Imperium 43 - The Planet-Builders of Meklon
Sponsor: RefSteel
Opening Date: Monday, July 24, 2017
Duration: Four Weeks
Patch: Kyrub's 1.40M patch
Race: Meklar
Difficulty: Impossible
Galaxy Size: Small
Opponents: Three
Color: White
Map Generation: Random with a few edits - generated with the 1.40M patch (but fully compatible with the base game, naturally)
Events: On
![[Image: imp-43-teaser-1.jpg]](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dtuT_P8p5lc/WXZXxjlWdiI/AAAAAAAADbs/jBrSiCYkQOMSZS53BBVj5QQFb81AhN5WgCLcBGAs/s1600/imp-43-teaser-1.jpg)
![[Image: imp-43-teaser-2.jpg]](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GtIan-t-GWI/WXZXxl67DJI/AAAAAAAADbw/Sxg434Nw874o3lR26HajyQHQ7qpgB48rQCLcBGAs/s1600/imp-43-teaser-2.jpg)
Scenario: The people of Meklon are the greatest of builders: A people driven to shape their environment, and even themselves, into the ideal forms of their own imaginations. Rather than accepting what is handed to them by nature - or even by the ancients of Orion - be it the natural surroundings of their homeworld, a colony ship with which to claim new stars, the factories and habitation bases of other races, or even their own bodies, they set out to build their own, in their own fashion. The Meklar are deeply reluctant to destroy even the work of others - unless they can replace it with something greater of their own - but not nearly so reluctant as to smash their beautiful self-made cybernetic bodies merely in order to conquer something made by other hands. They will do what they must - and learn from anyone and anywhere they can - but they long to build new planets, and in time the galaxy itself, into a true Meklar home.
---
Variant rules: None as such, but veteran players may want to restrict themselves in order to compete for highest score (and greater challenge)!
Scoring: This event has custom scoring. SCORING IS OPTIONAL. You are not required to track your scoring if you prefer not to do so. If you do wish your game to be scored, you will need to record each occurence of a scoring event: Scrapping your original colony ship; founding, glassing, or conquering a colony; having one of your colonies destroyed or conquered; the in-game date of your victory (if any) and whether you controlled more than one third of the votes in the election that you won (if you win that way). Scores will be computed as follows, and listed in order from highest to lowest:
Scrapping the "free" colony ship with which you start the game: +5
Winning a victory via the High Council when you control more than one third of the total votes - i.e. when you have a "veto": +5
Achieving any victory: +1 for each 25 years remaining before 2700 at the time of your victory, up to a maximum of +10 for winning on or before 2450.
Each time you build a colony: +1
Each time one of your colonies is completely destroyed: -1
Each time one of your colonies is conquered by an AI race: -1
Each time you destroy OR conquer a colony belonging to an AI race: -1
Tiebreakers: None; players with tied scores will be listed in alphabetical order.
---
Notes:
The edits I made to the map mostly consisted of swapping the locations of a few stars with one another, leaving both the shape of the galaxy and the overall mix of planets within it exactly the same as they were when randomly rolled, with the exception of one planet whose mineral level (i.e. Ultra-Poor/Poor/Normal/Art/Rich/Ultra-Rich) was changed. In keeping with the normal rules for the game's map generation script, my edits left at least one habitable planet within 3 parsecs of Meklon and did not result in the placement of any AI homeworld within 6 parsecs.
Any given planet may count multiple times for scoring; you can lose a colony to bombardment and re-found it any number of times and it will still come out to a net +0 or +1, but it is possible to run up a huge negative score at a spud world that you and some AI keep taking turns glassing and re-founding or (especially) conquering.
You may re-conquer a planet that was hit by the Rebellion event without suffering a scoring penalty: You're conquering it from your own rebels, not from an AI race.
Colonizing Orion does count for 1 point, just like any other planet, but unless your game drags on for in-game centuries for other reasons, delaying a victory in an attempt to capture Orion is likely to cost you one or more points as well.
If your game does continue beyond 2700, you do not accumulate negative points every 25 years; identical victories in 2676 and 2998 would get the same score.
For the overall Imperium rules, see the following:
Intro
Rules
Note that exceptions to the rules can be made for each individual Imperium, as in this case when (as usual now) we're using kyrub's 1.40M patch instead of the base game's 1.3. (I still don't know who to ask about getting that changed on the original page.) You can read about kyrub's patch in its dedicated thread and download it from kyrub's site.
Finally, please avoid the tactics banned in our exploits list (a list of ways we've found of taking advantage of bugs or massive and obvious holes in the AI which we've agreed not to use since they're not in keeping with the spirit or fun of the game) - although the most egregious one has been patched out by kyrub anyway, fortunately!
Good luck!
ADDITIONAL NOTE: Just to make this explicit: Sometimes a promising game ends prematurely because of an early council loss. For purposes of "Official Results" this counts as a defeat (unless you try to fight on anyway in Final War, but that's usually ... not easy) - but there's absolutely nothing wrong with reloading to one of the many autosaves created by kyrub's patch, trying something different to avoid the council loss, and then playing on and reporting a "shadow game." The more reports we all get to read, and the more enjoyable the games, the better the results for everybody!
