Poor Vegans
Probably one of the most boring AARs yet, but whatever.
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Not as dramatic or elegant as some; more of a sort rambling commentary...
Over my weekend gaming spree I managed to get in two games, one of which is still going. The first one I had to "terminate" because it was quite obvious that I was about to get a can of whoop @$$ opened on me by the Thalans. It was down to them, me and the Altarians - who were obnoxious but not enough so to stall the Thalans. Sigh...
Second game puts me and my beloved Terrans stuck on the middle edge of the map. Ah, what-ever. The only other civilization sharing my cluster with me is the Iconians & we're getting along swell. We had a pretty decent start: the star system closest to Sol had three habitable planets: C11, C10 & C7 (I had the number of habitables set to uncommon; normally I play with rare.) That's pretty cool. There was a juicy C28 down the road a bit along with another couple C10s, a C7 and a C5. I pump out a moderately paced colony rush to beat the Iconians to the farther planets (especially that C28!), and then settle back to build starbases & research while my scouts do just that. Happily for me (dripping in sarcasm), the only mining resource I found was an economic one. I'll take it, though I'd have preferred a research or morale, econs are #3 in my book. And there I sat. I was effectively cut off from the rest of the galaxy until I started to get aggressive and knock on other people's planets.
Meanwhile, on the second turn, the Torians declared war on me. WTF! They claim their were well paid do so. Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but they’re clean across the (immense) map from me, so I don’t think that I’m going to worry myself about them a whole lot for a long while. Not so my citizenry, who complained about the constant strife and how the Torians are so much more powerful than we are. Yeah, and have any of you bleating sheep actually seen a Torian ship anywhere within a hundred parsecs of us? No! So, stop grousing and get back to work!
And by work, I mean building starbases. Lots of them. As many as I can pack into each sector I control and all of them economic starbases. If I can’t have quantity, then by all the space gods, I’m going to have quality! My home sector – Earth (10), Mars (4), Wisconsin (11), Minnesota (10) and Michigan (10) – all are covered by six or seven economic starbases, while my R&D sector – California (28), North Dakota (11) and South Dakota (10) – are covered by no less than ten economic starbases. I made all my trade routes run between Earth and New Iconia (easier to figure out where they’re at & when they’re going to go down) and covered by almost all of my starbases. While that’s going on, I’m building pickets and establishing a sensor perimeter a good dozen parsecs out (I hate unpleasant surprises). My scouts are scouring space looking for any other mining resources to no avail. Drat! I’m going to either have to go offensive before I’m comfortable in doing so or extend myself by colonizing some far-flung and as-yet un-colonized planets.
I opt for a mixed approach. The nearest minor race – the Snathi – are on the corner of Iconian, Thalan, and Korx space. Stupid squirrels. They, I will liberate in the name of the Terran Alliance. After all, far better to be conquered by me than by any of the others. There’s also a C10 radioactive world on the far border of Thalan and Korz territories. Happily, both of them are at war with each other, so I might be able to make that one work. Additionally, there’s a C12 radioactive world just a couple parsecs away from South Dakota that’s in range of several of my economic starbases. Looks like we’ve got a winner! So, the Snathi fall and their world becomes Florida while several weeks later, my fast colony fleet arrives at what is now known as Montana.
But, I’m not all that comfortable with the Thalan being so close, particularly after the last, abortive game. They got a lot of snazzy techs that I’d like to trade for (which probably contributed to my woes in the first game: I gave them too much stuff for their techs. Sigh…) This time around, however, they’re doing nothing! Well, almost nothing. They’re sniveling a lot and somehow had managed to sandbag 25,000 credits. But no research, no military, only a couple of freighters sent my way & a pile of crummy low-quality planets. Fine, whatever. I’ll support their measly carcasses until they crank out some useful techs and then I’m going to take Thala – those Hyperion buildings they have are sweet!
