The Lord's Land

[bvanevery]

I wonder if Miriam is a "good" eXtermination faction?  To the extent that anyone can be on a Huge map anyways.  She's got the support, but her research surely sucks.  I also figure she's not going to be all that Efficient in practice.  I'm not going to make the same "limited growth" mistake I made with Aki-Zeta by going Green.  -2 Growth isn't as bad as -3, but it's still bad.  I suppose... if I had really big cities already, Green Police State would work well for Miriam, because then she'd have +4 Support!  But that's more of a mid to endgame consideration, not something she'll be doing initially.  Gotta get bigger first.

Huge map, average settings, random opponents.  I start on what looks like a large land mass.  How right I was!  Scouts reveal this to be a supercontinent.  This could be a Planet that's far more land than ocean.  I encounter enough fungus at the extremes, that we could all be touching each other by land, yet unable to reach each other.  Or I could be on my own chunk of supercontinent, there's no way to tell.  I don't meet anyone for a long time.

The Borehole Cluster is right next to my starting position.  Joy.  Such a liability.  I colonize it anyways because it does have good agricultural land, and someday I may be able to make use of it.

The Garland Crater is a distance to the east.  I do eventually get a road to the middle of it, but not a city.  It's got a fair amount of fungus at the center and should be cleared.  Also by the time I got there, I had hit my Efficiency limit, needed Recreation Commons, etc.

I get a fair number of Artifacts, with all those Scouts I sent out to pop pods.  I rush The Weather Paradigm no problem.  I start on The Merchant Exchange, in a city with a chunk of minerals next to it.  Turns out I don't have enough food to make use of the minerals at the same time and grow, so in practice it never gets used.  Someone else completes The Merchant Exchange before I can bring more Artifacts up to complete it.  Well, I'm glad I finished The Weather Paradigm because it's more useful.  I leave that base building The Merchant Exchange so I can turn it into another Secret Project later.  That will be difficult with my bad tech, but I will endeavor.

I get Information Networks and still have Artifacts, so I try to build some Network Nodes to cash them in.  They will take awhile, but who knows, maybe it'll work.  I've started on 2 Network Nodes when Lal shows up.  We make peace and trade a lot of techs, so I become more interested in Recycling Tanks for all my other cities.  I've got synthmetal and lasers.  Working on speeders and ships.  I'll build a Command Center in one of my cities, when one reveals itself to have decent productivity.
 
I started with Explore, Conquer focus.  As I've got Doctrine:Mobility and Doctrine:Flexibility now, I'm switching to Conquer only focus, in the hopes of getting Doctrine:Loyalty.  I'd take High Energy Chemistry as a booby prize, so that I can start eXterminating.  Hey, maybe Lal is next door and needs an ass whipping?

At the beginning of the game, I was decidedly the worst faction.  Now I'm at rough parity with everyone except the Spartans.  Their graph is huge compared to everyone else, so they must be sitting on the Monsoon Jungle.  I remember from another game that having powerful Spartans throw their entire industrial output at you, is no fun at all, due to all the Elite units that come your way.  So I will be very careful not to bridge any land until I've scouted that land first.

[bvanevery]

I contact Lal in my search for more tech.  He asks me if I want to sign a Pact to go kill the Hive.  I'm like, sure!  The Hive is an inevitable enemy, as Miriam will not be able to afford a Police State for a very long time.  It's also the kind of enemy on a big land map, that one would very much want to take out.  Now the irony is Lal is indeed next door by water, to the west, but Yang is nowhere to be seen.  I think they may have popped a pod with a comm frequency, or a scout could have fallen through a dimensional rift.

Lal gets me in touch with Domai, and I eventually ally with them as well.  I have him join my crusade against Yang, even though we don't know where he is.  Maybe I should have let Domai be neutral at first, so as to get map information out of Yang.

I complete my network node and pop an Artifact.  I only get Industrial Economics.  It's useful for trading techs with my allies, but not what I was hoping for.  Oh well, got another network node in progress.

Santiago settles a city on land to the east that I've already explored.  I run into one of her scouts while trying to get to the same pod to pop.  She's hostile, and has Nonlinear Mathematics.  Oddly, her scout completely disappears after popping the pod, and there's no mindworm feasting on the remains.  She must have fallen into a dimensional rift.  That's happened to a couple of my units already.

I ask Lal to join my crusade.  Part of my brain remembers the "get a map first" trick, so I just sell Domai the comm frequency.  A couple of turns later, he comes back with a full map of Sparta.  She's my next door neighbor to the east.  We're fully adjacent by land, but fungal choke points where 2 land masses touch, kept us from meeting each other during my initial exploration.  When I have a choice of risking a scout on a fungal land bridge, or popping a pod nearby, I always choose to pop the pod nearby.  I can come back for the fungal bridge, which stands a good chance of wounding me and making me want to retreat anyways.

