Remnants of the Precursors Succession Game?

[haphazard1]

If I understood Ray F's posts correctly, if we do not complete the ships currently being built then that spending becomes "ship reserves" (for lack of a better term) at those planets and will be applied to future ship building in a similar way to how treasury reserves work. So you can not do the "instant design change" exploit of MOO, but the spending is not lost and will accelerate ship building of new designs. Since we are not going to be ready to attack for some turns yet as we get our fleet built, RefSteel's preference to re-design should not cost us much. Maybe a couple of turns? I need to check how much we have already spent.

For beam ship designs, do we want quantity of beams or quality of beams? Heavy ion cannon will get more damage past shields, but regular ion cannon will give us more total beams. I guess a lot depends on what shield tech the machines have. Spying is needed. At least we are not fighting the birds and their racial defense bonus. Also, larger tougher designs or swarms of smaller ships? We have a number of possible options.

[Brian Shanahan]

I'm playing on a bit on the game I originally rolled and this is the local neighbourhood:

Yeah that could have been easy mode all right.

[haphazard1]

9 habitable worlds? What a map....

[Brian Shanahan]

9 habitable worlds? What a map....

It got even better, I'm out to 22 worlds at about turn 115, have two rich (one uncolonised because of other priorties, mainly growth), one Steppe ultra rich and five artifacts (of which I popped four techs, the {Pacifist Militarist} Mentarans beat me to one). It is an insanely good map, just hope the AIs don't gang up on me before I'm set.

[haphazard1]

I have gone over the inherited turn -- a LOT is going on in our corner of the galaxy.

Got spying spending going, adjusted planets in various minor ways to speed some things up, sent some pop to our new ultra rich world that was just colonized. The machines are upset due to someone framing us for stealing tech, our large size, and apparently we currently hold a system they originally colonized. Not sure on that last one? I don't think we conquered one of their worlds...yet, anyway.

In tech we have automated repair and soil enrichment in the percentages. It would be very helpful to have both of those, further improvement of some of our worlds and the potential for big auto-repair gun ships. I will hold off on fleet construction until we get the techs in.

OK, took a while to figure out everything that was going on. Now I can actually play the turns.

[RefSteel]

The machines are upset due to someone framing us for stealing tech, our large size, and apparently we currently hold a system they originally colonized. Not sure on that last one? I don't think we conquered one of their worlds...yet, anyway.

Correct - but apparently they're angry because we own a world they used to, even though we didn't take it from them! At least, that's what I inferred from the language and reported here:

Remember how the Mek Dominion and the insect Hive are at war? And how there was an armed bug fleet in orbit here for years and years? So when we showed up here, we found a bunch of new craters in the soil, and some archaeological artifacts of extremely recent mint referring to the system by one of those horrible names that start with a completely meaningless numerical designation just because the Mek have a fetish about numbers or something. So apparently what happened was something like this: They colonized this world and named it, spied on the bugs - or rather sent spies to hide in bug space a lot - got the Hive completely infuriated with them, and wound up at war. Then, as I think someone recently observed, this was the only planet not controlled by us that both of their war fleets could even reach, so they fought here, the far-more-powerful Hive obviously won, nuked the colony from orbit since an invasion would have taken ages, and left. I don't know what either side had planned for the place next, but it didn't matter since we were on top of things and got here first. And now, thanks to our planet named for an ancient lizard-like creature famous for stealing eggs, some of the Meklar are really upset with us: Not for doing anything bad to them! We didn't! (Yet.) But for daring to occupy a world that once, before they lost it for reasons that have nothing to do with us, was theirs.

And Brian, that looks hilarious! I'm glad you're enjoying that one, which looks like quite a romp - and I'm glad we decided to go with a more-representative map for our SG!

