Battlefield Earth - Turn Reporting Thread

[Googlie]

This is a SMAX game

Difficulty level is Transcend, tweaked (see below)

Players, in turn order, are:

Hive - Flubber
University - Archaic
Morgan - Mongoose
Drones - Qantaga

The AI factions are the Usurpers, allied with their submissives, Miriam and Cha Dawn:

You have escaped the alien crossfire on Chiron and have returned to Earth, only to find the Usupers esconsed on the Australian continent.

You have each others (and Cha and Miriam's) commlinks

Game conditions are:

all winning conditions on
do or die on
look first on
tech stagnation - no
spoils of war - on
directed research
intense rivalry - no
no unity survey
random scattering of Unity pods
No random events
all other custom conditions - no

other conditions:

pods do not produce monoliths (there are several scattered around)

The AI start with their HQ's already built and the Usurpers have a few additional bases with rec commons in addition to their usual recycling tanks

Suggested play rules (Forum Wars' set)

• Communications - available form the beginning - you have everyone's commlink
• Total freedom in Design Workshop (upgrades anytime, during turn or on-field,
• Retro-engineering - OK, except for using the probe rover chassis before discovering Doc. Mobility
• SE switches "quickies" forbidden - (obviously you can experiment to see what effect various SE choices have, but cannot change, play moves, then change back in the same turn)
• Council notification - immediate broadcast to all players (Post in the thread and e-mail in advance to all by player who anticipates calling the elections, citing candidates and votes. After each player's turn, post in the thread the running totals)
• Stockpiling in Qs anytime - OK
• Crawlers Upgrade anytime - OK
• Probe actions: Must choose vendetta option when probing other players, rebuke if a pactmate (OK to probe teammate at any time)
• Using the AI - Cannot use the AI to bribe on council votes nor to demand withdrawal of units
• Cannot use the right click feature for multiple drop moves to extend range (ie limited to 8 tiles unless owning the Space Elevator SP)
• Cannot use the 'set waypoint' feature for automatic worm hunting/lifecycle enhancements
• Must 'Accept' or 'Decline' an offered Pact or Treaty that the other player has indicated 'Accepted' before exiting the diplo box and playing the turn (i.e. no accepting pending treaties/pacts *after* declaring vendetta in the same turn )
• Cannot use the F4 feature (or the bases feature of the F2 screen) to change an infiltrated faction's workers to specialists

Passwords have been sent to all, and 2111 has gone to Flubber

(Well, they will go as soon as I get everyone's e-mail addresses)

Good luck all,

Googlie

[Googlie]

Does anyone know Mongoose's or Archaic's e-mail addresses?

(I've sent them both a message thru the 'Poly e-mail system, but if they are anything like me, they never check)

G.

[Qantaga]

Googlie,

I have e-mailed you what I believe to be Mongoose's e-mail. I don't know Archaic's.

[Qantaga]

I just found Archaic's e-mail in another game thread. I don't think he'll mind me posting it here, since he posted it in the other thread:

archaiceternal@hotmail.com

[Googlie]

Battlefield Earth, 2111 has been sent to Chairman Flubber, and passwords and forwarding instructions have been sent to all faction leaders

Good luck all

Judaa "Googlie" Marr

[Flubber]

2111 to archaic

Just a note . . . for me , "look first" was NOT on so I would anticipate that you will all find your first bases already established

Just curious, but why is it 2111 and not 2102 (which gives Googlie the first year to do setup and set passwords ) ??

[Googlie]

2111:

ah - that was to get the aliens and the Cult established (2105) - so I set the year to 2110 so that Miriam could start her researching from the beginning. Played the first turn (moving nothing for the human players) to set the passwords, etc.

Hence the 2111 turn (it could equally well have been 2106)

HQ established:

That was just so that I could name them New York, Beijing, etc.

G.

[Archaic]

And, why are all the faction graphics not what they should be, or is that just me?

Turn to Mongoose.

[Googlie]

A:

That's because when you open a scenarioded game, it loads the faction graphics that are resident in your alphacentauri.ini file.

So although the faction list for this game is:

Faction 1=HIVE
Faction 2=UNIV
Faction 3=MORGAN
Faction 4=DRONE
Faction 5=BELIEVE
Faction 6=FUNGBOY
Faction 7=USURPER

If in your last game played you had, say, faction # 3 as the PKs, then you will see Lal's graphics in this game for Morgan

There are three things one can do:

1) just live with it, as most of us do - but be especially careful around diplo negotiations, 'cos it's easy to forget that you might not be talking to, say, Miriam when you see Domai's face. - a good check is the powergraph standings, where you see the current faction colors (or the commlink button faction profile window)

2) just before playingf the turn, start a new single player game with the seven factions in the order above, then quit it after the pod has landed, and load the gameturn - the correct factions will now display (as your .ini file will have changed to save your last "game"

3) copy the list above and edit your alphacentauri.ini file just before you load the turn to play

Not too onerous if yopu are in a handful of scenarioed PBEMs - more time consuming if you are in ten or more.

G.

[Flubber]

hmm

I knew the faction graphics one but by starting in 2111 will it work so that the rest have no accumulated research but both Domai and Miriam avoid the 10 years of no research or did you just do something to help the AI on that ?

From the way the AI hes been portrayed, we may need the extra tech from a domai researching from the beginning

[Qantaga]

2112 to Flubber.

Domai is researching now. Two entire research points accumulated and a quite hideous lab rate until I get the initial bases set, but research is accumulating nonetheless.

Googlie, thanks for all your hard work getting the game set up for us. This looks like it should be a lot of fun.

[Mongoose]

MY 2112 sent to Qantaga.

[Qantaga]

2113 to Chairman Flubber.

[Flubber]

2113 to archaic

[Archaic]

Turn to Mongoose