Game Discussion, Turn 2121 - 2140

[Googlie]

Here's a portion of the current map with the moves already made:

[Googlie]

To the west (where we think Morgan is)

[Googlie]

SouthEast - by La-La land

[Googlie]

Ah, yes, the 2140 midturn.sav:

[KrysiasKrusader]

Originally posted by Snoddasmannen


Ok everybody, humor me, remember I'm a newbie

Oh good! A NEWBIE!

Best way to learn is by gathering experience.

Hey. We'll do even better than humoring you.

You'll get to lead our first marine division when it's time to charge a Hive gatling laser bunker!

[KrysiasKrusader]

I've downloaded the turn.

How much time do I have before you send it off, Googlie?

(I'm at work now - so trying to justify a few things to people might get tricky...)

[Googlie]

I don't send it off until I get answers to the "still to be moved units" questions and get the build orders confirmed (we have 48 hours to move the turn along - from its first posting at 'poly)

[Googlie]

In the light of this I think we should get Boy Scouts going in every base whenever a vacancy occurs (eg, at Craterwest after the pod gets built next turn, start a Boy Scout a-building)

It'd be nice to set SC2 to produce a string of them, with the increased morale that the Command Center gives, but I don't think we have the luxury of enough time to do that now (plus it's prototyping the impact infantryman which will give it another morale boost as a result of the Command Center there)

And can somebody test what Lal might give us for Doc Flex - either in tech or cash? - we might as well cash in before Morgan meets him and trades.

As well, getting Ind Auto now is critical - if we want to get the MCC we need to get some crawlers into production (although it doesn't make sense for Morgan to go for the MCC ahead of the PEG, in my opinion)

[KrysiasKrusader]

- Infiltrate with the first probe. Then we'll see exactly what's available for tech stealing later, etc. etc. Also; we may want to talk to him first (after infiltration). May be able to get a trade, thereby increasing our chance for a juicer tech steal.

- Lay down a road, with the former, I guess. Kind of pointless to do anything else. (Unless you want to plant some tress. I'm having a difficult time trying to understand why we are farming the crater. But not really saying anything against it, cause this all happened before I got here, thus didn't have the chance to try and influence you all otherwise - cause I sure would have! But I don't wanna make a big issue out of it. Not too much. Not yet...)

- Sentry one of the units in Vladivostock, please.

- Build orders only matter if the 10 mins or more will be accumulated. So only Olympus Academy is pressing for a change if we so desire. I say let it ride as is.

- (58, 28) is the only real logical choice for the colony pod on the transport.

- I don't care about base names (or landmarks) for now. I'll leave that for the more imiginative one's amongst our ranks.

- I see no good reason to start a sea former. Contrary to what a lot of people think - they are not cost effective. Not for us, not for Sparta, not for the current situation, not that I can visualise for the future.

- Let's worry about what our top three production bases will have to build in the upcoming turns. (I'm probably going to be shooting my mouth off concerning our strategy in the upcoming days.) The only one demanding a decision now is OA base, which I mentioned above.


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After this turn; I suggest we dedicate an entire thread per turn. We can name them "Pre-2141", "Pre-2142", etc. It will be easier for whoever is actually doing the turn - you won't have to search for posts in a 20 turn thread. As the game progresses, they'll just drift down out of sight anyways, so now worries about clutter. Also: It will ease things for people like me - who have trouble loading the pages at Apolyton.


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Snoddasmannen:

We were all newbies once. Don't be shy about asking questions. I do strongly suggest that you read our private forum here. I know there's a lot involved, but heah - I did it myself (!). There's a ton of information here. One thing to keep in mind, most of our discussions apply to "multi-playing" here. So take any pre-concieved assumptions you have about single-player games being the same, and throw it out the nearest airlock.

(And what I said a couple of posts above was just a little joke that I coulden't resist. )

Edit: Look in the thread "Krysia's Krusader Reporting for Duty!" There you'll find an excellent post by Maniac describing to me a lot of the stuff available here. Start with that and those links (like I did).

[KrysiasKrusader]

Googlie: In response to your last post...

- Just switch every base, at less than, or equal to; 10 mins to boy scouts for now. I personally would put them all at "(Relocate) Headquarters" myself. But that's for another discussion...

- Correct: We don't have the luxury (or more precisely; afford the time).

- The Peace Keepers are ignoring our transmissions, Major Googlie!

- Should have started off playing as a builder then. Too late now. We'll have to figure something else out for Ind. Auto. ...

