OSG 14b - Cold Blooded Killers

[Sullla]

Looking good, looking good. I especially like the factory construction at our Poor worlds. (It's not a good idea if we're gunning for an early Diplo win, but we're not in this game. Might as well build them up and get settled in for the duration. I have an Ultra Poor in my current solo game with 700 factories, making a major contribution on the research front... but that is in 2550, of course. Mrrshans on Impossible isn't exactly a walk in the park. )

I should be able to play at some point tomorrow, way too tired to do anything now. Depending on our situation, I'll see what I can do about setting up StuporMan for the beginnings of an offensive on his turn.

 

[Swein Forkbeard]

Galactic Civ 2 is the best current turn-based strategy game using a space sci-fi theme, absolutely no question about it. Brad Wardell and his team at Stardock have put together a top-notch product. There are some weaknesses in the design, but (especially if you haven't played Civ3) you probably won't even notice them. (I have no idea what's good in terms of real-time strategy games right now; the last one I played using a space theme was Starcraft, which is a mite out of date now.)

Of course, if you want old, OLD school action, you could always join us with Master of Orion too. (You might even have to use DOS for the first time, heh. I feel really old now! )

About RTS empire-building games, the most recent I know of is Age of Empires III: The War Chiefs. I had a good time playing standard AoE3, but I really want other games more. It's good for those who want to be a Native American civilization and build an empire to stand the test of time (well, the test of survival provided by the Europeans and Mother Nature during the "Age of Discovery").

 

[Sullla]

(0) 2400 Wow, we have a lot of planets now! 14 with another colony ship on the way. Of those planets, 10 of them are relatively mature, while the others are still getting stood up. Unfortunately most of those planets are on our borders... but at least the Meklar aren't likely to be able to settle there anytime soon, so maybe we'll be left alone long enough to stand up defenses. I still really like our position overall.

I note with some amusement that we've barely built any bases in the last two turnsets. Well, that's one thing that will be changing before I'm done! We're close to a breakthrough in Computers, Planetology, and Weapons; it doesn't make sense to design any ships until those all pop, so I'll hold off on fleet building for now.

Rana is only at 10/20 pop, and Hostile so it won't grow quickly; I slip in 9 million from nearby Maalor to stand it up faster (using Eco spending to regrow, of course). Talas and Galos (our new Dead worlds) are already maxed on population, nice work there from Dathon.

I just don't see us fighting the Humans in the immediate future, so I upgrade our trade agreement to the max, 550BC. That drops our income enormously at the moment, but it will climb and boost relations. I also sign the Humans to a Non-Agression Pact (not going to be fighting over border worlds). Once our trade agreement matures, we can think about signing another one with another race (Meklar, possibly? I think the Darloks and Mrrshans will probably be our first sporing targets).

(2) 2402 Improved Space Scanner, Terraforming +30, and Scatter Pack V all enter the percentages. Let's see how long it takes for them to pop.

(3) 2403 Found Cygni:

A very precarious world, but we can have it do nothing but build factories/bases for the forseeable future. Always nice to have a secure fort behind enemy lines. I send 8 million from Proteus (the only planet nearby) this turn, and will do the same the following 2 turns as well. That should get it up to full speed in short order.

(6) 2406 Not having as much luck with the techs this time around, but that's probably OK. Now we may as well wait for Construction research (Reduced Industrial 60%) to finish before getting into the shipbuilding department.

(7) 2407 Of course, since I said something last turn, Terraforming +30 finishes - ha!

