network of fungus

[bvanevery]

I only just realized that Aki-Zeta is not actually her name.  Well I'm sorry, but I'm not going for the Star Trek: Voyager ripoff of calling her Seven of Nine Aki Zeta-5.  Anyways, Consciousness, Huge map, average settings, random opponents.

I start on some decent agricultural land, so I found Alpha Prime.  Next turn I'm about to pop a pod, and I remembered how I rapidly completed stuff the last game as the Pirates.  What's the most expensive thing I can make?  A Network Node!  So I set production to NN; I'll change it to something else if it doesn't insta-complete.  But it does.  In fact, I manage this same trick with my 2nd base as well.  What good is 2 Network Nodes at the very beginning?  Probably nothing.  In fact, maybe it ate a little bit of my money every turn.  I could have cashed 2 Artifacts to get techs, and in due course I actually had 2 Artifacts to do that with.  But early techs can generally be traded for, so unless one is trying to get the jump on a particular Secret Project, I think it's better to use Artifacts to complete Secret Projects at the beginning of the game.

I'm on an island.  There's a lot of fungus.  For instance I get a mineral deposit on the nice agricultural land northwest of my capitol, but I can't found a base near it, due to so much fungus.  It'll need to be a coastal sea base "someday". 
Up north, I have so much trouble crossing fungus that a mindworm actually kills one of my colonists.

Shortly thereafter, I end up doing some stupid chase thing where I have to sacrifice 1 scout and 1 Former to save 2 colonists, just to slow the worm down.  That whole dance is a clockwise rotation around the Grand Mesa, which has a big fungal stalk on it.  I do manage to save the colonists and found cities on safer ground.  I then save up 5 scouts to take out the stalk.  I only actually end up needing 3, but it looked awfully big.  Maybe I should do the "send 4 scouts at it" routine more often in other games.  I tend to do everything else first, then come back for stalks, but in this game I had literally nowhere else to go.

As I'm about to settle my last city, I meet Svensgaard.  He's camping off the northeast coast of my island.  Grr!  Yet I make peace with him, and even ally with him.  Truth is I'm weak.  I've got a lot of cities but they're really vulnerable, sitting in piles of fungus and defended only by scouts.  I need some time to turn this into an actual empire.  I might as well use that time to find out who else is in the game and what their dispositions are.

Deirdre completes The Empath Guild, so I get to talk to all the humans.  Cha Dawn is Quarrelsome, so I only honor a Truce with her and don't even ask for a Treaty.  I figure if you've got a bad attitude, maybe you can be one of my victims?  But I have no idea where she is, so I won't be premature about it.  Lal and Deirdre are friendly and we trade techs.  I have map info on them and Zhakarov.  Svensgaard is at war with Zhakarov, but the invasion route is long enough that I think, I don't know that I want to bother with that.  Frankly Svensgaard is much easier to invade, if you get right down to it.  So when I talk to Zhakarov I'm interested in making peace, not war.  I get them to sign a Truce. 

Zhakarov, surprisingly, also trades me Doctrine:Loyalty!  I started with a Build, Conquer focus and switched to just Conquer later, and I still haven't gotten this thing, so that's quite a gift.  I don't fool around, I use 2 Artifacts and a lot of money to complete The Command Nexus 2 turns later.  Lots of Secret Projects were being built by lots of factions and I had a feeling they were all about to pop.  Maybe Zhakarov traded it because he calculated that he couldn't complete it.  Or maybe he's just stupid.  Well whatever, I'm the badass now!

All these trades got me mostly caught up on tech.  I started making Trance 3-Res Sentinels for all my cities.  After that I'm making Probe Teams everywhere.  I've got piles of scouts that I should send somewhere.  I've made very few transports and 1 R-laser skimship.  Most of my map knowledge came from other players, and there's this huge void to the south and southwest of my island.  I had a fear that the Caretakers were there, and I was correct.  They're hostile, and now I know who's going to die first.

I went Democratic Planned to get my city populations up higher.  I figured I'd switch to Green Police State once folks got unhappy.  Then start grinding someone up.  Hm, maybe I don't need to do anything with those scouts after all, as they'll keep the citizenry in line.

