OSG9 -- Mighty Meklars

[StuporMan]

Well it looks like things are starting to get interesting. We are at war with everyone that has met us, but on the plus side we have more people to steal from (and they should prove easier targets). It seems our priorities should be to get up missile bases on our front line colonies, and fleets over Jinga and Phyco for defense. And it looks as though a fleet is inbound to Jinga. We may have to sacrifice the ultra poor to the potato god.

One interesting thing to note, is that Imra is far from the Darlok core. Unless they can maintain an alliance with either the Sillys or the Bulrathis they cannot defend it. And a quick look at the save reveals they are only allied with the Humans. We might be able to destroy and resettle the colony, and actually make progress in an early war against impossible AIs. We will have to get either Dead Colony to be able to fit reserve tanks, or Range 6 to make it work though. So we may want to shift research priorities.

We also probably want to shift our spying to Sillys and Bulrathis. The Bulrathi's especially should be easy to spy on.

StuporMan

 

[Yuri2356]

"Oh god, please don't let me die today, tomorrow would be so much better!"
-Traditional Spathi Prayer

Got it, will play later today.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

I took a look at the save file. We're starting to get bases established on Rayden and Thrax, which is good. You may want to consider putting a couple of clicks into bases on Bootis and Meklon. They don't look like they need any bases immediately, but putting them on a 10 or 15 year schedule would be prudent.

You also probably want to build some more ships. The small laser ships are a better deal than the LR Laz's, because we don't need the extended range at this point. You could also design a new ship with more weapons. I'd recommend increasing our defense fleets at Jinga and Phyco, as well as sending something to Maretta. You might even want to station some more ships at Misha, since we don't want anyone establishing a base in the middle of our core.

We are definitely under the gun right now, but if we can get missile bases up, our planets will be immune to a good fraction of the current enemy ships (anything sporting lasers or gatling lasers can't even touch a missile base). So if we can hold the line and start maxing out the factories on some of our planets, we should be able to turn the corner and think about offense. None of the AIs are going to sue for peace until we can take the fight to them and hopefully slag some of their planets.

Anyone else reconsidering our decision not to ask the rockheads to help us against the Darlocks when we had the chance?

 

[Zed-F]

Heh. If we didn't have that variant restriction, it would have been my first suggestion. However, since we didn't have any intention of attacking the Darloks, even though they declared first, it still didn't feel right for the variant.

We might still get the chance to ask for help. Depends on how aggressively these guys decide to prosecute this war, and whether these guys start any infighting amongst themselves. We got boned by the early alliance behaviour here, but once that devolves into general warfare, we might be able to make peace with these guys individually. Hopefully we last that long. I suspect we're likely to have the Darloks framing us until they make a worse enemy, though, which will just make things all that much harder.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

Actually, the variant restriction wouldn't have prevented us from recruiting the Silicoids in this instance. It only says we can start spectator wars; which means that we can't start a war and then stay at peace with both sides. Whether or not we are in a position to go on offense isn't a factor.

The only situation where an attack is required is if you are currently at peace with both races, but want them to go to war. In that case, you need to be able to force the enemy race to declare war on you, and since the game lacks the option to do this diplomatically, you have to do it with ships.

 

[Zed-F]

Technically, yeah, but by the discussion we had on the RB forums before the game started, it still 'felt' wrong to ask for a declaration from the Silicoids when we were not intending to commit to battle. It seemed like the rest of you felt the same way, since there was no argument in favour of doing so.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

I also agree with our decision to hold off when we did. As far as we knew, the Darlocks weren't really serious about going to war with us. Come to think of it, we still don't really know. They have three medium ships inbound, but unless I missed something, those will be the first Darlock ships we've faced. The Silicoids sent more our way even before they declared war on us.

Also, the Bulrathis can't even reach us right now. Their nearest colony is 5 parsecs out, and they only have range 4. Even if they get more range soon, Hyboria is in a tenous position for them, so it's doubtful that they will send out a fleet that relies on Hyboria for refueling. War with them at this point is just a chance to spy on someone easier than the Darlocks.

 

[Liquidated]

honestly, the lack of trade routes to cultivate even a minimal amount of positive faction hurt us alot when trying to deal with the sillys...That and you know darn well the darloks can frame us any old time on spying fun.

