Home » Old Game Forums » Rabid Weasels II-A » RWIAB IIa Game Review
| Re: RWIAB IIa Game Review |
Fri, 19 March 2004 17:34   |
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 scottrick49 |
 | Master Chief Petty Officer |
Messages: 98
Registered: August 2003
Location: Minneapolis, MN | |
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RWIAB II Galaxy A
Armagon Perspective/Comments
This was my first Stars! game online. It was also my first time ever playing an AR race. I had no idea what I was getting into. Couple things I learned:
- You have to have high weapon tech. If you don't, you are dead. I consider myself fairly lucky that the Polanies and Desquis didn't focus their attention at me until late in the game when I had a competitive fleet. When the Polanies were fielding their weapon22 beamer BBs, and I had my pitiful weapon 14 beamer BBs, I was extremely vulnerable. Simply, AR MUST have top weapon tech to defend themselves.
- I needed to exploit my homeworld mineral fountain even more than I did. I am not sure if I should have started building mining robots sooner or just build more of them. At the end of the game I was getting 3.7k of each mineral a turn; not to bad, but apparently much more can be accomplished.
On to the actual game.
The Opening ---
I found myself with the Pick-Pockets to the southwest, and the OKs to the southeast. I found a fair amount of greens close by, but ran into my neighbors rather quickly. The OKs had very few planets that looked good for me, while the Pick-Pockets had many more. That is the main reason I chose to side with the OKs over the Pick-Pockets. It was a simple matter to gang up on the Pick-Pockets and take his planets. He gave up rather quickly when he saw it was 2v1.
Because the Watchers were in the middle of the map, I was fortunate to really only have two people adjacent to me, and let me focus more on my economy until the middle game.
The Middle Game ---
After the Pick-Pockets had been pretty much eliminated (~40's) the OKs and I had basically come to the agreement that we would stick together for the rest of the game. It had also become apparent that the Polanies would be the main contender for 1st place other than us. I admit my intel was very bad the whole game. From what I could tell, the Loranians were fighting it out with the Desquis and Polanies; and losing. The Zurg pretty much just sat around the whole game building fleets of misspelled Starcraft-esque warships, which were hopelessly outdated. I really had no idea what was happening with the BFT. Intel is definitely something I need to work on in my next game. Thank god the OKs had great intel and were able to relay that information to me.
I also made the mistake of stopping my expansion. At about 2440, when I had approximately 18 planets, I stopped. This was mainly because there were no easy greens or yellows close by. I feel I could have done much better had I tried to expand north into the Zurg territory, or more into the center of the map. That's another thing I learned: Never stop growing.
It was in the middle game (probably about 2455 or so) that the OKs and I decided that we needed to fight the Polanies before they got way to large. So we built up our fleets (the OKs was much larger than mine; I think Paul can manage his minerals 5x better than I can lol) and then at about 2460 or so we attacked. We launched a number of packets at Polanie and Desquis worlds. Because we had a significant disadvantage in tech at that point, (I had wpn 14 beamers and Polanie had wpn22 beamers) we had to stay on the offensive, keeping them from attacking our planets. Fleet splitting, packets, etc, to keep them busy. I knew that if they sent a good-sized fleets to my planets I was doomed – simply because my people are sitting ducks in my starbases. My battleships compared to the Polanie's resembled a Nerf gun next to a real firearm. I found that it would take about 3 of my BBs to destroy one of his. Thankfully the Polanies and Desquis were too busy fighting the BFT and Loranians to concentrate on a full attack against me.
The End Game ---
Around 2480 things began to turn around. The OKs and I were nearly caught up in tech. I had weapon tech lvl 22 or so and the Polanie/Desquis were sitting at 26. The only advantage they had now was the ARM missile over the doomsday, which isn't as huge an advantage as the weapon 22 beamers against a weapon 14, IMO. I fielded a weapon22 beamer battleship with no armor, 3 capacitators and 3 jammers. I added in a supercomputer instead of a maneuvering jet so I could get first shot vs the similar Polanie design. I also made use of the mini-morph hull I received from the MT. I had some markIV blaster sweepers/anti-sweeper ships. I feel they did a good job of eliminating Polanie and Desquis sweepers until the Desquis fielded the Snark (wpn 26 beam cruiser) around 2485. I had to update my mini-morph design at that point with wpn22 beamers, (range three compared to his range 2 wpn26 beam cruisers).
Around 2485 I felt that my attacks were finally making progress. I was able to destroy several Polanie/Desquis worlds, and I had taken a few new ones. The Polanies and Desquis caught on and started building defenses on their worlds to protect from mass packets. The last 15 years or so was pretty much a wreckless attack against the Polanie/Desquis worlds. I packeted and bombed as much as I could. By the early 90's, we were equal in weapon tech, and a good bit ahead in energy and others. (part of the reason I was behind in weapons was that I chose to research energy instead. Perhaps that is a mistake? But AR need high energy...) I really felt I had secured 2nd place as the last few turns rolled by. I had a lead of nearly 150 points before the last turn. To my dismay, I lost 2nd place because of some last minute colonizing and pop drops. Oh well.
Couple of comments/questions:
Polanie/Desquis:
How effective were the packet attacks we used against you? I felt as though they weren't as effective as we could have made them. What could we have done to make them hurt more?
Also, Why did you guys have so many different types of chaff? And why didn't you use the X-ray laser on all of them? It seems silly to me that you would waste multiple ship design slots on ships that serve the exact same purpose. Frigate Chaff? Why?
Could somebody (preferably one who knows what they are talking about  ) discuss my ship design? I didn't really know what I was doing; mainly just imitating the OK, Desquis, and Polanie designs. Please be brutal; I enjoy constructive criticism.
Again, great game; I really enjoyed it.
Is there going to be a RWIAB III game? 
Happy Hunting!
Scott
[Updated on: Fri, 19 March 2004 17:37]
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