In the intervening time period, Svensgaard dumped me.  Cha Dawn won't talk to me.  I still don't know where she is, but the graph says she's the weakest player by a wide margin.  He tried to get me to ally against the Caretakers, and I did end up going to war with Hminee eventually anyways, so maybe he is "next to the Caretakers" somewhere.

Deirdre may not like me right now, but I've had no need to speak to her.  Her civilization is far to the north, and buffered by both Lal and Zhakarov on a huge chunk of land.  So she'll remain a "remote kingdom" for a time.  I imagine myself pissing off Lal with my Police State, then knocking him off, as he's straight north of me.  But events could unfold otherwise; for instance, Svensgaard could get uppity and then I'd wipe him out.

[bvanevery]

I forgot that Lal is my ally.  Yeah, I care for him, I really do.   He asked me to go to war against Svensgaard.  I thought... sure!  After all, Svensgaard had just established another sea base that deprives one of my land bases of a sea energy resource.  I very much wanted to have that, so war it is.

Svensgaard immediately landed 2 impact rovers on a Monolith, within striking distance of a city that didn't have enough in it to repel that.  So I spammed him with scouts.  I figured, even if he remembers to heal himself on the Monolith next turn,   it will cost him a turn.  At which point I can put even more scouts in his way, until I figure out what I'm really doing about him.  I brought up a 4-1-1 Impact Squad, screened by a scout, hoping he wouldn't think to attack it after killing the scout.  But he did.  So at that point, I bought my way out of the problem.  I subverted 1 of his impact rovers for a fair amount of credits, I think 243 or something, but I had ~400 in reserve.  With that I wiped out 2 more of his rovers.  The last one was wounded and counterattacked me as I stood on the Monolith, but surprisingly, it died.  Must have been a real piece of crap, I should have been dead.  Instead I healed on the Monolith and retreated into my city.  No more rovers came and my garrison is adequate there now.

I've just researched missiles, so Svensgaard is really in trouble now.  R-lasers are expensive and slow to produce; missiles, not nearly so much.  I've got several unarmored Missile Skimships in production.  I also begrudgingly changed to Green Police State.  I wanted some of my cities to grow, but even under Democratic Planned they were going to take a long time, so I accepted that it's my faction weakness.  Under the new regime, nothing's gonna grow as I'm at -3 Growth.  I'm not using the scouts as riot control; that's turning out to be the job of Recon Rovers.  If Svensgaard or anyone else lands with speeders again, I want to be able to respond immediately.  The scouts are on coastal squares to deny Svensgaard any landing zones, and to keep improvements from being shelled.

Not much has come from the Caretakers.  The land mass to the south and southwest is quite large, and I'm not sure how far she's spread on it.  I have a free rover on the land to the southeast.  When popping a coastal fungus pod by jumping off the ship, I set off an earthquake, so I've lost my ship.  Just 1 miserable rover poking about, hoping not to get killed.  Meanwhile I've got 1 transport in the water to the west of my island.  That's the sum total of my exploration.

[bvanevery]

The southern land mass seems to be a linear mega-continent.  The eastern portion even turns north at the end, ultimately terminating at the Monsoon Jungle.  Svensgaard has a few bases off the coast of that.  I found the Unity wreckage on the southeast portion of the continent, and got all the goodies including 300 credits.  So the Caretakers clearly haven't pushed very far into this land.  I have my rover moving west, trying to find the boundary of Caretaker territory.  The Mining Laser is walking around popping pods that have a lower chance of injury, i.e. not fungus pods.  There's plenty of fungus all over the place, so the lack of Caretaker mindworm probing is all the more remarkable.

I forgot to mention that Deirdre went to war with me, back when I was Democratic Planned.  She's the most powerful faction in the game.  She sits on an island continent to the distant north, with the Garland Crater at its center, belching out Secret Project after Secret Project.  She started on The Xenoempathy Dome not long after she got elected.  Even though I'm a Green Police State now, she wants a ridiculous amount of money for peace and savors the idea of executing me.  Whatever beyotch.

One day I imagine it'll be a juicy place to overrun.  However it's not easy to get to, as it's blocked by a strip continent running east to west.  Zhakarov is on the eastern half, Lal is on the western half, just north of me.  One could attack by sea, going around the west end of the continent, but without The Maritime Control Center it would be a bit tedious.  And I've chosen to focus on Conquer tech, not Explore.

