First I must offer up 2 appologies:
1) There is no story this time. Blame World con, Gen Con and Dragon Con all happening over a 4 week period. I did good just to get the game played.
2) There are going to be a crapload of pictures in this report. I apologize in advance to any of you still on dialup. I'll break it into 4 so hopefully the threaded view will at least offer some relief.
Second I just want to say one thing: Sulla, you bastid, I have NEVER thought so hard or worked so hard on a game of MOO in my life! I literally sat and thought on some turns for like 20 minutes
That being said, I still think this report will be worth your while to read. Onward!
This event has custom scoring, so the first thing I did was look at the scoring and see how I could manage to hit the quadruple 150 points in each area.
My first thought was that the 150 in population would be difficult, but, if we get an isolated start and some large planets, and some good terraforming, it would actually be the EASIEST of the 3. I figure we could get about 90 points the first half.
If we had 20 planets the 2nd half, we'd need 40 votes, whcih would mean we'd better have at least Gaia's and Terraforming +80.
The researcher part would be more difficult. We might be able to get about 60-70 points the first half, but then we'd have to go all out on 3 fields thereafter... What 3 fields? We're the Klackons, so construction was obvious because it's the easiest, next would be computers, because we'd need to steal some tech, and finally planetology, because we'd need population. What of the other 3 fields? Clearly we'd need at least Hyper-X or merculite missiles, but beyond that, we could survive the first 150 turns just fine with no weapons tech. In force fields, Planetary V would be sufficient for our needs, and we could shut down research thereafter. In Propulsion, it'd be dicier. We might need range 7 and warp 3, because we would need to bomb enemy worlds...
Why would we want to bomb enemy worlds? Wouldn't that just hurt our score in Diplomat?? Actually, no. Lets look at why.
Feud: 0 points
Hate: 0 points
Discord: 0 points
Troubled: 2 points
Tense: 2 points
Restless: 4 points
Wary: 6 points
Unease: 8 points
Neutral: 10 points
Relaxed: 12 points
Amiable: 14 points
Calm: 16 points
Affable: 18 points
Peaceful: 20 points
Friendly: 22 points
Unity: 25 points
Harmony: 30 points
The top level you can get with an AI with whom you are not allied is Peaceful. With 4 Peacefuls you score 80 points. No way we'll have time to get 4 people anywhere close to Peaceful in the first 75 years. On the other hand, with 3 Harmony you score 90. It's actually far easier to get 3 Harmony than 4 Peaceful. Early contacts and trade agreements will be vital, as will getting someone under full dogpile and bombing them.
Another thing we're going to do this game is take full advantage of being Kackons for pop purposes. Other than the home planet and rich planets, we will grow Klackons BEFORE factories. The production you get from the pop is worth doing it this way in this scenareo and you don't have to deal with cleaning up that way.
2300: Looking at our starting location, I'm tempted to send the colony ship to the purple star. Purple stars offer the greatest chance of finding rich planets, and I wonder if there isn't one of those Rich minimal planets there... I expect there to be one somewhere close if Sulla really wanted mastery of the Triad to be possible, but I decide to play it safe and send the ship to the yellow star instead. We'll scout the purple star just in case. I decide to send the other scout to the blue star 6 parsects to the noreast.
2302: Well, I was right about some things. The planet at the purple star is a Minimal planet.
And there is a rich minimal planet within 3 parsects of the homeworld, but it isn't at the purple star...
2303: We whip up the scout 1.0 desidn and set the homeworld to make a batch of them. I send 15 million off to the ultra rich.
2304 Scouts fan out.
2305: We scout Size 50 Barren Anraq in the northeast.
2307: We scout size 70 Arid Poor Primordius at the red star just north of Omicron
2308: We scout size 65 Ocean Artifacts Artemis(Another early artifacts planet ) near Anraq, and size 50 Dead Morrig at the red planet in the southwest corner. We are the first to scout Artemis and we get:
Wow... Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good as Sirian would say. You know, I'm starting to feel like Sirian mining hills in CIV. Yeah, I popped another goodie. My luck has to run out some time doesn't it?