Well, I know what I'm going to be doing the rest of my turn... I have the option of Controlled Radiated or Terraforming +40, so naturally I go for Controlled Radiated. Still have a couple of Inferno/Toxic planets around us to settle. We're getting a really nice path through the Planetology tree here! (+10, Improved Eco, Controlled Dead, +30, Controlled Radiated)

Scout determines why the Mrrshans haven't colonized the planet next to them: it has none. Heh. I have our Poor and Ultra Poor worlds conduct research while everyone else terraforms and adds factories (although of course I'll go back and terraform them once the regular worlds max out again). Some of our smaller planets are really going to benefit from those extra 20 million lizards! (and 60 factories)

(8) 2408 Now the fun part: measuring out the correct BC amount to max factories with no waste at each world. Yay! Each factory costs 13.5 BC, so I definitely use a calculator here. (At least the small ones won't even be close for a couple of turns, so I don't have to measure there just yet.)

(9) 2409

Well that makes me feel a lot better; our bases will be able to shred any early-game junk now (especially with the Planetary Shield V we have almost finished). I have only one choice to move further up the tree, so Hard Beam it is. (Pretty decent weapon too; we could use a new beam weapon.)

(10) 2410 Improved Space Scanner finishes between turns; pretty good luck here at the end of my turn after inactivity earlier. Robotics IV is not present, so the clear pick is Battle Computer Mark V. Since we're still using Mark II, that will be a major upgrade.

Sssla maxes population and factories at the new levels, the first planet to do so. That allows me to set it to research, and then go back and terraform the Poor/Ultra Poor planets. Many more planets will max out factories next turn; I've already done the measuring, so StuporMan won't have to worry about it for at least one turn. There will be some opportunities to move population around to our new Hostile worlds as they finish their (slow) terraforming, so keep an eye on that.

With our new terraforming, we now have a significant population lead over the rest of the galaxy, although I think we're still a little short of 1/3. Humans have the second highest population (unless the Bulrathi in the fog have more than them), so we'll have to keep an eye on diplomacy. We're almost out of the hole in terms of our trade agreement with the Humans (down to -25BC), and so it may be a good idea to sign another one soon with a different race to boost relations and (eventually) income. We don't have nearly enough miniaturization to fit Death Spores on a Small hull, but we can pack 2 of them on a Medium with room for other goodies. Question: do Spores always hit, or do you need to make a successful attack roll? Just wondering if we should even bother with a Battle Computer on a dedicated Spore model. We can now fit an Ion Cannon on a Small hull, so that might be a good complement for our Spore ships.

Map:

I failed to scout east of Cygni, so we should probably design a Warp 3 scout and do that. Sorry! I make mistakes too, you know. Once we finish terraforming and add Planetary Shield Vs on each world, I think we'll be more than safe enough to go on the attack. Everything looking good, so let's keep trucking along and remember to check F8 each turns for potential attacks (yes, we now have a decent scanner!)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/OSG14b-2410.zip

 

[dathon78]

Question: do Spores always hit, or do you need to make a successful attack roll?

From the MOO strategy guide, spores are handles like bombs for to-hit purposes. Battle computers are definitely necessary, especially against races with high ECM. Maybe not the most realistic model, but that's the way it is. The difference is that to-hit does not determine damage like; if a spore hits, a roll is made, and the max damage is based on that. Death spores always do one damage, Doom virus does 1-2 (50% chance), and Bio terminator does 1-3.

measuring out the correct BC amount to max factories with no waste at each world.

I usually don't bother with that. Having extra in the planetary reserve is definitely not a bad thing. Never know when you need to double defense spending, or grease some diplomatic skids. I usually just set the bars as far as they will go, unless the reserve is bursting at the seams.

Good set of turns! Keep it going Stup

dathon

 

[StuporMan]

I will likely get to the save tomorrow. One thing is concerning me though, we are getting close to an election, we likely do not have enough to block, and Humans are our opponents (if Bulrathi had enough worlds to be #2 votes would have happened long ago).

To this end, I intend to NOT use any bioweapons yet. Since we have at least a few worlds left to colonize peacefully, we might as well wait to see if we can't get spores on a small before our peaceful colonies get up to speed. I do not want to be fighting a final war with medium sized 'bombers' if I can help it.

