Aquarius - scenario for SMAX

[Lazerus]

Solar flares wiping out a combined 180 AI energy sats

I see Morgan restarts with alot of cash aswell, 1 of my bases revolted to him and instantly netted me a couple of techs and another 14k lol, his tech rate is 1 per 1 turn with such low costs now !

Yang decided to PB Drone HQ which suited me great as its a 2 horse race atm between me and Domai.
2202 and Yangs decided to just start PB'ing everybody lol, drone, uni and gaians all hit so far

[Lazerus]

Well i transcended 2223, could have perhaps been 4-5 turns earlier if i'd played around with the sliders for more techs.
Yang finished off my Morgan submissive with a PB and hit the drones several more times who responded by PB'ing him twice. Zak was left with just 4 bases thanks to the Hive, Dee pretty much held her own in the corner next to me and remained pacted the entire game despite me being FM.
I still can't play the pirates in a "piratey" way lol just ended up jumping onto land and doing forest+forget with tree farms.

[Mart]

Congrats Lazerus! Quite a score to compare to.
There were like 3 challenging moments then?
- defeat Morgan before his economic victory
- avoid PB'ing by Hive
- win transcendence race with Drones (Hive was helping attacking them it turns out)

Were you hit by any PB? Hive had them in abundance - all hurried by large amouts of energy?

[Lazerus]

Nope i managed to maintain truce with him for the most part, only ended when my Gaian+Drone pact mates started demanding i join in against him. Even then i just conquered the sea bases near me to make sure no PB came within range and let him beat them two up as a source of amusement

[Flubber]

I am trying this and its weird to play. By probing for energy reserves, I have at various times had as much as a quarter million energy. Once I started probing bases away to be honest I gave up being careful with cash. I rush SPs for cash . . I rush ALL my builds even if I have less than 10 mins and I've given up building bases due to the pain in the butt factor

For all that, in 2201 I am the tech leader and pop leader. Gaia is a one base submissive while Roze is a small and weak pactmate. I have left Morgan alone to steal their cash. The hive has a few weak bases while the university has only its capital left.

I couldn't beat Lazerus for a transcend but I think I could do a conquest victory in less time than that. PBs are now possible so I am thinking of PBing the Drones back to the stone age while my conventional forces take out the others

Its a different game, but in many many ways very easy to play. Once I started stealing cash it got sort of silly actually. I have been playing far from optimum. AS an example, I have been rushing super-expensive units instead of building cheaper shells and upgrading at less cost. Why?? Because I could !! No seriously . . its just that its become a bit of a micromanagement slog since there is no way the AI can compete .

[Lazerus]

quarter million energy

how !? surely you mean 25k and not 250k energy? clearly i need to probe more if you mean the latter lol

PBs are now possible so I am thinking of PBing the Drones back to the stone age

Yeah, just cashing in one crawler and rush buying them makes conquest victory possible really early.

Totally agree with the laziness factor that can creep in, had my hands in the same pattern most turns, cycle next base, hurry, down, all, next base etc.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Lazerus


how !? surely you mean 25k and not 250k energy? clearly i need to probe more if you mean the latter lol

Nope quarter million-- I checked at that point and found out that it would cost 1.6 million !!! to corner the energy market. My current energy levels are at a paltry 37000 or so. heck I BOUGHT the CBA and CF for cash WITHOUT cashing a crawler just because building another crawler was a pain.

Stealing cash has slowed down but at my peak I was stealing 3-4 times from Morgan's HQ per turn and 10 to 40 K was a pretty normal theft. Now I am only getting 3 to 10 K per theft from the Morgan's and from a few hundred to a thousand from the Drones/Hive Uni. As I said, I was incredibly sloppy with my cash and ROUTINELY rushed things with only 2-3 existing minerals. With a little care, this game should be over.

At the height of my base stealing, I actually paid over 40K for a single base (I didn't even switch out of knowledge or into fundy, I was being so cavalier with my cash)-- Now that cash is drying up, I am actually using my probeships to sabatoge bases or assassinate researchers.

Oh -- one plan for me would be to just PB the Drone HQ and use probes to steal all the other major bases. But as it stands I have a pretty large air and chopper force in the area so I could take out his bases by force-- It will just be a matter of time-- I might come back to this tonight-- I wonder would a worldwide blitz be possible?? I can probaly rush a best chopper in ebvery base every turn and upgrade the ample captured troops to drop configurations ( NO one else has airpower yet)

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Lazerus




Totally agree with the laziness factor that can creep in, had my hands in the same pattern most turns, cycle next base, hurry, down, all, next base etc.

