Imperium Four - Veteran's Challenge

[Maniac Marshall]

All done. Definately diffrent fare from the first 3 Imperiums (I played 1 after the fact so I didn't post a report). Maybe I'll manage to get this report posted properly this time with the 30 pictures and all. :rolleyes: I'll probably go back and update the Imp3 report with at least the pictures of my ship designs in a few days as well. I don't often play the meklars as I don't seem to have any luck with them usually. You'll all just have to wait to see if that trend continued :P

[Factoid]

Hi Maniac (if I can call you that),

Maybe I'll manage to get this report posted properly this time with the 30 pictures and all.  I'll probably go back and update the Imp3 report with at least the pictures of my ship designs in a few days as well.

I believe there is a limit per post of 20 images and 20 emoticons in this forum, I tried to stuff *much* more than that into my Imp3 report, and spent a long time winding things back, not a bad thing as I tend to babble.

Please anyone, correct me if I'm wrong about these limits, but I'm pretty sure.

I don't often play the meklars as I don't seem to have any luck with them usually.

In preparation for Imp4 I have tried a couple of random impossible/medium/5 Meklar games over the past few days, lost one, won one (my first impossible attempts in years, my first impossible win ). I've learned *so much* from everyone over the past month, thanks guys!

The loss was early on, I managed to get the leading races (Silicoids and Bulrathis! to declare war on each other (divide and conquer seems really important, helps stop them from ganging up on me). However everyone else allied with the Silicoids and gave them a 2/3 vote. I had a grand total of 3 out of 30 votes, so I couldn't help the Bulrathis enough. With 3/30 population you can see things didn't look real good for me anyway, three planet empire with radiated/toxic planets around me being taken by the Silicoids (I blocked the Silicoids for a long time, but was nowhere near being able to settle...).

The won game had a really good start, I was in a corner with lots of non-hostile (terran through minimal) planets and no-one else close so grabbed eight planets for a 9PE. I won the first council vote after getting everyone to declare war on the leading race, Alkaris (I was second). I went back and played on to see, managed to win by getting 2/3 total population in the end, a LONG time later.

The moral of the long-run win was that I had enough planets for a decent population, the other two strong races (Alkaris and non-runaway Psilons) were busy fighting each other, I holed up and built all those Meklar factories (and *lots* of missile bases, 50 wasn't enough to discourage high-tech Psilons toasting one planet) and never looked back.

So anyway, to me Meklars look good for playing defensively, they don't come into their own until those extra factories are built so don't start really quickly. All this from my grand experience on impossible, of course! :P I hope for a propitious start in Imp4...

Cheers,
Factoid.