Imperium 42 - Shallow Thought goes hunting

[shallow_thought]

Hear the demanding screech of the Two-toothed Tabby Terror, most Whimsical, least Merciful, ever-Hungry. Respond to the soul-rending yowl of the Trembling Tuxedo, least Courageous, most Knowledgeable of obscure Civ IV camera shortcuts, ever-Fearful.


In the hope of distracting my cats so that they will get off the stack of clean towels (it's all very well knowing where your towel is, but "under the cat's butt" is not a very useful piece of science), I have been telling them of the mysterious Guardian of Orion Magrathea. The questions are raised: Is it fun to chase? Is it tasty? Is it yet one more thing trying to bully me out of my foodbowl?

Answers are required: let the game begin!

-------

Well, I managed to win a warm-up game with the cats. At the second attempt. On Hard. And I've won solo games on Impossible- two of them: one with Klackons, one with Humans. And, now, this...

(A long time later)

Wow, that was intense.

First, the final outcome.

I took a Conquest victory at turn 2575, with 52/67 votes and more than half of the galaxy in my paws.









Having our leader name be RBO-42 caused me a moment of panic as I thought I'd voted in the Meklar by mistake .

Next, the battle against the Guardian.

It's turn 2556. At the recent vote I had 21/45 votes, and have just conquered Narzin. The Darloks kindly spent all game researching excellent techs for me, but negelected planetary shields better than V or missiles better than Hyper-X. They also have yet to actually put their decent kit on any ships in any sensible way. Throwing small fusion bombers and enormous amounts of pop (poor gropo comapred to them, sadly) at them, together with a paper-thin screen of decent but badly out-numbered Repulsor ships, has been enough to rip through the game's tech leaders and transform me from competetive to lethal. So I now have the pieces I want to go for a one-shot kill of the big guy.

For some reason, I have bombers along. But the real is that I have too few of my killer design - 301 of them.



I'd originally been planning to use either cloaked or teleporter smalls with Megabolts. But I'd picked up Plasma Cannon from the Darloks the same turn I discovered Sub-Space Teleporters myself, so switched to this medium design. I had calculated that I needed 173 of them for an average one-shot kill. Nope. It took two turns - looking back at my notes I had carefully looked up hit rate, calculated average damage given said rate, and then ... forgot to account for the shields . About 8500 damage.

The good news was that I'd also been convinced the Guardian had some sort of fighter-killing pulsar, and it doesn't. So weed countered weed, it only killed fifty of my ships and was easily dealt with next turn. I don't think that this will be winning any awards for elegance, but it's done.



I don't think I'm in the running for any of the special awards. I wasn't even thinking about them during the game!

[shallow_thought]

Chapter the first: In which Shallow Thought gambles and loses on where to send his colony ship, and gets an early war dec from a blood enemy with three times the planet numbers and large warships.

Initial thoughts and plan
-----------------------------
So, take this steady and carefully. Looking at the starting position, there are a number of good points (also worth noting that completing the Imperium goals doesn't actually require a win, I guess).

- No Psilons (will not be forced into an early war to prevent them teching ahead)
- No Humans (no early diplo-cheese apes)
- Lots of stars within short distance: 3 choices for the first colship, and chains of stars heading out in all directions.
- Some back lines.

Possible problems:
- Klackons
- Bad starting relations with Alkari and Sakkra
- Poor starting relations with everyone else

YMMV:
- Yellow sun six parsecs away. How close can another race start?

Anyway, there is a natural gap between our start and the cluster of yellows in the SE corner. Plan is therefore to initially head north, grab as much as possible. So colonise the red-ring world north, send one scout to the SE (yellow ring) and focus initial blockade on green rings to the N. Backfill scouting nearby worlds after establishing perimeter. Initial scout target to the north will be the yellow, because (according to Thrawn's notes), yellows have the best chance of artifacts.




