The Monsoon Fungus

[bvanevery]

[Free] droning on again.  Huge map.  Started on a tiny island with ~3 supply pods and a slow transport.  Immediately put 1 colony on the transport and headed south.   The other units, I was dancing around this island for a bit.  Got a free rover.  Then kept getting mindworms every time I'd walk onto river fungus squares.  They didn't kill me, but they kept obstructing my movement.  Thus by historical accident, I did not found a capitol city on that island.

My southbound transport found Monsoon Jungle!  I landed, but being a greedy [progeny of unmarried parents], I wanted to find a Flat tile to settle on.  I like to improve the mineral content of tiles I settle.  Being a double greedy [progeny of unmarried parents], I popped a pod using my colonist, knowing full well that "bad things can happen" when sitting on the Monsoon Jungle.  The worst one is typically an earthquake that ruins the vegetation and also connects you land-wise to something you don't want.  Like another faction's land claim, or picking the Pirates up out of the sea.  None of that happened... but I did get this huge fungal burst, completely covering all this good land I had just discovered.  I was like "WT... F?!"  Man I was pissed.

So I try to get out of the fungus.  Here's a mindworm.  Try to go a different direction.  Another mindworm.  This game is really determined to grief me.  Well I don't think I'm going to survive this, even if it is just the first few turns of the game, when one is immune to a lot of these attacks.  Yep, half of my empire is summarily killed.  In fact, I haven't even founded a capitol city yet!

But this is the Monsoon Jungle so rather than scrubbing the game, I perservere.  This just reminds me that if I were writing algorithms for how to handle game openings, there are certain risks you cannot take.  If you think it's unacceptable for your AI to completely and utterly lose.  I put my 2nd colonist on the Jungle while there might still be mindworms present.  I don't care at this point.  I figure there's a pretty good chance that they will all immediately vaporize "because it's an empty island".  I happened to be correct.  Once I get a couple of scouts built, I also pop a pod next to me that yields a nice mineral deposit.  That was a crappy start, but this is now a really good spot for a capitol.

This Monsoon Jungle island turns out to be a bit small.  Not much bigger than my previous island, but of course the land is way better.  I can see on the radar that Mt. Planet is to the east, probably just by itself as an island.  I will put a base on the top of that, using my slow transport.  I'm not sure if there are any big land masses nearby, the radar is uncertain.  It will take exploration to find out, which will be delayed a bit as settling Mt. Planet is a higher priority.  I will focus on Build, not Explore, as I expect to grow some big cities rapidly.  If I crank out The Weather Paradigm than I can link these 2 islands.

Aliens are extant in the game, I got the crash message.  However I don't know if it's 1 or both factions.  Too lazy to check for certain.

A Few Turns Later...  I become motivated to determine who is in the game.  Yang meets me with a scout on the island I've assumed is Mt. Planet.  He says he'll execute me, so I kill his scout with my scout.  I presume this island must be connected to a major land mass and he walked here, as I don't see any Hive base grid.  Other clowns in the game to deal with are Morgan, Cha Dawn, Aki Zeta, and both aliens.  It's almost good that Yang declares war, as then I don't have to change my colonization plan.  I will add Conquer to my research, as I'm going to need something to hold him at bay.

Turns out this isn't Mt. Planet, it just looked a lot like it on the radar.  It has good rainy land on the west side though.  Unfortunately a Hive base is just to the east, so I need weapons, armor, or a lot of production to just stack bases with synthmetal.  With the 2 scouts I landed, I steal an Artifact from Yang that he's careless with.   This forces me to divert my slow transport to the north of that island, so that I can pick it up.  I'll have to settle my 4th and final city on my Monsoon Jungle island slightly more slowly. 

Slightly to the south, Yang has made it to the Unity crash site.  He picked up the Mining Laser from the site, and blasted my scout rover with it.  I disengaged, and will try to limp back to a monolith up north.  Hoping that I could beat him to gold or other crash site bennies, is probably unrealistic at this point.  Better to just survive.

I'm not sure where Yang is radiating from.  Maybe I should settle lands to the southwest, so that he has to walk a lot farther to bother me.  Without a weapon I don't think taking on a walled base is a profitable exercise.