In the northeast, I have taken 2 Pirate sea bases next to my island.  Oddly enough the next base next to me that needs to die is Safe Haven, his capitol.  The Pirates almost always put Safe Haven in a terrible deep ocean spot with no resources, not sure why.  Bad AI code I guess; didn't implement Look First logic?  Svensgaard did counterattack and kill some of my unarmored ships, but I figure everyone's guns are big enough that they'd die anyways.  So, better not to bother with armor, just crank 'em out as fast as possible.  It has worked well in many other games against the Pirates, and it seems to be working fine now.  I finally got a transport built, so I'm stocking those captured sea bases with scout cannon fodder.  They will keep the riffraff in line and might do some of the dying.

The Caretakers attempted to invade me to the southwest.  They were very sneaky, coming a long ways across fungus to at least 3 squares inland.  My habit is to put sensor arrays in forests, and I don't put forests on rainy land, only flat moist land typically.  That's to improve the minerals yield of the land.  Ergo the prime agricultural land, which generally is on the southwest portion of any given land mass, is a sensor array vulnerability.  Doubly so when it has a lot of fungus on it.  I have the tech to clear it, I've got fungicidal formers capability, but I don't have the time.  I've now using conventional formers that I already built, to try to clear more of it and get some sensors up, and also take hits from any further invaders.

It was really only by luck that I wasn't attacked completely by surprise.  I think I was moving a former around, and may have even moved it the wrong way due to a mouse slippage.  That revealed a synth impact rover, so I killed that with my own recon rovers before it could attack.  The Caretakers had brought in 3 armored impact infantry though, and I didn't have much to deal with that.  I brought back an impact rover from the campaign against Svensgaard, and also moved up a 6r-1-1 resonance laser.  Mostly I just threw a lot of recon rovers at the problem when they stepped into open terrain, pretty much destroying my reserve of them.  But they did their job, although their job was intended to be the repulsion of Pirate rovers.  If I thought the Caretakers would invade in force, I would have built X weapons, which I'm now doing.

I suppose I'm doing "fine" but fighting a 2 front war isn't making me feel mighty.  I need to remember not to overreact to the Caretaker threat.  I have piles of money lying around, as all I've been doing is cranking out units, not rushing any city improvements.  Maybe it's time to build walls.  I think The Citizen's Defense Force already got built, probably by Deirdre.

Lal arrived on a boat and was pissy with me.  I forgot that I'd gone Police State and he wouldn't like that.  He traded me something I actually needed and then was happy with me.  One of these days I'll kill him, but I will try to wait until after I've made the Pirates surrender.

[bvanevery]

I spent a fair amount of money rushing Perimeter Defenses.  I also kept a 6x-1-1 behind each wall.  This was extremely effective when the Caretakers tried to land again.  They weren't able to do anything as clever as the sneak attack they tried before.

Shortly after turtling up, I got Doctrine:Air Power.  That has made it trivial to overwhelm the Pirates.  I had already gained naval superiority anyways, but my movement through his sea bases now somewhat resembles a blitzkrieg.  Gas Missile Needlejets knock out armored defenders without even trying.  6-1-4 skimships eliminate any weak units and take the base.  He has foolishly chosen Free Market and has insufficient mobility for the few ships he sends at me.  Even when he does come towards me, I protect my own ships with air cover.  In principle he could make tactical fighters and shoot down my Needlejets, but in practice he doesn't have the productivity, or maybe even the brains.

I've taken a major sea base on the west coast of the Monsoon Jungle.  The Jungle is a small island that touches the southern supercontinent at 1 point.  It is possible to circumnavigate it.  I'm working my way clockwise around the island.  I'm mainly limited by logistics at this point: how fast I can bring garrison units, or how much I can spend to pacify with Recreation Commons etc.  I also use Scout Police as they're cheap pacification, but they have no defensive value.  So far nobody's been able to make any kind of offense though.  Mine rolls strong!

