Bulrathi Brawlers Challenge

[Psillycyber]

After doing my Darlok Hackers and Meklar Matrixlords challenges, I got to thinking about what other challenges would make sense.  Here's one I came up with for the Bulrathis:

*All tech research options allowed.
*No building of colony ships (but using starting colony ship is OK)...until after defeating the Guardian.  Then colony ships can be built.  

This is meant to force players to ground-pound and play towards the strengths of the Bulrathis.

Here's the scenario I rolled.  I went with a small map because it makes it just a bit easier on the human player if part of the challenge inhibits early expansion.  I did one initial attempt of this challenge on a medium map, and it is really demoralizing when an enemy AI race gets out to 12 planets when you are still stuck at 2 or 3.  

Settings:
*Map:  small
*Opponents:  5
*Difficulty:  impossible

Here is the starting map and the 2300 save:



My playthrough will be in spoilers below.

[Psillycyber]

My run up to 2431:

Fortunately, the planet to the east (the only one within range) was a decently habitable 55-size world.  This challenge would have gotten about 10 times harder if that had not been the case!



Aside from early factory construction, I peeked into planetology to see if IER was available.  Sadly, no.  We have IT+10, at least.  I did pursue that at a trickle while putting most of my early research into construction tech after peeking in there and finding that Reduced waste 80% was in there (at least SOME waste cleanup tech!...)

After those two techs, I peeked into weapons to see if hand lasers were available.  Sadly, no.  So I started on Range 4 tech.  After that, I went on to nuclear engines.  I got lucky with nuclear engines being in the tree.  As it would turn out, nuclear engines would end up being the lynchpin in my upcoming war against the Klackons.  I also researched Duralloy for the gropo bonus and to make my ships beefier.  

The Alkari were the first to 3 planets by about 2325 or so.  We had a pretty early council vote in 2344.  



No worries on that front so far...I suspect that the Alkari will not get along very well with the Sakkra or Klackons, thankfully.  

The Klackons finally got around to colonizing the next planet over to the east, Nordia, shortly before 2350.  That was my cue to spring into action.  I could have waited for the Klacks to build that planet up a bit first, but I wanted to race ahead and grab their next planet, Lyae, before that got built up too much with missile bases.  



They had no chance.  I think I lost 1 battalion.  Nordia is mine!

To take out Lyae and make sure I could maintain control over it, I had to prepare a little bit more (while I let the population of Nordia fill up just a bit more).  Here was the fleet I used to go after Lyae.  Note that I brought a few bombers along, just in case the Klacks built 1 missile base right before I arrived.  I figured that, together with my heavy-laser cruisers, I could take out 1 missile base with class II shields and 50 hit points with these ships if need be.  (As it turned out, they did not get the chance to build even 1 base before I arrived).  



(The Rhino was my scrapyard placeholder ship).  

I was able to take Lyae without any issues and snag Hyper-V rockets from the ruins of the 22 factories that the Klacks had kindly pre-built for me.  I had barely started on researching Hyper-Vs, so it worked out well.  I went on to research NPGs.  

Here's what the Klackon fleets looked like around this time.  



They had some useless nuclear missile boats and a bunch of laser fighters, plus a slightly scarier cruiser design not pictured here.  Thankfully, all of their stuff was slow and short-range, so my 2-speed, 2-range heavy-laser cruisers were able to whittle down their fleets with constant artillery volleys out of harm's way.  Like I said, nuclear engines saved the day here and made it so that the Klacks could not easily corner my ships with their superior (albeit short-range) ships.  

I was also glad to have a decent fleet-in-being to guard my new conquests from the inevitable Klackon attempts to reinforce their planets with more transports before mine could arrive. Their transports did not fare well with my blockades. In one case there might have been 2 straggler transport ships that got through. Those reinforcements were easily massacred by the Bulrathi foe awaiting them.

There was a changing of the guard for the 2375 election.  The Psilons had overtaken the Alkari in population to become my opponent.  Still, no major worries.  I had minimal trade agreements with the Sakkra and the Psilons and relaxed relations with them for the time being.  Only the Klackons naturally hated my guts, and the Klackons did not have any allliances.  I had still not even met the Meklar or Alkari by this point.  