The Caretakers nearly gave me a heart attack by showing up with a Battle Ogre right in the center of my island!  Must have landed on that huge patch of fungus on the coast and walked inland without getting destroyed.  Fortunately they were peaceful, or it would have really made a mess.  They signed a peace treaty and even withdrew their unit when I demanded it.  I offered an alliance but they demurred.  I was halfway willing to trade Industrial Base for Field Modulation, as that would be better armor than what Yang's got, but they weren't into it.

So there's that wrinkle: I may have another neighbor.  Or, maybe they sailed around on a slow transport and picked up a Battle Ogre out of the ocean somewhere.  I wonder if the Caretakers got as lame an island start as I did?  Or just popped a pod and got a slow transport after the fact.  The power graph says I'm terrible, the worst of the worst.  You could exhale and my empire would just float away off the graph, it's thin as paper.  Shades of last game.  I better not screw up my expansion any more this game, or it'll be some kind of tedious continuous pummelling from someone midgame.  Which caused me to quit, as it gets really old.

Slightly later...  I got Applied Physics, so I talked to the Caretakers to see if I could trade for more stuff.  She wouldn't, but she did swear a Pact with me, and is now nominally at war with Yang.  She has a pathetic little island with 5 bases on it, at a distance to the south.  Clearly she just rode a boat up to me with a Battle Ogre on it.  She is nominally adjacent to Yang's continent, if I show her the way, as she has not explored much.  Yang's continent also has The Garland Crater on it, at some distance to the south, nearer to the Caretakers.  The radio profile of that is unmistakeable.

Yang has settled that nice agricultural land on the Fake Mt. Planet.  I thought about doing it, but I deemed it indefensible.  Too close to Yang's base and a nasty lump of rock for enemy infantry to mass upon.  Similar rockiness problems for rest of the Fake Mt.  I thought about making a base very close to Yang's, to deprive him of the Monolith his base was mostly reliant upon.  But without lasers (at the time), and seeing him march up 2 laser infantry from the south somewhere, I thought better of it.

Instead, I'm sailing all the way around to the east of his base.  There's a projection of land out there with a mineral deposit, and a choke point where enemy units would have to accumulate on flat terrain.  If I can get it built and defended fast enough, I could exterminate tons of suiciding units from such a position.  Then I'll eventually get either ships or The Weather Paradigm and do a proper invasion from the west.

I'm shifting to Explore, Conquer focus, as Hminee has the Social Psych I need.  It's just a matter of saving the money to buy it from her.  And the wrinkle of her selling it first, as opposed to other stupid techs.  Well whatever.  I need both Command Centers and ships.  Yang is already building The Command Nexus, on top of The Garland Crater for all I know, so I won't be beating him to that.

A little later... Ummmm, the AI seems to have anticipated the nature of my "trap" city.  It brought up a synth laser infantry and waited 1 square away, declining to step into the kill zone.  A few turns later it was 2 such units.  Now it's 6.  Meanwhile I have 1 scout, 2 synth, 1 3-res, no lasers, and no Command Center because I don't have that tech yet.  If he chooses to attack now, I'm toast.  Time will tell if I've discovered a computational pathology and he'll just keep stacking units unnecessarily.

Yang has completed The Command Nexus.  Hminee completed The Weather Paradigm.  Yang has started The Merchant Exchange.  I've had no time for Secret Projects, but I've planted forests on my flat Monsoon Jungle spaces, yielding 2-2-1 on each.  Pretty good!  I've been snipping fungus on flat spaces first, to make more such forests.  I need to settle a small island to my west which also has a spot of Monsoon Jungle on it.  The real Mt. Planet may be south of me, in the water, but I'm starting to feel like The Boy Who Cried Wolf.  This is unusually elevated terrain for just having chosen the "average" planet settings.

A wee bit later... Well he attacked... and surprisingly, I was not toast.  I was left with 1 badly wounded 3-res unit facing 3 badly wounded laser synths.  Next turn he attacked again and they all died.  I put a scout on rocky terrain leading to the choke point, to block him from reinforcing.  That 1 scout was enough to cause 1 laser synth to die trying to kill me.  Grievously wounded, I limped off when he brought the 2nd laser synth up.  But that scout accomplished his purpose of delaying the enemy.

