Sorry I've been very busy this week and haven't followed stuff at all, but I should be able to play the next turnset by the end of Friday, using the intermediate time to catch up on everything.
Surprise! Turns out I'm a girl!
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Remnants Succession Game 02 - In Our Own Talons
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(June 12th, 2024, 15:40)haphazard1 Wrote: Looks like some solid turns, Brian. The Mentarans are parked on top of three of them while the Kittes not too far from thr fourth. Even if the brains have to go up a rung for colonisation it's a chancy prospect. My rule of thumb is to go for colonisation if it'll open up planets before anything else after the first rung until I run out of planets I can colonise. Growth techs can come later. Given that RotP is less likely to respect scout parking than original MoO I think this rule is even more correct in this game.
Travelling on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
Things are looking good! Nice job getting some techs in and up to the percentages, Brian!
I'm happy to be responsible for a big mistake considering our position (though our variant may still make things interesting!) - but I confess that if I were in the same position as when I picked IT+20 on turn 17, I'd pick it again: I would rather risk being in the situation we're in even if we don't have Controlled Toxic or Radiated in our tree than go for Controlled Dead and risk finding it gives me (a chance at) one size-25 Tundra and nothing else. That doesn't mean I'm right - especially as I'm still not very familiar with RotP - but it's the way I was thinking. I definitely would recommend more spending on planetology (e.g. at the expense of techs we won't need for a while anyway that are already up in the percentages) regardless of what our next tech there is going to be. I also utterly failed to communicate my arbitrary flag assignments, which made them fairly useless for my successors, and I think has led to a bit of a jumble; sorry! I was using red flags for all "regular" hostile planets (I think others have used them just for Barren/Tundra/Dead? but one of the red flags is still the one I put on a radiated world, so that one should be changed if we're going with the habitability version) - and pink flags for rich and UR hostiles (which coincidentally were Toxic and Radiated, so I think others started using them for those classifications). Dark purple we all know are empty asteroid systems though, from last game, so at least that worked out properly!
June 13th, 2024, 21:41
(This post was last modified: June 13th, 2024, 21:43 by haphazard1.)
A defined system for the flags would be helpful to have. Purple for no planets, red for hostile seemed to be working OK (-ish). Green for habitable was also good. The blue flags were a bit confusing; I think light blue was "scout driven off by an AI" and dark blue was an actual AI colony? Not certain about those.
Our region of the galaxy does seem to have an unusual number of tundra worlds, plus the barren planet. That was not apparent when the tech choice was made, and terraforming is a sure thing. A bigger share of our research spending going to Planetology does seem like a good idea, given what we know now. Too bad we have Dead tech rather than Tundra tech in our tree. Oh well, we will have to manage as best we can. What do we want to do about spying? I did not initiate any during my turn set, mainly to give trade time to start improving relations before risking negative hits from spies. But more info about our neighbors would be helpful, as well as possible tech trades. Would it be worth the risk? We are not exactly loaded with combat power at the moment. 
(June 13th, 2024, 14:58)RefSteel Wrote: Things are looking good! Nice job getting some techs in and up to the percentages, Brian! Didn't realise it was that far back given how little had been invested in it at the start of my set. In that case the choice makes a lot more sense as we had almost no visibility back then.
Travelling on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
June 14th, 2024, 04:47
(This post was last modified: June 14th, 2024, 04:48 by Brian Shanahan.)
 (June 13th, 2024, 21:41)haphazard1 Wrote: A defined system for the flags would be helpful to have. Purple for no planets, red for hostile seemed to be working OK (-ish). Green for habitable was also good. The blue flags were a bit confusing; I think light blue was "scout driven off by an AI" and dark blue was an actual AI colony? Not certain about those. I think it's a bit too early for spying yet, we haven't established our foothold. Thinking about ot we should look to crank some laser boats for our southern borders though as we tight up against Kitty down there and they really don't like us for some strange reason ;P
Travelling on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
Regarding NAPs (and alliances), I've found they are generally pretty useless, even bothersome. The AIs who will offer and accept them under normal circumstances (pacifists) generally won't be attacking you anyway, and diplomatically all they give you is the initial +5, with no recurring relations boost. The downsides are that you can no longer chase that AI away from a world you are trying to settle, nor can you prevent them from slipping in and destroying a planet belonging to a mutual enemy who you were attempting to invade. The AI loves doing that, and it drives me bonkers.
