Thanks for the win, pirates!

from Stardock Forums
This is going to be pretty short. I decided, just for the fun of it, to try playing a game on the Gigantic map. There were six alien races on the tough difficultly level, and the settings were set to the defaults.

I was playing the Thalians, and I had the good fortune to be in a reasonably isolated part of the galaxy. After researching Barren and Toxic colonization, I had a large number of planets to work with. As is my custom, I spent very little money on my military initially, with the plan being to at some point during start building up my forces very quickly under a good economy with good technology.

When the only race I knew, one of the minor races, declared war on me, I decided that the time was now. I built medium-sized ships loaded with missiles, and I built a half-dozen fast transport ships. Their resistance was quickly ground under the heels of my troops.

So, I kept building my missile cruisers, hoping to build up a large enough force that the other races would quit demanding money from me. I had just crossed the line from weakest military to second-weakest military when I got word that the Dread Lords had invaded the galaxy. Worse, they were in my back yard!

Fortunately, I noticed that they hadn't built any of their ships yet. I mobilized the remaining transport ships and moved them in the direction of the Dread Lord homeworld.

Two turns away from the Dread Lord homeworld, another special event popped up: Pirates had invaded the entire galaxy. I checked out one of these pirate fleets: they had devastating numbers of laser weapons.

My invasion fleet managed to evade the pirates and take over the Dread Lords (earning me the fastest warp engine in the game), but the pirates quickly demolished _every_ ship and station in my fleet. I could not build more ships, because as soon as I did, a pirate fleet was there to eliminate it.

At first I thought, "I'm screwed." And then I realized I could use this to my advantage. I went to the domestic spending screen and turned my research knob as high as it would go, and put the remaining production into social construction. Then, I made my way through Invention Matrices and Discovery Spheres, putting every effort into achieving technological victory, using the pirates to defend my territory from my stronger opponents. Eventually every other race declared war on my, but I was virtually untouchable.

Until some crazy scientist found a wormhole that released robot peacekeepers into the galaxy. They made quick work of the pirates, and continued to protect me from the occasional Torian invader. I lost two planets before it was over, but in the end I emerged victorious, thanks in no small part to the pirates who massacred my entire fleet.
aars
59,327 views 15 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Pirates and Peacekeepers? Sounds like fun

Last time I had pirates event, I used a different strategy. Transports with big fat engines. Outrun the pirates, conquer every planet the other races had.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Wow, usually I destroy every pirate I find...or someone else does.
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Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This Pirate event is a bit silly. Two games ago, they showed up and wiped out (essentially) every ship in the galaxy. It was pretty amusing looking at the graph of military strength. For everyone, it just turned into a ski slope to zero (I'd like to know where these pirates came from and where they got their ships if they can beat the WHOLE galaxy in a couple of turns -- thank goodness they had no Troop Transports). They were so strong, I determined there was no point in trying to fight them. I just sat there with bare planets while I researched big enough hulls with enough weapons and defenses to beat them. Meanwhile, the AIs kept trying to squash them with the ships they had. Once I had strong enough singleton ships, I popped out, mopped up the pirates (in my area only ) and took over the world (galaxy).
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
dread lords, pirates and peacekeepers, oh my!
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Great read.

I guess I will have to pick up GC2 again.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Congratulations on the win! Good to see someone turn a game destroying event into a win. Sounds like something many others in the forums should do rather than moan about them all the time
Great piece of lateral thinking there!


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Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That comment reminds me of the practice of restarting until you get a favorable starting position, thus inferring that luck is the difference between winning and losing. See, the winning and losing should be determined by strategy in a strategy game, shouldn't it? The ability to handle a mega-event should be more important than the event itself.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'd like to know where these pirates came from and where they got their ships if they can beat the WHOLE galaxy in a couple of turns

What a ridiculous question, of course the pirates are from:
1. Another galaxy
2. The future
3. A parallel universe

Personally, I believe that the Pirates are actually from the future of a parallel universe, but that's just my opinion.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
See, the winning and losing should be determined by strategy in a strategy game, shouldn't it? The ability to handle a mega-event should be more important than the event itself.


respectfully, i disagree entirely; i think it takes both. a game, a 1-player game at least, without some element of luck, is boring and stale, just a matter of memorizing a pattern. and there was strategy involved in this win. had the OP not re-rooled his or her path towards victory, it proabably wouldn't have been a win at all. and he could have had the bad luck of having disabled the victory condition. if might seem obvious to you and me, but s/he should be glad it wasn't obvious to one of the AIs.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Luck should be there, but the ability to adapt to the consequences of luck should enable you to win, regardless of what happens.

This win involved strategy, but hitting 'new game' until you get a particular spot in a galaxy is ridiculous and not strategic. If you're going to do that, why not just make a custom map?
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Luck should be there, but the ability to adapt to the consequences of luck should enable you to win, regardless of what happens.


i think that should be the norm, the middle part of the bell curve. winning in most cases should be a matter of usefully expoiting the small measure of luck you receive, and to be sure, no measure of luck should carry an entirely unskilled player to victory. still, if there weren't a chance to occassionally win or lose by sensational (mis)fortune, i think the game would be much more dull.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The only misfortune I face is setting the difficulty level too high...
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I've got a win due to pirates too (also had DL that game too). If pirates happen early enough they'll have vastly superior tech and will destroy every ship and starbase in the galaxy. The AIs don't react as well when this happens and keep building ships and business as usual, so you can kinda take advantage and tech up or do fast transport invasions.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hehe... something similar happened to me as well. I conquered the Dreadlords at one game and I obtained Quantum Torpedoes Tech. Needless to say, the galaxy became mine very easily!