Diplomacy is Fun! a mini AAR

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EricLarsen -> Diplomacy is Fun! a mini AAR (1/14/2003 12:01:33 AM)
Over the weekend I got into my first real game where I finally had some of the basics down and could start to play semi-intelligently. I got into a 150 star galaxy and finally I wasn't stuck in the middle again. I got this universe with lots of small galaxies clustered around. I was in the northern end in a small galaxy with another small one to my left and a little more north of me. To the center was a big galaxy with others clustered around it. So I set off to play the opening easter egg hunt part of the game and was pleasantly surprised not to find anyone in that small galaxy to my upper left. As a test of communicating with pirates I tried 3 different tests of the communication and found that it would give me info on neighboring alien races. I saw two mean ones that were close to me and then it told me about the Somu who had the same philosophy and were just on the other side of the two meanie alien races. I decided it was too early for first contact so I went back and then just got a little target practice in as I blew up the pirate. After I got all my stars explored in my two little galaxies I decided it was time to make first contact. The first pirate I next encountered told me about the Somu. I had watched in earlier games as the Somu always seemed to be the first race to disappear, I couldn't tell if they were conquered or somehow diplomatically taken over but I decided I wanted to find them and try to coerce them before someone else did. So I had fun spending money on making them my friends, and then my allies. I ended up giving them a wormhole system they had coveted just after it went "contested" by some other alien race. That way I didn't have to protect it and I knew I'd get it back after I got them into my fold. ;) Sure enough after some wheeling and dealing and lots of cash donations I managed to get the Somu into my camp. At the time I had a mere 2 world relics and knew I'd never get past the Fusion Age. The Somu also had 2, and then 3 just before I got them, world relics and then I knew I had enough to get to the singularity age. With the successful diplomatic takeover of the Somu I was now able to really crank up the production and research. I blew past everyone getting to the antimatter age and after finally getting the dope on all the alien races I discovered there was an extreme shortage of world relics. Several combined races only have 1 world relic and are perpetually stuck in the atomic age. some have 2 and are in the fusion age and 1 combined race has 3 and is in the antinmatter age. After deciding to save cash to build my cruiser fleet with and not wasting it on two timing aliens like the Mirrsh, I discovered that the aliens started to pick on me. After trying to get them over to my side with gifts and giving them a star system I discovered that no amount of bribery would work on them as they always slid back in their liking of me. I had lots of fun blowing up freighter routes and then the alins decided to attack one of my worlds. I had it protected with some frigates and gunboats and won the first incursion. But before I could get my surviving frigate repaired and more ships to the scene my system was attacked yet again and I ended up losing it and all the resource systems hooked to it. But I took down some alien ships in the process so it wasn't a total loss when I discovered that some of my ships had the dumbest crew compositions where they had no engineers so then I decided to change every ship's crew composition to my own choosing. Then for a while the aliens got the message to stop picking on the mean human and I had some peace. One thing that's been fun is discovering the joys of spying. After getting whacked many times by cash thefts I finally started to get involved in the spy business myself. One smart thing the AI aliens do early on is to start spying on you and taking your money. The really big hurt isn't on your cash reserves but on the fact that now you have to spend considerable population on security. I discovered that the alien AI's are also lax on their security until you start spying on them and taking some of their cash or sabotaging some component. I got all 3 of my spies on the Mirrsh worlds eliminated quickly because they were quick to repsondf to my spy activities. But I got the satisfaction of knowing they had just reassigned huge numbers of their population to security and they weren't researching or producing anymore. I also found that they were after my wisdom artifacts and finally had to pump up my security on sol to 75% before the spies started getting caught. Another lesson I learned this game was about funding pirates. Before I had been funding pirates against aliens and seemed perpetually plagued by them myself. In this game I didn't do any funding of pirates and saw little pirate activity early on. Only now that the aliens have little else they can do against me have they resorted to funding pirates against me. The other thing is not to let too many pirates go. Talk to them if you really need to get the dope on some alien race, but eliminate them whenever possible. If you don't kill them the system they were raiding will still show as being raided and after a long wait they'll be back and you then have to go out and kill them. It's almost as if funding pirates is a two-edged sword that cuts both ways, against the aliens and against you. It also seems that if you fund them they get better stuff and all you end up doing is arming one of your foes with better weapons. After getting 4 cruisers built and ready to fight with 100% combat efficiency artifacts I found on the Somu homeworld and found in debris the war started up again. This time I was more prepared to defend all of my worlds and had a nice big fighting fleet. I then decided to go after the biggest baddest aliens first, the Gimpata, and their homeworld. It was located on Altair and that is located on the northeastern part of the big galaxy, very close to my sol. I sent my cruisers in to detach all of Altair's freighter routes and then the Gimapata call up to talk with me. They ask to end the war and I refuse. A little while later they call back and this time I tell them I prefer the staus quo, war, right now. Now I've got Altair all disconnected from the rest of their empire which is way down south and ripe for the pickings. I'm just getting another cruiser ready and should be able to get them all united into a fleet to then attack the Altair homeworld. First I intend to just go in and destroy any survivng ships, I know one gunboat or frigate got shot up defending one of the resource routes and had to go back for repairs. After I shoot up the system, destroy any ships and the spacedock, and take down the planetary defenses a good bit I'll leave and head back to reconfigure the ships for a conquest of the world with assault pods. I wonder if I'll find that planet killer some lucky race found. :D Eric Larsen

