RBO OSG7: Always War Hard

[ToddMarshall]

The liberation of the galaxy has begun.

Fear the warp 3 laser fighter and Hyper-X boats! The Silicoids do

 

[ToddMarshall]

2370 - DDOT "Dictator for Life" Marshall usurps the throne There is, at this point, no hurry to start hostilities. Those substandard rock based life forms WILL DIE. But not until I DECIDE its time.

The first order of buisness is to stop building Rockhammers. I'll keep the 3 we have, but no more

The second order of buisness is to beeline for Toxic. The only field we are currently researching is Force Fields (PDF). I leave a little bit of research in it so it will break through, then shift the rest to planetology.

I turn serious expionage effertos on the sillicoids. We'll try the steal range 5 thing for a few turns, till planetolgy is halfway in. If no luck, we'll just shift research to get them togeather. then even out research. All this beelining is making my head swim

I turn "see what they have" spying on with the Psilons.

I set the poor planets to "grow pop" We'll need marines.

Wow, I still got that first turn rabbit foot charis gave me in RBP1, my 1st SG

2371 - It's election time. Wow, maybe we can get some war going here. Its us and the Alkari nominated.

Silicoids Abstain (3 votes), Sakkra vote Alkari (2 votes), Bullrathi abstain (3 votes), Psilons abstain (1 vote), Alkari vote themselves (4 votes), I vote for us (7 votes). We allready have veto power (7 of 20 votes)


2372 - Alkari chase us off Antares

2373 - PDS hits. Class IV is the only choice! Grrr at no Class V! The last 2 planets we settled max factories, grow pop. I open propulsion research. If we get a steal off the rocks after the next couple turns, we'll take something else.

2375 - More voting. Same results as before except we now have 8 votes. I'm going to give the spying thing 2 more years, then I'll just shut it off. We'll get lots of tech when we invade anyway. I errect a few bases for the laserproofness of it.

2376-2380 -

More to follow

 

[ToddMarshall]

2383 - Sub Light hits, we go for Range 6 rather than lots of other things, including Range 8

2384 - We get a theft off the Psilons?! CPU and Weap avail. I go for CPU and steal BCMKII That was state of the art for them. Note, I'm only spending .8 on spying too Controlled Toxic hits...........OMFG GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. Radiated is the ONLY NEXT TIER CHOICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I debate about going back for the cleanup, decide its a bit late in the game for that, and select radiated The rocks now have battle suits. I'd like to steal those... Prolly can't, but gonna try. With Range 6 nearing completion, its time to design some ships!!!

A few dozzen of these puppies and Hail Mary for the Silicoids. I haven't mentioned it, but the Silicoids now have 7 planets, so this won't be a cakewalk. I REALLY wish we had a beam for a fighter


2389 - Range 6 hits. Choices are Stabilizer, Range 7, Range 8, Pulsar, and Dissipator. I go back for stabilizer. We get contact with the birdies, who are Tense as we've voted against them twice. They are the tech leaders. I shift spying to them.

2390 - Bingo. We get a theft. All fields available and no clue what they have. I go for weapons hoping for a beam. I get:

Not a beam, but it could be useful later nonetheless

 

[vmxa]

Ok will DL and have dinner and get started.

 

[ToddMarshall]

2392 - Residual spy steals Jammer I off the Silicoids. Our hated enemies now have class V planetary shields, So hyper X boats will be useless vs their planets. Amazingly NO ONE has a beam above gatling laser. Maybe the H-X boats will be ok by themselves.... but maybe not. Knowing in advance the shelf life of these things will be limited, I build them anyway

Their mission in life is to hold the silicoid planets we take. Nothing more, nothing less. I na few turns, the war begins!! I'm just waiting for the UP to errect its base. Two more turns.

2393 - Annother chance to steal from the Alkari, all fields. The chance of stealing Planetary shields is just too good to ignore. What we end up with is:

Bah! I should have taken the Ion rifles

2394 - The UP finishes its base. Time to I queue up a two pronged invasion! First I send 40 Million from Anraq to Willow. They'll arive in 3 turns.

2395 - I send 55 million from Denubius to Hyborea. I notice I've been so caught up in war, I neglexted to grap that back yard barren and a toxic too I make a couple colony ships. Erm, no I dont because I dont have the tech to put reserve taqnks + toxic on a colship So I only make the one. I also send the fleets in.

