Appologies in advance. Sometimes the creative mood hits me, sometimes it doesn't. Here's a rather bland report:
OK, I opened this up, looked it over, closed it down.
I went to play my Civ SG, found out the wrong save was up, opened the game back up, looked it over, closed it down.
I went out to eat, came home, opened it up, looked it over, and..... those scout ships to explore the south still aren't there...
(I'm just giving you a hard time Zed
I'm just a scoutaholic since RBO3)
Guess I'll have to make them.. erm, no, I can't do that either. Well, I COULD, but no way am I delaying production of the next colony ship for anything, and the UP makes them so hideously slow (1 per 2 turns) that's not a good option.
So I decide to do something I rarely ever do. I go with an "empty backfield" by sending the scouts off our starting planets and off the radiated planet.... by the time we could colonize that planet I'd hope it wouldn't matter much who else had scouted it. It seems to be safely away from the silicoids also.
The micromanagment with the factories.... that's something I do all the time with the silicoids, but it works best when you keep a couple turns ahead of the game instead of a couple turns behind the game... In THIS case, however, all I care about is that I'll get the colony ship as fast as possible, so I'll continue on with the plan.
I add 1 tick to spying. I find 1 tick usually seems to do nothing, where 2 ticks is more effective at planting a spy occasionally. Either that, or it's just me being a loon. I also adjust the pop being sent to our new planet from 33...28 to get it to 30/90. Yeah, thats just me being anal most likely, but I like to get to exactly 1/3 early.
Zed says settle Retculi and leave the poor planet alone.... Well, I agree with settle Retculi FIRST. I'll see how it goes as far as the Poor planet.
OK, 4 hours after first looking at it, I click next turn
2330 - Tabby "Maniac" Mrrsha, the far too pacifistic takes over as Emperess
2331 -
(Tabby has her nails/claws done)
2332 - Scouts arrive at the Silicoid planet of Denubius and find.... a size "32" Barren.
2333 -
(Tabby takes a cat nap)
2334 - Scouts find Cygni. A size 40 Rich Toxic in the southeast. The colony ship for Retculi completes. The home plaet finishes terraforming. Who says the factory trickle thing doesn't work? We've managed to build just enough that I can now get annother colony ship in 3 years by going 100% on shipbuilding, which I do. I'm going to try to grab that poor planet. What the heck, it'll make a nice source of marines OR make a nice place for the silicoids to suicide their people. Remember, these are SILICOID people. Trading pop for pop with them is like a 2 for 1 in our favor
As long as we don't build factories here, I can't see how claiming this rock isn't in our interest. If we get beat here, we just send the colony ship elsewhere.
2335 - Alkari found living at Phantos, the red planet almost directly south of the homeworld. Its got a lot of pop and factories so they've owned it a while. vmxa's Fav (formerly Collassa/110 Terran) founded!!! Woe to any leader who loses this planet
The colony ship heads for Retculi. I send 24 million from the UP and 6 million from Anraq to our new prize. I'll trickle some more over the next few turns.
2336 - Our scout arrives at Crypto, but gets chased off by 4 silicoid mediums. I trickle 5 million more toward vmxa's Fav
2337 - The white planet in the south, Rana, is a size 20 Dead. Scout runs again from crypto. We get this message:
The colony ship for the poor completes. Ok, now seems the right time to build more scouts. I could build 16 more, but I know I'll need 8 at least... well, I have to build 9 to get 8.... so I build that many and put the rest towards factories.
2338 - The scout flees Crypto again. Well I had hoped they'd pull out, but I'm probably just pressing my luck here, so I recall the scout
Scouts find Vulcan, a system where not even the Silicoids can live at whe white star SW of Cryslon. Retculi founded. The blue star in the SW edge of scouting range is called Xendalla. It's a size 45 Minimal which is still uninhabited! (not that we can get it tho). I trickle pop towards Reticuli. Now that the urgency of colships isnt as great, I set about maxing Fieras.