Digital Age -> Re: Diplomacy is Fun! a mini AAR (1/14/2003 2:27:20 AM)
[QUOTE]Originally posted by EricLarsen [B] ... I discovered there was an extreme shortage of world relics. Several combined races only have 1 world relic and are perpetually stuck in the atomic age. some have 2 and are in the fusion age and 1 combined race has 3 and is in the antinmatter age. ... One thing the AI aliens do early on is to start spying on you and taking your money. ... I also found that they were after my wisdom artifacts and finally had to pump up my security on sol to 75% before the spies started getting caught. Eric Larsen [/B][/QUOTE] You've got a trail of clues there that lead to a powerful strategy that, in my opinion, exploits a minor flaw in the game. Early on one of the best investments you can make is in spies. Start stealing wisdom artifacts as early as possible. It appears that the game tries to prevent "steal wisdom" missions when you end up with more than the target race. So simply load them up into a ship and they suddenly don't count (and they can't be stolen either). More often than not if you act quickly enough you can keep every other race out of the anti-matter age and the game becomes a cake walk. I've reliably done this a half dozen times in intermediate games and have begun to try it out on advanced to see if it still applies. About the only thing you need to worry about is keeping the races from federating or conquering each other until you strip enough wisdom so that even between them they can't get to the AM age and the vitally important Multiphasic shielding. In the last (intermediate/6 other races/100 star galaxy) game I pulled this stunt I was able to take all 13 Wisdom in the game before taking on any race in direct combat. At the end I captured 100% of the planets and only lost 1 gunboat (early on to a tough pirate) and 1 destroyer (due to a mistaken order that sent it alone against a homeworld instead of the whole fleet it was assigned to) the entire game. Frankly, I'm starting to feel this is a bit cheezy. Ideally the routine that prevents "steal wisdom" would count artifacts on board ships as well as planets, or the game could even prevent wisdom from being transported at all after "installation". Still, until Andrew changes the game it is far too powerful a strategy to ignore. D.