--------------------

This image was generated after the game by reloading the first save and using the ALT-GALAXY code. I don't know how much work went into selecting the map: things ended up being bizzarely reminiscent of OSG-29, with extensive backlines and the AI all at war with each other all the time; however, the local planets were nothing like as lush as that one.  The lines show the borders I had for much of the game (note - there is one mistake, I grabbed the Tundra north of the line early on and held this outpost in the middle of the Darlok empire throughout the mid-game). I've marked some of the key worlds to make this report easier to follow. For reference, the Darloks are the white flag to the North, the Alkari the purple in the far East, the Sakkra the yellow, the Meklar red and the Klackons blue - all on top of each other in the SE.



My initial start was a bit slow because I gambled on sending my Colship north rather than waiting for scout reports. As that world was radiated, I ended up delaying colonisation of the nearby ocean world for a turn or two.

I got my scouts out as planned, and drew up a colonisation plan.



The idea was that the key was Tyr (Desert Rich), which I could only reach via Morrig; then I could hit the north, then the backlines (5 and 6 were only tentatve; I would - of course - be looking to grab planets outside this initial zone as soon as I could, although in the end I didn't make much progress). I made an error here - I neglected to record the distance from Morrig to Tyr when I had a scout at Morrig, so had to try to calculate distance by eye. I decided it must be five parsecs, but it turned out to be (just) four - so I went for Range 5 first when Range 4 would have done. In the end this didn't matter a great deal (and it was the last Range tech I would see for long, long time!), but it taught me to record these facts when they're available.


A major spanner was thrown in the works: the Alkari grabbed Tao, the large, fertile UP near the middle of the map on turn 2338, turning up with a large(!) escorting warship only two turns after I'd got a scout there and identified it as a stretch objective myself. I think they used their alliance with the Darloks to extend the range. This brought a race enemy, who already had five planets, to my borders on the turn I settled my second additional colony (Morrig). They threatened to sweep on westwards grabbing everything I had targetted, including Tyr, the key Desert Rich, which was now closer to one of their colonies than any of mine. A few turns later they were up to six planets (fortunately the new one was over in the far East) and, despite my attempts to be nice, declared war. I really thought that the game could be about to come to an embarrassing end, in effect if not in actual fact, with me boxed in and choked off.

[shallow_thought]

Chapter the second: in which Shallow Thought is thankfully ignored by the Alkari, and dances with Darloks to light of lasers.

However, I got lucky; the large warship headed back home, I fended off an unescorted Alkari colony ship, colonised Tyr myself and started building fighters. I got small squadrons over Tyr, the target planets to the north and over Endoria to block any incursions from the south-east.



And they were kept busy - the Mrsshan racial bonus served me well in fending off repeated Darlok probes. The Darloks early on relied on a medium with a heavy laser; I lost a fighter to the very first shot of the very first one I fought - after that I don't think they got a hit in. It did mean that I saw a lot of screens like this:





Constant shuffling and (eventually) the production from Tyr enabled me to first grab the borders I wanted, then the backlines. The Alkari never came back in force - their alliance with the Darloks broke down, and the three powerhouse races of the game (Meklars, Alkari and Darloks) got down to a long, long, three way war that kept them mostly out of my hair fur. The lizards never got off their sphere, but were also involved in the wars, primarily as allies of the Klackons (who seemed to be out-expanded by the Meklar ).

But eventually the Darloks upgraded their designs, and I did miss out on the Steppe UP on the western edge of the map. I also delayed scouting into the nebula so long that I never saw the Barren UR until it was too late... . The Shifter's grabbed it the turn I got my scout there; I didn't even get orbit to realise how good a planet I'd missed: that surprise waited until I got Advanced Space Scanner. The good news was that the Alkari eventually accepted peace without ever launching a single attack.

The game settled down into a long builder phase for me; I focussed on planetology and grabbed the Tundra worlds (including Rich Drakka, just south of Betelgeuse).



I then pushed on for controlled Radiated.

[shallow_thought]

Chapter the third: in which Shallow Thought feels briefly smug before the reality of Impossible catches up.

This was an early peak - I had solid territory, decent production and good relations with the Darloks and Alkari. The Sakkra and Meklar liked me a lot less, but were barely in contact with me. The Klackons were simply out of range - with no Range 6 or 7, it was a long time before I really got involved with them. Here's how things looked a little before the T2400 mark, just before I colonised the Radiated worlds.





