RBGC SG2 - In the Thick of It - TEAM E

Here I am.

Note: I will be away from my machine from mid-afternoon today (Thurs) to mid morning tomorrow(Fri) GMT time zone.

Looks like it was last picked up in the middle of last night so I guess if I look in Friday morning when I get back it'll be waiting for me.

Aviator99
 
Seizing control of the Realms in a bloodless coup (well, none of his blood was involved) GrymLaird TBC calls a meeting of the SHYTE (Sycophants, Henchmen, Yes-Men, Toadies and Evildoers) council...

...and is interrupted by Lord Kona, he of simian visage and malodorous environs,



:eek: In most cases, I would cave to these demands, but with us -441bc in the hole and no guarantees that said payola would stave off an attack, I send him packing. Relations fall to HOSTILE. I'll have to dance as fast as I can to avoid a premature war. Kona's modus operandi is typically: tech to Corvettes and seek out victim(s) to harass. We just happen to be on the short list this round. So here's the plan,

1. Complete Basic Environment Control
2. Research Deflectors at best speed
3. SPEND NOTHING for a few months to get in the black again
4. Buy a war or two with 'ol ape-face


January:
Cancel all Social spending and put 100% into Research. Raise taxes to 53% and adjust Spending to 29% which gives us item 1 in 1+1 months. Call up the Governors list and see that the Ford queue is in use, allowing the AIs to use our build orders. :rolleyes: I clear the Ford queue and add/edit items to the Kolaz queue,



Next, I visit all worlds and ensure that all are using the Kolaz queue and building Banking Centers (not that we'll be doing any Social spending this year). Looking over the Tactical Map (F9), I tag all resources by the simple expedient of setting way points on their locations,



See, I'm playing a couple of huge/maso games right now and this is a simple way to manage the resources logistics. :)

-- Carinoids complete their Economic Capital. Meet the Altarians.


February:
Adjust Spending to 27% (tech next month) and Taxes to 52%, and redirect the freighter bound for Altaria. Must... make... sure... Torian... and... Drengin... are... hooked... up... first.

-- Cari establishes a trade-route with us (every little bit helps). Complete Basic Environment Control.


March:
Shop our few techs around,

Here's the trade situation sorted by value and approximate research cost (first column),
Code: 
 400 Corvette Technology	DR
 200 Deflectors			DR  TO  AL  cr
 900 Advanced Trade		        AL
 500 Shields			    TO      cr
 300 Controlled Gravity		DR  TO
 300 *Impulse Drive		DR  TO  AL  cr
 250 Phasers			DR  TO
 200 *Artificial Gravity	DR  TO  AL  cr
 120 Photons			DR  TO
 100 Cold Fusion		DR  TO  AL  cr
  50 Defense Theory		DR  TO  AL  cr
  50 *Propulsion Theory		DR  TO  AL  cr

AL - !Basic Environment Control, !Medical Theory, !Weapons Theory
cr - !Industrial Theory
DR = Drengin, TO = Torians, AL = Altarians, cr = Carinoids; ! means 'not'

...and the deals,

Altarians:
Get Impulse Drive, Propulsion Theory, 14ip
Give Basic Environment Control, Medical Theory, Weapons Theory

Carinoids:
Get Defense Theory, 4ip
Give Industrial Theory

Set research to Deflectors. 54% Spending nets us the tech next turn. Taxes to 51%

-- Complete Deflectors, research Shields


April:
Set spending to 0% and let our treasury grow. Our first freighter arrives, connecting Rathra to Torian Ditla. The Altarian freighter is redirected again.

-- Meet Alexians, so maybe we can get some tribute flowing in.


May:
From the Alexians,
Get Artificial Gravity, 25bc * 5m
Give Medical Theory, Weapons Theory
(Every little bit helps) :p


June:
Discover (and Rally Point tag) a Research resource.

[continued...]
 
[...continuing]

July:
With our treasury in the positive double-digits it's time to stir the pot,



Now we have some breathing room. :undecide: Hope it's enough.


August:
Our Constructor arrives at the Military resource and builds our first Starbase. Our second freighter arrives, connecting Petroni to Drengin Hestia -- more insurance. With our two initial trade routes filled, the Altarian freighter now goes looking for the Yor.


September:
Spending begins again at 36% with Shields due next turn.

-- Shields completes.


October:
From the Alexians,
Get Cold Fusion, 27bc * 18m, 12ip
Give Shields

Set economy to 100% Military, at 65% Spend rate and swap all worlds to Defender as part of our overall CCOPS (Cardboard Cutouts Operations) program. ;) The least productive worlds will finish in 2+1 months.

-- Altarian freighter arrives. Meet the Arceans. The first Defenders are placed into orbit.


November:
Finesse the economy at a 64% Spend rate.

-- Drengin freighter arrives (good, good). Win the Senate Election with 25 votes.


