This is a report on Imperium 36 extreme, which can be found here:
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid358475
The first variant rule is that each ship needs to have at least as many beam weapons as the size of your ship (S = 1, M = 2, L = 3, H = 4). Fortunately, weapons that fire multiple times a turn counts, so a gatling laser is all you need to qualify for this.
The second variant, though not directly a rule, is that roughly a third of the planets were destroyed and became asteroids. Thus, the council vote only occurs when all non-Orion colonizable planets have been colonized.
Overall Strategic Notes
The first variant's most obvious impact is that it delays the player's early game, by forcing a scrap of the beginning ships. Also, early on, the rule means you can't use small scout (reserve fuel tank) ships, meaning you have to shell out more resources to make medium scout ships if you want to scout farther away. The second variant means that a number of your initial scouted stars will actually be uncolonizable planets, meaning that colonizable planets are effectively farther away on average, further compounding the early game scouting problem. For me personally, requiring beams on every ship didn't affect my mid-late game much, because I tend to put beams on ships anyway; I tend to use heavy beams versus ships, and versus planets I use missile carriers with a beam weapon so that they can still maneuver after firing their missiles.
The choice of Meklar is nice though, because the Meklar don't have to pay to refit factories, and they can use more factories per colonist. So Meklar colonies take longer to develop but can eventually be stronger than other colonies. Also, not having to refit factories means that factories just simply keep getting cheaper, meaning that in the mid and late game, colonies can become productive quickly. An end-game factory costs 7 BC for the typical race (improved industrial tech 2 + improved robotics 7 which makes factories cost 3.5x as much), but only costs 2 BC for Meklar, meaning their return on investment is 2 turns instead of 7.
So overall the variant cripples the player's early game, likely resulting in fewer planets due to a slower expansion, but as Meklar the player can make up for that over time once the colonies have been sufficiently developed. The council vote being delayed however makes up for this, so that players don't have to worry about cheesy early game diplomatic losses while they're still trying to get their footing.
Early Game
There were two approaches I could've taken with the early game, to deal with not being able to make small scout ships and that some stars will turn out to be asteroids. I could have made medium ships to compensate, or use the resources into developing my first colony but effectively being more "blind" as to what's going on in my neighborhood. I chose the latter, since in my games, I tend to develop my first colony somewhat anyway; so I figured I don't really need to know what stars are around me until I'm just about ready to colonize and need to figure out where to send my colony ships.
So I put the initial resources from scrapping the initial ships into making factories for Meklon. Once I got 100 factories, I made a few fighters (no fuel tanks) and then started building a colony ship while sending them out to exploring my nearby area. 100 factories is just an arbitrary number. Only Rana in the southeast was colonizable within 3 parsecs, so that's where I sent my first colony ship. I also started researching propulsion, since getting a good range will be crucial for the early game.
I could have researched range 4 or range 5. Now, usually my plan is to get up to range 6 or so; typically, that's all I need early on since I'll encounter the other races and they'll have colonized farther planets by the time I get it. But there's no guarantee that I'll be able to research range 6, since the game randomly removes some of the techs, and later range techs essentially override earlier range techs, meaning if I get range 6, then it doesn't matter if I had gotten range 4 or range 5 before it. So I could choose to get range 4 for a quick upgrade in the hope that I'll get range 6, or choose range 5 so that even if I don't get range 6, I could have a higher range while waiting for the next range upgrade -- but the extra BC spent in it would just have slowed me down if I do get range 6. I chose to go with range 4.
I founded Rana in 2419, and saw that Helos was colonizable so I started building another colony ship. A few years after that, I got range 4, only to see that I don't get range 6. At this point, I could just settle for range 5, or research nuclear engines and hope for range 7. I choose to go with nuclear engines. I colonized Helos in 2334.
I encountered some Darlok ships to the east and Silicoid ships to the southeast. In 2341, GNN reported that the Sakkras already had 8 colonies, while I still had 3. Sigh. They colonized Beta Ceti just south of me a few years later, in 2345, even though it looks like it's some distance away from their next closest colony, Vulcan. (Later analysis put this distance at 5 parsecs.) The map at this point looked like this:
The Sakkra basically had a continuous line of colonies heading towards me. Shouldn't they have encountered some asteroids along the way? But no, you can see that it's a continuous column of colonies. I assume it's their west and east that has asteroids. They're essentially the runaway race already. I made a trade agreement with them to decrease the chance of them randomly declaring war on me. A few years later, I met the Silicoids to the southeast, and set up a trade agreement with them too.
In 2349, I got nuclear engines, but didn't get any other range techs. So I'm just going to give up on the range thing, get range 5 and then start developing my other techs. Sigh. During this time, I colonized Maretta (even though it's ultra-poor) and Nitzer. I started being eligible for range 5 in 2353, but didn't actually get it until 2361; once it was at around 46% or so I just stopped trying to bump up the percentage and spent only 1 click on it while researching other things, but it still took this long. Similarly, I started being eligible for improved eco in 2363, but didn't actually get it until 2369, although it was at 50% for a number of years. I started doing planetology as my second priority to get the hostile planets, especially to work my way up to radiated Obaca just north of me which was a rich planet, and Lyae which was another hostile rich planet far to the west.
During this time, the races around me went berserk with ships. I had Sakkra, Silicoid, and Darlok ships all over my territory:
I don't know how the Darlok (white) can send ships past me to the west when their colonies are somewhere to the east of me. The Silicoid (purple) were able to send ships all over too, and in fact, was able to colonize Keeta even though it was a good distance away from their closest colony, Paranar, south of Maretta. This range thing clearly doesn't affect computers much, although it can of course be crippling to the player. I'm not even sure how it affects the computer players. Maybe it just governs when they can contact you or something, but range limits clearly don't affect their ships.
In 2370, I found that the Darlok had colonized Collassa to the northeast, and it was an artifact planet. Oh well. At this point, I needed to make a strategic decision. I could spend my resources continuing to tech up, get inferno to get Lyae and several other colonies to the west, or conquer Collassa to steal some techs from the Darloks as well as give me a substantial boost to my teching. The Darloks were allied with the Silicoids at this point, while the Sakkras weren't allied with anyone and have been expanding to my west even though their colonies (Kronos and Vox) were substantially farther away from their other colonies. I decided to go after Collassa; Sakkra having 13 colonies to my 5 at this point was a significant consideration. Darlok seemed more manageable.
In 2380, I finally completed my first warship, a large 7 heavy laser ship, to fend of any attackers. I also colonized Berel so was now within troop distance of Collassa. I started sending troops to Collassa from my colonies, timing it so that they'd all arrive at the same turn. Because they had around 60 colonists, I figured sending 40% of each colony, would be enough. In the meantime, I traded with the Darlok (along with other races), scoring hyper-v rockets for my industrial tech 8. Darlok laughed off my threat though, oh well. At least the Silicoids gave me 550 BC when their fleet was approaching Obaca and I threatened them away.
