Recently I recorded a game where I played as the Darloks on impossible difficulty, medium galaxy, 5 opponents, with the following challenge condition:
No researching anything other than computer technologies until after I have killed the Guardian and colonized Orion.
Things allowed:
Stealing technologies through espionage.
Stealing technologies through ground invasions.
Trading for technologies.
Here is the playlist. I am still in the process of uploading episodes, but I have the first 4 parts uploaded as of today, August 7th, 2016. I just need to do some editing, and the rest will be up shortly...
On episodes 1 and 3, the game sounds didn't record, so I put some techno music on in the background to liven things up (because, let's face it, even with editing out the boring parts, my commentary isn't exactly riveting). But still, I thought you all might find it interesting.
Sadly, I don't have the 2300 save from this game, although I am thinking of repeating this challenge with the Meklar, and in that case I will make sure to remember to keep the 2300 save so that we can make it into a challenge if desired.
Some general observations about the game (spoilers) :
I was somewhat lucky having the pacifistic Psilons as my neighbor, as I was able to steal from them early and often without facing anything too scary militarily early on.
Stealing improved eco restoration, sub-light drives, and range 5 early on from the Psilons helped out my colonization immensely. As soon as I researched improved robotics III (tech level 8 around 2340), I put a full 10% of spending into spying on the Psilons, and it started paying off immediately.
Stealing impulse engines, hyper-X rockets, battle computers, inertial stabilizer, class II shields, ion cannons, and tachyon beams from the Psilons gave me good defense.
There were a couple of close calls militarily in the mid-game: I had to slap together a quick fleet to defend an ultra-poor planet that I sniped from the Psilons right after they took it over from the Humans, and then I lost a battle against the first wave of Psilon megabolt destroyer ships attacking one of my backline worlds (using their range 10 tech), but I was able to withstand the first ground invasion and regain air superiority after a couple of turns). Also, the humans sent 200+ fighters at a new-ish planet with no missile bases when I was busy elsewhere, but thankfully those fighters were crap. And the Sakkra had me worried with a death spore / fusion bomber fleet, but those ships were speed-2 - not anything that some warp dissipator ships couldn't handle (warp dissipator stolen from the Psilons, naturally).
I prioritized keeping up with the Psilons in computer tech and planetology tech and was able to seal a bloc of veto votes to myself in the council after facing only 1 really nerve-wracking council vote.
After stealing fusion bombs and megabolt cannons, and with IIR4 and good planetology tech to make my planets regrow quickly, I was ready to take over the Sakkra. That sealed the game for me.
At the end, the Psilons had class 31 planetary shields, scatterpack X missiles, and mark VIII battle computers. But I just built a gargantuan fleet of neutronium bombers (100+ large ships with x12 neutronium bombs each) to counter that and ended up over-killing most of the Psilon planets on the first turn of bombing, wiping out those colonies (oops!)
I am curious to see whether I could replicate my success in this game with the Meklar, who would have worse spying but better production (and thus hopefully more spies and even faster computer tech research) to make up for that.
I suppose that this challenge might even be possible with the other following races:
Humans (good at computer tech, can peacefully trade with those who aren't targeted for spying).
Silicoids (good at computer tech, can hopefully leapfrog across the galaxy in the early game even without better range tech).
Psilons (good at computer tech).
The other races would be much much harder to complete this challenge with on impossible, I suspect...
Couple of questions about the playthrough, bearing in mind I've only seen the first episode so far. Why do you build more of the starting scout design, aren't they more expensive than just designing identical ones with the starting tech? Is it a mod? Also, why do you keep checking the research screen after adjusting research? Some micro I'm missing? Lastly, why don't you go for the largest possible trade treaties at the start?
(August 8th, 2016, 01:07)Dp101 Wrote: Why do you build more of the starting scout design, aren't they more expensive than just designing identical ones with the starting tech? Is it a mod?
The unofficial 1.4m patch fixes that bug.
(August 8th, 2016, 01:07)Dp101 Wrote: Also, why do you keep checking the research screen after adjusting research? Some micro I'm missing?
Also in the patch is an indicator for whether you are spending enough science to get the full benefit of the boost for consistent spending. It's a single pixel (red or green) near each of the techs.
(August 8th, 2016, 01:07)Dp101 Wrote: Why do you build more of the starting scout design, aren't they more expensive than just designing identical ones with the starting tech? Is it a mod?
The unofficial 1.4m patch fixes that bug.
(August 8th, 2016, 01:07)Dp101 Wrote: Also, why do you keep checking the research screen after adjusting research? Some micro I'm missing?
Also in the patch is an indicator for whether you are spending enough science to get the full benefit of the boost for consistent spending. It's a single pixel (red or green) near each of the techs.