StuporMan

 

[StuporMan]

Another pretty quiet turnset, pop/fact building was the rule early and hard teching the latter. I did pop out 6 scout 3's to take a peek at the uncolonized eastern worlds in our range. There is some very good news on that front, there are 2 rich worlds out there and both we can colonize. There is already a colony ship headed to the Rich Tundra in the FAR east, and another one en route to Cygni (due in 2 turns). Don't forget to send that one to the rich Dead world. The rest of the worlds were Toxic normals and we can colonize them shortly after we get Radiated tech.

The bad news is our opponent will most certainly be the Humans. The worse news is that they are in and out of alliances with the Meklar, Darlok, and Bulrathi. That leaves only the Mrrshan who are LIKELY to abstain from the vote and they will have only 1-2 votes. We will be lucky to not lose the first election, and each one after becomes more precarious until we reach 1/3 population. I tried to stir up some trouble for the pink-skins, but nobody was interested in starting a war with the Honorable Humans.

More good news, Reduced 60% pops mid turn and I choose IIT6 (only option), then Planetary V pops late in the turnset choosing our only advancing option of FF5. All planets, except for poors and our hostiles that are still fact building, are building shields (25% as the need is still not too pressing).

I did not do any redesigns (other than scout 3), so the next player may want to consider this. Also note, we are getting fairly close to fitting spores on a small, I think once Radiated and IIT6 hits they will be good to go (I am not positive on this). Our next leader may want to try some more diplomatic games to keep the humans from winning the vote that is due at any time now. Each colonization is a calculated risk now, each one gives us a benefit, but each one could lead to a lost vote. Final war could be devastating to us as it will only take 1 opponent to research antidotes to render our offense useless for a great number of turns. Proceed with caution!

StuporMan

 

[Sullla]

There is some very good news on that front, there are 2 rich worlds out there and both we can colonize. There is already a colony ship headed to the Rich Tundra in the FAR east, and another one en route to Cygni (due in 2 turns). Don't forget to send that one to the rich Dead world. The rest of the worlds were Toxic normals and we can colonize them shortly after we get Radiated tech.

Ouch! I feel really bad about not scouting those worlds on my turnset now. We could have had a 10-turn head start at colonizing them, plus potentially gotten to some worlds that may fall to another race now. On the plus side, our land grab is nothing short of "fantastic" at this point, and we may as well keep teching so long as we can expand peacefully. No point in declaring war until our new acquisitons can defend themselves.

Diplomatically, we just need to make sure we don't lose this upcoming 2425 vote. I think we're real close to 1/3, and certainly will be over that by 2450 barring a catastrophic turn of events. What I would probably do in this situation is gift some kind of cheap tech to the backwards Mrrshans to ensure that they won't vote against us in the next election; I usually NEVER give out tech gifts, because it's way too easy to manipulate the AI that way, but we need to make sure we survive this last election. Dathon can also check whether we can get the Humans and Darloks to declare war on one another; with everyone hating the Darloks, we'll probably be able to stir something up. And the shapeshifters won't vote for the humans if they're at war with them!

We're even in tech with all other races, beginning to pull ahead in production, and about to discover Controlled Radiated, which will open up a staggering SEVEN (!!!) new planets for colonization. We could easily have as many as 25 planets before the landgrab is finished - none of the AIs has more than 9. I like our chances.

Dathon <<< UP NOW
Sullla <<< on deck
StuporMan

 

[dathon78]

Diplomatically, we just need to make sure we don't lose this upcoming 2425 vote

Have we had the first vote yet? I can't find it anywhere in the reports. If not, we could be getting the vote at any time. That said, I don't like asking for war declarations that we aren't going to participate in, nor gifting tech for, well, anything However, I'd also hate to lose this concept with an unlucky early vote, so I'm on the fence here. OTOH, as Sullla mentioned, we may be able to peacefully absorb a full quarter of the galaxy without firing a shot, so I'm not sure how much the bioweapons are going to matter anyway. Obviously, I didn't get to this today, but should tomorrow. Sorry for the hold up!

dathon

 

[Sullla]

Good point; I just assumed that we'd already held at least one vote. With no Silicoids in this galaxy, it even makes sense. Not too often you see an Impossible game get to 2425 without a vote!

