Lordship of Development - Volume III

[Chaos Theory]

Dreams of Green is prosperous and should grow in 2156. It can control another citizen, but could also make a colony pod and spread our faction. I say we make a colony pod, but other options such as crawlers or formers are also viable.

After the end-of-turn save, Yang moved half a dozen or so units towards our blockade. They'll be slagged by collateral damage, but he is actually trying to attack. The cost of probing a unit there is about 120 ECs, more than we can get in a few turns (net 18/turn right now).

[binTravkin]

After the end-of-turn save, Yang moved half a dozen or so units towards our blockade.

Didn't I predict this?

How is our seaforming business going?

[Chaos Theory]

Another 5 turns or so before the former would be ready without hurrying. We can shave off 1 or 2 with ECs reasonably. After that, another few turns to move it into position and several more to actually lower the sea floor.

[Chaos Theory]

Turn's in! I'm not even touching it until tomorrow...

[Illuminatus]

Nothing new, Yang is still moving a bunch of units towards us. However I noticed two strange things - first is that is first time I noticed that Yang has Ethical Calculus which explains why are Spartans now willing to trade it to Angels. Second one is a strange bug - two of the ingame messages reported that forest is expanding near Arcadia University, which we cannot see. Zooming onto the location of message crashes the game of course.

[binTravkin]

two of the ingame messages reported that forest is expanding near Arcadia University

That is a common bug.
I have it each turn when forest expands near any base of player which is right before me in turn order..

[binTravkin]

And:

Yang is still moving a bunch of units towards us.

Don't make any expectations on this flow to stop.

If AI is at war with someone, he will flood units towards him as long as he has any units that are considered "attack" units (usually units whose attack is bigger than defense and units with offensive special abilities like 1e-1-2 empath rover).

Only thing which can stop Hive now is Sea former.
But we must watch Hive F7 screen closely for any attack foils..

[Chaos Theory]

Plan of action for 2154

The war with Yang goes reasonably well for now. Yang's artillery pieces are worrying, but he doesn't seem to know how to use them. Just in case, the spore launcher should go there.

Saving ECs for possible probing, and for the sea floor drop. They should be spent to prevent drones where reasonable, but not simply for faster production.

[livid imp]

Originally posted by binTravkin in post: Plan of action for 2153

Only thing which can stop Hive now is Sea former.
But we must watch Hive F7 screen closely for any attack foils..

And then what? What would we do even if he does launch foils? We could have our one port start building a foil of our own, but we will have neither the attack or defensive strength, nor the production capacity Yang has. Our only bet would be to take a 1-1-4 foil and start trolling fungus for IoDs. Even then one or IoDs isn't a navy. For the most part the former is going to be on its own, we just have to hope for some good luck.

Are current strategy is an all-or-nothing proposition. I don't believe 3 MWs can hold off the steady stream of Hive units that are likely to come pouring out of their cities for very long. We need that sea former ASAP. We also can not afford to rush it as we may need every EC we have to pay for the lowering. IIRC lowering enemy land is very expensive. Maybe someone should fire up the senario editor and see approximately, how much this will cost

[binTravkin]

And then what? What would we do even if he does launch foils? We could have our one port start building a foil of our own, but we will have neither the attack or defensive strength, nor the production capacity Yang has. Our only bet would be to take a 1-1-4 foil and start trolling fungus for IoDs. Even then one or IoDs isn't a navy. For the most part the former is going to be on its own, we just have to hope for some good luck.

Noone says we can kill Hive foil, but we can avoid it and see it moving out of base etc.
Any information is crucial!

Are current strategy is an all-or-nothing proposition. I don't believe 3 MWs can hold off the steady stream of Hive units that are likely to come pouring out of their cities for very long. We need that sea former ASAP. We also can not afford to rush it as we may need every EC we have to pay for the lowering. IIRC lowering enemy land is very expensive. Maybe someone should fire up the senario editor and see approximately, how much this will cost

You should read some more.
Those 3 MWs are our plan A.
They wont last forever, but they can hold off many units as they come in stacks and very slow (see map).
As soon as they're too damaged to continue, they will retreat to fungus and take positions according to plan B.

Formers near the northmost base are preparing the battleground for plan B.
It contains forests, sensors and the existing fungus barrage.

[Net Warrior]

Hi all, Sorry I haven't been around for a while. I'm not up to speed on the game yet but two things I've noticed:
(1) at Flowers Preach we could move the crawler to drag the 4 nuts and work the forrest instead for +1 nut for that base at no cost.
(2) at Red Water Spring, we could work the 2-1-1 tile instead of the 1-2 tile and (a) grow the base in 5 turns instead of 8, and (b) gain 1 energy which would boost our research from 8 turns to 7 turns. This would cost 1 mineral but we could always rush the rec commons when needed.

Oh, and in general I think we're better off building crawlers before rec tanks. I like getting mineral production as high as possible as soon as possible in the early game. It will be easier to build the rec tanks once we have a few more crawlers in place.

[binTravkin]

Your proposal seems good, although I haven't taken a look at the turn, but don't expect any discussion or opinions right now as activity is very low.
Our Chairman Of The Lords Chaos Theory will take your opinion into consideration and take a closer look to bases mentioned.
Almost all decisions are being made by him now at least till activity returns to more satisfying level..

[Illuminatus]

It does sound good Net Warrior.

[Net Warrior]

I've looked a little further we might want to consider a little different crawler/worker setup. Here we could go to 60 economy and 40 labs and increase our EC's from 17 to 27 per year while only reducing our research from the current 8 down to 9 turns to complete our current research. So, are 10EC's per year worth 2 extra years to complete our research? We could rush build some sorely needed crawlers with those extra EC's.
I'm not advocating anything, I'm just pointing out the options.

[Net Warrior]

I've been studing Hive bases and I've deducted that Society Grid, building a sea colony pod, is located at 37,49. There are no rovers at that base, so, I believe we could drop a probe at 42, 50 and probe a Hive tech the turn after.
Hive has 4 techs that we do not. They are researching at about twice our rate. Perhaps we should de-emphasize our own research and emphasize probing for techs instead.
We are way behind in this game and it's time for something radical.