it's poor, but second planets are often used for research/new colonists in the early game anyway. Plus, there wasn't much danger of the back being grabbed, as it's clearly out of range. But looks like the fringes are well-covered for the moment, so it probably won't matter much either way.

Priority now would be to see what planetology/range techs we have, after colonizing Uxmai and Dolz.

dathon

 

[pi-r8]

Looks like we'll have a fair amount of good planets. My suggestion is that we really prioritize diplomacy in this game, and try to get at least one strong ally early on. The reason is that with the silicoids in this game, you KNOW the council is going to start meeting early, and we gotta avoid that early diplomatic loss in case we're nominated.

With the klackons and the psilons around, this should be fun.

 

[dathon78]

Our Meklars are Xenophobic, and are repulsed by the idea of mixing with other races. As a result, these variant rules will be used:

V1: Spend 4% on defensive spying per alien race we are in contact with.
V2: No trade agreements
V3: No ground invasions
V4: Abstain from all council votes

We will also add a couple more to overcome some of the quirks of the game.
V5: No starting spectator wars between AIs (we can only ask AIs to declare war on races that are already at war with us)
V6: No scout blockades

Normally, I would agree that's a good startegy pi-r8. However, our variant rules specifically rule that out! The only way to up relations would be to join an AI in a war and actively bomb their enemy for the bonus. By the time we're capable of that, we'll probably be at war with most races anyway

dathon

 

[pi-r8]

Sorry, that was dumb of me. I read the varient rules, but for some reason I completely forgot about that. How do you propose we avoid an early diplomatic loss then? Do you think it would be worth it to purposefully slow down our expansion so that we don't get nominated in the first few votes?

 

[dathon78]

Well, avoiding the early diplomatic loss is kind of a dice roll. We lost OSG9 to early council vote, but I'm not sure if we were the opponent to the Darloks or not (couldn't find it in Yuri's account). Actually, one of the better ways to avoid a council loss is to expand pop as fast as possible so you have 1/3 by the time the first vote hits, but given our starting location, that seems highly unlikely. We'll just have to take it as it comes and deal with the diplomatic situation as it unfolds.

dathon

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

I loaded up Yuri's turn at the end of OSG9 to see the vote. It was us vs. the Darlocks, but in my trial, the Klacks were at war with the Darlocks, and the Humans abstained, so the Darlocks didn't win. I really does come down to the random numbers sometimes.

Luckily, the Humans and Darlocks aren't in this game, since they are the most dangerous races when it comes to early council votes.

I also tried to clarify the rule on spectator wars. If an AI declares on us early, we should try to get help from other races if possible. Our enemy will be trying to get them to ally against us, and we don't want it to turn into an us vs. AIs split.

I'd say our variant Meklars wouldn't ever form a formal alliance with another race, but they are smart enough to understand divide and conquer, and how to speak softly while you work on outfitting your stick with particle beams and omega bombs.

 

[pi-r8]

Ok that'll make things a bit easier at least. One question for you guys though: is it ok to use the trick of attacking a planet, running away, and then ordering the fleet to stay there and attack again the next turn? It's a really useful tactic, but I can't help but feel like I'm cheating when I use it.

 

[Yuri2356]

I don't see anything wrong with that one. It's how I managed to hold Jinga as long as I did last time.

 

[Zed-F]

It is a bit of a cheat. For an Impossible game, I might consider letting it slide. I don't think we need it for a game on Hard though. On Hard, I personally try to avoid using crutches like that and like diplo shenanigans that I might otherwise be tempted to consider using on Impossible.

 

[pi-r8]

Ok. I'll try to avoid using it then unless the game is somehow hanging in the balance.

 

[dathon78]

I agree with Zed; staying at a planet after a retreat should be disallowed. The problem with it is that it makes missle boats brokenly powerful. Unless the AI has ships that are fast enough to reach your side of the tactics screen in 2 turns, you can fire volleys of missles, retreat without any damage, and do it again the next turn. In this way, a relatively small fleet of missle boats can defeat what should be a superior AI invasion force. The logical counter to this startegy is for the AI to bring some missle boats of its own; however, it is not programmed to take this threat into account and act accordingly, so to me, it seems exploitive.

dathon

 

[Zed-F]

My 20 turns this time closely resembled my 20 turns last time. Pop out a couple colony ships, build a couple more LR lasers, start on a bit of tech, and that's about it.

Uxmai is settled and there is a colony ship on the way to Dolz. A third colony ship is in production for the next planet south after that, which is smallish but habitable. After that a few more scouting options will open to us.

On the tech front, in construction we are researching Reduced Waste 80% with an option for IIT9 (which we might want to go back for unless IIT8 is the only option at the next level). In planetology we got all 3 options, I started on terraforming +10 because it's cheap, but we have a barren world nearby which might help us expand (and barren bases are cheap) and Improved Eco is also a very valuable tech. Depending on what we have available at the next level, I can easily see researching all 3 of those. For propulsion tech, only Range 4 was available, which occasions sadness as our two northward backline planets require range 5.

We are last in tech according to GNN, and the Silicoids were the first to 6 systems. Go ahead and abuse Uxmai for expansion population. I have it equally building factories and tech as we are short on RP at the moment and it's not that good at building factories. If you wanted to switch it to 100% tech, I wouldn't say you'd be wrong to do so.

 

[pi-r8]

I've got it and I'll play it either tonight or tomorrow morning.

 

[pi-r8]

I've founded two colonies, one on Dolz which I've sent some extra colonists to, and on Kulthos which I haven't sent any colonists to yet. Founding Kulthos put me in contact with the Mrrshan, so I increased our security by 4%. Scouts found their homeworld of Fierras, and another habital but unoccupied world near it. Apparently, Fierras is their their ONLY world.

At the same time that Kulthos was finished, another colony ship was built. Unfortunately, the unoccupied world is 4 parsecs away, but range 4 is at 20%, so it should come in soon. I sent the colony ship to Kulthos in anticipation of this, and sent the LR laser ships to the unoccupied world to guard it in the mean time.

Also, terraforming +10 came in, so I terraformed Meklon and Morrig, but I didn't bother terraforming Uxmos yet since it's still nowhere near max population. We're currently researching controlled barren environment.

Anyway, dathon, remember to send colonists to Kulthos, and watch out for the Mrrshans- they're sneaky!

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

piR8, looks like your save game didn't attach properly. Please give it another try.

Roster:
Olorin
Zed-F
piR8 << just played
dathon << up now
Stuporman << on deck
Liquidated
Yuri

Good luck dathon.

 

[pi-r8]

Sorry, I attached the wrong file. Does that work now?

 

[vmxa]

Lurker:

Yes it works.