EricLarsen -> Stealing wisdom aritifacts (1/14/2003 5:34:54 AM)
Originally posted by Digital Age [B]Frankly, I'm starting to feel this is a bit cheezy. Ideally the routine that prevents "steal wisdom" would count artifacts on board ships as well as planets, or the game could even prevent wisdom from being transported at all after "installation". Still, until Andrew changes the game it is far too powerful a strategy to ignore. D. [/B] Digital Age, An interesting ploy you discovered there. I haven't gotten near as many games under my belt yet. But I don't like the idea of cheating with the wisdom aritifacts the way you discovered. I did discover how to "relocate" wisdom artifacts from a federated world to my homeworld in that game but hadn't considered leaving them on a ship to be safe. I would certainly not like to discover that after getting to some age that I could then pick up the wisdom artifacts that got me there and put them on a ship to keep them from being stolen by spies. I would hope that once an aritifact is "used" to help get you to a new age that it has to stay there permanently and can not be moved by the player. I guess as long as you put enough spy effort into stealing them before the AI aliens pump up their security that it's worth the effort. But I can only think of how boring your games have been because you abused this line of gameplay. No wonder you haven't lost many ships when you cheat yourself out of worthy aliens to fight. Once you've stolen all the wisdom artifacts your game is basically over and so is your fun. I would rather see wisdom artifacts become "used" in the building of a new age laboratory so that after they've been used to help a player reach a new age they disappear from the game. That way only unused wisdom artifacts could be stolen, which would make them more valuable as a spy mission. I wonder what would happen if you got to some age and then lost some wisdom artifacts that would bring your wisdom artifact total below the necessary total for that age? Does the game dumb you down or once you've reached an age you're always there? I wonder what would happen to a player if they lost their homeworld where their wisdom artifacts and age laboratories were built? I don't know but I'm soon going to find out when I capture Altair, the Gimpata homeworld. Maybe there should be some separate ship mission for transferring wisdom artifacts from worlds to homeworlds. The only time they can be loaded upon ships would be for a transfer of wisdom artifacts to the homeworld when you get a federation. That way you could move the new wisdom artifacts from your new federated world to your homeworld, but it would be a program-controlled mission that would only make the transfer run to your homeworld and in the quickest time possible so a human couldn't send it sashaying around the galaxy or sitting above the homeworld without accomplishing the actual transfer. I sure hope Andrew sees this and does something to correct this obvious human or AI (heaven forbid that Andrew teaches the AI aliens to pull this stunt on us) cheat. Wisdom artifacts should always have to be on worlds, and the only time they should be on ships is to take them to the homeworld for drop off. I for one will not bother to abuse this sorry cheat so that I don't rob myself of a challenging game with challenging aliens. I think the game's more fun when you're fighting tougher opponents and have to think your way to victory rather than cheat your way to victory.:rolleyes: Eric Larsen

Digital Age -> (1/14/2003 6:45:52 AM)
Eric: Not to worry. I'm in agreement with you. It does make the game terribly predictable. That's why I'm wondering if Andrew will do something in the code about it. For what it's worth the problem still persists at the Advanced level. In the one game at advanced consistently using this approach it went much like the others. Robbed the AI blind, kept most of them at atomic level, except for one which I couldn't find before they went AM. Federated with them after showering them with gelt. I found that another facet of the AI which suffers when this scheme is in effect is they tend to be much more aggressive to you when they see you have a whole lot more Wisdom Artifacts than they do. When you drop down to zero they become meek as lambs. It would be nice if they could keep some sort of high water mark instead of simple levels since a real person wouldn't be fooled much when your 9 or 10 Wisdom artifacts keep disappearing and reappearing. FWIW, I'm actually getting more enjoyment out of stressing the system than playing the game itself under these conditions. Busman's holiday, I guess. D.

EricLarsen -> Fun game (1/14/2003 10:46:52 PM)
Digital Age, I'm glad the AI doesn't do that cheat with the wisdom artifacts. I'm a bit disappointed with the AI handling of spying at the intermediate level. It seems like they only go after money and wisdom artifacts. I'm surprised I haven't seen any sabotage or even more importantly espionage considering the tech lead I've built up now that I'm into the singularity age for the first time. I hope the AI plays better in this respect at the advanced level. I can just imagine that at the advanced level there'll be ven less goodies to hunt around for. I noticed quite a difference in artifact quality and quantity between the beginner and intermediate levels. Eric Larsen

