haphazard plays an old Imperium

[haphazard1]

With OSG31 having ended in victory for lizard-kind and the XCOM Long War SG finally reaching a successful conclusion, I found myself with some free gaming time. I was in the mood for more MoO, so I decided to look at playing some of the old Imperia and writing shadow reports. (shallow_thought has since sponsored Imperium 45, which looks like a lot of fun, so now I am busy again. ) I went back to the very beginning and Imperium 1, sponsored by Sirian back in April 2004.

'Off to a Flying Start' features the Alkari in a medium galaxy, average difficulty, no special variant rules. Should be a nice, gentle introduction -- I could use a nice, straight-forward game to just relax and enjoy some MoO. Right?

Well...

By 2351 I was colonizing my fifth world. The Silicoids have...eleven. The rocks are going wild, and may beat me to the northeastern portion of the galaxy; they already own the entire north central. And oh yes, all three of our racial enemies (Mrrshan, Sakkra, and Klackons) are present in this galaxy. Plus the Meklar, who as usual have a scary big fleet.

Surely I am not going to lose this game...it is just average. Right?

Right?

Would have to crawl into a hole and disappear from shame if that happens. So I better get to work. Shadow report to be posted once I finish playing.

[Psillycyber]

The only way I could imagine losing that game would be to an unlucky early council loss, which might indeed be a real possibility with all of your racial enemies in the game. Although, being on average difficulty, I bet you could still win even if you had to go into an early final war. Even with all of the other races in a permanent, tech-sharing alliance, I still doubt an 11-planet Silicoid opponent on average would outclass a similar Silicoid opponent with impossible difficulty's 300% bonuses to production.

[haphazard1]

If I had this same situation on impossible, things would be looking very bleak indeed.

On average, I think I should be able to manage a victory. The big power being the rocks, rather than say the Klackons or Meklar, is actually helpful: they own a lot of planets, but only have about as much pop as I do. And I am growing a lot faster than they are. The Silicoids will continue growing for a long while to come, however, so I need to try to make a significant move sometime in the next 25-40 turns or so.

A lack of early clean up tech has been a problem; I have been spending a ton of resources on waste clean up. I did just manage to get RW80%, and that has helped, but I would love to get my talons on some kind of eco tech.

It will be interesting to read the old reports once I complete my shadow game. I wonder if the Silicoids expanded so successfully in all games? One advantage of playing old Imperia, no need to wait for reports to be posted. As soon as I finish I can compare with what others encountered. But this has not been quite the stroll in the park that I anticipated from the difficulty rating.

[Guiness]

Did you ever finish this game up haphazard1? I decided to pick up this Imperium as well and saw the same thing you did, a Silicoid race spread across the entire north of the galaxy, holding a dozen planets before they were done.

[haphazard1]

Thread necro!

I did eventually grind out a victory in this game. It was a long slog, but once I managed to crack a couple Silicoid planets and began capturing tech things started shifting in my favor. Those initial invasions were very costly, though. Fortunately an extended mass invasion population attrition struggle does not favor the rocks.