Imperium 39 - toddestan's report

[toddestan]

This is an interesting variant to be sure, and I'm sure after the last imperium the rocks are undoubtedly hungry for a little revenge. So rocks versus bioorganisms. Hard versus soft. Silicon versus carbon. Lets see who's the better lifeform!

This has the potential to kind of break me out of my comfort zone a bit. I pretty much never use bioweapons, as I find the diplomatic penalty is pretty severe, and I like to capture planets as intact as possible so I can grab some tech, expand my empire, and stand them up quickly. I suppose they are good for scorched-earth, but by the time I can go scorched-earth on someone standard weapons usually suffice. I guess there is no rule saying I must use bio-weapons, but unless I can sneak out a cheesy diplomatic win I don't see any other alternative.

I must say though, impossible, with the 'coids, and can only attack planets with bio-weapons? Well, lets see how I do.

2300 - The first decision for any new emperor - what to do with my standard compliment of starting ships? Well, it seems that I'm in the corner and with a green star and a white star in range, and being that I'm the Silicoids I could (probably) colonize either one. I could scout them out, and then send my colony ship out to the best one. Or I could assume that the green star probably has a decent enough planet, and since it would put a couple more stars within my range, including a yellow star, I could just send my colony ship out and take what it has to offer. Which is what I do. I order up some more scouts.

2302 - Found Kakata, at the green star. It's a 40 desert planet.

2303 - My scouts report nothing of interest at the white star. Good job new emperor.

2304 - Darlok scouts are spotted flying through my space.

2305 - The yellow star Reticuli, south of Kakata houses a 90 terran planet, which will make fine addition to my empire. I also scout Uxmai, a 40 dead world to the west. I order up some Laser-class popcorn fighters to defend Reticuli as there is no doubt I'm not the only one interested in it.

2306 - Chase Darloks away from Uxmai, and the Mrrshans suddenly show up at Reticuli with a scout that I also chase away. The independent-minded Mrrshans are already up to three systems.


One of the Darlok scouts goes into orbit around Kakata. Don't think much of it at the time... I mean, it's just a scout which must be near the end of it's range...

2308 - Chase Darloks away from Reticuli again.

2309 - I find Nazin and my scout flees in terror. Also scout Tao, a small-medium desert planet to the west that I'll hopefully be able to grab.

Oh, and Darlok transports heading towards Kakata. What in the blazes????

2310 - Darloks capture Kakata. Not only do they capture my world, since I lose some range some scouts get cut off, as well as the lasers that I was sending to Reticuli to defend it.

I've mentioned it before. The AI automatically sending transports to any planet they get into orbit around is one behavior that I would change. Though I guess I could see the argument that it is part of the game, but here there is no way they had the range tech to pull this off. Apparently the AI doesn't have a range restriction on their transports, which I guess is a known bug.

Obviously this is a big setback during a crucial phase of the game. Can the fledging granite empire recover from this blow?

2314 - Transports from Cryslon recapture Kakata.

2318 - Darlok fleet shows up around Kakata. Once again, how do they have the range for this? The fleet destroys my popcorn fighters, and then vanishes. Maybe the game realized that they didn't actually have the range to do this?

2327 - Cryslon completes its first colony ship, which is dispatched to Reticuli via Kakata.

2330 - Decide to open up propulsion and planetology tech trees. The only options are the cheap +10 terraforming tech and range 5 fuel cells.

2331 - Found Reticuli. Make contact with the Mrrshans. Oddly, I'm not in contact with the Darloks. I strike up trade with the Mrrshans.


2335 - Tech report.

Oddly I'm not dead last, despite not having any tech besides what I started with.

2336 - +10 Terraforming pops. Next option is DEATH SPORES.

2337 - I decide to open up computers. Only option is BC2.

2338 - I scout Nitzer, an ultra-rich dead world to the southwest in the fringes of the Great Rock Nebula. By all accounts this is my world as I should be able to get it before those gooey bio-organisms have the tech to land there. I will need Range 5 to get there, so I put some priority on that tech.

2339 - Chase Mrrshan colony ship away from Vulcan, a nice jungle world to the southeast. Another world I would like to have. It's kind of isolated so I was hoping that my opponents wouldn't have the range tech to get there right away. Looks like I'm wrong about that.

2340 - The Alkari show up at Tao and chase me away with a fairly decent fleet. They found Tao, and this puts them at six systems. I strike up trade with the birds.


2341 - I found Uxmai. This triggers the first council meeting. Oddly I'm in the vote, against the Mrrshans. The Mrrshans nab the Darlok single vote, which combined with their votes gets them 4/8. The Alkari abstain.