EricLarsen -> Spying is fun! my mini AAR continues... (1/14/2003 11:07:13 PM)
Let's see, I left you all hanging on my next venture in learning the game, attacking worlds. I got my 5 cruisers together at a world close to Altair, the Gimpati homeworld, and sent them off on a fleet mission. They swooped in on an undefended world and made rather short work of the planet's defenses and cities and the Gimpati race. Before I knew it I had blown up all the cities and found 2 more wisdom aritfacts in the rubble. Now I had 7 wisdom aritfacts. Then I decided the Kimshaar federation needed to be taught a lesson so I destroyed Canopus and retrieved yet another wisdom artifact and eliminated another race. The Mirrshi were next and I found yet another wisdom artifact yet failed to eliminate another race. After blowing up 3 worlds closest to my sol I now had a rather long set of freighter routes. I was very busy for a few years as all the star systems came out of turmoil and I beat the aliens to most of the newly available star systems. Then I decided to ahve some fun with the spy game. I watched as the alien security would grow lax, down to about 11-15%, and then I'd turn my spies loose to steal money, techs, or just sabotage some stuff. I'd usually get rather instant results and the aliens would crank up their security. They'd get lax again and I'd spy again. Sometimes their spies would steal some money and now I can usually go into the diplomatic screen and figure out who the culprit was. The spy game sure is lots of fun!:D So now I've got this universe with the Frashkin federation of 3 alien races with 2 wisdom artifacts in the fusion age, the Gimpati federation manned by the Tereks only with 2 wisdom artifacts and in the anti-matter age, and the Kimshaar federation manned by the Kimshaars with 2 wisdom artifacts and in the anti-matter age. I ended up relieving a few of the alien races of their wisdom artifacts after they reached the antimatter age. The Gimpati and Kimshaars were of the Little Endian faith while I'm a Big Endian. The Frashkins are also Big Endians, but not for long. I decide to have a little fun turning up the heat on their unrest. First I start pumping in $100 per year to up their unrest. That get's the ball rolling but it still isn't enough so I pump it up to $200 per year. Now that's more like it as fairly quickly I get their unrest to the 100% level and they switch faiths. Now I've got all 3 alien races on the same page and now I'm waiting to see how long before they band together so they can compete with me and reach the singularity age. Now that I don't really need the wisdom artifacts I'm going to turn down the security at sol and see if they try to steal them. No sticking them on a ship to keep them safe as I want to have some fun watching the aliens scramble. I only had 5 worlds and it is getting tough doing research and production so I started 2 new colonies last night. I just have so many resource systems and need more worlds to produce and research from. The only bummer is that all the really good planets to colonize are all near each other and near some of my already existing worlds. I'm still needing a few more in some of the less inhabited parts of space so I can shorten my resurce routes and have a world nearby to some of the aliens to keep an eye on them and to be able to strike quickly. Geez once I get jump drive everything will be quickly reachable for me.:D So now it's off to work, but tune in for the next exiciting installment.:confused: Eric Larsen

Andrew Ewanchyna -> (1/15/2003 10:45:06 PM)
I've patched the "hording of wisdom artifacts on starships" problem. Thought I did a while back, but noticed I wasn't checking the starships. Take that cheaters!

EricLarsen -> Research is Fun! my mini AAR continues.. (1/15/2003 10:50:08 PM)
I forgot to mention in the last episode that I had found the dreaded planet killer weapon. I got a message that the Gimpati (actually the Tereks since I exterminated the Gimapti homeworld) were attacking one of my systems. So I dispatch a cruiser to take care of biz. After a while my cruiser runs up against their frigate and makes short work of it. It finds an artifact in the rubble and lo and behold it's the mighty planet killer. Whew now to take it back to sol where I place it on a cruiser that's perpetually guarding sol. So I've still got my Three Little Endians all in a row and I'm watching to see if they'll kiss and make up with each other. So far they've basically ignored each other but the Gimpati and Kimshaar seem to be getting a little cozy. They finally ask for peace and I finally give it to them after some rejecting and waiting for bribes to be offered. I've now wiped out the Gimpati and Kimshaar fleets and the Frashkins only have 2. I find one of their gunboats trying to protect one of their freighter routes and blow it away. So now I'm down to finding one lone ship, and it's a scout at that. Should be easy work for my ships. My first encounter with the scout was seeing it attack my frieghter and then the game crashed. I finally caught up to it with one of my cruisers and go to battle. The foolishly brave little scout heads straight for my cruiser, ought to take 1 advanced antimatter standoff and the game's over. My cruiser fires off 3 standoffs and the little scout picks off each one and then shoots this yellow ray of death that toasts my cruiser with one shot.:eek: What the heck was that I wonder and go and reload my last save. After several attempts of finding it and losing to it I see it only has advanced radiation wave and disruptor wave for weapons, but then I finally see it; the scout has the dreaded killer beam. I send two cruisers after it and get one blown up (a brand new unexperienced crew)before the other wipes out the scout but I'm thinking I should be able to do better than that. After several attempts at bettering the score, and hoping I could kill the scout before it uses that dreaded killer beam, I finally end up losing one of my 100% cruisers just so the other one can kill the little scout. I also discovered that little scout had the crack shot and double weapons shots special abilities so no wonder that little scout so unerringly shot down those standoffs of mine. So now here I am in a universe with no ships except mine and the pirates. Even though the AI aliens have money they just aren't building ships. They seem to be spending lavishly on pirates as I'm definitely seeing improved pirates and I haven't spent a dime on them this game. I set up a few more colonies and now have 9 worlds and about 15 ships versus 8 combined worlds and no ships for my alien enemies. I got underground cities in sol and have made it real high tech. I've just been fighting pirates for a while and keep hoping that the three little endians will decide to gang up on me. I had the Frashkins steal a wisdom artifact, which gave them two and they're still in the fusion age almost 800 years into the game!:p I guess when I get my interstellar standoffs I can have some fun taking pot shots at alien cities from the comfort of my living room. Ahh, pushbutton war!:D Stay tuned for the next installment where I should be wrapping it up against the three little endians.:cool: Hopefully I can get my planet killer back on sol and leave it there so no ship carrying it will mutiny (and ofcourse it had to be the one ship carrying the one planet killer that rebelled). Eric Larsen

