Imperium 37 - Extreme

[Vanshilar]

I may or may not write a more in-depth report later on covering more of the strategy, but this report should be enough to get an idea of what I did. I used the extreme version so I didn't use the planetary reserves.

Below I've posted an animated gif of my game. This is something similar to what I plan to eventually do using the saved games using Kyrub's version of game. For those that don't know, Kyrub's version will save each turn to a unique save file name (based on game year), so eventually there's a long list of saved games, for each year of a game. Eventually I want to crack them open, figure out the MoO save file format, to give a more visual presentation of how a game went.

The animated gif was done by taking a screenshot of the map screen at the end of every turn, and then collating them together into an animated gif using a Matlab script. The various elements of this, such as the races at the bottom and the year at the top left, was also done via script. How long each year lasts can be set by script; for now, I've set it to about 0.5 seconds at the beginning, going up to about 3.5 seconds at the end in 2517. I can change this to any other time progression if people feel that this is too slow/fast. Note that the screenshots are right before the inter-turn when all the battles, invasions, etc. happen, so sometimes their results are not shown until the following turn. For example, I colonized Xudax in 2301, but it didn't show it until 2302.

I've also given the events in the code box, so that people can scroll it up and down without losing sight of the animated gif. Hopefully it's not too awkward; I'm not that familiar with forum code so feel free to suggest how I can change it to make it more readable. Events start off with the year they occurred while strategic notes start off with a "->".



[attachment=523]

Code:

2301: Colonized Xudax to the east.
2311: Started colony ship for Reticuli to the north. Note how I reposition my scout ships several turns after this in preparation.
-> Since the east stars are hostile or asteroid, decided to expand to the north.
2320: Reticuli colony ship built.
2323: Colonized Reticuli to the north.
2327: Made additional scouts to help hold territory so you can see them fan out in next few turns; started 2 colony ships after this. GNN also reported that Sakkras have 6 star systems now.
2338: Darloks settled Maretta to the northeast right before my colony ship arrived there. They arrived with a fleet so my scout couldn't protect it.
2342: Darloks also settled Berel right before my ship arrived.
-> I'll need to conquer some Darlok colonies to expand further. Researching nuclear engines now.
2345: Captured Darlok Berel, so they declared war on me. Note that I have a train of transports heading there, and Fierias and Xudax are also supporting Reticuli with troops.
2347: Got nuclear engines, so can upgrade and complete warship now.
2349: Captured Darlok Maretta, but no techs. Colonized Artemis to the northwest and met the Meklars, only to find out they have their fleet with a huge ship heading there next turn. Oops.
-> I can either let them destroy it for -10 points, or threaten them off and keep it for -10 points, so I choose to threaten them and take a -10 point penalty. Over a just-created colony. Sigh. Fortunately, they said they'll retreat.
2353: Colonized Vulcan to the northwest. Found Darlok Mobas to the north is a rich planet, so should really take it.
-> Strategy is to take the two Darlok colonies to the north, and hope that they're far enough away from Darlok's home planet that I lose contact with them, thus stopping the war, which I did in a previous Imperium. I only have range 4, so this would work if Darlok doesn't have any additional range techs beyond that.
2354: Captured Darlok Gion, but took range 6, so this strategy wouldn't have worked. Oh well. Note the steady streams of transports while I keep the colonies at 50% for max pop growth.
2361: Captured Darlok Mobas, but didn't get any techs despite it having 64 factories. Oh well.
-> At this point, I'm done expanding my borders, and now working on expanding to the stars in my interior, and strengthening my outer stars.
2369: Bulrathi, who are allied with the Darloks, declared war on me.
2372: I made peace with Darloks, but a bit too late since the Bulrathi are at war with me now.
2381: Meklar did a surprise declaration of war on me. Unfortunately, I'm not ready for it yet. Sigh.
-> I plan to take Meklar's Mu Delphi to the northwest to steal some techs, so started sending troops to it from my southern colonies because they'll take a long time to arrive. You can see them build up gradually here.
2385: Darlok, who are allied with the Meklar, declare war on me. That was a short-lived peace.
2388: Meklar captured my Artemis, so I lost another 10 points, for a total of -20 points now.
2394: My fleet and transports arrived at Mu Delphi. Unfortunately, I was expecting bases but not a Meklar fleet; my fleet was primarily geared toward the planet (lots of different medium bombers) and not against ships. So I took big losses in my fleet, and all of my 151 troops died before landing. One of the disadvantages of this method of capturing colonies is that when it goes wrong, it really goes wrong and you lose a lot. Nevertheless, the remainder of my fleet now start wearing down Mu Delphi's bases (with my bombers bouncing between Mu Delphi and Vulcan under Imperium rules, and my laser ships staying put at Mu Delphi since they have infinite ammo).
2399: Met the Sakkra, who is the computer main threat.
2407: Psilons declared war on me. My new fleet destroyed Mu Delphi's bases and can now station themselves there, ready for any Meklar fleet. Just in case, I have additional missile carriers on the way to provide an initial punch should it be needed.
2410: Made peace with Darlok, again. Made peace with Bulrathi the next turn.
2412: Captured Meklar Mu Delphi. Took class 5 shields, auto repair, and planetary 5 shields, so a good grab this time. I got the 12 systems message.
-> With auto repair, my ships can now just repair themselves and not die, so I start a new class of warships with it and heavy lasers. I also trade heavily (which I've been doing all along with whomever I'm at peace) so that my new ships are top-of-the-line.
2415: Start crash funding into soil enrichment, hope to get it before council to boost my vote count.
2418: Captured Meklar Artemis back.
2419: First council, between Sakkra and I. The two of us had 9 votes each, while everyone else had a total of 6 votes, so we're the two front runners.
2423: Soil enrichment is at 45% now and still haven't gotten it. Didn't get it next turn either, so no soil before the most important council. Oh well.
2425: Finally got soil enrichment, the turn after the council. Sigh.
2426: Now it's time to try and win this thing. Made trade agreement with Darlok, Bulrathi, and Sakkra, to try to appease them while I developed.
2429: Darlok declared war on me, maybe because they're still allied with the Meklar whom I'm still at war with. But this is my chance to pick up their nebula rich in the far north, Pollus.
2431: Sakkra fleet arrived at Whynil to the north; they routed my ships (I retreated to minimize losses), but I destroyed their colony ship first so that they couldn't colonize it. I then colonized it with my own ship when they retreated to collect another colony ship.
-> My goal now is to get range 7 and then get warp dissipator, so I can freeze enemy ships and protect my planets a lot better, not to mention neutralize enemy ships when I attack.
2434: Meklar offered peace, but I rejected; my plan is to see if their Zhardan (northeast colony) has anything special, if not I'll capture their Meklon for a nice big colony plus reduce my borders.
2445: Got warp dissipator. The Sakkra warned me about overexpanding (ha!).
2449: At council, Sakkra had 18 votes, I had 14 votes, and everyone else put together had 7 votes.
2455: Destroyed Meklar Zhardan's bases to explore it, and found it's just a normal 50-pop star. So I'll capture Meklar's Meklon; started sending ships to wear it down.
2463: Captured Meklar Meklon, allowing me to consolidate the Mu Delphi and Artemis defense fleets into a single fleet at Meklon. Meklar sued for peace and I accepted. Bulrathi declared war on me, however. I prepare to capture Darlok Pollus.
2467: Captured Darlok Pollus, their northern rich planet in the nebula, and took anti-matter torpedoes, zortium armor, and industrial tech 6, among others. I also colonized the northern stars Rigel, Uxmai, and Bootis, so I have 19 systems now.
2471: I noticed Meklar sending troops to the Psilon colony in the east that the Psilon and Sakkra have been fighting over for ages, so going to try something devious. If the Meklar capture it, I'll capture their Zhardan, to consolidate my position in the upper left quadrant, and leave them with a defenseless colony which if another race destroys, I won't be blamed.
2474: At council, Sakkra had 24 votes, I had 18 votes, and everyone else put together had 6 votes. Sakkra declared war on me, so it's on!
2477: Nope, the Meklar troops didn't make it -- the turn they arrived, the colony was destroyed. Oh well. The turn after, Sakkra colonized it. Oh well.
2478: I've been trying to steal stinger missiles from the Bulrathi all this time, because they only have comp level 8 or so and I'm at comp level 27, but I keep not getting it, so now I'm switching to teching weapons myself to counter Sakkra.
2479: Meklar declared war on me.
-> Do I want to destroy the Meklar for good? Their one colony in the middle of my colonies is a pain because the colonies around it have to be defended with ships and bases, yet exterminating them destroys my reputation with the remaining computers. Then again, I'm already at war with Sakkra anyway and they're the only threat, so I decide to destroy the Meklar once at for all.
2482: Destroyed Sakkra Imra's bases in the northern nebula, so I can capture it now and grab some juicy Sakkra techs because they out-tech me. It's very painful because they have 55 ground tech while I have 30 ground tech, so I'll lose about 3 troops for every 1 that they lose, and it has max pop 125. So I'll send 2 waves of about 300 troops each just to be safe.
2483: Captured Meklar Zhardan and exterminated them.
2486: Captured Sakkra Imra with my first wave so I got really lucky, but it means I have lots of wasted troops coming in next turn, oh well. I took high energy focus, terraform 60, class 11 shields, andrium armor, hard beam, and particle beam, so a good grab of techs. I got the "nearly majority" message.
2489: Got pulson missiles, so time to make my Sakkra-destroyer ships. I will start with Sakkra's northeast colonies because one's an ultra rich and another is rich.
2499: Got neutronium bomb, so now making ultrafast bombers with 0 shields. The Sakkra have their regular fast missiles but they also have scatter 5 missiles. If my ship has 0 shields, they'll rightly conclude that the scatter 5 missiles will do more damage and launch those instead. However, with impulse drives and inertial stabilizer, my ship can move 4 squares a turn (including diagonally) while their scatter 5 missiles move 2.5 squares a turn, so I can simply outrun those missiles if I don't use shields. It does mean though that one wrong move and my ships are toast.
2499: At council, Sakkra had 28 votes, I had 29 votes, and everyone else put together had 4 votes, so it's really about mopping up now.
2500: Captured Sakkra Jinga and took zyro shield, hellfire torpedoes, advanced planet tech 1.
2505: Captured Sakkra Firma, took zeon missiles, black hole generator, battle comp 7, among other things.
2506: Traded with Psilon and got ion stream projector, for more base-destroying carnage.
2510: Captured Sakkra Maalor, took waste 20, subspace teleporter, advanced cloning, complete terraform, among other things, so now my ships will be able to teleport, use black hole generator and ion stream projector before bombing, and my colonists are only 5 BC apiece so I can spam them for invasions.
2511-2517: Other than capturing Sakkra Phyco in 2515 to extend my range to reach the southeast corner, I go around destroying everyone.
2517: Destroyed last of Sakkra bases and won the game.