In 2391, my troops arrived at Collassa. I had titanium combat armor along with hand lasers. It turns out that they had a missile base, which took out some of my troops (didn't record how many). They also had duralloy armor already, as well as personal deflector shields. So their 61 troops took out 102 of my 144 remaining troops, but at least I had 39 left to take the planet. I got a good number of techs from this, including duralloy, personal deflector shield, and class 4 shields. The Darloks declared war on me for Collassa.
I then lost contact with the Darloks though . It turns out that the rest of their colonies were actually too far away to sustain contact with me; their closest colony, Jinga, was 6 parsecs away from my closest colony, Nitzer. So they declared war on me but since we lost contact, presumably forgot about me for a while. Since I only had range 5, I couldn't contact them either.
So now, I made sure I didn't get any range upgrades when doing trades and when researching. The longer Darlok and I stayed apart, the longer I didn't have to worry about them, and the longer I could tech up. I put my reserves into Collassa to build it up as quickly as possible; other than the Darloks, it was a nice, safe planet in the back for research. With that, I turned my attention to the west.
I finally got inferno in 2395 (after being eligible for it starting in 2387), and colonized Exis in 2398. With that, I met the Alkaris to the lower west, who had taken Vox from the Sakkras (but no hint of war). Because I could return to war with Darlok at any moment, I traded my 4 shields to the Alkaris for their ion cannon. It was a difficult trade for me, because 4 shields just compound their defense advantages, but ion cannon is my bread-and-butter for my laser ships, so I'm betting that it's better for me than however much giving them 4 shields may come back to hurt me.
During this time I engaged in a lot of trading for ship techs; I traded inferno to the Sakkras for their hyper-x missiles after I had already safely colonized Lyae in 2401. Eventually, I got radiated in 2407 and colonized Obaca several years later. At this point, the expansion phase was essentially over. I had my primary colonies of Meklon, Rana, Helos, Maretta, and Nitzer, with Collassa in the back doing research, and developing Berel and Exis, as well as rich Obaca and rich Lyae. Having 10 colonies at this point is certainly above average (average would've been around 8 or so for 6 players with this many colonizable planets), but the computers can be deadly even with few planets, and the Sakkra were still being runaway with over a dozen planets.
Mid Game
I continued trading for ship techs. At this point, I had spied each of the races so I knew what technologies they had, by putting any excess resources into spying. The way it works is that the game calculates the upkeep you need to provide in terms of the ship upkeep, trade, bases, etc., and then rounds up to the nearest percentage of your overall productivity. That percentage is then taken away from the output at each of the colonies, again rounding up.
So for a given turn, if my ship upkeep, trade, etc. amounted to 6.3%, it would take out 7% from each colony (and then round up how much it actually takes away at each colony, so if the colony has 104 raw production, it would take away 8, leaving the colony with 96, even though 7% of 104 is just 7.28). Well, if I added in an additional 0.4% of spying, it would be 6.7%, so the same 7% is still taken away; just that some of it goes into spying now rather than being wasted.
So at the end of each turn, after giving out reserve BCs (if I had any), I would reset the spying slider to nothing, see the actual production at a colony, and then add 1 click at a time of spying into a race until that actual production dropped. I would then return to the previous click, and that's how much spying I would do that turn. Sometimes it would be none, sometimes 1 click, very occasionally 2 clicks, but it built up over the years. I'd cycle through each of the races over the decades this way so I'd be kept up to date on each race's technology.
Anyway, this is a long way to say that by doing this, I was essentially spying for free. Before I went to trade with a race I'd check out what techs they had and put that into an Excel spreadsheet to refer to while I'm making a trade. This way I could trade them relatively worthless techs, while getting good techs in return. So for example, I researched improved eco while trading away my range 5 to the Silicoids for their terraform 10, because I knew they already had range 7 anyway.
Because I can only trade 3-5 times before they'd get fed up and leave, I'd only try to trade every 7-10 years or so. Over time though I was able to stay not necessarily on par, but at least not hopelessly behind, with the computers because of this. The Sakkras remained as the race completely out of reach.
Around 2425 or so, I noticed that I was back in contact with the Darloks. I also had a few really weird trades with the Sakkras. They offered me universal antidote for my mass driver, which was really lopsided on the tech level side. Then again, they were amiable towards me and completely outclassed me in technology, so I don't know if there's a "pity" relation in the AI code that will try to help the player when they're really behind. At any rate, I happily took it, although its use is somewhat debatable -- mostly it gave me a big planet tech boost, useful for both my colonist productivity and teching in the planet tier. I also traded it to the Alkari in return for their fusion drives, so that I could boost my ships to face the Darloks.
I noticed the Darloks were set to arrive at Collassa with their death fleet in a few turns, so the most I could do was send my outdated laser ship there and try to get as many missile bases as I could in time for when the fleet arrives. The fleet arrived in 2428. I wish I had taken screenshots before it arrived because it looked kind of scary, but when it showed up it turned out that the fleet was...full of neutron pellet guns. They also didn't invest much in movement speed. So my laser ship, with 2 movement and heavy guns, was able to dance just outside their range and kill them, while my missile base also helped take them out. Sadly, I made a big tactical error in this fight: I killed their little ships first before working on their huge ship. The result was that their huge ship survived the fight (because of the 50-turn fight limit) and retreated to protect their Jinga.
When I looked at the Darloks' techs, it turns out they only had up to Hyper-V missiles and were still using hard beams. This meant that even though they had a tech advantage on me, I could still conquer their colonies. They also hadn't advanced in ground tech since we last fought, and were still using class 4 shields with no planetary shields. So I started preparing a huge ship with auto repair that could take out their ships as well as bomb their missile bases. I settled on a design with enough lasers to take out that huge ship in 10 turns or so, and filled up the rest of the space with fusion bombs. The idea was that the fusion bombs themselves only lasted about 10 turns, so I'd like to kill off the huge ship at around the same time as well, in case I needed to retreat after using up all my bombs.
I chose to build the huge ship at Obaca on the east part of my territory, even though Lyae in the west was much larger but farther away. The reason was that because Obaca was closer to the Darlok colonies, I could take advantage of any techs that were discovered later, compared with making it at Lyae where several turns were spent traveling to the east. So to that end I focused my techs on making sure I would get ECM 4 and Stinger missiles before the ship was built.
The Darloks sent their huge ship to my Rana, and it arrived in 2434. This time, I was able to destroy it, without a lot of other pesky small ships to worry about. They sent a new huge ship a few turns later to Nitzer, and the new ship had hard beams and mass drivers, so it was able to destroy the one missile base I had there. It didn't destroy much though, so I quickly made more bases to destroy it.
Fortunately I got the ECM 4 and Stinger techs in time before my huge ship was built. I did one last round of trades before it was built except nobody wanted to trade so that round was a dud. I also tried to improve my relations with the other races before I attacked the Darlok. They were still allied with the Silicoids and the Silicoids wouldn't budge on that.