 

[ToddMarshall]

2397- Well, here's Willow

We'll lose like 10 ships *yawn* All Missile boats and 100 fighters survive.

And, here's Denubius

They dont record a single Kill. The larges soak up all the damage Hmm. I'll need to reloc a few fighters there. I decline to bomb either planet. I want the factories in tact so I can steal tech and so I can errect a base asap.

Back to Willow:

Back to Denubius

Yep, should have stolen the fusion rifles. Oh well, we'll correct the ownership problem with this planet next turn.

From the wreckage we get: Only improved 8 =/

This event happens:

So does this one

Bring it on Psilons. Your technologically backwards and have little production.

I send more marines to take Denubius. Willow tries to build a base... Only 10 years

2399 - Election time. Silicoids are now the opponent. They get 6 votes. We have 8 (of 24)

 

[ToddMarshall]

2401 - No second chances for the rocks this time

We pull Gatling Laser and range 5

I'm not going for cryslon till I'm sure we can hold it. It's just as hard for US to hold a nebula planet afterall.

2402

2403 - Stabilizer hits, we go for dissipators. Transports trying to take denubius all breathe the vacuum. I send a large chunk of the fleet at denubius to Cryslon. They'll be joined by ships from Willow next turn. I'm tricling replacemnt ships in to protect the planets.

2404 - Draconis settled. I send it pop.

2405 - Blow up a couple larges trying to attack vmxa's fav. *yawn*. Robotics III hits. We go for BC V (BCIII was other choice)

Alkari making a play for Retculi. The fleet and a stack of bases await them. I design a LR Colony 3p to grab the 2 uninhabited hostile planets.

2406 - We arrive at Cryslon...

We lose a Rockhammer, and 10 Ferrets. They lose everything except the one large which has some decent shielding... It retreats.

I start pushing Robotics III factories.

the silicoids now have Pelet Guns... If I can pointy stick THOSE, we'll have REAL fighters Then all we need is Stingers and a bomb and this game can be put to bed.

I send a combined 80 million at cryslon from the poor planets.... 5 turns I'll send annother wad from somewhere else as well and regrow them.

 

[vmxa]

Bad luck on the roll on Denub the first round. Could have gone either way with 55 Vs 44 an us having an edge in tech.

 

[ToddMarshall]

2407 - Eleven large "Whales" show up at Denubuis.... They are toting.... ONE Gatling laser We trade about a dozzen fighters for 5 of those ships because we wanted to, not because we had to. I send 55 million from Tau Cygni to Cryslon and have Tau regrow the pop.

2408 - The rocks counter attack a couple places. Die. We lose nothing.

Here is the Alkari SoD

We'll, the heavy lasers are theoretically a threat to the 9 bases... Theoretically. I had been worried because the birdies have Spore tech, but these designs are nothing to break a sweat over We slaughter them, losing about 10 ships. I probably should have just backed off so they'd run. Oh well.

2310 - We get a weapon/planetology choice from the Psilons. We go for the weapon:

Hyper-V rockets. Well, thats a dud.

Some of our Marines arrive at Cryslon (not all because of the Nebula eta guess thing).

We get this notice

From the wreckage we pull some uberly high tech stuff!

Can you say Improved Space Scanner - Great for Defense AND Spying

How about Battle Suits. Our Marines will love the hell out of those

And so that our fighter pilots don't feel left out, we also salvage this little goodie

We also grab Jammer III, which might be useful

Thats it. Then again, thats all they have.

Actually, thats all almost ANYONE has of any value except the Alkari

The Bulrathi have Dead and Mass Drivers (yawn)

The Psilons have Spores and Improved 7. (well, Improved 7 is nice)

The birdies have all the "cool toys" =/

Here is the 2411 save

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/OSG7_2411.zip

If anyone wants to take a turn at it before I start playing again, feel free. If not, I'll resume it in a bit

- Maniac

 

[Zed-F]

Ok, got it.

 

[ToddMarshall]

Play as many as you want. We're in a boring factory push right now, so 9 or 10 probably will be for action.

 

[Zed-F]

Well, I played more than 9 or 10. I played until I could set up the next player.

