OSG 14 - Cold Blooded Killers

[IamI3rian]

Let me start by saying WOW, spores are fun . Also, I'm gonna see if I can get pics in my report using photobucket.

Preturn: Designed new fighter, Ion-4. Just upgraded engines. Scrapped scouts to make room. I started on a comet fleet too, to deal with Blake's thoughtful gift . Then, I began spying... 2 clicks to Bears, 1 to Meks.

2441: Attack Nordia again, Meks are a bit upset about our Mass Genocide, but they aren't at war yet.

2442: Renew attack, setting up the colships too, I got a bit confused with the retreating colships not colonizing thing.

2443: Terraforming +50 comes in. New choices:
Terraforming +60
Complete Eco Restoration <--- this one (duh)
72&#37; of the comet is down already

2444: Comet destroyed (so fast ). Destroy Nordia from orbit, after I couldn't bomb last turn, Scatter V's were in there, and that's a breach of rules. Darloks declare war, cause we killed half the species. Bears begin aggression.

2445: Darloks Suicide... Honest. We had NOTHING to do with it.

2446: Murder the Human Fleet, at least until they retreat. They really have no real weapons. Got a spy hit on the bears. All but construction, we stole ECM III. Adv. Space Scanner comes in. New choices:
BCVI
RCV<--- This one, I don't think we'll be able to steal it from the bears.

2447: Another hit on the bears, all fields. We steal IIT7. Interestingly, the Meks didn't like that, and declared war

2448: Fought a Big Bear, that thing's lethal to our Ion-4's

Luckily, those Scatter V's took it out. Saved the day even.

2449: Messed up the Bear fleet. They attacked at Quayal, and with a little help from the (now huge) reserve; we had 15 bases up, which did all the work.

2450: Attack, and destroy Seidon. The OTHER human planet
The vote also happened. We're one vote shy from being able to declare ourselves emperors. But that's no fun. Bears have 16 votes, Humans 2, Meks 3. All voted for the Bears, our opponents. Did nothing else.

After: Once range 9 comes in, we shouldn't HAVE to keep building colships, to colonize the worlds we spore, to reach the other worlds. Zed, check out Draconis, in the south. They just finished Atmos, and I couldn't decide what to do with them. Also, the fleet is a bit scattered, from repelling attack fleets. We've got ships at Quayal, Hyades, Nazin and Seiden (that's our Human extermination fleet). Uxmai is building a Colship for Seiden, and our comet fleet is due at Tao next turn. We've got a LOT of ships:

Final Map: Finger points at Seiden.

Good Luck Emperor Zed!

Olorin <-- On deck
Blake
I3rian <-- Just Played
Zed <-- UP NOW

 

[Blake]

2445: Darloks Suicide... Honest. We had NOTHING to do with it.

I love the Ssspin department

 

[IamI3rian]

They Sssure can make Sssomething Ssseem Sssuicidal.

 

[Zed-F]

Ok, I'll try to get this tonight. I really thought if we went all out sporing everything in sight we could have won the 2450 vote. Oh well... I guess now we try for extermination before the next vote! Can we do it? I'll concentrate mostly on the bears to leave at least one other race in the running in case we need the 2475 vote to end things after all.

 

[Zed-F]

Err... one problem. I seem to be missing a save file to download?

 

[IamI3rian]

Sorry, SUCH an oversite... I coulda won the vote... I thought we were going for the 'sporadic genocide' win. I would REALLY like to get the domination, all other races exterminated win. Either way, here's the save. I was at work, or I woulda answered hours ago.

 

[IamI3rian]

I'm CLEARLY having issues uploading the file. Says not only that I already atttached it (in the earlier file, for what that's worth) but that I can't upload it again. I'll try RE-SAVING it, and uploading again, or else I think I need your e-mail addy Zed.

 

[IamI3rian]

Here Goes Nothing. So far it says I've got it posted the first time. If this doesn't work PM me your email, and I'll send it out to you. Needs to be done before 10:00 AM EST or I won't be able to send it til I get home from work (at around 11:00 PM EST). Sorry man, I don't know what happened.

EDIT: Sorry for that, my comp is really ghetto. I hope I didn't inconveniece(sp?) you much, and I hope you didn't sit down and get all ready for a game, with nothing there. I know how frustrating that is.

P.S. And sorry for the multi post. They DID in fact invent editing, though I think this is the only way to get the 'NEW' file in.

