Succession Game, Anyone?

[johndmuller]

I have started the game and the thread is at this link .

[Zakharov VII]

We have begun!!

Shall we try to keep the other thread for story/turn report, and this for the out-of-character discussion?

And I'll be awake for at least 6 more hours ...

Z

Hmph...I must be going blind. I thought this was post 25600, which was fun (2^(5x2)x5^2), but it's only 24600. Oh well.

[Zakharov VII]

(I'm re-replying rather than editing so it's clear I'm here )

I'm having dinner then I'm going to play some cards with the family, so It'll be 1-2 hours before I can play my turn. If anyone else is around, download the game and play it (other thread)! Make a post here so we're kept informed, of course.

Z

[Zakharov VII]

Here I go!

Z

[Zakharov VII]

I hate to post 4 times in a row, but I just wanted to say a few things out of character.

One, if it's a pain to read my long turn reports (just under 15000 characters, according to the length checker thing) I can post a shortened version. But I had fun writing it.

Two...I only make them that long because I like it. No need to write for forever if it's not fun.

Three, someone's downloaded the save, and I don't know who it is, so I'll send the turn to you through e-mail, Blake, anyways.

Z

[Blake]

heh, I like reading and writing long turn reports.

[Zakharov VII]

Just to kill the suspense, that's me downloading the file, Blake...it "reads" like you've done a great job so I want to see

Then I'm off to bed, I (almost) promise you won't hear from me till tomorrow !

Z

[Zakharov VII]

I'll be out till tonight...

Just warning you in case JDM plays fast .

Z

[Zakharov VII]

Some OOC discussion...

Could it be possible that we WANT to stay at war with Santi and the Hive? They are supplying us with military units, after all....

Also, if possible, I think we should try to keep Lal alive, so that if we desparately need more bases, we can betray him and subvert his bases. Sounds evil, but unless Zak has very few bases (or we can conquor the HSA), we're going to need whatever we can get to keep up on research.

If we can spare the production, the Empath Guild will let us get in touch. If we can somehow get on Zak's good side, he may well trade us PSA now that the HSA's gone. Fusion Power should help our Defenders/Guards.

If he's fairly close, there's a possibility that with the Spartan Gatling thing and that Hive Missile Artillery (and some Plas-Defender NTs for defense) we may well be able to capture the HSA. We won't be getting into his Datalinks so we need the Empath Guild more than ever to know what base we're after. If Deirdre's on the same continent but she won't cooperate, we might just quietly peek at her map so we know where that base is.

Of course, as I said, he'd have to be fairly close (or, is it possible with minimum land percentage that 6 of us can be on the same continent??), since...well...we'd be land-bridging too him . Unless, of course, we go to war with Deirdre and pray she sends a Transport full of troops . Kill the troops, raid the boat. Sounds fun. Speaking of sea subversion...I completely forgot about the Plas-Trance F-Probe in ZVII Center....

Of course...it'd be a suicide mission for whatever non-probes we send, because probes are last priority defenders...and so the military units would have to "camp out."

If Zak's really getting ahead on research...we can start framing him against whomever we're at war with

Z

[Blake]

we want to be at war with the spartans because they give us moderate quality military units cheaply. The Hive HQ is MUCH too close to give good deals on mind controlling so he would be much better in our pocket. We also desperately need a buffer against the Believers and if Yang is busily attacking us he'll fall very easily to the Believers... ofcourse I doubt Yang would want any sort of treaty/pact now so it's a pretty moot point.

What would really help is mind controlling a base full of aircraft, it's something to watch out for on the spartan front, and keep a large buffer of cash (around 500) for such an occurance. Also Miriam occasionally drops out of fundie, this is also something to watch for because with her sprawling empire mindcontrolling will be tolerably cheap when she does drop out of fundie...

We may also have to consider going Knowledge to get on Zak's good side, green to get on Dee's good side, or even fundie to get on Miriams good side! Our empire hardly benefits from Democracy (too small and not much growth) so do keep fundie in mind as an option.

I suspect that Zak will be an ass to us no matter what so a Fundie/Green/Wealth may be worthwhile for the improved diplomatic relationships (and captured mindworms!)

