Turn Thread for MY2111 thru 2120

[Makahlua]

Miriam?? Now I'm def. sure we should take IndBase next tech round Better to weaken or get rid of the wench before she's trouble

(Anyone else been PB'd by her one too many times? )

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Makahlua
(Anyone else been PB'd by her one too many times? )

That must have been in an alternate universe. She's all smiles in this one - depending on your SE choices, of course (or lack of them, maybe)

I thought of using a Darsnan trick (the CGN January Challenge) and finding an atoll and putting a lurking CP, probe, tranceAAA defender, shard chopper and PB. Would be activated when a human player (or Roze, I guess) passes by an adjacent tile, then next turn, a superbase with a believer PlanetBuster.

But I didn't have the heart to be that cruel to y'all

G.

[foolish_icarus]

geez you people are evil


Do you tell any trick you give out to one faction to the others as well, or do you do "personalized" bits of information?

[Googlie]

Only if it comes up as a point in one of the forums. I have fun pulling the Hive's chain as well

I also rise to the bait when a faction takes the AI too lightly (when I first playtested the game for about 50 turns Roze was so far ahead in tech, military and population that I had to dumb down the AI before releasing the first turn)

A neat trick is to give the AI an energy park with crawlers in place, but you can set them to "lurk" where they don't come into the game until a certain date - say 100 years on - then the AI gets a sudden boost in energy (maybe tripling their lab points)

But then you have to set the crawlers as "objectives" for the humans to capture (or the stupid AI uses them for exploring, with consequent loss to mindworms - or else uses them to rush prototypes)

Then the human players, when they find them, just send in the choppers, so now I put them in bunkers with a photon AAA unit lurking as well, one per crawler (and armor the crawlers too) - result is that the human players lose 3 or 4 choppers for every crawler they take out - really evens the odds.

But I didn't do any of that in this game, as the concensus vote was for a strong AI, not a pushover, but not a contender for transcendence or military victory

G.

[johndmuller]

2118 Turn

The Borg proposed a pact (see this thread).

We founded a new sea base at (54,56), tentatively named "Sealurk Channel" (a variation on one of the suggestions), and the pod at (49,57) was kind enough to give us a free build there (a SeaFormer had been inserted into the queue just in case). The Col Santiago, after popping that pod, went on its way to the NW and rounded the Funny Lookin' Island and found another piece of land just beyond.

The Montezuma's Revenge sailed off toward the NE and spotted another pod, which it popped. This time, instead of generously finishing the SeaProbe (Party Boat) at 'Rita for us, another one of those strange floating masses of insanity appeared, this time with another native life form aboard. With a gleam in his eye and a half empty bottle in his hand, the Cuspidore sailed right into it and gave it what for. This battle was much more costly than before (damage estimate of 70%) and the Revenge will need to lay up quite a few turns to recuperate and refit. We did get the morale upgrade and another 20 PoE's however.

The (Unnamed) Gunship PMS001 sailed further up the channel between Miriam and the CyCon, with no particularly noteworthy discoveries.

The Transport dropped off the new Colony and Liar's Former on the Boot, in preparation for next years settlement.

Liar's finished the Seaformer and started working on a Schooner, and 'Rita got its NetNode and started on the previously mentioned Party Boat. Tripoli finished its mine and moved the Hive ChainGang work crew from the tile next door to work the mine to help speed construction of a new SeaColony Pod. A roadway will be built there to improve productivity. "Rita's former finished foresting its tile and will move on down the bar planting more forests and maybe a Sensor and/or roads as necessary.

The interim file is here; I'll not finish off the play of the turn for another 12 hours or so, unless there is the imfamous stampede of unanimity on the boards.

[Flubber]

AS usual, I can't open the file you zipped on here on my computer at work . . . but I like what you are saying . .

Question . . is a "party boat" a probe foil, as I would like to get a couple of those going ASAP-- No support needed and we can send them exploring with a ship. I would love to garner infiltration on other factions-- For example, we could proberape Miriam-- with impunity if she doesn't have ships yet but lets infiltrate her and find out

I also want us to start exploring more to the west and south. We now know that we have the cycon and believers to the east so colonization in that direction is limited. WE need to figure out whats what in other directions. IIRC we are located to the north of a bunch of islands. I want to get a better sense of the map so we can start picking some defensible points for our empire.

[Flubber]

Note that I looked at the 2117 turn again and we have a surplus of energy. I propose that we commence building 1 to 2 probefoils immediately and rush them as soon as they surpass the 10 min threshold-- The University has a huge tech lead on us based on the powergraphs and finding them and stealing our way up the Ind auto beeline would improve our situation immeasurably

[Makahlua]

*nods to the party boats* The more data we have on the Holy Wench, the better and sooner we can plan an attack Tech stealing is good too!