At this point in the game, I had a major decision to make.  Should I finish off the Klackons, or build up my existing conquests first?  I decided that the Klackons would be a constant thorn in my side with their continual trickle of at first non-threatening, but steadily-improving ship designs.  (Soon they were fielding a cruiser with inertial stabilizers for which I needed all 3 cruisers to safely take on).  It would take 15+ years to build up a sufficient 2-move nuke bomber fleet (even with making the under-developed new conquest planets chip in as well), but it would be worth it if I could take Kholdan and its factories, steal some tech, and cripple the Klackon menace.  

I knew from intelligence and calculations that about 500+ bombers would do it, and thankfully I could barely fit nukes onto a small, 2-move chassis.  (I had, by the way, executed some trades along the way:  gatling laser from the Sakkra for Duralloy, and Industrial 9 from the Psilons for Reduced Waste 80% from the Psilons.  Those helped incrementally boost my tech levels just enough).  



Of course, I was scanning their planet every couple of turns to make sure that the Klackons did not get any truly deadly upgrades.  The main thing I was worried about was either scatterpacks or better attack level.  Thankfully, only their shielding and base armor was upgraded.  The mission was still within acceptable parameters.  It was GO TIME!

How did the Bulrathi fare?  We lost about 300 bombers, but Kholdan was soon to be ours!



Now I had another decision to make:  leave the Klackons as a 1-planet empire and try to poach techs off of them for the rest of the game through spying, or finish them off for good?  Finishing them off would remove their tech tree from the game, and it would piss off the other races...but, unfortunately, the other races were already getting pissed off at me, and I felt like I could use the additional population and council vote from the last Klackon planet to make me secure in the council votes.  Plus, more tech in the immediate future would be nice.  So I went for it.  

Unfortunately, I did not wait to rebuild my bomber fleet, and I lost almost all of the remaining 200 of them while only taking a few missile bases.  I would have to rebuild my fleet back to at least 400+ bombers to be safe.  At least this time I could built a new sub-light design with slightly better warp speed and evade.  

Finally, after about 5 turns (with Kholdan now chipping in, the construction went much more quickly), I was ready to return to the last Klackon planet and avenge my recent humiliation:  



I still had 65 nukpepperers, plus 500+ new sub-light nukebees.  It was more than enough.  Laan was mine!



I was very happy about every one of these tech discoveries.  I would have liked to get inertial stabilizer too, but oh well.

Hey, without even researching one computer tech on my own, I was now up to like tech level 10 in that field!  How about that!  And now I would be able to invade pretty much any planet on the map with controlled toxic tech.  And neutron blaster would help me defend myself while doing so, with personal deflector shield further buffing my already overpowered ground-pounders.  Nice!

Have I mentioned that I wasn't researching a single thing during all this time?  I was really banking on these tech captures to catch me up, and thankfully they delivered!

At this point I had to backtrack a bit and research a few things that I had already started on:  Range 5 tech (already started before the sub-light capture), Class III shields (already started before the PDS capture), ion cannons (already started before the neutron blaster capture), and Deep Space Scanner for some visibility on the fleet gathering at the nearest Psilon planet of Phantos.  Speaking of which...





The Psilons were inching upwards in council votes (these were from 2400 and 2425, respectively).  Then again, so was I!  

But what really annoyed me is when the Psilons declared war on me after I finished genociding the Klackons, and quickly showed up at Nordia with several fast cruisers and several dozen destroyers packed with nothing but fusion bombs.  My fleet eventually cleaned up their fleet with no difficulty whatsoever (as they had no ship-to-ship weapons), but they were able to bomb out Nordia on the tactical screen!  I would have to wait for them to recolonize it and capture it back from them.  

Soon I would finish Range 5 tech and move on to researching Warp Dissipator, which will surely put such fusion bomber shenanigans to rest...

