Third time's the charm - Mardoc plays the Pirates [SPOILER]

[Mardoc]

Alright, 18 gpt, that's worth changing our plans for, definitely. Swapping to Planetary Networks this turn, so that we can start getting the sweet Sarelnish income ASAP. That could do a lot for us, like, say, paying for our two new cities this turn

Torpedo is founded up near Sian, the last of the negotiated land. With the Marine DNA improved next turn, an energy bonus tile, trench, and a bunch of ocean tiles, I expect it to grow quickly and produce a good deal of hammers.

As it's 5 tiles from Sian (within 1 turn boatable range), I figure we definitely need a perimeter defense here to provide a little security.


Destroyer founded in the South Sea is much more clearly an energy farm, long term. Should still be able to get some hammers from this site, but its primary value is economic. It can share energy bonuses with its neighbors to ensure those are always being worked.

Note that we've finally proved Iskender is over in ex-Free drone land. Still need either a unit of his to move to the coast, or a border pop, before we have contact, though.


In other news, Fleet in Being is finally to the stage where I think it's worth a little infrastructure built here. A research hospital is 80 hammers, worth +13 bpt, +1 health, and a scientist slot. That's hard to quantify exactly, but assuming we use the scientist, that's +1 health, -1 hammer, +16 beakers: net +7 hammers worth of research, and that's setting GPP to zero value. Pays back in 12 turns, well within the reasonable range (well, perhaps slightly longer if/when we have to drop to 100% energy again).


I'm thinking the next couple cities will be these two (that is, one in the north on our border, one in the south on our border), just to keep expanding our amoeba-like civ rapidly. Not much point in going far afield, best to save the turns on the colony pod, garrison, and aquaformer transit, and to just build more pods for pushing further afield.




Really need to build some boats to clear out those spawning spots, on top of everything else. I want to push into worm territory with new bases, and we can't until we get a tad more navy.

Finally, a question for debate - do we dotmap and settle the southern iceballs next? Some good resources down here, including the white Algae and the spare Crystals. On the other hand, our empire is already pretty lopsided, with the capital as our westernmost city, and already pushed further south than east. Maybe we should round out the empire a bit first to keep maintenance relatively low, and to keep the defensive problem simple.



Finally, a clear sign of our REX strategy, and that it seems to be working; Not one Top 5 city, not one wonder, but oh those demos are nice!

[Mardoc]

T97 was pretty boring, except for one little thing: Sian finally showed up with his Acolyte laden transport! Err...I think. Unless his 'one little project' is invading us. I've been meaning to grab a couple military units from Dreadnought anyway, next turn ought to be a good time for that. Just in case.



Otherwise, we keep pressing onward to Planetary Networks. I've got at least two ideas of what we can do with a Probe team - go find Iskender and scout to see how he's doing, and scout Sian's land as well. So the tech will be worth more than just the trade bait.

Although, come to think of it, we ought to be able to scout Sian with our open borders, anyway. He's been happy to drive right across our empire, we can return the favor. If we use our now-obsolete Flamethrowers, we can probably do that without even making him nervous. Will start that project next turn, I think - step one is migrating Flamethrowers in his general direction.

And, we're now #5 in military. Still not especially impressive, but we're at least off the bottom of the pile. Will keep about 1/3 of our cities on military builds, that seems to be working fine.

[HidingKneel]

Looks like things are going pretty well. With all this expansion... surely autarky will be a worthwhile civic soon, no?

Finally, a question for debate - do we dotmap and settle the southern iceballs next? Some good resources down here, including the white Algae and the spare Crystals. On the other hand, our empire is already pretty lopsided, with the capital as our westernmost city, and already pushed further south than east. Maybe we should round out the empire a bit first to keep maintenance relatively low, and to keep the defensive problem simple.

I say round it out. Anyone watching the demos must be worried about you at this point... it can't be long before someone decides to make a move. Distant cities that you can't defend could be a real liability.

[Mardoc]

Looks like things are going pretty well. With all this expansion... surely autarky will be a worthwhile civic soon, no?

Actually, not really. Autarky only saves on the distance maintenance portion of the costs, and it has the pair of drawbacks of no foreign trade, and losing the Planned benefits.


Take a look at our current furthest colony, Carrier. The distance portion, which Autarky would save us, is only 3.08 gpt. We'd lose 2 gpt by turning our foreign trade into domestic trade. Meanwhile, it would cost us 1 food/turn here, from losing Planned. I don't personally think turning 1 fpt into 1 gpt is worth it. And this is currently the colony that would benefit the most! On net, I'm sure it would be negative.

Ask again in 30 turns. Perhaps we'll have expanded far enough by then to reconsider. But right now, not so much. Also, there's a detail. By that point, it might be easier to lean on Nuclear Reactors. -50% maintenance would be quite useful, especially if we start really pushing to use Biodomed to its full extent: -50% on hydroponics maintenance adds up really quickly.

I say round it out. Anyone watching the demos must be worried about you at this point... it can't be long before someone decides to make a move. Distant cities that you can't defend could be a real liability.

Something that helps; I finally figured out what rocky coastal highland tiles are good for, even if they have no bonuses: Windmills! Windmills are worth something like 3-4 energy once you add up the +1 for each component. Simultaneously, we'll have coastal Kelp (2/0/3) tiles to work, and the option of working Mining Platform Trenches once either we have a food surplus, or we decide to lean on Biodomed and make our food. So the western islands suddenly look like better terrain to me, even ignoring the military implications.