Once my huge ship was out, I sent it to Jinga and beat down the missile bases easily. I then sent troops to it, and conquered it but didn't get any techs. Using Jinga as a forward base, I then wore down Darlok's Nazin over a few turns, and took it over. This time I got a few nice techs including range 8 and battle computer 5 from this. Darlok was only down to Ajax and Herculis, so I made plans to exterminate them, by capturing the two colonies only 1 turn apart from each other.
Just prior to exterminating the Darloks, I had trade agreements with everyone except them, and non-aggression pacts with the Sakkras, Silicoids, and Alkaris (the Bulrathi had refused the NAP). The races I had NAPs with were also amiable towards me, while the Bulrathi was neutral.
I exterminated the Darloks by capturing Ajax in 2454 and then Herculis in 2455, and took most of their techs from that. However, right after this, the remaining races cancelled their NAPs, and they were anywhere from restless to feud towards me. I had 14 colonies, the most of any race (Sakkras were in second with 12), but only had half the population of the Sakkras. The other 3 races had 5-6 planets each.
I also realized I made a big strategic mistake. The council vote occurs when all non-Orion planets are colonized, but I captured rather than destroyed all the Darlok colonies. This means that the council vote can occur at any time, whenever the computers fully colonize everything. There was some mystery planet out there that hadn't yet been colonized, but I have no idea where it is. If a council vote occurred, the Sakkra could easily win by their population and that the other races will likely vote for them.
So I tried to go on the charm offensive with everyone. However, they were having none of it. The Sakkras continued to be in their good spirits with their weird trading behavior though; they willingly traded advanced cloning for my ECM 1, and high energy focus for my barren tech. However, for the most part the races weren't willing to trade, and when I tried to give tech tribute the only things they wanted were the really higher-tech stuff (like high energy focus) which I wasn't willing to give out. So the charm offensive was a dud.
The Silicoids declared war on me in 2457, and they happened to be allied with everyone else. The others quickly followed suit in the next few years, with the Alkari the last in 2463. At this point, I was at war with everybody.
End Game
I was still trying to tech as much as I could. Since I was at war with everyone anyway, I started doing a lot of spying, spending around 5-10% of my production to do so. Because the Silicoids declared war on me first, and their ground techs weren't great, I started sending troops to their colonies first to bolster my techs. They also had Xendalla, which was an ultra rich. I captured Silicoid Paranar in 2464, and got several useful techs such as class 7 shields and the warp dissipator.
The next year, in 2465, Sakkra's death fleet arrived at Meklon and destroyed it easily, even though I had quite a few missile bases on it (around 20 or so). I started building missile bases on most of my colonies except the originally Darlok ones to the east. I figured that the death fleet would kill off a few other colonies but hopefully the remaining ones would have enough missile bases before they got to Collassa or the rich planets. At this point, being Meklar was useful, because the factories were pretty cheap so my Darlok colonies were coming along nicely.
A year later, in 2466, a separate Sakkra death fleet destroyed Nitzer, but I managed to steal range 10 from the Sakkras. They had sub space teleporters already, which would revolutionize my ship strategy, so I was trying to get their propulsion techs as much as I could.
I also noticed that at this point, none of the computers were allied with any of the others, even though less than a decade ago they were all allied with each other. Unfortunately, none of them were at war with each other, so I couldn't take advantage of it. But I noticed that the Sakkras had colonized Meklon and removed their death fleet, while the Silicoids had ships over it and were sending troops. So I would try something sneaky: Send just enough troops to reduce Meklon's population but not actually conquer it, and hope that the Silicoids would take it over. I was hoping that the Silicoids could get some techs that I could then get from capturing their other colonies, plus hopefully foment a war between the two.
The Sakkras had 61 troops on Meklon, and they had +70 ground techs to my +45. They're likely to gain an additional 8 just from regular population growth for a total of 69. With their net ground troop bonus of +25 to me, I would need about 2.5x their colonists to take it over, so I sent 152 troops or about 2.2x, to arrive the turn before the Silicoids.
The troops landed and resulted in the Sakkras only having 8 troops left, so it was a success. I also stole ionic pulsar from the Sakkra, but still didn't get sub space teleporter. The Sakkra only had 3 propulsion techs that I didn't have yet, and I kept getting one that wasn't really what I was looking for, but hey, ionic pulsar is useful too, so I ain't complaining. I noticed that the Alkaris had planetary 10 shields, so I decided to try to capture one of their colonies. I could also try to capture a Bulrathi colony for it, except they had a good ground tech advantage, plus they had Stinger missiles while the Alkaris were still using nuclear missiles. They had good shields but crappy missiles, so I decided to just send the transports in without any ship support to save on time. I also captured Silicoid Xendalla and Cryslon during this time frame, leaving them with just their western colonies, Keeta and Klystron, as well as one in the southwest corner.
The following year, 2469, I successfully stole sub space teleporters from the Sakkras. So I got their 3 propulsion techs that I didn't have within 4 years. Not only that, I was able to frame the Silicoids with this steal, although it didn't have any noticeable effect on their diplomatic relations. I had also made ships with warp dissipators now, and was able to destroy one of Sakkra's minor fleets that they sent to Obaca by freezing all their ships and then letting my missile bases do their work. I also found that Iranha in the southeast area of the map was an uncolonized planet, so I'll have to send some ships to protect it sometime.
Unfortunately, the Silicoids didn't take Meklon, because the Sakkras sent a bunch of troops from another colony because Meklon only had 8 colonists. I wonder what would've happened if I sent my troops to arrive the same turn as the Silicoids, rather than the turn before? Oh well, I guess I didn't think through the idea enough -- didn't realize that the Sakkra would send troops from their other colonies to shore up a colony whose troops had gotten reduced by invasion. I realized though that maybe I should try to take Meklon myself.
I now started making large laser ships with sub space teleporters, ionic pulsars, and warp dissipators, to deal with the Sakkra death fleet which was primarily hundreds or thousands of small to large ships. They also had a nuclear missile on them, the smallest missile I could use. The battle tactic was to turn off missiles, wait until the computer moves, and then teleport in and zap them. Then, at the beginning of the next round, while I was still next to them, I would zap them again and, since I hadn't fired my missile yet, would be able to move away before they moved, and then be done for the round. I would then repeat this, thus enabling me to zap them every turn without them able to hit me. The difficulty is in making sure to slow them down with my warp dissipators, and also, I was under a lot of time pressure with this because the Sakkras obviously had the same techs so it was a matter of time before they made ships with these devices too.
In 2470, my troops landed on Alkari Vox and captured it, but I didn't get any techs. Oh well. In the meantime, my huge missile ship + teleporting ionic pulsar large ships were able to defeat the Sakkra fleet that went for Berel, so the tactic was working. The Sakkra were keeping their main fleet at Meklon though.