December:
Increase Spending to 73% to hurry several Defenders. Finally, the U.P. meets for the first time,



Look folks, no Drengin war! :goodjob:


Notes:
We're researching Advanced Trade so that we can connect a trade route to Altaria. Have the Hero grab that "unexplained" anomaly and hopefully knock 25% off the research time. The Drengin remain HOSTILE so either opening another front (perhaps the Arceans) or paying a suitable bribe is in order. We'll need to build our economy for the latter. I didn't add Habitat Improvement to the Kolaz queue. It should be inserted between Soil Enhancement and Banking Center before we do any more Social spending. Not the most fortuitous path to our ultimate galactic domination -- we live in interesting times and will prevail. Onward!


Be seeing you...

---> TBC (worshiping at the Temple of the Bloody Corpses)


RBGC SG2 - Team E - January 2182AD
 
TBC--nice work avoiding the war (for now).

A second front would be very nice to keep old monkey-boy busy. One thought--we may want Habitat queued up AFTER Banking, since most of our worlds are 15+.

Also--team note--please read the posts of the players before you. I had specifically noted that I was setting up all the queues for Ms. Kolaz to avoid the Mr. Ford bug (though I saw in the bug thread that Cari has fixed this). We didn't have any real problems, but attention to the detail of the previous players' reports is a hallmark of good team play.

Bam-Bam
 
OK so what do we have…………?

This is obviously where play style becomes significant, I just do not understand where we are or how we got here or what to do with it. :confused:

The biggest threat that I see is…no economy, no technology, no population. Sure the Drengin and the Torian could get aggressive but each planet has a ship and I’ve never seen a transport in flight except to an undefended planet and a Defender is just cannon fodder (I’ve never built one for months and get away with Battleaxe as the first build and we have shields now anyway) and we are building more at a buck a shot maintenance when our economy is going down the toilet…. Just doesn’t make sense. A government expenditure slider which is less than 100% and the net is negative, just never seen that after only 4 years in any game I’ve played, unless its taken me that long to find anyone.

Mind you there are several other firsts in this for me. Never bought a war before, never used a governor before, never seen a waypoint before (don’t even know how to set one), so it’s a learning experience big time.

So sorry guys there is just no point in me attempting to follow a strategy I don’t understand because I guarantee I’ll screw it up big time.:cry:

Plan is: develop techs we can sell, build the population, get the economy going, get the manufacturing base in place, build frigates….

If we get into trouble I’d buy peace somehow, maybe give away one of the minor planets which seem to be acting as ballast at the moment.

JAN

Down to business: Hero is about to hit an unexpected, must make it worth while what is the most expensive techs in our list Adv dip/adv trade/inter bus/ So lets leave it on adv trade and see what we get.



Zilch.

So tech to Nano as no one has it and tune research 50:50 to get it asap. Route the freighter further South.

FEB

Nano on board, still no one has it tune 20:80 to get Inter next time. Send the spare Defender at Petroni to the East (otherwise I’d scrap the buck a turn piece a junk).

MAR

Yor say hello, Inter on board. Turn Tax rate down as Earth has stopped growing and we need taxpayers change build to Habitat. Hero gets +1 weapons.
Deal with Alexians for 38 for 12
Carin for Space Mil & Battle arm and 11 for 9
Yor for the simple ones for 15 for 9:sad:
Crank up the Gov Exp. Doesn’t seem like we are going to get any kind of a deal with the majors as our diplo is poor. Adv Dip in +2 for 30:70 may be worth it so lets go.

Turn on espionage 2bc to each.

APR

Relations with Altarians > cool. But much more red influence on the map



Never seen that happening before either !!

MAY

Diplo Trans go to the Carinoids. Altarians > wary

JUNE

Altarians > hostile !!

Deals :
Adv dip & space mil > alex for 31 for 14
Adv dip > carinoids for Energy Chan & 16 flat

Now for Interstelar frigates in +2 and if we can sell that baby we should be fairly strong economically.

July

A Torian freighter arrives. And we get banks in Wardel & Rathra

AUG

A bank in petroni

SEP

Interstellar achieved now we need a manufacturing base to churn out those frigates.

Deals:
Alexians: Energy chan & interstellar for adv trade / phasors and 34 for 12
Cari: adv trade and interstellar for



Now when that kicks in in Oct we might see some deals with the majors.

OCT

Alterian freighter arrives.

Deal: Alexians photons for Cont Grav +8

Now that the economy is in the black. 100% spend 50% tax we don’t need the cash so does anyone have a tech we need. Not really only the Dren & Torian have techs we don’t and no one ever gets corvette in a trade so lets see if we can get the Drengin to like us.

Deal: battle arm for 15 for 10 and give away Nano and lets see what that does.




