Imperium 21 - Timmy's report

[timmy827]

Decided to alter a normal opening pretty heavily for the early research bonus points. Would definitely slow down overall development, but Hard is usually not so, so should be winnable. Set initial spending all to tech and let's see what we've got:

DSS (no choice, 440 RP)
RW80 (870)
S2(560)
Barren(310)
Range4(310)
GatlingLaser(870)

Ouchie on those. OK, my homeworld currently produces 23 RP, and will go up to about 32 once the ship lands (and will inch up with pop growth.) Payback for a factory is 20 turns. Something like 3360 RP to get all of those, which is more than 100 turns! OK, don't go completely for bonus glory, build some factories.


My 2nd world is Fertile but UP; the other ocean is poor. Orion is the reachable star in the center. I make R4 the first priority and do some full funding from Nazin, get lucky and a pop at 2317! Built factories for three more turns then a 6-turn colship; it's a Small map so didn't want to wait any longer. Research going to Construction next, that's done in 2333 right after Beta Ceti founded, not bad for just the UP plinking in! Got very lucky again, pop at 2 or 3%. Maxed out Nazin, put one turn of its production into DSS to seed before building a colship, then more turns of teching as the 5th Desert planet had to wait until #4 was founded before the ship could really move out.

DSS in 2342, Barren 2343, ClassII in 2349.
After the last colship, I started a Huge/LR col. 11 years to build, but what else am I going to spend my homeworld on? Also I wasn't sure if I wanted to tech Gatling - it really sucks, since lasers miniaturize better 4 normal lasers don't take much more cost/space.

Finally in 2363 the Psilons have the tech to settle the Dead world between us (their 3rd) and make contact. They are willing to trade HyperV or IIT9 for RW but I hold off.

I've just jumped that gap and a normal col is en route to the Jungle world (also poor), however a Mrrshan ship shows up at the same time with a big escort.

2374 is my first spying success, get to choose any Psilon tech and take Duralloy. Mrrshans have Gatling, hoping to lift that and see if I can then research a good weapons tech for free.

With little else to do, my maxed worlds built a couple bases if relevant, topped out a prebuild using that Huge design, and went reserve. That allowed Paranar to react to a Mrrshan attack:


This was a close fight, the heavies could penetrate my shields, but had enough to hold them off.

Shortly after in 2385 a BIG theft - the Psilon's brand new BCIV! That should give me a considerable spy boost against the other races, pity I still only know one of them. But then the next turn the Alkari learn Range 6 and come into contact, nice. The Meklar must be jammed into 2 systems in the far northwest.
Time until 2400 is a great age for spying - lift IER, Range5, Dead, and Gatling along with some assorted minor items. Of course, the Psilons and Alkaris DoW, but not unexpected and nothing I shouldn't be able to handle. What bothers me is that I'm not willing to conquer without some kind of engine and no one has one yet. Some +terraforming would be nice too, but also totally unavailable.

Psilons have one Huge that is full of heavy ions and parks over Beta Ceti, long bombing run begins. Beta Ceti regrows and fends off two invasions, eventually brains sign peace but my best world has to start over from scratch. Steal RCIII from birds; they get sublights but stealing takes so long I decide to research it myself. And then I do get the steal right when the tech gets into %s Somewhere in here I turned off Psilon spying hoping to delay another war.

So I went with Medium designs, one Hyper-V 5-rack and one with 3 fusion bombs. Taking the Mrrshan's Poor Maretta was easy fleetwise but their Battle Suits made the invasions costly, fortunately I looted that. However, a new Mrrshan design emerges that beats my Hyper-V's - 2 moves means it can either retreat away, or close on boats after they fire and smack them with a horde of NPG's. 5 of them kick me out of Maretta and start bombing away, but the joke's on them as I take out Fierias's 17 bases with their fleet gone. The homeworld's pop is decimated by futile attempts to invade Maretta while my transports approach; a fleet that retreated from a developed world of mine shoots down a first wave of invaders then ALSO goes to Maretta and lets the 2nd wave take Fierias! IIT6 and ClassIII looted.

Even better, I can rush forward, bomb out and invade the last Mrrshan world before their fleet can react! I couldn't fight their ships very well but didn't have to, hehe. Year was 2469 - man this was a slow-moving game! Maretta will be slow to rebuild but Fierias and Draconis are both good sizes and come 2/3 full of factories, so they are contributing pretty quickly.

Resume spying on the Psilons, get Inferno (can finally settle that Rich world in the backlines) and RW60 and war. Despite their higher tech they are very different than the Mrrshans; Larges and Huges with heavy blast cannons/fusion beams can chip away at my bases and win at worlds where I don't have enough, but swarm of Ion Cannon fighters can hold up quite well against them. They start a couple sieges but can't really threaten my worlds with shields (their bombard damage is really low, and I have a gropo tech advantage on them). I invade their small Inferno world (no techs sadly) but it gets wiped out before I get defenses. A small bomber swarm destroys their Rich world from the tactical screen:

First time I've ever done that without spores, short of late-game super-overkill stacks. I did have spores but decided not to use them, after relying them exclusively for much of the last Imperium.