---
Closing Date: Monday, August 21, 2017. Reports due by the end of Tuesday, August 22, your local time. Please do not post any reports or spoilers before this date! (If you won't be able to post during this time period, you can send it to me (RefSteel) in advance, and I'll post it for you.)
The starting save is attached to this post!
Sponsor: RefSteel
Opening Date: Monday, July 24, 2017
Duration: Four Weeks
Patch: Kyrub's 1.40M patch
Race: Meklar
Difficulty: Impossible
Galaxy Size: Small
Opponents: Three
Color: White
Map Generation: Random with a few edits - generated with the 1.40M patch (but fully compatible with the base game, naturally)
Events: On
Scenario: The people of Meklon are the greatest of builders: A people driven to shape their environment, and even themselves, into the ideal forms of their own imaginations. Rather than accepting what is handed to them by nature - or even by the ancients of Orion - be it the natural surroundings of their homeworld, a colony ship with which to claim new stars, the factories and habitation bases of other races, or even their own bodies, they set out to build their own, in their own fashion. The Meklar are deeply reluctant to destroy even the work of others - unless they can replace it with something greater of their own - but not nearly so reluctant as to smash their beautiful self-made cybernetic bodies merely in order to conquer something made by other hands. They will do what they must - and learn from anyone and anywhere they can - but they long to build new planets, and in time the galaxy itself, into a true Meklar home.
---
Variant rules: None as such, but veteran players may want to restrict themselves in order to compete for highest score (and greater challenge)!
Scoring: This event has custom scoring. SCORING IS OPTIONAL. You are not required to track your scoring if you prefer not to do so. If you do wish your game to be scored, you will need to record each occurence of a scoring event: Scrapping your original colony ship; founding, glassing, or conquering a colony; having one of your colonies destroyed or conquered; the in-game date of your victory (if any) and whether you controlled more than one third of the votes in the election that you won (if you win that way). Scores will be computed as follows, and listed in order from highest to lowest:
Scrapping the "free" colony ship with which you start the game: +5
Winning a victory via the High Council when you control more than one third of the total votes - i.e. when you have a "veto": +5
Achieving any victory: +1 for each 25 years remaining before 2700 at the time of your victory, up to a maximum of +10 for winning on or before 2450.
Each time you build a colony: +1
Each time one of your colonies is completely destroyed: -1
Each time one of your colonies is conquered by an AI race: -1
Each time you destroy OR conquer a colony belonging to an AI race: -1
Tiebreakers: None; players with tied scores will be listed in alphabetical order.
---
Notes:
The edits I made to the map mostly consisted of swapping the locations of a few stars with one another, leaving both the shape of the galaxy and the overall mix of planets within it exactly the same as they were when randomly rolled, with the exception of one planet whose mineral level (i.e. Ultra-Poor/Poor/Normal/Art/Rich/Ultra-Rich) was changed. In keeping with the normal rules for the game's map generation script, my edits left at least one habitable planet within 3 parsecs of Meklon and did not result in the placement of any AI homeworld within 6 parsecs.
Any given planet may count multiple times for scoring; you can lose a colony to bombardment and re-found it any number of times and it will still come out to a net +0 or +1, but it is possible to run up a huge negative score at a spud world that you and some AI keep taking turns glassing and re-founding or (especially) conquering.
You may re-conquer a planet that was hit by the Rebellion event without suffering a scoring penalty: You're conquering it from your own rebels, not from an AI race.
Colonizing Orion does count for 1 point, just like any other planet, but unless your game drags on for in-game centuries for other reasons, delaying a victory in an attempt to capture Orion is likely to cost you one or more points as well.
If your game does continue beyond 2700, you do not accumulate negative points every 25 years; identical victories in 2676 and 2998 would get the same score.
For the overall Imperium rules, see the following:
Intro
Rules
Note that exceptions to the rules can be made for each individual Imperium, as in this case when (as usual now) we're using kyrub's 1.40M patch instead of the base game's 1.3. (I still don't know who to ask about getting that changed on the original page.) You can read about kyrub's patch in its dedicated thread and download it from kyrub's site.
Finally, please avoid the tactics banned in our exploits list (a list of ways we've found of taking advantage of bugs or massive and obvious holes in the AI which we've agreed not to use since they're not in keeping with the spirit or fun of the game) - although the most egregious one has been patched out by kyrub anyway, fortunately!
Good luck!
ADDITIONAL NOTE: Just to make this explicit: Sometimes a promising game ends prematurely because of an early council loss. For purposes of "Official Results" this counts as a defeat (unless you try to fight on anyway in Final War, but that's usually ... not easy) - but there's absolutely nothing wrong with reloading to one of the many autosaves created by kyrub's patch, trying something different to avoid the council loss, and then playing on and reporting a "shadow game." The more reports we all get to read, and the more enjoyable the games, the better the results for everybody!
---
Closing Date: Monday, August 21, 2017. Reports due by the end of Tuesday, August 22, your local time. Please do not post any reports or spoilers before this date! (If you won't be able to post during this time period, you can send it to me (RefSteel) in advance, and I'll post it for you.)
The starting save is attached to this post!