Yes, exactly, I was using the latest patch (found in the stickied thread on the top of this forum) that updates those things. Maybe I should edit the youtube description to mention that.
Although, there is one bug that the latest patch doesn't fix: the Guardian on impossible is missing advanced damage control. You'll see that later in the playthrough. Although, I don't consider it too unfair since the Guardian on impossible (and possibly on other difficulties too, I'm not sure) comes with several other undocumented features such as complete immunity to ion and neutron stream projectors, technology nullifiers, black hole generators, and pretty much any "status-effect" type of weapon, and that rules out a number of strategies that would otherwise be viable for dealing with it in the late game.
(August 8th, 2016, 01:07)Dp101 Wrote: Also, why do you keep checking the research screen after adjusting research? Some micro I'm missing?
Also in the patch is an indicator for whether you are spending enough science to get the full benefit of the boost for consistent spending. It's a single pixel (red or green) near each of the techs.
Wait, what? I've never heard of this, and reading through the thread on it has convinced me that it is the worst and most unintuitive mechanic ever, and just adds needless micro.
(August 8th, 2016, 01:07)Dp101 Wrote: Also, why do you keep checking the research screen after adjusting research? Some micro I'm missing?
Also in the patch is an indicator for whether you are spending enough science to get the full benefit of the boost for consistent spending. It's a single pixel (red or green) near each of the techs.
Wait, what? I've never heard of this, and reading through the thread on it has convinced me that it is the worst and most unintuitive mechanic ever, and just adds needless micro.
There's some strategy involved, in that you want to plan ahead and decide when you want to start researching (the earlier you do, the more you take advantage of the interest...such that nowadays I'll often start on turn 2 or 3 of the game) and how much you want to put down as the "down payment" before scaling back the research to ride the interest to completion, based on how badly you need the tech vs. how efficient you want to be for your long-term growth.
Usually, when you are researching multiple research fields at once, it is less cumbersome to micro-manage the research because you can leave your total research spending fixed and siphon off any excess research on mature projects onto projects that are just getting going and still need the down-payment. So you are usually not flipping back and forth from the tech screen to the map like I unfortunately have to do in this playthrough.
...But yeah, I agree, the interest mechanic is very micro-management heavy, and I believe that RayF has come up with a superior mechanic that he is implementing in his "Remnants of the Precursors" re-creation of MoO1 where optimal efficiency comes from just equalizing research in all the fields, but where you can trade off from that if you really need one particular tech badly enough.
Also: why not the largest trade treaties at the start: trade treaties actually hurt both players' economies at first in MoO.
If you do a 100 BC trade treaty, the first turn both players will lose 25 BC (-25%), except for the humans who always start at -5% on their end. Then, if I recall correctly, the trade improves for both players at something like 2% per year (so, -23% the next year, then -21%, etc.), so after about 12 years you start breaking even on the trade deal, and after that you start to profit. And only after like 60 years, if the trade deal is still standing, will both players be reaping the extra 100 BC in income that was advertised. Yes, the game doesn't really explain this mechanic either. It was a different era when developers had to fit games into like 4096 kb of memory and when they relied on game manuals to explain this stuff.
The math also gets complicated if you had a maturing trade deal with an AI, and then you decide to update the trade deal to a larger amount. I think the game remembers both trade deals, so you pay the initial penalty as usual on the old trade deal, but that penalty is often somewhat mitigated by the profit that you might be reaping from the earlier trade deal maturing. At least, that's how it seems to work....
Anyways, unless you have good reason to think that cordial relations are going to persist (which can happen very easily later in the game if both races are at war and actively bombing a common enemy, which will boost diplo relations through the roof), I tend to go for the lowest trade deal possible early on just to get the diplo boost that comes with having any trade deal at all with the AI. Larger trade deals will just drag your economy down in the short-run, and often AIs will declare war just around the time when the trade deal starts to mature and turn a profit, which is frustrating.
Sorry, just to be clear, I knew that trade hurts you at the start of the deal and only becomes good later, I was just trying to understand your thought process. Thanks for explaining, I think I must have far more peaceful games than you, as my trade routes seem to always become profitable.
Yeah, if you fight mutual wars, or if you tribute tech (something I'm starting to use more of lately in my games), and if the AI doesn't yet consider you a threat, then you can keep relationships going for a long while.
But, especially since I was the Darloks in this game, I wasn't going to put it past the AI to declare on me on a random whim despite my trying to trade peacefully with most of them. Plus, I figured I would be going to war with the Psilons sooner or later, and I figured that they would frequently have alliances, and the AI generally finds a way to drag its allies into its wars.
Playing as the humans would be a different story...
Enjoying the playthrough, just about to start part 6. Very different style to anything i've seen before, with all the high speed ships for defence rather than bases or large armoured gunships.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
