Imperium 16 - Timmy's tech transfers

[timmy827]

Start by sending scouts to the in-range N and S, waiting one turn to send the colship to the red star (I should really experiment and see if there's a way to send all three ships, and have the "build a new colony" always come up last after seeing the other scouting reports). Turns out that red star is best destination. Built scouts on first and 4th turn, giving enough to cover all planets within 6 parsecs. Popped BCII from western Artifacts, beat Alkari there by a few turns, and met Silicoid scout at Ajax in the east.

2312-Reach Neptunus and found that the rocks have set up shop already. Research opened, finding +10 and Range 5 only options. +10 comes quick and I build up both planets.

Range 5 comes in 2326, formal contact with Silicoids. I stupidly forget to begin the gifting that turn. Build one round of popguns to guard the world near the rocks, then finish maxing factories before cranking colships. I do get Moro, but since I gifted Range to the rocks other worlds are at risk.

Tau Cygni to the north gets my 3rd colony ship and contact with the Klackons, in 2347. I hold off on gifting them range as they are aggressive and have a sizable fleet.

I expand wildly, making some sloppy moves (sending a 2nd ship to a planet, forgetting to gift hand lasers as soon as I pop them, etc.)

After getting Hyper-V's in %s, I divert all to propulsion. Unfortunately I picked Nuke Engines a long time ago - normally fine, but costly here as I need range 6 or Radiated to meet the birds. Once the rockets come in, I find to my dismay that both Klacks and rocks have them, and Psilons won't take anymore gifts!

In 2363 I grab Proxima to the south, completing my landgrab. This triggers both the final GNN expansion bulletin and the first election, and not surprisingly I could win already with a clean sweep of votes:



Klackons and Silicoids soon offered alliances.

A few years later I finish DSS and find that I can't give it away - ok, time to start spying so I don't keep doing this (due to my artifacts pop I could have gone straight for RC3).

2377 is the banner year where I get range 6 and meet the Alkari. The "gift limit" is chafing as I can't send them everything at once (fortunately was smart and did the higher levels first) and can't give Range6 to anyone yet either.

The Psilons hit one of my worlds with a single medium but it's developed enough to build a base in a few turns. One wave of invasion hits but is repulsed easily. In 2386 I get Dead environment and start ships to claim the SW corner worlds, have to break alliance with Klackons to keep them from getting the barren one.

Around the turn of the century the economy takes off with Enhanced Eco (1st waste cleanup tech), RCIII, and +40. I start focusing on computer tech in order to use spies to snag and gift some things from the AIs (Communist Santa alert!). I usually had trouble distributing those immediately; it seemed that once I self-researched something new the AI's would be willing to take tribute again (and would usually take older techs at this point). I therefore held off on gifting BCV in 2419 to test this (and also to keep a comp tech advantage for spy bonuses); seemed to work pretty well and from then on I could almost always gift anything I stole or researched right away.

A long period of peaceful happy teching follows; I was giving away stuff as soon as I could with the exception of Computers, so you can see my research and spying efforts from the scoring log. One annoyance is that there were no RC upgrades after III, at least up through 6. I discovered that in 2468, and at that point I decided that researching to RC7 couldn't pay off before 2500 even if it was in the tree. Lots of other stuff went wrong around then; continued spying and growth angered the AIs and I was attacked by Klacks and Alkaris. The Klacks surprised me (I had gotten complacent and wasn't using F8 ) but their fleet was laughable, all smalls without bombs, no hope of hurting a planet even if it didn't have a shield. I saw the Alkari fleet coming for the Radiated world, which I had settled quite late and wasn't topped out on factories yet, but reserve spending could still get a shield and 11 bases. I was a bit worried since I've given the Alkari the shields to nullify my pitiful Hyper-V missiles, and bite the bullet giving the Psilons Adv Space Scanner for Stingers. I had been avoiding weapons in spying since the AI's seemed to have a lot of the same ones with limited regifting potential, if I hadn't I may have had something better here.

So what did they have?

Only the larges were a threat at all, and 4 stinger volleys smoked it. I probably could have been OK with hyper-Vs (would lose some bases though) but better safe than sorry. Fortunatley they did not formally declare war, so I could keep feeding them techs for points. The Klackons did and kept their diplomat gone for a while, resulting in an amusing scene of gifting them 8 techs when contact was reestablished. This got them to declare peace, but still took away their diplomat afterwards.

2475 was another election where I could have cleanswept. I decided at this point to give up spying and gift my edge in computer techs away. I did get to steal and regift a lot of things, but didn't pick the trees clean like I was expecting to with such a big computer tech edge.

I occasionally got "you're too big" warnings, but fortunately minimized diplomat absence (was still getting some spying complaints). Thus the final 25 turns played out very peacefully:

Klackons actually abstained for some reason, but still had enough.

Scoring totals:

Since all races were alive at the end, I get the x2 for a total of 294,480

Was a fun little game, nice to have something on the easy side. Unfortunately it seems that playing to win this variant involves spending a lot more time going through the diplo screens and calculating score than playing (sort of the opposite of how I expect Epic 24 to turn out). It was a bit of a bummer to go through that work and get wasted by sargon0, without him even going all the way to 2500! (though not surprising; I feel like I'm pretty good at MOO now but there are some far more experienced players in RB). Thanks to Sullla and the odd fellow who didn't want credit.

[RefSteel]

playing to win this variant involves spending a lot more time going through the diplo screens and calculating score than playing

On consideration, I think Sullla didn't intend the game to be played for score almost at all, especially by experienced players. I should have realized that from the start, with 200 years of tech gifting possible, and with the game set to Average difficulty. The Artifacts planet was another giant sign post (along with Sullla's comments about relaxing and taking it easy with this one) to say, "Don't worry so much about score," I think. Your BC2 draw wasn't too bad, but probably hurt you a lot in comparison to my lucking into Duralloy (which meant LR colships pretty much immediately, plus lower costs per colony ship in general, and a chance to skip a tier or two of IIT) or Sargon's IER. If I had this one to play again, I'd probably play a different variant: An utterly ruthless diplomat pushing for the earliest possible election victory - via any and every combination of trade, gifts, alliances, and war (in part, and only in part, for enemy-of-my-enemy). Gifts would be given only when it would most benefit me (to get an alliance or maybe, sometimes, to thaw chilled relations) ... leaving my score (and the time taken building it up and recording it) much, much smaller. Ideally, I'd save up all my tech gifts for the last turn before victory, and write it up as a Scrooge-seeing-the-light kind of story.

I should really experiment and see if there's a way to send all three ships, and have the "build a new colony" always come up last after seeing the other scouting reports)

I always send the colship out on the first turn, regardless of whether I expect reports sooner or not (I can never tell which order planets will be scouted in either - it's sort of upper left to lower right, but I've seen planets show up before others that lie noticably northwest of them from time to time). If the colship arrives first, and you're still worried another world might be so much better than the one you're at that it'll be worth the extra years in transit (paying upkeep on the ship and delaying the new planet's growth) you can always choose "no" on the "build a colony?" screen, and you've lost nothing over keeping the colship at home for a year. And if your scouts report sooner than the colship, or the latter's destination is good enough to keep (or especially the equivilent of Maalor, Artemis, or Herculis from Imperium 11!) you get it started a full year early!