Imperium Five - The Ruins of Tau Cygni

[dathon]

Going by the graph you might have been last in population, but did you look on the graph at the same turn as you had the election? Remember that population in transports doesn't show up on the various graphs in the game or at the election. If you had a bunch of population in transports that landed between the time you looked at the graph and the time the election came around, that could be the answer

I checked the pop graph the turn after the election, because I was so surprised to be nominated. As for the transports, that is entirely possible; my notes aren't specific enough to tell.

As a human player, I've always found that the advantages of growing quickly far outweigh the disadvantages.

I've found this to be true as a general rule for any empire game as well. When I first started playing MOO1, it seemed like I was losing an inordinate number of games to early votes. That's where this thought came from. After playing for awhile, I think I'm getting the hang of avoiding this much better. One of my chief problems was trying to expand Civ-Farmer's Gambit-style. And as Sirian said in one of his reports, that just doesn't work in this game. So now I've adapted a strategy of "expand as quickly and as much as possible while still covering my ass" And that has worked pretty well in eliminating the early voting losses. On a side note, you and I were the only ones (at the time of this posting and that I can tell) to reach Yarrow first, and we seemed to have an easier time of the game because of it. Which probably illustrates the point that my "keep your head low" theory should be killed better than anything :axe:

Thanks for the comments!
Dathon

[dathon]

A nice showing

As for not using their abilities, I'm assuming you mostly mean the spying bit. Considering you had Darloks and Psilons as your opponents, that was actually probably a good thing h34r:

Dathon

[dathon]

Way to go!

TIME FOR EVERYBODY TO DIE

And you even managed to get into the Silicoid character :war:

Interesting that both you and Brackard got hit with the Earthquake event at the same place, just at different times. I wonder if this is coincidence, or revealing that events are only semi-random.

Dathon

[Brackard]

Actually I was more talking about the fact that there were very few hostile planets for me to snag underneath the noses of the competition. The 3 planets surrounding the home planet were all hospitble, and I was only able to snag the small planet on the fringe (the name escapes me).

Spying actually went fairly well during the warring years. Not great, but decent.

[dathon]

My apologies! I noticed you listed that as something you wanted to try in this contest in your pre-game analysis, but I don't remember reading it in your report. Guess I should be paying better attention or something

Dathon

[Patroclus]

After some of the adventures you had in earlier Imperia, I'm glad to see the misfortune streak come to an overdue end.

No kidding! I was wondering when the other shoe was going to drop. (It almost did in 2354, with the vote that the humans abstained on. How is it that I keep winding up in 2nd place population, with my only contact being my election opponent!?)

I noticed in reading the thread that I didn't answer your question about playing as the silicoids, so here goes.

The lack of hostile planets in the galaxy reduced one of the Rocks strengths -- aside from Simius (Inferno 10) there weren't any places it really came in handy.

I do seem to be the only person so far who paid a lot of Eco to grow colonists instead of riding along with a bunch of planets at half population doing research. I felt I did a pretty good job of having colonists and factories max nearly simultaneously at the core worlds. This seems to me to be a better strategy; the other big advantage of Silicoids is that they don't have to pay cleanup, but as other races learn cleanup techs this advantage diminishes. Therefore, a full silicoid planet represents a bigger production advantage early in the game, when the AI is still paying dearly for waste management. I certainly was able to keep up in population and technology to all of the AIs with this strategy... but I suppose I wouldn't get away with that nonsense on Impossible, would I?

[AlanSHB]

I failed to note this was avg so played it straight.

Well as straight as a rockhead can play it.

My notes are pretty thin, hopefully they'll improve for the next one.

Summary-Fusion bombs plus a lucky ground steal of nuclear engines leads to an early diplomatic win. Everybody hates dem darloks anyways.

I did not get yarrow, but I did invade it at around 50 factories (thats where nucs came from) when I noticed they were at war with the other two....No reason to avoid a convenient dogpile and when I settled simius a vote of me vs the universally hated was 1 shy of a first vote win...I prioritized weapons to grab bombs and bombed nazin for the obvious reduce the opponent population and score style points move.

The rocks impressed me with their gropo. While I was always at half full planets, being in the middle of the growth curve plus the no eco waste worries made them feel like sakkra. I've played them in larger galaxies and I think I just dodged the weak part of their population troubles (planets 8-13 are horribly under populated)

In a totally unrelated but still amusing aside--I'm currently playing a Impo/Huge/Psilon variant (No beams--we throw rocks! where they Kitties are runaway.....As you can imagine rocks aren't the best kittie deterrent....

[Sirian]

Runaway Mrrshan? Now that's a rarity.

[AlanSHB]

I think I have a save of it on turn 4 after finding an artifact world if you want to give it a try and see if they runaway. Rock throwing psilons is an interesting variant---no bombs or beams means taking planets can be an interesting experience. I think the runaway has to do with how the galaxy broke star wise.