What I've settled on is only accepting NAPs from empires who are relatively dangerous and who currently love me for beating up on an enemy (but inevitably will not stay that way for long). Alliances are pretty much always bad unless they've got important techs you want to trade for (the AI will allow more favorable trades with their allies) and you don't expect them to be attacked or join you in attacking a neighbor.
Ok. Still sick and busy so can't promise perfect play, but want to get these turns knocked out. I see the concerns with planets being under threat, and so I'm going to do the same thing I did in my first turnset last game, crank out a brief wave of fighters to contest things. Unlike last game though, this strat probably won't be as successful with so many mediums in the north, and it feels real bad to do this at this timing with NPGs and sublights coming down the pipeline.. but I digress. I set a base level of spying on everyone who isn't likely to immediately go nuclear on us (i.e. everyone but the cats) to figure out just how urgent these settling races are. Tech spending is rebalanced to align with current priorities, not going to put more RP into shields with them at 27%, or computers at 42%, some of the funding is diverted back into weapons but most goes to ensuring terraforming +20 pops ASAP. I also use some of our meagre reserve to help out at our poor world, due to reserve spending not being affected by the poor modifier. Also it appears that Toki is already lost, as the population limit displays 35+ meaning it's colonised by someone with terraforming tech, presumably the brains, at this point I just want to figure out via spying whether they have just controlled barren or controlled tundra too.
I also notice that the humans have a NAP with every race in the game. I'm sure this is fine. With no confidence, I end turn. Unsure whether light blue meant driven off by warships or a full-on alien colony, but the upper light blue flag is definitely the latter. Deep space scanner pops, BCIII is the only option for progression. I have no interest in it rn so spending is not put back into that field. As for tech, well... Damn. Everyone has controlled tundra. And I'm realising that our own NAP with the humans makes it impossible for us to repel their ships with fighters. We didn't spy on the cats, so technically which worlds they hold isn't something we know, but the scanners show a clear enough picture of that: Hopefully this is all they have and they're as badly squeezed as we are. I also belatedly remember at this point the suggestion to make a huge ER colony ship for the nice jungle world in the north, and I do put together a design, but it's 10 turns to build from altair and I'm 90% sure the AI a. does not build ER colony ships and b. cannot currently reach it, and this would represent a huge blow to our research efforts, which currently are the only path to securing many more closer planets. So I hold off on it. Maybe a mistake, but honestly there's a nonzero chance that a design built with sublights only once we reach that tech would reach the world first, given that it's a bit over 11 lightyears from altair. Annoyingly, I check and the brains are willing to trade us controlled barren, but at this timing it would be pointless since they already nabbed the only barren world around. Salt in the wound. T62 finds that the dark blue flags also have colonies, but the southern light blue one does not, so I think I understand the pattern, light blue being potential worlds and dark being actual. I update the flags to match, and also label the ships I'm encountering. T64 and we lose the southern tundra world to the humans. Just the north two are still up for grabs. Further images from combat alongside some spy reports indeed suggests as truncated an extent to the cats' empire as we might have hoped: The rightmost of the two worlds was maxed at size 55 when I saw it, which suggests that the selected one is their capital. Unfortunately it sure does look like they've been putting the production that otherwise would have been for colony ships into warships instead. IT+20 is at 50% now and still not popped, sublights at 30% and also refusing to. As always, complaining generates techs immediately popping, both shields and engines come in. I go for personal deflectors over class IIIs, and propulsion gives the full range of options, fusion drives or range 8 or warp dissipators. Range 8 wouldn't actually let us reach any contested world (northern jungle is 8.4 LY away, and <5 from either tundra) so I go for yet more engines. +20 at 49%, I put the entire propulsion budget into it which at least takes it to 55%. Prospects for whether we can get a large ER colony ship are immensely frustrating, with it going from 77 size over to 33 with the improved engines, so close and