The Giant Pirate Kingdom - 256x128 map

[bvanevery]

Details starving

starving

I lack experience at this style of long distance Free Market probe team warfare.  I should not have spent my initial actions on happiness buildings.  Usually I have an army sweeping behind me and defense is not a big consideration.  Deirdre was smart enough to attack me with a Marine and to starve me at the same time.  I've rarely seen the AI use Marines, so it's more than I expected.  I haven't built one of my own stronger Fusion defensive units yet, and my captured peons may starve before I can do so, preventing me from producing the unit.  Deirdre could liberate this base.  If she does, I'll try to be more careful next time.  If The Command Nexus actaully survives all of this.

[bvanevery]

Details reprieve

reprieve

Deirdre screwed up.  She should have pressed her advantage.  Her Marine, she took home to heal, and I hope it stays there for a bit.  Her air force, well that could come back.  Knowing the risk of starvation, I build a Recycling Tank as fast as I can.  I've also got another Cruiser Probe Team ready to take over her next city.  It got spotted on approach though, ran into a Transport, so it might get strafed.

I am rushing The Longevity Vaccine, with the assistance of 5 fission Supply Crawlers left over from the old days.  I've already built The Neural Amplifier.  The Supercollider has eluded me so far, despite my Discover focus.

[bvanevery]

Details expensive

expensive

Drat, a size 10 city 5 squares away from her capitol is expensive.  Looks like I'm sabotaging her Conventional Missile prototype instead.  Success!  and it promoted my Commando team to Elite.

Umm, I just discovered the hard way that I cannot affect her stack of mindworms at all.  I'm save scumming, as otherwise I would have lost the city.  Forgive me for not having a clue about attacking strong mindworms with not very good troops.  I could be in a heap of trouble anyways.  My units are Trance and will defend better than they attack, but they may be too weak to stand up to repeated attacks.  So now I didn't actually sabotage her Conventional Missile after all.  I just moved forwards and dodged one of her air patrols.

She's changed to Fundamentalist Green Power, so that probably explains why her city was so expensive.  I hope smaller ones on the back side of her island are cheaper.  I need more of a foothold than I've got.

[bvanevery]

Details beat up

beat up

Getting a Conventional Missile in the face wasn't fun.  I'm badly beaten up.  If she doesn't chicken out, she could definitely liberate her city before my new unit gets built.  My only saving grace is I've learned some things about fighting her, and I have a fair number of probe teams accumulating in the area.  They could get strafed though.

[bvanevery]

Details your agonizer please

your agonizer please

Deirdre liberated her city.  At least The Command Nexus was not destroyed.  In retalliation, I bought out her sea base nearest to me.  It was expensive, almost 5000 credits, and it's not that big of a base.  I hope I have an easier time defending a sea base and getting it up to speed.  There's a point at which the effort I'm spending on this, is not smaller than the fullblown military solution would have been.  Although, by maintaining my Democratic Free Market Wealth the whole time, I have been able to buy all the improvements in all my cities.  Money may come a bit faster now, although I can't seem to resist the temptation to expand and perfect the circle from my capitol.

I've never really been a fan of Punishment Spheres, but in my recent attempt to quell Deirdre, they seem to fit the task at hand.  I need to pacify people quick, and this base is way too far away to ever be worth anything for research.  I wonder if this is an atrocity though?  Or does it make her unwilling to ever surrender?  At this point I don't really care.  I want Deirdre's Secret Projects and I want her gone, one way or another.

[bvanevery]

Details never good enough for you

never good enough for you

It would be reasonable to rage quit the game at this point.  I have every piece of economic infrastructure that exists.  What the game is saying, is I'm not allowed to have money.  And given the amount it costs to take over Deidre's cities, the game is also saying I'm not allowed to win or make progress.  If there's a next game, and I do an AAR for it, we're selecting No Random Events.  That's 2000 credits the game just stole from me, maybe more if I lose the 1100 I should be making this turn as well.  How many Market Surges would I need to make up the difference?  Oh, about 60.

I shall stick with it for now, but this is beginning to get old.  Do people commit genocide just because someone's bothering them too much?

I finally get Applied Relativity and begin The Supercollider.  I simultaneously complete my Fusion Planet Buster, then disband it to get most of The Supercollider done.  A little bit of cash and next turn it's mine.  With that in hand, I switch to Conquer focus to try to pick up The Cloudbase Academy and The Cyborg Factory.

My new sea base off Deirdre's coast does have an advantage: my Cruiser Probe Teams end up there when I accomplish a mission.  That makes it really easy to steal money from Deidre.  Just 1 team this year, I stole ~250 credits.  She's got 1463 credits remaining, so maybe I can drain her dry.  This is finally making me feel like a Pirate.

