Imperium 12, Timmy's report

[timmy827]

I would like to preface my report by looking at what planetology techs actually do. OK, lack of waste cleanup arguably makes us polluting scum. But we wind up not changing anything on our planets (terraforming/soil enrichment), and leave the hostile worlds completely virgin and undisturbed. I think these variant rules actually are more like environmentalists than normal play

Very interesting initial start, in the sense that the choice between stars for first colship didn't matter at all. I was banking on Sulla mocking us with one hostile world right next to us, and lost 2 turns waiting on scout reports

Map after initial scouting:

Well, actually I took the pic a few turns later. Chased a Bulrathi scout in the west, and eventually a Klack scout at the southern yellow inferno. As the game players know, the unscouted start due west of Meklon is Orion. I got all these habitable worlds settled by 2346 or so, and was first to 6 systems.

The next 20 years or so were incredibly quick, nothing to do but research slowly from Meklon (going Nuke Engines->Range 7, HyperV->NPG). In 2367 I get hit with the virus event on a tech in percentages, but thankfully its FF2 and not range 7 so not that terrible a loss. Range 7 pops in 2374 and I formally meet the Klackons:

Make a terribly lopsided beaker trade: range 7 for RIW80, but hey that's the only way I can get cleanup.

In 2397 I finish IIT8 for the purpose of building a LR colship to snap the rich minimal in the SE corner, but find that it's not gonna happen the same turn:

The fleet goes in and out of Improved Scanner range, and loses the colony ship! The Lancers chases my scout but then turn around, and I take a flyer on sending a col ship down here. I know I will need to defend it and order up a few NPG larges, but I do not put reserve tanks on them so I need to wait for founding to get them moving (I weedily forget that I could have sent 1 or 2 to the Toxic between Kakata and Aurora). Another Klack fleet inbound - 50something smalls and a colony ship, Aurora has had no colonists arrive yet. I trade the Klacks something for FF2 - they only have hyperV's and AMR in their weapons tree so the smalls could only have lasers. It pays off as that fleet arrives one turn before my own and kills 2 million borgs - leaving me with 1 pop left! Interesting that the planet still takes damage in strategic bombing while a missle base would have been totally invulnerable.

The next turn 2 of my larges arrive and easily vaporize the attackers. The Klackons did send an invasion fleet; thankfully my ships shot down all the transports - they arrived before any of my own colonists and would have taken it if any got through. My larges would have poofed for lack of range - would the same happen to my colonists en route? I'm glad I didn't find out.

Also around this time BCV, AutoRepair, and AMBombs all pop, allowing this:

I traded for Duralloy from the bugs and stole the shields from them. They now have ScatterPackV so those shields will make a significant difference against their bases. All worlds start these (taking 11-14 years) except for Berel which starts building colony ships. Research turned off. I predict that winning a council victory is going to be very difficult becase I can only expand through the AI's and am prepared to use this model for the rest of the game.

Next turn the council finally meets. Probably would've happened 50 turns ago I had the planetology option - all those hostile worlds around me are still unsettled and I would have several barring extreme unluckiness in hostile environment options. I am worried that the bugs are my opponent as they have a lot of alliances, but the humans (1) and birds (2) abstain, leaving the bugs with 10/20 votes. Phew.

I get hit with mineral depletion, but at Berel - by far my smallest world, so not too bad.

2425 vote: Again I am saved by an abstention (Psilons). Still no contact with anyone but bugs so there was nothing I could do. My first Devastator has just finished and over the next 25 turns I ran over the bugs. I began to worry about a Psilon diplo victory. But no vote came in 2450, I had destroyed enough worlds completely. Actually I would have been fine with a diplo "loss" + final war victory; I fully intend to wipe out all AIs so it would play out much the same. In a normal game I would refound enough worlds to vote myself in to spare the mopup of the last few AI worlds, but since I can't settle any hostile worlds that won't work here. Here's the map in 2459:

Very dull from here on out. I am leaving one Devastator behind at each world I colonize (solely for range at this point), with warp one transports it would probably take longer than is worth it to ship people over and stand up worlds with missile bases. (The large % of income spent on ship upkeep, largely to having the no-planetology stunted economy, and poor cleanup would hurt too).

This fleet is notable for being the only one that tries to fight (against a single Devastator)

The medium stack is big enough to exceed my autorepair rate, but since all the ships are warp 1 I can easily dance around to avoid danger, and the mediums flee after all the larges have been destroyed.

2476:

I have FINALLY wiped out the miserable birds. I don't think they've had a world with more than 10 factories for a dozen turns, but keep managing to land an existing colony ship somewhere as soon as I think I've torched their last world. Big game of whack-a-mole, good thing there is nothing like Civ4's WW in this game. With only warp 2 speed, I probably should have built some large models that would be enough to burn new worlds and fight off small numbers of ships, freeing my huges for planets with missile bases. I've turned off shipbuilding and am researching range 8; the SW red flag is a tundra world so I can't settle there and I'm worried about being able to reach the planet in the corner. In 2482 I am in the amusing position of having no contact with anyone due to range limitations; 4 worlds are still divided between Klacks, Psilons, and bears. The situation is remedied by more worlds being settled; range 8 came in as well but was not needed. Extermination completed in 2493, with no planetology tech ever discovered. Will be interesting to see if others head further up propulsion and get a better engine, and how that affects the length of time to obliterate the AI's.

This was probably the fewest missile bases I've ever built; the hostile worlds to west of me were never settled so before I had dominant ships I only bordered the Klacks and kept them happy. This was also a very different playstyle; normally I would attack slower focusing on invading 1-2 worlds at a time, with the goal of turning them into assets rather than killing the AI as fast as possible - not surprising, given that Sulla's website games were my #1 resource for learning the game.

[dathon]

Very nicely executed game, Timmy! Another game where the Psilon were relegated to a small role. That made a big difference in the availability of tech to the AI. You were able to take it to them a lot sooner than I was.

dathon

[TheArchduke]

A pellet gun huge design? Wow, what a quick win. I didn´t expect that. Nice work!

[timmy827]

I definitely lucked out with no runaway AI's; as dathon noted the Psilons in his game were much scarier.

NPG huges generally won't cut it on Impossible, but when your autorepair matches whatever damage the enemy fleets can do, your beam weapons don't matter a whole lot
I really like that gun though, because it's a lower tech level it miniaturizes better than ion cannons, and the pound-for-pound performance is almost as good as them even against unshielded ships. Unfortunately, the mass driver/hard beams/etc. cost way more than the comparable neutron blaster/fusion beam/etc.

[sargon0]

The mighty NPG strikes again! RefSteel used it for a long time in normal difficulty Imperium 10. It lasts long (until shielding levels rise) and, as you say, it is small for shield-halving weapons. Usually does not feature heavily at Impossible level. Nicely played.

[Sullla]

Very interesting initial start, in the sense that the choice between stars for first colship didn't matter at all. I was banking on Sulla mocking us with one hostile world right next to us, and lost 2 turns waiting on scout reports

Your metagaming instincts were correct. The original save had a Hostile world among the initial choices. But I had to do a quick replacement job once we found out that save was actually on Impossible, so there was no time to get creative.

Impressive early win - the design on your Huge ship was excellent. Sorry the ending was an unexciting mopup!