Imperium 19 - Timmy

[timmy827]

Not surprisingly, the AI's missed the memo on that whole "Pax" thing

Well, I didn't scout before sending the colony ship, so got the size 60 world (ok) instead of the UR tundra to the southeast. I parked Cryslon at 50 population, allowing me to settle that world very early, 2317 I think. A few turns later here's the map as I hit the first Sakkra scout to the north.

When I settled that Tundra a while later I was able to see that the lizards had already settled the next world north of that Jungle, and was already fairly developed (50 factories), but despite being in range there hasn't even been an unarmed colony ship yet. I was happy to see range 4 as only choice in propulsion and that came in 2334. Time for some thoughts...

One of the big challenges of the Civ4 incarnation is that it can be hard to get the civ you want to declare war on you; there was much less random violence than in Civ3 (generally better for the game, but hard when you wanted the largest civ on the other continent to DoW you!). MOO does not have that "problem", but the auto-blood-enemy upon losing a world is a very dangerous rule here; in any normal game I would be surprised if I didn't lose a world or two during the early expansion phase. Obviously the correct strategy in this game is to postpone the blood enemy decision to the last possible moment so you can pick the biggest AI civ to invade and not attack anyone else; I did well in Epic 24 with extra aggression but the per-civ penalty has been significantly ramped up here. So I want to be very careful about settling non-hostile worlds. Also, I can't get contact with the Sakkra and see their personality until I make a decision - either settle a close world, or let them have it.

Only 40 turns in and I was already starting to dread the micro - Silicoids probably have more than any other race due to the factory building going faster than the population growth.

I did decide to take that world, and the discovery was mixed news:

Their stunted expansion may give me other opportunities, but also means I am their #1 target. Not good...At least they are Pacifists, although I'm not sure how much that means they will avoid brush wars. Have also seen some Alkari scouts to the west and Klackons to the east.

A beeline on Nuclear Engines came in and it exacerbated the "settlement bomb" problem - my UR world was cranking out colony ships at a disgusting rate (sometimes 1 turn with overflow!), and wasn't even maxed out yet; although it was about 2/3 full and my only world where I wasn't sending off population over about halfway. With new worlds slow to develop, I had it build many rounds of popguns for border world defense, and eventually some reserve pumping as well. About 2346 I remembered that I should open construction for IIT9; was now done with that, nearly to sheild2, and then going to go for Hyper-X, hopefully timed about when some of the outer worlds would be able to start building a base.

Yet another picture after meeting the Klackons (Ruthless Militarist, yikes!). I don't know how they got the range to make that jump, or why they have it and are still stuck at 4 worlds.

I am more or less cut off from further moves north or east by lack of range at this point - nothing after 4 until at least 8! - but in the west (despite the appearance of a gap) there are a couple of 4-range crossing points. I was hoping for luck that at least one has not been claimed by the Alkari as I haven't scouted them yet, and got what I wanted - a few turns after snapping that picture I found Altair as circled, and open space to the west. Look at that - there is also a gap between Altair and the SW worlds, and it appeared that it just might block them long enough for me to swoop in and claim the whole lot!

Yup!

Still no contact with Alkari - great news, they don't have the range to settle or attack the SW quadrant. Looks like I will get all of it, especially now that I wield sublights allowing double-speed shipping of colonists. Fusion drives are the only way forward - ouch, still no range! You can see the Sakkra have finally started to branch out in the north; maybe I could have delayed/prevented that via LR skirmishers but I was more concerned with defending worlds I did have and moving west. The bad news is that the Klackons have just jumped all the way to Toxic, so they could soon take that Dead world between them and the Sakkra which would truly cut me off (it's also UR to boot). Also, I had purposely held off settling that Tunrda near them until getting spy visibility into their techs, not wanting to open a potentially vulnerable world, then they get the tech to attack it right after plopping down the colony ship. I have considerable resources - moving around 100 popguns, able to ship in a lot of rocks, and reserve spending - but the bugs saw their chance:

Although I have no scanner upgrades, I'm 95% certain that this is going to Celtsi. I scrapped the venerable scout1's making room for a new popgun - warp 3/speed 2, 1 laser, and reserve tanks so it could pull double duty attempting to defend the Dead gateway world once this crisis passed.