[haphazard1]

OK, turns played. This ended up being mostly a development-focused turn set, as soil enrichment popped early in the turn set and many of our planets were busy implementing it and then building out factories. A bunch of our newer hostile worlds had not been fully terraformed (due to their newness), and had now matured enough to finally do that. So they were likewise busy getting maxed out, getting an initial missile base built, etc. Several turns looked like this:

Only choice to advance the Planetology tree was Advanced Eco (10 waste/BC). I decided to take the much cheaper (1/3 the price) Terraforming+30 instead. With as many worlds as we have, an extra 20 pop and 60 factories on all of them will be a huge boost. Be aware the Bio Toxin Antidote is also available, if someone starts threatening us with spores.

Renewed spying spending got us updated info on our neighbors after a few turns.

The rocks have a LOT of planets. And a lot of pop, despite their racial penalty. The brains are a major force, and given time are likely to catch up in tech. The bugs should not be taken lightly, either. The consolidated tech report (I really like RotP letting you see all of this in one screen):

Fusion bombs are pretty widely known -- maybe we could trade for them before building a bomber fleet? Inertial Stabilizer is also known, although our research is in percentages there. Here are the machines' techs, broken out for reference:

Be aware that the rocks developed Hyper-X rockets at the end of the turn set (according to our spies), so their missile bases will be dangerous.

For new colonies we did claim Vorlianth in the north, near our ultra rich planet. Sadly this new world is poor, but a size 70 is worth having.

The machines drove our colony ship away from Talurth (the tiny Inferno system in the southwest). I had tried sending a couple of our old missile ships, hoping they would not have much there, but a couple large heavy laser ships were way more than we could handle. So we have a couple of toxic col ships setting around with no where to send them. At least not without a heavier military escort.

Right at the end of my turns (after 139), GNN reported that the birds and humans have signed a full alliance. This brought us into contact with the birds, who were interested in a sizable trade deal. I happily agreed. (I have not done anything else diplomacy/spying with the birds, figured I would leave that up to Dp101.)

A couple of hostile worlds are maxing pop with a bit of eco spending to avoid factories sitting idle, but otherwise all but the new worlds in the north are pretty much maxed out. Missile bases have been upgraded with our current tech, which is not that scary -- we could really use a missile upgrade.

Overall I feel like I should have gotten more done this turnset. Maybe I should have just gone with the tech we had and built an offensive fleet. But Automated Repair, Deflectors 4, and Inertial Stabilizer will alll help an attack fleet a lot and are well into the percentages. The cheap Terraforming+30 is also already into percentages, which will boost all our worlds even more. So we did get a lot of development and research done.

- Fenn
- haphazard1 (just played)
- Dp101 (UP!)
- RefSteel (on deck)
- Brian Shanahan

[Ray F]

The machines are upset due to someone framing us for stealing tech, our large size, and apparently we currently hold a system they originally colonized. Not sure on that last one? I don't think we conquered one of their worlds...yet, anyway.

Correct - but apparently they're angry because we own a world they used to, even though we didn't take it from them!  At least, that's what I inferred from the language and reported here:

Yes, the first colonizer of a world will consider it one of their rightful worlds even after it has exchanged hands. If you come into control of one of these worlds, you will get a diplomatic penalty. The penalty is much larger if the system is their original homeworld. Overall, it increases their paranoia that you might take over their other worlds.

You can abandon a colony if you want to remove this penalty.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for clarifying, RayF. I liked the flavor text in the diplomacy screen, about a faction within machine society believing that we intend to conquer them all. Well, they are right about that. The various diplomatic texts and interactions in RotP are well writtten and add a lot of flavor to the game.

[haphazard1]

Oh, and a note for Dp101: I forgot to write down the specific turn in my notes, but we got the GNN warning that a galactic council meeting is happening soon. I think that means in 5 turns, and I think it was part of the GNN announcement of the Human/Bird alliance. I got distracted by the initial contact with the birds and then a diplomatic message from the rocks about spying. But the council meeting should be within the next few turns.