I decided to whine to Hminee, since my tech is pretty pathetic compared to hers, and I wasn't making enough money to just straight buy anything.  Maybe she'd give me something for free?  Indeed she did, Nonlinear Mathematics!  Now Yang is in big trouble.  I forgot to change my research settings despite what I said before, so now I've switched it to Explore only.  I should have an Impact squad in my "suicide" city before Yang gets there again.  Stack a few of those and he'll never take it, in this era.

The war shall turn in my favor.  However, I mustn't ignore my need to colonize, as that's been a problem for me in many games, and I've only got 5 cities right now.  4 really good ones, but still.

Later...  I got a couple more free techs out of Hminee.  That was indeed Mt. Planet to the south and she settled it.  There are limits to what I can do with 1 tiny little boat.  I've all but cleared my home island of fungus.  I'm working on clearing the small island to the west, on which I have 2 bases.  I'm apportioned a bit like England and Ireland, if not with the characteristic shapes.  Yang would be France.  My little outpost to the east hassling him would be Denmark.  Hminee would be like Spain, if it were 2 islands.  Marr would be like... a massive Iceland?  Well this is our little corner of the Huge world.  A bit cozy.

Yang is trying to make a run at my base again, he's stacked up 8 synth lasers so far.  I've got 2 3-res, 3 impact squads, and 1 laser squad opposing him.  I may have a 4th impact squad by the time he makes a move.  Right now, I think I'd win.  I've got a Former who has put a mine on the mineral resource behind my base, so my position is more entrenched.  The plan might be working.

I finally got Social Psych and Doctrine:Flexibility.  The former I bought from Hminee.  The latter I traded with Aki Zeta, who has occupied the small island I originally started on.  She swore a Pact and she's at war with the Usurpers as well.  They're on a larger land mass just north of my original starting position.  Guess it's lucky I dropped 1 island south, eh?  Aki started on the same land as him, and he clobbered her.

I have 3 colonists, created before I got Social Psych, that haven't had anywhere to settle.  I am thinking I may set down on the Fake Mt. Planet, since I do have superior armor and weapons to Yang, and a reserve of forces waiting to get off my island.  I think I can draw a noose around his upper neck, hold my position, and then crush him when my forces get fully mobilized.  I need to figure out which of his cities contain The Command Nexus and The Merchant Exchange, so that when he surrenders, they're mine.

A little later...  It's taken time to build recycling tanks, recreation commons, and a round of trance transports.  I also feel obliged to fish nearby pods out of the water.  I'm about to found another city on Yang's mainland.  At my "kill" base, I just blew away 14 of his units!  11 in 1 shot from a 2-1-1 because they were mortally wounded from previous collateral damage.  You know there's a gap in the AI's understanding when he suffers casualties that bad.  Boy did the plan ever work!

The only fly in the ointment is Yang's got some kind of plasma armor now.  Not a problem on open ground, but it can make his cities more difficult to bust open.  I did put Aki in contact with him.  She got a map out of him, which was my intent.  Then she declined to make war with him, saying she wouldn't undertake an expensive campaign for my "goodwill".  Yeah, I get that you're nominally at war with the Usurpers, but I haven't seen him actually cross water to get her yet.  I hope she didn't sell Yang that armor.  He certainly could have researched it on his own by now.

Later...  I gained naval superiority over Yang, to protect my supply line to the continent.  I crushed Yang's 2 northern cities.  The western one, under a barrage of heavy naval fire.  The eastern one, by sneaking into the fungus and whapping it with only 1 synth defending.  Destroying all those units earlier really did have consequences for him.  He never really got a good supply line up to these 2 cities, and now there's a bit of a gap between myself and his main empire.

I have 12 cities now.  I was Fundamentalist for awhile, but now I've gone Democratic, because I need the efficiency to make people happier.  For that reason I haven't gone Planned.  Nor have I gone Free Market as I'm actively making war on Yang, and definitely need freedom of movement.  This has the side effect of not pissing off my allies Cha Dawn and Morgan about my social choices.  Cha Dawn is probably going to dump me soon anyways though, and Hminee isn't thrilled with me lately either.  Can't imagine why.  Being successful perhaps?

