Morgan2000 Challenge

[Enigma]

Wow, congradulations! Nice job posting all of your progress BTW, it was interesting. An energy market crash *and* solar flares, that must really suck. I play with random events and have played many games but I have seen each only 2 or 3 times.

My one question about your play style is: why so many hologram theaters? Those facilities scare me, they suck energy rapidly. How was your population distributed, did you end up with a few large population bases? When you are running green you can and if you get the ascetic virtues you can install a brood pit in a base, that will give that base +3 police, combined with 3 1-1-1 clean police scouts I find that holo theaters can be avoided... heck in this scenario the brood pit does the same thing for a lower upkeep cost and has numerous native life bonuses as well!

But hey, I always like to learn new ideas. Your Morgan strategy appears more population focused than mine, I unfortunatly did not post detailed progress reports like you did... but if you could explain your somewhat unusual (compared to my playing style) clump of holo theaters I would appreciate it greatly.

[Gregurabi]

Well, given the fact that you won about 100 years earlier than I did, my strategy may not be terribly good. I haven't been playing this game as long as most of the others who participated in the challenges, so I probably have a long way to go.

Brood Pits come way too late for me to rely on them for police work. (Especially in this game, with blind research and tech stag!) I usually try to get the Virtual World so that I don't have to build all those Holos, but in this game that just didn't happen.

My basic approach was to get a medium-large empire of size 4 cities, with no unhappiness. The only way I could do this was with Holo Theatres -- there just weren't any other options available to me at the time. Of course, I could've had 3 workers and 1 Doctor, but that takes out 25% of my overall productivity. (And before the restriction lifting, too!) I just couldn't live with that.

Yeah, the Holos are expensive. Terribly so for a size 4 city! But I was willing to sacrifice the energy for the minerals in the early stage of the game, where I needed all those minerals. (Morgan's support rating is a real problem.)

Your note about the police units is good; when I retry this challenge, I may try using police garrisons instead of Holos in the early game, and see how well it goes. During the early game, when the war with H'minee was still tense, I was strongly tempted to go with Police State. That would've just slaughtered my energy/research though (especially since I didn't get Wealth for such a very long time). It might have been interesting to try running Police State instead of Democracy; but to be honest I don't know if it would have been any better for me.

Population distribution.... I didn't build any Hab Complexes for quite some time; I had a good number of size 4 cities, as noted above. Captured Caretaker bases were of course size 1, though they tended to grow quickly since much of H'minee's holdings were in the jungle. Once I had the restrictions lifted and had my Holos in place, I built Hab Complexes and let the cities grow to size 11. As they grew I added Tree Farms (top priority once they became available), Hospitals, etc. The Holo Theatres kept my population quite content, so I never faced serious drone problems.

I think that my biggest mistake was in neglecting the Builder technologies for too long. I focused on self-defense in the early game becaue of H'minee's proximity -- and I think that was wise. But once I had H'minee contained I probably should've focused on Builder techs instead of aiming for Air Power so early.
(Looking through my notes... in 2172 I set priority to Explore/Build. I probably should've gone straight Build and left it there until I had Industrial Auto, the restriction lifters and Planetary Econ. I didn't really need boats at that point, and planes were a long way off. In 2218 I went Explore/Discovery, and I didn't go back to Build until 2260 -- and still no Tree Farms!) Since it was blind research, I would've picked up some non-Build techs anyway... and any military techs that the Caretakers got, I could've attained by probes.

Being the first one with Fusion Power was nice, of course; but that only helped in the game and not in the meta-game. (In other words, it ensured that I'd have no trouble winning this game against the AI, but it took me a long time, so my time to victory was abysmally slow -- thus, I didn't do well in the Morgan Challenge. At least this first time around.)

If you noticed anything else that I could've done better, please let me know. I'm still learning....

[Enigma]

Well consider yourself very lucky that you posted such detailed notes. Morgan fans such as myself, and hopefully eventually experts like Vel can post stuff to help your strategy.