Those Dopey Meks have ARS, Please when we (if we) steal from them make it in construction, or weapons. To get the best 'bang for our buck'. I messed up the two Bear Steals enough. The second time, had I opted for Construction, we would have Zortium armor (at least, it's their lowest tech). Just goes to show that you need to pay attention.

 

[Zed-F]

Ok, I have the save now, and will try to get to it tonight.

 

[Zed-F]

Well, I was unable to get this last night, and I probably won't be able to get this in the near future now, so please go ahead and give me a skip. I'll be back next week to see how things went.

Olorin <-- UP NOW
Blake <-- On deck
I3rian <-- Just Played
Zed <-- Skipped

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

I've got it. I'll try to get it done tonight, otherwise Friday night.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

Pre-turn: I did some fleet maintenance. We had no RadCol's, so I redesigned them for maneuver 3, scanner, BC1, and still had room for 12 spores. I switched all the colonies building Deathcols over to the new Radcols so that they can colonize any world we happen to spore out.

I also scrapped the Ion-3s, since there was only one group of them left, and used the slot to make a new spore ship. I was able to fit a BC1 on it, so I changed over most of our spore ship production to the new design.

I also found two of our rich planets pumping reserves, so I fixed that to building spore ships (as our 3 turns to reach the planet results in pretty steady losses to our spore ships).

2451: Denubis gassed. Lots of ship building.

2452: Talas gassed with some losses due to the Bulrathi fleet in orbit. Laan gassed. Sol gassed. Megabolts come in, I choose Scatter 7's. Seidon founded, Denubis founded.

2453: Galos gassed. Humans pulled a fast one and refounded Sol with a colony ship they had retreated from the battle last turn. They were out of colships this turn...

2454: Gion gassed and Galos founded. Failed to take out Phantos with 200 spore ships vs. 24 missile bases. Bulrathis are packing merculites and they hurt. Need to adjust the size of our bombing fleets.

2455: Gion founded. Bears showed up with 2 Huges at Galos, and our fleet was only able to kill one. Galos got glassed.

2456: Meklon gassed. Two marks of spore ships allows one to act as a decoy, though my other fleet was too small to take out the planet in one turn. PSX and Range9 come in. I go for FF4 (fast) and Star Gates. Sol founded.

2457: Firma gassed.

2458: Misha gassed. Phantos gassed.

2459: Argus gassed. RW40% arrives IIT4 only choice. I chose the auto reduce planets to clean due to number of planets, I may not have caught all the ones that still need terraforming and set them back.

2460: Romulas gassed. Lyae gassed. Ursa gassed.

Post game--
Some of the worlds we are pushing through now have 20+ bases, and the lack of inertial stabilizer is evident. Not being able to take out the bases means getting hit hard, even on the turn after you exterminate the planet and retreat. Stupid missile bases are automated!

Bring big fleets with you to take down well defended planets, especially if they have 100+ pop. I didn't have tons of time tonight, so I didn't worry about trying to colonize and defend all the worlds as I went, it's up to you if you want to try to turn the whole map green or not.

Meklars are down to 2 planets, Bears have 8 (though at least one is a weed colony). This should be over in at most two more rounds (barring someone discovering an antidote).

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

Here's the save.

 

[Blake]

Righto, got it.

I'm tired and have a headache at the moment so I'll delay playing it until tomorrow. I fully intend to finish the game in my round by any means necessary - probably a fair amount of logistics will be involved, reserve pumping at back worlds to get out large fleets at the fringes and such. Should be a gas.

 

[Blake]

Plansss:
Looks like we have a lot of ships. I set a lot of back worlds to reserves and pump out more ships at the frontline.

Turn 1:
In the interturn gassed two mature bear worlds, losing nearly all spore fighters which attended.
On a more sombre note I discover just how tough those bear ships are... okay... don't fight the ships... just destroy the worlds.

983 Spore 4.1's trained . The bears are going to run out of missiles before we run out of ships!

Turn 2:
More worlds gassed. This may be the last turn.

Turn 3:
IBT Meklars destroy one of our colonies :grrrr: (stupid huge autorepair ships). THEY SHALL PAY! Well, they were going to pay anyway...

The Mekklars suffer an existential crisis. Apparently GNN doesn't report news about nothingness.
(Mekklars exterminated, but no news flash)

Bears persist in existing. They have Meklon and one colony ship. A welcoming party is arranged for the colony ship. The Lizards decide to have an End of the World party on Meklon. There will be smoke machines!

