Nice - congratulations on the win! Any post-game thoughts on this one - how it went, whether you did things differently from the norm, what was most fun and exciting about it, or what you'd like to try next time?
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[Report: Alkari/Average] Stretching my wings
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Thanks!
To be honest, I don't think this went all that great. I've been in second place pretty much forever and won because the Klackons antagonized the entire galaxy. And this is only normal difficulty! Mainly, I think I should have played more aggressively in the beginning. I underestimated the combat bonus that the Alkaris have. I shouldn't have waited for the Inertial Stabilizer to build ships and I also should have researched Duralloy Armor instead of gambling on Battle Suits (as you said). If I had conquered and fortified Sol by the time the Klackons showed up, the late game would have looked very differently. With more planets, I could have afforded to build more tech. Instead, I was tied up with trying to keep up in fleet strength, while the Klackons pulled ahead in technology. The lesson to learn here is, I think, to push military advantages early, whether they are technological or innate. E.g., if I play Alkari or Mrrshan, or if I happen to have lots of good military tech in my tree, while my neighbour has better economic tech, I need to strike fast! I also learned some valuable lessons in designing missile ships (thanks again, RefSteel). The trap I fell in here is that you have a short-term option (2-racks) and a slightly-longer-term option (5-rack). I tend to prefer longer-term options, and so I didn't notice that if you front-load all the damage, you can skimp on defenses. A somewhat more minor mistake was that I too often sent troops to a colony when I should have known that I probably couldn't keep it. I think it happened several times that the Klackons would settle Kailis, I'd send in the troops, then the Klackons return to nuke it. Instead, I should have done exactly what I started doing at the end: Dance around the stack of doom and nuke wherever it isn't. Also, for a (possibly) quicker diplomatic victory, I could have made deals with the Meklar. I didn't because I thought this wouldn't matter with an erratic leader anyway, but a token trade agreement and NAP would probably have gone a long way here. I obviously wouldn't want to rely on it, or make a major trade agreement (except if I was playing as humans), or make an alliance and get dragged into stupid random wars, but not interacting at all was also a mistake. The most fun thing was seeing the Alkari defense bonus in action! I think I now have to take care when I play different races that I don't assume my small ships are invincible. Being weaker in tech than my main opponent was frustrating (because I feel like I could have prevented it) but also fun when I managed to steal tech from them. The moments when my spies grabbed Industrial Automation IV, or when I got three techs at once from capturing Lyae, were very memorable. As for what I'd like to try next time: In solo games, maybe the Mrrshan on Average, or one of the stronger races on Hard. But I've already kept you waiting for a while with the succession game. What were your plans for that? (April 28th, 2017, 15:22)RFS-81 Wrote: Instead, I was tied up with trying to keep up in fleet strength, while the Klackons pulled ahead in technology. One important note here: You don't need to keep up in fleet strength. Building ships at all is kind of like putting equipment on ships: Unless you actually intend to use them for something (though things like defending a planet you can't colonize just yet certainly qualify as using them!) it's better to just skip them for a while. On Impossible, there's no way to keep up with AI fleet strengths anyway until you've reached a winning position; you just have to rely on your superior designs, deployment, and combat tactics to hold the enemy off. (And of course on diplomacy where needed to avoid having enemies! Quote:As for what I'd like to try next time: In solo games, maybe the Mrrshan on Average, or one of the stronger races on Hard. But I've already kept you waiting for a while with the succession game. What were your plans for that? I didn't have a specific plan yet - just trying to get a team together! If you want to jump into an SG now, I'll post a thread to start brainstorming. One thing: We almost always play using kyrub's unofficial patch (see the linked thread) which fixes a number of bugs and adds some interface improvements.
I actually thought I had installed patch 1.40m, and I was wondering why I didn't see the current year on the map screen or the "diodes" on the tech screen. So I now checked the game directory and found that there was both a STARMAP.exe (from the patch) and a STARMAP.EXE (from the base game). I've just replaced the old file with the new one and checked that I can see the year on the map screen, so I'm good to go!
If you like, we can try to get the SG started! What sort of pace do you expect? I can easily get one turnset done every evening (in the GMT+1 timezone), but before work would be very stressful, (April 28th, 2017, 18:16)RFS-81 Wrote: I actually thought I had installed patch 1.40m, and I was wondering why I didn't see the current year on the map screen or the "diodes" on the tech screen. So I now checked the game directory and found that there was both a STARMAP.exe (from the patch) and a STARMAP.EXE (from the base game). I've just replaced the old file with the new one and checked that I can see the year on the map screen, so I'm good to go! Yikes - no need to rush turns out before work! Standard SG rules are 24 hours to post a "got it" and 48 hours after that to play the set. I know there are sometimes days when I can't play at all (I work for the library, and my schedule is almost as erratic as the Meklar in your game!) so definitely don't worry about having to "delay" until a convenient time of day!
Good read! I've not successfully played Alkari above average myself. I think moo rewards aggression more than some other games, dancing around stacks, crippling production and so on. I naturally favour building so find that hard myself, but I think you did well here to realise that wasnt the way to beat the bugs...
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
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