[Zakharov VII]

Do you think capturing the HSA is feasable? If Z and Dee are on a continent together, we can most likely get a map from her, then the Empath Guild will do the rest...I think EG's pretty important at this stage?

Z

[Blake]

We will probably require to capture another players army (or good chunk of) to achieve it, and yes, I think it's possible.

[Fromage]

I didn't know that there are discussion in this thread too.

Anyway, we don't need EG anymore. In 2225 we have contacted everyone.

Zak was angry, but we have treaty nowadays. He isn't a problem.

We lost pretty much energy before I changed to Democracy, so Free market-Democracy-wealth is my option. We get a lot of energy and good growth. Soon we got 6 very large cities and they will give us enough evergy and research to do anything. Hybrid forests are on the way and after that we will get more energy that you can even dream. Our capital will produce alone almost 100 energy. If we build some research secret project there, we will get new techs almost every turn

[Zakharov VII]

I'm so glad CEO Blake was able to do such a great job!!

I was so worried that Miriam would come after us right after my turn, but Blake's done great (I downloaded, by the way)!!!

Beware - both Santi and Miriam are cooking up a Planet Buster - Miriam's Fusion, Santi's Fission. I'm not sure how "aware" the AI is, but I'm worried Miriam will have no qualms about Planet Busting Oul (she's at Vendetta with everyone), taking down practically our whole military. At least, then, the land bridge would be sunk .

And beware of Labor Network!! Miriam has half a million (well, not half, but nearly one hundred-thousanth of a million) noodles there, enough to make some serious spaghetti sauce out of our pretty orange and red probes. IIRC, Perimeter Defenses won't help against air strikes.

We're 4 techs away from Digital Sentience - MMI, Nanominiaturization, Industrial Nanorobotics, and then Digital Sentience. As (I hope ) you all know, that brings Cybernetic...and I'd never ever be more pleased to see that Probe bonus (though it is rather pointless, because with ANOTHER increase probe team base morale that I'm sure must come with Digital Sentience, we must be near Elite without +Probe). Then we can go to Democracy (with such high support costs at our military bases, -1 mineral won't make a difference) and get our 20% research back. Or, we can stick around Fundy for the Morale and let Cybernetic bump up our research.

In any case, it seems that's a worthy tech goal, we can pick up Hovertanks (4 movement on our Elite Probes!) and Drop Pods (though Probe Teams can't move the same turn as the drop ...) along the way. If Zak's not stubborn, we can get Unified Field Theory from him, get Frictionless, and stop by at Quantum!

It may be better to get to Matter Compression for a spledid jump from 6 armor (we're getting Probability Mechanics soon) to 8, but these decisions are for the next CEOs to decide.

Then, a tiny details...we've built enough new Tree Farms/Hybrid Forests that Morgan Industries can change from 3-0-5 sea tiles to 3-2-4 forest tiles without pollution, if so desired by our next CEO.

EDIT: I'm amazed how quickly we're moving - as of, well, before this morning, we were at 2230, then now tonight we're at 2270 !! Fairly long turns, too, with wars at both ends.

I'm not sure how heavy the action was with CEO Blake, but it seems (from the turn report) that Miriam's cooled down a tad but Santi's caused more trouble. In my notes that I may type up into a real report sometime, I have the following (adding a few words to make it somewhat readable):

43 - Ack, 9 Believer units move in (stacks of 2, 2, 4 and 1), kill probe and our 5-3-1. Subvert 6-2-2 (1 stack) kill 5-3-1 (in a 2 stack) with it, subvert other 5-3-1

44 - Uh Oh - 6-2-2 and 2x5-3-1 in a stack of 3 and 5x5-3-1 stack. Kill 5-3-1s in smaller stack, subvert 6-2-2, subvert a solo Elite 5-3-1 uncovered by moving in, unfortunately downgrades to Commando (because we're on Wealth??). Kill off 5x5-3-1 with 3 attacks and colateral damage, move probe in to "nullify" ZoC (we uncovered another stack when moving closer, and I didn't want to leave the safety of the monolith so it was ignored. I don't have in my notes what it was) so 5-3-1 can come to its new home, move probe back safe, switch off Wealth (I wonder why!)