More influence problems



NOV

Alexians get Aphrodisiac

Now we can get the social build sorted at least the governors can be ignored. Lets crank out those Fusion supplies and manu ctrs. However lets make sure that the crappy little class 15s with no population don’t build anything that costs until they need it or can make use of it.

DEC

Well giving the Drengin Nano made them a little happier with us and they seem to be at war with Altarians

JAN

Drengin vs Torian war over. Was it worth it ??

Over to you:confused: RBGC E Jan 2183
 
Aviator, your image links do not work because (unlike the save) you did not upload the image files (I checked the server).

As far as strategy, I have to agree that I would not have built the defenders. Of course I have NEVER built defenders in any game I have played. I built battleaxes about 1/2 the time.

I am not sure what got our economy in the tank so quickly, though grabbing that military resource (which was a good idea, IMO) probably had us spending a bit into the red more quickly than I usually experience.

Do not worry about trying to follow a strategy if you do not understand. We should all be trying to articulate what we feel we would do if we were to continue playing. That should help the next player get more quickly acclimated to the game.

We are a new team, and our position is far from grim. Good work to get us into the black. :goodjob:

As far as the Drengin-Torian war, who knows what value it had for us. I have found that once the Drengin get pissy--they will attack. We want war on our terms--or at least a phoney war that we can hold our own with locally superior numbers, ships and tactics.

I have not looked at the save, but here is what I think we should shoot for in the next go-round.

Stable relations
Improved economy w/100% spend capability.
5 trade routes established or freightors enroute
Aphrodisiac leased from Alexians
Build or lease Tri-Strontium trade good
Build or lease Gravity Accelerators
Mine our military resource
Get battleship tech (or dreadnaught) and prepare (start) the invasions.
More to come....

Deal: battle arm for 15 for 10 and give away Nano and lets see what that does.
Click to expand...

:nono:

Let me reiterate this point--it was raised in the Stardock forum, but I neglected to put it in above. NO ACCEPTING CASH FOR TECHS FROM THE MAJORS. I would like it that we do not take cash for tech from all but the alexians, but am willing to bend a bit on that point, based on a team consensus.

Ok. I will have more thoughts when I look at the save. Aviator, please upload your pics, since your tale is missing some pieces (i.e., cannot be completely understood) without the pics.

Bam-Bam

Roster:
Bam-Bam (UP)
Isit (ON DECK)
Aaberg41
Black Cursor
Aviator99
 
Correction--the images are on the server, but the links are bad. No worries, because the pictures are unviewable anyway (poor quality) :p (light-hearted jesting, here)

Aviator, could you fill in the holes in your turnlog with text to explain what was to be explained with the screenshots?

Thanks.
 
Fixed the image links above.

Didn't see the bit about selling to majors, wouldn't have done it if I had seen it. Presumably giving tech away to them is accepable?

Don't download .tiff images, It says download successful but they don't get to the server and I didn't check. And then my PSP was saving jpg with 100% compression :sad:

Aviator99
 
This is a very interesting game. I will talk tactics for a few mins because I think it might be helpful to get a very general game plan going. At this point I see two options:

1. A early rush to a strong military. I have played a couple of games using these settings and found a rush to Battle Cruisers allowed me to carve 2-3 systems out of the strongest AI while they were busy fighting someone else. This tactic normally puts me WAY into the red with a messed up economy but once I rebuild I can usually rush to battleships and mop up.

I don’t think this tactic will work very well at this point. Our economy tanked at some point so we don’t have the oomph to rush anything at this point.

2. Settle down for the long term. Since we got that military resource we are good shape to outgun people later in the game. Lets keep the AI at war as much as we can. If we can get our economy going and build enough ships to hold off the AI we can meet them in the battleship to dreadnaught era. With a few good bribes to start wars we can send a small force in and carve out the choice systems from a couple of empires. Even the drengin are willing to persue peace when they are in a 3 way war and we drop in to take 3 of their systems. More so if we can give their fleet a bit of a bloody nose.

Either way it seems to be our main focus needs to be on the economy and getting enough ships going so the AI isn’t nipping at our heels. Its hard to get anything built up when we are only a step away from war.

That’s just my two cents. I mainly think it will be helpful to all be moving to the same goal. :)
 
No, I will reserve the :whipped: on the selling to majors, because I negected to post it at the start of the thread.

Don't worry about the images for now. What I do need to know is the story that is missing (since you were using the images to replace text-based story for some part of the report).

@ Isit--yes, we are on a longer path for victory (would have been likely in any case anyway). We need the population to successfully invade all our enemies. That's a longer-term project, and why the aphrodisiac is essential. We also need to get all the techs that give morale improving builds so that we can keep all our planets @ 100 morale.
 
