[Report: Alkari/Average] Stretching my wings

[RFS-81]

Alkari
Map Size: Medium
Difficulty: Average
5 Opponents

RefSteel asked me if I'd be up for a MOO succession game, and I said yes, but I'd like to play a few solo games to get up to speed again before that. My write-up for Civ 6 Adventure 4 got me in the mood for writing more game reports, so here we are. I'll be posting updates as I play. (EDIT: The report is now complete.) I'm not great at this game (hints and comments are very welcome), and I still find hard difficulty quite challenging, so I decided to play on Normal difficulty, but with one of the weaker civs. Playing as the Alkari also means that I'll have to step somewhat out of my comfort zone in terms of play style, since the combat bonus especially lends itself to early rushes. Plus, I get to make a stupid pun in the thread title!

   

I'm starting in the north-eastern corner of the map, with only one star in range for the colony ship. On top of that, the star is located even further in the corner, with, as it turns out, no further habitable planets in range. So I need better fuel cells ASAP. At least Bootis is a size-100 terran planet. Here are the results of my initial scouting:

       

The humans are nearby and have at least three colonies already. The yellow star at the edge of the nebula must be Sol. However, they're still out of range for diplomatic contact. I made an initial research investment to see what's available, and luckily, I can research range-5 fuel cells. There were no other choices in the propulsion tree. I would have preferred range-4 so that I could colonize Maretta, the green star north-west of Altair, which has a size-100 jungle planet, earlier. The other techs that I selected were Deep Space Scanner, Improved Industrial Tech 9, Class 2 Shields, Terraforming +10, and Hyper-V rockets (my only choice there). For now, I'll build some more factories and then pour all research into propulsion to break out of my corner.

With Deuterium Fuel Cells researched (next up in the tree was the Inertial Stabilizer as the only choice), I sent out my scouts to explore a bit further and started producing my second colony ship. One of my scouts encountered a (still unarmed) Silicoid colony ship at the blue star south of the humans' nebula. Establishing a colony at Maretta puts me in contact with the humans. Their emperor talks about peace, but I'm not so sure about that in the long run. Or the medium run. But for now, I can keep expanding peacefully, since the colony at Maretta opened up the arid planet at Rotan, in the north-east, for colonization. In tech, I split 50-50 between construction and planetology. Here's the map in the year 2334:

       

A few turns later, Darlok scouts also made an appearance at the same star as the Silicoids.

[RefSteel]

Oh, cool! Thanks for posting this!

I'd love to see a bit more detail, but since it sounds like you're interested in tips and suggestions:

- Form a strategic plan and go after it hard. You of course have to balance stuff like infrastructure, but the most important thing is to understand the game situation and figure out what needs to be done to improve it. For instance!

- Are those southern habitables 6+ parsecs away? Colonizing Rotan is naturally a good idea, but it looks like there's still a danger of getting locked into that corner unless you can expand to the south as well. It might be possible to hopscotch from the Dead planet if the distance from there is short enough and you have Controlled Dead in your tree, but either way, pursuing Long-Range colony ships (by teching Construction and Planetology to fit the colony base and Reserve Tanks on a large hull) might be called for. In the meantime, I'd want at least a token long-range combat fleet to prevent e.g. the humans from colonizing the Terran world.

- On the other hand, if do get Controlled Dead and the enemy does colonize those southern worlds, maybe you can hopscotch using assault transports instead!

Of course those are a lot of alternatives and competing priorities! Planetology serves all of them in some ways, but as for the rest, it's a question of deciding what you think you most urgently need.

[Ianus]

Hi! I'll jump on here too as things are pretty quiet on the MoO front at the moment. I love reading any and all game reports so thanks for providing new content. Please don't hesitate to ask questions as you go along. There is A LOT of knowledge available here.
Welcome!

[RFS-81]

Thanks for the suggestion with the long-range fighters, RefSteel! In past games, I've built long-range colony ships, but for some reason it never occurred to me to put reserve tanks on combat ships...I'll get to that soon. I'll try to give some more detail in future posts. For now, the state of my empire in 2334 is as follows:

- Altair is maxed out in population and factories. It's building a colony ship due in 3 turns for Rotan (the green star NW of Maretta; arid, pop 60 max), and trickles in a few tech points.
- Bootis has 64/100 pop (after sending some colonists to seed Maretta) and has ~150 factories, so I'll allow it to fill up with people now, and keep building factories there.
- Maretta is recently colonized, only 3/100 pop, but 28 more will arrive next turn.
- I have a scout on the way to the red star west of Rotan. If it's habitable and not yet colonized, I will build a few fighters and park them there until I can send a colony ship.

