Ohhh....i love the "i hate you" speech! Your game has a mind of its own, the Drengin should prove to give you some hairy moments!

Hopefully, they'll present a challenge.  

I was zooming over to start up with the Korx and noticed something missing.  The Krynn aren't there anymore.  In fact, I own Kryseth.  It was in the Drath area during that war and it must have been taken by the Drath before I got it.  I was so caught up with the war, I didn't notice that they were wiped out.  Kinda strange, since they looked like the 2nd strongest AI next to the Drengin not long ago.

The Korx have ships that look like the old Drath ones.  Heavy armor and guns, but little else.  The numbers are higher, since they have huge hulls and better miniaturization tech, but the configuration isn't going to hold up against my newly upgraded Beam Ships.

My influence is taking Drengin planets now too.  That should be enough to push them over the edge before long.  If they don't declare on me, I'll save them for last.  

My current game; playing Yor (why???), on Masochistic, Gigantic map, all-abundant, loose clusters, rare events.

This is my first Masochistic game, so I was pleased to read recently that it's a big step up from Painful. Wonderful. I've been playing immense maps, but it's just too much, too long, and the mopping up takes forever. And it's been ages since I played Yor. I'm using Tolmekian's tech-tree mod.

I started out on a decent homeworld, with a 200% production square, in the central-west portion of the map, with the Thalan menace to the north, the obnoxious Kynn to my immediate south and the cute-but-menacing Torians stuck in the southwest corner behind the Krynn. The poison-sucking Korath in the southeast, the pathelic loser Korx in the north-center, and the cute-but-evil Drengin in the northeast completed the roll of AI opponents. This being my first Maso game and with me suffering from what appears to be a constitutional aversion to extreme development strategies, I'm playing dirty, with full on tech-sex-worker-tactics and corruption of the enemy's governmental procurement committees and everything.

So, I thought it was going pretty well; I got off the mark, colonizing my local space, researching my little head off, selecting the 'evil' option each time one came up 'cause, hey, evil robots, right? 'What is this 'mercy' of which you speak, protoplasmic contaminant? Eat hot photons and die -- and, ha-ha, I don't. Die, I mean. Oh, forget it ~~zap~~'

I've also got the megalomaniac evil-robot-talking-too-much disorder.

Boy, the AIs sure do colonize like lightning now. Well, except for the Dreng and Korx. I could've sworn I changed all those AI assignments.

But, by ripping their latest warships off; 'Yes, Krynn-senator Robertson, the Thalans really are depraved infant-molesting alien commies; we don't call 'em the Pink menace for nothing on Iconia, let me tell you. Twenty Heavy Fighters? Yes, that'd help us keep the Pink Menace from your border-worlds." "High Tech-Lord Thalron, I think you should know that the Krynn missionaries have infiltrated our cybernetworks, and our baby nanochips are just eating up the doctrine that we were all created twenty-five years ago by the Disney Co. from animatronic parts and that anyone who says otherwise, especially if they claim to be from the future, is evil and should be 'purified'. We think that purification probably involves nuclear fusion, but we're not sure yet, we haven't gotten to that chapter in the book. A trillion credits and twenty Thalan Defenders? Well, we can't guarantee anything, but we'll try."; I've managed to maintain my space, and I managed to grab colony nucleus worlds from the Korx and Korath, and some careful under-the-table payments delivered in some of the seedier fighting-pits has transferred substantial numbers of their warships to me too.

The shipyards are just waiting to take all that metal and circuitry and convert it into colony ships and new citizens to man 'em.  If only I could just get anough money to pay the rapacious grasping damned cyborg construction companies, who, suspiciously, have allied with other galactic entities and are charging me, not an arm and a leg -- hey, they're replaceable -- but hard credits, which are a lot harder to come by. When I rule the galaxy they're the first ones into the quantum converter. For some inexplicable reason, the opposing powers, even the pathetic bootheel chewing-gum-spot minors, won't talk to me more than once every two months so I can rip off their money. Can't imagine why, I've got diplomatic translators so I'm charming as anything.

So right now the game's a bit iffy. For some strange reason (innocent whistling) the Krynn and Torians are in a death-struggle; the Torians have invasion techs, the Krynn don't, and they come whining to me once a month, but it hasn't stopped them expanding into the central cluster that's clearly future Yor space. I don't want the fecund damn bunnies on my doorstep, so I occasionally toss the Krynn a defensive 'tech. Good thing I've got surrenders turned off.  The Korath, oddly enough, declared war on the Thalans, not that it's done much good, I doubt their ships can even reach that far, and the Pink Menace is expanding like, well, a menace. I couldn't con the Dreng and Korx into attacking anyone, and nobody wants to attack them; probably because they're so pathetic it'd be embarassing.