[Maniac Marshall]

Geez, I almost forgot about report day.

Hmmm. Sirian wasn't kidding about the size of the Artifacts planet. Size 30 is tiny, but a little terraforming and some reserves could still turn this into a research powerhouse someday.

I already see one thing I would have done diffrently. It's a small map. On small maps I make Scout II's on turn 1 for any planet that isnt totally 100% unscoutable for the next 10-15 turns. The blue star to the north falls into a probably not scoutable, but you can't really be sure area. I whip up a scout II design and set Cryslon to pump one out, then I scrap the default designs not named scout. Lastly, I send 8 million to Tau Cygni to shore things up there.

2304 - Scout #1 finds Guradas, a Large size 90 Jungle planet. Thats just 4 parsects from the homeworld. That planet would definately be sweet to have. I note that all the scoutable systems are only 4 parsects from our 2 planet core. Eyeballing the layout of planets farther out, I think range 4 will be sufficient.

2305 - Scout #2 Finds Collassa, a nice size 75 Jungle planet. Securing these 2 Jungle Gems is definately a top priority.

2308 - Scout #3 Finds Vega, a size 60 Tundra planet. Thats dern huge for a tundra planet. A less than ideal start? Only thing wrong is that one planet is size 30 and there is no range 3 bridge, but its Artifacts so I'll take it. Hopefully the other parts of the universe are riddled with hostiles and we can runaway from the competition. Silicoids can often gobble up over half the universe on small maps, especially at this level.

2310 - A single click in industry now reads MAX for Cryslon. With the silicoids, I like to go grab planets as soon as I can keep factories ahead of pop. When factories wouldn't keep up again, I throw all production from ship or all but a single click back from research for a turn or 2, then go back to ship/research leaving a single click in industry again. Rinse and repeat. Silicoid pop grows SO slow, the faster you grab planets the faster the pop level comes up over the long haul. In this case I'm only 1 factory ahead of pop though, so I wait 1 more turn before I open research full blast on propulsion.

2311 - Open research full blast on range.

2312 - Range 4 is the only option, but thats ok on this map.

Darlocks allready have 3 systems... Pretty good for an Average AI.

2314 - Range 4 hits on a 12% shot. Thats a nice start on tech. The Stableizer is the only choice. Hopefully Sub Light Drives are available or we won't have the ability to attack early (Psilons present... psilons need to die early when possible). Research Killed. I redesign the Colship and start cranking on one at Cryslon. I almost screwed up and put a Barren base on it ROFL. It's due in just 4 years. I pull Tau Cygni off Factories for a couple turns to build Scout II's. The little planet can only manage 2/yr but 4 is probably enough. I'll send them to Guradas. They'll arive just as the Colony ship does so they can fan out more quickly. Any advantage you can get on a small map. On Impossible, I'd be sending out Laser LR's to watch the Jungle planets and to send out elsewhere also possibly. That seems unecessarry on average though, so I don't.

2315 - First 2 new Scout II's head out. Cryslon has to take a turn of Factories.

2316 - Cryslon is now good to go till size 73 (its at 65), so it returns to the Colship, still due in 3.

2319 - First Colship heads for Guradas. Second Colship due in 3.

2322 - Second Colship heads for Collassa. Third Colship due in 3.

2323 - Guradas settled. It needs people. Because we are the silicoids I wan't to keep everywhere but the home planet right at 1/3ish as we expand. I send 11 million from Tau Cygni (all I can as its size 23) and 17 million from Cryslon to our new colony. Scouts Fan out from Guradas. Actually, I'm a scout short.... So I decide to take a chance and send the scout watching Vox to the northern yellow. Yes, I know an AI lives there, but I'd like to know which one. It's highly, highly unlikely that even a psilon opponent could have Tundra Environ this early on average level, and we will claim the planet in 7-8 turns so its pretty low risk.

2324 - Tau Cygni is now ready to do the factory/research shuffle. I open research evenly on all fields. Lets see what we get.

2325 - I choose Jammer I over Scanner (I think as the silicoids scanner wont be as useful as it is with other races because we'll be grabing planets pretty quickly and likely ones only we can), Improved 9 (allways the only choice with the rockheads of course), Class II Deflectors (duh), Improved +20 over Spores (or +10 :rolleyes: ) If we get desperate for a "bomb" we can allways go back and grab spores, and Hyper-V rockets (only choice... yuck.. at least we weren't stuck with Gats). Settler 3 heads for Vox.

2326 - Scouts Find Size 30 Minimal Yarrow at only 4 parsect range. Chase a Psilon scout off size 10 Inferno Simius. Settle Collassa. This brings 1 more star in range. I send the Scout from Collassa to investigate. I send 5 million from Tau Cygni (leaving it size 10/30) and 18 million from Cryslon to the new colony. I set Cryslon to Reloc the colship for Yarrow through Guradas to save a turn.