In tech, I've already got a 7% discovery chance for Terraforming +10, so we'll soon see if I have Controlled Dead Environment in my tree. The bulb for Industrial Tech 9 is half full.

Now a few questions for the resident experts:
- Is there any difference between a terran and jungle planet with the same pop max?
- The manual says that for each 10 tech levels over a device, that device's size is reduced by 25%. Is that a sharp cut-off (i.e., 9 tech levels do nothing, 19 is the same as 10, ...), or continuous (e.g., something like an exponential decay function)?

---

Turn 40: Terraforming +10 popped, and I can indeed research Controlled Dead, which I of course do. I also sent the colony ship to Rotan on its way. Altair and Bootis both implement the new terraforming tech. Altair also builds my Squatter ship (3 lasers, reserve fuel tanks).

Turn 41: The Klackons also say hello with an unarmed scout at the blue star south of Human space. Well, it's very nearly at the center of the galaxy, so of course everybody shows up there. The star west of Rotan has a pop 10 max tundra planet. I let my scout squat there, but I don't think I'll spend any resources on protecting that with armed ships.

Turn 45: GNN says the Klackons already have 6 planets...

Turn 46: Finished Industrial Tech 9, Reduced Waste 80% next. This is not optimal for increasing the tech level, but it's a relatively quick improvement for my production. Bootis maxes out on factories and nearly on population. Altair and Bootis focus their spending on tech. Altair had produced a second long-range Squatter recently, I hope that's enough.

Turn 47: The news robot says that I'm first in population!

   

Ok, I've got to go now. I'll play some more this evening when I'm back from Aikido!

[RefSteel]

Now a few questions for the resident experts:
- Is there any difference between a terran and jungle planet with the same pop max?

Nope; the different types of habitables can have different ranges of max populations, but once the map has been generated, the differences between two habitables with the same max pop and (rich/poor/ART) resource is purely cosmetic.

- The manual says that for each 10 tech levels over a device, that device's size is reduced by 25%. Is that a sharp cut-off (i.e., 9 tech levels do nothing, 19 is the same as 10, ...), or continuous (e.g., something like an exponential decay function)?

It's continuous; every little bit of miniaturization counts! (And specifically, yes, I think it's basically an exponential decay function based on tech level instead of time. There are complicating factors due to Power requirements though.)

Thanks again for the report! I'm curious about which other tech choices you had available, but the ones you did choose were certainly helpful techs!

(And have a good time at Aikido!)

[RFS-81]

Thanks for the answers, RefSteel!

Today is not my day...first I accidentally closed Dosbox, losing a couple of turns. Later, my computer shut down due to overheating (Can't I run Dosbox and Firefox at the same time anymore?), and I lost my nice detailed summary. I had saved my game shortly before, though.Then I lost a short summary I wrote up from memory when I clicked on "Save as Draft" and that didn't seem to work. Well, here's the gist:

Firstly, I noticed that I don't need to worry about the tech level right now, since I could reach Lyae via Misha (the read star) once Vega is colonized. (Still, thanks for explaining miniaturization, I always like to know more details!)

   

Well, I could have, but Lyae is a human colony now. I fended off the first wave easily, but got overrun in the second one. And just when I got reinforcements ready at Altair! The year is 2362. In the meantime, I've colonized Rotan which already is at 50% population. Maretta is growing and industrializing nicely, too. Bootis is producing tech. I've finished Controlled Dead Environment and a colony ship is heading to Vega. Another one is being built at Altair so that I can send it to Misha as soon as it is in range. I've sent 5 more of my Squatter ships to Misha.

My next choices in Planetology Tech were Controlled Barren, Terraforming +20, Death Spores, and Controlled Toxic. I picked Terraforming because there are no toxic planets in sight. I also finished Industrial Waste 80% and was faced with a tough choice: Industrial Tech 8, or Duralloy Armor. First, I thought I'd pick Duralloy Armor because I think it's about time to go on the offensive. I can't snowball as fast as the Klackons, so I'll have to eat neighbours to keep up. However, I chose IT8 for the following reasons: I'm interested in Duralloy Armor more for the ground combat bonus than for ships, because of the Alkaris' evasion bonus. But IT8 is cheaper, boosts my economy, and when it's finished, I can see if I have Battle Suits in my tech tree. I've set my research spending bars equal, then shifted a bit from Force Fields to Propulsion.

I also allocated some intelligence funding to get a look at the humans' techs:
   

Hyper-X Rockets, hmm...that's not a great weapon against swarms of small agile fighters. I'm resarching the Inertial Stabilizer right now, and I hope I get a better engine next. Shields II could be annoying, though. That's all for tonight. I would have liked to get more done, but a streak of bad luck prevented that.