I saw a Caretaker rover on the supercontinent, and I killed it with a mindworm I captured on my home island.  Hey I've been Green all this time, you'd think I could dig up more than 1 mindworm!  Nope, but at least the one I've got, is horribly huge now.  I found The Ruins south of my island and promoted my mindworm to Demon Boil.  I just need it to pop pods, nothing else.  It keeps on stirring up mindworms and having to kill them, so I've actually popped very few pods.  My other 2 units previously on the supercontinent got killed, in the traditional "surrounded by 8 indigenous life forms" manner.
 
I saw a Caretaker rover on the Monsoon Jungle and killed it with a Needlejet.  It could have driven a long ways to get there, or it could have just landed on a transport.  It popped 1 pod in the Jungle, and I might want the few other pods for myself.  Also, it could trigger an earthquake.  That would ruin part of the jungle, and might cause Svensgaarad to get a land base.  Currently he only has sea bases, so if I put 1 land base in the middle of the Jungle, I'll deprive him of all land resources.  In the real world I doubt I'll have time to do that while in the middle of my conquest, so it's a question of when or if he surrenders.

I've been building X Missile Needlejets in my capitol, on the southwest side of my island.  I've denuded 1 Caretaker base so far.  My production seems to be taking a long time, maybe I should check what's going on.  I don't think the Caretakers ever actually settled on the supercontinent.  I think they started on an island just west of it, and have been spreading with sea bases along its coast.  I still haven't been able to get over there to see what's going on, and I doubt anyone else knows either.  Svensgaard would be the only one who might have made it, and every time I take one of his bases, the map reveal doesn't get any bigger.  Ergo, he didn't.

Deirdre completed the Maritime Control Center, among her many other projects.  In principle she could come.  In practice she won't, because there's that giant strip continent in front of her island.  She'd have to go around Lal to get to me, and I'm doubting she's motivated like that.  If only I could trigger a war between her and Lal.  Lal dumped me; we traded 1 last set of techs and then that was that.  Doesn't want a planet full of slavery.  What's wrong with slavery?  Don't chains look good on UN administrators?     I'm allied with Zhakarov now, who is not skittish about such things.  Lal and Zhakarov are at peace.

I'm not trading techs with anyone, because someone else has got the Planetary Datalinks, and they aren't researching most of the really useful stuff anyways.  Like bigger guns!  Thicker armor!  Holes drilled in brains!  Cyborg factories!  Well I don't even have Advanced Military Algorithms yet.  Hope I get it sometime.  Even if Deirdre gets The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm, I have the unique ability to steal techs anyways, just by taking over a base.  So I have nothing to worry about.  They can tech, tech, tech until the cows come home.  My +2 research is already rather good anyways and has gotten me what I've needed so far.

[bvanevery]

That "blitz" feeling faded out fairly soon.  Svensgaard became much more willing to counterattack with ships and Needlejets as I got closer to the thicket of his bases.  I held on however, I think because his productivity must not be that great.  Mine isn't amazing either but it's better than his.  My clockwise tour around the Monsoon Jungle slowed to a crawl.  However I was able to pacify all my old holdings, and now they're beginning to produce missile skimships to finish Svensgaard off.  My base on the west coast of the Jungle, I at last built an Aerospace Complex.  With that I'm able to smash up his bases most efficiently.

The Caretakers have annoyed me some in the southwest.  This stupid Unity chopper kept shooting down my Needlejets!  I never realized they were any good at that sort of thing, but yeah, they're SAM units.  I've denuded the small island west of me, and I wiped out a base to the south.  There's 1 base southwest of my capitol that needs to die, but that's where that chopper last came from, so I can't just go in there.  I've switched to building a Missile Tactical, but now I'm realizing, it won't have the range to intervene.  I might have to save up some planes and blow the base away all at once.  3 or 4 planes might do it, as the population of the base isn't that large.

My Demon Boil is tromping around in the general vicinity of The Ruins.  It's hard to get out of there because when I get wounded, I need to heal up.  I'm not seeing much in the way of pods.  Maybe the Caretakers actually managed to do some popping, in regions I haven't explored yet.