In 2471, my fleet arrived at Meklon to take on the Sakkra death fleet there. To my surprise, they decided to retreat. This meant that I could capture Meklon now, so I started my troop invasion. I also found out that ionic pulsars hit everyone around the firing ship, including my own ships. Oops. Also, my ionic pulsars had little effect on Sakkra planets; I don't know if that's because they had good shields or good ECM or whatever. So it really means that I still have to make new bomber ships to take care of missile bases. My original 35 fusion bomb ship only did 20 damage a turn to the Sakkras. Sigh. Fortunately, Meklon was too young to have missile bases yet, so I could have my fleet hover over it to deflect Sakkra reinforcements.
In 2473, I stole megabolt cannon from Sakkra, and started researching anti-matter bombs because I couldn't get omega-v bombs. My invasion force also reached Meklon, although this initial set was just to soften them up. The casualties were unsurprisingly large, my 133 troops succeeded in reduce their troops from 162 to 83. However, my 300 troop invasion was arriving next turn.
Well, the next turn came. It was my 300 troops against Sakkra's 121 troops, so they obviously sent in some reinforcements. The result was...they ended up with 3 troops left. Yeah, my 300 troops only ended up killing 118 of their troops. Sigh. But at least I captured Alkari Laan and got graviton beam from that. I now have 17 colonies.
In 2475, I stole zortrium armor from the Bulrathis and blamed the Sakkras, so hopefully my next Meklon invasion will be better. It turns out I didn't need it, because in 2476, I researched andrium armor, so I was fighting on more even terms with the Sakkra ground troops now. Their 80 troops killed 115 of my 289 troops, leaving me with 174 troops for Meklon and netting me a bunch of techs. I got advanced soil enrichment (great because I never got the regular version), waste 20%, and hercular missiles, among others. The following year, 2477, my troops that were meant to just soften up Nitzer ended capturing it with 4 troops remaining (oops). However, I still got ECM 6, combat transporters, battle computer 8, and complete eco, among other techs from it. I also finished researching anti-matter bombs now so I started making my bomber.
When I sent my anti-matter ships into battle, I realized I made a big mistake: I forgot to equip them with nuclear missiles so that they could teleport away after bombing a planet. Oops. Also, I sent them to Silicoid Keeta and tested them out after destroying the missile bases there. They outright destroyed the colony. Oops.
Nevertheless, with these ships I started attacking established Sakkra colonies. I captured Sakkra Kronos and Beta Ceti in 2482, as well as Silicoid Klystron. The latter meant that I broke contact with the Silicoids; they had one remaining colony in the southwest area. With these captures, I got a good amount of techs from the Sakkras. However, they now had planetary 20 shields, along with their class 11 shields, so hopefully my anti-matter bombs will still do good damage.
I noticed that the Sakkra were now sending a colony ship to the uncolonized Iranha in the southeast part of the map. Remember how I said I should send a ship there to prevent it from being colonized? Well, I promptly forgot about that. Fortunately, because I had accidentally destroyed Keeta, it would be the colony that I use to prevent council votes. At this point, though, I realized I should start preparing for the conquest win: having 2/3 of the total population and just voting myself emperor. With this in mind, I started conquering planets as quickly as possible.
In 2485 I captured Sakkra Vulcan, as well as a few Alkari colonies. In 2486, I had captured my 26th colony (Alkari Altair), so it was time to spring my end game invasions. The plan was to get enough population to put me over the 2/3 threshold, right when I colonized Keeta, since the Sakkra had taken Iranha now. I also couldn't kill any colonies, of course, although I found I could control how much enemy population I destroyed much more finely during battle rather than by planetary bombardment. So my strategy for the colonies that I was not capturing was to freeze the enemy ships but not kill them to keep the battle going, then I would bomb the planet to as few people as possible without actually destroying it.
The plan involved sending out as many troops as possible from my inner colonies to my outer colonies so that my outer colonies would not be empty, while sending out as many troops from my outer colonies as possible to invade the Alkari, Sakkra, and Bulrathi simultaneously. The goal was for my colonies to be at or near their max population while reducing the enemy populations as much as possible, either through direct invasion or through bombing in the combat screen. So my formerly Darlok colonies and formerly Silicoid colonies in the east sent their troops to the Bulrathi in the southeast, my middle colonies sent their troops southward toward the Sakkra, and my western colonies sent their troops to the Alkari in the southwest. All colonies would be maximizing their population growth by ecology spending as well.
The whole plan of how to send troops around among 26 colonies and an additional 11 enemy targets to maximize my remaining population in a few turns (right when my colony ship would reach Keeta) took 3 days of several hours each (i.e. my available spare time) to map out in Excel, and included things like how much each colony was expected to gain from natural population growth. I had to divvy up the troops from my inner colonies properly between the different prongs of attack and each other to ensure that I had max population, which took a lot of trying different scenarios.
The result can be seen below:
It is the two turns prior to colonizing Keeta. In 2486, I would have had 41 votes while everyone else would've had about 26 votes total. In 2487, I would have had 43 votes while everyone else would have had 23 votes. And as for the final tally at the end of 2487, when all the transports finally arrived at their destinations:
Yes, I ended up with just over 6000 population so 61 votes, while I exterminated the Alkari and reduced the others significantly. As expected, the computers all voted for Sakkra.
End result: Win by Conquest in 2487
Strategy thoughts
* During the early/mid game, if you're in a war, you can potentially shut it down by making the opposing race break contact with you. This may be useful because the computer doesn't seem to respect range limits when they colonize (or when their ships move generally). With the Darloks, because their Collassa was so close to me and so far from their other colonies, I did incur a war declaration from them when I captured it, but we broke off contact thereafter, and they didn't bother me again until they re-established contact. The computer races do get range techs though, and so do you, so this is limited pretty much to the early/mid game when everyone is still trying to expand; in the late game, you're likely right up against other races and their range is probably enough to reach your colonies, so you wouldn't be able to do this.
* Capturing planets is a good way to get techs if you're behind in the tech race. This typically only applies on higher difficulties (i.e. impossible) because of computer bonuses to productivity. A corollary is that if the computer invades and destroy or capture one of your colonies, you can get revenge and capture that colony, netting you their technologies. I used this against the Sakkra after they declared war on me, and it helped a lot with the teching.
* Warp dissipator rocks. The warp dissipator is great defensively for stopping enemy ships in their tracks and letting your missile bases pick them off. It also works very well with heavy (2 range) beam weapons, even if the heavy versions of the beam weapons are much more expensive.
* Subspace teleporters are also good. They allow you to teleport around the map, to move in and zap enemies and then move away to safety.
* Having 1 missile on your ships is good. It allows you to continue moving after you fire your beam weapons or bombs, if you make sure to deactivate it at the beginning of every fight. I used it extensively with my beam warships, and even more so once I got subspace teleporters (as long as I remember to equip ships with it).
