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How to Beat Maso With Only One Planet!
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He won on Medium Rare. It's really a great AAR...good job, Sirian!
          
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Very nice Sirian. Thank you. 
    
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Well done, Sirian. While I'm at it, thank you for your very thoughtful and instructive posts in many threads! (I remember being quite proud of my first OCC in Civ2. I never pulled it off at Size One, but I did pull it off at Size Four.)
[Message Edited]
 
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#6
by Citizen Sirian - 11/25/2003 7:58:09 PM
| A suggestion. In one-sector games, you can vastly boost your military rating in the early game using a starbase with those very rarely used military modules. |
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Interesting idea. Not sure what you mean by "early" game, though, since it would take 1000 bc worth of production to build a mere five constructors. That could be grabbing Tri-Strontium and Galactic Exhibition instead of a starbase. The bonus would only affect the ratings of existing ships, too. For 1000 BC, we could have a starbase with four modules (at best, that's what? Battle Stations I, II, III and a fourth module? If the techs are available) or we could just build two battleships or nearly four battle hammers for the same price and surely get more boost. No?
The starbase would cost less maintenance but cash was never a problem, and ships could actually fight if war came. The starbase would be a sitting duck.
Something to keep in mind, though. In the right situation, it might be a good move.
I'm thinking I might try another OSC.
- Sirian
  
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#9
by Citizen Sirian - 11/26/2003 7:40:33 PM
Mmm. Yeah, that might get rough. I thought the same for Civ3, but didn't turn out to be the case. The Civ3 AI died on the vine without trade. GC would be different, though, with the minors for the major to bully around, and likewise for the player to trade with and bully. Too bad minors aren't optional.
I went and played another OPC, this time on huge/rare. I drew really bad terrain, with a yellow star next door to draw a major to me, and with no minors nearby. I only did find one of the four minors ever, and they wouldn't buy tech for cash. I had only one major close, the Yor, who had the best terrain. Despite three trade routes to them, they sent me no trade and when the grace period on relations ended, they went from neutral to war in less than ten turns. I never had a chance and got snowed under. I tried, and even had the Torians and Altarians join the war with me, but after the Yor killed off my trade routes the end soon followed.
JaxomCA has done it with one system, two good planets at Sol, since I posted my report. He did OSC on a Large/rare map. He had both Scotty and Alex buying, and coasted to an easy victory. The game form is clearly interesting, but there seems to be such a thing as a terrain situation from which victory is not feasible. Minors being accessible may be the keystone requirement, as without them to speed your climb up the tech tree and stay in the tech trading game, you just can't keep up doing it all on your own. I'll try again, but after being conquered, I'm ready to give some back as good as I got, in a normal game, before I do.
- Sirian
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#10
by Citizen LDiCesare - 11/27/2003 8:56:02 AM
| Mmm. Yeah, that might get rough. I thought the same for Civ3, but didn't turn out to be the case. |
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It can be VERY rough. I have a 'simple' victory in my log, well, that was it. However, you just have to be careful, and trade with minors. On a bigger map, it can be very deadly, particularly with abundant stars, as the major will expand more than the minors, I think even now, but I am not sure. And they tend to beat you in terms of speed to stars. Trade is really key there, as this settings effectively prevents the major from trading effectively. They'll usually attack the minors instead of trading with them for instance.
There have been several people doing One Sector Challenge. It's obviously simpler than one planet, particularly if there's a yellow in your home sector.
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Hi, Sirian.
Well, as an "old-hand" at OCC in Civ2, I decided to try your OSC. Just started yesterday so I have very little to report. Same party, but I fiddled with the bonuses a bit. I was tempted to take my usual +5 PQ, but that would be a real one-shot bonus in this game. It seems to me that even the +Production boni will be less valuable when there's only one or two planets...but then again, having +Production on my ONLY production makes sense! So IIRC I took +2 Trade Routes, +1 Trade, +1 Diplo, +1 Soc Prod, +1 Mil Prod...so it's a bit like trying to be a Jack-of-all-trades.