I'm not building more military units presently, because I had quite the pile up to take out Yang's 2 northern cities and protect my 4 cities up there.  Now that I've got less support, I'd like to use up the old inventory some.  I'm starting to build Network Nodes so that I can cash the few Artifacts I've acquired.  I think I have 3 or 4.  I'd like to get some of the techs that others have before cashing them, but I'm wary of waiting too long, as it often makes me get bored with a game.  I think The Planetary Transit System, The Planetary Energy Grid, and The Citizen's Defense Force are all being built right now.  I'd just like to get a bigger gun so I can roll over the rest of Yang like sliced butter.  But we don't get to choose our Artifactual Enlightenment, now do we.

I'm building some sea colony pods, since my home island is in the water.  When I hit the next tier of unhappiness due to Bureaucracy, I will probably stop settling, finally build Hologram Theaters, and resume the conquest of Yang.  I have sent Skimship Probe Teams to figure out the Usurpers, but my first theft from them only yielded their world map.  Sometimes that happens even though they have a tech, but he may just not have anything new.

We are all strangely close to each other on this map.  It could make straightforward military conquest quite a bit easier than usual.

Later...  I took The Hive, which contains The Command Nexus and The Merchant Exchange.  Yang's never getting it back.  He makes occasional forays at me, and I summarily kill him with this stack of impact infantry I've got sitting in there.  He also wanders around in the no man's land between our empires.  I expend unwanted units on rocks, and counterstrike to kill him.  My forces are less bloated than they used to be, and I haven't had time to build more units, despite having Air Power and Missiles.  There's so much infrastructure that needs building, to keep up with my growth, and to stay ahead of more important factions.  Yang is at peace with the Caretakers though, so he's under no pressure.  I have to watch for a resurgence, but if he keeps suiciding against my walls, I have little to worry about.  I'll get my infrastructure together and then finish him off with Needlejets.

I manged to build The Empath Guild, so I will stay Governor forever.  I'm working on The Planetary Datalinks and have no competition for it so far.  I've traded for Ecological Engineering and Environmental Economics, but haven't made use of either yet.  I haven't even land bridged my territories yet.  I'm still terraforming the land I took over from Yang.  I haven't popped any of the Artifacts I've accumulated.  I'm now Democratic Planned Knowledge, which will piss off Morgan and Cha Dawn, but might make the aliens better disposed towards me.

[bvanevery]

We had sunspots for awhile.  The Caretakers were accumulating transports off my shore, so I thought I'd try something "clever".  I raised the land next to them, in order to sink the transports.  I forgot the units they're carrying would end up on my land though.  It's a better tactic against military ships. 

When the sunspots were over, I had beaten more of Yang's cities into a bloody pulp with my Missile Needlejets.  However he didn't want to surrender, so we kept fighting.  The Caretakers and Cha Dawn surprise attacked me, and the Caretaker attack was particularly annoying due to all the accumulated units.  They weren't as weak as Yang's and didn't summarily die.  I scrambled to realign my air corps, and I cashed all of my Artifacts.  This put me quite ahead, with things like Photon armor, Chaos weapons, Copters, and a whole pile of Secret Projects to build.  Didn't get Fusion Power or The Hunter Seeker Algorithm though.  I currently have a Discover research focus, hoping to pick all that up.

I'm now holding my perimeter and trying to get my Secret Projects built.  Yang has now got Needlejets, showing just how annoying the inability to stomp out one's enemy can be.  But what can I do?  I'm at war with 4 factions.  I'm clearly strongest, but not so strong that I can advance right now.  Hopefully when I get more Photon garrisons built I'll be able to finally wipe Yang out.

I'm running a slightly negative economy, like -5 per turn.  Too many Research Hospitals I think, but I have a lot of large cities and no Human Genome Project to stop the Prometheus Virus.  So, arguably I really do need the Hospitals.  I have a few old Trance Transports in the water, and I did build The Maritime Control Center, so they are exploring and making me a bit of money.  I hope it's enough until my empire stablizes.  I don't really want to go Free Market because I have a lot of Needlejets and am very much at war.  I'm Democratic Knowledge because I need efficiency to keep all my conquests happy.

So far I haven't used chemical attacks on any aliens.  I'm wondering if I should.  Now that I've kicked the Caretakers off my (Ireland) island, and I have Photon garrisons in those cities, they are no longer a direct threat.  I suppose I'll defer the decision until later.  I'd feel best if I finally got Yang to surrender.