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid358475
The first variant rule is that each ship needs to have at least as many beam weapons as the size of your ship (S = 1, M = 2, L = 3, H = 4). Fortunately, weapons that fire multiple times a turn counts, so a gatling laser is all you need to qualify for this.
The second variant, though not directly a rule, is that roughly a third of the planets were destroyed and became asteroids. Thus, the council vote only occurs when all non-Orion colonizable planets have been colonized.
Overall Strategic Notes
The first variant's most obvious impact is that it delays the player's early game, by forcing a scrap of the beginning ships. Also, early on, the rule means you can't use small scout (reserve fuel tank) ships, meaning you have to shell out more resources to make medium scout ships if you want to scout farther away. The second variant means that a number of your initial scouted stars will actually be uncolonizable planets, meaning that colonizable planets are effectively farther away on average, further compounding the early game scouting problem. For me personally, requiring beams on every ship didn't affect my mid-late game much, because I tend to put beams on ships anyway; I tend to use heavy beams versus ships, and versus planets I use missile carriers with a beam weapon so that they can still maneuver after firing their missiles.
The choice of Meklar is nice though, because the Meklar don't have to pay to refit factories, and they can use more factories per colonist. So Meklar colonies take longer to develop but can eventually be stronger than other colonies. Also, not having to refit factories means that factories just simply keep getting cheaper, meaning that in the mid and late game, colonies can become productive quickly. An end-game factory costs 7 BC for the typical race (improved industrial tech 2 + improved robotics 7 which makes factories cost 3.5x as much), but only costs 2 BC for Meklar, meaning their return on investment is 2 turns instead of 7.
So overall the variant cripples the player's early game, likely resulting in fewer planets due to a slower expansion, but as Meklar the player can make up for that over time once the colonies have been sufficiently developed. The council vote being delayed however makes up for this, so that players don't have to worry about cheesy early game diplomatic losses while they're still trying to get their footing.
Early Game
There were two approaches I could've taken with the early game, to deal with not being able to make small scout ships and that some stars will turn out to be asteroids. I could have made medium ships to compensate, or use the resources into developing my first colony but effectively being more "blind" as to what's going on in my neighborhood. I chose the latter, since in my games, I tend to develop my first colony somewhat anyway; so I figured I don't really need to know what stars are around me until I'm just about ready to colonize and need to figure out where to send my colony ships.
So I put the initial resources from scrapping the initial ships into making factories for Meklon. Once I got 100 factories, I made a few fighters (no fuel tanks) and then started building a colony ship while sending them out to exploring my nearby area. 100 factories is just an arbitrary number. Only Rana in the southeast was colonizable within 3 parsecs, so that's where I sent my first colony ship. I also started researching propulsion, since getting a good range will be crucial for the early game.
I could have researched range 4 or range 5. Now, usually my plan is to get up to range 6 or so; typically, that's all I need early on since I'll encounter the other races and they'll have colonized farther planets by the time I get it. But there's no guarantee that I'll be able to research range 6, since the game randomly removes some of the techs, and later range techs essentially override earlier range techs, meaning if I get range 6, then it doesn't matter if I had gotten range 4 or range 5 before it. So I could choose to get range 4 for a quick upgrade in the hope that I'll get range 6, or choose range 5 so that even if I don't get range 6, I could have a higher range while waiting for the next range upgrade -- but the extra BC spent in it would just have slowed me down if I do get range 6. I chose to go with range 4.
I founded Rana in 2419, and saw that Helos was colonizable so I started building another colony ship. A few years after that, I got range 4, only to see that I don't get range 6. At this point, I could just settle for range 5, or research nuclear engines and hope for range 7. I choose to go with nuclear engines. I colonized Helos in 2334.
I encountered some Darlok ships to the east and Silicoid ships to the southeast. In 2341, GNN reported that the Sakkras already had 8 colonies, while I still had 3. Sigh. They colonized Beta Ceti just south of me a few years later, in 2345, even though it looks like it's some distance away from their next closest colony, Vulcan. (Later analysis put this distance at 5 parsecs.) The map at this point looked like this:
The Sakkra basically had a continuous line of colonies heading towards me. Shouldn't they have encountered some asteroids along the way? But no, you can see that it's a continuous column of colonies. I assume it's their west and east that has asteroids. They're essentially the runaway race already. I made a trade agreement with them to decrease the chance of them randomly declaring war on me. A few years later, I met the Silicoids to the southeast, and set up a trade agreement with them too.
In 2349, I got nuclear engines, but didn't get any other range techs. So I'm just going to give up on the range thing, get range 5 and then start developing my other techs. Sigh. During this time, I colonized Maretta (even though it's ultra-poor) and Nitzer. I started being eligible for range 5 in 2353, but didn't actually get it until 2361; once it was at around 46% or so I just stopped trying to bump up the percentage and spent only 1 click on it while researching other things, but it still took this long. Similarly, I started being eligible for improved eco in 2363, but didn't actually get it until 2369, although it was at 50% for a number of years. I started doing planetology as my second priority to get the hostile planets, especially to work my way up to radiated Obaca just north of me which was a rich planet, and Lyae which was another hostile rich planet far to the west.
During this time, the races around me went berserk with ships. I had Sakkra, Silicoid, and Darlok ships all over my territory:
I don't know how the Darlok (white) can send ships past me to the west when their colonies are somewhere to the east of me. The Silicoid (purple) were able to send ships all over too, and in fact, was able to colonize Keeta even though it was a good distance away from their closest colony, Paranar, south of Maretta. This range thing clearly doesn't affect computers much, although it can of course be crippling to the player. I'm not even sure how it affects the computer players. Maybe it just governs when they can contact you or something, but range limits clearly don't affect their ships.
In 2370, I found that the Darlok had colonized Collassa to the northeast, and it was an artifact planet. Oh well. At this point, I needed to make a strategic decision. I could spend my resources continuing to tech up, get inferno to get Lyae and several other colonies to the west, or conquer Collassa to steal some techs from the Darloks as well as give me a substantial boost to my teching. The Darloks were allied with the Silicoids at this point, while the Sakkras weren't allied with anyone and have been expanding to my west even though their colonies (Kronos and Vox) were substantially farther away from their other colonies. I decided to go after Collassa; Sakkra having 13 colonies to my 5 at this point was a significant consideration. Darlok seemed more manageable.
In 2380, I finally completed my first warship, a large 7 heavy laser ship, to fend of any attackers. I also colonized Berel so was now within troop distance of Collassa. I started sending troops to Collassa from my colonies, timing it so that they'd all arrive at the same turn. Because they had around 60 colonists, I figured sending 40% of each colony, would be enough. In the meantime, I traded with the Darlok (along with other races), scoring hyper-v rockets for my industrial tech 8. Darlok laughed off my threat though, oh well. At least the Silicoids gave me 550 BC when their fleet was approaching Obaca and I threatened them away.