And, on the other side of the galaxy, not only are the Torians attempting to ascend (and doing a pretty good job of it too, judging by how many turns they have left to go), but they’ve amassed the strongest military and are pounding the Drengin into goo. Sheesh! And here I’ve always thought of them as feckless whiners. A little sweet talking to the Arceans and off they happily go to war with the Torians. Sadly, they fared only marginally better than the Drengin. Whereas the Drengin eventually surrender everything to the Drath Legion, the Arceans sucked up the drubbing they took and turned instead to the Altarians to dish out some displaced aggression. Meanwhile, anyone who’s on the short end of a large stick is knocking on my door, looking for hand-outs. Only ones I don’t hear from are the Torians (no surprise there) and the Krynn. Yech! I despise the Krynn more than even the Thalans. The Krynn are aggressive – like the Thalans; successful at colonizing or taking over colonies at a sickeningly fast rate – like the Thalans. Unlike the Thalans, they don’t have jack for decent techs. So, of course, when the Thalans decided to roll-over after years of living on the Terran dole and not producing a lick of spit for all of that, they surrender to the Krynn. Oh, that’s terrific.
Perhaps sensing my displeasure over that whole deal, the very next week the Krynn gift me with several squadrons of heavy fighters to “help in my fight against the Torians” or something like that. Well, I guess I figured out who took out the Torian Ascension Bases after all. The only good news out of all this nonsense is that the AI doesn’t seem to recognize when a mining resource become “liberated” after the previous tenants are gone (I’m currently playing on Challenging, if that makes a difference.) So, I’ve got those two military resources the Snathi were mining, plus a bunch nearby that the Thalans were ineffectually mining and then all the Drengin ones. Annoyingly, the Drengin are out of range for me, being on the north-side of my empire (Florida and Montana are both to the south.) Fine, an influence starbase or two later and my long-range constructors can make it there. Whether they’ll do so in time, I don’t know. But, in the process of engineering that logistical nightmare, one of my scouts found another C12 radioactive world in the middle of what had been the Drengin Empire. Mine! Another fast-colony fleet and three months later and Oregon has now been added to the Terran Alliance. Of course, that’s even farther removed from any sort of support, so I had sent several of my newly commissioned heavy battlecruisers up there for defensive purposes.
Then comes the Vegan. Tremble in fear everyone. Or something like that. They’re dolts. But dolts that were able to take a Class 0 and make it into a nice, comfy C15 world. Which was located right smack-dab in the middle of my empire, just a couple parsecs away from California in my R&D sector and covered by several economic starbases. So, why are they dolts? Because they didn’t put up any defenses! Two weeks later, and the Terran Alliance welcomes Texas to its core colonies.
Now, I’m at a cross-roads (and not likely to be able to play for several days). I’ve made peace with the Torians, if only to get my mewling sheep to stop their bleating about the war. So, of course, they’re trying to ascend again. Then there’s the Krynn. They’ve more than doubled their imperial territory thanks to the largess of the craven Thalans and they’re right on my doorstep. Plus, somewhere in the middle of that uncharted territory that my scouts are finally able to get to, is Thala and not only do I want to have it, I certainly don’t want *them* to have it. I’ve just started a serious military production run, rolling out a heavy battlecruiser from California every third turn and one from Earth every tenth or so. I’ve also finally gotten mining stations up around many different resources abandoned by their previous tenants and those things can be pretty tempting targets for aggressors. I build them up as best as possible, but that effort is taking most of my ship-making capacity to crank out cheap little constructor boats (tiny hulls) or larger, faster-moving constructor ships for the more far-flung stations. My concern is that if I wait too long, the Krynn might get out of hand, especially in my neck of the woods, where the Korx and the Iconians are pretty much still existent because I trade heavily with them and the Krynn have access to Thala and its wonders. The Torians seem to have finally hit a wall between battling the Arceans, Drath and Krynn, so I might get a lucky reprieve there if one of those manage to take out the Torian ascension starbase before too much longer. Given my druthers, I’d like to wait until I can produce some battleships and unleash those on the Krynn, who seem to be pretty much making heavy fighters and frigates, but I may have to use my cruiser fleets and hope for the best.