Like your game, Earth started PQ19 and I think it will be a one-planet challenge. This may be great for me, as I will only be micro-managing and dithering over a single planet. The game will go faster that way.
You wrote "My surveyor hugged the map edge below." Was this to delay contact with the majors? I didn't, and I may live to regret it I suppose. However, my first contact was a doozy. I met the Alexians and the Torians on the same turn. With Alex I swapped trade and 35x1bc for IT & CT. Then Toria: Tr+UT+IT+CT+50x1bc for BE, AG, PT, DT, and MT. Hello, Habitat! Then met the Yor, but their only tech was Deflectors, so no deal. I gave them MT to prime the pump, but they wouldn't trade a freighter for my BE...though they had FOUR.
So, it *looks* like a good start.
In your AAR your freighter bypassed the Torian homeworld to create a longer trade route with them. I guess that means that distance is more important than the economic power of the destination; I've wondered about that. [Question: is the relevant distance in parsecs or in sectors? This is for when there are multiple planets in the same sector, or the equivalent.]
In your "no bonus" AAR, you wrote "I decided to settle the PQ16 in Sol system with my colony ship." It seems like this almost cost you one of the most valuable planets in your cluster. I always send that initial colony ship out and pick up "spare" Sol planets later on. I'm not planning to do any Soc spending until my initial colonies are in place, so I think I get more benefit from an extra system than from early colonization at home. You have a lot more experience; I guess you disagree. -- HtL
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#14
by Citizen Sirian - 12/6/2003 3:07:03 PM
| In your "no bonus" AAR, you wrote "I decided to settle the PQ16 in Sol system with my colony ship." It seems like this almost cost you one of the most valuable planets in your cluster. |
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On the contrary.
Let's say there are only five planets. There's Earth and a second planet at Sol, PQ16. There's a yellow world halfway between, and two yellows in the distant sector. Now let's do the math.
Each sector is twelve tiles across, so six turns to travel a whole sector. Let's say ten turns to reach the most distant planet, from Sol, eight turns to reach the other distant yellow, and five turns to reach the middle planet. Remember, we MUST settle the middle planet before we can have the range to reach the distant ones.
CASE 1: Send the starting colony ship to middle planet.
a) Five turns to get there, five turns while there to build a colony ship, three more turns to reach second yellow, total 13 turns.
b) Three turns for Earth to build next colony ship, ten turns to travel to most distant star, total 13 turns.
C) Three more turns to build ship to settle second planet in Sol system.
CASE 2: Settle Sol second planet with starting colony ship.
a) three turns for Earth to build its first colony ship, ten turns to travel to most distant star, 13 total.
b) five turns for second Sol to build colony ship, eight turns travel, 13 total.
c) six total turns for Earth to build its second colony ship, travels to middle planet in five turns, extends range just as first colony ship needs it.
Total time? 13 turns either way. So what IS the difference? A couple of things.
A) All ships being built out of Sol means all can have 150 to 200 colonists onboard. Ships built at Earth and Sol second planet are treated the same, and draw from both planets to board the ships.
B) If done the other way, the ship being built out of the middle planet will have only about 140 colonists to choose from, meaning sending only 40 on the ship, or shortchanging the middle planet. Either way, at least one of the yellows starts with a low pop.
C) Pop is growing, and production is being spent, from turn one, if second Sol is settled right away. That gives me more production in to build additional colony ships to settle the PQ14's sitting around. I complete my total colony ship production sooner, perhaps buying me AN ENTIRE TURN OR TWO for the rest of the game. Compare to the five turns the colonists spend in space, doing nothing, not growing, not working. It's a minor difference, but such is the stuff of increasing your game.
With full spoilers, I wouldn't do anything differently except to send fewer colonists on the third ship, the one that ended up settling the middle planet for me.
I don't usually settle a second Sol planet on the first turn. If there is a yellow in my starting sector, I'll grab that instead. But I do usually want to settle quickly. An exception may come if I have a major breathing down my neck right at the start. Then it's a pure race to grab what you can, and reaching out as far as you can with the first ship may be best.