Well, it turns out I was wrong about the fleet's direction and no attack came immediately. I soon realized that I could settle far-out worlds:

I think this is probably the first time I've ever intentionally used lower-tech warp drives than I have - but it makes all the difference! Due to the plodding speed I pumped reserve at Phantos (the UR at the start) and built it at a closer world. However, the Sakkra had also gotten Toxic and both races were on the move to the north - so I was probably still going to get cut off. In a normal game I would have tried to sneak more ships through but in this environment I had to guard anything within range of the AI's. The goal Dead world should be fine - size 40 + UR, just flood it with colonists and it should have lots of bases fast - but defending multiple worlds would be tough. I was still lacking a full scouting report out west after my latest settlements; maybe I would be able to do an end run around Alkari space on the far west side of the map or find a hostile-environment path through them.

Further expansion in the west triggered vote at 2390 against Klackons; I pull votes from the Alkari and everyone else abstains, allowing me to vote for the bugs, excellent. Situation repeats in 2400 although I need to watch out as the Humans are nearly equal with the Klackons in population. Map:

That (red) human world in the far west is momentarily blocking my colonization - I had started one of the slow LR ships on it but was not close when the humans got there. Probably should have drawn some LR lasers to blockade eariler, those were also on the way. But the good news is they were willing to trade me Range5 for IIT8, which finally introduced me to the rather stunted Alkari (grey). In 2400 Death Spores was finally done, which allowed me to put real engines back on the long range colony ship and suddenly I had many expansion opportunities again. My votes allowed an alliance with the Klackons also, giving me more range and a sense of security on the eastern half, so I got considerably bolder. Here's the results 25 years later:


Time for a bit of an AI rant. In some ways this game surprises and delights with better AI behavior than much more modern games, but it's inexplicable that I got all of these worlds. Neither Alkari or Psilon have higher than Dead tech, so that explains the inferno grabs but I can't believe the Psilons didn't settle the worlds along the western edge. Similarly, no one except Humans have Radiated but how did those habitables in the east get to me? And I don't even want to know how that Jungle world in the NE is still open. There appeared to be some buggy blind spot in the AI, I eventually settled it years later.

Relations are starting to get interesting; I've triggered "you're too big" warnings from everyone now except my bug buddies. But there has still been zero acts of agression against worlds I've settled; only a couple skirmishes at still open worlds. The AI's aren't hitting each other either - at one point I noticed the Klackons orbiting a fleet over a human world and taking it by invasion a few turns later; next turn the two races were allied again. Thousands of popguns are guarding my new acquisitions but I'm quite ancy as many races have had class IV shields for a while, which would make them invulnerable. Just got Graviton beams and am working on frigates to replace.

Oh, and I am furious with the blasted Sakkra, who have failed for the last 50 years to do something about the pirates at Firma, killing trade.

Well, finally some action in 2430 as the Alkari DOW. Thankfully they are the weakest AI, and I should be able to hold my own against their fleets (no good ship to ship weapons, but they do have fusion bomb). Not too worried about them, but they are allied to everyone except the Klackons so this could get ugly fast, no chance at getting any of those races to cancel their alliance. Was quiet for about 10 turns, then an AI fail alert:

Nothing more than lasers/gatlings which can't touch my bases, but they chewed up my equally obsolete fighters pretty well. This was one of the Inferno's in Alkari space, if they had gone for the other one (no bases yet, although many of the graviton corvettes) they might have done something. Alkari would stay in non-threating war for quite a while; had some luck in the other races holding off but the dogpile was fully joined soon after the 2450 vote (still me vs. Klackons and everyone else, but a solid blocking vote). The smackdown came from the Psilons:

This was at Tao on the west edge of the map. Credit the AI here; this fleet had been massing near my inferno worlds so I had gathered most ships there, but then when they went west I couldn't react fast enough. My popguns actually took most of the missile blasts, giving the handful of Merculite bases a chance to shoot down some of the fusion beams, but it wasn't quite enough. However, the Psilons also were just short of nuking the planet to oblivion, setting up a rematch next turn when my dreadnoughts could arrive:

At this point I have already lost one (a different model; both are all autorepair+grav-beam, main difference is the surviving one has a repulsor, better targeting computer, and warp 4 engines). With some dancing I was able to outlast the missile-heavy fleet! I was positively euphoric that I was going to avoid having a blood enemy forced on me (although the Psilons were doing pretty well, so it definitely wasn't the worst thing in the world). Next I repulsed a smaller brain incursion in the inferno zone, then I find out that 20 of 40 Psilon marines got through at Tao (they had a planet close enough to send in one turn, so I didn't even see the invaders inbound). With only a few Silicoids still alive from the previous turn's bombardment and a gropo deficit, no chance of stopping them. So my blood enemy is set.

[timmy827]

If only I could have kept both ships alive....

Or if I had designed them better. I was thinking that the main threat would be good beam weapons, so I forsook class IV shields which wouldn't do much against heavy fusion beams for firepower. But against all those 6 and 8 damage missiles shields would be really useful so I went back to the board.