I had to turn my production rate down to 75%, but I'm running a slight surplus at that; and the next diplomatic turn I'm going to have enough money to convert a dozen more colony ships, plus it's treaty-time, and the minors had better cough up or else. I've got more advanced trade centers and efficiency matrices coming online too.

Then I think I'm going to blow up the happiness-mining starbase the perfidious Paulos stole -- stole -- right from under my constructors' nose -- and let 'em come at me with half the Korath fleet sitting right there. Eat robot death, squashies.

Does anyone know how many Super Dominators, and doesn't that sound like something you'd find in one of their seedier sex-clubs, the Dreng get when you declare on them? They've got a lovely green mining starbase just a parsec away from the Paulos one, and the fleet's going to be right there, and it's an enormous temptation, which my evil cyber-brain doesn't handle well at all. I figure by the time they could even get there to take it back, I can get 'em to declare peace again. Mining starbases are Yor territory, I say. It just makes sense.

To be continued, possibly.

I love the running commentary!! Great stuff!! Plenty of new insults in there for me to use on inanimate objects!

A trick, that i assume still works in TA. Talk to all the AI, inc minors and trade your ass off. Save the game then load that save straight back up. You should now be able to talk to all the AI and minors again, all except for the AI in slot 1. (the  top left AI in the relations screen.) For that AI, you will have to treat with them as per normal, unless you destory them and someone moves into that slot, then it will work.

It's not an exact number. The number of ships they get is based on their Military might. I think, and this may be wrong, it's based on their native mil might, before bonuses, but don't hold me to that. What you want to do is when talking to them, keep asking for outrages things from them, that will get them pissy at you. And also park some ships near a resource of theirs and/or a planet. Make it a transport if you can, doesn't matter if it has only 1 person on board.

they will see that as threatening behavior and will declare on you!

Sounds like a great game mate!! Keep us updated!

---

Well i finished my game.

The Drath and Korx were both my south and were getting annoying. Between them they had maybe 70 or so planets, but with my superior ship speed, that was nothing. After about three turns they both feel to me, giving me two more Shrinkers...don't mind of i do!!!

All that remained was the Yor and the Altarians.

By now, i had payed off all leases, and each planet was pretty much built out. I had an IS on each planet to assit in completing them along with one Farm III (two on the class 16's and above) and a one VR center. My econ was about 300K per turn, and with nothing to do with it and those two new shrinkers, i felt an upgrade coming on.

The AI still had not countered my missile attack, still focusing entirely on beam att/def, so i stripped my att down on both my large and huge hulled ships and increased the engines on them, and my transports.

I now had 50sp ships, all classes, and the att/def of my huge hulls was about 250/650. I could have went much lower on the attack, since they had no defense, but the Altarians had plenty of ships, and i didn't want any surprises.

I turned my powerful econ to building ships. In just one turn i produced about 130 transports, far more than i needed. Ahh AI unused starport production, we do love thee.

So, just two turns later, both races fell to me. My ship speed allowed me to hit them at will, and when facing beam ships with 130/1100 att/def, it was a slaughter.



Next for me? A TA game, still undecided what thought. Perhaps a terran diplo/influence game and conquer everyone without firing a shot.

  My current DA metaverse game;  can't win through peaceful (except after war ) means...

  Gigantic galaxy;  few stars and average habitable planets;  Altarian Resistance (Super Diplomat,  pacifists party);  9 races and 8 minor races;  crippling difficulty. 

  The Jagged Knife took over some planets,  including one of mine with my tech capital.  I conquered most of their nearby planets,  then negotiated peace for all their techs (a recent strategy I aim for with them):

  That was better than a "share techs" vote by the United Planets.

  Later,  the Arceans had a megaevent which I have never seen before:  the "Free Arceans" minor race took over about half their planets.  Soon after that came the plague megaevent,  so their soldiering ability (and apparantly their shipbuilding ability) was zero.  A new tech with every invasion;  one was Doom Ray,  so I could leave weapons research.

  This was all early in the game where any small changes are the difference between being a "weak member of the galaxy" and being "the magical Altarian Resistance";  and "having me for dinner" being me as the dinner,  or me as a diner.

 (btw I also had the spies on every planet megaevent).

EDIT (27Feb2012):  later,  2 assassination-during-meeting-and-they-blame-us megaevents,  fairly close to each other.  I've never had so many megaevents in one game.

Wow, thats alot of events to deal with! I didn't get one in my last game....

I'm hoping in my next game, which is TA, i will get some more....

Hi everyone.

Just thought I'd check in to say that things are progressing fairly well in my current game. I've met 4 of my 6 opponents so far. The colony rush is going quite well with a few decent planets grabbed in the process.

Zoomed up to Xeno Ethics ---> Good and Evil (evil of course) ---> Concepts of Malice and rush bought the MCC!