Colonising the Radiateds (and the one Toxic in range) made me the first to 12 planets. And at the 2425, vote, this happened:



That's a diplo win. On impossible, with the Mrrshans! Except that, of course, I went back to the save I'd just taken and carried on - I just wanted to bask briefly in my third ever Impossible win, in case things went wrong . Speaking of which, things began to get a bit sticky - with no range* I couldn't expand to the Barren and Tundra in the far south (the Darloks of all races eventually got them), so I stagnated. Lack of any scanner tech (no DSS or ISS) made life more stressful than I'd like. Relative production began to fall (no RCIII in the tree) and I realised that my tech rate was falling behind.  

*EDIT: Note to self after reading a comment about range in Sullla's report - you can put extended range on colships, you know. Idiot.

I got PSV, but still only had shields II on top of that when the Meklar turned up over Endoria on turn 2436. Their huge was carrying enough Mercs to outfight my own Merculite bases, while my NPG fighters were irrelevant, and eventually they got the planet. I accepted peace with them, and vowed to be back. By the 2450 mark, I hadn't really fallen behind, but I'd not made much progress. I have a note here that it took me 64 years to get from Sub-lights to Fusion Drives. I picked up a lot of other things in that time, but it shows how I struggled for tech pace.

[shallow_thought]

Chapter the fourth: in which Shallow Thought gets carried away by the excitement and gets the pacing of the story all wrong; also leaves his screenshots on his other computer also realises he didn't take relevant screenshots so has to dig though the archived save games to mock some up.

---
While uploading this part of the report (from a computer at work ) I realised how badly short of screenshots it was, partly because a bunch of the relevant ones are in the summary at the top. So, I looked through my stash when I got home, discovered that I still hadn't taken relevant ones of the Darlok tech and ships and had to dig out a save game to take some.
---

The tide slowly turned once the rich radiated worlds came fully online. Pushing reserve spending through Betelgeuse clawed through critical economic tech: first Soil Enrichment, then RCIV. A little later, and I had production again! Advanced Space Scanner fixed my blindness. In the meantime, various races had fought over Endoria and bombed it out, and recolonised it, then bombed it again and so on. I grabbed it from the Sakkra during a brief window at turn 2459, and was pleasantly surprised to be able to hold it. New, large designs with Fusion Drives - initially with NPGs, then suplemented with a Graviton Beam design to help handle fighter stacks - proved to have long active lives, sweeping up stacks of trash even decades later. One piece of good luck had been an espionage hit on the Sakkra picking up Fusion Bombs, so I could start to think about going on the offensive.

Actually, I dithered, as I didn't want to genocide the Sakkra, and other nearby targets (such as UP Tao) kept changing hands so fast I couldn't actually get an attack in against unfriendly races. However, Atmospheric Terraforming kept the production climbing as those Rich Radiateds became Fertile, and I pushed up the tech tree: Megabolt cannon, Repulsor Beam, Zortium Armour, all culminating in Ion Drives and Phasors (my first heavy beam since lasers) in turns 2504-6. Just in time for the Darloks to declare war.

Note: I had skipped Inertial Stabiliser - I should have gone back for it long before this point. Fusion + Stabiliser matches Ion for tactical speed, and is cheaper in RP. I think I'd got it into my head I didn't have it in the tree .

I was distracted by the Nova event at Betelgeuse  - which had already gone poor; Ukko was my second largest non-poor planet, and had gone Radiated much earlier; I didn't get terribly messed by events this game, but I did get my share of bad luck. For some reason, I struggled to get enough RP to build the rejuvenator even with reserves, just squeaking in under the wire - I had been pushing reserves into tech there each turn for a long time, and I think it skewed the Nova target amount . In the meantime, I decided to have a pop at the Sakkra before tackling the Darloks, in case I could get some diplo by lightly bombing them.

So, on turn 2512 I finally went on the attack. There was no problem bombing out the lizard's Scatter-pack Vs, but I had too many bombers to attack without triggering a genocide, so I sent most of them home, intending to bomb a few factories next turn. Before I could,  the Meklar arrived with a big fleet, pushed me away and glassed the planet. Goodbye, lizards - they weren't missed. Even better - an espionage hit on the Meklar got BCVIII. That was the computer big leagues (although I'd rather have had RCV), and a big step towards putting together a Guardian Killer. But I put on that on hold for now...

