RB OSG1 - Team II - Da not-quite-n00bz

[Zed-F]

Uninspired name, I know, but what can I say.

Team Two - ROSTER

Zed-F
Kylearan
Ozymandous
Kabuki
JMB
EDIT: TBC Added here!


Possibilities for the open slot: Caesar Augustus, LKendter, last-second signups...

Parameters:
Ten turns per player. 24 hours Got It, up to 48 hours to play and post. (Note that ten turns can go by awfully quickly, so we may need to adjust this for future games, but we'll see how this plays out first. Also note that you can find out the year number by looking at the top left corner of the Status dialog on the Races screen.)

Difficulty Level: Average
Map Size: Large
Race: Bulrathi
Opponents: Five
Color: Red
Minimum Victory Level: Conquest

This last one means we must achieve 2/3 of the population BY OURSELVES to win by vote. No wimping out and taking ally votes unless we're over that threshold on our own anyway. We're here to prove our might on the bodies of the AI races with our booted heels, not our writing hands!

Please use save slot 3 or 4 for this event, though personally I would prefer to go further than that and stick solely to save slot 3. Save file naming convention examples for upload purposes:

• osg1-team1-2320ad.zip
• osg1-team2-2480ad.zip
• osg1-team1-2303ad.jpg
• osg1-team2-found-the-bloody-psilons.jpg
• osg1-team2-zeds-missile-boats.jpg

Inside the zip file should be either save3.gam or save4.gam, of course. As Sirian mentioned, double-check what you are doing by looking at the contents of the zip file before extracting.

I've got the start file and will post the results of my 10 when I have completed them.

 

[Zed-F]

Ok, here we go. Someone wanted to name a planet Chicago, but that might make it hard to compare with team 1's game once both are complete, so I think we should stick to the default names for of our colonies.

Also, be aware that 10 turns is not very long in MOO. Don't be surprised or dismayed if nothing happens in your turns, and above all don't feel the need to "get something done." I know most of you are experienced enough Civ3 SG players not to fall into that trap, but if all you do during your 10 turns is research, that's FINE; it likely means everything is humming along nicely, and at 10 turns per player you can be sure to have plenty of cracks at more interesting times.

What we get from the map: We're up against the Psilons, the Sakkra, the Silicoids, the Darloks, and the Alkari. We're on a large map, which isn't my specialty, but I figure I can hack it. Certainly for 10 turns at a time, at least. We're in the NE corner, and our best expansion opportunities as far as chaining colonies at range 3 goes are to the west and south, which is good as we won't need much tech to get the leapfrogging going. To the north is a whole lot of nothing, but there are a few stars to our NE and to our E which could make for a nice little backyard to fill in as we get the chance.

As far as other yellow stars our opponents might be starting from goes, there's one next to us which is almost sure to be vacant, there's one in the far NE corner (pity the poor sod that starts there, if there is one), there's a cluster of 6 to our west which should have a couple start locations in it, and 5 more spread fairly evenly across the bottom half of the map. I'm guessing we will have two or three very cramped starts for the AIs and a couple with lots of room to grow, mainly in the south.

2300: We have 3 choices for our colony ship, the aforementioned yellow right next door, and two green stars. I send our colony ship toward the yellow as it has the best probability of a habitable world, and our scouts to the other two. I could send the colony ship toward the westward green instead, but we should have at least some time to get our expansion mapped out anyway.

2303: Sending the colony ship to the yellow pays off as it an Ocean 80, named Gion. The westward green is a Barren 45 and the southward one an Ocean 55. We have 58 pop at Ursa, so I send 8 to Gion, and will follow up with more as new pop grows until Gion's at around 25-30 pop. I've been building factories, and plan to continue to do so until I can build a fair-size scout wave.