2309: Time to make some more scout 1.0's...
2310: More scouts fan out. We scout Size 35 Barren Beryl in the southeast.
2316: We find asteroids at Dunatis, a blue star near the center of the galaxy, and Size 20 Dead Klystron in the south center of the galaxy.
2317: We find Orion
We also find asteroids at Rotan, the red star midway along the eastern edge, Size 85 Terran Crius at the yellow star near the center of the galaxy, and Size 30 Desert Imra at the red star near Orion. And finally, we find this little gem of a planet.
2318: With Morrig nearly maxed out, I design a new colony ship, and start on it with every click Morrig isnt using to get the last 5 factories and last pop. We scout Size 50 Minimal Vox, at a white star on the western margin, and Size 75 Jungle Gion at the red star next to Vox.
2321: Colony Ship dispatched to Arietis. With the homeworld about to max out, I make one last set of scouts with the spare clicks.
2322: I open research. I allocate 3 clicks to everything that isn't planetology, and the rest to planetology. We select Jammer I over DSC (Jammer I is really cheap, and I don't plan to do a lot of threatening this game), Reduced 80 (only choice), Class II (always the only choice), Terra +10 over Controlled Barren and Improved Ecco (Great bang for the buck and we'll get Improved Ecco before going forward), Sub-Light Drives over range 5, nuclear engines, stabilizer, and range 7 (We need an engine and this one will likely be sufficent for our needs for the first 150 years) and Hand Lasers over Gats (Needs no explanation)
2323: Colony Ship dispatched to Primordius (to extend our range north) Terra +10 hits. The new choices are +20, Controlled Dead, and Death Spores. We select Improved Ecco Instead.
2324: We begin Terraforming.
2327: Colony Ship dispatched to Omicron. Aretmis colonized.
2328: Primordius Colonized.
2329: Colony Ship dispatched to Crius. We scout Size 65 Barren Ukko at a purple star in the middle of the galaxy.
2330: We chase a Psilon scout off Ukko. Colony Ship dispatched to Imra.
2331: We scout Size 20 Toxic Neptunis near Ukko. We colonize Omicron.
2332: Colony ship dispatched to Vox. We chase a Human scout off Ryoun, a Size 35 Inferno at a green star in the northeast. We get this message:
Raise your hand if you're surprised.
2333: We chase a Silicoid Colony Ship off Kailis, a Size 90 Jungle Planet. We also find Silicoids living at Rayden, a green star in the northeast. Their one base forces our scout to retreat. We also scout Thrax at a green star in the center east amd find a size 25 Inferno planet.
2334: Colony ship dispatched to Crius as a staging planet for Kailis.
2335: Colony ship dispatched to Gion. Hand Lasers hit. The new choices are NPG and IC. We select NPG.
2336: Improved Eco hits, we select controlle dead.
2337: Colony Ship dispatched to Herculis. We design a Placeholder Huge so we can pop several Dead Colony Ships at once when Dead hits. We chase a Bulrathi Colony Ship off Neptunis. Jammer I hits. The only new tech is BCIII and we select that.
2339: We colonize Crius.
2340: We colonize Imra, which leads to this message.
2341: We Dial up the Silicoids for trade and they accept.
Here is a look at the Sillicoid empire.
2342: We scout Gienah at a red star in the north and find asteroids. We colonize Vox. We scout Areitis at the red just north of Vox, and find a Size 30 Rich Toxic.
2343: We run a Silicoid scout off Nyarl, a size 65 Tundra planet in the southeast.
2344 we scout Incedius, a size 45 Toxic in the northeast. We colonize Herculis.
2345: We scout Bootis, a Size 50 Rich Barren planet in the north. Controlled Dead Hits, the new choice is Controlled Toxic. We go for it. We colonize Gion. I realize I've been letting the Colony ship for Kailis sit at Crius for several turns...