I've noticed that Aki Zeta5 has researched Superstring Theory.  She's still at war with me, so I'll need to go steal it from her.  I'm wondering about this Wealth strategy of mine.  Is it working?  Am I saving any mouseclicks doing this?

[Buster's Uncle]

I just gave up on random events last year - it wasn't the EC crashes; it was the solar flares wiping out all my energy or mineral satellites at a stroke.  In late game, that's 127, and maybe 40 bases to put them back with, having to cycle through each pasting in build queue, and it's just a chore and a bore and an unvarnished pain when it happens three or four times in the last 300 years of the game, turns I'd otherwise have zoomed through.

[bvanevery]

Yep I've had the pain of complete satellite destruction as well.  At least last time around, it only destroyed my massive contingent of energy satellites and left my food satellites alone.  I did rebuild the energy satellites fairly quickly because I had massive productivity, but game design elements that gratuitously waste real wall clock time, are not fun.  Actually there's a very cynical school of game design called "forcing the player to maintain the status quo".  It's used a lot in MMORPGs, where you keep penalizing and wearing down the player, and they have to struggle just to break even.  Of course in that case the payoff for the developer is MONEY, in terms of subscription fees historically speaking.  In a game like SMAC, the designers were just lazy bums and thought it would be oh so kewl to reduce player agency.  What every Builder game player needs is to have their work randomly undone on a large scale, yeehaw!   

Details military solution

military solution

I have decided that the "buyout" approach does not work at this stage of the game.  The AI will inevitably go Fundamentalist unless they have a faction restriction against it.  (How 'bout it Aki?   )  The expense per city is way higher than I can produce, even at 1100 credits/turn.  I just had to steal 2 techs from Deirdre, Superstring Theory and Silksteel Alloys, so I'm obviously not keeping up with the Joneses scientifically.  I did research Organic Superlubricant at least, so I do have the best offensive weapons in the game right now.  It's time to use them.  A fleet of AAA Fusion Silksteel warships is being built and will come to summarily crush Deirdre.  It'll just be a slow wait, hurry up and watch paint dry, for it to get there.

Previously my probe teams concentrated on stealing money, but I've drained a lot of her money, so now they've switched to sabotage.  I have 6658 credits, enough to buy a small base but not a big one.  No point buying small sea bases because I'll just take those with ships eventually.  Based on my last experience trying to hold a land base without ground troops, I'm not sure I even want her island right now.    I could buy the city with The Command Nexus again, but that's not very helpful to a sea power, and I have plenty of Command Centers back home.  Gaia's landing contains The Weather Paradigm and The Xenoempathy Dome.  It's a worthy prize, but I can't buy it.  So I'm not sure what I'm doing with all this money.  The game has twice told me that I don't to keep it, so I have a bit of a thresholding problem.  It probably takes 10k credits to buy one of the big cities, and here I am sabotaging them.

I'll admit it, this has been a frustrating and boring campaign against Deirdre.  Very unsatisfying, nothing gets done.  Well, I knew a map this size was going to be a PITA some way or another.  I just wish my original goal had been met, to make the AI capable of spreading out and invading over land.

Well I just got an idea.  I do have an offshore staging point, and I've managed to build a Command Center there.  I should start rushing the production of ground troops.  Support will suck, although I could make them Clean.  I need to stop with the indiscriminate sabotage and only do targeted sabotage.  Use drone riots to keep her off-balance.  Ok, sounds like a plan.

[bvanevery]

Details minerals r us

minerals r us

That's a big pile of minerals, for not using any Supply Crawlers.  It's the result of adding Colony Pods to the local population.  As I still haven't found The Cloudbase Academy yet, I thought I would build something more expensive than Formers there.  I have 1 extant Aerospace Complex that slowly puts out Sky Hydroponics Labs, because I've already got an eastern wall of defensive interceptors and no actual threats.  Now I will have 2, and this one will go faster. 

Fair warning: I've decided that if another market crash vaporizes my accumulated 7710 credits, I'm quitting this game.  That would be just too much of a serious misfeature to put up with.  This ocean sucks hard too.  I would start a new game on a mostly land world, to help the AI like I intended in the 1st place, and No Random Events.

[bvanevery]

Details paltry sea minerals

paltry sea minerals

Belatedly I'm realizing that sea minerals a long ways away from my civilization, are not worth developing and crawling.  What do I get for all the trouble?  4 minerals.  That's equivalent to an ordinary Mine on rocky terrain on land.  Rather than send Sea Formers great distances to do the development, and Sea Crawlers great distances to do the crawling, I could just build land units close to home.  It might also be more productive to make Tidal Harnesses close to home, but outside of cities, and harvest the energy they produce.  In short, a minerals "special" in the ocean is not that special.

Energy specials are worth it though.  Typically I crawl them from my capitol when it has nothing better to do.