The Darloks are unhappy about this turn of events, and declare war on me.

2343 - Galaxy map:


The Darloks, naturally make a move for Reticuli. They send up a fleet. The colony ships were unarmed, and naturally the scouts were too. But the Needle-class, which were almost certainly standard single-laser fighters were more numerous than my standard Laser-class fighters and they won the fight.


2345 - The Darloks take Reticuli, and manage to take my +10 terraforming tech too.

The Darlok fleet, happy with their accomplishments, promptly went back home. So I send some transports to Reticuli to take it back.

2350 - Council meets, and this time I'm not in it as it's now the cats versus their prey. I stay out of it.


2351 - I take back Reticuli.

2355 - The Darloks come to me wanting peace. Whatever dudes, accepted.

2358 - Galaxy map:


2359 - Mrrshans roll the industrial accident on Rigel.


Colony ship built and redirected to Reticuli on the way to Nitzer. No Range 5 yet so I order up some LR Lasers just in case someone gets some ideas about Nitzer.

2361 - Range 5 pops, and my LR Laser are instantly obsolete. I send some popcorn fighters to Nitzer.

2364 - Colony ship dispatched from Reticuli to Nitzer. The Alkari chase away my unarmed scouts from Nitzer with a couple of fighters (no colony ship in tow, whew!). Good thing my laser-class ships will be there in a couple of turns.

2365 - Darloks declare war. Just because I guess.

2367 - Scout Tau Cygni, a 25 toxic world in the nebula. Not a great world, but as a Toxic planet should be fairly safely mine.

2368 - Found Nitzer.

The Alkari start probing my defenses, and get a small fleet around Kakata which was currently undefended. Here we go again. Unfortunately, I had sent a large chunk of my Laser-class to Nitzer, which is something like 8 turns away because of the nebula at retro speed. What's left of the fleet is at Reticuli. I have Cryslon start pumping out more popcorn fighters and redirect them to Kakata.

Meanwhile, the Darloks send a bunch of transports to Reticuli. Unescorted.

2374 - The Mrrshans declare war. I manage to defend both Kakata and Reticuli from the Alkari and Darloks, respectively, by having enough popcorn fighters in orbit to shoot down enough transports that they don't take my world, though several million rocks still get slagged defending the empire.

2375 - Council meets. I decide to try and kiss up to the birds and vote for Skylord.


2376 - The Alkari respond to my kindness by sending a delegation to Cryslon. Somewhat disturbingly, this ship is FAST. The galactic propulsion experts have been busy. I had been building a colony ship, which I quickly switch over to missile bases, and get one up just in time. Which, equipped with the most basic shields and nuclear missiles, gets blown to bits.


I go to Skylord and after expressing my disapproval Skylord sends his ships home and gives me some BCs to boot.


2378 - Another colony ship is built and dispatched to Tau Cygni.


2385 - Scout Draconis, which is a tiny, rich world to the south of the map. Well out of range for the moment, but may become mine at some point.

The Alkari continue to make a nuisance of themselves. I go into my tech screen and emphasize Hyper-V rockets and Class II shields, with the hope that if I can strengthen my missile bases a bit the Alkari might decide to pick on someone else. Like maybe the Mrrshans? That would be great.


2389 - My spies roll a success against the Mrrshans, and naturally I take computers. I get ECM Jammer I. Yay, more expensive missile bases! At least they'll be better protected should the opponents start using missiles on their designs.

2390 - Found Tau Cygni.

2391 - The war with the Mrrshans finally heats up and they send a fleet to Reticuli.

Those ships with the neutron blasters are a problem for my missile bases.

Oh, did I say Mrrshan fleet? I meant fleets.

I chase the first few away, but they keep sending more and better ships. This is not going to turn out well.

[toddestan]

2400 - Council. I vote Alkari, again, for what good it does me.

The Darloks declare war, because... well... whatever guys.

2402 - Mrrshans capture Reticuli.

2404 - I roll up the virus event, which sends me already lousy force field tech further back.


The Alkari start up their old tricks again, and start probing my defenses at Kakata.


I manage to fight them off, one missile base remaining. But Kakata takes some heavy damage.


2409 - The Alkari throw another fleet my way. This time, I go complain to to Skylord, and he backs them off, again.


I'm still plotting my counter-offensive to take back Reticuli. Unfortunately, I have nothing to soften the planet up with (no death spores yet and everything else is off limits), the Mrrshan gropo tech is unfortunately about twice as good as mine, and I don't have enough warm....err... cold bodies to throw at Reticuli.

2411 - The Mrrshans come to me and want peace. I initially resist because I would like my planet back, but Jasana throw's in some cash so I grudgingly accept. Their day will come.

