2157 End Turn and 2158 Discussion

[Mead]

Originally posted by -SafaN-


Well, i like the stall with the spartans, but we should be wary to do open acts of agression. And probestealing of the university is such an act. If we can do it without the spartans noticing its ok.

Unless we agree not to (which I have no plans on doing so) I see no problem with prob stealing from Uni.

With the vendetta on the hive i would still wait a bit. AI is not very good in spreading his units, so in a few turns all attack units should be near the spartan border, what is far away from us . BTW we should keep track of the hive losses vs the spartans. We can do that, dont we?

My idea is to hold off probing the Hive until just before we probe Uni again. I hope we send our gator boats south to better meet the Gaians and DA, as well as probe a more southern Hive base.

What will be our attitude vs the angels and gaians when we meet them. Their reseach should be behind, so are we trading then or something like "u can chose between a treaty or a vendetta, your choice". If the gaians have much native units, that can be a problem.
I think we should paint the spartans as the most dangerous faction on the planet.

I have no problem with trading tech with them. We'll see what they have to offer. Maybe it will be cash, or maybe it will just be a treaty, which is still good.

another thing: what will be the chance that sparta is gonna probe our cash reserves away?

I think all of our cities are probe protected with double protection in a few more vulnerable ones.

Sparta will have to kill the probes before they start to take the cash. That will require either multiple probes, or a combined conventional assualt with probes to cleanup later.


Mead

[#endgame]

I know we're on a DAP Beeline, but how far away are clean reactors?

-- CTO #endgame

[jtsisyoda]

For Clean, we still need SotHB (researching/stealing soon), then Neural Grafting, then Bio-Eng. For DAP, we need SFF, then DAP.

Compare these when thinking about going for Bio-Eng:
A) A crawler plus three regular Plasma Garrisons cost nine rows. Support is three mins but the crawler gathers four on a mine. Net +1 min/turn.
B) Three clean Plasma Garrisons also cost nine rows. Net +0/turn.

[jtsisyoda]

Regarding the Spartans not wanting us to steal from Uni... we'd miss out on 400+ free lab points (I forget the exact tech cost). Add the 100-300 ec they want as penalty, and the cost of a treaty is extremely high. However, we have to invest heavily in Plasma Garrisons. We'd have to do that regardless, though, because the Angels or Gaians might land some troops, or the Spartans might still backstab us even with a treaty. (Self-described most evil faction, btw.)

Should we lobby first for a truce? We could pay the 48 ec (or maybe 60) to settle our debt, and then go from there as far as what it takes to get a treaty or pact? With a truce, they'd have to notify us if they took probe action.

[AndiD]

Advantages for clean is the massive army of formers building forest, sensors (!!), boreholes (!!), rather than garrisons. For building clean garrisons, build unclean first and upgrade later.

Building crawlers first, then garrisons requires a bit of additional discipline - there may be other things to build by then. (Are we building crawlers at the moment??)

Morgan's big timesaver advance: either rush-build with cash or upgrade with cash instead of building everything.

I vote for trucing, then continuing treaty negotiations.

[Mead]

Originally posted by AndiD
Advantages for clean is the massive army of formers building forest, sensors (!!), boreholes (!!), rather than garrisons. For building clean garrisons, build unclean first and upgrade later.

True.

Building crawlers first, then garrisons requires a bit of additional discipline - there may be other things to build by then. (Are we building crawlers at the moment??)

Tragically, no. I think in the next round of building we will place a strong emphasis on crawlers, yes?

Morgan's big timesaver advance: either rush-build with cash or upgrade with cash instead of building everything.

Yes.

I vote for trucing, then continuing treaty negotiations.

I have no problem going for a truce, but would that mean we can't tech probe Uni?

I fail to see the benefit for Sparta of a truce (what would it do for them).

What it means to them would be that we are afraid of them.

I may be overanalyzing this, but,
With us being silent it may mean that we are activly planning offensive actions against (probe actions, because we have nothing else). This may cause them to behave more defensively. Which is good for us.

I'll can keep talking with them to see if we can treaty. I think a truce is of limited value (OK, if they meet one of our ships on the open seas then it might mean they don't attack it). It signals that we really are afraid and they can break the truce any time they want.


Mead

[jtsisyoda]

I agree we shouldn't look like we're afraid, so I would phrase the truce thing as settling our tech fee obligation as a first step/ olive branch. Maybe we could tell them we don't like the idea of not fulfilling a previous contract.

But if the team isn't interested in a truce, I'm not going to cry myself to sleep over it.

[Whoha]

I say we should go ahead and pay our debt to them, but that is that.