Well I have the same thing-- I wish there was a button to pay the full hurry cost in EVERY base-- I would use it-- I spend a LOT of time hurrying stuff and a little killing all the units the AI is spamming out toward me. I've actually purchased petty much any AI unit that appears outside a stack

I think on my next turn I can eliminate the UNI while last turn I took the Hive capital so his bases should be amenable to mind control. or conquest-- The Hive basically spent his military in the region of the capital and has little left

That leaves

the Morganites -- weak militarily but rich-- They only have a few bases so maybe I'll just PB them to oblivion

the Drones-- by far the strongest AI and the only one close to me in tech

the Gaians-- submissive pactmate with one base

the Angels-- pactmate and relatively close to me but weak--

[Lazerus]

Damn lol my AI never got that rich ! Bar Morgan and Dee the others never had more then 5-10k stored away. Even those two at their peaks only had around 20k and once i'd stolen it it didn't really recover.
Paltry 37k i didn't even have that at my height heh.
Mart did you add some crazy "Interest 20%" feature to allow that to build up ?

Did your Morgan not attempt to corner the market Flubber ?

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Lazerus
Damn lol my AI never got that rich ! Bar Morgan and Dee the others never had more then 5-10k stored away. Even those two at their peaks only had around 20k and once i'd stolen it it didn't really recover.
Paltry 37k i didn't even have that at my height heh.
Mart did you add some crazy "Interest 20%" feature to allow that to build up ?

Hmm-- maybe I benefitted from a world that was pretty peaceful-- I did get a very early pact with the morganites and then borrowed 14000 energy. I confess I had read the thread and knew they would have cash so I made probing a huge priority

If you did not experience the same cash situation, could it be that there were different versions of this-- I just downloaded the version that appears first in this thread ( two days ago)

The only other think I can think is that the fact that the AI were moderately peaceful worked in favour of cash accumulation. The only AI war that seemed like it was actually being fought was a Hive-Uni one.

Originally posted by Lazerus


Did your Morgan not attempt to corner the market Flubber ?

Nope-- But I was robbing him from his HQ about 3 times a turn so it wasn't as if he could build up that much cash. If he would have made the attempt, I'm guessing that MCC-aided cruisers carrying best weapon amphibious troops could have made his capital mine-- Now . . . I would just rush a nuke and dispatch it

[Flubber]

Originally posted by mart7x5
What year Morgan started his 20 turn cornering?
2171, was when I played it.

Congrats for killing Morgan.
Any details as for expedition force taking over the capital?

Ahh -- I was ripping off morgan prior to that IIRC-- Even one really good theft would probably change things markedly and I made it one of my primary goals to rip him off on a regular basis-- The poor guy--- He would periodically send out a ship to try to stop the bleeding but said ship would invariably join MY navy.
Without airpower, he is helpless to stop ships that can strike from 8-9 tiles out

[Mart]

It's dissapointing that AI is not that good in using this energy. Morgan has interest 12 %. The rest of AI factions 8%
I think even 8% is too much. In U2 all have 5 % and this is more reasonable. Still, the AI might hurry things more frequently. Then good interest alone would make really challenging opponent.

[Flubber]

I'm up to 2204

I eliminated the gaians and UNi
The Morganites, Hive and Angels are all submissives

The drones have 8 bases-- I just stole a size 3 for something like 9K-- I currently have 50 K in the bank and that will have to do since the AI are all broke after surrendering-- I have probably 20 choppers in range of their bases and can rush a few more each turn so a conquest is forthcoming

[Flubber]

Originally posted by mart7x5
It's dissapointing that AI is not that good in using this energy. Morgan has interest 12 %. The rest of AI factions 8%
I think even 8% is too much. In U2 all have 5 % and this is more reasonable. Still, the AI might hurry things more frequently. Then good interest alone would make really challenging opponent.

I think that giving the AI that much cash makes the game easier. They don't probe defend properly. Just before Morgan surrendered and gave me his remaining cash, I have probed him for something like 8k and 7K on one turn and then 5K and 4K the next.


Oh and I am the only faction that has PBs. It was only in the last turn or two that anyone started building AA troops and for every faction except Domai, they are fission rather than fusion.

Oh and my relentless probing and attacks have had an impact. Domai is running Fundy, planned, Power

[Flubber]

The final attack went faster than I expected when I probecontrolled a few fringe basis and used them to rush choppers

Conquest victory in 2205-- I attached a zip of the file just before I dropped into the final drone base

I wiped out the drones to achieve it while the Morganites , Hive and Angels were all submissives and frankly militarily insignificant.