Didn't take a detailed log or play with customary attention to detail. Basically the gist is this: I set out to occupy all the Silicoid colonies along our western border, and succeeded. I also stole a few techs from the Alkari, including most of their best ones -- Class V planetary shields, Soil Enrichment, Improved Space Scanner. The only one they have we might want right now is Fusion Drives (but we're researching Impulse anyway.) I also spent most of my time researching so we have quite a few new techs to play with. Unfortunately we got all sucky choices for weapons research.

As far as war on other fronts goes, other than conquering the main part of the Silicoid empire aside from a couple minor outposts here and there, mostly we were just fending off Alkari probes at Reticuli. The main threat they have going is some Death Spore medium ships which are a threat in numbers but so far they haven't brought enough. The Alkari have some speedy designs though so our missle boats (still using Hyper-X as we have nothing better!) are starting to become a bit more vulnerable to enemy beamers.

I didn't do a lot of conquest of the Alkari since they had Class V shields and we don't really have an answer for that at the moment aside from Death Spores since our weapons research has turned up blanks. Death Spores don't help us as we need to capture to extend our range. I could have gone after the Psilons or Bulrathi instead but never bothered as I was hoping to actually research a useful weapon. However, I now have a cunning plan, which I'll leave to the next player to implement... the Psilons have recently researched Fusion Bombs. The Bulrathi have recently researched Auto-repair. (I knew there was a reason for keeping those guys around a bit longer!) So, if we go capture a Psilon colony, that will give us a weapon capable of penetrating Alkari planetary shields. It just so happens that Xendalla is a Psilon colony in a prime position to allow us to strike at the Alkari core. So, my thought would be to capture and defend Xendalla with our existing fleet plus a few reinforcements suitable for holding the planet until we can get a shield and some bases up, then design some fast bombers and do hit-and-run jobs on the Alkari core to keep their fleet back on their heels.

Whoever takes it next (Maniac?) will get the fun job of redesigning and rebuilding our space control forces, taking out Xendalla (and maybe a Bulrathi world for the ARS), and then building a fleet to tackle the Alkari. I left the game at a good spot for fleet redesign since we don't have any techs coming due right away (though a couple are due soonish.)

Back to warmonger mode! Here is the save: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads10/OSG7_2442.zip

 

[ToddMarshall]

Wow. I just looked at the save. Nice job of pushing those Hyper-X boats right down the Silicoids throat!! That pretty much followed my plan (secure the entire north, but you did a really nice job of doing it quickly.

I probably wouldn't have advanced that fast, but you realized (if I guess correctly) that those planets over there would be weak on base count since they were new.

One complication of The Zed Offensive™ : The Psilons have BETTER planetary shielding as the Alkari do....

HOWEVER. Xendala is a poor planet that we have scouted, and it has only ONE base. So it would be possible to invade right past the base if we time our fleet to arrive at the same time the troops do.

OR It would be possible to build some nuke bombers just to grab it as a base. They are only at shield 9, so a small stack of nuke bombers should be able to toast 1 base. Thats probably paranoia speaking though. Invading past the base should work just fine

This isn't I got it, rather it's an I gotta take a nap If no one else gets it ill get it after while, but it's open if somone wants to, go ahead and grab it.

Edit: Alternatively, the Psilons also have a planet named Rotan on the western edge of the universe, and its, ummm, in a Nebula I don't see any problem taking Xendala, but it's an alternative.

 

[Zed-F]

Actually 30 years to take about 5 planets is really slow. A lot of time was spent waiting around for radiated bases to complete so I could land, waiting for one colony to give enough range to the next instead of performing simultaneous landings, and just plain waiting after the last colony fell for the current round of techs to come in. So, I don't feel like I accomplished a whole lot in those 30 turns; if I'd been doing anything more than coasting along on the fleet we already had I could have easily laid more smackdowns around in Bulrathi space, though that would have been a bit rougher on the troops.

Invading past the missle base at Xendalla should hopefully net us the prize. Sounds like a plan! You'll need big transport stacks to do it, rather than lots of small ones, but that shouldn't really be a problem.

 

[ToddMarshall]

You could have 155 transports arrive simultaneously in 5 turns. Overkill I suspect.

In a general sense, thats slow yeah. But its in the 2nd Century and we're taking planets with Hyper-X boats and pushing factories, so its not THAT slow

And, yes, I'm going to take that nap now.

Final waking thought: HAve you ever seen such a rotten tree for weapons with the cats? Hand Lasers was good, and I'm REALLY glad Hyper-X was in the tree now since there were NO other missiles or bombs, but having to research Blasters and Hard Beams and Anti-Matter torps? Man, what a worthless collection of garbage that is. I guess we could have been given Mass Drivers instead of Neutron Blasters, other than that....

