Imperium 11: The MOO Doubling Cube

[jmas]

2453 I launch a fleet at Bootis and prepare to strike Mentar. I wasn’t expecting to encounter ships at Bootis, but the Sili have a Huge there (just built, I think), besides 9 bases. But my Pegasi take out both the huge and the bases. The Sili give me a “warning” but we are still at Amiable.

2454 Seeing that the Buls have sent an invasion force out from Ursa toward Neptunus, I think, why not attack Ursa now, instead of Mentar first? Sabotage 2 bases at Sol. Colonize Morrig. A lot of planets max factories.

2455 Move (i.e., launch an attack) on Ursa. 42 of our troops land on Bootis and defeat 54 Silis. We lose only 8 troops, and capture 84 factories, Hyper-X tech and Auto Repair tech. The Silis declare, naturally.

2456 Battle at Ursa with 20 bases. I lose only one Bombdude. Sabotage 2 bases at Bulrathi Paranar and frame the Psilons. Launch an attack on Mentar.

2457 Start launching troops to Ursa; Imra will add its share to the force next turn. The Psilons are striking at Rayden. Battle at Mentar. Destroy all Psilon bases (20, I think?) with one volley from each of the Bombdudes and the Pegasi. We did lose one Bombdude though. Sabotage 1 base at Sol. Get IT+60, go for Cloning for faster replacement of pop sent out for invasions. I see Mentar has almost 400 factories! Can’t wait to get those. I get an atta boy from the Buls for my attack on the Psilons

2458 Send troops to Mentar.

2459 Three races have their “diplomat gone” and I’m at war with two races. “Nobody wants to play with me!”

2460 Get cloning. Capture Mentar, with Range 6, Inferno, IT+30, BC 2, BC 5, ECM 2, and Ursa, with ECM 5, IIT6, ECM 4, but no Anti-Matter Bombs.





2461 Take orbit of Bul Proxima.

2462 I see the Psilons are sending troops to Sili Rayden but are allied to the Silis?

I colonize Rich Arietis.

2463 Colonize Omicron, no need to really, just for the extra pop. Capture Proxima with Class 5 Planetary, Anti-Matter Bomb (!), Bio Tox Antidote, Neutron Blaster, Mass Driver.

2464 The Psilons captured Rayden but are not at war with the Sili. I design the “Bomb o’ Doom”:



In general I don’t like to bomb colonies, but I wanted to see how these would perform. I build these, and the Horsemen space superiority ships, in earnest.

2465 Destroy colonies at Anraq, Laan, Sol, Jinga. Jinga is a Bul colony but the Buls give me an atta boy for attacking the Humans! This comic situation was to repeat itself several times.

2466 Colonies destroyed at: Uxmai, Kulthos, Klystron, Vega; bombed Ryoun without destroying it.

2467 Battle Humans at Romulas:



Destroy the 2 Huges with Auto Repair, 12 larges, 26 mediums, at a cost to us of 5 Horsemen mediums. In terms of “ship points” that the game uses to compute “Fleet Strength”, we destroyed over 27 times as many ship points as we lost!

Colonies destroyed at: Denubius, Ryoun, Rayden, bombed Paranar without destroying it, spared Romulas till we can fight the other big Human fleet (which was about like this one, and equally thoroughly crushed).

2468 19 Sili missile bases at Cryslon fail to destroy even one Bomb o’ Doom out of the 31 I sent, which deal over 4400 points of damage in one volley.

Colonies destroyed at: Ajax, Thrax, Cryslon, Neptunus, bombed Paranar without destroying it. The Silicoid empire is no more.

2469 Finally the AIs are more wary of me. Fortunately for them, I lose my taste for bombing helpless colonies and build colony ships instead, to recolonize back up to the Council threshold.

2470 I recolonize 13 (!) glassed planets. Didn’t bother moving pop.

I coasted to 2474 and victory, picking up the last unresearched Construction tech (IIT3) before Advanced Construction tech along the way.

31 Council votes, 28 of them mine, 1 each for Buls, Psis, Humans.



Total score: 748 + 200 = 948.

All hail the Colorado Avalanche, I mean the Kholdan Klackon Ant-a-Lanche!

[jmas]

I may post some more thoughts on the game later but right now I need a rest. For now, to add on to my comment about diplomacy (best conducted by warfare), it's interesting how good of relations you can have with a race you are 1) at war with, and 2) actually bombing, as long as you are also fighting their other enemies!

[RefSteel]

After looking over RefSteel’s old post about AIs getting mad when you reach some undetermined amount of population

I thought this was the case right up until I played Imperium 11, but I now believe I was wrong. Part of the reason for my silly Orion gambit (the biggest reason was the Artemis myth) was that I didn't want to anger the AIs by growing too much population - but they yelled at me for getting too big anyway, during a period when my population was absolutely level, but factories were going up with Improved Robotic Controls. I'm now convinced it's either (yeah, some undetermined amount of) Production (my current assumption, since there seems to be a separate "ships on our borders" complaint for fleet strength) or Total Power that leads to this message. In fact, the bad relations I (and Brackard) suffered with the Humans on first contact may have been due to something like production yo-yoing back and forth across a power benchmark due to reserve spending. Growing lots of pop will sour relations of course, but that's because the new population increases your total production (especially as it also allows you to work more factories). Or if Total Power is the trigger, it's doubly increased by population (directly and via production).