I don't like asking for phony war declarations or bribing the AI for relations boosts either; you'll almost never see me do either. (Now if I get declared on by someone else, I'm darn sight going to do all I can to prevent a military dogpile! That's a different story.) Pretty much the ONLY time you'll see me do this is when I feel that I'm outright going to lose the game if I don't. That happened to me in my second Impossible game; I was the Humans (the HUMANS!) and the Silicoids cheezed their way into a 2400 diplo win via early game alliances.

I'm not suggesting we exploit these gray areas of the game into the ground, just make sure we don't lose the first council vote of the game. Because that would just stink with how well we're looking right now.

 

[StuporMan]

Well, a diplo loss does not have to be a loss necessarily. I think we can participate in a final war and manage all right, provided antidotes do not get discovered too early. Of course, even that can be countered with Bioterminators. If bioterminators are missing and that happens we still have an out, we can still use BEAMS to take out planets we do not want to colonize (it is technically legal in this variant, though I would say this should be a last resort).

Oh, and before we get too concerned over antidotes, we probably ought to check our oppositions tech. Since we are getting close to attacking, we should know who we can and cannot attack.

And when I was trying to start a war with Darloks or Meklars against humans, I was not intending it to be a war we didn't participate in. I fully intended to attack either the Darloks or Meklar eventually. I may have even considered going after the Humans to knock them out of election contention. I much prefer a Darlok opponent to a Human in an election.

On a side note, our great expansion really is a bit of a let down to the variant. We already own almost a quarter of the galaxy and have not fired a shot, nor even built a ship with offensive capabilities. We really lucked out in our oppositions lack of planetology tech. We have been unopposed on anything hostile so far this game.

StuporMan

 

[dathon78]

I hemmed and hawed quite a bit in my head about whether or not to stir up diplomatic trouble for the Humans. Looking at the graphs, we had to be close to 1/3, but I wasn't sure. It was the apes themselves that stirred me to action, though, signing alliances with the Bulrathi, Meklar, AND Darlok on my second turn Thankfully, they were willing to declare on the Darloks. Colonizing the second planet in the south was enough to trip the vote (which, incidentally, did end up happening in 2425 ) The results:

For the Humans: Bulrathi (3), Human (9), Meklar (4), and Mrrshan (2)
For the Sakkra: Darlok (7)
We abstained with 12 votes. Without the war declaration, we would have lost the council by a single vote. Whew!

The Mrrshan showed their displeasure at this turn of events by declaring war two turns later. I had already opened up some exploratory spying on them (and everybody else) earlier, and they are most definitely not a threat. None of their current weapons can penetrate our shielding. Better news, nobody has antidote yet. I stole ECM I off the cats after the war declaration, and we have some more espionage with them going. The cats have their entire fleet heading towards Proxima, but there's a shield there, so no worries. The planet is currently building bases to try and take out some of that fleet.

On the tech front, Controlled Radiated popped on my last turn. I went back for Enhanced Eco, but our next choice should definitely be Atmospheric Terraforming given the number of small, hostile planets we have. I actually slightly regret going back for the Eco in hindsight, but it's done now. All other fields, save maybe shields, should pop on the next turn set.

On the expansion front, Moro and Gion have been colonized in the East, and are currently terraforming. The SE corner has been scouted, and there are 5 (!) planets down there to grab, bringing our total to a staggering 11 planets. Maalor is building a ship for the radiated near it. Proteus is building for the inferno and toxic on our Eastern border. For the rest, I've set Selia as a rally point. I also noticed that the green star in the nebula in the far West has not been scouted, so there's a warp one scout on the way.

