Market Forces - Earthmichael AAR

[Earthmichael]

This is my (Earthmichael) AAR for the GOM Market Forces.  This shows the path I followed to acheive economic victory by turn 2276.  By the very nature of an AAR, it is a massive spoiler for this scenario.  So I am not going to put spoiler warning anywhere else; this entire thread is a massive spoiler.

I put one "artificial" constraint on my game, as suggest by Kirov.  I tried to minimize conquest and play peacefully.  I only attacked bases established within 5 squares of one of my bases.  I reasoned that this was really a defensive measure to keep myself from being boxed in to a small territory, and it would be too easy for the enemy to launch an attack from such a close base.  I also accepted all truces, treates, and pacts, even if it was not in my best interest to have a truce at that time.

I found that Economic victory was the slowest kind of victory to achieve.  I could have acheived victory by Transcendance at least 15 turns sooner, and could have acheived a conquest victory 40 or more turns sooner.

I am reconstructing this AAR from my saves.  It was too long since I started the game, and I did not keep notes.  So sometimes I will not be able to tell exactly which tech I traded or bought from whom.  I know I traded techs at every opportunity with Roze.  I know I bought techs at every opportunity with Aki.  In some cases, I don't know exactly what I got when I popped a pod.  In short, if it cannot be reverse engineered from my saves, then I don't know it.  And I don't have saves for every turn; most saves are several turns apart.

I am also including my saves so that you can see in detail exactly what I did.  In fact, you could just look at the saves and construct your own AAR, because that is exactly what I did.  Once I figure out how to post graphics again, I will post some screenshots as well.  I generally abreviate construction and techs when I think it is clear, i.e. CP = Colony Pod, NN = Network Node, IA = Industrial Automation, rb = rush build, FM = Free Market, etc.; let me know if you think an abbreviation is unclear.

I will post this in installments, mostly due to the limit of 5 attachments per post.

So here is the AAR.

2141 Morgan Industries (CP), Morgan Robotics (NN), Morgan Interstellar (NN), 50Energy/50Labs, researching IA, switch to FM as soon as energy available
Former to mineral special -> Mine
I may have deconstructed some units I did not need to speed production and reduce support, because I only have 1 Scout Patrol and 2 Synthmetal Sentinels.  If the scenario started with more units, I deconstructed them.

2144 pod -> Monolith

2146 Founded Morgan Transport (RC), Rush build NN at Morgan Interstellar, start CP

2149 Founded Morgan Mines (RC), IA researched -> Biogenetics, switch to Wealth,  rush build NN at Morgan Robotics

2150 Contact (not sure who), bought comm frequecies, Roze -> pact, Domai -> Treaty, Yang -> Vd, Miriam -> Vd,
 traded as much tech as I could -> techs: D:M, CE, IN, IB, SP, D:F, EC, PN, IE, IA, GS (still researching Biogenetics)

2151 Former finished Mine/Road on minteral special for 7M, move NW, build road, Morgan Industries finishes CP, starts SC

2153 Former built road, Morgan Interstellar starts RC
Traded more tech -> Biogenetics, switched to Ecological Engineering, truce Aki

2155 Crawler finished -> mine, Morgan construction established -> rush build RC (first citizen drone), researched Ecological Engineering -> Environmental Economics

2156 Morgan Solarflex established -> rb RC, building RT everywhere as production finishes, now have 7 cities, drone control facilities are high priority

2157 Independent SP sent east at Northern edge discover pod, every city except Morgan Mines has built or is building RC

2158 Morgan Transport -> Former, Morgan Industries -> SC
I have no idea what I popped from the pod, nothing visible, but no new tech, not energy, not build completion, just don't recall...

2160 Roze refreshed the ally map, Sven -> Vd, now have 3 SC, 2 formers building road/forest
Researched Environmental Economics -> PS
All cities have RC, all have or are building RT, 4 cities building Formers

[Earthmichael]

2163 Established Morgan Metallurgy -> rb RC, two cities building Research Hospitals

2166 Research PS -> PE, formers building roads/forests as fast as possible,

2168 Prototype Recon Rover and Plasma Garrison

2170 2 Fungal pops with mindworms

2171 Both mindworms moved to same square, killed them with one attack,  Independent SP continuing to east at northern edge of map

2175 Believers invade!  When I came in contact with Miriam's rover, she offered a truce.  I would like to have declined, but the rules I am playing under require me to accept.  But I now have no way to get rid of the Rover (since my rules do not allow me to trigger a Vendetta), and its ZOC is very painful to work around.