In 2391, my troops arrived at Collassa. I had titanium combat armor along with hand lasers. It turns out that they had a missile base, which took out some of my troops (didn't record how many). They also had duralloy armor already, as well as personal deflector shields. So their 61 troops took out 102 of my 144 remaining troops, but at least I had 39 left to take the planet. I got a good number of techs from this, including duralloy, personal deflector shield, and class 4 shields. The Darloks declared war on me for Collassa.
I then lost contact with the Darloks though . It turns out that the rest of their colonies were actually too far away to sustain contact with me; their closest colony, Jinga, was 6 parsecs away from my closest colony, Nitzer. So they declared war on me but since we lost contact, presumably forgot about me for a while. Since I only had range 5, I couldn't contact them either.
So now, I made sure I didn't get any range upgrades when doing trades and when researching. The longer Darlok and I stayed apart, the longer I didn't have to worry about them, and the longer I could tech up. I put my reserves into Collassa to build it up as quickly as possible; other than the Darloks, it was a nice, safe planet in the back for research. With that, I turned my attention to the west.
I finally got inferno in 2395 (after being eligible for it starting in 2387), and colonized Exis in 2398. With that, I met the Alkaris to the lower west, who had taken Vox from the Sakkras (but no hint of war). Because I could return to war with Darlok at any moment, I traded my 4 shields to the Alkaris for their ion cannon. It was a difficult trade for me, because 4 shields just compound their defense advantages, but ion cannon is my bread-and-butter for my laser ships, so I'm betting that it's better for me than however much giving them 4 shields may come back to hurt me.
During this time I engaged in a lot of trading for ship techs; I traded inferno to the Sakkras for their hyper-x missiles after I had already safely colonized Lyae in 2401. Eventually, I got radiated in 2407 and colonized Obaca several years later. At this point, the expansion phase was essentially over. I had my primary colonies of Meklon, Rana, Helos, Maretta, and Nitzer, with Collassa in the back doing research, and developing Berel and Exis, as well as rich Obaca and rich Lyae. Having 10 colonies at this point is certainly above average (average would've been around 8 or so for 6 players with this many colonizable planets), but the computers can be deadly even with few planets, and the Sakkra were still being runaway with over a dozen planets.
Mid Game
I continued trading for ship techs. At this point, I had spied each of the races so I knew what technologies they had, by putting any excess resources into spying. The way it works is that the game calculates the upkeep you need to provide in terms of the ship upkeep, trade, bases, etc., and then rounds up to the nearest percentage of your overall productivity. That percentage is then taken away from the output at each of the colonies, again rounding up.
So for a given turn, if my ship upkeep, trade, etc. amounted to 6.3%, it would take out 7% from each colony (and then round up how much it actually takes away at each colony, so if the colony has 104 raw production, it would take away 8, leaving the colony with 96, even though 7% of 104 is just 7.28). Well, if I added in an additional 0.4% of spying, it would be 6.7%, so the same 7% is still taken away; just that some of it goes into spying now rather than being wasted.
So at the end of each turn, after giving out reserve BCs (if I had any), I would reset the spying slider to nothing, see the actual production at a colony, and then add 1 click at a time of spying into a race until that actual production dropped. I would then return to the previous click, and that's how much spying I would do that turn. Sometimes it would be none, sometimes 1 click, very occasionally 2 clicks, but it built up over the years. I'd cycle through each of the races over the decades this way so I'd be kept up to date on each race's technology.
Anyway, this is a long way to say that by doing this, I was essentially spying for free. Before I went to trade with a race I'd check out what techs they had and put that into an Excel spreadsheet to refer to while I'm making a trade. This way I could trade them relatively worthless techs, while getting good techs in return. So for example, I researched improved eco while trading away my range 5 to the Silicoids for their terraform 10, because I knew they already had range 7 anyway.
Because I can only trade 3-5 times before they'd get fed up and leave, I'd only try to trade every 7-10 years or so. Over time though I was able to stay not necessarily on par, but at least not hopelessly behind, with the computers because of this. The Sakkras remained as the race completely out of reach.
Around 2425 or so, I noticed that I was back in contact with the Darloks. I also had a few really weird trades with the Sakkras. They offered me universal antidote for my mass driver, which was really lopsided on the tech level side. Then again, they were amiable towards me and completely outclassed me in technology, so I don't know if there's a "pity" relation in the AI code that will try to help the player when they're really behind. At any rate, I happily took it, although its use is somewhat debatable -- mostly it gave me a big planet tech boost, useful for both my colonist productivity and teching in the planet tier. I also traded it to the Alkari in return for their fusion drives, so that I could boost my ships to face the Darloks.
I noticed the Darloks were set to arrive at Collassa with their death fleet in a few turns, so the most I could do was send my outdated laser ship there and try to get as many missile bases as I could in time for when the fleet arrives. The fleet arrived in 2428. I wish I had taken screenshots before it arrived because it looked kind of scary, but when it showed up it turned out that the fleet was...full of neutron pellet guns. They also didn't invest much in movement speed. So my laser ship, with 2 movement and heavy guns, was able to dance just outside their range and kill them, while my missile base also helped take them out. Sadly, I made a big tactical error in this fight: I killed their little ships first before working on their huge ship. The result was that their huge ship survived the fight (because of the 50-turn fight limit) and retreated to protect their Jinga.
When I looked at the Darloks' techs, it turns out they only had up to Hyper-V missiles and were still using hard beams. This meant that even though they had a tech advantage on me, I could still conquer their colonies. They also hadn't advanced in ground tech since we last fought, and were still using class 4 shields with no planetary shields. So I started preparing a huge ship with auto repair that could take out their ships as well as bomb their missile bases. I settled on a design with enough lasers to take out that huge ship in 10 turns or so, and filled up the rest of the space with fusion bombs. The idea was that the fusion bombs themselves only lasted about 10 turns, so I'd like to kill off the huge ship at around the same time as well, in case I needed to retreat after using up all my bombs.
I chose to build the huge ship at Obaca on the east part of my territory, even though Lyae in the west was much larger but farther away. The reason was that because Obaca was closer to the Darlok colonies, I could take advantage of any techs that were discovered later, compared with making it at Lyae where several turns were spent traveling to the east. So to that end I focused my techs on making sure I would get ECM 4 and Stinger missiles before the ship was built.
The Darloks sent their huge ship to my Rana, and it arrived in 2434. This time, I was able to destroy it, without a lot of other pesky small ships to worry about. They sent a new huge ship a few turns later to Nitzer, and the new ship had hard beams and mass drivers, so it was able to destroy the one missile base I had there. It didn't destroy much though, so I quickly made more bases to destroy it.
Fortunately I got the ECM 4 and Stinger techs in time before my huge ship was built. I did one last round of trades before it was built except nobody wanted to trade so that round was a dud. I also tried to improve my relations with the other races before I attacked the Darlok. They were still allied with the Silicoids and the Silicoids wouldn't budge on that.