I'm now trying to get my economy going as I took a big hit rush buying and I'm not in the green yet but I think that's normal for this stage if I'm not mistaken. I've acquired a few resources mines (morale, econ and influence) so that should help, especially the morale resource so that I can slowly start to increase my taxes. I'm researching Xeno Trade Centres now.

Both Diplomatic Translators and Harmony Crystals are nearly complete and I'm leading in population and influence so far but I'm a little worried that my research is lagging behind all others.

The Yor were the first to build any kind of military so I shouldn't allow myself to fall too far behind in that department and If I do maybe I'll go for the SCC sooner than planned... we'll see.

The only competition so far is coming from the Altarians (ranked 3rd), so that means it's probably the Thalans who might be the biggest threat down the road and if the mini map is any indication, they are all by themselves on the other side of the map but occupying a good portion of it (purple blob) so they are probably in 2nd place. The Drengin seem like they occupy only a small section of the map. The only two opponents I have yet to make contact with.

So far relations are warm, friendly, neutral.

I really enjoy reading everybody's progress, they show a wide spectrum of game experiences!

Yup, gotta get after the,, the Morale ones especially. I find if going All Lab, that the research ones are not worth it, i go for the yellow ones straight away. Yellow and green are worth going to war for!!


Couldn't agree more! sharing straight up games has inspired me to play a few different styles i would not have thought of.


I have decided on my new game, but cannot start it yet due to a TA snafu with Stardock/Impulse...(headache!). I was inspired by  artxian's game which reminded me of a game style in the ANNO series called continuous.

My goal will be to live in peace with all 9 AI for as long as i can, and to try and just make my empire, whatever size it may be, reach every potential maximum i can. I'll leave all winning conditions on and try and see if i can gain an alliance with everyone, but will let the game go in what ever direction it sees fit.

I'll post about it in detail when i can actually start it.

Come to think of it, "continuous" games like this are pretty much how I play all the time, although I don't always try to be particularly peaceful.

ugh...i hate it when i don't catch a typo till i have been quoted. Sorry qrtxian..


Yeah i can see the potential in a game with ever changing alliances and wars as well!! I will do something like that too, i just don't think i have ever played a peaceful game, except in one of the rounds of the MVL perhaps.

LOL.  I feel your pain.    

 

Good game, Neilo!  Nice score too!  I'm looking forward to hearing about your TA game.  I'm not quite ready to delve into TA yet, but maybe one day...

 

I'm not familiar with that one.  A mega event perhaps?  Sounds like an interesting twist.

 

I like it too.  Seeing games from others' perspectives can be quite entertaining.    

 

My game ended shortly after the Drengin saw it befitting to declare war on me.  Their fleets were stronger than my two warships, but I outran them and attacked at their weak points until their economy couldn't maintain their military.  I then fleeted my two ships together with some empty hulls and sacrificed both of my veteran ships.  All good things must come to an end after all.  

Not a bad score in the end either...

Just under 400K with just two ships??? Wow, makes our old mumblers with thousands of ships not really worth all that effort.
Great game mate! I'm still waiting on Impulse to sort out my TA reg info....i don't like being the slave to two masters,  you would thinkg i'm either a SD customer or a Gamestop customer but somehow i have been split in two and distributed to my masters...

I cannot wait to give Impulse the single finger salute..hurry up SD with the new SDC!

As a bit of an update, I can now say that I'm definitely going to (at some point) make a full-fledged AAR of that Torian game I mentioned even if it kills me - which at 15 years and counting, it just might. So far, we've had:

• Allies becoming enemies and vice-versa
• Invading Dread Lords - that actually posed a threat!
• Minor races saving the day
• Terror Stars
• A duel between two Precursor Rangers (and their escort ships)

And, of course, the whole fifteen-year thing in the first place. A game like this has to be told.

I just need to finish the one I'm currently writing up first...

My Yor game is finishing up; by maintaining both a military and diplomatic edge, and getting extreme colonization techs first, I covered the map in evil purple goo; then went evil and rush-bought the MCC.  It's taken about three months, but the enemy empires have just melted away; I was only at war with the Thalans at the time, and only they and the Torians remain, with their two worlds stuck off in the corner.  

As a result, instead of well-organized enemy empires to fight and crush into squashy, organic oblivion, I've suddenly got an entire galaxy swarming with friggin' pirates; over 1500 pirate ships swarming everywhere.  I've already lost one poorly-defended mining starbase, with others at risk.  My battlefleets were all in the northwest fighting the Thalans; when the Korath and Krynn collapsed, their battlefleets, spread all over -- you guessed it -- the southeast, went pirate and are swarming in all directions.  No existential threat, but an unbelievable annoyance.  

