Beating MOO1 on Impossible

[rgp151]

I've been able to win on Impossible now with Psilons, Klackons, Sakkra, Darloks, and Meklar. I'll do Humans next. I really like the Meklar. I hadn't really played them much before and when I did I wasn't doing it right, but now that I've got my openings better its actually possible to be successful with them. They have basically no advantage right way, but I'm a big fan of going hard on computers and doing a lot of spying. And now what I do is I build factories until I get double in the beginning, so on par with a normal race, then I start researching and building ships, while building like 3 or 4 factories per turns for a while, so I'm still ramping up but not waiting all the way to max factories. They can really pump out colony ships once they get going. also, missing RCIII isn't a huge deal with them.

There's a few ways to look at it: Klackons, if you have a lot of nearby colonizable planets, then they have a huge advantage. If there are good planets, but you can't get to them right away, then Meklars are pretty close to Klackons. Poor Planetology isn't great, but Propulsion is arguably worse. I'll take Computers over Construction. I'm not saying Meklars are better than Klackons, but they aren't as far behind as I had once thought, and can be more fun IMO. Meklars on Rich and Artifact worlds are monsters. I'm in a game now where my second planet was an Artifact planet where I poped Industrial Tech 8 on turn 3 Talk about an amazing tech for Meklars.

Sakkra are underrated as well since population growth is both a military and economic benefit. Sakkra are the second best early invaders after Bulrathi, with the 2nd best early economy after Klackon. Not too bad.

I've also ben successful with Alkari on Hard, but haven't tried them on Impossible. They are interesting to say the least.

But yeah, Silicoids are way overrated. I always end up struggling with them. That slow growth is just so bad. If you spend to grow then you essentially negate much of their advantage early on. It all depends on if you find a good Rich plant early. If you can get something like a pop 25+ Hostile planet early, then yeah that helps, but still. The problem is that pop is also your invasion force so it makes ground invasions very painful.

[haphazard1]

I like playing the lizards. Their pop growth is great early, and is very helpful during wars for invasion forces (or to replace losses when defending from invasions). Once your planets are maxed out, their bonus no longer helps -- this is why they are generally considered one of the mid-tier races. The racial bonus of the Psilons, Klackons, and Meklar all continue to help economy and research after maxing out.

Meklars are a lot of fun to play, but you have to be careful not to spend all your time building factories. I tend to over-build factories early when I should start pushing research and ship building. If you can get at least a few planets, though, they are great. No race turtles up better than the cyborgs.

Silicoids are tough because all your advantages are early and fade with time as other races get the tech to settle hostile worlds and reduce/eliminate waste. But that huge growth penalty never goes away, even once other races get tech to match your racial abilities.

I tend to struggle with the Alkari. They do not get any economic boosts, and over time that tends to leave them a bit behind the races that do.

Glad you are having fun with the game, rgp151!

[rgp151]

Yeah, I just don't care for Humans. The biggest issue is that a lot of their benefit relies on having alliances or at least trading partners, but I'd rather just blow everyone up I'm actually in a pretty hard game with them right now though where Mrrshan have been leading in many categories since the beginning. They have the most planets and higher tech than me. But I've allied with them. Sakkra have the highest population , with me in second. So I've been going after Sakkra, but they are quite difficult to crack. Their planets are all massive now and they all have like 75+ missile bases. And they keep sending waves of Bioweapon ships at me and tons of missile boats. I keep trying to trade with other races, but they keep getting into wars with the Mrrshan, who keep calling on me to honor our alliance. But the Mrrshan are so power (highest weapons tech and largest fleet) that I dare not break the alliance.

[haphazard1]

Sounds like a tough game. And an ususual one -- Mrrshan are leading in many categories? That is rather rare. Usually they get themselves into too much diplomatic trouble to sustain any early edge they manage to develop.

Top level weapons and huge numbers of missile bases -- ouch. When trailing in tech (so spying is unlikely to help), invasions to capture tech are the usual alternative. But that sounds very unlikely as well. Good luck!