With Dead in the bag, I even out research to try to get some points before the scoring in 30 years.
2346: Reduced 80 and Class II both hit. The only new choices are Improved 8 and Class III.
2347: SEVEN Dead colony ships roll off the line and fan out. We scout Ajax a Size 35 Desert planet in the northeast corner. We design a LR colony ship to grab it.
2348: We find Sol at the western yellow of the cluster to the north. We run. Colony Ship Dispatched to Ajax
2349: We find Humans living at Denubius, the westernmost of the northern yellow cluster. their fighter chases our scout away.
We colonize Kailis, which triggers this message:
2350: We find the Bulrathi living on Paranar, a Size 60 Arid planet near the southeastern corner. Colony Ship dispatched to Morrig.
We dial up the humans and make this deal.
At this point, we pull our scouts off the two highly hostile planets near the Sillicoids (not the Barren planet, we want that one) We want them to have them. Why on earth would we want to GIVE AWAY planets??? Simple, we're going to declare war on the Sillicoids soon. We're going to (hopefully) get them under full dogpile, but the last thing we want is for the Sillicoids to get eliminated from the game before the end. Letting them have the Inferno and Toxic along the boarder gives us some place to bomb that the other AI will hopefully LEAVE ALONE because they CAN'T LIVE THERE! We hope to have all contacts and be bombing them shortly.
At this point I saved for the night. I was tired from all the thinking this variant required. Our winning is not in doubit, but executing the plan for the tripple 150... that's a long shot, everything has to go right, and ONE stupid move could end up costing me my chance at it.
When I restarted the next day, I realized I had a serious problem...
1) There is no story this time. Blame World con, Gen Con and Dragon Con all happening over a 4 week period. I did good just to get the game played.
2) There are going to be a crapload of pictures in this report. I apologize in advance to any of you still on dialup. I'll break it into 4 so hopefully the threaded view will at least offer some relief.
Second I just want to say one thing: Sulla, you bastid, I have NEVER thought so hard or worked so hard on a game of MOO in my life! I literally sat and thought on some turns for like 20 minutes
That being said, I still think this report will be worth your while to read. Onward!
This event has custom scoring, so the first thing I did was look at the scoring and see how I could manage to hit the quadruple 150 points in each area.
My first thought was that the 150 in population would be difficult, but, if we get an isolated start and some large planets, and some good terraforming, it would actually be the EASIEST of the 3. I figure we could get about 90 points the first half.
If we had 20 planets the 2nd half, we'd need 40 votes, whcih would mean we'd better have at least Gaia's and Terraforming +80.
The researcher part would be more difficult. We might be able to get about 60-70 points the first half, but then we'd have to go all out on 3 fields thereafter... What 3 fields? We're the Klackons, so construction was obvious because it's the easiest, next would be computers, because we'd need to steal some tech, and finally planetology, because we'd need population. What of the other 3 fields? Clearly we'd need at least Hyper-X or merculite missiles, but beyond that, we could survive the first 150 turns just fine with no weapons tech. In force fields, Planetary V would be sufficient for our needs, and we could shut down research thereafter. In Propulsion, it'd be dicier. We might need range 7 and warp 3, because we would need to bomb enemy worlds...
Why would we want to bomb enemy worlds? Wouldn't that just hurt our score in Diplomat?? Actually, no. Lets look at why.
Feud: 0 points
Hate: 0 points
Discord: 0 points
Troubled: 2 points
Tense: 2 points
Restless: 4 points
Wary: 6 points
Unease: 8 points
Neutral: 10 points
Relaxed: 12 points
Amiable: 14 points
Calm: 16 points
Affable: 18 points
Peaceful: 20 points
Friendly: 22 points
Unity: 25 points
Harmony: 30 points
The top level you can get with an AI with whom you are not allied is Peaceful. With 4 Peacefuls you score 80 points. No way we'll have time to get 4 people anywhere close to Peaceful in the first 75 years. On the other hand, with 3 Harmony you score 90. It's actually far easier to get 3 Harmony than 4 Peaceful. Early contacts and trade agreements will be vital, as will getting someone under full dogpile and bombing them.