The starting colony ship, with only 100 colonists, will spawn only 30 to 40 mil per ship off the planet it lands on. That's great for grabbing up PQ14's, or maybe 15's, while all the ships from Earth will have 200. This makes for uneven settling, and is bad if you are playing abundant. You end up with a lot of yellows with low pop. Better to put about 150 on each ship so that more worlds get going stronger sooner, and not have any low pop ships until the second or third generation.
You have to play the map you're dealt. There is no one best answer for everything. When I started, I would always skip additional Sol planets, thinking I needed to race to reach out. Then I came to see that settling faster gets me more total colony ship production faster, which in many cases beats sending the ship out into uncertainty and possibly NOT finding a yellow in the direction you choose. Depends on the habitability and other factors.
But no, I would have "almost lost" that planet no matter what I did. There were only two ways to get all the planets, and both took 13 turns. The way I did it made sure both distant planets started with strong pop, though, and also completed my totality of colony ship production a little sooner.
| In your AAR your freighter bypassed the Torian homeworld to create a longer trade route with them. I guess that means that distance is more important than the economic power of the destination |
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They are both important. I prioritize building my colony ships from my best worlds, often all from Earth or my econ capital, occasionally from other planets if the need to get trade going quickly is dire, for relations purposes. I prefer to send the ships to different routes than all the "best" route, because spreading them around a bit makes them less vulnerable, as a totality, if I end up in war.
Longer routes are worth more only in the latter stages, but they take longer to recycle, so the totality is worth more. Yet routes to higher pop systems are worth more than lower pop.
In my OPC, the Torian worlds were all about the same size and population. So going to the farther one was a no brainer. If they had had a system with two or more planets in it, though, that's where I would have gone.
Like the colony issues above, trade strategy has a lot of subtleties. There's the diplomacy of whom to trade with, the military aspect of whom to trade with, the econimics, the security of the routes, and more.
Pay attention to the values you get from the routes, and you can learn to eyeball when you get more value from distance vs population. Try to remember that the longer route will still be paying out high when the shorter one recycles, so a small loss per turn on a longer route is worth it over time, but a large one wouldn't be.
- Sirian
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My first OCC attempt suffered a terminal setback when the Torians declared war directly from "Friendly." I don't know what happened, but I suspect I clicked the wrong thing and attacked accidentally. The game is slow on my laptop and I guess I got impatient waiting for a response. Those darned trigger-happy border patrols!
The game I posted last night would have been great for OCC, with four planets in two systems in my starting sector. [Icing on the cake: one of those became PQ 44.] But in that game I was aiming for the culture bomb route, which means that I ended up with almost all the planets by the end.
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#16
by Citizen Sirian - 12/9/2003 3:35:52 PM
From Friendly, you got attacked by ticking them off. As of v1.12, the AI has been "upgraded" to show ZERO TOLERANCE for any of your military ships set to "guard" mode in any sector adjacent to a sector containing one of their worlds. You get no warning. Just a "we're going to take care of you before you take care of us" message, and it's war. Relations do not matter, although perhaps an actual Alliance will prevent a problem. (Don't know, haven't tested).
These new wars will happen even if your ships are parked to attack someone ELSE, including minors, and even (incredibly) if they are parked ON your own starbases to defend them. The AI doesn't care. If a ship is parked near its worlds, that's a threat!
In other words, the AI's have been made paranoid in an attempt to beef them up. This is good news in some regards, since the AI can better see sneak attacks coming. But I don't know that it really solves anything, since you can simply leave your ships at home, massed in your own sectors, until you are ready to attack.
I suppose the one thing this prevents is opportunistic poaching by parking transports in or near systems in the hope of AI-on-AI wars opening a chance for you to poach somebody's planet on the ultra-cheap. Yet this "fix" comes at a cost: legitimate players and legitimate play must now contend with paranoid AI's.
I recommend you use only scouts and freighters and drones as "eyes" in deep space, and keep your warships well out of any risk zone. Also pay CLOSE attention when AI's start taking over other AI's or minors, as a stray ship parked in what used to be deep space may suddenly become the reason your long-time ally decides you are a threat: that corvette guarding your starbase looks like a massive invasion fleet to the AI now, if it's close to their systems. 
