OSG 29A - The Charismatic Introverts

[Sullla]

Let's add some pictures of the current state of the game. That always makes it a lot easier to follow what's going on.



Here's the galaxy overview. It looks like things are relatively evenly split between several of the AI races, which is always a good situation for the player. The Meklar must be up at the top side of the map, and we have a bit of a buffer space before running into them. That's a good thing! The Mrrshans and Alkari look like the weakest empires in this galaxy. I'd lay pretty heavy odds that the kitties are the ones we will mostly likely go after first, given their weak status and their propensity to make enemies of everyone else.

There's a cluster of three yellow stars in the southwest corner of the map close together, and that's where Cryslon, Fierias, and Ursa are all located.



Here's the habitability rating of each world. The "None" planet in the north gives us excellent odds to claim that Terran 100 world first; it's going to be tough for anyone to slip down from the north and beat us over there. We'll also need to explore the other two worlds further east as soon as we settle that spot. Controlled Dead should be our next Planetology research, and that will land us two more planets in our core area. I think we have a decent chance at keeping the Silicoids from claiming that Ultra Rich Radiated world too, since it will be dead center of our territory. The one off to the west, nah, not so much. Let them have that and concentrate on settling what we can. We're hopefully looking at about 8-10 planets here in our corner settled peacefully, with some very large sizes (100, 90, 100, 100) and two Ultra Riches. That's an outstanding position if we can claim it all. I'm confident we can win without too much trouble from there.



I pasted together a diplomatic overview. The Bulrathi drew a bizarre combination: Ruthless Technologists, neither of their normal personality traits (Aggressive Ecologists). They're going to tech a lot and it will be hard to make friends with them. The Mrrshans also have a weird combination, drawing the Technologist personality along with an Aggressive trait. Is this something different in kyrub's patch? I've never seen the Mrrshans roll Technologist personality before. The Silicoids have an Expansionist personality, and that may be why they're doing pretty well thus far. Note that they also have two Alliances at present, with the Bulrathi and the Alkari. The Mrrshans have no friends, as usual.

Note how we're at Relaxed relations with everyone - it's good to be the Humans. Nearly all of my losses in Master of Orion have come from getting attacked at an early date on Impossible. The Humans are much more likely to get a grace period at the beginning of the game to develop and tech in peace, and that's a major advantage. Time is on the player's side in MOO since the AI is so bad at handling faster fleet speeds and more advanced specials.



Paladia looks like it will be our exposed point world. I would immediately start spending from the Reserve to speed along its development, and stack a lot of missile bases here. Now I know that I tend to build more bases than a lot of other players, but this feels like a strategically important spot that's just crying out for heavy defenses. Obviously we need factories first, of course. I would be willing to invest a lot of Reserve spending here to get this place up to speed quickly.

Otherwise no recommendations that are too out of the ordinary yet. Keep building up most of our worlds with factories and colonizing the rest of the available planets. Good luck!

[Ianus]

Thanks Sullla! Those pictures help a lot especially given how much was revealed during my turns. I'm rather surprised that we haven't had a vote yet given how many colonies there are, but expect it soon. Probably within the next 4 turns one way or another.
Otherwise let's just concentrate on settling as many worlds in our corner as possible. I didn't do a good job of strategizing but if there is some point we could fortify with ships to try and hold off the Silicoids for as long as possible that might be worth doing. Just something to think about...

[Mardoc]

Let's add some pictures of the current state of the game. That always makes it a lot easier to follow what's going on.

Yep. Which also raises a question for me: how did you get your pictures to be of a non-squinty size? Is that a setting within Dosbox or did you have to rescale them manually using something else?

Here's the galaxy overview. It looks like things are relatively evenly split between several of the AI races, which is always a good situation for the player. The Meklar must be up at the top side of the map, and we have a bit of a buffer space before running into them. That's a good thing! The Mrrshans and Alkari look like the weakest empires in this galaxy. I'd lay pretty heavy odds that the kitties are the ones we will mostly likely go after first, given their weak status and their propensity to make enemies of everyone else.

Seems likely. Another point in favor of hitting them: they have enough of an empire to be a reasonable profit.

Here's the habitability rating of each world. The "None" planet in the north gives us excellent odds to claim that Terran 100 world first; it's going to be tough for anyone to slip down from the north and beat us over there. We'll also need to explore the other two worlds further east as soon as we settle that spot. Controlled Dead should be our next Planetology research, and that will land us two more planets in our core area. I think we have a decent chance at keeping the Silicoids from claiming that Ultra Rich Radiated world too, since it will be dead center of our territory. The one off to the west, nah, not so much. Let them have that and concentrate on settling what we can. We're hopefully looking at about 8-10 planets here in our corner settled peacefully, with some very large sizes (100, 90, 100, 100) and two Ultra Riches. That's an outstanding position if we can claim it all. I'm confident we can win without too much trouble from there.

I had previously thought we had an unlucky draw by having a range-moat, but I guess it's going to work out well for us after all.

Paladia looks like it will be our exposed point world. I would immediately start spending from the Reserve to speed along its development, and stack a lot of missile bases here. Now I know that I tend to build more bases than a lot of other players, but this feels like a strategically important spot that's just crying out for heavy defenses. Obviously we need factories first, of course. I would be willing to invest a lot of Reserve spending here to get this place up to speed quickly.