Svensgaard shows no sign of surrendering.  He will keep dying, but this can definitely take time.  We are fighting a rather backwards war compared to other factions.  Neither one of us has AAA, deep radar, or Cruisers.  Deirdre, Lal, and Zhakarov are currently in a 3 way race for The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm.  I don't know who will win, and to be honest I really don't care.  Zhakarov is my ally and he could sell me Advanced Military Algorithms, but currently he won't.  Once he does, I may go for Power and then he won't like me anymore.

I feel like I'm doing ok this game, but I don't feel like I'm some super awesome badass.  The Pirates are a chore to clean up.  I'm not convinced my rush-and-Conquer method of dealing with him, is more effective than biding one's time, researching Doctrine:Initiative, and cleaning him out with Marines.  I'm not sure that having all these sea bases is valuable, especially to the extent that they are quite distant from my capitol.

On the other hand, what was available in other directions?  Caretaker bases aren't valuable, they depopulate to size 1 even if you want to keep them.  Plus the ones near me are sea bases, so that's no better than going after Svensgaard.  On the other hand I didn't have much of a choice about fighting the Caretakers, as they started out hostile.  That's typical of them.  If I had gone after the Caretakers instead, perhaps by now they would be about to die.  But I wouldn't have any more bases to show for it, whereas by the time I get through Svensgaard, I'll have doubled in size.  Not the greatest bases to have, but still double in size.

My -3 Growth seems like a pretty serious handicap.  Deirdre for instance has bases much larger than I do.  I'm sorta living "the Green dream" that she is not!  I would definitely like to switch back to Democratic Planned at some point, but for this war, I need the Police State.  I don't think I will vanquish both Svensgaard and Hminee anytime soon, and Lal could get cranky pants and go to war with me at any time.

I'm tempted to quit because this is a pretty dull game right now.  However it seems like fighting one of the "more sophisticated" factions would catch me up on tech pretty fast.  It's 1 AM as I write this.

[bvanevery]

The Pirates offer token resistance.  Logistically I'm a bit stretched, but a contingent of missile skimships has arrived at the head of my spear and no counterattack is forthcoming.  If Svensgaard doesn't surrender "soon" he's a fool.  His ally the Cultists have an annoying plane in one of his bases.  I've been in a Truce with the Cultists forever, so this makes the base unassailable.  I think they dispensed with that kind of protectionism in one of the later Civ games.

I am confident enough in my position around the Monsoon Jungle that I've begun building Formers and a colonist.  I'm wondering if I'll ever make a transition to Democratic Planned.  I'm at peace with Lal, but my ally Zhakarov has declared war on him.  So, won't be long before it's time to gobble up the north.  Might still want the Police State for that.

Deirdre went to war with the Caretakers, and surprisingly took one of their bases.  I couldn't tell which one, until I got a Caretaker map reveal somehow, maybe from Zhakarov passing me info.  Deirdre had taken a base on an island just west of me, thereby dispelling my belief that she wasn't willing to make long range naval forays.  I didn't have much in the way of invasion forces because I was in the habit of committing mass casualties and wiping Caretaker bases completely out.  I brought up an unarmored transport from a southern city, and waited empty off the coast  Next turn loaded it with probe teams and made a dash to cross, covering my movement with a Needlejet.  Unfortunately she completed The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm before I could land.

I came back with 2 Gas Missile Rovers I'd had sitting around for ages.  They were built against the possibility of Svensgaard attacking with more rovers, but that threat was long since eliminated.  Same loading and covering tactics as before.  This time I actually got a walk-in.  Did she see me coming and think that standing outside her city, in the fungus, would bring her safety?  My 2nd rover killed the unit she was trying to protect; better luck next time, Deirdre.  I had a vast choice of techs to take from her and wisely opted for Fusion Power.

I forgot to try to negotiate with her afterwards.  If she wants to finally make a Treaty I'm amenable.  We're both Green, and I can't invade her until I've chewed up either Lal or Zhakarov.  At this point it's looking very much like Lal.  He's got lots of techs I can play catch-up with, so I don't really need to munch Gaian bases.  Not that there are any more to munch anyways.

As we are now in the Orbital Spaceflight era, I'm thinking I better hurry up with eXterminating the Caretakers, before they get a nuke.  I've really done very little to them.  I halted their advance towards me and denuded all but 1 of their bases within Needlejet range, but their main civilization is out of reach.  90% of my effort has gone towards vanquishing the Pirates.