Strategically, we're in an interesting situation. We have a LOT of land, but the Kittens have attacked before we could secure it. If we decide to go after the cats, I imagine our relations are going to degenerate into a dogpile pretty quick. The Humans have been concentrating on shield tech, which is mostly irrelevant to us, but the Meklar's have Fusion Bombs and Beams, Merculites, Megabolts, Spores, and Repulsors. They could be quite the force to contend with, especially at our current tech level. I would actually be tempted to not respond quite yet to the Kitten's temper tantrum. I'd like to see some of those rich systems in the SE stood up before we go on a major offensive.

I don't think we're going to be fitting Spores on a small ship any time soon, not with the computers and engines they'll need, so it's going to have to be mediums or larges. Larges actually might fare better here. I designed two hypothetical boats, and for the cost of 6 2-spore mediums, we can have a large with better shielding and 13 spores. I would NOT build these, as we have a lot of tech that's going to pop; they're just examples.

Good Luck Sullla!
dathon

 

[Sullla]

Wow, a lot going on during those last 10 turns. (Makes me wonder if I'm the only one who's going to do screenshots, eh? ) I am VERY glad that Dathon got the Darloks and Humans into a conflict, because Final War is not the situation we want to be in. Even though we could probably survive it and still win out (maybe), any comparisons with the "A" team would have gone out the window right there. And frankly, I don't like the whole Final War paradigm anyway; if I lose a vote, I consider the game to be a loss and just move on to the next one. Regardless of how we pulled it off, good job to avoid the diplo loss.

The one minor nit I would have from these turns was already pointed out by Dathon himself:

On the tech front, Controlled Radiated popped on my last turn. I went back for Enhanced Eco, but our next choice should definitely be Atmospheric Terraforming given the number of small, hostile planets we have. I actually slightly regret going back for the Eco in hindsight, but it's done now.

I'm a big fan of advancing up the tree as quickly as possible with minimal backtracking; with Improved Eco AND Reduced Waste 60%, we had very little need for additional waste cleanup, while Atmospheric Terraforming would be a major benefit to our many hostile worlds, PLUS push us further up the tree. Still, mostly water under the bridge at this point, and not a major concern.

I think we have enough on our hands with adding new colonies and standing them up without going on the offensive, but I'll see what happens on my turn. Amazingly, we may find ourselves allying with the Darloks against the other races in this galaxy. Never would have expected that!

 

[Sullla]

(0) 2430 OK, first things first. LOOK at this galaxy map we've got!

Dathon wasn't kidding when he mentioned that we had no less than ELEVEN different worlds to grab. My mission should therefore be clear: see if I can grab ALL of them before the end of my turnset. With our expertise in Planetology, we could potentially even be able to walk to a Conquest win without firing a shot, heh. (Atmospheric + Advanced Soil at all those worlds = lots 'o lizards!) We only just hit Controlled Radiated, so I've got a lot of ships to build.

I notice a lot of planets with a couple of ticks in defense spending. There's probably nothing wrong with this, but I like to have my worlds putting 100% of their spending into whatever I'm emphasizing at the moment. That is, I'd rather be going full blast on bases, OR max speed on research, one or the other - not trying to do a little of both at the same time. I therefore do some adjusting of the sliders; feel free to reset to fit your own personal preferences as desired.

With us at peace for the immediate future, now is the perfect time to build up our Poor planet, so I go back to doing that. It should be able to max factories by the end of my turn, then can start building a shield and some bases for itself (yes, these planets CAN defend themselves given enough time!) The Ultra Poor I will, however, keep on research - if only to humor the rest of my team.

I also reshuffle some of the RELOC orders, planning out a destination for each colony ship I plan to build (this is not something Dathon could have done on his final turn, so not a criticism here). Since Proxima is 100% safe against Mrrshan incursion, I also have it go back to maxing factories rather than adding more bases (3 is plenty). And with that, everything looks good!

(1) 2431 Not much going on. Lots of colony ships getting ready to pop.