[johndmuller]

2118 Posted

Since there didn't seem to be any movement to immediately Pact with the Borg nor any specific comments about current turn options, I went ahead and finished the turn as sugested in my previous post. I posted the turn to the Dronzzz and am about to email it to those whose addresses I have. It is essentially the same as the -mid1 file, but I will send the original .zip and the .sav and .zip from the -end version. BTW, Cap'n Maki, I continue to experience bounces from your email address most of the time - do you have a more dependable address?

With respect to rushing a Party Boat from the minimum possible moment, that would mean in 2120 at 'Rita - we would have 13 of 50 with current production of 6, so we would need to rush a minimum of 31 units at the 37-unit-price of 2.85 or 120 PoE's. That's more'n the Cuspidore ordinarily thinks is reasonable, but as always, he will follow the will of the Council. He might even solicit the will of the Council, but if Cap'n Flubber really wants us to do that, he should take the initiative to start a poll and treat us all to many rounds of xenorum and free visits to the rope room to effect the proper atmosphere of interest.

We should think about the potential Pact some more.

It is time to select a new Fleet Operations Cap'n; I plan to step aside following the 2120 turn. If nobody else starts a nominations thread soon, I will; I would think that 10 year terms are about right for this stage of the game, but that is only IMhO, and is also subject to decision (I would point out that one's RL tends to get jerked around a bit by the arbitrary schedule of turns and that the FOC will find that keeping people informed and keeping track of many .sav and .zip files make this a lot more work than a normal PBEM, so burnout can easily occur sooner than one would think.)

Does anyone have any suggestions for Cap'n Flubber's problem with reading my .zip files at his work computer? I assume that he is unable to load an alternate unzipper onto his work machine. If I have time, I will investigate whether there is a newer zipper for me to use that might work better for him - any suggestions there?

I am also about to update the master schedule in the begining of this thread.

[Makahlua]

I just setup a fresh account at my ISP (my default there is dead of spam ) It will take a day to get setup in their system, but after that try xxxmakahlua@earthlink.netxxx

[Googlie]

I am using Ultimate Zip - seems to be compatible with everything else. Get it here

G.

[johndmuller]

2119 Preliminary

Fellow Cap'ns:

This is shaping up as a rather routine turn as far as discoveries and pod events go, but there are a few build decisions to make. The long awaited land base on Morgan's Boot was founded (and tentatively named (Henry) Borgan's Boot). We'll presumably soon find out whether or not it is attached to someone elsee territory, meanwhile, we now have a legitimate stake in it in any case. The only item of interest discovered is another Unity Sea Pod in the East, at (86,64), off an apparent Eastern corner of Borg Island.

As to the build decisions, we got the free SeaFormer at Sealurk Channel, and need another build there and Morgan's Boot needs a build too. The items that I am putting in there (barring Council disapproval) are:
-(Henry) Morgan's Boot - Infantry Former - which I plan to rush to completion;
-Sealurk Channel - BootyBoat/FoilTransport - (PMS-006) - Naming rights for sale;
While we're on the subject, I plan to rush another vessel this turn, specifically:
-Liar's Lair - Schooner - (PMS-005) - Naming rights also available - mission: to explore the SW and West, particularly the back side of Morgan's Boot to see if it is really a boot shape and whether or not it is co-inhabitted and/or if it is an island;
-Tripoli's SeaColony build is past the 10min threshhold., but it is still quite expensive (180-225) and would likely drop the production of Tripoli back to 1 if we built it now;
-'Rita is the one that Cap'n Flubber will want to rush in the next turn or so - it will cost 120-143 next turn, 89-110 in 2121, if I've done my arithmatic correctly.

By way of explanation on the Transport, I think we could use another one as it is getting kind of far to keep moving the original one around. Also, for the time being, this new one can be the garrison at Sealurk and also serve to allow a future Land Former (or the one from 'Rita) to get to the little islet adjacent to Sealurk.

