OSG21 - Big Brother

[Zed-F]

@Zed ... well, not really. As I understand it, the point was to have the cats voted in, with us NOT being a contender in the election. Now granted, that may become impossible depending on how relations fall out, but I believe that was the original goal.

dathon

If the cats have enough votes, it doesn't matter if we abstain in the election; so long as there are at least 3 races still in the game, they will still win.

Sure, we could leave one race as a fall guy and try to remain under their pop level. Or, we could just keep a few zoo worlds around for every other race, and try to help the kitties win on the basis of their own raw pop, even assuming we are in 2nd and abstain. If we tick off the other races of the galaxy enough, they may well vote cats just to spite us. I would tend to go this route anyway since it will be simpler for us to control events to our taste if we have more economic (and thus military) power.

*shrug* I guess there is more than one way to laurel this cat. Which will be easiest, we'll have to see in due course. I don't plan to make any irrevocable decisions at this early stage.

 

[AlanSHB]

I think the variant is more interesting if the player controlled race is intentionally kept out of the running by maintaining 3rd place on pop.

For one, it lets you vote for the cats without it being variant breaking, for the second point it makes it more important to keep helping your brother grow so they can keep up with 'good AI x'

I'm sure it's possible to genocide everyone but the cats then let them win, I don't think that fits the spirit of the variant very well.

 

[Zed-F]

I dunno, I seem to recall a Civ Big Brother or two turning out to be a 'kill everyone but big brother' fest. Certainly we could have considered a 'no offensive action except to support big brother' ruling, but we didn't. Something to consider for next time, perhaps.

Regardless, naturally we could make an attempt to remain in 3rd and if it doesn't work out that way, then do it the other way. *shrug* We'll just see how the ball of string bounces.

 

[AlanSHB]

Call it belling the cat to stay in 3rd and force an election of the "occluded diplomacy" cats =P

 

[Zed-F]

Some very quiet turns....

Pretty much I opened the save, fiddled with the tech sliders, gave our two new techs to the Mrrshan and asked for an alliance (which they agreed to), built a few new scouts, sent them out... and then hit next turn 10 times.

Really not much new to report. Thanks to our alliance we can see a couple new Alkari planets but don't have the range for contact yet. I used Rotan as a pop supplier for our northern planets, and some for our south as well but it's too far away to be really useful for the latter, so I eventually let it max. It's trickle-building new scouts for further exploration but we probably have enough now. The northern half of our empire is now fully developed or within a couple turns of being fully developed. Our two southernmost planets are still building up but now have a respectable industrial base to work from.

Militarily, we are now the proud owner of one missile base, on our northernmost planet, in addition to a number of warp 2 scouts.
I suppose we could think about beefing this up a tad... we probably don't need a lot until we get contact with more races though. Other races can't get ticked off with us if we don't have contact, as we found out in the early war variant where we were *trying* to get other races angry enough with us to declare war.

Tech-wise... a whole bunch of goodies are due any year now, with 5 techs having full bulbs or in percentages. RC3 and IIT8 should hit at roughly the same time and our planets all have a decent installed base, so the jump in factory prices ought not to hit our build up too badly.

Steady as she goes, looks like...

 

[dathon78]

Zed, I agree that it is likely that this will de-generate into a kill-everybody-but-the-kitties, and that's not even that much of a bad thing in my view. I was just trying to interpret RefSteel's intention based on the posts at RB, since this was his idea originally

Haven't had a chance to look at the saves, but I'm sure we are sitting in good shape after your turns. Good work getting the Alliance going; that's one of the major potential stumbling blocks overcome. sargon9, you're up!

dathon

 

[sargon0]

Okay, got it. Looks to be developing well and about to gain some useful techs to boost us and our puppets, sorry allies. Soon time to choose some new techs and build an even stronger economy. May build an odd base or two but do not anticipate much militarily until further contact breaks.

 

[sargon0]

Quiet turns balancing tech with new round of factories.
2370 Fiddle tech sliders waiting hits and first spy
IBT NPG hits early – select Meculites over Mass Driver or Ion Rifle
2372 Personal Deflector Shield hits – select Planetary Shield V over Deflector Shield 4
2373 Robotic Controls 3 hits – choose Improved Space Scanner over ECM3. Spy reports:

2374 Gift NPG+PDS to cats, now at Peaceful
IBT IIT8 & Enhanced ECO hit – choose Battle suits over Reduced Waste 60% or IIT7 and Radiated from the following:

I push Radiated to eventually help cats.
2375 Gift IIT8+Enhanced ECO to cats – can now consider RC3 but wait to allow them time to develop newer colonies
...
2380 Sub-light in percentages, Planetary Shield V at full bulb, ISS+Radiated+Meculites well along, Battle Suits just started. Mentar & Hyades will Max this turn, Rotan & Xudax will Max next turn with Rayden & Helos still to catch up. No new ships or bases.