I posted that last one from a different puter. I have just taken a peak at the game. Our economy doesn’t look that bad. We are at 100% spending and in the black. We can have battle cruiser tech in just a month if we go for it now. I think a strike at the Drengin is possible at this point. Taking a couple of their systems would help in the long run by limiting their power. We would have to go to a 100% military stance to do it. Likely we would end up fighting them for a year or so before we got enough of their fleet down to seek peace.

If we dont want to get into a major war I think the Yor Collective looks ripe for the picking. With only one system it would be easy to take them out.

Despite that I still think that a long term strategy might be best. If we plan on starting up our wars in say the battleship era we can plan ahead now for what we will need. :)
 
Finally sorted the images in the "2182 turn".:thumbsup:

My 2 cents on strategy:

Finish establishing the basic manufacturing base.

Frigates & transports from Thuban > invade alterian Antra & onwards (maybe) That should buy us respect from the Drengin so long as they are still at war with the sniveling do-gooders.

Tech > Nano Met > Manu Cap > Sol

All subject to change without notice.

(now we're cookin):rocket:
 
Aviator--thanks for cleaning up the report--I had guessed right on most of the missing spots--but good reporting with the pictures :goodjob: It also reminded me that my likely problems with my pics are due to the compression I have set up for jpegs in my photo editor. :thanks:

I'll take a look to see if taking a bite out of the Alterians would start off our invasion-happy game. Would be nice to claim first blood. :hammer:

As far a tech trading/selling goes--

Receiving cash from Majors for tech is a big :nono: I plan on giving away our ill-gotten 315bc to a deserving minor charity. Giving the money back to the majors we took it from would give us too much relations benefit--relations benefits from the minors are [mostly] irrelevant. That's the team punishment for my oversight in laying out the rules at the start.

I propose that we no longer accept cash from anyone for tech--I had a thought that we could take from the Alexians, but since we were fast and loose with our cash for tech deals up front, this seems like a reasonable penance for sandbagging. (While we may not all be maso killers--we do have some ringers (ahem Aaberg) here, and style does count in RB circles :D ).

Are there any strong objections to this approach?


Overall--good first round from the team--we spent to the red, and climbed right back out. The reporting was good, with some minor forum learning curve issues that should be behind us. The team leader :whipped: was not clear on the varient rules--but that has been rectified, and an appropriate penance set. A few growing pains, but for a 5 member team with only two players having played together, and succession games not being an icon to GalCiv--we are in a good position. I expect that we will only get better as we move along.

Should have my turns up tonight or tomorrow afternoon.

Bam-Bam
 
I propose that we no longer accept cash from anyone for tech--I had a thought that we could take from the Alexians, but since we were fast and loose with our cash for tech deals up front, this seems like a reasonable penance for sandbagging. (While we may not all be maso killers--we do have some ringers (ahem Aaberg) here, and style does count in RB circles :D ).
Click to expand...

Fine by me. :)
 
Agreed on the no cash for tech house rules from here on out. As for the Defenders, you'd be surprised at the value "cardboard cutouts" have. Just having ANYTHING in orbit around worlds will make the AI think twice about harassing you in most cases. Of course, these will be replaced by real defenses should the need arise.

Since we had good luck grabbing PQ15+ worlds and are not likely to immediately need PQ13/14 worlds, I agree with putting Habitat Improvement later in the build order, like this:

Soil Enhancement
Banking Center
Habitat Improvement
Entertainment Network
Fusion Power Plant
Manufacturing Center
Research Lab
etc.

and let's also be sure to build Economic and Manufacturing Capitals.

Be seeing you...

---> TBC (The Battle Cruiser "rush" would have worked (earlier) too.)
 
Agreed on the no cash for tech house rules from here on out.

What is the reasoning behind this? I don't understand what this would add to the game.
 
I'll take your word for the value of the cut-outs TBC--I've never used them...moot point anyway--we have 'em and I usually do not scrap or sell ships until much later.

That build queue is pretty close to the std I use for PQ15+ planets, maybe with the entertainment network coming after the production improvements (which is 6 of one 1/2 dozen of the other call). I always put habitat before banking on PQ13/14 (PQ12 if I have the +5PQ bonus pick).

EDIT: :scan: looking at the save--we are in a VERY nice position. Who cares if the Altarians are hostile--they are panzies who lack the frigate tech MUWAHHAAAAH. :hammer: :mwaha: [plasma]

I'm afraid it's the death furnaces for you, lads. :eek:
 
As LKendter asked:

"Agreed on the no cash for tech house rules from here on out.

What is the reasoning behind this? I don't understand what this would add to the game" me too :confused:

(apart from artificially resticting the oportunity to exercise economic warfare) :rolleyes:

As I did most of the tech selling I would vote against this unless some reason is provided (like the boss says so :whipped: ), but am happy :cool: to play that way if the team wants.

BamBam where was the original thread you mentioned?
Found it, Sorry, just never read it :o

Aviator99
 
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