So, I waited until the Psilons had built a couple of missile bases on Nordia, which was my cue that they had probably built up some factories too by then 100+, in fact!).  Then, I sent my fleet into action.  I still had several hundred nukebees leftover from the Klackon campaign.  They had to go up against Class V+V shields (Class X total), so they barely scratched the Psilon missile bases, but there were enough bombers to take out 2 Psilon missile bases. Then the ground troops went in...and you know the rest.



Not bad!  Range 8 put me in touch with the Meklar.  I signed them up for a minimal trade agreement.  

I also hit the Sakkra up for a trade:  IT+20 for sub-light drives.  With that, plus my research that I have started on soil enrichment, I think I shall comfortably have a veto-block in the council vote from here on out.  Also, after getting DSS, I researched IIR3.  So, my production is booming as well, with 3 factories per pop.  Here's an overview of the Bulrathi empire as of 2431.  The Alkari are the only ones I haven't met yet, but I know where they have to be:  the 3 planets in the far east.  



There are surprisingly few planets to colonize in this galaxy.  Many solar systems are just desolate asteroid belts (marked with "N" on the map above).  Two within range are toxic ("TOX").  1 is Tundra.  The AI races are basically out of room to safely expand, and if they try to colonize those hostile worlds, I think I would be able to easily snipe those from them before they can get defenses up.  

Eventually, I might want to go after the Guardian and colonize Orion.  But right now, my priorities are:
*Research
***BC4
***Industrial 7 (almost finished)
***Class III shields (almost finished)
***Soil Enrichment
***Warp Dissipator (almost finished)
***Ion cannon (almost finished)

Also, I need to start pre-building a placeholder for some better ships.  I am still using those ancient heavy-laser cruisers and some NPG fighters.  The AI is starting to show up with scarier designs.  I have some missile bases at Lyae and Kholdan, but Nordia is still getting retooled from the Psilon interlude, and I need a fleet there to dissuade the Psilons and Sakkras.  Hopefully I can get those 4 tech fields in that are almost finished before I need to commit to a new ship design.  

So, that's where I stand so far.  I am feeling pretty good about this game, especially about having the veto block sealed up.  I just need to work on my defenses and do some scouting of what kind of ships the Sakkra have (up until the recent Nordia reconquest, I did not have the range to easily scope the Sakkra out).  I know what the Psilons have, and if I can just finish warp dissipator, I can deal with their existing designs easily.  We'll see...

[Ianus]

A great game so far!  I'd really like to read the rest and see how you put it to bed in the mid and late game. These challenge games are the absolute best way to learn how to use different mechanics more effectively. I know that my own play would benefit from more of this kind of practice. Thanks for the great reports!

[Psillycyber]

Success!  Won at the 2525 council (quite a late victory date for one of my games).  Spoilers below. 

Okay, so first things first, I wanted to get some updated scouting of the Psilon and Sakkra ship designs.  This is one of the most important things one can do in MoO1.  There is a huge difference between settling on ship designs that fare badly vs. the AI rather than designing ships that exploit one or two narrow weaknesses in the AI's designs.  

So, what did I find?  First, the Psilons:



Lots of bombs and guns, but slow speed and no 2-range weapons.  Some 2-range, 2-move ships of my own with warp dissipators on them will chew through this fleet like it's breakfast.  

And the Sakkra:



Similar issues (I've found that it is common for the AI to over-rely on 1-space weapons with no backup plan if they meet repulsor or dissipator ships), but it could be tricky trying to freeze all of these 2-mover ships if they come as a group.  In 4 in-battle turns, they can corner and obliterate my forces if I'm not lucky in slowing them down first.  

I did end up facing an attack from the Psilons a few years later.  I had just finished warp dissipators and a few other techs, so I was prepared:



The 2450 council vote confirmed that I had secured a unilateral veto.  



And with soil enrichment about to finish, I was confident that I would be holding onto that veto.  

After soil enrichment popped, I decided to go onto Advanced Eco Restoration (10 cleanup per 1 BC), seeing as I had no restoration techs as of yet.  It was either that or atmospheric terraforming, and I had no planets that needed terraforming as of yet.  