[bvanevery]

Well it has begun.  Zhakarov asked me for help defeating Lal, and I acquiesced.  Lal's first move was to attack my north coast with 2 impact rovers the moment I accepted.  One died assaulting a walled city, and one didn't even remember to attack the Formers it had the opportunity to destroy.  So I killed it with a 6x-1-2 rover that I just happened to have sent that way.  I did not use chemical weapons on him, I will play nice.

I want Lal's techs but I don't know how much offense I'm actually going to do against him.  Lal is good to have as a buffer state against Deirdre, and I'm more interested in wiping out the Caretakers.  Currently I'm going through a round of putting Fusion Police Pulse Impact Infantry in all of my bases, in case anyone gets any ideas about coming for me.  After that I'll be building infrastructure to the degree that the efficiency of my Green Police State makes that profitable.

Some bases are too far away from my capitol to be good money and tech makers, so they will make the military units.  The Monsoon Jungle bases, however, need to develop that land if only to get productivity and population.  I'm about to finally colonize the center of the Jungle.  I'm also starting to settle small islands near my main island, to provide air bases to better wipe out the Caretakers.  I still don't have Industrial Automation so my bases are limited to size 7.  When they get to that size, I make a colonist and send it somewhere.  Originally I was just going to use the colonists to increase the size of other bases, but I've realized I would like to increase my land perimeter in places.

Svensgaard still refuses to surrender.  All of his nearby bases are mine now, except one that's stocked by Cultist air force, and sometimes Gaian air force.  The Cultists won't leave so I haven't been able to conquer the base.  If I had more money maybe I'd buy it, but I'm not rich.  I have put Tacticals in 2 of my Jungle cities, so when Deirdre bombs my feebler bases, I shoot down her planes.

Svensgaard has got 3 bases quite far away from me, on the other side of a peninsula full of peaceful Cultists.  I'm going to try to sail some ships up there to induce his surrender, but they might get picked off by the Gaian air force en route.  I'd have more ships if I could get those Police Impact Infantry finished, but it's taking awhile.

Zhakarov is an irritating ally.  The only tech he'll sell me is Orbital Spaceflight for 625 credits.  I don't have that kind of cash, so conquering Lal is the way to get tech.

[bvanevery]

I'm at a dull, infrastructural stage of empire growth.  I'm moving my capitol to a former Pirate base that's at the center of my conquests.  This should make the Monsoon Jungle cities economically viable, but will somewhat reduce the value of my home island cities.  There's a massive amount of sea kelp available to the south of this new capitol, as that's where the Sargasso Sea used to be.  Every time I build a base now, people are unhappy.  I don't want to go for Knowledge though, as that will make me more vulnerable to probe teams.

Perhaps it's time to hang up the Police State hat.  Well, maybe I should get done stealing Lal's techs first, as I need hab complexes.  I'm tempted to quit.  I'm starting to think that on a Huge map, there's no such thing as a "good eXtermination faction".  I've been doing Conquer, Conquer, Conquer the whole game and what has it gotten me?  I'm at the point where I'm going to have to spend some time Building anyways, because this empire is so large.  I'm #2 on the power graph now, not far behind Deirdre.  Seems like I could have easily dwarfed everyone as #1, if I had focused on Building instead of Conquering.

I'm running into what I call "the Garrisoning problem".  That's when you spend all your time shuffling units between cities to optimize your police and support.  It can consume so much time that I've quit many games because of it.  I've done it a lot with Yang-based empires.

I've got a bunch of Artifacts that I've never used, because of all the tech that's still available to steal.  If I could figure out what Deirdre's got, then I could gain tech parity and cash them all in.  Unfortunately I never had time to infiltrate her.  I'd have to win the Governorship, and I doubt I can do that.  Even if I go Democratic Planned and my bases grow like gangbusters, I'll probably only catch up to Deirdre.  I think she's got The Empath Guild as well.  I doubt I can take the city that The Empath Guild is in, as it's a very long ways away, and Deirdre is powerful.  If I were to do that, then capturing her cities to gain techs, until she doesn't have any new ones, would be equally easy / difficult.  And by that point, I won't need a tech boost as I'll have pretty much won the game.

