After opening the save file, everything looks pretty good under initial inspection. I briefly considered building some LR lasers for Centauri, but even landing +20 and Nuke engines will not be enough to build an LR Dead ship, and our chances of holding the world against a Militaristic race right next door seemed like a pipe dream, so I held off. That also means that Galos might be in danger, but I decided to leave it unattended for now. In fact, except for one popgun which I accidentally built, I went defenseless for my entire turn. Can't run farmer's gambits like you could in Civ 3, but I deemed our position secure enough for now to take the risk. Zed was dead on in his suggestion of more planetology tech, and I shifted research around to get +20 quicker.
Hope this doesn't offend anybody, but my turns were very quiet, so I went ahead and played 20. Spent most of it sitting building factories and terraforming. On the research front, we had the following breakthroughs, and my choices:
Class II -->
Personal Deflectors or Class III We'll get a better shield for our missle bases next rung, and going on offense is not likely for awhile.
IT20 -->
Enhanced Eco or Controlled Inferno. Tough choice, but I ultimately decided that the one 30-size planet in our space wasn't worth the cost of all that burned clean-up BC. If we don't manage to land Toxic, we may want to come back for this.
NPG's -->
Scatter V's or Neutron Blasters. Easy choice; Scatter's make for great bases, are half the cost of the blaster's, and there are 3 beams in the next rung.
RCIII -->
Improved Scanner or BCIV. I really like having the scanners on hand to eliminate sneak attacks.
Nuke Engines --> Sublight's or
Stabilizers Ouch, no range tech!
I went with the Stabilizer's for trade value; we might have to buy a range tech, and I don't like sublight's all that much anyway; not much of an upgrade on Nukes at this stage in the game.
On the homefront, Fierias, Yarrow, Rana, and Stalaz are maxed in pop and factories, with a base up on the first three. Volantis and Helos are set to terraform, should be done in three turns, though Helos might miss by a couple BC. Those Klackon fighters are headed for the empty blue. We did manage to land a spy in 2388; here's the report from then, and one at the end of my turns.
The Klackon alliance is new, and slightly troublesome. The RC IV is also new, and VERY troublesome
. Note that the brains have had the means to colonize Centauri for some time, and would no doubt do so if we sent a colony, as the AI in this game is wont to do. With Class V planetary, blasters, fusion bombs, and big planets, the bugs are looking like an even more appealing target. BTW, both of us are at 8 planets, but they are still ahead in population. Next leader might consider building some LR laser's for Galos, but I wouldn't build much more than that right now. The bugs are out of range, and the Psilons are up to amiable and honorable. We need to tech as fast as possible here.
OSG11 2400 Save
Remember that while the Psilons are good at acquiring a tech advantage, they are no better than any other AI at using one. If we can get up past the middle portion of the tech tree, to the point where it starts getting easy to burn down worlds regardless of how much defenses they have built up, then we can win regardless of what the Psilons have. The interesting part will be to see if we can survive that long.