[RefSteel]

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I hate it when crashes eat my work. I've gotten into the habit of creating forum posts in wordpad and saving everything every time I write whenever I finish a thought, but it still manages to happen at times and it quite upsets me.

On the "Save as Draft" problem, it might actually still be around: Drafts on this forum don't get saved in your view of the thread, but in their own little nook on your "User panel." Click on your name near the top right of any forum screen when you're logged in, and look for "Saved Drafts" - fourth from the bottom along the left-hand "Menu" sidebar. Click on that, and it should give you a list of all the posts you've saved as drafts, so you can edit them further and post them (at which point they'll go in the thread to which you were originally replying). I hope that helps!

Also, of course: Good luck dealing with those Apes that stole Lyae! What year have you reached in-game? ([R]aces - [S]tatus is the only place that shows this information in the unmodded game.)

[RFS-81]

When I clicked "Save as Draft", I was forwarded to my Saved Drafts page, and it said that I didn't have any drafts. Now there's something there, but it's not all that I had written.

The year is 2362, so I'm on turn 62. I'll play more turns in the evening, but for now, some more thoughts on the game situation: I'd like to steal the Personal Shields tech at some point to even out the ground combat odds, but since the humans have their usual honorable personality, I'd better be ready for war when I do that. My plan is to research a better engine, and then build lots of fighters. But maybe that's too slow? The Inertial Stabilizer is already expensive, the next engine will be even more expensive then. My Propulsion tree was very sparse so far.

[RefSteel]

Really weird behavior by the forum software then ... which I guess doesn't surprise me that much; sorry to hear that it bit the report you were writing!

I'd say that whether it's too slow to wait for a new engine mostly depends on what you'd be doing in the meantime (and what your enemies are packing, potentially). If you have more room to expand to good planets while you're teching, there's less urgency to attack; on the other hand, Lyae is a really nice coreward world, and slowing down the humans might be a good idea to reduce the chances of a council loss. Sublight Engines aren't guaranteed to be in your tree either, so it could be a long time before you get your next engine upgrade. So the question is whether you think you cam claim Lyae for yourself with the tech and production you have available - and whether you can deal with the diplomatic repurcussions if you succeed. Assuming they have missile bases up already, you'll certainly need more than lasers to crack them, but nuclear bombs are plenty to crack the kinds of defenses your spies are telling you about here. They'll get a bunch of shots in on your ships as you approach the planet, but not many will hit an Alkari small. (Can you fit a bomb on a small yet?)

[RFS-81]

I do have some more room to expand, that should allow me some more time to think.

Turn 64: Vega is colonized, and a new colony ship is on the way to Misha. A pop 45 desert planet at Tao in the south is now in colony range, and I can scout the green star further to the south. I send 12 pop from Altair to Vega and refill Altair with some colonists from Maretta and Rotan. I start building another colony ship for Tao.

   

Turn 65: Deep Space Scanner is complete. I can choose between ECM I or II, or Battle Computer II. I pick ECM II. If I can fit it on my fighters, I don't think I'll wait around for the new engine. The problem is that I can't find the size of the thing in the manual, and I only found resources for MOO2 and newMOO on the web. Does anyone have a link for things like this?

Turn 68: I have Hyper-V rockets now. The next choices are Gatling Laser, Hyper-X, Fusion Bomb, and Ion Cannon. Too bad, I was hoping for a ground weapon. I go with Hyper-X missiles for now. Also, the colony ship for Tao is ready and Altair switches to Tech.

Turn 69: The green star south of Tao already belongs to the Meklar, so I'll have to make a move soon.

Turn 70: I colonized Misha and am now in contact with the Silicoid. I again send some colonists to seed it from Altair, and refill it from Rotan. Maretta maxes out on industry. I build some missile bases there since it's one of the few planets immediately in range for the humans.

   

Turn 72: The Silicoid send an armed colony ship and colonize Kulthos, the blue star at the center of the map. Here's an overview of the Silicoid empire.

   

Turn 73: Inertial Stabilizer is researched and the only choice for the next Propulsion tech is Range 7. That means I start building fighters now.

Turn 75: Tao is colonized, and I'm in contact with the Meklar. Both Altair and Maretta are building fighters now.

Enough for today! Here's a view of the map and the status screen.

   

   

The Silicoid actually look like an easier target, though of course I don't know if I can land on all their colonies. (I can definitely land on Kulthos, though, since it's tundra.) On the other hand, the humans are closer to my mature colonies, so sending troops will be faster if I fight the humans. I'm leaning towards attacking the humans to prevent their tech lead from becoming larger. I'm definitely happy with the number of planets, though!