Yes, Santiago did start near the Monsoon Jungle as I suspected, but it's a small portion of jungle.  Good chance there's another larger half of Jungle across the water to the east of her.  She has 2 mineral deposits and a Monolith on that jungle, so I can see why she was able to crank out pretty hard.  She has land bases at a wide, rough radius from the Jungle, but no roads.  Sparta doesn't tend to make roads until pretty late in the game, I think because they forget to research Centauri Ecology.  Pretty sure their default research focus is Discover, Conquer and that doesn't include Formers.

Not many turns later, I research Nonlinear Mathematics.  I talk to Lal about a trade.  Surprisingly, he's researched Doctrine:Loyality and trades it to me!  Well hey if you think guns are great, knock yourself out.  My old Merchant Exchange project is 5 turns away from completion, so I switch it to The Command Nexus.  Then Yang starts building it; guess what Yang, you're not gonna get it!  Some mindworm follies yield enough cash for me to complete the project 3 turns early.  Simultaneously I complete a 4-1-1 Impact Squad prototype.  I'll have a Recon Rover prototype finished in another 3 turns.

Lookin' like death for Santiago to me!  With her bases so isolated, it might be a cakewalk.  I've got major "Former lift", I'm already halfway to her.

[bvanevery]

My 2nd network node completes shortly.  Before popping an Artifact, I trade with Domai and get Gene Splicing.  That's very helpful as now I have enough food to make full use of that big mineral deposit.  I pop an Artifact and get Planetary Networks.  As I have a fair number of Artifacts remaining, I consider cranking out The Virtual World.  The Consciousness is working on 2 copies of it, and Domai is working on it as well.  Turns out Domai is very few production points away from completion, even though that city is supporting way too much stuff and only has 2 minerals output.  He also has enough cash on hand to buy the project outright.  So I wisely decide not to bother.  Indeed, the next turn he rushes it to completion, and I didn't even throw my hat in the ring.

Instead of synth garrisons, I make a few probe teams to go after Santiago.  I figure I can infiltrate and steal 1 tech from that forward exposed city of hers, if she even has anything to steal.  I'm also thinking of putting a probe team on a boat and infiltrating Lal and Domai, since they may not be allies forever.  While thinking these great thoughts, a scout rover I left as a warning picket, is summarily executed by an Elite 4-2-1 infantry.  That's not how it was supposed to work.  A rover unit was supposed to stop on the fungus on the land bridge, then move 2 squares to end its turn right next to me.  Then I would either attack or retreat.  Instead I'm blown to tiny little metal bits.  Sigh.

Crap, Santiago is doing the "Elite" thing already??  Maybe it's just been fighting a lot and used a Monolith to level up.  Maybe it's the 1st such unit she produced, as that always gets a morale bonus.  Well now I'm more worried because my empire is not secured, I've only got scouts in most of my cities.  Glad that pile of minerals just came online, as I need an impact rover immediately!

I am pressing forwards with my "invasion road" making Former regardless.  However I will probably stop to make a Sensor Array.

[bvanevery]

Well it's not going to be cake.  I was heading towards a big patch of forest to set up an ambush, when Santiago ambushed me instead, coming down a river.  This is at the eastern edge of The Garland Crater, which is also the eastern edge of my controlled territory.  I built a Sensor Array on the last square as far forward as I could.  We had enormous numbers of battles back and forth over the rim of the Crater and the forest.  Ultimately my superior productivity and tactics prevailed and I cleared her out.  The good news is her troops were relatively untrained by her standards, a lot of Disciplined and a few Hardened or Veteran.  So, no waves of Elites to deal with, that was just an oddball unit earlier.

I went Fundamentalist during the combat at an opportune moment, as bribing a speeder looked really really useful.  I still have 1 Elite probe team accompanying my units, behind the front line.  I'm nowhere near to getting to that "exposed" city.  It's behind that big patch of forest, and several of her badly wounded 4-2-1 units managed to escape.  Just east is a big patch of fungus, and southeast is a stand of rocks, which are near the bottleneck where her main forces probably come over.  I took my rovers in a big sweep of the plains around the rocks.  We got in a big fight but I killed all of her units there.  I'm not sure I can hold that area, but I might pick off a few more of her units coming through and interrupt her supply line.

I have Pulse armor, and Nerve Gas if I want it, and Police units available.  As all of my bases are at full support, I'm building a round of Children's Creches to keep the growth going.  My original mission wasn't an offensive, it was just to infiltrate Santiago's base!  She hasn't shown any plasma style armor, nor weapons better than impact, so I may have out-teched her.  I still haven't popped any more Artifacts.  I figure there may be more techs to steal or trade, and I did prevail in my 1st engagement against Santiago.