Once my huge ship was out, I sent it to Jinga and beat down the missile bases easily. I then sent troops to it, and conquered it but didn't get any techs. Using Jinga as a forward base, I then wore down Darlok's Nazin over a few turns, and took it over. This time I got a few nice techs including range 8 and battle computer 5 from this. Darlok was only down to Ajax and Herculis, so I made plans to exterminate them, by capturing the two colonies only 1 turn apart from each other.
Just prior to exterminating the Darloks, I had trade agreements with everyone except them, and non-aggression pacts with the Sakkras, Silicoids, and Alkaris (the Bulrathi had refused the NAP). The races I had NAPs with were also amiable towards me, while the Bulrathi was neutral.
I exterminated the Darloks by capturing Ajax in 2454 and then Herculis in 2455, and took most of their techs from that. However, right after this, the remaining races cancelled their NAPs, and they were anywhere from restless to feud towards me. I had 14 colonies, the most of any race (Sakkras were in second with 12), but only had half the population of the Sakkras. The other 3 races had 5-6 planets each.
I also realized I made a big strategic mistake. The council vote occurs when all non-Orion planets are colonized, but I captured rather than destroyed all the Darlok colonies. This means that the council vote can occur at any time, whenever the computers fully colonize everything. There was some mystery planet out there that hadn't yet been colonized, but I have no idea where it is. If a council vote occurred, the Sakkra could easily win by their population and that the other races will likely vote for them.
So I tried to go on the charm offensive with everyone. However, they were having none of it. The Sakkras continued to be in their good spirits with their weird trading behavior though; they willingly traded advanced cloning for my ECM 1, and high energy focus for my barren tech. However, for the most part the races weren't willing to trade, and when I tried to give tech tribute the only things they wanted were the really higher-tech stuff (like high energy focus) which I wasn't willing to give out. So the charm offensive was a dud.
The Silicoids declared war on me in 2457, and they happened to be allied with everyone else. The others quickly followed suit in the next few years, with the Alkari the last in 2463. At this point, I was at war with everybody.
End Game
I was still trying to tech as much as I could. Since I was at war with everyone anyway, I started doing a lot of spying, spending around 5-10% of my production to do so. Because the Silicoids declared war on me first, and their ground techs weren't great, I started sending troops to their colonies first to bolster my techs. They also had Xendalla, which was an ultra rich. I captured Silicoid Paranar in 2464, and got several useful techs such as class 7 shields and the warp dissipator.
The next year, in 2465, Sakkra's death fleet arrived at Meklon and destroyed it easily, even though I had quite a few missile bases on it (around 20 or so). I started building missile bases on most of my colonies except the originally Darlok ones to the east. I figured that the death fleet would kill off a few other colonies but hopefully the remaining ones would have enough missile bases before they got to Collassa or the rich planets. At this point, being Meklar was useful, because the factories were pretty cheap so my Darlok colonies were coming along nicely.
A year later, in 2466, a separate Sakkra death fleet destroyed Nitzer, but I managed to steal range 10 from the Sakkras. They had sub space teleporters already, which would revolutionize my ship strategy, so I was trying to get their propulsion techs as much as I could.
I also noticed that at this point, none of the computers were allied with any of the others, even though less than a decade ago they were all allied with each other. Unfortunately, none of them were at war with each other, so I couldn't take advantage of it. But I noticed that the Sakkras had colonized Meklon and removed their death fleet, while the Silicoids had ships over it and were sending troops. So I would try something sneaky: Send just enough troops to reduce Meklon's population but not actually conquer it, and hope that the Silicoids would take it over. I was hoping that the Silicoids could get some techs that I could then get from capturing their other colonies, plus hopefully foment a war between the two.
The Sakkras had 61 troops on Meklon, and they had +70 ground techs to my +45. They're likely to gain an additional 8 just from regular population growth for a total of 69. With their net ground troop bonus of +25 to me, I would need about 2.5x their colonists to take it over, so I sent 152 troops or about 2.2x, to arrive the turn before the Silicoids.
The troops landed and resulted in the Sakkras only having 8 troops left, so it was a success. I also stole ionic pulsar from the Sakkra, but still didn't get sub space teleporter. The Sakkra only had 3 propulsion techs that I didn't have yet, and I kept getting one that wasn't really what I was looking for, but hey, ionic pulsar is useful too, so I ain't complaining. I noticed that the Alkaris had planetary 10 shields, so I decided to try to capture one of their colonies. I could also try to capture a Bulrathi colony for it, except they had a good ground tech advantage, plus they had Stinger missiles while the Alkaris were still using nuclear missiles. They had good shields but crappy missiles, so I decided to just send the transports in without any ship support to save on time. I also captured Silicoid Xendalla and Cryslon during this time frame, leaving them with just their western colonies, Keeta and Klystron, as well as one in the southwest corner.
The following year, 2469, I successfully stole sub space teleporters from the Sakkras. So I got their 3 propulsion techs that I didn't have within 4 years. Not only that, I was able to frame the Silicoids with this steal, although it didn't have any noticeable effect on their diplomatic relations. I had also made ships with warp dissipators now, and was able to destroy one of Sakkra's minor fleets that they sent to Obaca by freezing all their ships and then letting my missile bases do their work. I also found that Iranha in the southeast area of the map was an uncolonized planet, so I'll have to send some ships to protect it sometime.
Unfortunately, the Silicoids didn't take Meklon, because the Sakkras sent a bunch of troops from another colony because Meklon only had 8 colonists. I wonder what would've happened if I sent my troops to arrive the same turn as the Silicoids, rather than the turn before? Oh well, I guess I didn't think through the idea enough -- didn't realize that the Sakkra would send troops from their other colonies to shore up a colony whose troops had gotten reduced by invasion. I realized though that maybe I should try to take Meklon myself.
I now started making large laser ships with sub space teleporters, ionic pulsars, and warp dissipators, to deal with the Sakkra death fleet which was primarily hundreds or thousands of small to large ships. They also had a nuclear missile on them, the smallest missile I could use. The battle tactic was to turn off missiles, wait until the computer moves, and then teleport in and zap them. Then, at the beginning of the next round, while I was still next to them, I would zap them again and, since I hadn't fired my missile yet, would be able to move away before they moved, and then be done for the round. I would then repeat this, thus enabling me to zap them every turn without them able to hit me. The difficulty is in making sure to slow them down with my warp dissipators, and also, I was under a lot of time pressure with this because the Sakkras obviously had the same techs so it was a matter of time before they made ships with these devices too.
In 2470, my troops landed on Alkari Vox and captured it, but I didn't get any techs. Oh well. In the meantime, my huge missile ship + teleporting ionic pulsar large ships were able to defeat the Sakkra fleet that went for Berel, so the tactic was working. The Sakkra were keeping their main fleet at Meklon though.