Further battles:

Psilons - I almost ran into big trouble with a smaller attack at an UR world, as that fleet had more of the fusion beam ships which could really threaten the dreadnought. Had to retreat the dreadnought I had built instead of bases and the brains came within 2 bases of victory; if I spent 2 turns adding more bases that wouldn't have been close.
Humans


Thank goodness that dreadnought didn't have many other weapons to go with the dangeous ISP. Those 500 Ion Cannon corvettes would have obliterated my dreadnoughts if not for the repulsor beams; I whittled that stack down to 350 or so then retreated as it was exploitative (they had killed all the smaller ships, and with superior initiative they couldn't hit the repulsor ships and not strong enough to get through the planet's shields.) And I could have sworn there were 9 of another dreadnought type seen on Adv. scanners, idiots must have scrapped them en route.


Not very dangerous as they were attacking core worlds and the bases could tear them apart. There was a 2nd battle the same turn - more ships on their side, but my newest dreadnought and 45 bases on my side. In both battles I retreated my ship partway through when it was clear the AI's couldn't kill it (trying not to use the yo-yo exploit) and paused my missle fire a couple rounds, but both times the Sakkra futilely charged the planet. I was happy to trade a couple bases at each world for wiping out their main fleets.

These rounds took the steam out of the AI's and soon I was able to get peace with all but the stubborn brains. Although they remained at war, I had a good 30 or 40 turn interval of pretty peaceful existence; they kept churning out their missile boats in numbers that were significant but not enough to be a major threat. Not surprisingly, I got complacent (especially since the "can't lose a single world!" mentality was over) as I raced up the tech tree (also lazy, not taking many pictures). Eventually got spanked by both the humans and psilons on the same turn. In the west I had left my dreadnoughts at the wrong world after an attack; Moro was close enough to their worlds for fleets to reach in one turn so I didn't get a warning despite checking F8 every turn. Nothing really new in the Psilon fleet, had just piled up a large enough supply of ships to get through the bases; leaving Moro on bases would have prevented this. Humans took out Dolz with a huge number of Merculite boats. In awesome annoying AI fashion, they had enough firepower to kill all but 3 inhabitants and leave 140 factories, letting them steal several techs in invasion.

A major reason for these losses was that my missile bases hadn't really improved much, stuck with Duralloy and weak shielding for a long time. Fortunately right when I lost those worlds I got class XV planetary (earlier generations were absent, and I was unsuccessful despite a hundred years spent trying to steal or trade for V or X), so in a few turns my worlds became truly invincible. Both major enemy powers had Doom Virus but had never shown any interest in bioweapon ships; I was curious if the AI is smart enough to change its designs. Many other nice things had just popped like HEF and Disruptors so I assemble a new round of dreadnoughts to retake Dolz:


I was a little uneasy - the new (larger stack) model had class 7 shields to block most of the missile damange, but that's still an awful lot of volleys! But the human ships all ran away and handed me the world; perhaps they had taken Sirian's maxim too literally?
Next turn a much smaller human fleet decides to fight and is wiped out without a prayer of accomplishing anything. Due to the game rules I can retake this world without penalty but don't want to invade the humans, so back to defensive war.

Now it was time to decide if I could kill the Psilons. I have a good tech edge now (for a long time I had no bomb tech and they had class X planet shields, but AM bombs should be enough), and my new planet shields mean I can comfortably devote all my fleet to attacking and guarding new acquisitions as my core worlds should all be able to take care of themselves. Attacking now means I get their worlds and add to my research power, plus a few useful techs (IIT4, BC 9). But I forgo the chance of them expanding against one of the AI's allowing a later boost in total world count, and the possibility that they will use atmospheric terraforming/soil enrichment to boost the size of their worlds in ways I can't. Also I want to get as many of the options in my own tech tree from the AI as possible so I can research future tech for more points, so killing them now means I can't get some of those.