Look what the cats just researched:

Shiny new Neutron Blaster!
We could do with more Range and/or cats settling towards core. We look to have tech coming & available for reasonable early defence when needed but still need further tech to start thinking about a decent navy (weapons, construction, computers). Good luck Dathon.

Savegame: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/117018/osg21_2380_SAVE3.GAM.zip

 

[Zed-F]

Mmm, that stabilizer looks like something we'd like to snag in trade from the cats too.

 

[RefSteel]

Looks like we've got a couple of healthy empires here. (Also, Zed's short-but-sweet turnset report was hilarious!) Will the Mrrshans be willing to trade their Stabilizers as soon as they have better Propulsion Tech (e.g. after we discover and trade them Sublights for Deuterium or Hyper-X or something) or do they have to research something new on their own?
By the way: I'm amazed that the Cats and Birds aren't yet at war. I guess all the still-available planets have them distracted for now.

@dathon: I think in practice, both victories are likely to be mostly the same: (mostly) clear out the weaker races to make way for the cats, then if the biggest race either has a veto or is smaller than us, start bombing them too until the situation is corrected or the kitties achieve a Conquest victory. In any case, I'd say Mrrshan Conquest of the galaxy is perfectly in keeping with our variant's "Shadowy (Darlok/)Psilon propping up a Mrrshan Tyrant" theme.
(EDIT: The reasons we're forbidden to vote for the cats when opposing them are twofold: First, from a roleplaying perspective, by voting for the Cats when we're in the running ourselves, we'd be giving our plans away to the galaxy. Second, from a game mechanics perspective, due to the way the vote works, it would just be too easy. If we put the Cats into a position where they can win in spite of our abstaining, no one in the galaxy is the wiser about our relationship, and we've obviously done a great job of strengthening the kitties.)

 

[Zed-F]

Cut-n-paste from the other (wrong) thread:

I see that I'm up, but I probably won't be getting to this today; probably tomorrow.

dathon

 

[dathon78]

Oops

 

[sargon0]

Picking up tech from the Mrrshan will help but interestingly Deuterium, Stabilizer, Barren, Hyper-V & Hyper-X are all in our tech tree; only Neutron Blaster is missing. I don't know if gifting Sub-Light when in will allow trade for IS but I did notice during my turns a delay before gifts show up on the report. If we want something early that is cheap but they cannot yet offer we may want to consider going back for it ourselves rather than wait for the backward cats - over half their current tech is our gifts! Of course advancing the tree is also desirable.

 

[dathon78]

2380: Open the game, things look pretty good. Make some slight adjustments to the tech sliders. Kittens definitely want our RC III, but they also have a lot of recently colonized worlds, so I decide to hold off on trading that to them for the moment so they don't get hammered with the higher factory costs. Actually, now that I say that, I'm not sure that the AI does have to pay those costs, but I have no way of checking right now, so we're going to assume it does Schedule some warp 2 scouts out of Hyades; I'd like to have some sentries in Mrrshan space, especially once Improved Scanners hits. I'm definitely not used to having an alliance with the AI in this game. I almost reported that the Kittens had one with the Psilons!

IBT: Sublights come in, take the Dissipator over the Stabilizer to keep the tree moving.

2382: First Elections! It's us vs the Mrrshans.

Mrrshan:
Mrrshan (5)

Abstain:
Bulrathi (2)
Meklar (4)
Alkari (5)
Klackon (3)
Us (6)

Hmm, seems we're a little big at this point. I would definitely recommend skipping the terraforming techs for now. Hopefully, the Alkari or Meklar will be able to surpass us in pop.

2386: Class V comes in, choose Repulsor. That could be a very useful tech to have for protecting the cats. What we really need, though, is Range tech, so we can get contact with the Alkari and get some intel. I go ahead and trade Class V to the cats for Range 4 (Pollus is 6 parsecs away? oops, thought we'd get bird contact for that). If they can get those shields up, they'll be impervious to the small fighters the birds like.

2387: Controlled Radiated comes in, and I take Atmospheric Terraforming over +40 or cloning. Won't help us, but it will help the cats. I tried to trade Radiated to the cats, but apparently I bugged them too much, and their diplomat left. Oops! I didn't realize you could annoy an ally.

2388: Merculite's come in, only good option is Stinger's. Well, they must not have been too annoyed, as they'll talk to me this turn. Trade Radiated for Hyper-X missiles (yes outdated, but every little bit helps with miniaturization). Hopefully this will kick the Mrrshan into some more colonizing. I'm wondering why they haven't colonized that size 100 Terran up north yet.

