Imperium 35 - Brack's Game

[Brackard]

So....here we are again.

After a long hiatus, the lure of Master of Orion brings me back from the ashes. For whatever reason, I enjoy playing strategy games. The ironic part if that I'm not that GOOD at them. Even a slight curveball will strike me off. But I love the twists, so here we go again.

So, let's take a look at what we've got here.

Let's start with opponents. The initial threat is the humans. I've never done well with Humans in game. They always seem to grab the vote very early in game. We'll TRY to do something to prevent that this game.

The only other immediate threat is the Psilons. We just need to make sure they don't go run-away on us. While difficult with 5 other players, not impossible.

Ok, so let's take a look at the map:



Ok, nicely enough, we have two green starts within our 3 turns. (Yellow square). The red square is the scout limit at start.

After screwing with the map for far too long, the map seemed to comfortable handle 4 other races. The fifth, wherever it may be, must be scrunched in a corner somewhere. I hope it's on the other side of the galaxy and not right next to me.

So.....general strategies? Couple of things.
1) Obviously, I need to head towards the green. That means heading south. Woe to the poor soul who has the south.
2) Keeping the AI in the blind. I want and need to keep as many stars as I can covered for as long as possible to keep the enemy from scouting them and realizing that there's something there. Not sure how long that will last, but hopefully long enough to give me an advantage in getting setup.
3) Finding the editor that allows me to turn stars green. Oh. Wait. This is RB, nevermind.
4) Considering the strength of some nearby stars. I'm seriously considering playing with bio bombs. Because I can't use the system, I really don't want ANYONE to use the system. So I'm seriously considering using the bio bombs and making it even MORE difficult to repopulate planets I've decimated.

So. Shall we start?

I send my colony to the yellow star, two scouts to the green. Find the better green, relocate the colony to the proper location, and send scouts out everywhere else possible.



I can tell I'm a bit rusty. I forget to immediately send out some support for the fledgling colony. I also send out another scout to the guardian (Red circle). You know. Because I forgot what was there. However, that guardian does make a nice barrier. There's a single system up north that enemies need to get through, or they have to go south where I plan on moving.

I find two other green stars in scout range: Ukka (minimal - all but worthless), and Beta Ceti - Range 4, Arid, 55 max. Solid planet.

Knowing what I know now through the first 17 turns or so, I understand that the enemy is definitely crammed together quite nicely. Potential locations in yellow.

The biggest concern as it stands is the far west. I'm hoping that's not the humans or the Psilons. I know it's not the Darloks. They just showed up with a scout on a yellow world (nice yellow 100 earth world). I chased it away, but it's time to get some firepower over there.



So, it looks like the site was a bit far for both of us. Only a scout tried to get there. I created a medium fighter with a couple of lasers and a fuel tank in order to defend it (for now).

Max factories on homeworld in 2328. Switch to research, 100% propulsion so we can colonize next world and start moving south. I have a choice between Range 4 and Range 5. I choose Range 4 because it's quick. Three turns later, I have Range 4.

I switch to Planetology hoping for Tundra tech. No dice. Go for a quick +10 populaiton. It only takes a few turns, then I get the option of Tundra, I grab it and start researaching!

2335 - Darloks show up with a colony ship on Kronos (the bright yellow star). My long range fighters scare him off. He'll be back. How long before he brings friends?

2340 - Controlled Tundra comes in, and I begin building colony ships. Darloks bring along some scouts with their colony ship (all unarmed). That didn't help much. I equal out my research among all fields.

2346 - We are fifth in empire population...

2347 - Darloks show up with an armed ship escort. They retreat. Time to start beefing up security. Laan colonized on southern border. Scouts sent out to well...scout!



2348 - One word:



Crap.

We also meet the humans (owning the green stars I wanted). I do some scouting, and find a Tundra that the Humans cant' colonize. I work on pushing out another colony ship.

2354 - Beta Ceti founded.

2363 - Darloks getting fiesty. Fired off an ARMED colony ship. Took out small fighter, but their ship destroyed. Adding more to that planetary defense.

2367 - Proteus founded. Darloks bring 3 armed colony ships (incluidng missiles) and take out my defenses. Hmm....time to take a look at overall status. I'm officially boxed in.

Ok, the loss of Kronos really put me in a poor position. From Kronos, the Darloks have the ability to launch into all those delicious little planets that I've got covered that they now have range to. I don't want that. I REALLY don't want that. I have to prevent that. I have 10-15 new fighters on the way to Kronos. Most of those will retreat until I have a nice fleet there.



Additionally, I have the humans sitting on two different juicy green planets that I absolutely need to have. The Humans are very low on the fleet power graph with 20 some odd small fighters wielding a small laser each. With a small fleet of medium ships, I should be able to run through that.