EricLarsen -> Standoffs are Fun! my mini AAR continues (1/16/2003 11:25:14 PM)
I last left you folks at something of a standstill for my game. I finally dusted the little killer scout that could and I was the only player with ships left. So the aliens started getting smart and they all asked for peace. So now I begin to do some research in earnest as I finish up my weapons lines of advanced conversion beams, advanced singularity standoffs, and advanced repulsor waves. I begin to build underground cities on sol and discover I made a mistake in thinking I could skip the protected and domed cities and just start right at the underground cities. No I had to build each one in succession but I got underground cities on sol with 4 absorbtion shields. Things were pretty calm, just going around blowing up pirates with very incomplete ships. While I noticed some are now sporting singularity generators they're always incomplete when my big bad ships show up and blow them up. I kind of slowed down and researched other stuff first as I didn't want the pirates sporting my new advanced weapons tech too early. Then the Gimpati decide to declare war on me and I find they have built a ship. So I start sending ships out to raid his resource systems hooked to it's homeworld and disconnect them all from that world. I send a destroyer up to Metis which is very, very far from Gimpati space and figure it will only be seeing a freighter to blow up. I get the call that it's about to go into battle and when I look I see this big bad blue Gimpati cruiser waiting for me. Whoops I better not save this now as I may need to go back and rethink this ship posting better.:p So I let the clock run at 10X and my destroyer lets off 3 advanced singularity standoffs and away goes trouble down the drain as the first one to hit blows it out of my sky. Geez whatever was I thinking that that cruiser could be a match for my destroyer!:confused: So now I'm back to being the only alien in the universe with ships except for the pirates. I finally decide to research the interstellar standoff and then build one on sol. To my pleasant surprise I find not one, but two interstellar standoff shots available! :eek: Thankfully I had given sol a double shot weapon artifact and it doubles my interstellar standoff shots. Now if I'd only put in a crack shot on sol it would never miss.:p So I shoot my interstellar standoff twice but I don't get any kind of confirmation and I don't know if I hit and caused some damage, or if the shields absorbed the blow or if I blew up the city I was shooting at. I'll have to keep shooting until something tells me I've gotten a hit or blown up a city. Maybe the game doesn't confirm hits or maybe I'll discover something from my spies. They haven't reposrted anything to me either way about my attack. Then the AI gets sneaky on me and the Gimpati call me up and ask for peace. Late at night and nearly braindead I decide to let them off the hook since I trashed many of their resource routes and didn't want to inflict further damage. Oops, I forgot they're allied with the Mirrshi and I've still got ships raiding in their sectors that all of a sudden become available for reassignment. Oh well back to base and then out to hunt for pirates. Now I'm still waiting to see some more diplomatic action out of the three little endians where they'll decide to band together and we get to teh final confrontation. Probably not going to happen while I've got interstellar standoffs on sol ready to go.:cool: Guess sooner or later I'll have to break some bad news to them that I want to blow them up real bad. Now that I've gotten to the singualrity age my ships are really cool with transdimensional cloaks, jump drives, advanced conversion beams and advanced singularity standoffs. It's really cool to watch my cruisers launch a few standoffs and then cloak and then watch the enemy ship go boom without ever being able to shoot back. Standoffs are like Brylcream, a little dab will do ya!:D They are definitely my favorite weapon as it is a true fire-and-forget weapon that doesn't get confused by cloaks. With their long range they fire off first and then the defender is left scrambling trying to shoot them down before they hit. A few times my ships even go in to blow the defender away with their advanced conversion beams before the standoffs hit. One thing I haven't seen in my game is derelict starships. I apply the proper amount of force to do teh job and ships never survive my attacks, well except for that little killer scout that killed a cruiser but it didn't survive my second cruiser's attack. If you don't want derelicts floating around your star systems use the right weapons to do the destruction job thoroughly.;) Next installment should be more of the same waiting for the aliens to band together like a band of brothers. Hopefully I'll learn more about interstellar standoffs and finally get some confirmation of damage. Eric Larsen

