Game Discussion, Turn 2101 - 2120

[Googlie]

I basically agree

The Chiron Knights motorized squadron I suggest move downriver (are we agreed on Red River, or Rouge Riviere? - what would it be in Spanish?) in a NE direction - the river must eventually run into an ocean, so it'd be good to find where

I'd move R-112 Corazon Recon Vehicle east to try and find the headwaters of the northwesterly flowing river (Gunrunners' Creek, for want of a better name?) which I would guess is on 59:11 or 60:10. It could then proceed downriver back to SC2

The about-to-be-commissioned rover at SC2 (name? - how about Rolling Thunder Brigade - a highly decorated unit in The Spartan Chronicles?) can go straight west into 56:18 and then maniac can decide to go on to 55:17 or 54:18 after these tiles are uncovered by its first move (if a pod, change production at SC2 to a CC and pop the pod)

With 7 turns to pop2 in SC and 9 turns in SC2, and with Soc Flex being 5 turns away, these next 5 turns will largely be exploring turns

Question: should we interpose a defensive scout patrol in each base (3 turns) to give our 3 rovers free hand to explore and meet other factions?. Our pop growth rate will still allow 5 or 6 turns (depending on the base) to rush build colony pods at that time, provided we pop a 25ec's or 2 with the rovers

G.

[Zeiter]

Perhaps we could get by with just 1 scout patrol, and shuttle it back and forth for drone control/mind worm defense duty. Would that be feasible?

The rover exploration sounds good. We'll have rolling thunder brigade map out the crater and eventually the areas down closer to Yang's territory.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Googlie
(are we agreed on Red River, or Rouge Riviere? - what would it be in Spanish?)

According to the English->Spanish translator at the bottom of the page 'Río Rojo'. Sounds good to me.

Question: should we interpose a defensive scout patrol in each base (3 turns) to give our 3 rovers free hand to explore and meet other factions?. Our pop growth rate will still allow 5 or 6 turns (depending on the base) to rush build colony pods at that time, provided we pop a 25ec's or 2 with the rovers

The only time when we would need base garrisons for drone control in the next fifteen-twenty years or so is the period between SC1 & SC2 growing to size 2 and those bases completing their CPs. But with some hurrying that period could be reduced to only one turn. So personally I'd consider scout patrols not the best investment possible right now (and we don't have a command center yet to produce veteran (+) instead of disciplined (+) scout patrols. ).

To garrison the bases the turn they grow to size 2 and at the same time not delay our rovers' exploration plans, I'd suggest to plan the path of one of our rovers in a way that it moves into Sparta Command in about exactly 7 turns. Then it could immediately proceed to Santiago Citadel, and when that base is reduced back to size 1, the rover could once again proceed north, west or south to continue exploration. The time spent not exploring would be minimized this way.

Possible routes for one of the rovers could be like below. Just a rough example of course. It all depends on the terrain we'd encounter.

[Googlie]

The only lingering fear I have is the memory of the UoP in the last game, where Archaic pursued an "empty base" policy in favor of building facilities - that made him a walkover when the Hive/Drones came calling.

In fact, in one of the stalled Uni turns I played and moved on, I started infantry probes in 4 of his five bases - at least he continued with them.

Maniac would have seen that too when the Uni merged with the CyCon - totally inadequate defenses.

G.

[Maniac]

Ah I think we've got a misunderstanding. I'm not at all advocating an empty base police for about the entire game. Only for now in the beginning while we don't have any drone problems. Once our bases start growing to size 2 without any CPs being completed right after, and once we cross the first bureaucracy limit and thus get drones in bases even when they are at size 1, I'd be a heavy supporter of gradually increasing our base garrisons to no less than two per base. Anything less would be wasting our +1 Police SE advantage.

A nice side-effect of that is, even when it would only be two scout patrols in each base, we could end up as the largest military power in the "Who's Who" info screen (unless the Hive goes really overboard with military production ). Other factions might then think we have a large offensive military itching to invade somebody, and fear us more.

Have a look at the comparison game I just posted in the relevant thread. There Fort Superiority has a command center (besides many other nice facilities due to materials pods ) and I'm using that base to produce police infantries practically non-stop. If we have some luck with materials pods ourselves in the ACDG3 and get a command center in one or two bases, we could perhaps use those bases too to produce military units and garrisons non-stop?

[Zeiter]

I definitely like the idea of having bases that specialize in producing one thing - like one base for just police units. Less confusing to manage.

Nice color-coded play-by-play diagram there.
Although, I wonder if it would be better to send one rover waaaay out, and have the other exclusively do drone control duty, and scouting the more neighboring areas in its spare time, instead of having both come back.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Zeiter
Although, I wonder if it would be better to send one rover waaaay out, and have the other exclusively do drone control duty, and scouting the more neighboring areas in its spare time, instead of having both come back.