I guess I'll just have to settle for stealing Lal's techs, then cashing.  At present I'm stealing from his feeble sea bases.  I plan to "steal then take", so I get 2 techs per base.

My 2 ships sent against the Pirates probably aren't enough.  I had to attack one of Svensgaard's ships on the way over there.  That leaves only 1 ship full strength, the other 1 is wounded.  It is sitting around trying to heal as the full strength ship moves onwards.  I've seen Deirdre in his bases, and sometimes planes.  So there's a very good chance of me being destroyed on approach.  If I take another base with only 1 ship, it'll be luck.

[bvanevery]

Destroyed by a Sea Lurk of all things.  Good grief.  So much for that.

I've stolen all of Lal's techs.  To do that, I was assaulting 3 of his sea bases in a group.  I used air force to cover my ships, and he didn't think to use Tacticals against them.  Yeah it's a bit of an exploit, but the AI has other advantages over me, like never getting bored.  Gotta have an equalizer somehow.

I never made it to his 3rd base.  He counterattacked and took back the 2nd base.  By the time I had new forces in theater, he took back the 1st base.  So I probed and conquered it all over again!  I really don't care if he takes it back, it's not a good base.  I just wanted the tech, and he made that easy for me.  Another exploit: the AI doesn't know how to make or use skimship probe teams.  So this sort of dynamic, works to the human's advantage.

Svensgaard's stronghold, stocked with Cultist and Gaian air force, lingers on.  Now I know how Mainland China feels about Taiwan!  One time, the Cultist planes flew off briefly.  I brought up 2 Needlejets and a skimship to assault next turn.  Unfortunately, that seemed to spur the Cultists to bring their planes back again.  I left my planes in place, just in case the Cultists abandon it again.  I'm bringing my 1 Destroyer Probe Team over there to see how much it would cost me to buy the base.  Or if I even can, with the Cultists in there.  See?  The AI has exploits too.

As I've finally got hab complexes and tree farms being built, I have a choice to make about my government.  Growth would help a lot, as my empire is quite stunted compared to what it could be.  I'm equal with Deirdre on the power graph, but the point is to surpass and win.  I can't be a Police State, grow, and be efficient at the same time.  I could go Police State Planned Knowledge, which would get me -1 Efficiency.  My empire is already strained at +2 Efficiency.

I've got a lot of forces and would like to keep my support.  I don't want to get sucked into having to build a lot of infrastructure.  I've been doing that enough as it is, for pacification, and it doesn't feel like a conquest.  I suppose I could go Democratic Planned and switch back to Police State Green when I think it's big enough.

Both Wealth and Power could be useful to me.  However, both will piss off my ally Zhakarov.  He's got techs I want to have, but he wants too much for me to pay for them.  Perhaps I should build a Covert Ops center and go steal them.  However, to even get to Zhakarov, I have to get past Svensgaard's stronghold with the Gaian air force.  Well, maybe an AAA cruiser would be sufficient for that.  Point is, it's a bit of a chore.

Lal's capitol, UN Headquarters, is vulnerable to Marines on the western side of his continent.  It's a hike to sail up there, but doable.  It contains The Virtual World.  Problem is, if I take it, I'll have to hold it.  Lal is allied with Deirdre and without a full scale invasion, it could be dicey to hold it.  It's very close to Deirdre's territory.

What to do?  I've got Fusion weapons, so offense isn't really a problem.  I'd say my biggest problem is production.  I haven't popped any Artifacts.  Deirdre is working on The Supercollider.  Zhakarov would be working on it, but he's too stressed with the war against Lal.  I think Lal still hasn't got Fusion Power, so maybe it's time to wipe him out properly.  Lotta territory to go through though.  Kinda reminding me of the Pirates, which still technically isn't over.

Maybe I should make some AAA cruisers and go kill the bloody Pirates once and for all.

I've wiped and continue to wipe a lot of Caretaker bases, using only 2 planes.  I just can't get a priority together for dealing with him.  I hope that's not a ticking time bomb.  The good news is, the Cultists hate them too and invaded at least 1 base on their main island.  Can't remember if they held it.

