Playing the way game is set neither of planets can be held as Meklars meet Colas at Jinga with colony ship and heavy laser cruiser which our Colas design is unable to defeat with 11 lasers. If I redirect them from Jinga to Yarrow after that same thing happens there.
I very very rarely put weapons on colony ships but when I do I also put a computer as dumb weapons don't do much.
Colassa is wanted by both Alkaris and Mrrshans and what we have there cannot hold them back.
It is however doable to snag Collassa with effort
Start: design heavy laser cruiser
Set Nazin to produce Cruiser in 3 turns to coincide with transports arriving to About Time, so I can pool research from all planets into missiles.
2351 battle at Collassa, Alkari retreat
2352 We are last in population. I usually play on small impossible and I'm usually 2nd in population by 1st vote. We're not doing well.
2353 battle of Jinga. Our laser colony cannot defeat Meklar Ajax, so we retreat. Were we to head to Yarrow same would happen there, so we redirect this fleet to Collassa
2354 Nazin completes Laser Cruiser and we can pool all 3 planets into tech to seed Missiles.
Mrrshans declare war.
2355 Our Scout explores Cryslon we retreat and redirect it to Gorra
2360 our fleet is on the way to Collassa with one heavy Cruiser 2 turns away and another 8 turns away. I would build a regular colony ship at Nazin at this point to Colonize Gion.
I would shift population to Collassa to get it up with a few bases. After we colonize backwaters we need to focus on prying planets away from rivals. Either Jinga from Meklars or if that is not doable we could focus on Bulrathi.
Ok, I'm getting worried. We tried to pull of a gambit - pushing out as aggressively as possible and doing the backlines later - but we're sinking all our BCs on military and not on improving our economy and are just going to fall further behind. Alkari showing up early with guns was brutal - they're impossible to keep away from early cities, but I think our path to victory is first finishing our expansion, not building more guns that might not be enough to hold the edge of "our" space.
Still being on 3 planets on 2360 (on Medium!) is a huge problem. I'm going to need some very good arguments about why I shouldn't be pushing only Colony Ships out from Nazin to fill those backwaters.
I set the game so that my successor will have more colonies and also managed to build a few factories.
Collassa gets colonized but with fleet there you can retreat and return, bomb and recolonize. You can also quickly shift population from Keep Out over About time and you will get V rockets so you can hold on to Collassa. Nazin can push out two colony ships in 3-4 turns each and nuclear is about to be discovered. My successor will have colonized Collassa, Gion and Hyboria. Imra is colonizable and Nazin can start producing medium missile boats to retake Jinga.
The reason I built 2 cruisers is that without that we wouldn't be able to take any of near fringe worlds which we need to keep AI from our core. I would build 2 colony ships on Nazin after my set.
I've been building ~2 factories on Nazin during ship production with rounding out ship years and ~4 on About Time. We have 59 factories on About Time and 166 on Nazin.
I would focus on force fields II and better computers next, then see if better robotics and planet improving techs are available.
Thanks for the thorough report of a tough situation, utwig! Looks like you had to lead the empire through some interesting times! As Cyneheard observed, we seem to keep doubling down on our gambit, which explains how we've reached 2360 with only 180 factories and 263 population in an empire with little (and apparently ever-shrinking!) expansion space left and three hot wars ongoing! Now let's see if we can dig our way out of this hole!
Before I talk about that in more detail: I think this is just word use I wasn't expecting, but I did want to make sure of one thing:
(April 17th, 2020, 15:52)utwig Wrote: Playing the way game is set neither of planets can be held as Meklars meet Colas at Jinga with colony ship and heavy laser cruiser which our Colas design is unable to defeat with 11 lasers. If I redirect them from Jinga to Yarrow after that same thing happens there.
(April 17th, 2020, 23:07)utwig Wrote: Collassa gets colonized but with fleet there you can retreat and return, bomb and recolonize.