Indeed. I'd propose indeed to only let one of the two rovers return after a while. I only drew two paths to show we could choose between the two rovers if we wanted to use this idea.

[Snoddasmannen]

If I was playing this alone, I would be exploring and expanding to the south-west, preempting Yang's exploitation of that region.

We might have all the time in the world to explore and pop pods in the east, but we know we have competition in the south-west, so why not go there and fetch those pods before Yang can get his dirty hands on them?

Just a thought

[Dis]

my thoughts as well. Although I'm not sure they are to the Southwest? Do we have confirmation on that? Those pods close to our base should be safe for a while. but I would like to go out and get the further out pods. We can take a chance on those. And of course eventually find out the situation arrangement of our ene... I mean counterparts.

Sending one rover back to Sparta command seems fine with me. Chiron Knights? Is that the name of the souther one? That's as good as any. He may be able to go further out than the arrow indicates because of the good movement on the river.

2 garrisons is fine with me eventually. But I don't just want to have a psuedo large military. I do want to be able to conquer something . But we'll plan more for that once we find someone. It would be wasteful to develop the military too soon and pay costs for something we aren't using. but because of our -1 industry, we can't wait too long either.

[Maniac]

Battle Report MY 2106

I executed the general suggestions made to further map the rainy plains with R-112 CRV, move west into the crater with Rolling Thunder, and move down Río Rojo with the Chiron Knights.

Results:

The Chiron Knights' expedition on Río Rojo was a bit disappointing. I was hoping for a long river leading to some fertile coastal plains, but it turns out Río Rojo is a relative short river filled with rocks and fungus.

Two consolations:
1) The river is largely covered with red/pink fungus, so the name Red River really fits.
2) Unless we want to plough back north through all that fungus and rocks, exploring further south seems the easiest and logical path to follow, as desired by Snoddasmannen and Dissident.
I guess this also means we should use R-112 CRV to move into Sparta Command in som five years, if you agree with that idea.


R-112 CRV moved a bit (north)-east further mapping the rainy plains and loosely following the coast. I guess next turn we'd better move fully inland to find the source of Gunrunners' Creek.


The Rolling Thunder Brigade mapped the delta of Blood of Martyrs' River and then moved into Buster Crater. Two possible Unity pods detected. Would I assume correctly we're gonna wait with popping those until we have a base there, to prevent nasty stuff like a fungal bloom or an earthquake (like CyCon both suffered in ACDG2 ) destroying the Crater?
Anyway, the Crater valley is rather swampy and full of little lakes (or in other words: a river flowing in it), so combined with the mineral bonus, there are perfect base sites there!!!


This doesn't show on the screenshot I posted in the map thread, but I've also named a few landmarks according to Googlie's suggestions. They can always be changed later if required.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Dissident
hmm, I haven't downloaded stuff from Poly before. I get the option to open or save to disk. When I click save to disk nothing happens.

That's rather annoying to say the least. Have you mentioned this to MarkG or DanQ in the Apolyton/Community forum?

The about-to-be-commissioned rover at SC2 (name? - how about Rolling Thunder Brigade - a highly decorated unit in The Spartan Chronicles?)

Do you want to be the commanding captain of this brigade?

[Googlie]

Diss: do you have any virus protection attachment-scanning software running?

I just installed the full Norton Systemworks, and now it can take over 30 seconds for me to see the download activating (ie after it's scanned the file)

Maniac: Sure - Rolling Thunder, commanded by Captain Googlie

I posted a map with landmarks named - and units - with only one change - Rio Grande instead of Blood of the Martyrs River (a bit long winded)

Maybe Rio Grande can run into Blood of the Martyr's Bay

(also took fog of war off to make the map a little clearer)

[Zeiter]

Our destiny lies to the west, it seems. I suggest having the Chiron Knights rover explore some more to the south, and then come back up to Sparta Command for drone duty. R-112 CRV and Rolling Thunder can keep on exploring NE and SW, respectively. Eventually we'll probably have R-112 CRV loop back around to our cities after it scouts all of the good land to the north (assuming we are on a penninsula and the coast line wraps all around on the 3 sides to the North and East.) Then either it or Chiron Knights could scout more land SW.

That crater is perfect. I suggest founding a base 1 tile W and 1 tile NW of Santiago Citidel.

So many good base sites...if only we could get those CP's out there sooner...*sigh*.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Zeiter
Sounds good.

I guess we could start to set up separate threads for different tasks (rover exploration, base management, etc.) and get people in charge of each department in order to streamline things a bit and remove any confusion over what the consensus is on any given turn.

So, are there volunteers for any of those departments? Especially rover exploration would be useful. There are many general suggestions made, but I don't know sure where exactly to move them, while the turn is already back. Should I just move in the general directions mentioned (eg Zeiter's post above) without waiting for specific coordinates?

[Googlie]

I'd go with Zeiter's suggestions until we geta formal command structure in place