2329 - Scouts find the Darlocks home planet.

Wow, they have a large ship allready?!. The darlocks usualy build nothing but fighters and maybe medium missile boatsearly. Vox is settled. I ship 4 million over from Guradas, and 14 million from Cryslon. I can't see sending 1 million all the way from Tau Cygni. Colship 4 is on the way. Colship 5 is due in 5.

2330 - Find humans at the northern yellow.

Drat that 1 base that won't let me scout it. Humans found living at Antares, Darloks found living at Kalis (both planets scouted). Looks like we are boxed in :(. Looks like we may not get contactwith the Psilons for a long time either. This really sucks. This is a pathetic land grab for the silicoids.

2331 - Chase the Humans colship off Yarrow.

2332 - Scout Gorra, find Darloks. Yep. We're screwed.

2335 - The last settler heads on its way. ECM I Hits. no Robotics III. Thats REALLY a bad thing to be missing on a small map. :( We select BC III.

2336 - Yarrow founded. We get the message that we have 6 planets, outstriping all other races. Too bad it is unlikely to last. Then we meet the Pacifist Humans,

and the Xenophobic Darlocks.

Cryslon has taken over research while the artifact planet beefs up. I dial up the Darloks and start trade at 50BC (the max). I do the same with the humans, but I hold off on getting a nap until I scout the green star east of Antilles.... Woah what's this?!

Three guesses where that fleet is headed. It's a darn good thing that the Humans are playing as pacifists so I can threaten them off. There is no way I could defend against that fighter stack. It would toast my colony. The galaxy as we know it so far.


2338 - Woah, whats this?

They either just settled that green planet or they just got range 5. Our last hope for further gains is the red planet behind nazin. I hope it is hostile. Hmm the Psilons only have the 2 planets. There are a ton of planets on the backside of the universe. All the hostiles must be piled up there. Well, no reason to delay the Human nap now. I dial them up, nap, then threaten them off Yarrow to the following effect.

Hmm, no freebie tech. Oh well. I then dial up the Psilons and start max trade of 75 BC.

2343 - Hmm, looks like that planet is a little TOO hostile (sigh).

We're stuck now unless we get more range, an alliance, or we go take some planets. Im leaning towards the go take some planets approach. Simius settled. The High Council convenes. It's me vs the Darloks. Humans abstain (3 votes), Psilons abstain (2 votes), Darlocks 4 votes themselves, me, 3 votes the Darloks. Hmm. maybe we can win this in 7 years. I ship 7 million from Guradas to Simius. Size 10-20 planets are an exception. I generally fill these up, especially this late into the planet grab.

2344 - Improved 9 hits. Hyper-V rockets hit. Improved 8 is the only new option in const, and weapons only offers Ion cannon or Fusion Bomb. We go for IC for point defense fighters, though i considered fusion bomb for instant glass making.

2347 - Class II deflectors hit. Personal Deflectors is the only option.

2349 - OK lets see if we can win this allready. The Psilons aren't quite to Relaxed yet so this may not work. I dial up the Psilons and tell them that the Darloks are planing to sneak attack them any year now. Kelvan has this to say on that subject.

I dial up the Amiable Humans and........ they.... don't know the Darloks

:(. I'll just have to pray they vote for me anyway. At amiable, with no war vs my opponent, my experience is I have about a 1 in 4 to 1 in 6 shot of getting their support.

2350 - OK. Here we go.
Humans DO VOTE FOR ME

Psilons of course vote for me

Darloks of course vote for themselves

I of course vote for myself

Geez. My previous fastest MOO win was in the 2370's, so I take the win.

I decided a few days afterwards to go back and play it out, but I never got arround to it. Oh well :(.

The winning "fleet"

The winning empire

The universe as we knew it

The current galactic indicators


I probably should have turned down the vote and just gone to final war, but I really wasn't interested as I had just completed a wonderful final war win on impossible (first time ever on that level for me with any race other than the Psilons) with the mighty Klackons a couple days ago. It was the farthest I'd ever gotten in tech in a small map game, reaching the end of all the trees necesarily as I had no bomb and even capturing Orion didn't give me one. I finally came up with a winning Proton Torpedoe Huge that turned the tide... anyway, back to the game at hand.

Maybe I should have skiped this one, I dono. Either that or made it a personal variant, but I read Sirian's asking for the vets to play straight up for a while, and since I allready hadn't once (Imperium 2) I capitulated to play this one straight up. My original intent was to make some Fusion Bombers or Merc Boats and Trash the Uni quickly, but I just couldn't turn down a win at 50 turns, which I'm sure I've never done before. Hopefully somone learns something from this game. I know I've learned a thing or 2 about MOO from reading others reports.

Anyway, as allways, thanks for the game. See you in Imperium 6.