2308: I design a new scout and build some for 2 turns, to get enough scouts to send one to every star in range. The naming convention I use is typically name x.y, where name is a descriptive name denoting the role or main weapon, x is the warp number, and y is the "mark" or version number of that design, in case I get new tech and want to modernize the design. So, the new scouts are called Scout 1.0. If you like that naming convention, feel free to borrow it, but I'd at least like to see the warp capability of any design in the name somewhere, as I find this makes it much easier to coordinate fleet movements. In 2310 I set production back to factories and give the second wave of scouts their movement orders. I wind up with a couple of spares which I send to Irma, the Ocean planet to our south, as that's likely where our second colony ship will go; they can explore further from there.

Save file: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/osg1-team2-2310ad.zip

Next player will get the oh-so-exciting job of building factories... lots and lots of factories. You might also get a start in on our second colony ship (you will need to design a new one since I scrapped our starting design to save a few BCs in construction.) We will have a tough time expanding west or southwest until we have either range 5 tech or barren environment, but we might be able to get a couple colonies to our south and southeast more quickly. I wouldn't start building colony ships until we can get the construction time down to at most 6 years, though. How low to shoot for on the construction time depends on how many outbound colonists you think you will need, relative to how many ships you will need. We won't know that until our scouts report in.

Zed-F << Done
Kylearan << UP NOW
Ozymandous << On Deck
Kabuki
JMB
TBC

 

[Bam-Bam]

Good luck, Team 2! Have fun with the Bears! Fun race to play (actually, I enjoy all except the humans and Psilons, but who's counting).

 

[Zed-F]

TBC added to the roster; welcome aboard!

 

[Kylearan]

Checking in, and got it! I'll play tomorrow and not today as I have a bit of Easter stress going on here at the moment.

 

[JMB]

Checking in...

 

[Kabuki]

Checking in... I'm very curious as to how we'll find the 10 turn splits... I'm wondering if maybe Charis' North Korean game model might work better... but that is for another day. Let's go pound some alien scum... in an... Ursine fashion.

 

[Kylearan]

The first turns were uneventful - our two systems were busy building factories and our scouts arrived at their various destinations. We scouted several habitable words, but also several poor and ultra poor ones. In 2315, one of our scouts arrived at Gienah, a size 40 minimal artifacts planet - and we got very lucky!

That's like a free settler in civ, right?

One year later, we meet the Sakkras at Incedius, a size 30 tundra world and scare away their colony ship. Another year later, we meet the Sakkras again in a system in the nebula, and this time it's us who is running...

Only now I remember that we have some extra scouts sitting around, and send them away to unexplored systems who are now in our reach thanks to the deuterium cells. I also expose Ursa and Gion and send their scouts away as well - I hope that's not , but I figure the chance to find another artifact planet first is greater than an alien race scouting our two systems and invading them with ground troops.

I have designed a new colony ship named colony 1.0. In 2318, Ursa could produce one every 6 turns, but I decide to wait and build more factories. We have a lot of systems to settle, and most of them are to the south, uncontested for now, so I like to have enough factories for a colony ship every 5 turns.

In 2319, we send an Alkari scout running at Moro, west of the Nebula, and another Sakkra scout at Rotan north of the Nebula.

On my last turn, Ursa is ready to produce a colony 1.0 every 5 turns, so I switch production. Here's the map...

I had planned to name all the planets in the map and give their stats for planning, but I ran out of time - sorry. But at least I have found a program to take screenshots in the XP compatability DOS full screen mode. Zed, if you're still looking for a way to do it, I could post a link and instructions tomorrow in the RBMoo forum if you wish.

Expand our empire!

Roster:
Zed-F
Kylearan
Ozymandous <-- UP
Kabuki <-- on deck
JMB
TBC


-Kylearan

 

[Zed-F]

Duplicate post.

 

[Zed-F]

Great, Ky, please do. Looks like a solid set of turns as well. I would build another round of scouts, probably out of Gion, as we are likely to need more soon. I would think we want to backfill the scouts at Gion at least and possibly Ursa as well to prevent them from scouting us with single scouts, that's easily preventable and would be quite embarrassing. The AIs are much more likely to target a planet they have already scouted than one they have not.

