Our last attempt at this game wound up as a total cakewalk, as you can read about here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=147051
Fortunately I had generated two starts, so this time we will pick the harder of the two and see if that makes the game more like what we might expect from an always war game. Here's the start picture:
----------------------------------------
Always War Hard
Race: Mrrshan
Difficulty: Hard
Size: Medium
Opponents: 5
Colour: Red
Minimum Victory: Extermination!
Variant Rules
Spirit of the Rules: Always act as if we are at war with all races, even if they have not formally declared war.
* May never form any long-term treaty or trade agreement, including peace treaty
* May never offer tribute
* Must always have at least one tick of spying per race contacted; spies may not hide.
* Must always vote for ourselves in council, but may not accept a council win (or loss.) If we can't vote for ourselves, we abstain.
* Must always have at least a token force attacking any AI with whom we have contact. If we haven't met anyone yet, there's no reason to be on a war footing. Send scouts to scout AI worlds, use battle scanners to gather intelligence on AI ship/base designs, and otherwise keep tabs on enemy fleets & planetary defenses if you don't have an attack fleet on hand!
----------------------------------------
Note that you don't actually get relations penalties for using ships to harass an AI race you don't have contact with.
Lineup: I put vmxa next this time since he didn't get a turn last time.
Zed-F << 30 turns
vmxa < 20 turns
Maniac < 10 turns thereafter
catwalk
dathon
My turns:
I spend my 30 turns quietly building up in our backyard. We don't even so much as see a scout from any of the AI races. I manage to get a colony ship out the door and research Terraforming +10, and that's about it. We just founded Xudax and Dunatis is about to send 20 pop there to get it stood up. We might think about backfilling our homeworld in the near future too as it's remaxing after terraforming. We are slowly researching IIT9, Hydrogen Fuel Cells, and Tundra bases. There's a pair of Tundra worlds to our west we'll need to settle if we want to have a hope of breaking out of our corner.
Note there is one unscouted star within range 3. That's Orion. Don't go there.
Also note there are 2 yellow stars at about range 7 from our new colony. It's possible that one or both is an AI homeworld, though as I haven't seen any scouts, it seems somewhat unlikely. Then again, we don't have any decent scanners yet. Otherwise there are a bunch of stars at range 7 we can try to scout when Hydrogen Fuel Cells come in. I parked our spare scouts at our new colony.
And here's the save file: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/OSG7_2330ad_SAVE31.zip
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=147051
Fortunately I had generated two starts, so this time we will pick the harder of the two and see if that makes the game more like what we might expect from an always war game. Here's the start picture:
----------------------------------------
Always War Hard
Race: Mrrshan
Difficulty: Hard
Size: Medium
Opponents: 5
Colour: Red
Minimum Victory: Extermination!
Variant Rules
Spirit of the Rules: Always act as if we are at war with all races, even if they have not formally declared war.
* May never form any long-term treaty or trade agreement, including peace treaty
* May never offer tribute
* Must always have at least one tick of spying per race contacted; spies may not hide.
* Must always vote for ourselves in council, but may not accept a council win (or loss.) If we can't vote for ourselves, we abstain.
* Must always have at least a token force attacking any AI with whom we have contact. If we haven't met anyone yet, there's no reason to be on a war footing. Send scouts to scout AI worlds, use battle scanners to gather intelligence on AI ship/base designs, and otherwise keep tabs on enemy fleets & planetary defenses if you don't have an attack fleet on hand!
----------------------------------------
Note that you don't actually get relations penalties for using ships to harass an AI race you don't have contact with.
Lineup: I put vmxa next this time since he didn't get a turn last time.
Zed-F << 30 turns
vmxa < 20 turns
Maniac < 10 turns thereafter
catwalk
dathon
My turns:
I spend my 30 turns quietly building up in our backyard. We don't even so much as see a scout from any of the AI races. I manage to get a colony ship out the door and research Terraforming +10, and that's about it. We just founded Xudax and Dunatis is about to send 20 pop there to get it stood up. We might think about backfilling our homeworld in the near future too as it's remaxing after terraforming. We are slowly researching IIT9, Hydrogen Fuel Cells, and Tundra bases. There's a pair of Tundra worlds to our west we'll need to settle if we want to have a hope of breaking out of our corner.
Note there is one unscouted star within range 3. That's Orion. Don't go there.
Also note there are 2 yellow stars at about range 7 from our new colony. It's possible that one or both is an AI homeworld, though as I haven't seen any scouts, it seems somewhat unlikely. Then again, we don't have any decent scanners yet. Otherwise there are a bunch of stars at range 7 we can try to scout when Hydrogen Fuel Cells come in. I parked our spare scouts at our new colony.
And here's the save file: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/OSG7_2330ad_SAVE31.zip