EDIT : OK I got it. Will try to get us to 2460.

Made it to 2453 We own 5 new planets so far. And we're just now designing the bomber. must now

I got us to 2460.... We haven't gotten very far yet, thanks to an Alkari stack of Medium Spore Ships with AMR special + Over 1K fighters as escort. Those AMR Spore ships are serious threats to all our new planets and we're having trouble killing them fast enough, so we had to stop to make fighters to counter the Alkari ones, and to give us someting to blast those spore ships. It should be smooth sailing from here now though. I'll post in the AM.

 

[ToddMarshall]

OK, I do a planetary tour. Almost everything looks spiffy. The only thing I change is setting our original UP to regrow pop instead of do research. The only mission in life I ever see for this planet is to provide Marines, which it did with aplomb at the start of our western offensive, and is nicely situated to do for the southern one.

I see that we can grab 2 radiated planets. BOTH are Ultra Rich. One is safely in the back yard, the other on the front lines. Although the front line one could be considered risky, I'm going to grab it anyway. I'll fill it with pop, tell em to make a shield and bases, and if it succeedes, then ill build factories. I have nothing to lose that way really.

I'd post some screens of how we're doing vs the competition, but it'd only make you puke. Basically we're arround 1.5x the Alkari, and double anyone else in all categories except fleet strength, where we are last, but competitive with all but the Alkari.

He'res a look at the map at least

I decide to invade Xendala from Tau Cygni and Reticuli. We'll have 80 Hyper-X boats arrive the same time as the troops do.

Since the target planet is poor, I won't be able to just flip arround a shield and bases, so, ill wan't something to help the Hyper-X boats guard our new forward base. There are a couple options. I could go for a Large with Heavy Blast Cannons, or I could just whip up 100 fighters out of thin air. Given that no one has repulsors or dissipators, and I don't expect anyone to in the short to mid term, I decide on this little design.

The fleet in the NW corner seems to have finished playing traffic cop up there, so I order it to go take a look at that Psilon planet up there, just in case we need to invade it to get the Fusion Bombs.

OK, its been like half an hour, maybe I should see what this Next Turn button does

2343 - I design a colship to settle the 2 Radiated. I'm going to pass on the small Toxic as the Alkari have Toxic tech.

I send 50 Million from Reticuli to join the 67 million from Tau Cygni. Thats 113 million. Almost ceartianally overkill, but hey. Better to be sure.

2344 - We lose a few ships because I misclcked. I think we'll be ok. We wiped out like 200 Alkari fighters for the price of 13 fighters and 4 missile boats, so it's not the end of the world. We get a cpu/const choice off the alkari. I go for CPU and get Jammer II.

2345 - We arrive at the "alternate" Psilon planet. We're not impressed,. Hmm. it's size 100 and has 200 factories.

They take out some of our forces but we slag the bases and 63 Bobcats and 107 Ferrets survive

Meanwhile, we get to steal off the Psilons, weapons and Computers are available

Well, that sort of made this whole deal a pointless exercize didn't it?

The 2 colony ships complete. I send them on their way.

I hold off on designing the fusion bomber. I want those fusion drives for it and I have a plan to get them

I cue up a nice little invasion of the Psilon's Nebula Planet. 32 million from Beta Ceti and 52 Million from Crypto. We have better toys, so it should be enough. I build a few more Hyper-X boats. Sure they are becoming dated, but I want a 3rd fleet for something in particular After that, I'll build a few more fighters, then bombers, bombers, bombers

 

[ToddMarshall]

2346 - First we deal with a new base at the Psilons nebula planet (no casualties). Then we deal with this:

We do a little Tango and avoid taking any damage whilst wiping them out. It's really nice of all these bases to shoot at our nimble fighters and ignore the missile boats The good news is, aparently the planet was still building its shield because one shot from the boats made the base go poofies. We decline to bomb the planets of course.

there is bad news here, however. Because our fleet was able to clear a path for the marines, we did, in fact overkill. The planet only holds 45 million, so, unfortunately 52 million brave kitties are left to breathe the vacuum

A GNN report shows the unmet Sakkra are last in tech, so no worries there (not like I expected there would be). Oh, by the way. When is the last time You saw the Mrrshans and Alkari listed first and second in tech at this point, with the Psilons in 4th?

