Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » Game stories » Sophisticated has ended (please share your stories here)
| Re: Sophisticated has ended |
Wed, 01 July 2015 20:51   |
|
 ManicLurch |
 | Lt. Junior Grade |
Messages: 462
Registered: May 2009 | |
|
Very nice map.
Quote:(The Smile, a 15% 1/2500 WM, was placed between two AR.)
That is a nice advantage to start between 2 AR's. But there is always some luck involved in this game.
The tale of the Avengers has some luck as well, some bad and some good.
The Avengers were a -F SS, looking for a fast start and to grab some early territory. I didn't take the start at 3 box in the tech section, so I had no tech except EL to start with. The first bit of bad luck came with the scrappers that were given at the start of the game. Among the tech from the scrappers, I only got to W 2 from those scrappers. This made the fast start difficult. I saw many players with Yak DDs, while I still didn't have red lasers.
Some good luck my placement put me between 2 HE races, so I could attack without worrying about gated reinforcements. The northern HE (Men In Blue) was one of the races that had Yak W tech while I still was working on red lasers. We fought over a few planets and had a few pop drop battles. They were pressing me pretty hard. I had hoped to beat them to FF tech, but that didn't happen. They started fielding EN3 shield Yak FFs. When this happened, I had just gotten FF tech and red laser tech. I had EN cheap, so I reseached EN6 and built EN6 shield red laser FFs as a counter.
The MIB had a nice head start with FF production, but had them spread out because they were HE. I was able to gate mine together and use my stealth to win some battles. After winning a couple of battles, I now had a fleet size advantage and started building bombers. At at point I had a fleet and production advantage and starting taking planets. Taking planets also got me to W6.
I ended up with most of the MIB territory and started looking at my southern neighbor (!@#$%), whose border had been much quieter by comparison. There were another HE, but with factories. Our first skirmishes were over a cluster of 3-4 planets about halfway between both of our HWs. 3 of the 4 planets were green to him, and all 4 were green for me. We each had 2 of the 4 to start with. I used Beta DDs to remove him from that cluster. He came back with a large fleet of CCs that removed me from the cluster. I came back with Jihad DDs to reclaim the cluster. I thought then that I had gotten the upper hand, when he started building W16 BBs with Con16 armor. His BBs had 4000 armor. I was still at W12! It turns out he caught a tech MT that I couldn't get too.
So I had to retreat and come up with a counter to his ships. I researched W14 while retreating, and started building a cheap light BB to counter his powerful, but heavy and expensive BB. I lost a bit of territory while gathering enough BBs to beat his fleet. I finally had enough W14 BBs to counter his fleet. I retook a few planets and got to W16 from battles while doing so. But then he merged of his smaller BB fleets into his large and I was outgunned again.
I was having lousy MT luck so far. I had met 2 MTs, and I had the hush a boom and multi-cargo pod to show for it. Other players got tech and the enigma pulsar!
So I was on retreat mode again, when the tech MT made another pass through the universe. This was very late in the game, but still welcome. When I met it, I got 3 levels of W tech, getting me to W19. Finally some good luck. But I had a decision to make. It was about 6 turns of nothing but research to get me to W20. I was loosing territory. Should I build ships, or get W20 for 6 turns. Real life made the decision for me. I missed 2 turns in a row because I was too busy, and ended up researching those turns. So I kept researching to W20. It took 5-10 turns after I got W20, but I finally had a superior fleet. I had W20 beamer BBs and W20 missile galleons to deal with the !@#$%$ W16 BBs. I took about 3-4 planets back and was about to get more when the game ended.
Other than the 2 HE neighbors, I had very few battles with anyone else. Towards the end of the game, I had plenty of skirmishes with the Hunanoids as out territories met with the downfall of the Eterals. But it seemed both of us were busier at other fronts.
I did have one significant battle with the Humanoids, I happened to see a fleet of about 150-200 of their older W10 and W16 BBs in attack position. I gated in all my new W20 missile ships with about 40 sapper BBs and got a nice bit of salvage. I am not sure that made a big impact on their strength however.
I think the mistake I made in this game was I chose the wrong neighbor to attack first. I should have attacked the +F HE, and just contained the -F HE, I did the reverse. I let the +F HE have enough time to build enough Factories to be a threat.
The game was a lot of fun. I think future games with this setting (slow tech, W expensive) should not have the MT. Not getting a tech MT can devastate a player in this setup.
Report message to a moderator
|
|
|
|
Current Time: Thu May 16 04:41:38 EDT 2024
|
Members
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
