*Pant pant pant*
Did I make it?  I spent all month trying to find a chance to play, and even gave up hope, and then on closing day I carried out a marathon game, foregoing sleep and sanity to get a result to submit before the close.  Let me apologize up front and say that I don't have a report OR any screenshots to post right now, and I didn't even take notes while I was playing, so I will have to cudgel my brain to remember as much as I can.  I haven't even finished the game.  I conquered Orion and came straight here to post.  So here we go:

I defeated the Guardian TWICE, in 2530 and 2531.  How you ask? By exploiting the bug that if a space monster happens to attack Orion it triggers a battle with the Guardian instead.  This required some planning because although the Space Crystal took almost 30 turns to cross the galaxy and approach Orion I couldn't be sure where it was going until fairly late.  I initially planned to divert my anti-Guardian fleet to deal with the Space Crystal before tackling Orion but it kept bypassing all of my planets.  Then when I was sure that it was actually going toward Magrathea and I knew that I could exploit the bug I had to plan my fleet to be able to survive two encounters with the thing.  This made the battle even more exciting as I had to minimize attrition which meant dodging as many Scatter Pack X shots as possible.  I wound up with three roughly identical stacks of ~1500 speed 4 Megabolt fighters which I used to dance around as many missiles as possible while whittling down the monster's 10,000 health.  I doubt that I could have fought it a third time as two of my stacks took a volley (one in each battle) with the result that I lost more than half of each stack hit.  It got dicey at the end.  My overall tech was very low in this game, although I was developing some late game toys toward the end.  It didn't help that my stacks had BC2, 3 and 5 respectively as I was able to miniaturize while building up for the attack.

Lets see, my overall game:
I ran a complete Farmer's Gambit at the start and got a ridiculous number of worlds.  I hit every single Colonization notice and had 13 planets after researching Controlled Dead fairly early on.  Oh and I terraformed a Tundra world in 2387.  I had the entire string of Rich/Ultra Rich worlds around our start after being the first to Controlled Radiated, but in spite of this the game felt very slow to me.  Maybe its because I tend to play the Klackons for fun because I love how fast they play, but I was still fielding NPG fighters up to around 2500 or so.  Then I was finally able to fit Megabolt Cannons on a small hull and from there I built up to attack the Guardian.  I originally planned to build a stack of 32000 fighters for style (the most it is possible to build of a single ship design) but exhaustion and lack of focus killed that plan.  I struggled to tech early as I basically built nothing but Colony Ships from the time I maxed Fierras until roughly 2400.  I didn't bother to research Nuclear Engines so it took a long time to grab all of those worlds.  I was frankly amazed that I was able to grab as many as I did.
The early game was very quiet.  I didn't see a single enemy ship until roughly 2350, and by luck I voted for the Darloks when the Council met in 2374 and again in 2375 for MAJOR brownie points.  They were the leaders for the early game until the Meklar got their 8 or 10 planets up and running and blew past them into the lead.  I had a NAP with the 'Loks for roughly 100 years, and we left each other alone for the entire middle of the game which allowed me to focus on running my massive empire.  Because I played all night in one sitting I definitely didn't pay as much attention as I should have with the result that my empire ran very inefficiently at times.  Sullla would not have been happy with me.
Still I was able to make opportunistic attacks against various enemies, and I stole some key techs.  The Sakkra never got beyond four worlds and were easy pickings for some really strong terraforming and cleanup techs.  The Alkari were the same; I got two worlds, the Meklar poached a third while I was organizing an invasion, and I left them on their homeworld after I got all of their techs.  I cracked three or four Meklar worlds and cleaned up a lot of their advanced toys, and when the Darloks finally broke our NAP I took all but three of their worlds and cleaned them out.  They had RIDICULOUS Computer techs but not a whole lot else.  They had IRC6 which I really wanted as I couldn't get anything better than IRC4, but it took capturing ALL of their technologies to finally land it.
I had the Super Nova event hit a brand new size 2 colony, and apparently it rolled 0RP to fix as the event resolved itself the following turn with no research spending at all.  I wasn't worried about it as I had colonists en route and I wanted to see what the news droid would say about how many RPs I needed if I ignored it for a while only to see it resolve.  I never got the Assassination event and one of my Toxic planets became Poor soon after I colonized it which didn't hurt very much.  The Meklar got the Rich event which was the only Rich planet in the galaxy I didn't control by the time I took Orion.  The Plague event hit a mature Rich colony and took a while to resolve so that hurt, but could have been worse.
As of 2531 I control 25 planets (not including Orion) and lead in Total Power by a very large margin.  This game would have been MUCH harder if I had experienced more pressure early from the AI but everyone seemed to expand toward the NE and left me largely alone.  And when wars were declared lack of range seemed to limit their scope so that my missile bases could keep me safe.
Thats about all I can think of.  I'm really sorry I don't have pictures and a more detailed report, but I just can't manage to find the time right now.  Maybe I'll be able to come back and grab some from my saves at a later date (I'll definitely save the records from this one, it was quite a fun game to play) but I can't promise anything right now.
Cheers!