Later...  After a good number of turns of additional pounding, I took 1 more of Yang's cities and he finally surrendered.  I suppose my advancing Photon garrisons convinced him that I was way more powerful than himself.  His core empire is centered around The Garland Crater and is viable for surviving and bothering others.  So now I have a patsy vote on the Council, if I decide I want a Global Trade Pact or some such.

The Caretakers have done nothing further.  Cha Dawn has been a hassle however.  He griefed me by mind controlling one of my larger cities!  That really pissed me off.  All this work stabilizing my empire, and the oversight of not having spawned probe teams everywhere gets me.  Not like I had zero probe teams, so I immediately took it back, but it cost me all my money.  Fortunately my economy is stabilizing now.

I have redistributed my Needlejets in preparation for possibly going Free Market.  I've put 1 in each of my most populated cities.  That took some time because of Cha Dawn hassling me, the need to blow up his transports and units that landed and so forth.  I have built many Secret Projects, but have only just acquired the tech for The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm.  Don't have Fusion Power yet either.  Haven't finished The Supercollider, nor have I put my Headquarters in that city yet.  I intend it to be the new center of my empire.  Haven't started The Longevity Vaccine at all.  I've got piles and piles of land that I took from Yang, that should be terraformed.  I've been expanding "Ireland" by terraforming, hoping to eventually link it with "England" which contains most of the Monsoon Jungle.  Even "Ireland" contains some Monsoon Jungle though, so the needed land bridge is circuitous.  Raising squares ruins any Jungle on them, so I don't want to do that.

Cha Dawn has a lot of nerve, asking for Truces just after he's put units and probe teams on my shores.  Seeing as how he surprise attacked me before, my policy is to destroy invaders first and consider negotiations later.  And after I took my city back, he's not talking, go figure.  Cha Dawn is relatively far away, and I don't think he has any Secret Projects to seize.  There's basically no value in fighting him, except to suppress him.  That said, I could launch a marine invasion and destroy him.  Will I bother?  And would I attack him in such a way, before the Caretakers, who are closer?

Later...  I went Free Market.  After all this time I still haven't managed to start The Longevity Vaccine, so I think the extra money from Free Market was warranted.  I've heard hardly a peep out of my enemies.  They've made the occasional furtive attempt to land on my shore, but they do it badly, and usually get sunk on the approach.  I've got a new HQ at the center of my empire, with The Supercollider there, and all the way through Fusion Labs.  I'm switching to Build focus now, but I forgot that I haven't researched Orbital Spaceflight.  Well, honestly it isn't all that useful, because Planet Busters just wreck all this careful hand terraforming I've done.  I'd rather get some mag tubes.

The Fusion Power advantage is a good time to wipe out an enemy.  Should I blow away the Caretakers?  They have The Weather Paradigm and The Citizen's Defense Force.  Neither of those are terribly important at this point.  Morgan is the one with good stuff, like The Virtual World and The Planetary Energy grid, but he's my ally.  Should I do something dastardly?  Eh, I dunno.  I'll see what my mood is like when I finish The Longevity Vaccine.

Later...  Quiet out of my enemies.  I completed all my stuff without incident.  I've got Super Formers now.  I'm working on a massive program of rail building, and I'm still terraforming the land I took over from Yang.  I've got so many Formers that I also imagine completing that circuitous land route between my home islands.  Marr strafed many of my Formers to death earlier, but now I'm covering them with AAA units.

I've got lots of money, like 1000/turn, and I'm thinking of just doing war by money.  I took over a Cult sea base and got them to declare a Truce on that basis.  Earlier I tried to take over both a Caretaker and a Usurper base, but they were ridiculously expensive so I just stole money instead.  Now I don't have much in the way of city improvements to rush, so my money may build up faster.  Maybe I'll declare a Truce with the Usurpers, but continue to buy out the Caretakers.  Otherwise I'm not sure what I'd do with all this money.

I'm thinking buying alien bases is kind of a rip though, as I think they get reduced to size 1.  Maybe I should buy out the Cultists using untraceable mind control?  Maybe I'll just buy 1 foothold on each of the aliens, bring my old Penetrators over, build up those beachheads, and invade in a slow conventional "Free Market" way.  For some reason I just don't feel like committing atrocities against them.  Aside from being nice, I'm a little wary of leaving a big land vacuum where their cities used to be.  Yeah I've got 2 allies but will they stay that way?