I assume what you're saying in each of these cases is that this is what you expect will happen; the way it's written made me worry that you might have played ahead and reloaded after finding out what did happen (which is something I used to do myself ages ago, before I was introduced to Realms Beyond's standards and realized how much more fun games were without reloading or other forms of de-facto cheating) - and I realized that though the rule against reloads is assumed to go without saying around here, it's something I should state explicitly, even though everyone likely already knows, along with the less-obvious rules against in-game exploits like those listed here, for players who are new to the site. If I'm right that you were just talking about your expectations, cool; if you did "play ahead," my apologies for forgetting that I should have made it clear from the start that doing so is off the table - and now you know!
On tactical and strategic matters:
(April 17th, 2020, 06:51)shallow_thought Wrote: I think this mostly goes back to the decisions I made in my turnset
I don't think figuring out who set the gambit in motion is important; I've mainly been commenting on it to foster discussion and understanding of what we're doing and did, and how we could improve on the strategies we used. More important even than quickly colonizing and building up good planets you have in range, back lines or not, (which is a good strategic rule to keep in mind!) and the importance of factories (having a big, Poor second world and delaying colonization of the worlds nearest our homeworld, especially when we got Improved Eco, were two reasons in addition to the usual ones to max our homeworld factories ASAP!) is the importance of adapting to situations as they develop, and willingness to adopt a better plan for the situation we're in even if we've invested a lot in the plan we'll have to abandon.
This can be one of the most difficult strategic moves to make, especially because it's easy to overdo it, changing plans wildly in response to each new development or discovery. The need to find the right balance is central to good strategy!
(April 17th, 2020, 23:07)utwig Wrote: I very very rarely put weapons on colony ships but when I do I also put a computer as dumb weapons don't do much.
I both agree and disagree with this: 10 guns and a battle computer is virtually always better than 11 guns on a warship. On a colship though, adding that battle computer would (at this stage in the game) cost more than twice as much as all 11 guns combined - and will still disappear in a cloud of dust when we build the colony! Putting a laser or two on a colony ship heading for a contested zone can be worthwhile in the early game, when its 100 hp will let it last long enough to beat small fighter groups that we couldn't otherwise have handled as cheaply. (A laser on a colship only costs a few BC.) If my colship is going to need 11 guns though, what it really needs instead is probably an escort fleet.
One other point on ship design: Don't be afraid to leave even a warship with "unused" available space! On the LZR Cruiser, I would have preferred an 8th Heavy Laser over a 5-rack of nuke missiles, even though it means "wasting" 14 space! (And if the missiles were meant to enable firing the lasers and then moving away on the same turn, I'd rather use a 2-rack and give up both regular lasers for an 8th Heavy, "wasting" 4 space relative to the LZR Cruiser design.)
(April 17th, 2020, 16:42)Cyneheard Wrote: I'm going to need some very good arguments about why I shouldn't be pushing only Colony Ships out from Nazin to fill those backwaters.
Is that a "Got it"? If so, good luck! I agree with your assessment of the game state thoroughly! The only argument I can think of to delay colships from the homeworld would be to wait for Nuclear Engines and a colship redesigned to use them before completing such a ship, using a huge placeholder build in the meantime instead - but given the state of our empire and the range involved, I'm not sure even that is a good argument. Our position is very precarious right now, and it's going to take some creativity (and luck, perhaps!) to get out of this mess, but we may yet be able to do it!
(April 18th, 2020, 03:59)RefSteel Wrote: I assume what you're saying in each of these cases is that this is what you expect will happen; the way it's written made me worry that you might have played ahead and reloaded after finding out what did happen (which is something I used to do myself ages ago, before I was introduced to Realms Beyond's standards and realized how much more fun games were without reloading or other forms of de-facto cheating) - and I realized that though the rule against reloads is assumed to go without saying around here, it's something I should state explicitly, even though everyone likely already knows, along with the less-obvious rules against in-game exploits like those listed here, for players who are new to the site. If I'm right that you were just talking about your expectations, cool; if you did "play ahead," my apologies for forgetting that I should have made it clear from the start that doing so is off the table - and now you know!
Thank you for letting me know. Next time I shall spend more time planning and discussing before my turnset.