All I have to say is that size 4 is not a special number by any means... size 3 is what is most easily achievable through having only forests terraformed. If that extra population point costs you 3 energy per turn it is probably not worth it...

Unlike you I was having some serious drone problems in the last five years right before I won, fortunatley I knew I didn't really have to worry about them since my victory date was set =]. I was just starting to get the money to hurry in hybrids everywhere, the cash for this was delayed a lot for the economic victory. It is worth mentioning that I completely ignore population as Morgan and keep my bases size 3 (the PTS also conveniently removes a drone at this size...) until I have tree farms, then I switch my supply crawlers from bringing in minerals to bringing in food. Then I switch my citizens to doctors, and this creates enough talents for a Golden age which creates a pop boom...

Allright I admit pop booming with Morgan is really tough, and in a game like this you would need to have your crawlers keep focusing on minerals instead of food. In this sort of situation with Morgan I ignore population cause it ends up inevitably cutting into my economy- it is easier to build a supply crawler when all you really want is minerals. My 12 or 15 main bases all had 3-4 supply crawlers. There were 2 times or so when my garrisons and attack rovers were severely depleted in the fighting but my 12-20 production bases were able to replace the losses RAPIDLY with the combination of rush builds and their baseline production. Also I spaced my bases extremely closely together, this was somewhat problematical near the end.

I guess you are right that brood pits were too late in the game to make a difference in this particular game... some games though I often happen to have that tech as an option, it is not all that far away on the tech tree from the conventional builder techs. Fusion is much farther away...

Also if you are looking to improve your strategy then (if Morgan is your favorite?) it is worth mentioning that the person who pioneered "green Morgan" was Mongoose, I haven't seen him here in a while though. But he can do very well with psi units while still making energy, maximising some of Morgan's strengths.

My strategy could certainly use improveing, any things you think I could do better from the (very sparse) info I have posted on this game?

[Gregurabi]

I don't think I have a favorite faction. I do like Morgan, though. He has a unique set of strengths and weaknesses that set him apart. I tend to use Green with him (once available), so maybe I should go through the archives and look for hints....

I tried this one a second time. I was doing really well at the start... and then all of a sudden the Caretakers crushed me. It was really frustrating and depressing. I got IndAuto in 2145 and HGP in 2161. The Caretakers destroyed one of my bases in 2168, captured a second in 2178, and captured a third in 2192 -- at which point I quit. The battle outcomes were very strange; I lost a lot of battles where I had the numbers on my side. (I had some lucky defensive victories, but I think the unlucky losses were far more common.) It's possible that I might have been able to fight it out -- but with no Perimeter Defenses, and only tech parity, and with the Caretakers well over twice as high on the power graph as their closest rival (the Pirates I think), and with the random number generator acting against me, I just couldn't bear it.

I can't really see anything in your description that I could've done better. You were really fast -- I've never won a game by any means at all as fast as you won this one.

In all honesty though, I think luck plays a huge part in this challenge, because of the blind research. If you'd gotten Crawlers earlier, you probably would've done better; if I'd gotten Crawlers and Tree Farms earlier in my first game, I probably would've done better. (Early Crawlers aren't enough by themselves, though, as my second game shows.)

[Enigma]

All I have to say is don't get too worried about it. This was a very difficult scenario, and with the blind research luck was a large part. Heck I *tried* to beeline for industrial auto, and wasnt successful, but some of the techs I got in the mean time were useful. I traded for most of my conquer techs but I may have researched doc:loyalty because it is part of the beeline to planetary economics and a dang useful tech too. My actual base squares where my defenses were were only attacked once, I relied on rovers to destroy her forces in the rolling terrain right next to my base square. Even in wealth the children's creche will actually increase those unit's offensive power by 25%. This combined with the 25% attack bonus in rolling terrain that rovers get was enough to make up for booger's defensive powers.

I think that the key to an early economic victory is getting the PEG, having a small core of pop boomed bases, and having a LOT of bases. The energy *will* add up.