45 - One of our 5-3-1 and probe dies, we kill a 4 stack of 3x5-3-1 and a 6-2-2, unfortunately the 6-2-2 was killed in colateral damage

46 - Miriam gets an Elite near us, kills one of ours, 6 units colateral damage. We subvert 2 5-3-1 and kill 5x5-3-1.

In 47 it looked like she retreated ("only" 2 5-3-1 to mop up), but in 48 she came back Fundyfied. Then there were 4-5 units a turn coming (I stopped reporting on all these gory details, rather tedious), killing off about one probe per turn (multiple bases were feeding Oul so it could afford to send out probes to draw fire and weaken). When things got adjacent to the base, they were killed off, though those annoying Elite Infantry (Elite Rovers were worse) got close to attack in the same turn, and sometimes Miriam got lucky with them. The the damaged units (from attacking Probe Teams) would retreat and a new wave sent next year.

A much simpler way to say all this is just to look at the numbers. At the end of CEO JDM's term, Miriam had 33 Gatling Plasma Infantry (5-3-1) active, 0 in production, 2 lost. 15 years later, at the end of my term, Miriam had 6 active, 0 in production, and 22 lost. Yang certainly didn't kill many of the 20 Miriam lost that term . Wait...now I count 22 5-3-1s lost/subverted above (first count I missed my comment about "only" 2 5-3-1s to clean up)...subversions are not included! I did a quick test, confirming this. After a subversion, the number active decreases but the number lost stays the same.

That means that the I subverted at least 7 Gatling Plasma Infantry, as Miriam had 35 total (active and lost) at 2240 and only 28 total (mostly lost) at 2255. If she built more, I subverted more .

Of all her units, she had 98 active, 20 in production, and 31 lost at '55. By 70, that was 99-20-66, 35 more kills (who knows how many subversions). CEO Blake did great, leaving her with 106-14-97, 31 more kills.

Z

[Blake]

Miriam sure did come after me and with force! I couldn't subvert a single one because the wench remained in fundie the entire time, so I just crushed her armies, mostly by confusing the heck out of them, using such tatics as:

Putting an elite 0-5-1 in the fungus next to the base, 90% of the time her elite missile units would go after the probe, and die, I had to keep swapping probes as they got damamged...

If things get too hot, I stuck a needlejet on the 1 tile landbridge, this forces all the reinforcments to turn around and go home, and I can deal with those next to the base. I then remove the ZoC blocking needle and allow some more units to flow in, thus I killed her units at my pace.

A few times she did get to attack the base, once the defender won and otherwise I just had to bring in some of the "Spartan Army Surplus" units to replace the losses and increase the pool of counter-attackers. I had to sacrifice the odd unit to dislodge miriams infantry from the fungus patch.

And altough Santiago was active she was hardly dangerous, hence the "Spartan army surplus" name , after the strategic retreat every unit she sent through either suicided against a probe, got needled, or mind controlled.
Miriam was much more dangerous, a slipup with my ZoC defense and the base could easily have been lost - one of the reasons why I played 5 extra turns, my skills at beating overwhemling streams of AI military units have been honed in various CGN challenges and I wanted to get some more durable defense in place, the defense situation around 2265 was just so fragile, but with fusion noodles the plasma units are easy picking.

We will soon have tachyeon defense, that provides +100% vs land and air, which will provide a much needed boost seeing we cant upgrade our military with AAA and COMM, altough I aquired a ECM unit or two from Santiago. I imagine that the tachy defense will spell the end of the Believer threat because her missile units wont stand a chance - we could even use our armoured formers to garrison bases, veteran 6 armour former+creche, +50% morale , x1.25x1.25 base/sensor, x3 from Perimeter+Tachy = 7x defense, with 6 armour thats 42 defense!, with 3 armour 21 defense.

Miriams attackers are 6*1.5*1.25*1.25 = 14, by my count a former will be able to beat off about 3 elite infantry, a plasma unit should reliably beat 1, but sometimes die to the second.