 

[Kabuki]

OT: Zed, have you figured out how to do screen shots in XP yet?

 

[Kylearan]

Is it really necessary to build even more scouts? I know that preventing the AIs froms scouting a planet is a Good Thing, but won't a ring of scouts around our core be enough for that? They would need very advanced range tech to bypass our scout ring to reach Ursa and Gion, for example, and soon armed scouts and colony ships will arrive anyway and render our scouts obsolete.

-Kylearan

 

[Kabuki]

Armed scouts? Crazy talk... We are bears not birds...

On the other topic... Keeping one scout at every discovered system is a good habit. And it doesn't cost us much. On a well developed planet one or two ticks of production is usually enough and even if we don't need them for Gion, we will need them for the next set of expansions.

 

[Kylearan]

What I meant was armed scouts from our opponents, not from us. Once their scouts and colony ships are armed, our scouts are useless and will be driven back to our systems, rendered useless.

 

[Kabuki]

True, but for 8BC knowing the exact timing of the armed scouts/colony ship can be quite useful... for mmm... some attractive real estate deals.

 

[Zed-F]

I have found that not keeping a fleet in orbit encourages the AI to send a fleet to scout the planet as soon as it can. Early on that scout fleet will just be scouts, but later it can include armed ships. The AI will try to scout planets it has decided it wants anyway, once it has run out of expansion room if there are still some uncolonized systems with scouts in orbit, but at least this way they aren't all over the map, but focused on one or two systems at a time that you can conceivably defend against. Since the tech pace goes faster on large maps, you can't be sure a planet in your back lines is "safe" from scouting for very long anyway. It costs little, is a good habit, and better to be safe than sorry.

I usually will have a scout for every planet I can possibly reach, at least until all planets are settled and I have at least one missile base up on all my planets.

 

[Ozymandous]

Will get this tonight.

Is the Jungle planet to the North in range, or not? Do we want to get that now as opposed to later, or make a beeline for the Artifact planet? I'm thinking go straight to the Artifact planet if possible and then expand coreward since the Sakkra's would need quite a long tech to reach past that empty system to get the jungle world, but just curious what others think.

 

[Kylearan]

Roger on the scout issue - despite this SG's title, I still feel like a n00b so I like to discuss these things in detail. My line of thinking was that once the AIs have enough range to bypass an outer ring of our scouts, all of their ships would be armed anyway and so additional scouts in our core would be useless. But if the mere presence of ships in orbit of a system will keep the AI's fleets away for a bit longer, I should adapt my playstyle to that fact, thanks.

Regarding the jungle planet to the north, a 75 poor world, it's 6 parsecs away and thus not in reach. This is unfortunate because it's surrounded by hostile worlds, and there's a yellow star in the northeastern corner which could be another nice system (a scout is on its way). But I agree that the Sakkras will need several tech advancements to cross the gap to the jungle world, so that may not be a problem.

Zed-F, see the RBMoO forum for a post about how to take screenshots.

-Kylearan

 

[Ozymandous]

Well this was a short round of turns.

Built some factories and 2 colony ships.

Highlights:

2320 - 2325 or so: Built a scout per turn out of Gion since it would be where our 'seed colonists' (SC?) would be coming from for the next few colonies we found.

2324 - Discover the Alkari at a Artifact planet, Yarrow, to our West.

2327 - Imra founded (last action on that turn).
2328 - 19 million colonists sent from Gion to Imra, due in 5.
2329 - Had Gion start a little research, 11 BC per turn, to see what our initial selections are. If we could get Barren environment, we could colonize the planet that's right next door to Ursa.
2330 - Second colony ship built and tasked to goto our close Artifact planet (forgot the name, sorry.)

There is a size 80-85 Jungle planet to our North above the poor world, so that might be good to go that way eventually. There are three scout 1.0 heading to the red star south of Imra to explore down that way. I built them out of Gion as the last group to go.

Not much else to report for now.

2330 Save

 

[Kabuki]

Got it, I'll get to it tonight hopefully. Have a couple of things to finish up first.