The next few turns are pretty quiet. I'm (re-)building up my worlds and trying to catch up on some tech, including death spores.

2425 - Council meets. This time I don't vote for that jackass Skylord. Which would have ended the game besides...


2430 - The Alkari sneak attack Cryslon.

Cryslon is toast. Meanwhile the Darloks want peace. Whatever guys.

2431 - Death spores finally pop. I design this:

I switch Nitzer from popcorn fighters to build some after it gets done with a colony ship.

2434 - The Mrrshans declare war.

2439 - The Alkari chase me away from Cryslon the same time my colony ship gets there from Nitzer (it was actually quicker this way than having Uxmai or Kakata build it).

2440 - The Alkari abandon Cryslon, so I send transports from Kakata. The Darloks decide to not be left out and declare war too. Whatever guys.

2441 - Capture Cryslon. Since there were a lot of factories there (the colony was destroyed from bio-weapons) I haul in a decent amount of tech. Here's the goods:
Class V Planetary Shield (hurray!)
Personal Deflector Shield
Improved Robotic Controls (yay!)
Range 7
Auto Repair
Oh, and a declaration of war from the birds. Keep in mind that despite all the hostile moves by the Alkari, this is actually the first time in the game we've been at war. Up until now we've actually had good relations according to the race screen.

2443 - The Mrrshans show up at Tau Cygni, and glass it. I guess the days of my dead and toxic colonies being invisible to the AI has come to an end.

2444 - The Alkari show up and glass Cryslon. Here's a map of my rapidly shrinking empire:


2445 - "Mrrshan" spies destroy all the missile bases at Uxmai. Great.

2447 - Uxmai completes its planetary shield. I promptly pour spending into a missile base, with the hope that with the shield the world should be relatively safe.

2449 - Mrrshans score the mining event.


2450 - Council meets.

At this point, the council is pretty much irrelevant as the Mrrshans and Alkari are just going to split the vote for the foreseeable future.

2451 - My spies come up with an unexpected break in with the Mrrshans. I can choose weapons or construction, so I go with weapons and get hand lasers. Yay? Since I don't have any other ground weapon this isn't as bad as it may seem. I also recolonize Tau Cygni.

2452 - Mrrshans show up at Nitzer.

Nitzer doesn't have shielding since it's in a nebula, and the Mrrshan fleet does heavy damage to my missile bases.

2453 - Mrrshans are back at Nitzer, and this time it's downright ugly.


2455 - I manage to take Cryslon back, so I'm back up to three worlds. Cryslon is a sad place though, and it wasn't even my bioweapons that wrecked the place.


2457. Three world? Not for long. The Mrrshans take Nitzer, and besides getting my best world out of the deal, they also get auto-repair for those huge ships they're building. Lovely.


I go to adjust my sliders at Uxmai, and the colony can't actually build anything! Bug?!? I check the planets screen, and now with Nitzer gone, ship maintenance is 118.4% of my income!


Ouch! My fleet isn't quite as small as one might expect. Thanks to Nitzer in its prime, I have several hundred laser-class popcorn fighters. Which, however, are pretty much obsolete. I also have a couple dozen Biobombers which are yet to drop their payload on anything, and maybe a dozen or so Gunner-class, which is the next generation popcorn fighter with a neutron pellet gun which has been taking heavy losses. Oh, and a colony ship and a scout. The bulk of it are in the northeast corner of the map, attempting somehow to fend off the birds. The laser-class ships haven't been blown to bits yet because they are slow and the Alkari mostly seem they would rather run around them with their fast ships than confront them. The biobombers haven't been effective yet because potential targets are either well defended worlds that would shred them, or weakly defended worlds (mostly my ex-colonies) where I don't get them across the screen before the battle ends.

I end up sending the mostly useless retro-powered laser-class ships to the scrap heap. And the lone scout that was still around keeping an eye on Draconis. This drops my spending back below 100%.

2458 - The Mrrshans send a fleet to Tau Cygni and commence bombing. Incoming at Cryslon.


2459 - Cryslon destroyed again. I send the remainder of my fleet to Nitzer, cause, why not?

2460 - Mrrshans turn their attention to Uxmai, which so far has been ignored by my opponent forces and therefore is my only colony that's built up. They send a small fleet which I fight off.

I also manage to steal inertial stabilizer from the Mrrshans. Yay!

2463 - Mrrshans take Tau Cygni. This bumps them up to nine systems.

...and in other news, the Silicoids are now a one-planet empire. Oh, and incoming at Uxmai...

2464 - Uxmai falls to the Mrrshans. Game over.



Conclusion: Military defeat on 2464.

