DT4: Paul vs Tau Ceti

[Paul]

2212 to Tau Ceti.

You got 4 techs in one turn and you still want more? Aren't you far enough ahead already?

[Tau Ceti]

2213 to Paul. Sorry about the long response time.

Far enough ahead? Yeah, I guess. 25 techs at last count. Unsurprisingly, I built the Pholus Mutagen this turn.

This was my last turn today.

[Paul]

2213 to Tau Ceti.

That's one more project I won't get. I hope to get at least one more project before this game ends. My first choice would be Ascent to Transcendance , but considering the current situation I'd settle for any project (other than the PD) that I can get.

[Tau Ceti]

2214 to Paul.

Not sure which project that would be. I could see you reaching the tech for the Nano Factory, but that will be finished in 2 turns. The Dream Twister, perhaps - but you would have to be quick.

[Paul]

2214 to Tau Ceti

[Tau Ceti]

2215 to Paul and Aredhran.

[Paul]

2115 to Tau Ceti. That will be all for today

[Tau Ceti]

2216 to Paul. The Voice of Planet completed.

[Paul]

2216 to Tau Ceti. I suppose that was my last turn of this game unless you could not rush Ascent. That was a clear loss, but I did learn some things that would probably improve my efforts in future games. Congratulations, Tau Ceti.

[Tau Ceti]

MY 2216: Transcendence!

I attempted to send the final save to Aredhran, but my mail server decided it did not want me to. Will try again later today.

Thanks to Aredhran for setting up the game, to Helium Pond for coming up with the ideas that led to the DT games, and not least to Paul for playing well, but not well enough .

I learned some new things too, and at least I got some of my theories confirmed, for example how powerful the Planetary Transit System is when you can get it early enough. I think that was a decisive factor in this game, and I was rather surprised when Paul preferred the Virtual World. That is a fine SP too, and drone control is important, but less so on Librarian. Librarian also makes it disgustingly easy to run Free Market the entire game.

But I thoroughly enjoyed the game, and I hope Paul did too.

[Paul]

Yes, the value of the PTS is one of the things I learned in this game. Earlier, against the AI and on Transcend level I never wanted to build it before the VW because of drone problems, but I guess it's much better on librarian level. An other thing I learnt in this game were the value of specialists. I should have used them earlier in the game. An engineer brings in more credits and science than a worker on a forest, even in FM and with Merchant Exchange. This means that engineers are now my preferred citizens when population is maxed out and I no longer need the food that the workers would provide. I should also have gone for Doc Flex earlier in the game. That would have allowed me to go pod popping on the oceans earlier in the game and I could have gotten some probe teams to you to infiltrate your datalinks and steal some tech. Now I only got ships when you had already completed Hunter Seeker.

[Tau Ceti]

Finally I managed to send the last turn to Aredhran.

Specialists are certainly very good. I probably did not use them optimally in this game - I like the extra minerals a worker provides, and I mostly used thinkers even after engineers were available. They give more research, but I guess engineers give more useful energy. Not that I ever had money trouble - each turn I spent several hundred credits to get below 1000 to minimize the chance for an energy market crash.

DocFlex around 2175 is too late. I had it from quite early, but my first two transport foils were killed by IoDs (at least 75 % of my total sea pod pops were IoDs!) and I did not build many seagoing vessels until I had Initiative and the MCC. It is just more tempting to sail around with 7 moves than with 3.

And infiltrator information is invaluable. After I built the Empath Guild I think you only got 1 more SP, since I always bought and built them whenever you got near. But I would definitely have built Probe garrisons if I had not got the HSA before it was needed.

You also tended to have far fewer crawlers than me, and did not seem very interested in early expansion, preferring to build every city up first (until near the end, your average infrastructure was better than mine). I think a more expansionist, crawler-heavy policy has quite a few advantages.