I'm realizing that if I stray from being Green, I will piss off the Cultists.  Although they can't do much, we share a pretty big flank.  I'd rather have the Monsoon Jungle fully powerful before doing that, and presently it's still gearing up.

Choices choices choices.  What shall I do?

[bvanevery]

I decided to declare a Truce with Lal, since I had taken all the techs from him I wanted.  Invading his western corner didn't seem feasible.  I got him to sign a Treaty with Zhakarov, thinking this would somehow be a buffer against Deirdre.  I seriously miscalculated on that one.  It actually freed Deirdre to come straight at me.

I embarked upon a program of Democratic Planned Wealth urban renewal.  It was quite tedious because I never built any Hologram Theaters.  That was sort of the point of having a Police State, to not pay for that sort of thing.

The Cultists finally left the hated Pirate base.  The Gaians left too for some reason.  So I took it in 2 turns without any difficulty.  I also sailed 3 leftover Chaos Marine Skimships to the west, all the way around the world, to attack the Pirates from their back side.  The Cultists were often residing in those bases as well, but they did move away often enough, that I was able to kill a base.  Svensgaard still wouldn't surrender.  Jerk.  He killed a colony pod I had just captured.  That seems to always be the fate of crippled ships, they get killed by air force.

Deirdre landed 8 powerful units right next to one of my cities.  I certainly wasn't prepared for that sort of thing.  She had Photon armor for some of them.  I committed atrocities against her trying to wound her stack, which didn't actually do any good.  I found out that it doesn't matter if you win or lose the battle, you still committed an atrocity and everyone treats you accordingly.  I was tempted to quit right then, but I devised a strategy to protect my base.  I switched from Wealth to Power to boost my morale.  I'm not sure if it took effect immediately, but it would help next turn.  I upgraded a fission unit in the base to have fusion armor.  I peppered her with wimpy fission artillery fire, which at least gave her small wounds.  I put a couple of units right next to her stack outside the city, hoping to distract her Chaos units into attacking them instead of my city.  I evacuated an Artifact and a probe team.  I deliberately didn't cash any Artifacts.  I sent all my old trance fission units on a march towards this beseiged city, hoping they would do some good.  I sunk her fusion transport with my old fission planes, but it took 2 of them to do it.

The city did hold, with 1 artillery piece remaining.  Many of her units were badly wounded and I could have kept playing.  However I was deeply irritated that Deirdre ever got to this point in the game.  The Police State Green strategy for Aki-Zeta, is clearly worthless in the scheme of things.  It doesn't make substantial progress in the game, compared to other things one might do.  With my more typical non-Conquest Secret Projects play style, other factions typically can't even touch me this late in the game.

The lesson learned, which I had learned a long time ago and forgotten, is that -3 Growth is crippling.  Can't do it. 

A secondary lesson might be that a captured Pirate empire is not worth having.  They sprawl all over the place, they don't build good stuff, and consolidating afterwards takes a long time.  Better to just shell them with artillery and put up with the nuisance.

I don't know if Yang or Aki is the better faction overall.  When Yang goes Police State Planned, he has Efficiency 0.  He can neither go lower or higher than that.  When Aki does it, she has Efficiency -2.  Realistically she can afford to choose one or the other, not both at the same time.  Even choosing just one of those, she's at Efficiency 0.  So Yang is strictly better in these areas.  Aki's benefit is she's not stuck with Police State Planned as her only good strategy.  She can change to pretty much anything she wants, as long as she isn't doing -3 Growth at the wrong time in the game.

I wonder if Miriam is viable for eXterminating others?  She has the support.  Her tech is going to suck.  As long as she's on offense, she'll be Fundamentalist, which means she has no Efficiency.  She can't get it from Knowledge either, she's forbidden.  Ergo, she cannot afford Planned.  If she goes Green, she runs the same risk as I just had in this game with Aki.  She'd be at -2 Growth, not -3, but that's still not good.  So probably to kick butt, she ends up as Fundamentalist Simple Power.

In hindsight I went to war with 2 factions whose territory was completely worthless.  The Caretakers are worthless because one just exterminates their bases.  The Pirates are worthless because they're on the water, they drag you far away from the core of your empire, and it's very hard to corner them to put them out of their misery.  What a drag!