I decide to wait for the moment, and arrange some tech trades to give Atmospheric to the Psilons. Those crazy brains gave me IIT4 for Bio Toxin Antidote as well. Klackons decide to out-idiot them in grand fashion - after 100+ of happy alliance and after I get near-unbeatable shields, they decide to break the alliance and DOW in a few turns. But over time there was good news, with some bribery I could get a peace deal to stick long enough with the Psilons that they got dragged into war with all of their AI neighbors. No longer worried about that threat, I massed my fleets and took out the Guardian just after the 2525 vote. By 2550 I had finished all Planetology techs (gifting many to the Psilons in hopes of them getting strong enough to make more gains as well as terraforming up my future worlds; they were slowly moving east but having trouble fighting Humans, Alkari, Sakkra simultaneously). I soon realized that besides hoping for the Psilons to take and hold onto new worlds, which they did in a couple of instances, I would be better served by swooping in and grabbing spuds. Result in 2570:

I've gained 5 worlds in the north-center. I almost didn't realize the problem here with the Alkari on death's door, and there are Psilon transports inbound to Altair! Gifting them a bunch of techs got an alliance and I rushed everything I could to defend their first and last world. Had to break the NAP with Psilons but it was worth it. Neither the humans or sakkra would peace with me as long as I stayed allied but that was fine, they posed no threat.

When the inevitable Psilon war came I resolved for a show of force to make a quick peace, so I took three Gaia worlds and destroyed some of their fleet (for some reason they were taking an absurdly long time to deploy Atmospheric Terraforming and Adv Soil to many of their worlds. I know the AI isn't smart enough to boost Planetology when it has a good reason too, but it was like they turned it off completely.) This worked, although the worlds I took somewhat isolated the Psilons from the other races, and after that they didn't war as effectively as before. Of course they weren't going to make any gains against the other races while fighting me, so I'm not sure what the best solution was.

Interesting times with the votes starting in 2575 - Klackon warring had split the previously unanimous support against me, so for the first time I had to abstain from winning.

For tech - I had maxed out most fields by 2575 vote. After about 6 total "future techs" I decided to abandon active management, parked 2/7ths of the budget on computers (since they are comparatively much cheaper) and 1/7th on each other field. Since the tech costs keep increasing unlike Civ4 it's definitely best to spread out research, and this was a pretty good way to do so evenly without the tedium of constantly adjusting sliders. I did eventually boost Planetology somewhat, as that would continue to translate into modest productivity gains while the others did nothing. However, I was caught by the weird game mechanics, having never gone into these before:

Oddly, when I first got to MAX I could research one more advanced tech in the field, only after that did I not get another option. If you really wanted to max points here, the goal would be to mimize acquisition of techs not in your research options through invasions/spying/trades, since each one raises your level by one taking you closer to the maximum. Overall effect on your score is pretty negligible then.

Sadly, I could not keep the Alkari alive forever; despite the fact that my fleet in orbit was the only thing preventing from annhiliation they eventually cancelled the alliance :weed:. I think it was about 3 turns before a huge Sakkra fleet spored out Altair, not long enough for "diplomat gone" to wear off and try to buy them back. Fortunately it's only a -5% demerit, good scenario adjustment there as the AI's are much more likely to kill each other compared to huge-map Civ4, and also since you can't do some of the tricks available in Civ4 (pay for peace, gift units, use OB with the weak civ and DOW on the strong one, allowing you to kill the attack stack without breaking the invasion rule, etc.)

Eventually it was time to mop up the Psilons; they still hadn't terraformed all of their worlds, but had done it to all that would get to size 220 for the bonus scoring. This was made easy by the one big hole in their techs: missiles!

Gropo tech was close, so invasions were costly in Silicoid lives, but with Advanced Cloning that was no longer a problem. Here was the result after the deed was done:


Unfortunately, the last 200 or so turns were not a lot of fun to play. The good thing about MOO compared to Civ4 is there is much less micromanagement of planets/cities (only problem was having Atmospheric Terraforming meant that my planets would not come off Eco spending when they maxed population). The bad thing is that in Civ4 the AI's aren't crazy enough to continuously DoW the global superpower...I was fighting incessantly for the rest of the game. Put the rich worlds on dreadnoughts, bases as needed, and ride it out. Most enemy attacks were beaten easily, although a couple of times I get caught with a fleet out of position and lost a world. It was also irritating when the Humans got unlimited range which more or less tripled the number of worlds I had to defend.

Some interesting bits...I had a subspace teleporter design:

It was tearing it up against the AI's, then at one of my own worlds, it was immobilized. I thought the interdictors only did things at enemy worlds? So I gave up on that and went with max maneuverability + HEF. I always had initiative, and it was highly amusing to regularly blast apart 3 different stacks with three different weapon groups. Using Neutron Streams against negative fleet bug stacks was cool too:


By the end of the future techs, the miniturization was ridiculous and I literally had more space than I knew what to do with (the only restriction on what I could do was the 3-slot limit for specials). Interestingly, some of the fleets I destroyed were large enough to trigger "enemy of my enemy" diplo boni during brief AI-AI wars; I had never seen that before without bombing or invading a planet. I stole uneeded techs just to frame the other races, but never succeeded in getting the humans and klackons to go after one another; but they did eventually reduce the lizards to OPE status. Compared to the map above I was able to poach 4 more worlds, but no gains made in Human or Klackon space.