Over my weekend gaming spree I managed to get in two games, one of which is still going. The first one I had to "terminate" because it was quite obvious that I was about to get a can of whoop @$$ opened on me by the Thalans. It was down to them, me and the Altarians - who were obnoxious but not enough so to stall the Thalans. Sigh...
Second game puts me and my beloved Terrans stuck on the middle edge of the map. Ah, what-ever. The only other civilization sharing my cluster with me is the Iconians & we're getting along swell. We had a pretty decent start: the star system closest to Sol had three habitable planets: C11, C10 & C7 (I had the number of habitables set to uncommon; normally I play with rare.) That's pretty cool. There was a juicy C28 down the road a bit along with another couple C10s, a C7 and a C5. I pump out a moderately paced colony rush to beat the Iconians to the farther planets (especially that C28!), and then settle back to build starbases & research while my scouts do just that. Happily for me (dripping in sarcasm), the only mining resource I found was an economic one. I'll take it, though I'd have preferred a research or morale, econs are #3 in my book. And there I sat. I was effectively cut off from the rest of the galaxy until I started to get aggressive and knock on other people's planets.
Meanwhile, on the second turn, the Torians declared war on me. WTF! They claim their were well paid do so. Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but they’re clean across the (immense) map from me, so I don’t think that I’m going to worry myself about them a whole lot for a long while. Not so my citizenry, who complained about the constant strife and how the Torians are so much more powerful than we are. Yeah, and have any of you bleating sheep actually seen a Torian ship anywhere within a hundred parsecs of us? No! So, stop grousing and get back to work!
And by work, I mean building starbases. Lots of them. As many as I can pack into each sector I control and all of them economic starbases. If I can’t have quantity, then by all the space gods, I’m going to have quality! My home sector – Earth (10), Mars (4), Wisconsin (11), Minnesota (10) and Michigan (10) – all are covered by six or seven economic starbases, while my R&D sector – California (28), North Dakota (11) and South Dakota (10) – are covered by no less than ten economic starbases. I made all my trade routes run between Earth and New Iconia (easier to figure out where they’re at & when they’re going to go down) and covered by almost all of my starbases. While that’s going on, I’m building pickets and establishing a sensor perimeter a good dozen parsecs out (I hate unpleasant surprises). My scouts are scouring space looking for any other mining resources to no avail. Drat! I’m going to either have to go offensive before I’m comfortable in doing so or extend myself by colonizing some far-flung and as-yet un-colonized planets.
I opt for a mixed approach. The nearest minor race – the Snathi – are on the corner of Iconian, Thalan, and Korx space. Stupid squirrels. They, I will liberate in the name of the Terran Alliance. After all, far better to be conquered by me than by any of the others. There’s also a C10 radioactive world on the far border of Thalan and Korz territories. Happily, both of them are at war with each other, so I might be able to make that one work. Additionally, there’s a C12 radioactive world just a couple parsecs away from South Dakota that’s in range of several of my economic starbases. Looks like we’ve got a winner! So, the Snathi fall and their world becomes Florida while several weeks later, my fast colony fleet arrives at what is now known as Montana.
But, I’m not all that comfortable with the Thalan being so close, particularly after the last, abortive game. They got a lot of snazzy techs that I’d like to trade for (which probably contributed to my woes in the first game: I gave them too much stuff for their techs. Sigh…) This time around, however, they’re doing nothing! Well, almost nothing. They’re sniveling a lot and somehow had managed to sandbag 25,000 credits. But no research, no military, only a couple of freighters sent my way & a pile of crummy low-quality planets. Fine, whatever. I’ll support their measly carcasses until they crank out some useful techs and then I’m going to take Thala – those Hyperion buildings they have are sweet!