Another thing we're going to do this game is take full advantage of being Kackons for pop purposes. Other than the home planet and rich planets, we will grow Klackons BEFORE factories. The production you get from the pop is worth doing it this way in this scenareo and you don't have to deal with cleaning up that way.
2300: Looking at our starting location, I'm tempted to send the colony ship to the purple star. Purple stars offer the greatest chance of finding rich planets, and I wonder if there isn't one of those Rich minimal planets there... I expect there to be one somewhere close if Sulla really wanted mastery of the Triad to be possible, but I decide to play it safe and send the ship to the yellow star instead. We'll scout the purple star just in case. I decide to send the other scout to the blue star 6 parsects to the noreast.
2302: Well, I was right about some things. The planet at the purple star is a Minimal planet.
And there is a rich minimal planet within 3 parsects of the homeworld, but it isn't at the purple star...
2303: We whip up the scout 1.0 desidn and set the homeworld to make a batch of them. I send 15 million off to the ultra rich.
2304 Scouts fan out.
2305: We scout Size 50 Barren Anraq in the northeast.
2307: We scout size 70 Arid Poor Primordius at the red star just north of Omicron
2308: We scout size 65 Ocean Artifacts Artemis(Another early artifacts planet ) near Anraq, and size 50 Dead Morrig at the red planet in the southwest corner. We are the first to scout Artemis and we get:
Wow... Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good as Sirian would say. You know, I'm starting to feel like Sirian mining hills in CIV. Yeah, I popped another goodie. My luck has to run out some time doesn't it?
2309: Time to make some more scout 1.0's...
2310: More scouts fan out. We scout Size 35 Barren Beryl in the southeast.
2316: We find asteroids at Dunatis, a blue star near the center of the galaxy, and Size 20 Dead Klystron in the south center of the galaxy.
2317: We find Orion
We also find asteroids at Rotan, the red star midway along the eastern edge, Size 85 Terran Crius at the yellow star near the center of the galaxy, and Size 30 Desert Imra at the red star near Orion. And finally, we find this little gem of a planet.
2318: With Morrig nearly maxed out, I design a new colony ship, and start on it with every click Morrig isnt using to get the last 5 factories and last pop. We scout Size 50 Minimal Vox, at a white star on the western margin, and Size 75 Jungle Gion at the red star next to Vox.
2321: Colony Ship dispatched to Arietis. With the homeworld about to max out, I make one last set of scouts with the spare clicks.
2322: I open research. I allocate 3 clicks to everything that isn't planetology, and the rest to planetology. We select Jammer I over DSC (Jammer I is really cheap, and I don't plan to do a lot of threatening this game), Reduced 80 (only choice), Class II (always the only choice), Terra +10 over Controlled Barren and Improved Ecco (Great bang for the buck and we'll get Improved Ecco before going forward), Sub-Light Drives over range 5, nuclear engines, stabilizer, and range 7 (We need an engine and this one will likely be sufficent for our needs for the first 150 years) and Hand Lasers over Gats (Needs no explanation)
2323: Colony Ship dispatched to Primordius (to extend our range north) Terra +10 hits. The new choices are +20, Controlled Dead, and Death Spores. We select Improved Ecco Instead.
2324: We begin Terraforming.
2327: Colony Ship dispatched to Omicron. Aretmis colonized.
2328: Primordius Colonized.
2329: Colony Ship dispatched to Crius. We scout Size 65 Barren Ukko at a purple star in the middle of the galaxy.
2330: We chase a Psilon scout off Ukko. Colony Ship dispatched to Imra.
2331: We scout Size 20 Toxic Neptunis near Ukko. We colonize Omicron.