Win by extermination in 2517.

2424 council: Between Sakkra and me. I had 11 votes. The votes and who voted for whom are:
Meklar 2 Sakkra
Darlok 2 Me
Bulrat 2 Me
Psilon 1 Sakkra
Sakkra 11 Sakkra
Me 11 Abstain

Scoring:
Extreme variant (planetary reserves not used)
Posting report: +50
Achieving victory (extermination in 2517): +50
Votes in 2425 election: +11
Threaten to attack AI: -10
Lose colonies: -10

Total: 91

Ultimately, I didn't take the "this game has a scoring system intended to reward players whose colonies are most successful at building themselves up and sustaining and defending themselves" part seriously enough. In retrospect, each time I lost a colony or threatened the AI I lost 10 points, which was equivalent to 1000 population at the 2425 election, so it was really stupid of me to be greedy and overextend myself early on, only to be beat back by the Meklar. Oh well. This was a blast to play!

EDIT: It seems like after a day or two, my animated gif attachment gets lost and I only see "[attachment=523]" instead of the animated gif, so I've linked it to offsite now. Let me know if you see two animated gifs instead.

[RefSteel]

Whoa - that animated gif of the game map as it developed is really great, especially in combination with your strategic thoughts about the game! (I wonder if there's some way to link them together as something like a slideshow or something...)

Ultimately, I didn't take the "this game has a scoring system intended to reward players whose colonies are most successful at building themselves up and sustaining and defending themselves" part seriously enough. In retrospect, each time I lost a colony or threatened the AI I lost 10 points, which was equivalent to 1000 population at the 2425 election, so it was really stupid of me to be greedy and overextend myself early on, only to be beat back by the Meklar.