I've got my first four transports on the way to the Torian enclave; then two more will take the Carinoid homeworld, which is all that keeps the last two Thalan planets from defecting.  But all that will take a couple months transit time, meanwhile I'll be mopping up pirates as they beat the robotic daylights out of my miner and constructor and survey fleets.  

My game playing the Terrans is going very well. I have gained 75% influence over the entire galaxy (immense) with less than 10 turns to go before an influence/cultural victory is declared but "it ain't over till the fat lady sings" as the saying goes.

Building the MCC early helped a little I think but that thing is so dang unpredictable at times as far as planet flipping goes. At this point I can't really tell whether it's doing the job or because I have almost all of the diplo/influence techs researched. I'm guessing it's a little of both.

I hardly needed to colonize aggressively, instead I just used my humongous influence points to acquire newly colonized planets from the others each and every time I contacted them (a little cheesy maybe). The trick is in getting the population up and running quickly on those new worlds. The "Recruiting Centers" really help in this regard as well as keeping approval at around 76% or 100% for pop. growth if I understand this correctly.

I was worried at some point because I had neglected to build a decent navy with only a few cheap laser/cargo hulls at my disposal, so I thought I would need to build the SCC as soon as possible in order to artificially boost my military rating (ward off the bullies). Well, with only 10 or 9 turns to go, I don't think it's necessary at this point and near the tail end of any game I don't think it would count very much towards improving my military score very much from what I understand but someone correct if I'm wrong on this one.

Out of the six A.I. players, relations boil down to: three are warm-friendly and three are close (possible alliance). Oh, and I had them all warring with each other very early on in the game which probably drained their finances considerably I would think.

A lot of things never got researched and as I see it, they never will eg. no advanced hulls, no advanced colonization, no advanced miniaturization, etc. I'm not even sure what I should research next that would make any difference at this point.

A good game this one, albeit a little dull compared to many of the other players' more interesting games that I have been reading about here, but I guess that's to be expected from this type of victory (read bloodless).

Nice games guys!

Particle, i think the 100% only works with Super Breeder. Other than that, and not including any other improvements or bonuses, if your green, your getting good growth. SoleSoul will know the exact math though, i'd have to look it up.

As for the mil score, this late in the game, i'd doubt it would even register at all. I say if you don't need them, don't worry about them!!

I see you guys playing on GIgantic with everything abundant. Hell that's way to big for me.

 

I prefer my games smaller. LAst time I played it's been months I was on a small map with 9 AI and full minors.

It's really crowded and the fights come to you quite fast. I think I will start one tonight and let you guys know how it turned out.

 

It was fun reading you guys. Keep them coming.

Please do! I'd love to hear how that would turn out. I've been keen on doing a small map with all AI for some time. I think  it will be very intense!
Looking forward to seeing how your game turns out!

 

Thanks for that info Neilo. Green = Fertile. I have yet to play as the Torians, so I will definitely keep that 100% approval rate in mind when I give them a go.

Ya, I was afraid of that, oh well. I think I do recall a discussion way back when that explains that overall score is determined more by getting and maintaining a lead early rather than in late game, more front heavy. It could very well have been Mumble that brought this up (hope I'm crediting the right person... apologies if I'm wrong).

Finally got around to reading this thread. Quite interesting what you guys have going here. Too bad, that I have nothing to contribute. Haven't played a proper game in month. Been too busy, working on my mod.

Now, that's a surprise. I didn't expect to find someone, using the same playstyle I use.


IIRC, if your approval is in the green, your pop-growth gets a 25% bonus. If your approval is at 100%, your pop-growth doubles. That's how it works for all races. Super Breeder, on the other hand, only works at 100% approval and increases your pop-growth by 7x or 8x times. Haven't played the Torians for some time, so I'm not quite certain on the number. In any case, your planets will quickly have max population, if you manage 100% approval.

1) Breeder gets an additional 4x multiplier only at 100% for a total of 8x, whereas normal races get 2x at 100%.
2) 100% is 2x, 76% is 1.25x, 41% is 1x, and 20% is zero growth, from memory.
3) Correct; it was Mumble who pointed out that score is front-end loaded.  It's possible someone else stated so before him, but if so that was before my time.

Thanks for the math guys!

If it wasn't mumble who figured out about mil score it would have been Purge or Mag, but i too think it was Mumble.

@Gaunathor thats ok mate, as long as others are enjoying reading about everyone's games too!!

Glad to hear that. I'm currently preparing for a re-installation of my system, so modding is on hold. After that is done, and the research part of my mod is back on track, I'm going to do an exhaustive (immense size, all abundant, tight clusters) test game. AI vs AI tests are fine for quickly tweaking the research pattern for the AI. But only a real game can show possible balancing problems. Not sure yet about the race, however. Probably the Yor. They are my favorites.

Sounds great! I love the Yor. From lore standpoint, the yoy are probably my favorite race!