Well other than jinga (which cannot help itself at all) the other planets we have are totally solid in both population and industry.

Bootis is a prime canadate for pumping out ships btw as it's in back and full up on industry. To keep phycho and jinga we are gonna need them.


Cheers!
-Liq

 

[Zed-F]

I got the impression we are building industry on Jinga? If so, we might want to stop doing that. The horizon for return on investment on factories on ultra-poor worlds is a very long time until you get enough tech to build factories a lot faster than we are capable of now. We want to get whatever benefit we can out of the world now, not a century from now. It should be building research or defense, and of course troops.

 

[StuporMan]

Since we have a fleet incoming that we are not likely to be capable of dealing with (3 Med > 15 smalls due to tech advantage). We proabably want to get Jinga to +1 pop per turn to repel an invasion while Bootis builds us a decent fleet to repel the invaders. The rest should go to research to maximize profits.

Although, since Jinga is an Ultra Poor, it may serve us better to let the Darloks take it. They will not be capable of defending it, nor will anyone else for a long while. It should quickly assume spud status and serve to get the local AIs sufficiently mad at one another to leave our better defended worlds alone. This move, however, seems to be in direct contrast to the variant rules.

StuporMan

 

[Zed-F]

Yuri, you out there?

OlorinStormcrow, you might need to execute a skip if we don't hear from Yuri shortly.

 

[Yuri2356]

Sorry about that, folks, had a very busy weekend to deal with. I'll be right with you.

 

[Yuri2356]

Well, I was in the middle of turn 6 when an error struck in mid-battle, forcing me back to an auto-save. I was left back at 2374, a minor delay.

In a wonderfull stroke of luck, our small ships at Jinga managed to hold off the three Dark Mediums after three turns of skirmishing. We lost 9 of them, but the planet has been held.

In this year, the Darklocks won the Council vote, supposedly making them the new rulers of the galaxy. Naturally, I had no time for the mad ramblings of shapeless Xenoes, and returned to swatting their vessels from the stars with our newest missile bases. Thrax, and Rayden are both protected, and a new breed of Three-Laser Medium ships, with Computers, type II shields, and ECM I are now in play for our protection.

An LR laser is forced to retreat from Darklok Space, but elsewhere our bases kill off a Large and three mediums effortnessly. A warning though, Silicoid Colony ships are packing bombs, so we'd best double up on the bases before shifting focus elsewhere.

The Darks slip in and settle Misha (That Hostile, Barren, size 10) Ships are sent to reinforce Maretta in response, and more effor it put into fortifying our borders. The sooner that our planets can fend for themselves, the sooner we can start focusing the firepower of our fleet.

Darkloks seize orbit over Jinga with two mediums. One of them had gattling lasers, small ships completely destroyed. 1 Factory lost in bombing, but Meds of our own are on the way. Also, Silicoids Colonize Keeta (Little fronzen rock up north)

Sucessfull infiltration of the Bulrathi, all categories but construction open for grabbage. Unsure of what they have, I take a chance with weapons. My efforts are rewarded with the good 'ol fasioned Hyper-V rocket. Huzzah!

More bombing at Jinga, 4 factories an 1 million people lost. I continue to generally dig in arround the homefront.

Darkloks attack Thrax, but run in fear from their twin missile bases. Annother Spy breaches the Bulrathi, construction is availible this time so I try it, getting IIT9. A bit of a plus while we wait for 8 to come in, at minimal cost. Thrax, Rayden, and Melkon are all now defended by Missile bases, with more coming-soon to Bootis and Maretta.

The Darkloks invade Jinga. They have Zortium armour, Personal Shields, and Ion rifles. Naturally, our people are slaughtered and the surviving 25 of 43 Darks take control. A wealthy Merchant then gives them 800 BC.

Prick.

As I enter my final turn, Unknown spies destroy factories on Rayden, but all else is quiet...

Aside from a Huge-Silicoid ship bearing down on Thrax!

So there we sit. We've been winning most of the battles here, but the final war is on. It's them or us, no two ways about it. Have fun.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

Well, what do people think?

Having the vote go to the Darlocks at this point is bad luck. I did a quick try from Liq's save and the Klackons and Humans abstained.

