Imperium 35 - let's go extreme, nad!

[Nad]

Back in the saddle! Fortunately I couldn't mess with the first colony ship in this one.

2302 Settling Morrig and sending out the usual scouts
2306 Opened planetology after scout report on Spica came in (seeding +10)

So far, so bad ehm good (When I learned that Tyr was poor I got a really bad feeling about this game):
   

2317 Hitting +10 (bad luck), seeded eeco
2318 Assembling LR Laser
2323 Hitting IIT9 / seeding range 4 (way too late, I guess)
2326 Chasing away Meklar colony ship at Rigel (first contact - lovin' Meklars as neighbors)
2329 Humans have 6 systems (what?!)
2331 Maxed Sssla (once again some lag due to early research), eer and range4 in percentages
2332 Hitting r4, r6 in tree - seeding it and enlarging scout radius
2334 Meklars checking rayden with colony ship, chased them away and hit eer (selecting +20)
2335 Humans checking Tyr
2340 Silis checking Jinga with colony ship
2341 Morrig maxed, r6 almost bulped, seeding +20
2346 hitting r6, going back to nuclear, spreading scout radius (still no contacts yet)
2348 Sending colony ship from Sssla to Rayden, seeding nuclear
2350 Sending colony ship from Morrig to Tyr
2351 Humans checking Tyr with small armed fleet (critical turn), was able to defeat them
2352 still no contacts, +20 in percentages
2353 Hitting + 20 / only crappy choices left / settling rayden and meeting Humans + Meklars (lovin' erratic Meklars even more)
2355 Settling Tyr, Council vote Humans against Meklars, 10/19 for the Humas, I wisely abstain

Let's have I look an the strategic situation. So far I was able to hold the enemies back, but see yourself:
   
   

2357 Defeating large Meklar fleet at Rayden
2361 Defeating large Bear fleet at Tyr (first indirect contact - lovin' bears as neighbors ) / Popping Nuclear engines
2373 Still trying desperately to hold all unsettled systems / Popping durally and design LR colony for Drakka
2375 Council vote Silis against Humans: 12 vs. 9 for Humans (voted for them to improve relations)
2379 Settling Drakka in the southwest
2382 Meklars finally grab Rigel
2391 Popping inferno and went for soil enrichement
2393 Humans at 12 systems! No planetary shields in the tree / researching on improved space scanners
2399 Major spy success on Bears: Planetary V, but still no decent missiles in sight (waiting for a Meklar SOD every turn)
2400 Council vote - Humans against Meklars
2401 Popping soil, only relevant coice is cloning *grrr, this game really seems unwinnable*
2425 Council Silis vs. Humans without winner
2438 The Meklars finally send a SOD to Morrig and destroy our planet with ease. At this point I had no fleet to speak of, was falling behind in Tech, had no spy success at all and tried desperately to win back Morrig.
2448 Meklars take down Sssla (of course without being at war with us), so we were down to three planets. I decided to give up, because all hope was lost ehm my headache worsened.

The final screenshot:
   

[timmy827]

Yeah, sounds about right, I recall similar feelings of dread with Poor Tyr, and Cloning in the tree. Glad you gave it a shot.

It looks like the AI's in your game had roughly same balance as in mine; I may well have met your fate if the Meklars weren't at war with everyone else as well.

[Nad]

Thanks for your comment! Honestly I paid way too less attention on diplomacy, but the Meklar were not at war with anyone most of the time. The only positive thing was that they didn't bother to declare war on me. I just replayed a couple of turns to check something and bam, the Meklars declared war on me exactly one turn after we've met which should equal an instant loss given the challenging scenario.

[RefSteel]

Thanks for your comment! Honestly I paid way too less attention on diplomacy, but the Meklar were not at war with anyone most of the time. The only positive thing was that they didn't bother to declare war on me. I just replayed a couple of turns to check something and bam, the Meklars declared war on me exactly one turn after we've met which should equal an instant loss given the challenging scenario.

I think "paying too little attention to diplomacy" was a theme in this game. This variant made that aspect of the game much more important, I think - in large part for reasons mentioned in timmy827's brief report on the warm-up game he played on Map A - and I think a lot of us had gotten out of the habit of paying attention to them. (I know I had, at least!) Oddly though, I think you might have been UNlucky never to see an official DoW from the erratic Meklars; a well-timed one might have given you an opportunity to take Kronos not only without repurcussions but with a good chance to parlay your show of strength (like mine at Collassa) into several turns of peace (as opposed to the usual Meklar state of [ahem] "peace").

[Nad]

Thank you for going through all reports, Ref! Good to see you back online.

I totally agree with you on having gotten out of solid MOO habits. Especially kyrub's patch leaves only a small tolerance space for errors. I spent too much production on defending unclaimed systems (instead of deciding which races should colonize them as you have suggested in another post). Hence I wouldn't have been able to carry out a hit and run tactic or even a full assault on a Meklar world later on. This map doesn't seem winnable for my playing strength. After resigning from the official Imperium game I replayed the early game phase twice - the first time the Meklars declared war on me the turn after we met and took Rayden with ease, the second time the Humans were up to six planets no later than 2316 and even managed to grab 12 planets with ease... Still, I love to play the Sakkras and really appreciate the basic setting!