2389: And ISS comes in. I acutally decided to take BCV over RC IV for the moment; if we have to fight the Alkari, we're going to need it! Hmm, the Alkari have quite the little fleet there at Pollus. 300 smalls, 36 mediums, and 2 large's. That's more than the kittens have. Once Construction tech pops, we may want to design some military.

2390: Not good. The Alkari are using Pollus for a rally point. As I understand the AI, they only do that when they have a target in mind. They might have designs on Talas.

Post Game: Construction is at 17%; we should definitely design some military once that comes in. We're really lacking for beam weapons and computers, though, so a traditional Repulsor ship probably won't be very effective. Maybe some NPG fighters, or Merculite boats, although missile boats aren't good against fighters. Discussion is definitely warranted here! On the home front, Helos will be maxed next turn, and then our empire will be up to 100%. Rayden, Mentar, Rotan, and Hyades already have Class V in place. We might want another couple bases at Hyades in case the birds have the range to get there.

Roster:
dathon78 --> Just Played
RefSteel --> UP NOW
Zed-F --> On Deck
Sargon0

dathon

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/52773/osg21_2390.zip

 

[RefSteel]

I see it, but won't be able to "get it" until I get home later today, and may not be able to play until later this weekend (especially as I'd like to wait for discussion, as dathon suggested). Without being able to look at the save, my battle plan would be:
-Immediately design and build a medium ship with a Battle Scanner, to be sent to Pollus.
-Start prebuilding Repulsor Huge placeholders at two or three planets, ready to be chainsawed into smaller ships.
-Try to get IS from the cats the turn before the scanner ship hits its destination.
-Once we have our scouting report, our new Construction tech, and (if possible) IS, design new ships accordingly:
--If the Alkari smalls are bombers, I'd probably go with NPG fighters all the way (and maybe build more bases on vulnerable worlds).
--If all the bird ships use one-space beams, I'd probably go with one or two Repulsor larges with Heavy Lasers and let them handle the problem while we tech toward real computers.
--If there's a mix including beams on the smalls and missiles or two-space beams on the others, I'd use both designs, with as much tactical speed as I could give them, hoping to dodge missiles and force their smalls to deal with our larges while our fighters attack their missile boats and/or Heavy beamers.
--If they have a mix and legitimate tactical speed, I might have to come up with something different, depending on what they're carrying and whether the cats have any bases up at Talas. (e.g. large missileboat/bombers might require missile boats of our own).

 

[sargon0]

Kittens definitely want our RC III, but they also have a lot of recently colonized worlds, so I decide to hold off on trading that to them for the moment so they don't get hammered with the higher factory costs. Actually, now that I say that, I'm not sure that the AI does have to pay those costs, but I have no way of checking right now, so we're going to assume it does

The AI pays the higher factory costs for Improved Robotic Controls immediately just like the human player (except the Meklar of course).

 

[Zed-F]

You know, you *can* use one space beams on a repulsor ship. They work just fine, especially if you have high initiative. Since we don't have auto-repair, I'd think about two different large repulsor ship designs focusing on NPGs (unless the birds have uber-missiles or something.)

 

[RefSteel]

Okay, got it. Looking at the save, I see we don't actually have Repulsors yet (I should have realized this already) and actually seem closer to Warp Dissipator, so I might design a fleet around that instead when it comes in. In the meantime, I plan to build our very first armed starship, which would look like this:

Scanner is the main point, but I added Tanks to allow us to scout more distant fleets, plus Maneuver, battle computer, and an NPG in case it just needs to clear away a couple of fighters in order to scout a planet.

@Zed: I was worried that with only Battle Scanner and a Mark I computer, we might not have the initiative to risk moving Large Repulsors into point-blank range. You'd know better than I, of course. What does the equation for initative look like? (Even roughly; is it just based on Attack Level, or does Maneuver and/or ship size play a role?)

 

[sargon0]

Initiative is Battle Computers level plus maneuverability with +3 for Battle Scanner. The Alkari +3 initiative is an advantage but if they are using smalls they will not have Battle Scanner and it will come down to what Battle Computer they have and can fit. I think the idea of the design is flexibility - it can close on & kill vulnerable groups or stand-off & repulse dangerous ones. Of course better computers will make it more effective.

 

[Zed-F]

RefSteel -- there are two ways the repulsor ship can bring 1-space guns into play. One is to wait and let the enemy close, then shoot and repulse them. The other way is to move next to (preferably a single) enemy stack, shoot them, and then repulse them. I don't know whether we'll have enough of an initiative advantage against the Alkari to use the first method, but the second should be available to us. But we absolutely will need battle scanners to pull it off, either way, to counter the Alkari maneuver advantage.