). Special thanks to my ally the Robots, without whom I would have become lunch meat for the privateer. And of course a round of =D> for our gracious hosts for setting up such an excellent game!Here is my report, as usual told from my point of view.
Turn 1: Ah now I know why they call it the pit. Well that changes my strategy by a lot… Let’s announce myself first as the Benign Empire, and welcome all other races into my reign. Just to make sure everyone knows we are peaceful by nature. Ok done, so here is my plan:
1: Find out who is where (duh) as soon as possible.
2: Determine strategy based on the neighbors.
3: Focus on expansion in home cluster and on building bases.
4: Try to find some nice center worlds to build a landing platform.
Fleet: 1 SDSF, 1 RU25
Turn 10: Meh, Klingons to the left. And they’ve started spamming their cruddy missiles. Those hooligans obviously have never heard about environmental friendly space expansion. Guess it will be up to the Benign Empire to educate them. Hmmm, how about I just build my own little missiles to fight back.
New strategy, build a large amount of Moscow and jump 350 ly to destroy his fleet and bases all at once. Build bases to get fighters for the Moscow. Build Super Star Carriers to have unlimited funds.
Dropped from game: Lizard, Rebel, Colonies, guess they didn’t like the game setup?
Fleet: 1 SDSF, 1 RU25, 1 NFC, 3 LDSF, 7 Moscow, 1 SSF, 1 SSC, 3 PL21
Turn 20: My probes have been active and have scanned the universe. To my right I have the Robot. Not very interesting. Could be a tough opponent, could be a weak opponent, not sure.
After that we have the privateer. I hate the privateer! With my Mark4 SSF I will have a hell of a time protecting my fleet. Fortunately for now, they are not coming my way. They are very active in the center so I change my strategy there. Find all native world in the center that I can, drop 1 clan, tax down to 31% happiness, next turn tax 100%. That should at least slow him down considerably.
The Klingon have been bombarding my worlds with cruddy missiles, but my fleet is almost ready to destroy him (23 moscow). Let’s see if he’s prepared for it or not.
Fleet: 3 SDSF, 5 RU25, 2 NFC, 6 LDSF, 23 Moscow, 4 SSF, 10 SSC, 13 PL21, 4 SSD, 1 Gorbie, 3 Hros
Turn 30: Gave the Klingon one last chance to ally with me, but he is already allied with the Privateer, so I continue with operation “Up yours”. Assault on the Klingons worked like a charm. I lost 4 Moscow in the attack, but managed to destroy: 4 starbases, 2 Deth, 1 D7, 1 SDSF, 6 D19b, 1 MDSF, 3 LDSF, 1 NFC, 1 B200 and 1 Viccy. After that, no more cruddy missiles came flying my way. I jumped back my Moscow to rearmed them with fighters. I also contacted the Robot, and allied with them, because I don’t want to face the Klingon privateer combo by myself.
Note that the combo Robot Empire with Jupiter addon is extremely strong. Unlimited minefields (x4) due to unlimited money from SSC. Viral fields to safeguard anything. SSD to take over enemy bases. Gorbie as strongest ship in the game + capturing ships. Unlimited knowledge of opponents. Moscow to resupply fighters to forward ships. Unlimited free fighters.
Fleet: 1 SDSF, 6 RU25, 1 NFC, 6 LDSF, 22 Moscow, 4 SSF, 11 SSC, 9 PL21, 5 SSD, 2 Gorbie, 3 Hros, 1 MDSF, 1 Deth, 1 B200, 1 Falcon
Turn 40: Slowly conquering the Klingon region. Borg is coming up from the left now. Seems he would also like to have a bit of Klingon space after all my hard work. I don’t think so! Privateer has made their move and managed to run off with one of my Gorbie
, but at least I managed to grab one MCBR back during its abduction. Privateer did not use his cloak tow ability, not sure why not, so he lost an additional MCBR. Fortunately, the Robot has now arrived and by giving him my minelayers we are slowly building up my protection. A cybernaut is en route to lock is down further. My ally has started his invasion of the privateer home cluster. The privateer seems to have trouble finding a way to deal with the cybernaut, so for now is just putting up minefields to slow the advance. I start sending over 10.000MC per turn to the robot to fund his minelaying efforts. I’ve also been giving him a lot of Moscow to enable him to teleport over materials and clans and gave him a bunch of SSD to capture privateer bases. It’s too risky for me to use them in Klingon space for now; I don’t want to lose a single one to the privateer.Fleet: 2 RU25, 1 NFC, 6 LDSF, 14 Moscow, 12 SSC, 7 PL21, 2 SSD, 2 Gorbie, 3 Hros, 1 MDSF, 1 Deth, 1 B200, 1 D7, 1 MCBR
Turn 50: Nothing much exciting happened. Slowly continue to advance into Klingon territory. Small robot minelaying to protect my ships, but not secure enough yet to use SSD. Robot is not getting any further into Privateer territory due to abundance of minefields and interdiction fields. But we’ve started prepping an additional invasion force to move into the center. Gave my MCBR to the robot to help out in his invasion force. Finalized building my first Antimatter Launcher. Which will help get rid of interdiction fields.