I wonder if I could have emphasized that more to make it more explicit. My intention with the scoring system was indeed for the losing-a-planet penalty (and the equivalent "I can't defend this planet, so I'll threaten in the hope I won't lose it" penalty) to act almost as a second variant, so that people playing for score would have to weigh expansion and defenses more carefully than usual, with the 2425 vote primarily as the first tie-breaker between players who lost the same number of colonies. (I thought about making the threat penalty lower too, since there's a risk that the AI will say no and potentially create a double scoring penalty, but fortunately that doesn't seem to have made a major difference here.)

By the way: preparing for AI bases but not a fleet that wasn't there when your assault began is one danger of committing to an attack many turns in advance; that said, I underestimated AI defenses myself at one point in my shadow game; fortunately for me, it was in the last turn endgame against the Sakkra, so all it cost me was the chance to win by Conquest instead of domination. And by the time I'd written about half of my report, I was glad it had ended that way!

Oh well. This was a blast to play!

I'm glad to hear it! It sounds like another really exciting game!

[Vanshilar]

Whoa - that animated gif of the game map as it developed is really great, especially in combination with your strategic thoughts about the game! (I wonder if there's some way to link them together as something like a slideshow or something...)

Thanks -- it took a while to create! Actually, now that the script works, I can do it with any game as long as I remember to take a screenshot of the map at the end of every turn.

My intention is to eventually write a script to automatically generate this map from the save games in Kyrub's version, but that will take many months. It'll also allow for more interesting graphics, in that I can have icons for colonizing, conquering colonies, destroying colonies, etc. Eventually I want to have graphs of how the races are doing in terms of fleet size, production, population, etc. as well. It'll only work with Kyrub's version of the game, though.

Putting text in would be ideal, but then it runs into a size issue: the animated gif is small because it's using a gif compression method where only changes to the image are drawn, so each frame after the first is very small (since it's mostly just ships moving around and stuff, which are very small sprites). In fact, each frame actually looks like this:



It's just that it will leave previous frames in place until they're overwritten. Incidentally, MoO uses a similar method to compress its animations (although gifs draw horizontally while MoO draws vertically). Anyway, if there's blocks of text, however, then each time the text is put on or removed makes the file size bigger, maybe substantially. This makes it hard to fit the animated gif into the 500 kb limit on the forums.

Of course, that problem isn't intractable. I think links to offsite images can be of any size (though I haven't checked). Also, the playback can be broken into separate files, perhaps one every 50 years or however much to ensure it stays under the 500 kb limit (this way you don't have to wait for it to cycle through to review an event that you missed because it went by too quickly). But basically, it makes the playback work better in syncing up the right year with the events that happened, allowing things like putting in the names of planets and stuff, at the cost of increasing the file size. So it's a tradeoff.

I wonder if I could have emphasized that more to make it more explicit. My intention with the scoring system was indeed for the losing-a-planet penalty (and the equivalent "I can't defend this planet, so I'll threaten in the hope I won't lose it" penalty) to act almost as a second variant, so that people playing for score would have to weigh expansion and defenses more carefully than usual, with the 2425 vote primarily as the first tie-breaker between players who lost the same number of colonies. (I thought about making the threat penalty lower too, since there's a risk that the AI will say no and potentially create a double scoring penalty, but fortunately that doesn't seem to have made a major difference here.)

Oh I knew about it before playing, I just didn't take it seriously enough and didn't actually think through what it implies in terms of how I should proceed strategically. I didn't realize that it means each threaten/loss is equivalent to 1000 population at the 2425 council, which means I should really not try to overexpand like I usually do (trading colonies is usually a good way to pick up techs on impossible). If I have time, I want to try playing this map again, but more conservatively, and see how it goes.

By the way: preparing for AI bases but not a fleet that wasn't there when your assault began is one danger of committing to an attack many turns in advance; that said, I underestimated AI defenses myself at one point in my shadow game; fortunately for me, it was in the last turn endgame against the Sakkra, so all it cost me was the chance to win by Conquest instead of domination. And by the time I'd written about half of my report, I was glad it had ended that way!

Yeah capturing colonies the way I do it is very high risk high reward. I can hit much larger colonies than otherwise by taking troops from a bunch of my colonies, but because those troops are coming from much farther away, I have to plan many many turns in advance, and can't really adapt to changing conditions very well.