With the distraction of the Sakkra over, I looked north. With hindsight, the Darlok war declaration was a real slice of luck, forcing me to focus. They had always looked like a tempting target geographically and - once their early alliance with the Alkari was over - diplomatically. They had some advanced tech, particularly guns and gropo, but they only had Hyper-X missiles. Their shields were decent, at Planetary V and DS VII (better than mine...) but that wouldn't completely block Fusion Bombs aimed by Mrrshans.




The Darloks had sent some probing attacks that were easily defeated, revealing that their designs were mediocre: easily countered by Repulsor Beams (and I don't think I ever saw anything with a decent bomb on it). They were also continually heavily committed in their ongoing struggles to the east. I noticed that the UP world of Aquilae in the far west had no bases. A little later, my first real conquest had yielded tech, despite being UP - including Range 10. Finally, an upgrade from Range 5!



Grinding through worlds with bases - and 12 layers of shields - with fusion bombers was harder, particularly as I was behind in gropo, but I managed to grab three in the far NW before my remaining fusion bombers ran out of puff against the better-defended Nazin. The Darloks may only have had Hyper-Xs, but from behind decent shields and with ship support they could wear down my fusion stack. However, those three worlds had given me a decent tech haul, including the Plasma Cannons I would use to kill the Guardian. I refocused against Trax, the Barren UR in the nebula - no shields there. This yielded IRCVI, IIT6 to help build all those new factories, and Omega-V bomb. My notes are confused as to whether I was happier with the bomb or the computer tech. Either way, together with the incoming Sub-Space Teleporter - that was pretty much game. Even without the Teleporter, Nazin fell to Ion-drive Omega-V bombers only a few turns later.

I paused in my warring to kill the Guardian (see the first post) and went on the rampage: first through what was left of the Darlok core and then through the Meklar (the Darloks survived on their colonies in the south). Omega-V plus Combat Teleporters laughed at bases, while the AIs had no real answer to Tri-Focus Plasma (from the ruins at Magrethea), HEF and Repulsor. They were still mostly struggling against my older Megabolt and Phasor ships.



The Meklar finally put HEF on a ship a few turns before the end, but it was only effective  against my oldest designs.



The Heavy Fusion beam is sad; the Blaster comic .

At T2475 I decided to put the galaxy out of its misery by accepting a conquest victory - one turn after Magrithea had maxed out its pop and factories.

[shallow_thought]

Epilogue: in which Shallow Thought finally draws breath.

As said, I found this extremely intense. I felt I had to really up my game to give myself a chance with the cats. I made slow detailed, plans at the start (not all of which worked out, of course!), recording them in text and pictures (OK - that also helps with the reporting, but it mostly for my reference). I found myself constantly working the micro until the last few turns of the game (when I gave up and just went fast and loose) to give myself the best chance of eventual success: measuring out planetology work, moving pop around, switching between forcing pop and natural growth based on Thrawn's efficiency model (or just forcing pop as soon as it was needed to work more factories at rich worlds), remembering to adjust eco when applying reserves to a planet, and so on. I'm sure this is second nature to the vets here, but it was a whole different feeling than mucking about with Psilons or Klackons on hard, where you don't have to care about being efficient with every BC.
 
It took a major effort, feeling stretched to the limit, to make and hold the initial land-grab, getting warp-1 fighter squadrons into place just in time over-and-over. The OSG makes a comment that a game takes 5-6 hours: I reckon I sat at the computer playing and taking notes for well over ten all-told; it could easily have been twenty. It was a serious challenge, and I'm glad to have made it through! I imagine that more experienced people played a bit faster.

The start position was strong, without being the "gimme" that was OSG-29 (I'd be interested to know how much selection or editing went into this). If I did anything really well this game it was getting all that territory secured in the face of alien incursions.  I did consider posting a detailed turn-by-turn of this era (going back to the start), but this report is long enough, and I'm expecting there to be several reports for everyone to read through. The notable exception was missing out on any chance of getting the UR Barren by holding off scouting the nebula. On the other hand, the shieldless planet eventually delivered me key techs just as my weapons weren't cutting it any more .