Fleet: 1 RU25, 1 NFC, 7 LDSF, 12 Moscow, 12 SSC, 7 PL21, 0 SSD, 5 Gorbie, 3 Hros, 1 MDSF, 0 B200, 1 D7
Antimatter Missile Launchers: 1
Turn 60: Moved 3 Gorbie over to Klingon territory. Enough minefields there now to protect them. Used them to scoop up some leftover Klingon D7a which were hiding out in the warp well. Will try to grab some Firecloud from the Borg, could come in handy. Robot has a second viral field in privateer space. The invasion is slowly picking up speed. We’ve also landed in the center and slowly move forward there. Busy with expansion, building bases and gathering resources for building Antimatter launchers.
Fleet: 1SDSF, 1 RU25, 1 NFC, 8 LDSF, 8 Moscow, 12 SSC, 8 PL21, 0 SSD, 6 Gorbie, 3 Hros, 1 MDSF, 0 B200, 1 D7, 4 D7a
Antimatter Missile Launchers: 1
Turn 70: Ooh boy, game is getting slow. Privateer seems to have given up trying to resist us and is just laying mines. Guess he didn’t think of any anti-viral-field tactics. So we’ll just slow (very slowly even) continue to invade his worlds. Managed to drive the Cyborg from Klingon space. Managed to grab 3 Firecloud and hoping to grab once more to be able to jump back and forth between two fronts.
Fleet: 0 SDSF, 1 RU25, 1 NFC, 8 LDSF, 8 Moscow, 12 SSC, 5 PL21, 2 SSD, 6 Gorbie, 3 Hros, 1 B200, 1 D7, 3 D7a, 3 FCC, 1 Quietus, 1 Cyber
Antimatter Missile Launchers: 2
Turn 80: Did I mention slow? We are literally crawling forward. Sure we run no risk of resistance, but the rate of assimilation is boring. Firing antimatter missiles at interdiction fields and building more launchers. Don’t think there is any way we can lose this game. Privateer and Klingon have invaded Borg space, Borg is dying. So it’s time for me to move into Borg space to chase out the Priv/Klingon combo. We’ve added another front in the centre to try and speed up the assimilation of the universe. Lost 2 SSD which were set to enemy privateer while flying to one of their bases, slowing us down further… Managed to grab a fourth FCC.
Fleet: 2 SDSF, 0 RU25, 1 NFC, 8 LDSF, 8 Moscow, 1 SSF, 12 SSC, 5 PL21, 1 SSD, 6 Gorbie, 3 Hros, 1 B200, 4 FCC, 1 Cyber
Antimatter Missile Launchers: 2
Turn 90: Privateer cluster is almost done. Slowly pushing into the center from 3 points. Invading Borg home cluster, who by now has left the game. Build 7 more launchers and more are on the way. Fed finished a launcher. He has been fighting the bird solo 1-on-1 for most part of the game. We promised him not to blow it up for now.
Fleet: 3 SDSF, 1 RU25, 1 NFC, 7 LDSF, 10 Moscow, 1 SSF, 12 SSC, 8 PL21, 1 SSD, 6 Gorbie, 2 Hros, 3 B200, 1 MCBR, 4 FCC, 1 Merlin
Antimatter Missile Launchers: 9
Turn 100: Repeat previous message, make use of terms: slow, invade and antimatter building. Nothing much to report. Bird dropped finally after losing to the Fed. Crystal decided to build 2 antimatter launchers, but our missiles are already on their way to those two locations. We will not allow anyone else to build launchers.
Fleet: 3 SDSF, 0 RU25, 1 NFC, 7 LDSF, 10 Moscow, 0 SSF, 12 SSC, 7 PL21, 2 SSD, 6 Gorbie, 4 B200, 0 MCBR, 4 FCC, 2 Merlin
Antimatter Missile Launchers: 17
Turn 104: Game over. Crystal has requested we stop playing. Privateer and Klingon dropped out and the Q took over. Suddenly, we are actually getting resistance from the Privateer. Looks like the Q is immune to viral fields . However, attacking Gorbie with MCBR is not really the best strategy possible. At least it freed up some space to build more Gorbies for the score…
Fleet: 3 SDSF, 1 NFC, 7 LDSF, 10 Moscow, 12 SSC, 7 PL21, 2 SSD, 11 Gorbie, 5 B200, 2 MCBR, 4 FCC, 2 Merlin
Antimatter Missile Launchers: 20
Final score from VPA to show the ships and planets.
General game notes:
Bird and Fed have been fighting their own war the entire game. Finally won by the Fed after a long time. Crystal we never really encountered. Lizard, Rebel and Colonies dropped within minutes after starting the game. Cyborg managed to hang on for a long time, but finally got eaten by us and the Priv/Klingon combo. After turn 40 or so, the top part of the map was never updated, as I didn’t resend probes there. But if the Crystal/Fed want to send me their final turn, I’ll add an updated shot of the universe.