(2) 2432 Here's the Mrrshan fleet:

The only dangerous ships are the Larges containing Heavy Ion Cannons, but of course they're glacially slow at Warp 1 speed. I focus on the Warcats first, killing three of them before their missiles take out our scout and they retreat. Not much of a battle, to be honest.

Sssla and Quayal finish colony ships, and continue building more. Talas maxes and begins some base construction (it's a frontline world on the Meklar border, so we'll want a good amount here).

(3) 2433 Mrrshans are intent on killing our scout at Proxima, allowing our Scatter Pack bases to waste their ships with no losses. We discover Warp Dissipator tech! The pick is between Range 9 or Impulse Drives (Warp 5), so that's an easy choice and I select the better engines. We build FOUR (!) colony ships this turn, heh. Proxima also maxes factories, and I elect to add some more bases. Coordinating all this is a bit tricky, but also fun.

(4) 2434 Our first new colony is born!

Hopefully many more to follow in Reticuli's wake. I quickly send 38 mil from the surrounding worlds to get it up to speed. (Size 40 Radiated? Pretty nice. That'll be base size 70 after Atmospheric Terraforming!)

(5) 2435 Found a new colony on Ukko; I of course send population there from nearby Proteus. 3 more colony ships complete, finishing our total needed for my round. Now if I can just keep the orders straight! I've been sending the first colony ships to the furthest (and least-safe destinations), so many of them won't land until StuporMan's turns. Still, I think we're in prime position at this point to potentially land all 11!

(7) 2437 The Meklar sent a colony ship to Exis, a Rich Toxic world in the extreme southeast, but I manage to dodge their nuke missiles with our scouts and thus get them to retreat. Whew! (Not that they could have settled there anyway, but easier all around this way.) We build new colonies at Bootis (Toxic 55) and Hyboria (Toxic 35). I shuffle population around to help out our new worlds. Our lizards are really starting to get out of control in this galaxy...

(8) 2438 The Mrrshans try again at Proxima. They fail again; with 11 Scatter Pack V bases, the slaughter is indiscriminate. We colonize Toranor (Toxic 25) and find a system with no planet in the west, over by the Meklar. No further opportunity to expand over there, oh well. The Meklar then come calling, asking for a Non-Aggression Pact, which I happily accept. I also realize our Espionage against the kitties is pointless because they have nothing to steal, so I go back to one tick of spying for each race (I do leave Espionage on against the Mrrshans on the off chance we get a lucky dice roll.)

(9) 2439 Discover Battle Computer Mark V; our next choices are Mark VI or Advanced Space Scanner. Since we just discovered a computer, I opt to go for the scanner upgrade. We can then finally dispense with the need to move scouts around after that!

Very bad news on our Weapons research though:

We were at 20% to discover Hard Beam tech, ouch! That's a major setback. Not on a tech we really need, but still painful. The Humans also come to us protesting about sabotage; we were framed by the Darloks. Maybe attacking the shapeshifters isn't such a bad idea...

(10) 2440 Mrrshans attack again; they fail again. Badly. Construction tech pops and gives us Improved Industrial 6, which will be a major help to our new worlds (drops factory costs from 13.5 BC to 9 BC each - big difference!) Our only next choice is Reduced Industrial Waste 40%, which makes our Improved Eco research look a little silly. Still, you can't see the tech tree ahead of you, so sometimes it happens. I do shift 3 clicks from Construction research to Planetology, however.

We establish colonies at Omicron (Toxic 30 Ultra Rich), Volantis (Toxic 30), Mobas (Toxic 15), and Denubius (Tundra 50). Woohoo! The other races are in trouble now! That leads to this screen:

We get the 3/8 warning, without firing a shot. Beautiful. I hope the "A" team is doing as well!