Digital Age -> (1/17/2003 2:02:18 AM)
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Andrew Ewanchyna [B]I've patched the "hording of wisdom artifacts on starships" problem. Thought I did a while back, but noticed I wasn't checking the starships. Take that cheaters! [/B][/QUOTE] Glad to hear it. Is the patch including this fix going to be available soon? D. Additional question added on edit: Also, does this patch merely count WAs so disallow additional thefts and influence AI behavior? I hope it also penalizes or prevents loading them into ships to in order to avoid having to beef up security on planets in order to protect them. In my opinion I think that spies should be able to steal things on ships to discourage this. A spy would just have to make a sufficiently large bribe to convince a crew member to jump ship with the WA. Probably even easier to do than to try and swipe it off a planet. D.

EricLarsen -> Random Events aren't fun! my mini AAR (1/17/2003 10:30:14 PM)
Last night I decided to have some fun with interstellar standoffs. The aliens were all being nice and peaceful so I decided to stir things up by declaring war on the hapless fushion-age Frashkin federation. I used my double-shot IS weapon on sol to attack the Frashkin homeworld's alpha city but saw no kind of feedback as to hits or misses. I then decided to build IS weapons on all of my worlds and then had 10 shots to blow. I fired 2 or 3 at the Gimapti homeworld's alpha city with no feedback and then the rest again at the Frashkin homeworld with no feedback on any of the attacks. I am rather dismayed that we don't get some feedback when we shoot IS weapons. It's rather anticlimactic after spending all that time researching that cool weapon to find it goes pop but we don't know if it hit the weasal. Last night the program was hot and heavy on the random event to have one of my ships rebel and switch sides. I had to keep saving often and restoring each time this dreaded RE happened as I didn't want my high-tech ships switching sides, especially the cruisers. I had one gunboat switch sides and now I wished I'd just let that one happen as I ended up late at night saving over a ship rebelling when I thought it was another ship going into combat message. The autosave put me back 30 years and I'd pretty much considered quitting this game to move on to another without the dreaded RA to ruin my late-game play. I kept trying to get the three little endians to kiss and make up and federate but so far two are allies and one is lone sharking it and they still resist the federation route to gain enough WA to get to the singularity age. I spent some time raiding their resource systems trying to isolate their worlds without any resources and was able to isolate several before my late-night booboo. Tonight I'm going to try another tack, by banding together 5 cruisers and going after each world directly, leaving 2 for pirate duty. I'm also going to build lots of IS weapons and I'm going to time it so I can get a ship in-system while I fire at the planet to see if that helps me to see how IS weapons work or if they hit and if they do damage. Maybe I'll get lucky and find a crack shot artifact on one of the worlds I toast and can then bring it back to sol with the double shot whammy that will never miss.:p Tonight I'll have to be more observant of the messaegs before I save so I don't go losing ships and then having to restore an old autosave. Maybe when I start blowing up their worlds the three little endians will finally decide to band together.;) Eric Larsen

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