2390: Ok, the Silicoids may have declared war, but we don't know yet if it's a real war or a phony one. We have no knowledge of their tech levels, other than that they are way beyond us. I dial up a single click of spying so we can at least see what they have someday. Laser fighters probably won't even put a dent in them and are likely useless other than to dodge their missles and force a stalemate. We need a lot of tech right now, but we are still expanding.
Hmm, strategy for this war: We are bears. They are rocks. Our strength is ground invasion, their weak point is pop growth. Sounds like our strategy should be to send in the troops! I would much rather fight over their worlds than ours, that way our military strength (or lack thereof) is less of an issue. We only have range 4, which hurts, but that should give us access to the closest Silicoid planets anyway. I start coordinating an invasion of Toranor, which is poor but fairly large. I don't care if we can't hold it, that's not the point; the point is to get the Silicoids back on their heels rather than attacking our colonies. Hopefully their fleet won't be at Toranor when our troops arrive. Several of our planets on the Silicoid front start on force pop growth to get more troops for further invasions.
Meanwhile, I keep expanding in the north. We are seriously lacking scouts to explore the northern corner. I have to send a colony ship at Regulus to an unexplored star or else have it sitting around idle for lack of any known good planets to send it to. I may have to do the same with additional colony ships we construct, we have so many of them being built without having sent out advance scouts, or even having many scouts in the area to send! We should have more scouts and fewer fighters; don't our scouts have guns on them too, anyway? With the only significant difference between the two being a Mk I computer versus extra range, I'd rather have the scouts. They are much cheaper to build anyway. Have we met anyone in the NW corner yet? Alan mentioned Alkari, so maybe they are up here. Our ultrarich spends a turn building scouts since building more factories right now would just result in them idling.
2391: We start researching Jammer I, Shield II, and NPG. Our best researchable beam is Graviton beams, which will be a respectable fighter weapon later once we have enough propulsion tech to miniaturize the energy requirement. However, NPGs come in at 1/5 the price, are also a good fighter weapon, and we need something better than lasers.
2392: Antares and Uxmai settled. I scramble to find pop to send to those worlds. We are stretched thin up north. We scout Proxima (Radiated) and Tauri (Barren). Production of colony ships largely swapped to Tundra 2X, which are more flexible in these situations, if a bit more expensive. We have plenty of regular colony ships right now anyway.
2393: Discover Whynil (Inferno) and Rana, an Ocean 80 Ultrapoor in the NW. Send a colony ship to the latter. We now have several colony ships outbound to unknown planets, but if we run across Orion, we can afford to lose one. The Toranor invasion force is assembled and enroute, consisting of 70 transports full of grunts. The Silicoids have 80 pop on the planet. Unless their fleet is in orbit when the transports arrive, we should have no problem occupying the planet. I start assembling another invasion force for Phyco, a size 60 minimal Silicoid world.
2394: IIT7 finally comes in, our only next choice is IIT6. Yuck. Apparently we should have chosen reduced waste 60% last time. I face a difficult choice, get a tech we don't need in order to progress in the tree or go back for something that would be moderately useful. I elect to go back for reduced waste 60%. Automated repair is another good option but that can wait; we are nowhere close to building ARS huges right now.
Oh. My. Goodness. We discover Drakka, a Steppe 50 Artifact world in the far NW corner. And we are the first to discover it. And we get... soil enrichment! Woot! You can't ask for better than that. Fertile worlds everywhere when we are in the middle of a ground war with the rocks? Happy day!
In other news, we discover Meklon at a yellow star due east of Aurora. Our colony ship retreats.
2395: Discover Meklar at the red and purple stars north of Meklon.
2396: Our invasion of Toranor was unsuccessful. Some Silicoid larges made it to the planet in time to destroy most of the transports attacking the planet. 20 made it through, and did a reasonable amount of damage, but the Silicoids have personal deflectors and Ion rifles, cancelling out our innate advantage. We are only up by +5 due to Duralloy, not nearly enough, and our invasion attempt at Phyco will probably also fail as a result. This is still our best strategy, but we will need bigger planets able to send more troops to pull it off -- or else a fleet capable of obtaining space superiority. Soil enrichment will certainly help matters.
2397: Discover Thrax, a Barren world orbiting a green star north of Meklon. It is also occupied with Meklar. Our ships move on.
2398: ECM Jammer I finally pops. We have a choice of RC III and BC III. We are still expanding, and not ready for RC III yet. We go for BC III with the intention of coming back for RC III when we are done. We settle Drakka (Steppe 50 Artifacts) and Rana (Ocean 80 UPoor).
Ajax, our Tundra URich, is maxed. However, we don't have any ships worth building right now. I pump reserves instead, with the intention that we can use those funds to grow our other colonies faster.
2399: We colonize Tauri and get contact with the Meklar. We also discover an asteroid in the far north. We own the entire western side of the map (or will soon) but making an end run around the Meklar to snag hostiles in the core looks dubious. The Meklar are Xenophobic, but I establish a minimum trading agreement with them anyway. Once they get contact with the Silicoids, war seems likely.
2400: Our transports attempting to attack Phyco have similar problems penetrating the planetary defenses. The problem is, when attacking in lots of groups of a few transports, the missle bases get shots at each group in turn, multiplying the number of attacks they get against our transports. Only attacks with large numbers of transports get through. Thus, coordinating invasions becomes trickier than normal. We still don't have enough tech to field a credible fleet but hopefully this will pick up soon now that our core worlds are on research rather than colony ship building.
The vote saw the Sakkra (8) voting for the Silicoid allies (8). We abstained with 10, as did the Meklars (4). The Alkari (2) voted for us, as they are at war with the Silicoids. The vote doesn't look terribly dangerous to us in the near future.
Summary: So far the Silicoids haven't responded to our invasion attempts, but that could change anytime now, especially considering our fleet power is diminishing as we settle worlds, reducing the number of active colony ships, which are most of our fleet strength. However, laser popguns are not the best answer at the moment. We should wait for at least NPGs before trying to build an offensive fleet; now that our core worlds are on research, it should not take long. The Silicoids currently only have Class II shields so NPG attackers can still do damage to bases on the surface. The Silicoids have Merculite missles for their bases, and we don't have enough defense to get around that, so fighters are probably still our best option for the moment.
Our attempts at ground invasion fell flat to start with, but were instructive and probably useful none-the-less. We don't have quite the ground invasion advantage I expected, and I didn't account properly for the presence of defenses on enemy worlds, so my error there. Nevertheless I continue to see ground invasions as potentially viable in the not-too-distant future.
The save:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads8/osg4_2400.zip
Research is switched completely to IIT7, and shifted to Maretta; Gion will be building a normal col ship to land Kulthos.
) technologist ( 
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
Weigh in with your thoughts. Situation-wise, we have transports flying out to populate our new gains. The last three worlds on the frontier have ships en route. IIT7 is almost mature, and should help the growth of our new acquisitions substaintially.
) sooner. 
We should give the scout a medal, he single handedly holds off these scouting expeditions by flying around in the asteroids at warp 2 vs their warp 1 scouts/colships/etc.