(April 18th, 2020, 03:59)RefSteel Wrote: On tactical and strategic matters:
(April 17th, 2020, 06:51)shallow_thought Wrote: I think this mostly goes back to the decisions I made in my turnset
(April 17th, 2020, 23:07)utwig Wrote: I very very rarely put weapons on colony ships but when I do I also put a computer as dumb weapons don't do much.
I both agree and disagree with this: 10 guns and a battle computer is virtually always better than 11 guns on a warship. On a colship though, adding that battle computer would (at this stage in the game) cost more than twice as much as all 11 guns combined - and will still disappear in a cloud of dust when we build the colony! Putting a laser or two on a colony ship heading for a contested zone can be worthwhile in the early game, when its 100 hp will let it last long enough to beat small fighter groups that we couldn't otherwise have handled as cheaply. (A laser on a colship only costs a few BC.) If my colship is going to need 11 guns though, what it really needs instead is probably an escort fleet.
One other point on ship design: Don't be afraid to leave even a warship with "unused" available space! On the LZR Cruiser, I would have preferred an 8th Heavy Laser over a 5-rack of nuke missiles, even though it means "wasting" 14 space! (And if the missiles were meant to enable firing the lasers and then moving away on the same turn, I'd rather use a 2-rack and give up both regular lasers for an 8th Heavy, "wasting" 4 space relative to the LZR Cruiser design.)
Agree on the colship. I would mainly have cases where I build a huge reserve fuel tanks colony ship for early distant world and in such case I would put a couple of heavy lasers on one.
You are right about the ship design. It was inertia of my habit. 8 heavy lasers and 2-rack missile would be a better design choice and the reason I put missiles on is to be able to move after firing lasers.
So my suspects were right and our colship met the Meklars' reaching the planet on the same turn. Not bad with a nebula in between! I put all the guns I could without adding to build time, I was thinking that with the two laser smalls we could at least try it out. How did you do that exchange? Did you fight out some turns to see how it would go or did you just retreat straight away? If the enemy large has missiles then there's sometimes a way to get them hit asteroids. Though, looking at your screenshot, it might be difficult in this fight, they're all to the right.
Yes in hindsight doubling down wasn't a smart move, but consider that there was absolutely no forewarning, the moment I saw that large our Longsticks were too far to reach the planet in time.
Edit:
(April 17th, 2020, 15:52)utwig Wrote: Our Scout explores Cryslon we retreat and redirect it to Gorra.
Is that a redirect after a retreat? If I recall, there's also a house rule against that.
(April 17th, 2020, 16:42)Cyneheard Wrote: I'm going to need some very good arguments about why I shouldn't be pushing only Colony Ships out from Nazin to fill those backwaters.
Is that a "Got it"? If so, good luck! I agree with your assessment of the game state thoroughly! The only argument I can think of to delay colships from the homeworld would be to wait for Nuclear Engines and a colship redesigned to use them before completing such a ship, using a huge placeholder build in the meantime instead - but given the state of our empire and the range involved, I'm not sure even that is a good argument. Our position is very precarious right now, and it's going to take some creativity (and luck, perhaps!) to get out of this mess, but we may yet be able to do it!
It is. I plan on playing this evening (EST), wanted to give people a chance to review the situation because this is clearly very precarious.
Really important question as I look at the map - is Imra 6 or 7 parsecs from Hyboria? If it is only 6, then that would be really really helpful to know. It's definitely 6 parsecs from Artemis, so I do want to know now if Tundra needs to be a priority or not. This is something that having a wider scout net could let me do, but I don't have the scouts in position to check.
I'm highly skeptical that we're anywhere near a position to take back Yarrow/Jinga in the next 20 turns.
Turnset complete, we dodged a bullet at Waters Edge (formerly known as Collassa). I had an unforced error (finished Nuclear Engines before finishing a Colony Ship, but didn't change the Colony Ship design) that has slowed down our southern colonization, but we'll get them soon enough. Pretty sure we're not going to get Imra without either Tundra or a LR ColShip, but that can be easily confirmed on 2371 by checking with the scout that's about to be over Hyboria.