[Kirov]

I'm going to play this scenario once more, although I seriously doubt I can beat your time. For now, a few comments off the top of my head:

1) Did you do anything special (bribing, etc.) to be BBF with Roze? I couldn't secure any long-lasting pact in this game and this can have a serious impact on the score (not only pacts give you money, they also decrease the MC price of friendly bases). I remember it was strange, because usually Roze likes my leader, what with Demo/FM/Wealth and all.

2) I wonder if it has something to do with your not disbanding 1-2-1 (some AI respect you more if you have army). I'm quite sure I would disband those two units (they're not independent). For me, the scenario was about defending against quite aggressive and strong opponents with minimum effort.

3) And I'd also be careful with rushbuying (this I don't remember too well, must replay).

4) When it comes to truce with Believers, I say it's ok to decline it. I think Miriam is responsible for at least a half of any sneak attacks delivered against me. She's bound to attack again, sooner or later. So you could have saved yourself some trouble.

5) Did you weaken enemy bases in any way? Genejack warfare, bombing raid for killing food, this kind of stuff. We both took pacifist approach, but I think it would be kinda fun to allow such guerilla, because you have to be even more careful with calculating cost-to-benefit value (if you can't push on for real).

6) Last thing I wonder is the energy/labs balance. Sure you want EnvEcon and PlanEcon asap, but saving cash for cash' sake could also be beneficial, i.e. complete scenario quicker.

7) Were you also forced to go D:AP before EnvEcon (because AI had planes as well and harassed your crawlers)? If not, tell me more about it. At my first attempt I tried to go the builder tech path, but failed.

[Earthmichael]

Kirov,

1. I just mostly traded tech with Roze, I might have given her a tech or two after I had traded as much as I could, because she was researching something I had, and that might have helped with the pact.  But I did that out of my own self interests, because I wanted her to research a tech I did not have and trade it with me.

2. No need to rush to disband, you get 1 free support from each base (until Democracy). 

3. I am NOT careful with money early on.  I try to keep 200-300 reserve for buying tech (primarily from Aki), and to rushbuy at new bases.  But otherwise, I spend the energy as soon as I get it, until I feel that I am getting close to making my move.  I gain the spending back in increased productivily resulting in more energy in the long run.  But I stopped rush building at the point I decided to make a run on Economic Victory.

4. I agree that the truce with the Believers (and later Drones) is a bad idea, but that is the self-imposed rule I played under.

5. After I started being attacked by Needlejets into my Crawlers and Formers, I began attacking any units in any base within 10 square of boarder, to get rid of Needlejets.  I also used Intercepters again attacking aircraft.  I used a small  city with lots of mineral crawlers with all population as Doctors as the home base to my aircraft.

6. I pretty much kept a 50/50 balance.  With only +2 EFF, it was too costly to do otherwise, and I wanted the tech.  Someone could possible win sooner if they shifted away from tech when raised money for Economic Victory.

7. I don't recall on this.  As I get further in my AAR, we will be able to tell.

There is a very cheesy was to win really quickly on this scenario.  After you get empath and a magnatube network, intentionally overproduce to get hoards of mindworms attacking.  You can harvest the mindworms for lots of energy.  I think this is very cheesy, so I did not do it, but I recognize that this is the fastest way to win by Economic Victory.

[testdummy653]

I'm really enjoying this AAR.  Keep up the good work!

[Kirov]

Why aren't you able to post any screenshots? It would be good to give a face to those descriptions.

Also, I'd like to read more about background story, specific strategies or analyses. What was your defence force and why this size? Why building facilities instead of hordes of crawlers sucking up energy? Is it worth it to stray to PEG? I often had this problem, PEG is actually quite useful, but lies in such a tech that it may cost you much more (i.e. losing tech advantage).

What techs are important in this scenario? Maybe all except for PlanEcon and D:AP are neglectable.

What was your initial concept - maximing tech at all costs, defence minimum or maybe considerable, raise terrain or not, strong navy or none? And in what manner you had to adjust your concept after meeting AI/losing something/being probed/whatever else? Empty bases or armoured probes? This kind of stuff.

At the risk of sounding too obvious, you will best help others if you analyze what you do along with what you don't do. I see you build two Research Hospitals at one moment. I'm not saying it's wrong, but RH is quite fancy to me and in such a race-against-time scenario, even a few crawlers sucking 1 energy/turn might be more worthwhile. You chose RH for calculation or too many needlejets were flying around?

Maybe I asked too many question above, but you know what I mean - the whys of your actions would give them a nice background.

There is a very cheesy was to win really quickly on this scenario.  After you get empath and a magnatube network, intentionally overproduce to get hoards of mindworms attacking.  You can harvest the mindworms for lots of energy.  I think this is very cheesy, so I did not do it, but I recognize that this is the fastest way to win by Economic Victory.

Yeah, I'm afraid Economic Victory is inherently flawed in a few respects and if you make it a scenario objective, additional house rules must follow.