Like the Mrrshans, the Psilons erred in trying to take one of my worlds under siege, depleting Mentar's population (aided by some bombing

An invasion from here essentially clinched the win; Mentar had gone Rich by event, so I quickly fortified it and continued to press forward, and a haul of six techs pretty much erased the brain's lead. Was able to mass fighters and kill the one Psilon huge that was sieging my world and shoot down their big invasion fleet soon afterwards; they would be unlikely to threaten me again. I razed and resettled one Alkari world mainly to contact the Meklars just before the 2500 vote, they didn't have any + terraforming either! Bizarre, a game went 200 years with no one getting any (of course, if not for the variant scoring I would have researched +20 myself ages ago). Had time to wipe out the Psilon's 2nd planet and it was just enough to put me over the top now:

I got some help from an interesting way - when I bombed out that Alkari world I was just short of the firepower to wipe it out in one turn. So they sent 33 reinforcing transports that were shot down by my fighters too. As usual for the AI's in this game the Alkari fleet positioning was horrible; had a big fleet of ships on par with my tech (kept getting bigger since they had no weapons that could go through a planet shield, and so never took losses at my worlds) but did not use it as the powerful defensive force it could have. I really wish the AI's tactical realization that it has no chance if it can't penetrate a planet shield was shared by their strategic move and they wouldn't waste time sending ships on pointless missions over and over again.




Scoring
1st tech dates:
Computers - Deep Space Scanner - 2342 (no bonus)
Construction - RW80 - 2333 (2nd, 4 points)
Force Fields - class II - 2349 (T3rd, 1 pt)
Planetology - Barren - 2343 (no points)
Prop - Range4 - 2317 (1st, 6pts)
Weapons - uh, whoops.
Yeah, I held off on researching any, the idea being that if I got left with a key gap (no bombs, or seriously hurting for better missiles, etc.) I might be able to research one higher-tier tech at no score penalty. Also, the only initial choice of Gatling Laser is always essentially worthless; you can fit almost as many normal lasers for the same space/cost, and if you are doing any significant fighting at that tech level you'd come out ahead by putting those RP into more laser ships. Probably I should have researched a weapons tech once I got a winning position (was still on Hyper-x, could do quickly) - doubtful I would have gotten points, but who knows, maybe only three people play this one, or someone else does the same thing as me and forgets to research one, or they do but their game lasts longer.

No negatives, did not self-research anything after those listed above. Total score 111 (100 victory, 11 bonus from early research dates.)

[RefSteel]

Thanks for the great report - and what looks like a great game, coming back from a first-turn all-out tech gambit! It looks like taking Range 4 paid off with a earliest tech by anywyone in any field though Barren became a costly choice when you decided to reprioritize. You're right that all-out teching from turn 1 wouldn't be a winning move, but balancing factory building with steadily increasing tech spending could bring in all six techs surprisingly quickly. Though it does take 20 years for initial factories to pay off, a lot of them are doing so by turn ~30; never underestimate the power of compound interest!

Weapons - uh, whoops.

Hilarious! I loved your plan to steal gats and freely research a decent weapons technology, and kept waiting to read the date of your first weapons research into something like Fusion Beam ... and waiting ... and waiting.... I imagine Hyper-X Rockets would even have helped your missile boats and bases in the middle game, but I think you deserve some kind of special bonus for letting your scientists in that field retire without doing anything! The greatest accolades, of course, are reserved for the spies who grabbed Sub-Light Drives for you just in time to avoid a scoring penalty! One really interesting thing (for me at least) about this variant was relying on the AIs and their Questionable Research Choices™ to determine our potential discoveries. I also think it's great that we both built Huge LR Colships ... mine for Vox, several years later than yours was sent to ... Paranar!

Congratulations on the victory, and some great early tech speeds - you beat me to two of the five techs you researched at all, and tied me for a third, so in that sense, we were pretty much exactly even!

[KnTenshi]

Let's see:

2 Diplo wins in 2399.
A Conquest in 2429.
And a Final War Victory in 2792.

What a variety. I'm actually surprised about such quick wins. From the nature of the variant, one would think these would all be slow games.

I do like how your Weapons Researchers pretty much said "Do the research ourselves? Why? Why would we want to do that when our enemies will gladly make the instruments of their own demise?"

[sargon0]

Nicely played and reported. Some really early techs then some recovery and, it seems with RefSteel & you, the huge LR colship is back on the menu! Good fun with the invasions and the AI mistiming their assaults. You should get a bonus for forgoing all weapons, whatever the reason!