Our next three built pods will be land pods, to take advantage of these two spots and to finally fill in our home island, with the intent of putting up windmills and Kelp on basically every tile. They'll continue to cost about 10 gpt each, mainly by increasing # of cities maintenance elsewhere, but with trade probably only need to work 2 energy tiles to be net neutral, and everything after that is profit.

The fun part about an empire humming along as smoothly as ours is, is that's really only going to take 5-6 turns of about half our production to accomplish. The rest will go into military, and maybe a couple more formers. Then right back to sea colonizing. After we grab the islands and the northern spot, we'll be rounded somewhat, and can go for balanced expansion southward, westward, and as soon as we've killed some spawning spots, eastward.



I *think* I figured out what Sian was doing with his transport - dropping off a Colony Pod onto that peninsula, where it couldn't walk due to the lowlands-highlands transition. I think that energy bonus may be lost to us for a while.

Of course, this peninsula naturally is much easier for a naval power to attack or defend than a landlocked power . Not yet, but it's something to stick in the back of my mind.


In other news, Planetary Networks is in, and will be providing us 18 gpt via Sareln starting next turn. We'll pick up Centauri Empathy next, and start putting some resources into kicking Planet out of the seas. I expect Isles to have much better odds than Foils when it comes to attacking spawning spots.

I've got a pair of Flamethrowers headed north, to start exploring the mainland. And we'll build a Probe team to go Probe Iskender.

[Mardoc]

Dang it, Sareln, I know you said you wanted 1-turn warning, but I figured 3-turn was close enough that you wouldn't forget

Ah well. Next turn we have cash incoming. This turn, we have another cash drain! Yaaaay!

These are fairly consistently adding 8-9 gpt to our costs. Which, granted, should pay for itself quite rapidly, but it's annoying nonetheless. Still - we've another Nutrient bonus/Methane Ice/Trench site, this will be a nice hammer producer with some energy on the side. It may be about time to add another base to the 'Stockpile Energy' crowd, though.



Gambling that Sian won't get us an Acolyte in 2 turns, so we can finish up Centauri Empathy before stockpiling cash again. He's not only founded a city as predicted, he's provided exactly zero garrison. Man...so tempting....but for now he's worth more as a friend than as an enemy. Particularly given our current military state.



In other news...well, that's about all the news for the turn. We're back to working all improved tiles everywhere but the new city, so I've no hesitation in continuing heavy base spam.

And, because I never get tired of looking at them, the Demos:


Huh...#4 Military!

Here's what a 4th place military looks like:


Yeah, just enough to have minimal security against trifling threats - this military is defending our 11 bases. Obviously we still have a ways to go, but at least the trend is looking good. And it's enough to deter thoughts like 'all I have to do is move the Marine over and that Morganic base is mine'. Going to keep building Marines and a couple more subs, but I think we should add in a couple Transports and as many Isles as possible. Currently our limit is 6 Isles, but we're also gaining Psi potential at +21/turn, which is another Isle permitted every 3 turns, basically.

And that'll about double when we research Psionics and unlock our Planet Pearls/Brilliance...more if we can trade excess of those for other Planet resources. At the moment, both Maniac and Sareln have one Radiotropic Fungus available...it may not be long until Sareln has a spare and Maniac has none So I anticipate the main limit on our Isle production to be simply scraping up the foodhammers. But that'll give us a navy that doesn't go obsolete and one that's perfect for clearing out the spawning spots.

[spellman]

Huh...#4 Military!

Here's what a 4th place military looks like:

If that's #4, then what the hell is 1-3? (Rhetorical since I'm global lurking)

[Mardoc]

If that's #4, then what the hell is 1-3? (Rhetorical since I'm global lurking)

Sareln has about double what we do, and only 6 cities to guard. Which does leave him a surplus for invasion - pretty much it's what Maniac showed in the diplo thread, Sareln's power's been plateaued lately. Everyone else...one of these days I really need to hire some spies. Don't got a clue. Although by the way Iskender's neighbors keep disappearing, I bet he's up there.

[Mardoc]

T100 started off pretty well:
Sareln, all is forgiven! We got our payment as soon as it would have been possible regardless.

And...what's this?


Oh ho! We finally have official contact with the last faction in the game. How's our buddy Iskender doing?

Um. 7 bases, which just so happen to be named like Drone and University bases. Drones are dead, University is dying.


Looking at the Top 5 cities:

Yep, Iskender's got two of them. And the best two of the four built wonders, plus the Homo Superior holy city and shrine.

Yeah. All signs point to exactly what the score implied. Iskender is our main competition this game. One bright spot: he's currently met very few people, and has open borders with no one. So at least his econ isn't humming quite as well as it otherwise would be. We will not be opening borders with him, we'll trade with the rest of the world instead. At least until he fights his way into contact with others.

Another silverish lining is that Iskender has a negative Planet rating, and in fact the tile we see is blockaded at the moment. So presumably some of that tech and military might has to go to killing worms, rather than killing AI's or killing us.


At home, things were pretty boring. We finished the research of Centauri Empathy, started building a transport and a Probe Team, and cities continued growing. One piece of news means that next turn will be even slower, though:

Yep, we've got the Voice of Planet now. Going to have to revolt next turn, to get Dreadnought happy again. Which means we'll have a whole lot of nothing to report, of course. Followed by a lot of Planet spreading efforts, hopefully we can get it fully spread before we pick up a second religion.

[Mardoc]

[spellman]

I haven't tried it myself, but documentation claims you only need to use a [screenshot] tag.