I am also planning on keeping the original BootyBoat at Boot for a little while, until a scout gets built following the initial Former build. FYI, I was thinking a rover might be good there too, with or without a preceding CommandCenter, but those will all be someone else's final call, so that is really just a suggestion for the future. In the short run, I wondered if homing the BootyBoat at Boot was a good idea or not, the good being that it would give 'Rita another min of production by removing the boat's support, but the bad being that there will soon be 2 new units at Boot (former and scout) which will use up Boot's free support (and if we go Planned, there will be even less free support) and 'Rita can probably afford the support better with it's sea-min special and larger population - so I'm not terribly in favor of switching the BootyBoat's support, but thought it worth bringing up anyway. There is also Liar's as a potential home for the BootyBoat, but that is getting up in support requirements as well. In any event, we can consider the original BootyBoat to now be serving Liar's and M's Boot, with occasional forays to Tripoli and the new one to be serving Sealurk and Rita with occasional runs to Tripoli.

I'm still interested in Planned, but looking at the effect on the two new bases (taking all their energy), I am no longer so enthusiastic; the two sea base sites to the SW and SE of Tripoli are much closer to HQ, so maybe things will look better then - or maybe the Council will decide that the growth and industry bonuses are worth it. Eventually we will be able to also run Demo, so the efficiency hit will be cancelled out.

Any comments on Pacting that we can send to the Borgs?

So here is the mostly finished turn for last minute recommendations, I plan to finalize it in about 4 hours.

[johndmuller]

Well Mateys, since there wasn't any feedback, we took that to be approval and did everything like we said earlier.

Issues which may be of interest:
- the matter of whether and if so how soon to rush the PartyBoat at 'Rita (see prior post for cost info); it is conceivable that we will get it free next turn via pod popping - I think it is closest to the far southeast gunship and its soon to be popped pod.

- the current master plan (hopefully I'll have updated it in the first post in this thread) calls for starting a CommandCenter in Boot next turn - I was planning to rush the 8 necessary to get up to 10 in 2120 on the assumption that it would get the rest of the rushing done by my successor in the next turn or two. I figured to build the CmdCntr right away before building the scout since I thought a Rover would be a good next build to explore the landmass and confont the neighbors if any (not to mention native life appearing from the nearby pods), from a position of relatively higher morale, if not any other big stick. Of course the build can be changed after the rush to 10 without penalty by my successor if they want to.

- Liar's will need a new build next turn; I put a (Infantry) Colony Pod in the plan to send to the island to the northnorthwest of Treasure Islet previously known as "Funny Lookin' Island", now marked with a 'Base Site' landmark instead. We could build a RecComm instead and grow Liars, but I thought that it would make more sense to grow 'Rita and Tripoli than Liars, although that base site is not really exciting - I plan to explore the islet beyond Funny Lookin' a little more next turn; perhaps it will turn out to be a bettter choice. Of course, we could build something else altogether, but the pop is getting up there at Liar's and will grow even faster in a couple of years when the SeaFormer finishes the Kelp Patch.

- The choice of a BootyBoat/Transport at Sealurk is discussed in the earlier post. In addition to what I said there, the original BootyBoat will probably be tied up in the West delivering a Colony from Liar's and/or shuttling one of the InfFormers on Boot back to Treasure Islet and/or on to Funny Lookin'.

As I mentioned in the email with the turn files, Be on the lookout for an election of the new Fleet Ops Cap'n and for a vote on a Pact with the Borg.

[johndmuller]

Cap'n BrownBeard will perhaps miss this turn.

Mateys, the Cuspidore's gonna be out t'sea for the weekend - until Monday night, in fact, so if as seems likely, the turn comes around well afore then, I guess one of you'all's gonna have to take it for me. Too bad, I was lookin forward to going out in style, but so it goes. Anyways, if the Borg don't get the turn out til Sunday night, I can play it late Sunday night, unless you'all get impatient, but if it comes in sooner than that, then someone else should take it.

The main thing to do, I suppose, is to accept the pact (and probably prepare the Borg for our acceptance and maybe add some considerations).

Otherwise, I was going to start a Command Center at Boot, rushing the 8 remaining of the first 10 mins, and a SeaProbe at Liars. I was going to hold off rushing the SeaProbe at 'Rita for another turn, but you'all will have the final call on that I guess. The new Former at Boot is scheduled to go over to the Nut special and help the other former plant the forest there. The SeaFormer at 'Rita is headed for Tripoli's nut special at (56,68), but since it was going to take two turns to get there and get started anyway, I thought to detour via (61,69) to do a tad more exploring on the (slightly longer) way there. I was going to leave the Tport at Boot for a few turns, til it gets its own garrison. The new Schooner at Liars is planned to go around Boot on the South and check out the other side - as well as the south and west quadrant of our Domain. Of course, the Cap'n can do whatever seems right at the time, all of the above notwithstanding.

See you soon.

[Hercules]

Still here at 23.00 GMT I have not yet posted the turn: awaiting a little comment.