A somewhat disappointing loss. Obviously the big issue that I faced in this game was the opponents that came out swinging and then never let up. This started with the Darloks, which other than their cheap attach right at the start of the game I should have been able to handle. However, defending against the Alkari which acted like they were in a hot war for the entire game is really what strained my resources and caused me to fall behind, even if it was at the paw of a kitty that was my final demise.

I mean seriously, you're an honorable personality, you have good relations with your neighbor who has never attacked one of your planets, you've had a trade agreement in place for decades, and this neighbor has even voted for you in the council the past couple of elections. What do you do? If your answer is c) destroy their homeworld with bioweapons - you may have a job in the Alkari empire.

Something I just thought of while writing the report is that I could have sent my colony ship to Draconis as soon as I had range 7. Given that my opponents did not have controlled radiated I could have hid out there, at least for a while. Not sure what this would have accomplished, other than prolonging the inevitable.

Interesting, kyrub's patch likely made this game a lot harder, as it would have made it a lot easier to soften up enemy planets, by stealth-bombing them by leaving my biobombers in orbit around them for a few turns as seen in standard 1.3.

Oh well, someday the rocks will be back for a double dose of revenge.

[Nad]

Hey Toddestan,

thanks for your report! I am sorry that you lost this one. After a quick read-through, I'd like to make a few suggestions:

It looks like you expanded too slowly. Due to their higher tech costs and usually small hostile planets, the rocks need more planets than other races to fortify a solid position. Cryslon can start to churn out colships at a decent speed even with 50 pop + 100 factories. You might wanna keep it (and most of the other planets) at half full in order to max growth and shuffle colonists around like crazy. In terms of tech a little bit of planetology and range are sufficient in the beginning. After finishing the early expansion phase, Cryslon and other more matured worlds can shift to heavy teching in order to decrease AIs tech lead.

Ignatius script-based report is rather detailed and gives a good example of how fast you could/should expand in this scenario. Maybe you try the map again and only focus on heavy expanding (you may stop after the early expansion phase is over)?

[ignatius]

A ground invasion at 2310!? Well, this is a catastrophic blow, esp. for the slow growing Silicoids. A setback of at least 5-10 years and on this map, even a loss of two or three turns will mean the end of westward expansion.

Still, Nad is right: you need to press harder. Nitzer was unsettled at 2385 and you completely ignored Draconis and Colassa although, by 2400 you should have had the tech to build LR colships. Another shortcoming seems to have been defense. If you are about to get dogpiled, then I would forego ships entirely and only do missle bases. Ships in defense only make sense for specials like repulsor, WD or ISP but rarely for firepower unless late in the game when you have HEF.

ignatius

[toddestan]

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, it was brutal right from the start. As soon as I saw those transports I was like "Game over". After losing something like 20 million either killed in the initial invasion and subsequent counterattack I figured I was set back enough that I wasn't going to win on a small, impossible map, especially as the Silicoids. I'm finding out that I pretty much have to leave a ship in orbit around any colony now that even an enemy scout could reach.

Besides that invasion stunting my growth, the other problem was the constant incursions courtesy of the Alkari. They seemed a lot stronger in my game, though it could just be that I started out weaker and they capitalized from it. More than once I was almost done with a colony ship only to have to switch to something else at the last minute in an attempt to defend my worlds. That ended up hurting, though forgetting about Draconis was pretty much all my fault. Eventually I fell enough behind that my mostly base-level tech missile bases wouldn't cutting it and they ran right over me.

On a side note, I seem to remember that Honorable personalities are not supposed to use bioweapons per the strategy guide, yet clearly the Alkari didn't follow this. Would this be a bug, or an error in the strategy guide?

[Nad]

Oh, I overread the ground invasion in 2310. That really is a decisive blow for the slow-growing Silis. In the beginning it is imperative to station scouts at every reachable system and even to deploy a couple of Lasers to strategic locations.

Of course slow expansion of one race does always leave space for others. Your Birdies may have expanded faster than ours (and early game Birdies are hard to match), but I assume that all systems Northeast of the Nebula could have been claimed with a clear push. That would have opened the scattered hostile planets in the West and secured your overall position.

Instead of incremental improvements I would concentrate on mastering the early expansion phase before moving on to more advanced defensive strategies. The rocks have to be played differently, but certain opening moves are usually the same. The margin for early game mistakes is very slim.

Concerning personalities and constant attacks: Do not trust the OSG that much. Although kyrub tried to fix them I witnessed strange behavior from time to time, even honorable leaders behaving like erratic ones and declaring out of the blue. IMHO the general issue remains having a small and seemable weak empire will encourage even peaceful leaders to press on you. E.g. in this case your threats will not scare incoming fleets away.