I've decided a practical strategy, is to buy out the Usurper's distant sea bases, thus limiting his expansion.  They don't cost as much because their populations usually aren't so high.  They tend to come with units that I can cash in for immediate base builds, i.e. Recreation Commons.  I'm only taking the ones that have good shore land available to them.  I'm not sure why the AI settles places that are surrounded by deep ocean, those things aren't going to grow without a ton of work.

I've also been trying to buy Cultist sea bases with untraceable capture, but so far I haven't had enough money.  Well as long as my money is actually getting spent, I'm happy as I'm doing something productive with it.  Most of my bases have been "completed".  I'm starting a round of Tachyon Fields because I just got that tech, and because I can.  I'm getting techs every 2 turns now.  Not bad for technologically regressive Drones, eh?

Also instead of trying to connect my home islands, I'm trying to connect "Ireland" to a big Caretaker Island.  I already have a foothold on it, which is becoming my excuse to use up my old Missile Penetrators.  I haven't made any progress inland because Hminee is proving spammy.  However as long as my base isn't actually threatened I'm fine.  Hopefully I will complete the land bridge and rail line before she can do anything about it.  Then I'll have 3 complete cities supplying units, and it should be a cakewalk to take the rest of the island.

The only wrinkle in my plan is sometimes new resources appear in the water as I'm building the land bridge.  So I have to divert my bridge, "because I love those resources so much".  It's possible I won't actually be able to connect, or the connection will take way longer than anticipated and I'll do the invasion some other way.  I suppose if I put a new city halfway between, then I could use Drop troops pretty easily.  As it stands they're too far away for drops.  I could ferry things around on ships but the mouseclicking for that gets old.  Worst case my foothold city may get strong enough to take out the Caretaker island single handedly.

[bvanevery]

I finally got my land bridge built to the northern Caretaker island.  Although having a rail will make the administration of my empire easier, I'm belatedly realizing this isn't the most practical way to take an island.  When my cities got "built out", I started making Conventional Missiles.  Pounding the enemy with CMs, then dropping units into the empty bases, is probably effective.  I say "probably" because I'm 1 turn away from completing those drop units.  He might have some Aerospace Complexes, which prevent drops.  But the strategic "bombing" of my enemy, certainly has weakened him on the island.  I've got Hovertanks now as well, and am realizing those would be good for crossing "Free Market" frontiers quickly to take cities.  Also thinking a "drop Hovercraft" would be useful for taking empty cities that have an Aerospace Complex.  Yes they will get wounded when they drop on open ground, but then they'll be healed when they zoom into the empty city.

The financial campaign against far flung Usurper sea bases, has been surprisingly expensive.  2000+ credits just to take some tiny piece of crap base doesn't seem like a good deal to me.  I've rushed Secret Projects for a lot less than that.  Maybe it's a Fundamentalist thing.  Maybe my Knowledge choice is also a handicap.

Cha Dawn also declared war on me again, surprisingly not due to any of my nefarious undertakings, but just because he couldn't stand my Free Market politics when our Truce expired.  The next base I want costs 4000+ and I haven't made it to that level of cash.  Too many other project needs.

Hm, just realized I could attack anywhere on Planet in 1 turn with a boat full of Marines, if I had enough boats.  The mouseclicking for all of that sure would be a drag though.

Later...  You know what?  I'm bored to death of this game now.  It's been a few days playing it, and I'm bagging it.  I just got Centauri Psi, which gives me Wave capability.  So I can bypass things like Comm Jammers and AAA defenses I suppose.  Handy.  But you know what?  I couldn't air drop on those cities because they did indeed have Aerospace Complexes, and that just bores me to death.  Makes me feel like I shouldn't have been constructing and faffing around with my empire for so long.  I usually fall into the trap of base improvements + manual terraforming, like I think it's important to do that for some reason.  I do a pile of it and then find out a day later that I'm so bored with all this.  I think doing some[/] of that is interesting, but it doesn't have days worth of interest to it, so there's the problem.  After awhile it's just more chores, how many mouseclicks is it going to take me to actually win this game??

No doubt that I "won", but am way too bored to finish.  Trying again from scratch.  Will I ever learn?