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More Intel Gathering Ops. Report M.Y.2140


- Zakharov does not trust Yang and will ask us to pact with him and join in a vendetta against The Hive.

- Zakharov will trade Ethical Calculus for 100 energy credits. No other trade / offer seems to work.

- Zakharov does not have the commlinks to any of the other human factions.

- I can get the commlinks for either the Gaians, the Angels, or the Morganites for 25$ off of Yang.

- Yang will declare vendetta on the Morganites for 75$.

- Yang will part with Labour Network for 1217 energy credits.


Edit: More intel added.

[Snoddasmannen]

Originally posted by KrysiasKrusader
Snoddasmannen:
We were all newbies once. Don't be shy about asking questions. I do strongly suggest that you read our private forum here. I know there's a lot involved, but heah - I did it myself (!). There's a ton of information here. One thing to keep in mind, most of our discussions apply to "multi-playing" here. So take any pre-concieved assumptions you have about single-player games being the same, and throw it out the nearest airlock.

Thank you Krysias. Yes I have read a lot of the material here and I am learning even more by following the discussions in the game discussion threads. The micromanagement would drive me nuts if I were forced to do it, but I admire it nonetheless

Anyway, just a thought. If we steal a tech, the uni will go nuts, declare war and probably set up defensive probes, right? So it would be good to conduct an quick and clean probe campaign. Why not infiltrate with both our probe teams (the latter having no effect except enhancing moral to that probe team), and then returning with both our experienced crews to do two quick steals before the uni even has time to get upset.

Oh I can hear you laughing, but I'll keep giving you bad ideas until I've learned

(And what I said a couple of posts above was just a little joke that I coulden't resist. )

Oh I'll be there right on the front line staring the hive soldiers right in the eye, with you guys right behind me. Right guys? ... Guys?

[Zeiter]

The base locations look good.

Orders for the former currently between CraterWest and CraterSouth (farm has been completed)

How about we send it east and get started on planting farms on those rolling/rainy tiles?

Build orders for:
> Sparta Command (currently 1/2 of first of 2 rows towards a former)
> Gythium Harbour (7/10ths of first of 5 rows towards a foil probe team)
> Olympus Academy (9/10ths of first of 2 rows towards an infantry probe team (Boy Scouts)- will cost us 4 mins next turn to change our minds)
> Fort Buster (1st of 2 rows completed for a Boy Scout - will cost us 2 mins next turn to change our minds)

Is not Sparta Command already supporting two units? If so, then we could avoid spending a min/turn on support if we had it build a probe team instead. If we are going to make probe teams our sole research corps, then we better stock up on them. Not only that, but we'll soon need probe defenders, and probe teams will make great offensive weapons in the Uni campaign (we might even be able to subvert a few bases!)

Although we do need more formers...are there any bases with free support slots? If not, then I suppose we could build a probe team at Sparta Command.

Probe foil for Gythium Harbor

Olympus Academy: It's already supporting 2 units, right? If so, then perhaps we could make a grad at an SP? Or maybe just some more probe teams.

Fort Buster: Probe team sounds good, again assuming it is already supporting 2 units.

Also something to keep in mind: when we steal social psych from Zak, we'll probably want to switch several of our bases to rec commons. So, just keep that in mind when considering build orders.

Is 58:28 the site for the next base? Name?

Yes. Maybe name it Minas Tirith? (translates to "Tower of Guard"). It would make sense, as that will be our guard base against Yang for a while. It will also guard us against mind worm attack originating from that massive field of fungus.

Our best minerals bases are Olympus Academy, at 9 mins per turn, followed by Sector CraterWest at 6 and santiago Citadel at 5 - what should we be building there?

We could try for an SP at Olympus Academy, also it would be risky. Although if we probe doc:loyalty from Zak or Yang, we could have an SP (and a nice one at that! ) to fall back on.

After the impact infantryman at Santiago Citidel, how about a steady stream of impact rovers for the Uni invasion?

And colony pods at Sector Craterwest is great for now. We still need to get the northern Messenian Plain populated.

As for a sea former at GH - nah, not yet. Probe foils and infiltration are more important at this point.

*Also, I suggest moving the eastern foil 3 tiles NW and 1 tile W, eventually heading down SW of where it is right now. I just bet there's a human faction down there.

Getting Ind Auto will be easy once we contact a vendor. I mean, who would refuse GS + uni and Lal commlink for Ind Auto? (or, we could substitute something else perhaps). Actually, now that I think about it, might it be a good idea to contact the Gaians right now and pitch this deal to them? Then we could use OA to pump out crawlers like crazy! What do you think? We can get the Gaian commlink for 25 ECs. I say go for it!