There are currently no attacks incoming against us anywhere, which is nothing short of amazing. I have our core worlds doing research, while the worlds on the periphery are either adding factories, bases, or sending population to some of our new worlds. With Improved Industrial 6 in hand, I think now is the time to start adding factories on our Ultra Poor world, but I'll leave that up to the rest of you. I've got a lot of population moving around in space, and StuporMan will get to play around with that as well. There's probably not too much you can do with the worlds in the extreme southeast, but any population that can be spared down there will definitely help out. Our last two colony ships will land in 1 and 2 turns, respectively. Amazingly I didn't forget a single RELOC order this whole turn, which is quite rare for me!

Map:

Kinda disgusting, huh? We have 26 planets (with 2 more on the way, at those two red stars in the SE), and no one else has more than 9. I'm pretty confident we'll have 1/3 of the galactic population by 2450, but the Humans DID get Terraforming +40 recently, so keep an eye on diplomacy just to be safe. Have fun!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/OSG14b-2440.zip

 

[StuporMan]

Force Fields land, and it is officially game over as we have planetary X in the tree (which I naturally choose).
Planetology comes in next and I make the obvious Atmospheric choice.

This turn actually had some interesting events. First off, the Mrrshans attack on the same turn the Humans attack the Darloks at Hyades. Humans far much better, though I do manage to lose a scout (due primarily to my not seeing a missile get fired). My dear scout pilot you will be avenged several million-fold! The humans impressively are able to mount a planetary invasion on the shape-shifters, but are not able to take the planet. They now have 2 death fleets en route there.

Other than that it was pop shifting, pop pumping, and reserve pumping going on in the southeast to get our new colonies up and going. I absolutely abuse Gion by having it build 11 lizards a turn and shipping them off to our colonies.

The final vote comes around, and I got to see how my efforts paid off. The Humans had a large jump in pop, due to +40 so it will be close to 1/3 for us in total pop.

And the votes are in:
Bulrathi Abstain!?!? - 3
Humanssss - 11
Darlok - 8 for us
Meklars Abstain!?!? - 5
Kitties - 2
Us - 19! abstain

We definitely have 1/3 now, by a decent margin. More interesting is the fact that we were 5 votes shy of being able to diplo win this one. That means, if Meklars side with us, it is game over. In other news, we can now fit spores on a small, with nothing else. One more tech in Planetology (3/4 bulb) or Construction (1/2 bulb) and we can have ourselves a small spore bomber!

Looks like it is all over but the genocide!

Stup

 

[Sullla]

Looks good, StuporMan. Given our position, I think we should probably try to go for a Conquest win at the minimum; we could easily win a diplo victory just by lining everyone up against the Humans. I mean, we DO want a chance to actually use Death Spores in this game, right?

I know we've been saying this for a while now, but with our latest round of new colonies beginning to mature, we can FINALLY get ready to go on the offensive soon. Darloks make the most sense from a geographical perspective (their territory is inside our empire!) but since they're voting for us, we should probably hit the Meklar or Humans instead first.

And we can probably wipe out the Mrrshans too while we're at it sometime soon. Cats and lizards don't get along too well.

 

[Swein Forkbeard]

I got to chat with Sullla earlier. Yay!

Sullla, did you get Master of Orion for Christmas?

I'd also like to see you try one of the historical scenarios included with Vanilla Civ4. They are:

American Revolution
Desert War (WWII)
Greek World
Earth 1000 AD

 

[dathon78]

I saw that I'm up, and I meant to get to this today, but I got swamped with a minor work crisis. Tomorrow for sure. I apologize for the delay.

dathon

 

[Sullla]

Hey, no problem. We've been flying along so far anyway, so zero need to rush the turns. Now, while we're waiting until tomorrow for the next MOO turnset, I'll take the time to answer Dathon's question:

Just out of curiosity, did you ever finish your Final Fantasy Berserkers variant? I was really intrigued when you first put it up, and wondered how that would go. I may have to try that one myself

You're about the third different person to ask me this, so I thought I'd give a more public answer (in case anyone is reading). I've actually played through most of the game with my Zerks variant, and it was a great deal of fun. But one thing led to another, and I never quite managed to finish it. I think I'm at the Sky Palace in terms of the quests... The offensive power of this group was simply sickening; I killed all of the first three Fiends in a single round of combat! But in turn, pretty much every random encounter in the game is a dire peril, leading to potential scenes like this:

It's actually pretty hilarious watching run-of-the-mill enemies kick my characters' behinds! Since I'm relatively close to the end of the game, I will probably try to go back and finish things up so that I can post a full report on the website. (I have a number of observations to make, especially with regards to the comparison between the Fighter and Black Belt classes. Lots of useful data.) I'm also looking forward to killing Chaos on the very first round of combat with this combination:

Knight (wielding Masamune): average damage = 756/attack
2 Masters: 1500 damage/attack (EACH!)
Black Wizard: NUKE

 

[dathon78]

I'm amazed that the lack of ProRing/Ribbon didn't cause more destruction. Though I guess if you're killing everything really fast, it wouldn't matter too much. Now that I see that it is indeed viable, I'm definitely going to have to give it a spin BTW, I'm here to pick up the Orion save; should be back in an hour or so

dathon

 

[dathon78]

Things are looking pretty good. The only major thing I changed was to dial up more espionage against the cats. Yes the techs are outdated, but each tech level helps, and it doesn't cost much. We managed to steal BC III on my watch; I would go for the RW80% next to up our construction level. Incidentally, the Darloks stole IIT6 as well.

I also was lucky enough to have all of the tech fields pop on my turnset:
Advanced Scanner --> RCV over BC VI
RW 40% --> IIT4 over IIT6
Class X Planetary --> Class VII over Class VI
Atmospheric --> IT +50 over cloning
Impulse Drives --> Star Gates over Range 10 (this will be GREAT for our spread out empire, particularly with all those rich planets in the SE corner. I would recommend emphasizing this.)
Hard Beam --> Megabolt over Fusion Rifles If we don't get a missile in the next rung, we should go back for Merculites. Human shielding is getting to the point where scatter packs will be ineffective.

Relations with the apes are down to restless after two empire-size warnings and a framing for factory sabotage. They glassed Hyades on my first turn, and the planet went down to size 10, so they are packing spores as well. They now also have Energy Pulsars, which could be a threat (more on that later). There's a Kitten fleet heading for Bootis, but it's got a shield and bases, so it's secure.

The rest of my turn was spent building factories, pop, terraforming, and building shields. That's just about done, but there is a little more work to do, particularly in the E/SE. I used all of our Rich/Ultra Rich planets to feed the reserves, to in turn stand up the other holdings faster. I'm a little nervous if the humans do decide to come after us. They have both a Huge and Large design that could have Class VI+ shields, rendering our bases irrelevant. Frankly I should have gone back for the Merculite's, but I just hate backtracking. Here's hoping for Pulson's!!

And since Sullla was complaining about the lack of pictures:

I took the liberty of designing some new, um, "toys" They aren't being built anywhere yet, but could be. Spores can indeed fit on a small ship now with adequate support, but I'm kind of worried about the Human energy pulsars. If they are using them widespread, we can kiss those ships goodbye. The large ship with some shielding can fit 20 spores for the price of 39 smaller spore ships. However, unlike bombs, we only need as many spore-hits as there is population. Six of those large spore ships should be more than adequate to glass a planet in a volley or two. They have twice the attack level (30% more to-hit!) and are impervious to the Pulsar. If we must go with the small ship, we should make two stacks to fake out the missile bases/pulsar/repulsor ships.

Because we are using spores, we will need a colony ship, so I re-designed that too, giving it scanners and a dissipator so it can serve as a support ship. I designed a traditional Ion fighter, but given that both the Meklar and Humans have Repulsors, I like a medium Heavy Ion better. They are expensive, but should be good against the Human behemoth ships. These designs are of course not set in stone; I built them for discussion (and for fun )

The game is getting interesting!
dathon

P.S. I went back and designed the large spore ship as I was writing this post, so it's not in the save. It can easily be reproduced from the picture though.