And, on the other side of the galaxy, not only are the Torians attempting to ascend (and doing a pretty good job of it too, judging by how many turns they have left to go), but they’ve amassed the strongest military and are pounding the Drengin into goo. Sheesh! And here I’ve always thought of them as feckless whiners. A little sweet talking to the Arceans and off they happily go to war with the Torians. Sadly, they fared only marginally better than the Drengin. Whereas the Drengin eventually surrender everything to the Drath Legion, the Arceans sucked up the drubbing they took and turned instead to the Altarians to dish out some displaced aggression. Meanwhile, anyone who’s on the short end of a large stick is knocking on my door, looking for hand-outs. Only ones I don’t hear from are the Torians (no surprise there) and the Krynn. Yech! I despise the Krynn more than even the Thalans. The Krynn are aggressive – like the Thalans; successful at colonizing or taking over colonies at a sickeningly fast rate – like the Thalans. Unlike the Thalans, they don’t have jack for decent techs. So, of course, when the Thalans decided to roll-over after years of living on the Terran dole and not producing a lick of spit for all of that, they surrender to the Krynn. Oh, that’s terrific.
Perhaps sensing my displeasure over that whole deal, the very next week the Krynn gift me with several squadrons of heavy fighters to “help in my fight against the Torians” or something like that. Well, I guess I figured out who took out the Torian Ascension Bases after all. The only good news out of all this nonsense is that the AI doesn’t seem to recognize when a mining resource become “liberated” after the previous tenants are gone (I’m currently playing on Challenging, if that makes a difference.) So, I’ve got those two military resources the Snathi were mining, plus a bunch nearby that the Thalans were ineffectually mining and then all the Drengin ones. Annoyingly, the Drengin are out of range for me, being on the north-side of my empire (Florida and Montana are both to the south.) Fine, an influence starbase or two later and my long-range constructors can make it there. Whether they’ll do so in time, I don’t know. But, in the process of engineering that logistical nightmare, one of my scouts found another C12 radioactive world in the middle of what had been the Drengin Empire. Mine! Another fast-colony fleet and three months later and Oregon has now been added to the Terran Alliance. Of course, that’s even farther removed from any sort of support, so I had sent several of my newly commissioned heavy battlecruisers up there for defensive purposes.
Then comes the Vegan. Tremble in fear everyone. Or something like that. They’re dolts. But dolts that were able to take a Class 0 and make it into a nice, comfy C15 world. Which was located right smack-dab in the middle of my empire, just a couple parsecs away from California in my R&D sector and covered by several economic starbases. So, why are they dolts? Because they didn’t put up any defenses! Two weeks later, and the Terran Alliance welcomes Texas to its core colonies.
Now, I’m at a cross-roads (and not likely to be able to play for several days). I’ve made peace with the Torians, if only to get my mewling sheep to stop their bleating about the war. So, of course, they’re trying to ascend again. Then there’s the Krynn. They’ve more than doubled their imperial territory thanks to the largess of the craven Thalans and they’re right on my doorstep. Plus, somewhere in the middle of that uncharted territory that my scouts are finally able to get to, is Thala and not only do I want to have it, I certainly don’t want *them* to have it. I’ve just started a serious military production run, rolling out a heavy battlecruiser from California every third turn and one from Earth every tenth or so. I’ve also finally gotten mining stations up around many different resources abandoned by their previous tenants and those things can be pretty tempting targets for aggressors. I build them up as best as possible, but that effort is taking most of my ship-making capacity to crank out cheap little constructor boats (tiny hulls) or larger, faster-moving constructor ships for the more far-flung stations. My concern is that if I wait too long, the Krynn might get out of hand, especially in my neck of the woods, where the Korx and the Iconians are pretty much still existent because I trade heavily with them and the Krynn have access to Thala and its wonders. The Torians seem to have finally hit a wall between battling the Arceans, Drath and Krynn, so I might get a lucky reprieve there if one of those manage to take out the Torian ascension starbase before too much longer. Given my druthers, I’d like to wait until I can produce some battleships and unleash those on the Krynn, who seem to be pretty much making heavy fighters and frigates, but I may have to use my cruiser fleets and hope for the best.