Victory Vote:

This was surprisingly kinda close. If I hadn't been alert at poaching a few worlds, or had wiped out the Psilons before they terraformed most of their worlds, I may have had to go nuts gifting the humans things to buy their allegiance. Also, in the end the Klackons had Adv. Soil but not Atmospheric Terraforming while the Humans had the opposite - if they had exchanged those techs I could have been in trouble as well.

Scoring
3600 poins from 72 Planets
225 from 11 size 220+ planets - Orion, the homeworlds, and other Psilon planets that had been made Gaias.
255 from 51 total Advanced Techs
0 from diplomacy
4080 base score
-5 % from two races eliminated
3876 total.

[KnTenshi]

You swarmed your galaxy nicely. I wonder how many different Blood Enemies people will have. I think you got a good windfall with the Psilons as your Blood Enemy - that let you take the eastern half of the galaxy within the rules. Granted you had a quarter of the galaxy before hand. XD

[RefSteel]

Impressive game, and a very enjoyable report! Great analysis, and I could tell exactly what was going on throughout the game - and you had me laughing often. ("AI fail alert"!)

Judging from the maps, my AIs were slackers at expansion in comparison with yours (with the important exception of the Sakkra!) but that may just be because I was reaching them earlier. (Do you remember the dates on those maps from the first post?) My laser-like focus on getting Phantos (and later, Tao Cygni, Kronos, etc.) up to full power, even sacrificing my total population growth curve, appears to have paid off in the end. Plus Whynil going rich on me early didn't hurt. I also suspect I used reserves more heavily (URs are great for this, even while doing other things - they can feed themselves and net a profit - if you have the patience for the micro, which for a while, before I realized I was running out of time and could and should just hit cruise control, I did).

I think your game and Cyneheard's were more like the game Sullla intended than mine, first because my surviving AIs wound up so stunted (none of them ever achieved more than 7 worlds) and later because of my ruthless sabotage. I was stacking up bases for most of the game in anticipation of doom fleets and Thorium (unlimited) fuel cells, but none of the AIs ever became a serious threat, and no one ever got Thorium in my game. I'm kind of glad though; if I'd had to deal with Black Hole Generator negative fleet bugs across my empire for hundreds of years, I'd never have finished! Still, I think in future Imperia, I'm going to try out some different playstyles. We'll see.

[Sullla]

I think your game and Cyneheard's were more like the game Sullla intended than mine, first because my surviving AIs wound up so stunted (none of them ever achieved more than 7 worlds)

Definitely! There was tons of space on the western and northern sides of the map; I was very surprised to see what happened in RefSteel's game. Your game here timmy was closer to what I was hoping to see.

This is one of the weaknesses inherent in competition games for Master of Orion: much more variability in AI performance compared to a game like Civ4. Sometimes you get lucky and the AI throws up a dud performance, sometimes it expands aggressively and the results are entirely different. My only real piece of advice on this is to accept that the games will sometimes shake out (very) differently, and not take the scoring too seriously. Fortunately you guys do a great job of that.

[kyrub]

It's a pity, the expansion routines are one of the least reliable points for AI in Moo. I remeber being disappointed in many games, when, on the first contact with opposing players in a large galaxy, you realize the game is over, because they were incapable of the simplest of expansion there could be.

There are several aspects of AI non-expansion:

• The AI has only 50% probability to put 3/4 of the research poll to propulsion in the opening stages of the game. The opening stage lasts only 30-35 turns and encompasses 3 points of research decision. Thus, there is a 0,5*0,5*0,5 = 12,5%, e.g 1/8 chance an AI player will not touch propulsion in the opening stages of the game. How different it could be, we see on Alkaris. They get an extra 25% of the rest, so 62,5% instead of 50%. That makes a nice 94,7% (19/20) probability they will spent at least some tech points on propulsion.
  

• The AI becomes much more careful (fearful) once it contacts the human player. It refuses to expand unless half of its planets have either 75% of max population or enough of missile bases. (This has a multiplied effect with the action radius bugs, which tends to deplete the planets of its POP). This maybe explains the sudden "waves" of colony ships, when 3-4 planets are colonized in 1 year. One of the best way to stop a runaway AI must be... to contact it.
  

• Sometimes we see a planet near a sole-world AI, in his reach, uncolonized after 50 years. The explanation might be that the planet is, in fact, out of reach for the AI, who uses slightly disadvantaged range fonction. This is especially true about angles near 30 and 60.