I think I agree. Three different empires have a nearby star to Paladia, so even when we start expanding, it's not going to be backlines for a long time.

I'm rather surprised that we haven't had a vote yet given how many colonies there are, but expect it soon. Probably within the next 4 turns one way or another.

This kinda suggests to me that maybe the Meklar are stuck with not much more than their six worlds. In fact, let's count. I found a random site online that claims the threshold for the vote is 2/3 of planets settled, which I'll assume is right. We see 21 settled planets, out of 47 total. That puts the threshold at...32, which could mean the Meklar have as many as 10 planets, which is not nearly as reassuring as I thought

Otherwise no recommendations that are too out of the ordinary yet. Keep building up most of our worlds with factories and colonizing the rest of the available planets. Good luck!

Pretty amazing pace so far, three turnsets in 20 hours. We keep that up, we might be wrapping this up by Monday . (j/k)

[haphazard1]

Aggressive, ruthless, xenophobic...now all we need is for the Meklar to be erratic and we will have a full set of hard to deal with neighbors.

That no planet system may be a significant break, if it lets us claim Collasa (sp? the terran world to the east). Add Uxmai in the corner and the ultra-rich dead world near it, and we will have a very strong set of planets.

Grabbing these worlds, developing what we have, and then maybe fortifying Paladia once it has built some factories should keep us busy for a while. Hopefully our relaxed relations will keep the AIs off our backs for a little while.

[DaveV]

Another pictureless report, I'm afraid. It's going to be a busy weekend, and I squeezed my turns into a narrow window to keep the game moving.

2350 - I turned down the Planetology research to 20%, funneling the rest into Propulsion.

2351 - Improved Eco finishes, I pick Dead Environment over Death Spores. That will open up Crypto (size 45 Tundra) and Exis (size 15 Dead Ultra-Rich).

2352 - Bulrathi ships chase my scout away from Ajax (None).

2354 - Nuclear Engines discovered. I pick Sub-Light engines over Range 7. Uxmai (size 100) colony founded. Endoria sends 23 transports.

2355 - Colassa (size) 100 settled. That triggers a council vote; it's us vs. the Meklars. Meklars (5) vote for themselves, Bulrathis (3) abstain, Alkaris (1) vote for Meklars, Mrrshans (2) vote for us, Silicoids (3) abstain, I abstain with my 3 votes.

2360 - Planetology is at 8%. Darrian and Sol are building Dreadnoughts which can be switched to Dead Colony ships when the tech comes in.

[DaveV]

... and I should have read the thread before playing. I checked that there were scouts near Collassa, but forgot to send them out exploring. Mea Culpa.

[haphazard1]

Despite the delay on the scouts, sounds pretty good overall DaveV. More good worlds grabbed, and research towards Controlled Dead started so we can grab even more worlds (including that ultra rich, shame it is so tiny but still will be good once developed.)

Meklars have by far the most pop in the galaxy? Hopefully they will keep themselves busy building factories rather than a war fleet, at least for a while. But we are going to need to think about starting to improve our military tech so we can defend what we have while we get our worlds developed, then think about going on offense. Would it be worth it to invest in some minimal spying to learn what tech our rivals have?

[Mardoc]

Looks pretty solid. I do have one small complaint: I really think it's early to start spending on on either missile bases or ship placeholders, when we haven't even started on weapons research. Right now, our best options are nuclear missile bases and laser fighters, and I think either one would just be a bug on the windshield if a neighbor decided to hit us.

Would it be worth it to invest in some minimal spying to learn what tech our rivals have?

I would be against this, at least for the moment. We literally have no weapons tech at all. Therefore, it doesn't matter what our neighbors have. It won't affect our fleet design (we shouldn't be building any ships except maybe laser fighters). It won't affect our missile bases. It won't even affect our weapons research if we ever start doing some - because we're going to need to climb up a couple rungs before we can be relevant anyway.

I'd much rather spend the money on tech or on reserve funding of factories at our new worlds (or other forms of growth). Once we have enough tech that we might be relevant in a fight, then we can start spying.

For an analogy: we're tied to the railroad tracks. Spending on spying is trying to turn ourselves over to look for incoming trains. Spending on tech is trying to untie ourselves.

Edit: Although I just realized the ship placeholders might be placeholders for Dead Planet Colony Ships, in which case I approve

[haphazard1]

I think the ships were intended as placeholders for dead colony ships, yes.

Good point about the spying not really being useful yet. That is why I was asking -- to get input and learn more.

Is reserve funding (and losing half the moeny spent) better than putting that money into research? If we had a rich world to fund the reserves it would be an easier decision to fund factories on our newer worlds, but as is we are only getting half the factories for the money spent.

[Mardoc]

Is reserve funding (and losing half the moeny spent) better than putting that money into research? If we had a rich world to fund the reserves it would be an easier decision to fund factories on our newer worlds, but as is we are only getting half the factories for the money spent.

Hard to say. 18 BC per reserve-funded factory, which will produce 0.67 BC/turn after waste cleanup, for a 27 turn payback period. But I don't know how really to judge the value of tech. A lot of tech seems to be all or nothing - either it does nothing, or it lets us win a war. How many BCs is a war worth?

I guess it's not quite as bad as investing in factories on a Poor world, but worse than investing in factories elsewhere...which still leaves me uncertain. I could see an argument for just going for research, definitely.