Lordship of Development - volume II

[Illuminatus]

So does smacksim need to step in then or will you do it tommorow? I can't wait to see what will we pop.

[smacksim]

Illuminatus, you play the turn. I'm just back from vacation and am a little rushed...

I'll play the turn in 30 minutes if Illuminatus doesn't come online by then...

[smacksim]

I played the turn and will post now. I made a couple of executive decisions that I hope are o.k.. I didn't want to make a mid-turn save as there are so few of us online right now....see the turn report, etc...

[Illuminatus]

Hmm I was online, but I haven't noticed that anything is happening in our forum. I haven't got any notifications about new replies (I usually do). What do you mean by executive decisions? Was there something unexpected? It is better to delay things than to try to keep up the speed.
EDIT: Looked at presend. VS shall be attacked in two turns without option for preemptive strike, since MW will follow the fungus path. If we are lucky, perhaps we can capture it. Second MW will not approach so soon while third worm shall be captured or cooked. I had the feeling sth like this will happen.
We found another river a pod. If we follow the river with SL we are likely to stumble upon more pods or at other faction - I would speculate that if don't make contact within a year that we can leave Spartans from the list of possible factions, leaving Angels or Morgan.

[smacksim]

Plan of Action for 2130

Defend/Capture remaining 3 mindworms on our continent

Rush something (we'll have 57 ECs), probably the former in our new base.

Continue to move foil homeward while exploring a bit

Continue exploring with New-World Rover and SL

Continue production.

3 formers will need commands. 1 is obviously to complete a road. The other 2 just finished a forest. Suggest 1 move to the free 2-1-0 tile and road, then both can solar there. Meanwhile other free former can forest closer to GL.

The SL in the picture moved into our new base, as did our independent scout from GL. GL had produced it's own scout on this turn. If we now rush the former at our new base, the scout can protect it moving into the fungus to build a road into the flats....

[smacksim]

Here are the mindworms, including the 1 that was captured (the rover is with it)

[smacksim]

Here are the new-world explorers. Suggest moves. The foil has already moved after this picture for 2129. It moved N, then East, leaving a clear eastern path home, or more moves north to find the coastline if we want to say hello

[Illuminatus]

The MWs which are our priority now - both scourge and a source of income. Perhaps we should have plan to reinforce VS just in case? I guess popping both pods in western continent is in order?

[smacksim]

The mindworms are in the second picture...

I also switched the production in Fallow Time to a Probe Team, although we still have 2 turns before it will reach the second mineral row. I did this for 2 reasons. One, the Nearby Dreams of Green will be producing it's own 3rd unit, a former, which we'll need to rehome (or it's partner who is about to finish the road to FT). The only base in range for re-homing in a single turn (no wasted minerals, in other words), is Fallow Time. Fallow Time's own Former will be busy that turn, unable to re-home immediately without wastage (it would have to re-home to our new base to keep everyone at 2 supported units).

So I think you can see, FT should not build another supported unit without some consideration for the re-homing of DoG base former #2. Thus, the switch to the probe team.

Other plans are viable, but this should be addressed. Unneccessary mineral wastage for extra units can be planned around rather than ignored.

-S

[smacksim]

Originally posted by Illuminatus
I guess popping both pods in western continent is in order?

I don't know, popping with our New-World rover looks a little risky, should we uncover a few worms. What do people think?

As to reinforcing VS and hunting down the mindworms, we have freed the independent scout and SL which are currently in our new base for the party there

[Chaos Theory]

Virgin Soil will be fine as long as there's something in the base. Mind worms suffer against bases this early. Of course, if we can capture/harvest the mind worms, so much the better!

I say we have the western rover pop its pod. If it finds mind worms, it can likely capture one, or else kill one and harvest credits. The remaining worms could be quite a handful for an unprepared faction on the same continent, if they overrun our rover.

We really need to burn off our ECs on production. We can hurry formers not only to get the formers sooner, but to get the bases working on probe teams sooner. At a cost of no worse than 19 ECs for 8 minerals, we should be spending these ECs.

[smacksim]

As to our home mindworms, we could herd them in towards our bases, or 'fork' them through the middle with our new baby mindworm, which would cause them to disperse outwards. Here's a picture of 2 possible paths for us, and for the natives. The red lines are my guess as to what the locals will do if we 'fork' them in the middle with our baby worm. In any case we should just rest our mature/hurt worm next turn.

The big decision is what to do with the rover up there. Clearly it should not fork the MW's if they are nearby. We'll really have to wait and see how the herd moves. Thankfully the rover is safe from attack this turn. That would have been too sad if it had been stuck in the middle of the worm-pile.

[smacksim]

Originally posted by Chaos Theory
We really need to burn off our ECs on production. We can hurry formers not only to get the formers sooner, but to get the bases working on probe teams sooner. At a cost of no worse than 19 ECs for 8 minerals, we should be spending these ECs.

Agreed! We'll need a new base-production poll for after next turn because we'll be working on/finishing everything ordered in the last poll.

[Chaos Theory]

As far as forming, we already have most of a road into the Flats, we only need a little more, maybe clear the fungus on the head of the river and road there. Of course, forest on that river would be nice, as would forest near Gaia's Landing. We can move a former onto a flat tile, road, then forest. We also need a sensor in the midst of our bases.

[smacksim]

If we do go with focusing on an SP, rather than early ICSing (see the longterm thread), we'll possibly be able to put a few sensors under our new periferal base sites with the extra former time. It's worth considering. Agree that the head-of-river tile is optimal for de-fungusing....--->question:

Should we leave our independent scout in the new base for 1 more turn to guard our soon-to-be rushed former there on the following turn? In this case we can still move our SL towards the worm herd. As a native unit it will be very effective in blocking any worms that might choose to come south. I do remember that we had other plans for that SL though...any opinions?