BTW, excellent intel gathering, KrysiasKrusader

[Googlie]

Contact Alert - We've met the Gaians

Our exploring Rover has encountered a damaged Gaian Mindworm

I was moving it back up the river wast of the Hive base Labor network when we encountered it struggling thru the fungus to get to the monolith.

Who's our ambassador - Kass? We need to open confidential (ie, not within the game screens) communications with them.

I'll set up a chat forum for this.

Here's the contact point:

[Maniac]

I can't open the turn during the week, so I can't give any well-informed detailed production opinions.

However taking into account our population growth combined with the extra b-drones from new bases (on average 2 new drones per base), we'll probably need 10 scout patrols by MY 2144 to satisfy all our drone control needs. And even more later when we move our rovers away to invade someone.
Are there production plans to meet that scout patrol level?

How many extra b-drones did Vladivostok cause by the way?

Originally posted by Googlie

In the light of this I think we should get Boy Scouts going in every base whenever a vacancy occurs (eg, at Craterwest after the pod gets built next turn, start a Boy Scout a-building)[/quote]

I agree that with this news boy scouts have increased in priority. How many do you think we'd need for now? Would one or two in our future west coast base suffice?

Anyway, the most effective defence against infiltration by Morgan is infiltrating Morgan ourselves IMHO. That way we can see in advance if and where they're building probes. For that purpose, are we still building two probe teams (with *two* MPs so that they can land next to a base and infiltrate in the same turn) in Fort Buster and Olympus Academy? The screenshot says yes, but your midturn battle report says no:

> Olympus Academy (9/10ths of first of 2 rows towards an infantry probe team (Boy Scouts)- will cost us 4 mins next turn to change our minds)
> Fort Buster (1st of 2 rows completed for a Boy Scout - will cost us 2 mins next turn to change our minds)

Please help this confused person without a computer to open the turn.

Besides scout patrols and probes, formers are of course important as well like Zeiter says. Currently we don't even have enough formers to make any use of Gene Splicing.

Too many needs, too little minerals, as so often.

And can somebody test what Lal might give us for Doc Flex - either in tech or cash? - we might as well cash in before Morgan meets him and trades.

IIRC I traded DocFlex to Lal for 25c the turn we infiltrated Yang and discovered he had DocFlex. Yang's two laser foils seemed to be heading straight east to LaLaLand at that time, so I though it would be best to trade it ourselves before Yang met him and traded the tech. Also that turn I discovered Zak already had DocFlex himself, and since Zak's submissive to Lal, Lal could have gotten that tech from him too at any moment.

Originally posted by KrysiasKrusader
- Lay down a road, with the former, I guess. Kind of pointless to do anything else. (Unless you want to plant some tress. I'm having a difficult time trying to understand why we are farming the crater. But not really saying anything against it, cause this all happened before I got here, thus didn't have the chance to try and influence you all otherwise - cause I sure would have! But I don't wanna make a big issue out of it. Not too much. Not yet...)

How would you have terraformed the Crater? With forests? Remember we don't have EcoEng yet, so forests wouldn't have given any mineral advantage: the tiles are already producing two!

- I can get the commlinks for either the Gaians, the Angels, or the Morganites for 25$ off of Yang.

Great intel!
Just like Zeiter, I'd suggest to buy Gaia's and perhaps also the Angel commlink at once! And then trade IndAut for Gene Splicing or so.

Originally posted by Snoddasmannen
Why not infiltrate with both our probe teams (the latter having no effect except enhancing moral to that probe team), and then returning with both our experienced crews to do two quick steals before the uni even has time to get upset.

Innovative idea! Though IIRC the infiltration option no longer appears once you've infiltrated once.

Originally posted by Zeiter
Also something to keep in mind: when we steal social psych from Zak, we'll probably want to switch several of our bases to rec commons. So, just keep that in mind when considering build orders.

Currently we can still support all our drone control needs by cheap police forces. Is it lucrative to build rec commons then? If we did, we wouldn't make full use of our +1 SE Police advantage.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Googlie
[/b]Contact Alert - gaians[/b]

Ooh great news!
I assume getting IndAut would be our first priority. Do you think they'd accept a straight IndAut<->Gene Splicing, or would they want something more? We could of course also try to sell them our weapons and Mob/Flex techs. Since they're at war with Yang, they could very well use them.
Anyway, in negotiations we could try to downplay the perceived importance of IndAut by reminding them we can't run Wealth.