Thanks Ghostwes. I was beginning to think the Empire had died of old age.  

Welcome to this band of veterans, Amalric.

I am not a Canadian either.
I live in Australia, which, I suppose, is very similar to Canada in many ways...apart from climate of course.

Welcome aboard, Amalric.

I think there's just a lot less activity in general right now, Embird. I've been quite busy with other things, I'm afraid to say. Nevertheless, I hope our empire will continue to dominate the galaxy.

I will have to remember that in a few years. When our son heads off to college, my wife and I are planning a SCUBA trip in Australia. We're wanting to dive with great whites... from the safety of a shark cage of course. I'm not *completely* stupid... yet.   

Actually, Great Whites are not that dangerous to Scuba divers.
They are scavengers and will go for what they see as dead or dying things on the surface.
If you are with them and do not stir them up whith bits of fish, as the cage operators do, they are nosy but not aggressive.
They are also endangered and protected in Australia.

Well, a long time coming, but I finally posted my first game for The Gerontocracy.
.

Good job, Particleweave.

Nice to see some recent activity here. I have been working my way through the various races, trying to get the every-race victory medal. Scores still in the 20K+ area, but not too shabby since my system won't handle huge galaxies and my lax gameplay can't yet handle the extreme difficulties that some of you experts shrug off. I had to laugh at Embird telling us all not to worry about great whites. So typical of the Aussies to make light of what the rest of the civilized world considers a terror.

Anyone else mildly put off by the fact that the Gerontocracy colour is so similar to the other empire shown right beside us on the Empires map! Just like in the game where the three grey coloured races always seem to end up in the same part of the galaxy.

On the imperial progress front, I've been trying to finish my first (only?) military victory on a gigantic map with less than abundant everything. I'm in what should be an early mop-up period, but alas I've suddenly been moved (not my choice) from the too-old rig crowd to the too-new rig crowd. As far as I can tell, Vista + Nvidia = Galciv Frustration.

I think the Gerontocracy needs a Curmudgeon Council. Our esteemed emporer deleted the original tagline about yelling at kids on the lawn, but really a lot of folks (things?) need a good scolding. I was online when modems all had cradles for Bell standard handsets. Yes, many of the new techs are fun and/or useful, but when will the frakkin' IT industry get over change for change's sake? I really like roots X-Men (Claremont), but don't most mutations die because they aren't fit for the world they're born to?

But maybe this belongs in Off Topic

Actually, it's still there.

I grew up reading Claremont's X-Men. Good stuff. The past few nights at work I was bored and started reading some wikipedia articles on X-Men characters and wow, I have no idea what happened -- what a mess. Read the article on Psylocke for a good example of my confusion.

Could my character, Horza, get an invite? I can confirm that I am, ahem, in the correct age range (>35, not dead yet).

I posted my first game for the empire a couple of days ago. I am now working through the second and third games. I installed at work so that I could play over lunch. Now THAT'S dedication to the empire! (Others might just call it obsession.) If I can just finish off these durned pirates then I can turn my attention to the other races.   

Welcome aboard aristotle66. Nice score you have there, by the way! Beats all of mine...

Why thank you. I thought I did ok, but does our empire have any ethical standards with regard to 'cheating'? My personal preference is for the biggest galaxies (occasional, occasional), v. slow tech, on crippling difficulty. However this requires scumming (ctrlN) a decent start, and using a custom race. Plus I reloaded when I lost most of my hard won gains to the knife empire event. I did get hit by the max speed 5 event too, which I stuck with.

What are other people's play styles like? I've played with the standard races, lower difficulty and no scumming as a challenge, but I find I come to a 'crisis' point quite quickly, after which I've lost, or will eventually win. On crippling scumming a good start gives me enough to survive with initially, but only just, and I stay edge-of-the-seat for a long time. I can take out my weaker neighbours, but can I do it quicker than the No1 empire?

There are no ethical standards... play any way that you enjoy playing.

I might Ctrl-N once or twice if my position seems completely untenable, but not very often. I will also load an autosave game if certain mega-events occur... like the Jagged Knife. I find that particular event quite ridiculous. That and the Independent League. or whatever. I mean, a spontaneous empire rising out of nowhere? Fine, no problem. A spontaneous empire that takes away my Economy Capital and Technological Capital without me being able to say boo about it? Damn straight I'm going to reload! The other mega-events are fun, though, mostly.

I tend to turtle a lot, waiting until I am confident in my ability to fight off an opponent. My benchmark for this is a strong economy, established tech world(s), ability to build medium ships and a good ratio of missile weapons and whatever defense I need for my most likely opponent. I also build huge arrays of economy starbases surrounding my most productive tech and manufacturing worlds respectively, preferably in the same array. In that array I include a few military starbases to enhance my fleets and provide a depot for launching attacks, organizing fleets, etc. This all takes me a few years. I usually pay lunch money to galactic bullies to prevent attacks while I'm building up.