[rgp151]

It was a good game actually. The top three, including me, were all pretty close in power for quite a while. But, as usual, I prioritized Computers so I remained able to spy. I had to basically hang on until I got subspace teleporters. I ended up losing a couple planets in the process to bio-weapon attacks, but I would take out all ship in the process. He never invaded me but I was able to invade him (Sakkra), so I got all his tech. I'd say that in reality invading a powerful Sakkra is worse than Bulrathi. They re-populate so fast, if you can't get them all in a single attack then you just keep grinding against full or almost full populations. Pretty much all his planets were 200+ pop, so I had to send in a couple waves of timing basically all my planets to send max pop. But the good thing was taking those huge planets with all those factories got me tons of techs fast. And I kept my alliance with Mrrshan the whole time. The really tricky part, however, was keeping them in the #3 position. I had to actually back off Sakkra to let them remain #2. Then since the Klackons kept getting into wars with the Mrrshan that I couldn't do anything about, I just went after them and the Darloks and was able to win by vote with the Mrrshan help.

[haphazard1]

Nice work pulling out a victory! Those kinds of situations are very tough, with the possibility of a council loss always hanging in the background.

[rgp151]

Just had a really depressing game. Meklars. Got a pretty good start. The overall planet placement wasn't great for me, but my first planet was a pop 60 Artifacts planet and I poped Deep Space Scanner. All the rest of the planet were out of range, so I would need to research before getting my 3rd planet and I needed Range 5. So I plan things pretty well and get my Range five quickly enough. Once I got to making 10 factories a turn whenever I was making more than 10 I would put the additional into research. I also started making a colony ship once I was getting close to Range 5. For Construction I got 80% and I got Eco Restoration for Planetology. When I opened Computers I had RCIII. So in fairly short order I was pumping out over 600 research, really probably the fastest I ever got to that level of research in any game ever.

First race I meet is Klackons. They were already way ahead of me. I put spies on them right away and got a trade deal. They were WAY ahead of me on research and already had RCIII, plus Zortium Armor among other stuff. I have a save from 2359. At that time I was 1 turn away from poping RCII doing about 500RP per turn while pumping out Colony Ships at one every 2 turns. I end up taking 7 planets. I contact Psilons. I get trade and spies with them. They are even more advanced than the Klacons and control 11 planets by 2370!

By 2385 both of them had declared war on me and the Klackons sent a fleet of over 500 total ships to my best outlying planet and killed the colony, then set course for the next planet. Pslions were sending a fleet to the planets on the other side. I quit. The Klackons were already on Industrial Tech 4 at that point, with Sub-light Drives and Gravitation Beams. Psilons were way down the Computer ladder, with like 8 Computer techs plus a bunch of other crap.

Possibly the best start I ever had and I was totally blown out of the water

[haphazard1]

Getting stuck needing range 5 to reach a third planet is usually a sign of a very tough game ahead. At least one AI (and often several) will be grabbing planets while you are putting BCs into research for range. This delay in your early growth curve can put you so far behind your rivals that catching up is difficult or impossible. Having both Psilons and Klackons for rivals makes things even worse.

[RefSteel]

I'm sorry to hear the game went downhill for you - if you still have that save from 2359, would you be willing to post it so I (or anyone) can have a look at the game state and/or play around with it?

(In fairness, with OSG-39 about to start, I probably won't have a chance to poke around with it for a while though...)

[rgp151]

I'm sorry to hear the game went downhill for you - if you still have that save from 2359, would you be willing to post it so I (or anyone) can have a look at the game state and/or play around with it?

(In fairness, with OSG-39 about to start, I probably won't have a chance to poke around with it for a while though...)

Aww, too bad I just overwrote it with a new Mek game. This one's going a lot better though. Started found an Artifact planet early and poped Range Tech 6! In addition there were some really good planets at range 5 and 6 I was able to jump on.

On another note, I had a really weird start the other day. I found an Arid pop 60 Ultra Rich planet at range 6 and was like WTF! Then I found two Rich planets, both Barren and like pop 40ish. Then I Found two more Ultra Rich planets, BOTH Jungles! I was able to get onto one of then, a pop 90! Almost every planet around was Rich or Ultra Rich. Very strange. The game didn't go well though, as other races got on many of them and I guess they had other really good planets in their range too? Very weird.