Our troopers only manage to return with improved 7, so maybe its a good thing that we stole fusion bombs!

Ummm, did I say Unmet Sakkra?

Being that this is AW, I believe we ARE allowed to trade on the turn we make contact right???

Auto Repair for Hard Beams?? Hard Beams are nothing but inefficient junk. How could I turn this trade down?

I then make a trade that may cause some head scratching. I give him Neurton Blasters for Ion Cannons. Blasters may be a higher level beam weapon, but Ion Cannons are the better gun because of their space efficency. Lastly, I pick Up reduced waste 80% for Class III deflectors. They may be state of the art for him, I dono. But Class III deflectors won't help him much, as more miniaturization will help us.

Still I wait on designing the bomber. I want the magical Warp 4 + stabilizer. And I have a plan to get it. It's just going to require 5 or so turns....

2347 - We settle Rha

I send 50 Million from the Military Academy err, the Ultra Poor, to that little size 10 planet the Alkari have. Let's see if we can pull Fusion Drives out of there.

I send pop to Rha off the home planet.

 

[ToddMarshall]

2348 - Aquillae founded. I send it 27 million.

2349 - Sakkra declare war. I forgot to take the screenshot, so you're just going to have to trust me on this one

2350 - Couple of run from the all powerful Heart of the Tiger battles take place. Of note is that the Alkari now have a Medium design toting a rack of spores... We'll make sure to watch out for that and go banannas to steal the antidote when somone researches it. Ummm... holy handgrenades batman. Thats a good design. It has AMR and shielding. They reach the planet and dump several loads of spores brefore the bases can kill them

Now for some good news:

Our 85 brave cats take on 100 cowardly eggheads. End result.

Looks like our horde was better than their horde™

We pull BC MK III from the wreckage (only tech they had)

Vote time: We have 17 votes, Rest of uni has 15. (Alkiri were nominated)

I send 52 million more from Crypto to Rotan. The Psilons have a rather large fleet en route... We'd best try to stand up defenses there or it could become a spud I also need to terraform Reticuli back... I may need to stand up some Hyper-X boats to augment the bases... erm.. actually, that planet won't be in range of the Alkari in a minute

2351 - We arrive at Fusion Drives LAboratories Time for some Battles at Antares™

Planetarily, we cant hit them and they cant hit us. I hoped their ships would fight, but no

Zortium Armor hits. We go for Reduced Waste 40% over Improved 6 or Improved 5. Probably a mistake not to go for Improved 5...

The invasion commences. 37 of our 50 transports get through....

The end result??

Fusion Drives are indeed pulled from the wreckage Now the question is. Can we hold it?? I THINK so. I wait one more turn on the bomber. If I didn't, the game wouldn't miniaturize them properly with our new techs.

 

[vmxa]

I would trade them warp dis as they are of no use at this point. Let them waste space by adding them to the ships, you are not going to retreat anyway.

 

[ToddMarshall]

2352 - Annother fleet arrives at Reticuli... I should have sent fighters to it not Missile Boats

I trade all our boats for all their spore ships and a hundred or so fighters, but they never reach the planet to spore it this time (whew)

This one is even MORE serious....

Antares is size 10.... If those spore ships reach the planet, it's over... Their fighters close on our Missile boats.... We fire at their spores.... the spores retreat... Our fighters shoot at theirs... Bang, bang... yep. 2 shots and all them fighters dissappear They toasted... umm, FOUR of our fighters. So much for those Alkari fighters All hail the mighty npg fighter . Because those spore ships had AMR, if we had not had fighters in this stack, the planet would have been wiped out. Immediately after that, our mighty npg fighters shoot down all Alkari transports trying to land on Antares... This is going to be a rough ride!

Time to design that bomber

2353 - Ummmm. I didn't see this one coming. There's an extra # in that fighter stack... the leading 1... I don't think we can win this fight....

Nope. Too many fighters. We did whittle down their # of spore ships, and 81 of our Missile boats got away, but thats all we managed to do. Looks like I need to build some serious fighters to counter the alkari ones

BC V hits, we go for BC VI.

I swap everyting to fighter till I have enough to counter that Alkari stack. If they bring that to any planet I don't have a way to stop them! (Breathe, Maniac, breathe... We're not really in danger, its just a temporary setback)