Edit: If you want to see if you too can defeat the guardian twice in a row using my motley collection of ships (or look around my empire) I'm attaching the 2529 save file.  Just move the stacks from Trax (heh) to Orion.  The Space Crystal will arrive in two turns, so don't dawdle!

Attached Files

  RBO-42 TWO GUARDIANS.GAM (Size: 57.65 KB / Downloads: 1)

So...I haven't won any impossible practice game with the Mrrshans yet, but I don't know if I'll get around to play much on the next weekend, so it's about time I got started with Imperium 42. I expect to get stomped pretty quickly. Let's see how it goes.

Attached Files

  IMP42_FINAL_SAVE.GAM (Size: 57.65 KB / Downloads: 0)

By way of introduction, I have a hard time documenting my games. Popping back and forth between the game and notepad really kills the immersion, and thereby the fun, of the game (not to mention my new computer has the function keys laid out differently and I kept hitting Ctrl-F9 and crashing the game instead of Ctrl-F10 to release the mouse) . Notes on paper are even worse. This time, I went with a slew of screenshots, but probably not as many as I needed.

I expanded without AI contact until I met the Darloks and Klackons in quick succession:



In 2371, the Newsdroid reported that I was #1 in population, which is rare enough that I deemed it worth a screenshot:



State of the known universe in 2400:













Tech steal in 2401:



I stole a *lot* of techs, using my usual algorithm of stealing computer tech if available and then trying to choose what I needed. This is the only one I where took a screenshot, though.

Peace in our time:



The first election came in 2428, allowing me to gain some brownie points with the Vogons:



I had to abstain in 2450 and 2475, but didn't have to worry much.





By 2475, I had researched Controlled Radiated and colonized the Rich and Ultra Rich planets I'd been coveting.



State of the universe in 2500:























You can see that I'm about to lose Ryoun (the Steppe world due north of the homeworld) to the Sakkra. They had no problem taking out my missile bases, my fleet couldn't contest them, and they had better ground attack tech.

In my usual style, I kind of twiddled my thumbs and stole techs for 50 turns.







The Alkaris and Darloks both had bad shields and missiles, so I invaded two of each of their worlds, greatly increasing my population and giving me a nice boost in tech.



With Subspace Teleporters in hand, I was ready to go after the Guardian in 2477:







Game over. Endgame state of the universe:

Challenge format
1) Three games are played with mostly the same build (small tweaks allowed between games at your own discretion), you pick your build freely and modify the save with the wizcopy tool and alter your race with whatever tool you prefer
2) For each game, create a new thread and state your overall strategy with as many words as you care for (you may tweak your overall strategy between games)
3) Each 12 turns, report the following:

• Overland map
  
• F4 and F5 screens
  
• Magic screen
  
• City screen
  
• Gold income
  
• List of military buildings you own
  
• List of spells researched
  
• Brief summary of units you own
  

• Land: Huge / Large / Fair land
  
• Magic: Good / High / Max
  
• Minerals: Rich / Fair / Poor
  
• Climate: Wet / Fair / Dry
  

Attached Files

  SAVE1.zip (Size: 23.07 KB / Downloads: 1)
  SAVE2.zip (Size: 23.92 KB / Downloads: 1)
  SAVE3.zip (Size: 23.9 KB / Downloads: 1)

My report is posted on my website at the following address: http://www.sullla.com/MOO/imperium42-1.html

Enjoy.

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 .

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!

Hey,

Does anyone play Ultimate General: Gettysburg? If so, would you be interested in a multiplayer match? I'd like to try multiplayer.

THH

This is Civ IV

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