It's likely the Humans only know me and the Darloks. The Darloks are doing me a favor here. I'm not overly worried about the Darloks making friends with lots of people here. I can work on the Humans without too much repercussions from the rest of the galaxy to date.

So, priorities:
1) Build a new bomber - bomb out the humans and to bomb Kronos
2) Regroup fighters into a force that can defend Kronos from Darloks
3) Build force of fighters/bombers for Human assault.

Damn, I have a lot of work to do. And I'm not even sure it's going to work...

2400 -

No. It didn't work. There were too many point of entry and too much for me to guard. Darloks and Humans teched their range too far for me to defend. I have to give up that strategy and work on something else. Mainly upping the colonies I have and then when they are securely defended, going for the additional ones I want.

Time to do some turtling.

2428 - So, I've spent some time shoring up my defensees (missile bases), doing some researching, etc, etc. The Darloks and the Humans have been slowly expanding around me, and nothing I can really do about it. It's like trying to plug the leak in the dam by plugging your finger in it. It doesn't really work.

However, that being said, it's about time to start looking at the offensive against the humans. The one good thing about them having a colony across the universe is that they spend a LOT of time in transit. I hope that bodes well for us.

2438 - Status



2444 - Don't have enough high enough tech to even come close at mounting an assault. Working on advanced tech. First council. Humans have everyone on board with exception of the Darloks. It's about time to get something moving. Quickly perhaps?

2449 - Too late. Game over. Diplo loss to the Humans.



Irritating loss. Not even sure I'd have been able to work through the issue by the next vote though. I'd seriously contemplated playing the game again as a shadow game to see what I could do differently but I didn't get around to it. Ah well, always next game.

[RefSteel]

Thanks for the great report - lots of detailed analysis of your plans and strategic goals and well-chosen images for illustration!

Some strategic suggestions/opinions/babbling from me:

It looks like you did a good job of controlling your part of the map early on. Later in the game though, especially with a variant limiting the number of stars you can actually control, it becomes much harder to take on AI fleets, and you won't be able to beat all of them until you've achieved a true winning position. Also note that blowing up AI fleets does result in diplomatic penalties. Ideally, as you're reaching the point of diminishing returns for "defending" unclaimed worlds, you could decide which race(s) you want to see claim each planet, and allow them in while chasing off the others. It's often better to let ANY race claim a world though (except maybe a runaway you might not be able to stop anyway) than to expend a lot of resources stopping them. Basically, if you imagine the game as a competition between yourself and the biggest/baddest AI race, any resources you spend fighting the other AI races is ~wasted if you're not gaining something (like a world) in the deal. Of course this is especially true in a case like attacking Kronos, where victory would come at a significant cost and definitely result in war with another race.

On a related note, it's best when possible (until you're so strong that it doesn't matter) to keep real combat to a single enemy front at once - preferably one on which you hope or expect to make gains. If you were committing resources to hold back the Darloks at the same time, it's understandable that you couldn't make headway against the humans. Likewise, stopping Human colony fleets should be secondary to acquiring green stars from the Humans (an old Sirianism is, "What can wait, should wait").

Hopefully those suggestions are helpful (or will stimulate some more discussion) - and in any case, I've an idea to prevent irritating losses of this type in the next Imperium....

[Brackard]

As far as the irritating loss. I'm irritated at myself from preventing it. Even my pre-discussion talked about trying to prevent the early Human diplo victory. My thoguht that the nearby Darloks would irriate everyone off. Nope, they had decided to ally with the Humans early as well.

And yes, I realize I spent too many resources trying to keep AI away from uncliamd planets. I realized it in game as well. Unfortunately, I caught on a little too late and it was hard going from there. Kronos was a key in my plans simply to prevent a launch point into the rest of the unclaimed systems. Unfortnately, the AI teched range faster than anticipated and my planned defense went to hell in a handbasket extremely quickly - even without Kronos.

The Kronos war, of course, pushed me into defensive and missile bases. I also needed to tech up to have a chance and taking out the humans. Had I been a tad quicker (by not wasting time scrweing around with Darloks/Kronos), I should have been able to invade the two other southern green stars before the Humans started cranking out the Very Large monster ships that I couldn't match.

Wars. One front war: Good. Two front war. Bad. I actually was never at war with the Humans, other than trying to prevent them all from claiming unclained planets. So while technically war, it was expending resources for the purpose of denying the 'enemy' resources. Same concept. Same use of resources.

All in all, I had a strategy that sent me into a nose dive. I tried to pull up, but the forces were too great and I ended with a nice explosion upon impact.