Aki-Zeta, alien eXterminator

[bvanevery]

Can Aki-Zeta wipe out Aliens?  Yep.  Long as she chooses Build, Conquer as her research goals.  Took that out of the playbook of Yang.  I would have done just Conquer, hoping to ensure the Police State and The Command Nexus, but I remembered why one doesn't do that.  One needs Formers.  Recreation Commons are also useful.

Huge map, average settings, random opponents.  Both Alien factions in the game.  I start on what looks like a large island, in an agricultural valley with a river.  I move to the flat river hex for the money.  My other colonist goes slightly northwest to take advantage of the rolling rainy land I've just moved out of range of.  Early spread is uneventful.  I pop minerals next to my capitol, and settle an interior city with minerals as well.  Even though I'm not trying to, I get Doctrine:Mobility, so these 2 mineral cities become Command Centers.  I also get Nonlinear Mathematics almost immediately, so I know I won't be taking crap from anyone.

Who shows up to give me crap?  Usurpers, on the northern end of my "island".  Maybe it's a continent?  I block the movement of a Battle Ogre with my scout.  I move my 4-1-1 Impact Squad up to a choke point at the north of the island.  There's no way I'm letting this guy wander around and settle.  Remembering that I completely screwed up against the Spartans in a previous game, by failing to attack when I had the Nonlinear Mathematics advantage, I don't make the same mistake again.  When Marr brings an "innocent" scout down to the choke point, I eXterminate it.  I would have liked to kill the Battle Ogre but who can choose one's fate in war?

I build a Sensor Array on one side of a fungus line, which proves to be a great help for controlling my frontier.  I march scouts up there as screeners, sending better units behind them to do actual damage.  Soon I've researched High Energy Chemistry, so I start making X Impact Rovers and Plasma Garrisons.  A lot of skirmishing... although sometimes I get whapped by columns of speeders that are too large, my tactics are better than the AI's and I give better than I get.  I wipe out cities.  I also settle my side of the island just fine, didn't forget to expand.

I'm about to do this big push with a whole pile of Plasma Garrisons and X Impact Rovers, into a rocky fungus square where I thought I'd be safe... but I get unlucky and everyone gets wounded by Marr's synth impact rover.  Suddenly Hminee is here as well.  We can talk by now, I've got Progenitor Psych for some reason.  She's unfriendly and threatens me, so I X her too!  Yep, got 2 Aliens to wipe out now.  No slaves for this gal.

Deirdre completes The Empath Guild and I get to meet other humans.  Morgan, Svensgaard, and Miriam.  They all sign Treaties, and I trade techs and maps.  I don't have a bead on the Caretakers yet, although they're invading Deirdre just to the north.  It looks like I've trapped the Usurpers in just 2 cities!  Way to outpower a regional rival.  I've got more than enough units to take out 2 cities, as in addition to the X rovers I had already, I've made some X Impact Infantry.  All I have to do is screen stuff well enough to get everything to work.  The approach is on open ground, but I do have enough to overwhelm.

Sadly, others are going to get The Command Nexus.  Once again, I did not get to choose to be a Police State.  I haven't even gotten to go Planned.  But my +2 Research got me the techs I need, to do the deed!

[bvanevery]

Marr went down like a ton of bricks.  Ironically I think his problem may have been a lone Scout put in front of his roadway by the Believers.  Shoulda declared war on the Believers I guess.  I actually had to ally with them to get past the obstruction.  At which point Marr was summarily eradicated.  I'm a little confused at why he put up a better fight before.  Maybe I just outproduced him.

After clearing him from my island, I needed to play catch-up in other areas.  I thought about going after the Caretakers immediately with the X forces I had amassed.  I made a fair number of transports to facilitate that, but the Caretaker homeland was actually fairly far away.  They also kept landing on my shores which made me think I needed garrison forces.  I actually only ended up taking 2 units off island, not to the Caretakers, but to Deidre "just" to the north.  Which was farther than it looked, crawling along 3 squares at a time, with some sea fungus in the way as well.  Deidre and I were allied and the Caretakers had taken over 2 of her cities.  By the time I got there, she had already liberated 1 of them.  I had arrived at the 2nd one when I started typing this, but I think it was empty and about to be liberated as well.

Whatever my prowess at the close range struggle, this was turning into a longer distance game.   I had firepower, but I needed to catch up with a lot of other techs.  Deirdre was coy about trades, she didn't think High Energy Chemistry was good enough for her.  No you're not getting my tasty missiles and resonance lasers, beyotch!  I turned to Morgan to make the sales, as what he offered seemed more reasonable. 

I realized I was now headed for a repeat of my previous game.  Long distance enemies, need to come up with the shipping.  Didn't want to do the "building up" thing.  Sounded like a chore and it's 6:30 AM, so I quit.

I think I responded correctly to the Usurpers.  Maybe nobody can actually make short work of a Huge map?