In 2471, my fleet arrived at Meklon to take on the Sakkra death fleet there. To my surprise, they decided to retreat. This meant that I could capture Meklon now, so I started my troop invasion. I also found out that ionic pulsars hit everyone around the firing ship, including my own ships. Oops. Also, my ionic pulsars had little effect on Sakkra planets; I don't know if that's because they had good shields or good ECM or whatever. So it really means that I still have to make new bomber ships to take care of missile bases. My original 35 fusion bomb ship only did 20 damage a turn to the Sakkras. Sigh. Fortunately, Meklon was too young to have missile bases yet, so I could have my fleet hover over it to deflect Sakkra reinforcements.
In 2473, I stole megabolt cannon from Sakkra, and started researching anti-matter bombs because I couldn't get omega-v bombs. My invasion force also reached Meklon, although this initial set was just to soften them up. The casualties were unsurprisingly large, my 133 troops succeeded in reduce their troops from 162 to 83. However, my 300 troop invasion was arriving next turn.
Well, the next turn came. It was my 300 troops against Sakkra's 121 troops, so they obviously sent in some reinforcements. The result was...they ended up with 3 troops left. Yeah, my 300 troops only ended up killing 118 of their troops. Sigh. But at least I captured Alkari Laan and got graviton beam from that. I now have 17 colonies.
In 2475, I stole zortrium armor from the Bulrathis and blamed the Sakkras, so hopefully my next Meklon invasion will be better. It turns out I didn't need it, because in 2476, I researched andrium armor, so I was fighting on more even terms with the Sakkra ground troops now. Their 80 troops killed 115 of my 289 troops, leaving me with 174 troops for Meklon and netting me a bunch of techs. I got advanced soil enrichment (great because I never got the regular version), waste 20%, and hercular missiles, among others. The following year, 2477, my troops that were meant to just soften up Nitzer ended capturing it with 4 troops remaining (oops). However, I still got ECM 6, combat transporters, battle computer 8, and complete eco, among other techs from it. I also finished researching anti-matter bombs now so I started making my bomber.
When I sent my anti-matter ships into battle, I realized I made a big mistake: I forgot to equip them with nuclear missiles so that they could teleport away after bombing a planet. Oops. Also, I sent them to Silicoid Keeta and tested them out after destroying the missile bases there. They outright destroyed the colony. Oops.
Nevertheless, with these ships I started attacking established Sakkra colonies. I captured Sakkra Kronos and Beta Ceti in 2482, as well as Silicoid Klystron. The latter meant that I broke contact with the Silicoids; they had one remaining colony in the southwest area. With these captures, I got a good amount of techs from the Sakkras. However, they now had planetary 20 shields, along with their class 11 shields, so hopefully my anti-matter bombs will still do good damage.
I noticed that the Sakkra were now sending a colony ship to the uncolonized Iranha in the southeast part of the map. Remember how I said I should send a ship there to prevent it from being colonized? Well, I promptly forgot about that. Fortunately, because I had accidentally destroyed Keeta, it would be the colony that I use to prevent council votes. At this point, though, I realized I should start preparing for the conquest win: having 2/3 of the total population and just voting myself emperor. With this in mind, I started conquering planets as quickly as possible.
In 2485 I captured Sakkra Vulcan, as well as a few Alkari colonies. In 2486, I had captured my 26th colony (Alkari Altair), so it was time to spring my end game invasions. The plan was to get enough population to put me over the 2/3 threshold, right when I colonized Keeta, since the Sakkra had taken Iranha now. I also couldn't kill any colonies, of course, although I found I could control how much enemy population I destroyed much more finely during battle rather than by planetary bombardment. So my strategy for the colonies that I was not capturing was to freeze the enemy ships but not kill them to keep the battle going, then I would bomb the planet to as few people as possible without actually destroying it.
The plan involved sending out as many troops as possible from my inner colonies to my outer colonies so that my outer colonies would not be empty, while sending out as many troops from my outer colonies as possible to invade the Alkari, Sakkra, and Bulrathi simultaneously. The goal was for my colonies to be at or near their max population while reducing the enemy populations as much as possible, either through direct invasion or through bombing in the combat screen. So my formerly Darlok colonies and formerly Silicoid colonies in the east sent their troops to the Bulrathi in the southeast, my middle colonies sent their troops southward toward the Sakkra, and my western colonies sent their troops to the Alkari in the southwest. All colonies would be maximizing their population growth by ecology spending as well.
The whole plan of how to send troops around among 26 colonies and an additional 11 enemy targets to maximize my remaining population in a few turns (right when my colony ship would reach Keeta) took 3 days of several hours each (i.e. my available spare time) to map out in Excel, and included things like how much each colony was expected to gain from natural population growth. I had to divvy up the troops from my inner colonies properly between the different prongs of attack and each other to ensure that I had max population, which took a lot of trying different scenarios.
The result can be seen below:
It is the two turns prior to colonizing Keeta. In 2486, I would have had 41 votes while everyone else would've had about 26 votes total. In 2487, I would have had 43 votes while everyone else would have had 23 votes. And as for the final tally at the end of 2487, when all the transports finally arrived at their destinations:
Yes, I ended up with just over 6000 population so 61 votes, while I exterminated the Alkari and reduced the others significantly. As expected, the computers all voted for Sakkra.
End result: Win by Conquest in 2487
Strategy thoughts
* During the early/mid game, if you're in a war, you can potentially shut it down by making the opposing race break contact with you. This may be useful because the computer doesn't seem to respect range limits when they colonize (or when their ships move generally). With the Darloks, because their Collassa was so close to me and so far from their other colonies, I did incur a war declaration from them when I captured it, but we broke off contact thereafter, and they didn't bother me again until they re-established contact. The computer races do get range techs though, and so do you, so this is limited pretty much to the early/mid game when everyone is still trying to expand; in the late game, you're likely right up against other races and their range is probably enough to reach your colonies, so you wouldn't be able to do this.
* Capturing planets is a good way to get techs if you're behind in the tech race. This typically only applies on higher difficulties (i.e. impossible) because of computer bonuses to productivity. A corollary is that if the computer invades and destroy or capture one of your colonies, you can get revenge and capture that colony, netting you their technologies. I used this against the Sakkra after they declared war on me, and it helped a lot with the teching.
* Warp dissipator rocks. The warp dissipator is great defensively for stopping enemy ships in their tracks and letting your missile bases pick them off. It also works very well with heavy (2 range) beam weapons, even if the heavy versions of the beam weapons are much more expensive.
* Subspace teleporters are also good. They allow you to teleport around the map, to move in and zap enemies and then move away to safety.
* Having 1 missile on your ships is good. It allows you to continue moving after you fire your beam weapons or bombs, if you make sure to deactivate it at the beginning of every fight. I used it extensively with my beam warships, and even more so once I got subspace teleporters (as long as I remember to equip ships with it).