2332: Colony ship dispatched to Vox. We chase a Human scout off Ryoun, a Size 35 Inferno at a green star in the northeast. We get this message:
Raise your hand if you're surprised.
2333: We chase a Silicoid Colony Ship off Kailis, a Size 90 Jungle Planet. We also find Silicoids living at Rayden, a green star in the northeast. Their one base forces our scout to retreat. We also scout Thrax at a green star in the center east amd find a size 25 Inferno planet.
2334: Colony ship dispatched to Crius as a staging planet for Kailis.
2335: Colony ship dispatched to Gion. Hand Lasers hit. The new choices are NPG and IC. We select NPG.
2336: Improved Eco hits, we select controlle dead.
2337: Colony Ship dispatched to Herculis. We design a Placeholder Huge so we can pop several Dead Colony Ships at once when Dead hits. We chase a Bulrathi Colony Ship off Neptunis. Jammer I hits. The only new tech is BCIII and we select that.
2339: We colonize Crius.
2340: We colonize Imra, which leads to this message.
2341: We Dial up the Silicoids for trade and they accept.
Here is a look at the Sillicoid empire.
2342: We scout Gienah at a red star in the north and find asteroids. We colonize Vox. We scout Areitis at the red just north of Vox, and find a Size 30 Rich Toxic.
2343: We run a Silicoid scout off Nyarl, a size 65 Tundra planet in the southeast.
2344 we scout Incedius, a size 45 Toxic in the northeast. We colonize Herculis.
2345: We scout Bootis, a Size 50 Rich Barren planet in the north. Controlled Dead Hits, the new choice is Controlled Toxic. We go for it. We colonize Gion. I realize I've been letting the Colony ship for Kailis sit at Crius for several turns...
With Dead in the bag, I even out research to try to get some points before the scoring in 30 years.
2346: Reduced 80 and Class II both hit. The only new choices are Improved 8 and Class III.
2347: SEVEN Dead colony ships roll off the line and fan out. We scout Ajax a Size 35 Desert planet in the northeast corner. We design a LR colony ship to grab it.
2348: We find Sol at the western yellow of the cluster to the north. We run. Colony Ship Dispatched to Ajax
2349: We find Humans living at Denubius, the westernmost of the northern yellow cluster. their fighter chases our scout away.
We colonize Kailis, which triggers this message:
2350: We find the Bulrathi living on Paranar, a Size 60 Arid planet near the southeastern corner. Colony Ship dispatched to Morrig.
We dial up the humans and make this deal.
At this point, we pull our scouts off the two highly hostile planets near the Sillicoids (not the Barren planet, we want that one) We want them to have them. Why on earth would we want to GIVE AWAY planets??? Simple, we're going to declare war on the Sillicoids soon. We're going to (hopefully) get them under full dogpile, but the last thing we want is for the Sillicoids to get eliminated from the game before the end. Letting them have the Inferno and Toxic along the boarder gives us some place to bomb that the other AI will hopefully LEAVE ALONE because they CAN'T LIVE THERE! We hope to have all contacts and be bombing them shortly.
At this point I saved for the night. I was tired from all the thinking this variant required. Our winning is not in doubit, but executing the plan for the tripple 150... that's a long shot, everything has to go right, and ONE stupid move could end up costing me my chance at it.
When I restarted the next day, I realized I had a serious problem...
Favorite quotes:
Diplomacy is the art of letting other people have your way - Unknown.
The graveyards are full of indispensible men - Charles de Gaulle
If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you - Winnie the Pooh.
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes - The Doctor
What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it? - The Doctor (again)
Your friendship is the nicest gift I have ever recieved - my girlfriend
Diplomacy is the art of letting other people have your way - Unknown.
The graveyards are full of indispensible men - Charles de Gaulle
If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you - Winnie the Pooh.
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes - The Doctor
What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it? - The Doctor (again)
Your friendship is the nicest gift I have ever recieved - my girlfriend