I would even go as far as to say, if this sort of war starts because you accidentally overlooked some harmless ship parked somewhere that the AI took offense, then just reload, because you are being hit with a side effect of a fix aimed at something else. Now if you get caught preparing a bona fide invasion, then the honorable thing to do would be to eat it and keep playing. In the mean time, be a lot more careful about where you park your ships.
- Sirian
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| It adds tedious micromanagement to the game, which is imo acceptable if it's penalizing an exploit. |
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Hmm...would Sector Sweep work? That might be interpreted the same as autopilot. Now imagine the following: 10 or 15 ships in the same sector, all on Sector Sweep. It would look like an Indian attack in the old westerns...
As you said, autopilot may not work in 1.12. In a semi-real gaming galaxy, I would think a friendly AI would permit warships to pass through, and in the real world this has been exploited...viz the Fourth Crusade sacking Constantinople.
| I would even go as far as to say, if this sort of war starts because you accidentally overlooked some harmless ship parked somewhere that the AI took offense, then just reload, because you are being hit with a side effect of a fix aimed at something else. Now if you get caught preparing a bona fide invasion, then the honorable thing to do would be to eat it and keep playing. In the mean time, be a lot more careful about where you park your ships. |
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Wow! Thanks for the tip! It would have taken me a lot of pain to figure that one out. Yes, I would reload (and may do so); likely I put a ship on guard on a starbase. And as for being careful, I understand fully; I live in Hoboken New Jersey and we *kill* for parking spaces here. 
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Agreed! So how did the pizza come out and is Johnstown still there today? I had some interesting detours around flooding in NJ this morning. 
OH, the MAIN topic! Well, I have an OSectorC game going (as opposed to OSystemC or OPP), and I've reached an awkward strategic question: "How can I win this thing?"
Situation: maso,small,common,standard align,all incredible,populists,diplo&influence bonuses and maybe +1 speed(I forget). I've reached Feb 2189, with four planets in one sector (the starting position I mentioned). Two superpowers: the Drengin, right on my doorstep, and the Altarians beyond them. The Yor surrendered their two systems to the Drengin, the Torians should fold any time now (only had one system), the Arceans have two or three systems way in the upper corner and are fighting the Torians; likely one or both of the superpowers will soon come calling. [All AIs are currently friendly, though making intermittent demands for cash.]
There was only one tech resource, and I have it, along with 2 of the 3 econ resources. Anyway, even with four planets I have only about 1/4 the research power of your super research planet, but I'm doing OK on tech, leading in the non-military techs...while anxiously watching the Altarian and Drengin Avatars slugging it out.
12/88 was a big trade month, starting when the Drengin offered Dreadnoughts for Xeno Prop. Then I traded them Conglomerates for 3D Phasing, Art.Life, and Art.Planets. Then I visited the Altarians and gave them those 3 techs plus Xeno Prop for Adv.Art.Intel., Cult Focus, Reinf.Hulls,Replication,Splash Dam, StarHawk,Terraform & UltraComp. Rounded out by trading two techs to Arcea for Dam Opt. This month I completed Hist.Preserve. I have a lot of trade goods that I haven't traded to the majors, hoping to be able to trade for (or be offered) big military techs.
So where do I go from here? My original thought was to go the Terror Star route, but I have only 2500 in the bank and income of 750 (the Alexians would NOT trade cash for techs, and there have never been any minors except for Alex and the Carinoids--both deceased). Alliance? I might be able to ally with the Drengin if I generate some morality events by colonizing worthless planets in my sector. It's likely they will defeat the Altarians (so sayeth the news)...and I could blow up the Arceans and Torians for them. Of course my timing would have to be good or the Altarians will kill me. My third idea is to research Cultural Conquest and use influence...destroying each colony that flips to me to remain true (more or less) to the OSC. Your thoughts, O Noble Sages? -- HtL
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I thought you could use terror stars even when you have no money - it just puts you massively in debt.
 
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