Turn 4:
I tried gassing the Guardian with 800 surplus spore ships. Didn't work.

VICTORY in 2464.

(Aww I got the screenshot with his eyes closed. "A moment of silence for all those who died... sure were a lot of them... damn what do I do now... I'm bored. Oh well, nap time.")


I should probably have noticed the bear colony ships and thus won a turn faster. But that's how it is.

I forgot to save on 2463 so here's the 2462 save. It's the last turn where anything HAPPENS anyway.

Good game.

 

[dathon78]

This is a re-post from the end of the RB14b thread, in case any lurkers (there's those damn cricket sounds again) or players missed it:

Oh man you guys were slow (2500 vs 2464)

First of all, very nice job guys; your team played a great game. I think most of the difference in time, though, was due to the vast differences in our AI's. Your AI's were slackers We finished this a few days ago, so I lurked your thread. Our AI's, except for the Bulrathi, expanded MUCH faster. The Darlok's in particular were speedy. You guys colonized Kulthos in 2348, and Tao sometime in the 2380-2390 turn. Our Darlok's nabbed both worlds by 2337! Similarly, your Vox got settled on the same 2380-2390 turnset, while our Meklars poached it on the 2360-2370 turnset. Because we never got Kulthos, we never had a chance at Hyades, but I'm pretty sure the Humans grabbed it pretty quick.

I'm not at all trying to belittle your win -- you guys did a fantastic job finishing in the time you did Running these multiple comparison SG's is a lot of fun. For instance, it's interesting that you guys chose to go with lots of small spore ships, opting for production to outweigh attrition, while we went with large ships to minimize attrition. We could have fit spores on a small, but given our lesser empire, we chose a sturdier platform, noting that not nearly as many spores are needed as bombs to eradicate a planet.

So, what's next?

dathon

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

I agree that besides the Bulrathi, our AIs seemed to sit on their hands most of the game. On the issue of the various planets you mentioned, while it's true that had our AIs gotten to them at the same turns as yours, we would have lost those colonies, I wonder what our difference was in terms of the timing of putting scout blockades at those worlds.

I looked at Kulthos, and looks like we scouted it in 2327, while you didn't have R4 until 2328 (and were maxing Sssla instead of putting out ships). Looking a bit more closely though, your Darlocks probably got Tao first, and then Kulthos. We didn't get a scout to Tao until 2344, so our Darlocks were definitely behind schedule. It could have been the AI didn't push much, or that they had bad luck in the tech department. They would definitely need at least R4 to jump to Tao, maybe R5. If our Darlocks had slow tech progress, or chose R6 instead of R5, it might explain why they were slower in our game. And once we took Tao, it blocked all their expansion routes to the North, which would have made it more likely for them to get into conflict with the Humans.

The Humans were in a similar spot. The only way for them to advance to the West was to get a decent range tech. And very interesting are the Bears. They also look to have started in a bit of a box. They probably only needed R4 to get out of it, and I notice that due south of Ursa is an Artifact planet, looking to be within initial scout range. I'm guessing that in our game, the Bears pulled a Range tech off that Artifact world, giving them instant access to a bunch of nice planets. It would also have given them the chance to beat the Humans to Laan, and strand them in their corner half full of hostile planets.

I took a look at our 2420 save and checked out the AI tech. The Humans had R4 as their top Prop. tech (after 120 years!). The Darlocks had R4, then IS and Sub-lights.

I grabbed your 2390 save, and stuffed in some spies to take a peek. Your Humans already had R4 and R6 (though they had less in Comps and Constr., different priorties, or just 30 year difference?). The Darlocks had both R6 and IS, so they either went for both techs or stole R6 from someone (like the Humans).

So perhaps the difference in AI performance comes down to their tech choices. Our Humans were stalled trying to research the expensive R6, and then the Bears cut them off. Our Darlocks went for IS and then Sub-lights, and never had the range to jump to Tao and Kulthos, and then further north. Then again for your Darlocks to get to Kulthos at 2337, they must have been able to do it with R4...so maybe they didn't get lucky on the beakers in our game, and our scout blockade arrived before they got to R4.

I'm even tempted to think that perhaps the computer decides to play some AI's less aggresively (to explain the Humans especially), but we started from the same first turn save, so that doesn't seem to be a plausible explanation.