I also backtracked and teched merculite missiles instead of moving ahead immediately to fusion beams, as the Psilons were now showing up with class-V shielded ships.  Mercs + class V planetary shields finally made my core worlds' dozens of missile bases impervious against even the Psilons, freeing up my fleets for offensive actions.  

The Sakkra eventually colonized those 3 hostile environment worlds I pointed out last time.  I let the Sakkra build them up for a few decades.  Then, starting in the 2470s, I started taking them over.  The Sakkra fleets were slow as molasses in terms of warp speed (apparently with the weird combination of retro engines + inertial stabilizer, giving them actually more moves in combat than on the map screen.  I had traded sub-light engines to the Sakkra earlier, but apparently they were still using these even older designs), so I was able to strike with opportunity and poach these planets with little immediate interference from their fleets, except for one instance I will mention in a moment....  



IRC4!  That would mean a temporary postponement of the real military offensive against the enemy core worlds until I had built up that new round of factories.  

The 2475 council vote:  I maintained my unilateral veto, although the Sakkra must have gotten some high-level terraforming tech because they were surging in pop as well.  



Around this time I tried to pre-emptively take out the main Sakkra fleet at one of their hostile worlds.  



This battle actually went badly, losing me all but one of my cruisers.  Basically, I got some unlucky rolls with the warp dissipator ships, and the Sakkra were able to close in on me and start wrecking me with their superior firepower.  So, the invasion of Reticuli had to be postponed....

But, a few years later I was able to try again and this time clean up that Sakkra fleet.  The rest of the Sakkra hostile worlds were mine!  

And now, I had to prepare an invasion of the Sakkra homeworlds that would actually have full complements of missile bases defending them. Thankfully, I had finished researching impulse engines, and I was able to trade the Meklar warp dissipator for inertial stabilizers, so now I could design some fearsome little fusion bombers that could practically outrun the Sakkra missiles.  It didn't take too many of these little bombers to seal the fate of the first Sakkra coreworld, Nyarl, in 2497.  



(Note that, thanks to IRC4, my planets' production was now swole enough to feasibly produce huge ship designs on a regular basis).  

The ground invasion came in two turns later in 2499:



IT+80!  So that's why the Sakkra and Psilons were catching up in population!  But now all of my planets would be getting 60 more pop!  It might be too late to help me win the 2500 council vote...



...but this would all but assure me of a victory in 2525.  

The rest of the game was just a steady march towards galactic domination.  



I suppose I should mention that everyone hated the honorable, grudge-holding Alkari and had reduced the poor birds to their homeworld.  It was not difficult to put the birds out of their misery.  

I eventually got Omega-V bombs and built some better bombers to deal with the Psilons if need be, although I didn't really need to take their planets to have enough votes to win.  Here's what my endgame fleet looked like.  I was still holding onto some of the older warp dissipator ships to help guard just-captured planets, but now I had some much more directly deadly ships as well.  



The snakewhip design was one I was particularly proud of.  It had first initiative against all foes, could outrun almost all enemy missiles, had great evade, and could shoot-and-scoot a nasty salvo of heavy fusion beams and quickly get out of harm's way.

The trickiest battles I had were these two.  This first one pitted my warp dissipator ships and a fledgling conquest against some Psilon ships that had 3 moves and were packed to the gills with tachyon beams that could even destroy my missile bases.  I'll admit that I got lucky only losing my cruiser in this battle before getting the enemy ships frozen enough to start plinking them down.  



The other tricky battle was against a pretty nasty ship design from the Meklar:



The anti-matter torps and auto-repair made this one tricky to wrangle down even after freezing it in place, but eventually I was able to whittle it down with my Ancalagon (which did ~120 damage per round) and my snakewhip destroyers (which did about ~150 damage per round), dodging the anti-matter torps every other turn.  

Needless to say, I was ready to win the council vote in 2525:

Overall, this was a really fun challenge!  I think I might repeat this exact same challenge with the Mrrrshans sometime soon.  I wonder if they will be better or worse than the Bulrathi (apart from how much easier or more difficult the next map is.  I got lucky with the AI not getting to expand much on this map).