It is looking like it will be more of a slow crawl towards her home territory, building up strength, than any kind of blitz.  I need to put a base on The Garland Crater.  Unfortunately I still need to clear fungus from it as well.  I've only had 1 Former working there during the big fight.  I'm also about to link a small island west of New Jerusalem, which will eventually be a bridge to Lal's territory.  I think I will build a base very close to him, then bridge, so that there's no dispute over a territory.  I could be a dick and invade him outright, but he's an ally, and he also doesn't have anything important to take.  More like, wait for his inevitable uppityness.

I suppose the Spartans could do something dumb like stop building units, or build units that are too expensive, while I'm still banging out units.  I've seen that sort of thing happen before.  Alternately, we could persist in stalemate until the Advanced Military Algorithms era.  If I go Powerful, perhaps we'd make peace?  On the other hand, Santiago and Lal are the logical neighbors to invade.  Everyone else is remote right now.

I was right about the Monsoon Jungle being split in two by water.  Aki-Zeta is putting sea bases around the eastern half.  Maybe she and Santiago will come to blows.

Someone got ahold of a map that had the Unity crash data on it.  I know that Deirdre is far to the northeast, probably separated by water.  Neither Lal or Domai has met her yet, but maybe Aki-Zeta has and I should talk to her.

The Drones are southwest of me by water, and the Hive is south of them on land.  Yang took a base from Domai.  Did I forget to trade Nonlinear Mathematics with my ally?  Well I don't recall him asking for it, he wanted other stuff.  I got Ecological Engineering out of him, pretty good trade, since it's made my Borehole Complex actually useful.  I'll check on whether Domai is helpless or not.  I don't think I want a supercontinent full of Yang.

[bvanevery]

The era of impact rover only warfare ended.  Santiago arrived with substantial numbers of Pulse Impact Infantry, dissuading me from casual rover action.  I had to retreat and once again got nowhere near the "exposed" city.  Santiago even tried to found a second city, but by some clever maneuvering on my part, I went around her infantry and attacked the city, which only contained rovers.  It died, so I felt good about that small battle victory.  The war is an awful lot of mouseclicks though.  It turns out that many of my Impact Rovers have been promoted to Elite, and they can actually take out Santiago's Pulse units, at least on open ground and such.  I think my 25% attack bonus must be helping me as well.  But in general, I've had to create some 4-1-1 and 4-3p-1 units of my own to counteract the threat.

I did put a city on the new annex to the west, and also on The Garland Crater.  My empire expansion has forced me to build a pile of Hologram Theaters.  I'm wishing I had gained The Virtual World once upon a time, but it was not to be.

Nothing about this game is making me feel "awesome".  I'm simply building up an empire.  I do fine against Santiago, but it's interminable war.  Mouseclicks upon mouseclicks, and I'm getting bored.  I think my question about eXtermination factions is satisfactorily answered: on a Huge map, Miriam is just a faction among factions.  There's nothing about her that makes her especially gifted at slaughtering other factions, because she has to keep her citizens from rioting same as anyone else.  That's a pretty substantial check on growth.

Aki-Zeta, left alone on her side of the map with a bit of Monsoon Jungle to play with as well, is working on The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm.  That's how interminable this war has been.  You can really lose track of the years going by, when it's another move-up here, another dodge and flank there.  Santiago has acquired Gatling guns, so there's finally something worth stealing.  I haven't cashed any Artifacts.

I had a strange series of exploration events north of Santiago's "exposed" city.  First I got a clone of my scout rover.  Then I set off an earthquake and got a land bridge to the continent north of her "exposed" city.  In principle I could attack her from that direction.  In practice there's a lot of wild terrain to get through, and I have to keep fighting her main force on the traditional east-west axis.  Finally, I found an Artifact up there.  So these 2 rovers are slowly trying to escort it home.  Veeeeery sloooooowly.  There are more pods up that way, but they're sitting on fungus and I'd rather use something more expendable to pop them.

I don't know that I'll continue this game.  I'm doing fine but I don't have any special feelings about wanting to continue.  It seems to have turned into a "strategic Builder" game and there are better factions for doing that sort of thing.  I guess the moral of the story is Miriam can't rush Santiago when both start with abundant land, good resources, and are relatively far apart.

Yes I could kill Lal but there's no point.  He has nothing, and it would just make my citizens more unhappy.

Yes I could use chemical weapons on Santiago but at this time, I'd rather not have sanctions.  Even impact weapons still basically work.  I've protected my empire, built a new base on The Garland Crater, have energy banks, half of my cities have network nodes....

Ah screw this.  Gonna try Yang.  Safe in the knowledge that this game would have been won, with many more mouseclicks expended.