[Earthmichael]

Why aren't you able to post any screenshots? It would be good to give a face to those descriptions.

Hopefully I will get screenshots sorted out soon and post some.  In the meantime, download some of the saves and peek around.  They can tell you much more than a screenshot.

Also, I'd like to read more about background story, specific strategies or analyses. What was your defence force and why this size? Why building facilities instead of hordes of crawlers sucking up energy? Is it worth it to stray to PEG? I often had this problem, PEG is actually quite useful, but lies in such a tech that it may cost you much more (i.e. losing tech advantage).

What techs are important in this scenario? Maybe all except for PlanEcon and D:AP are neglectable.

I don't think it is worth it to sidetrack to PEG.  For the most part, you can see my tech strategy by what I researched, but there were some sidetracks.  For example, Polymorphic Software was not a priority, but I had to research it anyway because the things I wanted were not offered.

I think it is kind of obvious, but my main early priorities are Clean Reactors and lifting resource limits.  I want to be first to certain secret projects, but that takes a back seat to building an ecomomy that can afford to build the secret projects.

For defense force, I wanted to make sure some good units offense and defense units were already prototyped and ready to build if I get invaded; otherwise, I built what I felt was the minimum to defend against mindworms.  I knew I could easily build a unit each turn in nearly every city if I felt I needed to, so I tried not to overbuild on initial defenses.  But I felt what I had truly was the minimum, if anyone was suggesting I should build less.  I should add that if there was a human in the game, I would have built MUCH more active defenses, as t_ras can attest.  But AI is not very creative in their attack strategy.

What was your initial concept - maximing tech at all costs, defence minimum or maybe considerable, raise terrain or not, strong navy or none? And in what manner you had to adjust your concept after meeting AI/losing something/being probed/whatever else? Empty bases or armoured probes? This kind of stuff.

My initial concept was to beeline to what I though were critical techs (as I listed earlier), then to build lots of clean formers to maximumize to use of the land I had, and to raise new land for expansion.  This scenario is very land locked.

With the Pirates in the game, I decided to avoid the water. 

I mostly avoided probes by destroying them with active defense.  At some point, I do put a few defensive probe teams in my cities.

I was worried at first by the Believers' early invasion, but it seemed to be just a feint, followed by a truce.  I never felt I had to adjust my strategy much based on AI actions.  I just played my game.  The AI kindly held off from any serious invasion until I had Air Power, which I did not rush, but got just when I intended to.  But having Air Power allowed me to really bolster my defenses!

At the risk of sounding too obvious, you will best help others if you analyze what you do along with what you don't do. I see you build two Research Hospitals at one moment. I'm not saying it's wrong, but RH is quite fancy to me and in such a race-against-time scenario, even a few crawlers sucking 1 energy/turn might be more worthwhile. You chose RH for calculation or too many needlejets were flying around?

I felt that until I had clean formers, I was not going to be able to terraform enough land to use many crawlers; I did not even have enough productive land for my cities.  RH give a lot of value for the cost: 1 drone suppression, +50% research, etc., and since research was my top priority at that point, I felt it was a good choice

[Kirov]

Do you want to continue this AAR? Please do. I gave it a shot and have serious problems finishing so early. My first attempt was almost there if a bit cheat-y - I didn't even try to establish a well-balanced empire but kept saving money and I was just 2-3k EC short somewhere in 2230s, when suddenly the price for cornering went through the roof for no discernible reason (it's not the first time I see an increase like that which I can't really track to one prominent factor).

My subsequent attempts were usually foiled by the AI which, although not really dangerous, was pain in the neck enough to slow down my economy-oriented build (tree farms etc).

Also, I'd like to make a correction with regard to the beginning - I believe you haven't actually met somebody and bought the freqs. What really happens is that in this scenario, out of the blue, Roze convenes the Council even before you have a chance with anybody.  This bugs me a little actually. The only possible explanation that I see is that the Pirates touch your base from fungus, don't contact you not to blow their cover away (you're so smart, Aryan boy!), sell your comm to Roze and she can call the Council. But it sounds pretty far-fetched... I will need to take a closer look at it later in the editor. I've never heard that AI can touch you but not bring up the diplo menu.

[Earthmichael]

I wonder if the Empath Guild was a factor?

[Kirov]

Nope, I'm positive this happens long before EG. I wonder if you can preset in the editor, but I highly doubt it (at least I've never seen such an option and the time Roze convenes the Council varies). This is actually really interesting. Maybe sisko could shed some light?

Other than that, I have no other theory than a stealth pirate and that's something which runs contrary to my experience (although on the other hand, you would never know if a ship was passing by through fungus if it doesn't contact you...).