I played a few turns from Yuri's save. Thrax gets hit the next turn by a 900 hp auto-repair Huge carrying 15 Hyper-X 5 count, and a bunch of lasers. Two Hyper-X volleys wiped out our 2 missile bases, who couldn't exceed the auto-repair anyway.

The AIs have 4+ techs on us in every catagory, including Mercs and Hard Beams, Planetary Shields, Auto-repair and Zortrium armor. The Huge that killed Thrax wasn't even an up-to-date model.

Thrax dies 2 turns later when 37 Silicoid troops take out 93 defenders.

We could draw this out and build bases like crazy, and try to spy our way out of the tech hole. I'm sure we could last awhile, but only because the AI is ******** when it comes to final war. Anyone one of the AIs could easily build a couple auto-repair Huges with Merc missiles, anti-missile rockets, fusion drives, etc., and obliterate us.

I'm of the opinion that this is a lost cause. 5 strong Impossible AIs when we don't have more than 2 missile bases at any planet? And those are packing Hyper-Vs to fire at ships that potentially will have class 5 shields?

What do the rest of you think? Did we handicap ourselves too much, or just get unlucky with the council vote. Should we try again on a lower difficulty, or with less restrictions (allow scout blockades, or trading, no mandatory espionage spending?)

Or should we stick it out until the last cyborg is added to the scrapheap?

 

[Liquidated]

hehe put it this way...

Darlocks are the most hated race in game will sillys right behind them... for darloks to win a vote this early is bad luck yes but what weapons do we have to rely on that next vote doesn;t follow the same path? Since they now trade tech instantly, our tech deficit (which is going already on bad footing) is going to get much much worse.

Lost cause imo.

This game really shows the importance that mininmal trade routes provide simply because there's really no other form of positive diplomacy that early in the game.

For all the mismanagment of jinga (liq's partial fault) nothing that planet could provide would have made a whit of difference, it being ulta poor and on our almost non existant border. The rest of our planets were solid and we got enough to go on. Our tech choices were perfectly fine and we played a race that has one of the strongest opening games. Yet all this and diplomacy really bit us hard. Honestly all we had to do was keep the rockheads on the 'L side the neutral T' and we would have had the game np.

With all the depth that civ4 brings to the table, with various ingame and rb inspired tweaks in the rules.... Our beloved moo I think is just too simple a game to cut out so staple a mechanic.

I shudder to think of a game were we got a bad deal on the planets

I'm up for trying same settings on difficult tho. The difference in difficulty is more than a mere step or two.

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[StuporMan]

Well, I think this game is a lost cause as well. I DO think that it is possible to win on Impossible with the chosen variant, though. I think we ended up with some bad dice rolls on the Council vote, and that was our undoing. If we had asked for Silicoid help earlier in the war (when Darloks first sent ships), we probably could have made it past this vote no problem. If we could have made it past another couple of votes, we would be in a position to take a shot at winning a final war. I vote that we get a new start and try again.

StuporMan

 

[dathon78]

Unfortunately, looks like we got bit by the early-alliance behaviour of the AI. Works well, especially on lower difficulties, to get the AI's out of their corners and exploring the galaxy; unfortunately, it bit us here with the council vote. Personally, I've always wanted a way to turn off council votes before a certain date, say, 100 turns in or something, but alas, I think Microprose stopped patching this a little while back

I'll go either way on whether to quit or not, though if we go into turtle mode, we can probably start running 20 turns per player. Or we can start fresh.

dathon

 

[Yuri2356]

I'd go with starting fresh. There's nothing that can turn this arround short of rigging the RNG to always roll in our favour.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

If we go for a new start, should we keep the same conditions, change the difficulty level, change race, relax some of the variant rules?

I won't have time to get a new start going until Wednesday. If someone else wants to get us started before then, feel free.

 

[Zed-F]

We got smoked on Hard with OSG5 by having a too-restrictive ruleset (and an aggressive powerhouse for a neighbor.) This ruleset isn't as restrictive and I think a game on Hard could turn out to be a good challenge -- but it could also turn out too easy. I think we were mainly a victim of bad luck here... but it's true that playing diplomacy games is often a requirement to win on Impossible, depending on how good a start you get and how good a start your neighbors get.

Let's try it on Hard with the same race/rules and see what happens. If it turns out to be too easy, we can always make another Impossible game next.