yet so far. I figure I'll wait to start a huge until IT+20 pops, because it might miniaturise the colony base enough to make it work. IT+20 *finally* pops on turn 68, with controlled dead or controlled inferno the only options. Dead is 2k RP whereas inferno is 3.5k, and we lost another tundra world this turn, with there being just 1 inferno up for grabs as well. I'm really torn as to what to do, the last tundra world could fall literally next turn, making controlled dead a complete waste, but picking inferno is almost certainly giving it up. I take inferno... I'd rather have a good chance of securing one world than an almost certain outcome of throwing away both. Who knows, maybe the 5 laser fighters over Satake will keep it safe... But, there is exactly one bit of good news! The miniaturisation made the ER colony ship a reality! I immediately put Mounteverde on it, due in 3 turns, then 3 turns of travel time. Hopefully it'll be in time, so that my legacy isn't one of *complete* failure... T69 we get an announcement of the galactic council, which may well signal the end of the game if the humans are nominated, they *still* have a NAP with the entire galaxy. Anyways it was at this point that I noticed I failed to click the correct tech last turn and we're still on controlled dead, and I don't have a save from every turn to reload to... oh well. Currently feeling despondent enough such that I'm unsure if it'll even matter. At least it's coming along at a good pace, with almost the entire empire's research budget dedicated to it, so maybe we'll be fine after all. Or NPGs will be done quickly enough such that we'll be able to defend both world properly. Nothing of note happens on the last turn of the set. Overview: I honestly don't think our situation is outright hopeless, we have a fair number of worlds, just not as many as it feels like we should. The number of empty stars is ridiculous. On the plus side, no one is currently able to compete for the rich/UR worlds, thanks to our spies who are still hanging on (ok technically the cats could have the tech but given their size I doubt it) and so we'll still have those no matter what. Biggest concern at this point is humans winning diplo for free, I considered terraforming stuff to try to grow population fast enough to help out but I doubt it matters. Just a couple notes for RefSteel: the ER colony ship finishing at Monteverde T71 is for Yoshii in the north. Tech sliders are skewed massively but feel free to skew them even harder, I'm unconvinced we actually need armour, and skipping it may well make up for my blunder alternative strategy. Anyways, in summary, played nowhere close to perfectly but I do not think it's by a margin that matters. Our fate right now is in the hands of the AI and their research priorities/tech holes/council voting strategies and there's not much we can do about it.
Surprise! Turns out I'm a girl!
June 15th, 2024, 03:18
(This post was last modified: June 15th, 2024, 03:19 by haphazard1.)
Hope you feel better soon, Dp101. And get a bit less busy.
 Our position is looking a bit rough, but this is a result of the galaxy as a whole and our earlier choices. Sounds like you handled the current situation about as well as possible, given what we have to work with. How different this game might look if we had Tundra tech in our tree! The humans grabbing an early diplo win at the first council vote is a possibility, but there really is nothing we can do about that. We have no idea what is happening in the rest of the galaxy, or what the balance of power looks like with the races we don't have info on. Centrally located humans are always a risk for an early win.
I hope you feel better soon, Dp101 - and I hope the turns were fun to play even while under the weather! No one here expects (nor executes) perfect play; that's not important: Worst-case scenario is that we lose to the RotP equivalent of early MoO alliance cheese - i.e. "Everybody loves a monkey; what can you do?" - and since that would leave our birds secure under the Triumvirate's pacifistic leadership, that's not even so bad for them, and we can just start a new game! But I'm hoping everyone's aware that if turns ever look like they're going to be (or are becoming) unfun for anybody (or worse, if they're not conducive to good health) then that person can request a swap or a skip: Enjoying playing together and watching the game's events unfold, directing them as best we can, is the point here; winning, even though it's our nominal in-game "goal," is very secondary.
In any case, though I haven't had a chance to look at the save yet, those look like mostly good turns to me! I'll see what I can do about avoiding a loss at Council, and then if we do, think about ways of turning some of our apparent liabilities into ... opportunities. (We'll see!) |