At least I figured out early in the game that nutrient specials out in the ocean are completely worthless.  Not like I don't get food from kelp.  Yes, I suppose I could prospect these various resources, raising or lowering land to turn them into one thing or another.  But even with my vast and continuous production of Fungicidal Fusion Formers since a very long time ago, I still haven't finished working all my ordinary land.  I had that much Rocky terrain to mine out.  I don't even know if those Mines are doing me any good, nor do I really care.  I've got Hybrid Forests everywhere and a full complement of 16 Sky Hydroponics Labs will be coming soon.

I'm up to 8303 credits.  I'm wondering if I'll be able to avoid a market crash long enough to buy one of Deirdre's big cities.  The military solution is proceeding very slowly, as expected.  I made an AAA Impact Silksteel Cruiser locally to try to capture Deirdre's Sea Formers, but the gun is still too big and just destroys them.  I guess I'll build my own.  My offshore staging point is Stagnant for lack of kelp.  The AAA ship can provide cover for them, as soon it will have no military duties.  Next turn I'll have a Gas Fusion Marine to begin torturing Deirdre with.

[Buster's Uncle]

It never ever zaps your food satellites, and agreed about deliberately building in too much grinding being bad game design.

-For the AI goal, have you considered building a scenario?  Build one, leave it for a month to try to forget all of the map you can, then see if that doesn't play out more satisfactorily...  Better, talk Mart -Kirov is too busy for sure- into making a you a scenario for that...

[bvanevery]

Definitely have to do something to improve the AI next time around.  It already has plenty of resources.

Details rail system

rail system

Several turns ago I bought Monopole Magnets from Roze for 450 credits.  Her prices are more reasonable nowadays and heck, I'm rich.  I've nearly connected all of my cities.  I also researched Advanced Spaceflight and completed The Living Refinery in 1 turn, using a lot of supply crawlers to goose it along.  I still haven't gotten Mind Machine Interface and its 2 Secret Projects, despite my Conquer focus.  I've 9741 credits saved up to bother Deirdre with, but I'm getting closer to a military solution anyways.  The first of my AAA Fusion Silksteel battleships is about to arrive.

[Buster's Uncle]

Well, this community is a resource you can search for information -as you know, along with the old dead places w/ deep archives- and even have just posting to ask sometimes pay off in a big way.  Some members can give you a lot of useful advice about AI optimization via something like setting up a game designed/map laid-out to encourage that, as I was suggesting above - though it's entirely outside my own wheelhouse, and the community needs reviving via more of those sort of conversations.  (Activity drawing more activity and all that - to wit, me commenting on AARs while I'm in he mood is inevitably going to help draw more comments, hopefully more focused on whatever the current game, given a bit of time.)

[bvanevery]

Details massive upgrade

massive upgrade

I bought Advanced Ecological Engineering from Roze for a measly 225 credits.  She must really like me!  Now for the low, low price of 4600 credits, I can have all my Formers become Super.  Heck, why not?  It's gotta be worth more than 1 of Deirdre's cities, which I will soon conquer anyways.  I upgraded my sea formers similarly for yet more money.  I don't seem to have an easy way to upgrade my plain old movement 1 fission Formers though, so perhaps I'll disband them the next time I have a Secret Project to complete.

Now that I've built rails, completed mines, have made deep oceans shallow, have worked 1 site for 1 new city, and have essentially doubled my terraforming capacity, the reality has to be faced that I don't need any more Formers.  What am I going to do?  I had the problem "don't need any more cash", now I've just traded it for a different one.  Everything is too far away for land conquest and more than half of my bases are inland.  I'm thinking a massive rail to one of my enemies is the only obvious course of action.

Being unsatisfied with my gross excess of cash, I cranked up the Workshop and learned to use it with greater precision.  Now I have fewer needed unit designs as old ones have either been disbanded or made into Clean units.  I put Shard weaponry on all my newly arriving battleships while I was at it.  Now I'm down to 373 credits, a normal amount of money.

[bvanevery]

Details clearing land

clearing land

I found something to do with my Super Formers, for a few turns at least.  I'm clearing land for 3 more cities.  Pretty soon my circle from my capitol is going to be sufficiently round though.  I decided not to wait on disbanding the old fission Formers and threw them into whatever projects seemed advisable.  I still have "money troubles", in that my income is 655 credits/turn.  Since I don't have any facilities to spend it on, that's a little absurd.  I simply have nothing to blow it on.  My budget is 40-20-40.  I tried shifting it to 30-20-50 but I get an efficiency penalty, even with a +3 Efficiency rating.  I don't really need to be more happy, frankly many of my people are ecstatic.  Well, perhaps as I accumulate more and more clods of excess cash, I'll do yet more upgrades.