| Re: Altum Silentium has been ended! |
Sun, 28 November 2010 18:30  |
|
 ManicLurch |
 | Lt. Junior Grade |
Messages: 462
Registered: May 2009 | |
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I played the Xyrillians. I started in the SW corner of the universe. I played kind of an experimental race. I played a factoryless IS, 1/3 habs with no immunity and 20% growth. I also took mine efficiency of 12. The thought was I could win by having the most minerals by having habs of virtually all (once terraforming was done) and high mineral efficiency. But this came at a price; I was only able to afford two cheap techs with rest expensive. No immunity and wide habs meant that a lot of resources went into terraforming and not into research. Combine this with the expensive fields of En, EL and Prop and no tech trading, I was behind the leaders in tech for those fields.
The positive note with this race design is how fast it is at the start. 20% growth plus freighter growth is a beautiful thing. With this speed I was able to overwhelm my neighbor to the east. I was settling planets 80ly from his HW in the early 20s. I didn’t go to war directly with him yet, just a few skirmishes. I relied on sheer pop numbers and my wide hab to take all the planets in his space. I didn’t finish him off until the early 2450s, instead I kept expanding north and east through his space as fast as I could.
Around 2450 I slowed my expansion and started building an orgy. I am wondering now if this was a mistake. I wonder how this would have turned out if I had kept pushing my expansion.
In the 2460s I met a new neighbor the slowpokes to the east. We started minor skirmishing right away. But nothing serious until 2475. That year the Slowpokes put ships in position to attack my closest planet to them, Silver. They had a fleet of 45 BBs, 600 chaff, over 70 jihad CC and many DDs and 98 B17 bombers within one turn of Silver. But they also pinged Silver the same turn and saw that I had an Ultra station full of Doomsday missiles and the start of a mega disruptor BB fleet. I didn’t know the design of his BBs, but I had suspected that they were W16 beamer fleet. My suspicions were confirmed when he retreated the next turn.
The next turn I had 53 Mega Disruptor BBs, chaff and other warships at Silver and set course for NU, an uninhabited planet between Silver and Zed, a Slowpoke planet that I wanted to take. In 2 turns I arrived at Zed and lost all my ships. He had gated in a large fleet of Jihad CCs, Galleon CCs and chaff. That plus his Starbase defeated my fleet. It was at this moment that I regretted another race design decision, NAS. I would have given a lot for pen scanners at that moment. I fought several more battles of this magnitude with the Slowpokes.
The next few years I built up another fleet, I mixed it up this time with beamers and missiles. I had an Arm BB with mass 471 (my intent was to gate these once) and a fleet of Mega Disruptor BBs. He gated in a large fleet of AMP & Syncro Sapper BBs and several Missile BBs. My Mega Disruptor BBs were in range of his AMPs on the first round. I was slaughtered. I had also brought over 4 mil of pop, 3.4 were in Galleon ships with 2.5 speed even when full of cargo. The rest were in SF & LF ships with freighter chaff. I lost the SF and LF, but the Galleon ships escaped the battle. So I only dropped 3.4 million of pop, which left him with 180k on the surface (he had 1.1 mil and 93% defenses). Oh if I only had brought all the pop in those Galleons I would have taken that planet with installations intact and could have built a good starbase and gated in ships. But I didn’t have enough of those built. Another example of my enemy having intel (he was a Joat and has his cheap FF ships flying everywhere) and I did not have enough intel with NAS. I don’t think I will ever choose NAS in a game with no communication and no trading ever again. This was the game changer for me. I cringe when I think of how many minerals I left at Zed from battle salvage.
At that moment I decided rather than to build another BB fleet, I would race for Nub tech. I also built up a fleet of missile CCs as a defensive fleet, since they were gateable. By the time I got Nub tech, I was being attacked by three different players, Slowpokes, Uriki to the north and the Shima got me in a nice surprise attack (he was SS and I didn’t have Tachyons yet) and slowly loosing planets to each. I don’t think the Slowpokes had Nub tech and I never saw an Uriki Nub, so I don’t know if they have Nub tech. But with three fronts the best I could do was to slow them down.
My idea for this race did work, I had more than enough minerals to build many more fleets. The game ended at 2505 and I could have kept building more ships (I had two Nub fleets going) for quite a while. If I could have had just a little peace I likely could have built a good enough Nub fleet to turn things around.
I am not sure I would go with a factoryless with no immunity again, even IS, nor would I choose NAS in a no communication/no trade game again. If I could only change one thing about this race, I would not check the NAS box and pay for it with normal mineral efficiency (I would still have lots of minerals with the wide habs).
Like most games, I had fun and learned a few things along the way.
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