Honestly, I see other players winning in three years or less and I'd love to know how they did it.

The events certainly spice things up. I have a pretty conservative turtle style of play too. Develop infrastructure up to the extreme colonization level, throw out some freighters, get the economy as big as possible. DOWs don't concern me too much - as soon as I start seeing mil transports I rush research into mediums. By this point the AIs have specialized in weapon types - their defences may not be obvious, but I know it'll be usually be against the commonest weap type. I'll research the appropiate counter attack/defences, and get a minimum single medium on evey colony. The AI sticks with fighters for far too long, and a good medium design can take on a whole fleet of these. Then I go all the way into the planet invasion techs, and try and grab tir-quan training.

After this stage I'm ready to go a-conquering. I pick a target, do a bit of extra research (a couple of levels of logistics at least) and send off the transports with fleets of three mediums. On crippling I'll need to do some diplomacy, hand out lunchmoney and so on to 'develop' a target - I can take on a big neighbour if he's busy on a couple of other fronts. I also need to keep the No1/2 empires busy, preferably with each other. (NB I turn off tech trading, so I have to use treaties to buy this).

I use plenty of SBs too. First round is mil SBs with basic def, and -2 enemy ship speed. In the early days that guarantees no nasty suprises. If I'm fighting an advanced AI I'll need some combat support pluses too - I've had some really critical battles just over getting a mil SB built and upgraded in a strategic spot. Econ SBs are a nice to have - until the economy is really huge I can't always finance the results.

One of the nice things about this game is you have to flip between conquering and turning turtle again. I usually have to scrabble several times to deal with becoming target of the month for the AIs, or to handle events. I can go back on the offensive when I hit certain tech points - for instance, being evil, when I get the bonus weapons. Or just when the AIs all jump on one of their own.

Whew, went on a bit there. Just started a new gigantic game, and guess I'm in planning mode.

I thought it used to be the subhead on this thread, but I guess I was confusing that with the official empire page (I mostly view through AltMeta).

Re the ethics question from aristotle66, I suggest poking around some of the threads about "cheese." Cheese is good food in general, but you can pretty quickly split some crowds by bringing out the Stilton. Or you can offend others by offering a Kraft "cheese food product."

I don't CTRL+N b/c it doesn't seem to repro all my setup details, but I do occasionally restart a game when I'm in a really crappy spot on a gigantic map. I've yet to turn Megaevents back on b/c I was in the beta and they were just too mega for me. I'll probably try them in my next game, but I'm likely to re-load after ones like the Speed Limit or Peacekeepers.

OK, guys, I know I'm not in the empire but I have a little challenge for the

The image is a bit hard to make out. Looks like a pink castle to me, heh.

Hmmmmmmmmm. Nope, not sure, sorry.

Many of your members probably only saw it in black and white, originally.

I'll even give a text hint: 0 N, 0 E.

drrider

I'll take a stab at it... to me it almost looks like a crayon drawing depicting "Rocketship 7" from the TV show of the same name beamed out of Buffalo, NY in the early 60's. (cigar or no cigar?)

I think the hint might have something to do with Atlantis...

Sorry it took me awhile to get back guys. Hectic end of week.



Close, in concept, but no cigar.

In the late 50's / early 60's, at least in the New York / New Jersy viewing area, there was a TV cartoon show call 'Colonel Bleep'. Colonel Bleep was the Earth's assigned secret advanced alien guardian, to get those young humans through that awkward age when they are just venturing into space. Col Bleep lived at a secret base on 'Zero Zero Island', at 0 deg N, 0 deg E, off the coast of Africa. The pink icon is his spacecraft (whose name I can't remember), which also had time travel capabilities. One of his sidekicks is a cave guy that he picked up on an early adventure ala Dr Who - the cave guy always manages to have an expression of 'facinated surprise' on his face. When Colonel Bleep is out of his spaceship, he is kind of a child sized, very energetic stick figure, with an oversized head always in his signature fisbowl-and-rabbit-ears helmet. He zips around on what looks like a sort of anti-gravity unicycle, but it is unclear if this is really a device, or really Col Bleep.
And he is the goodest of techno-magic little good guys...ET with a mission.

I was following a thread of something else the other day, and stumbled across his fan site. I'd been looking for a unique icon harking back to my beginnings with SF, and this was about as beginning as I could get. The only thing better would have been the spine logo from the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet series of books. (Yell if you run across that in jpeg.)

drrider

You know, to the MTV generation it does look like something and it ain't no spaceship.

A little before my time, heh. Although I started this empire for older players, I'm actually only 37. That's ancient by most gamer standards, but nothing compared to a respectable methuselah like yourself

Thanks for the challenge!

drrider, you may have also missed my query in a different thread. You had mentioned recently purchasing a new computer. Since I am also in the market right now, I was curious what you got. If you'd rather not post details, that's fine, no worries.

Oh well, that was fun anyway tickling those close to dormant brain synapses.

Thanks for the trip in the "Wayback Machine" drrider.