I was also lucky that I was able to get good relations with my nearest neighbours (Alkari and Darlok), and effectively "hide" behind them. The ongoing warfare, particularly the long phase of Alkari-Darlok-Meklar three-way mutual destruction between balanced powers, was very helpful. It gave me all time I needed to build up - I basically got away with a second phase planetology rush / farmer's gambit to grab all those tasty rich, hostile worlds - until my lack of range stopped my expansion and threatened to stall the game.

Strategically I was probably too slow to go on the offensive. Trying to match tech pace without pointy stick research ran into the sand once my expansion (either to new planets or through new planetology or robotics tech) paused. I was somewhat baffled by having what I felt were poor targets for a long time - couldn't reach the Klackons, could barely reach the (powerful) Meklar, Sakkra only had one planet, the Alkari and Darloks were my friends and allied to each other for a key period. Once the Darloks declared on me and I went for them, everything just flowed. They had a glass jaw, and I was lucky with their ship designs - Plasma Cannon are very scary unless you're Mrsshan with a decent battle computer (for initiative) and Repulsor Beams. I was also very lucky with my initial tech haul from their first few planets, in particular getting Omega-V from them just as it was getting too costly to keep using fusion bombers.

And then, of course, I messed up my one-shot against the Guardian . Just glad to have made it through and met the main objective.

One final thought - I liked the little touches about VogSphere and Sol, but I think the mapmaker missed another couple of opportunities here. I'd definitely have called Meklon "Sirius" (Cybernetics Corporation), probably Nazin "Krikkit" (a bit of a stretch - they're not actually Xenophobes in this game) and Altair could have been "Brontitall" or "Frogstar" (where the people had evolved into birds in response to the Shoe Event Horizon, different in different media). I guess Kholdan could have been "Traal", the planet where bugs get blatted...

[shallow_thought]

Well played and congratulations on the Impossible Mrrshan win! Intense or not it you managed it well and had control for the majority of the game. The game took me a long time too to plan and execute efficiently.

Great suggestions about the extra edits. The Meklar certainly deserve to be the first against the wall when the revolution comes . I had forgotten almost everything everything and even the existing edits come from Ref and he didn't know which races ended up in the save that made it, so that's why we didn't put more.

The map didn't take that much rolling, though there was a first candidate that I discarded after about 20 turns because the nearby planets were too hostile. This map looked nice because we have a good amount of territory - reds and greens are nice at 65% chance to be habitable, there are no yellows nearby, and there are nice isolation gaps. And of course no Psilons! It was good to have it not imposibly difficult. After playing the first 25 turns and scouting the nearby stars they looked good enough and so the map was good to go.

Thanks Thrawn. I think the map turned out to have a really nice balance of space to work in but (initially) limited resources - well, for those of us that didn't manage to grab Trax as well as Tyr, at least.

[Sullla]

Great game and well reported. Our games looked very similar overall, with both of us identifying the key planets to control early on and holding them against the other AI empires. I think you were a bit fortunate in the diplomatic situation, with relatively little aggression coming your way in the first 150 turns, but when it did come you handled it well. If there was a mistake here, it's what you already identified: the potential ability to go on the offensive sooner. Still, as I've written for this same game, with no time limit and no scoring, better safe than sorry in that regard. Nicely done.

[shallow_thought]

I think you were a bit fortunate in the diplomatic situation, with relatively little aggression coming your way in the first 150 turns
...
Nicely done.

Thanks Sullla. Some of the other reports have driven home quite how fortunate I was with the diplo (I'd realised, but not the extent). There's a saying about luck around here somewhere...

[RefSteel]

Great game, and I love the report! As Sirian points out in the famous Cuban Isolationist Civ4 SG he played with Sullla, "Sometimes it's better to be lucky and good!"

Congratulations on an Impossible Mrrshan win in a very hostile galaxy - well done!

(On taking the Guardian: The first time I ever took on the Guardian, back in Imperium 11, I also went with an advanced Medium design, and I also underestimated the number I would need, so I have a lot of sympathy there.)