Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » Game stories » Slow Boat to China has ended (please share your stories)
| Re: Slow Boat to China has ended |
Tue, 22 November 2016 21:40   |
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 schneck |
 | Crewman 3rd Class |
Messages: 8
Registered: April 2015
Location: United States | |
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This was my first Stars! game against humans since the 90s, when I was introduced to the game by my friend Epworthian, whose loss to Jason Cawley was immortalized in the strategy guide.
It looked to me that the game rules put constraints on most econ races but didn't touch IS, and I've always liked IS, so IS it was. The Penguins were based on Jason Cawley's Yankees ( http://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/%22Inner_Strength_Race_De sign%22_by_Jason_Cawley_1997_v2.6/7) with just a couple of changes: no OBRM, and NRSE. In hindsight these were mistakes. Not checking OBRM is like checking "9% smaller economy". I never built a mining fleet (mainly because my allies ended up taking care of remote mining). Checking NRSE is really checking "mid-game expensive engines", which sadly limits the fun of Croby Frigate hordes.
In the first few years I met the Androids to the south and the Salts to the north. Neil had suggested he would try to make everyone neighbors with one natural enemy and one natural ally. It quickly became apparent that the Androids were the natural enemy as we wanted all the same planets. In 2409 I let him have Phaeton, a choice planet nearer my homeworld than I would like, and we agreed to a border and a 10-year NAP. Then in 2413 the Macinti, just north of the Salts, suggested that we three form a victory-or-death alliance. We agreed, and so it was for the rest of the game.
Even at that time we talked about inviting the Androids. As Runar suggested we never did bring him on, and this did turn out to be something of a mistake. I don't think which side got the Androids was decisive in terms of which side won, but in the late game Runar was remarkably effective at skirmishing, minelaying, and minesweeping, and indeed caused us substantial misery. I think we would have had more fun with the Androids on our side, and I bet the other team would have had less!
In the 2420s I did outrun the Androids to the last planets in the not-pre-determined area of our border, and we started running into the opposing teams, notably the very expansionist Sossios Naze. In 2434 we agreed to a border with the Humanoid/SklogW/Bamboo/(Otter)---a border presuming the elimination of all the other races. After a rather abortive attempt by the Macinti to conquer the Perseons, we similarly agreed to a border with the Sossios Naze/Aliens/Perseons/Puppies.
Mostly, we had peace until the endgame. I didn't build a single weapon until 2440 (by which point I had 10k resources). I had just broken the NAP with the Androids and it was time for the Croby Frigates.
We spent a long time taking out the Androids... we started in 2448, by 2469 took their homeworld, and were done mopping up around 2490 at which point the Southern Alliance belatedly decided to get involved. (This I think is the answer to XAPBob's question of what we were doing with our midgame.) Here we missed another chance to bring the Androids into our team and forgo a lot of later misery. Too bad! As it was, I'm glad we got at least one reasonably satisfying war of conquest, before settling in to the trench warfare of the late game.
At this point, around 2490, we considered the situation total war. For a while we let the Southern Alliance beat up on the Northern Alliance to build up our strength, until about 2515 when it was clear the only way forward was to join with the Northerners. As I remember it, we didn't see the situation with the Puppies as "backstabbing" them---we simply didn't believe there was any room for a neutral race at this point. It seemed clear to us that you either had to be ready to join the Southerners or fight against them. The Puppies made their choice and we responded in the way we thought was appropriate.
I still didn't build many weapons until the endgame: about 800 Croby Frigates, and later about 50 W16 battleships. But I was the main engine of our team's Nubians, building 2646 by the end, though mostly I transferred them to the Macinti.
Hopefully Eddie can comment on how we felt about the "Cochise disaster". I don't remember it. I was mainly building and transferring Nubians, and doing some light border defense and skirmishing. I suspect that it happened just before we fully committed to ally with the North, and were still hoping the other two teams would substantially damage each other. Possibly we waited too long.
I started hitting germ limits before 2500 and by the end was even running out of boranium. Eddie had said early on that the game would be won or lost on minerals. We had hoped that having the sole SS player, we might make a go of piracy as a game-winning strategy, and although we got a few good shipments of minerals that way, we never quite turned it into a game-changer.
I had 18k resources in 2450, 51k in 2475, 79k in 2500, and peaked at 105k around 2530. In score I rose as high as second in the early 2500s, later falling to third and staying there... I wonder how much that had to do with transferring away most of my capital ships.
There were two major events with the MT. First of all, our team managed to get the Enigma Pulsar by turning the useless MT Scouts or Probes we had gotten into lambs which we all observed being destroyed. It was a critical piece of our late-game Nubian, giving us an extra slot.
More importantly, very late in the game, the opposing team got three MTs offering parts which traveled very slowly through their space. As a result they managed a clever strategy of having one team member get the part, and then trading it to the other players, which could then visit the MT again for different parts. Most importantly they got the Genesis Device, which of course upends the mineral calculus.
We knew we would lose unless we could somehow get the GD ourselves, and we came up with a last-ditch plan to trade an MT part among all of us, and send the four players who didn't originally get the part deep into enemy minefields to meet one of the MT. I think the plan could have worked, and it would have been very satisfying. But by this point we seemed collectively exhausted; our hearts weren't in it and we didn't execute it quite well enough.
The SklogW and Bamboo suggest their excess size would have been decisive even so, and it certainly does not seem unlikely. I never interacted with the SklogW much myself, but our teammates said that he was a excellent and careful player who simply never made mistakes.
Congratulations again to all the winners and thanks to all.
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Slow Boat to China has ended
By: schneck on Sun, 13 November 2016 22:31 |
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Re: Slow Boat to China has ended
By: XAPBob on Mon, 14 November 2016 05:02 |
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Re: Slow Boat to China has ended
By: ludek on Mon, 14 November 2016 18:11 |
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Re: Slow Boat to China has ended
By: platon79 on Tue, 15 November 2016 12:58 |
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Re: Slow Boat to China has ended
By: XAPBob on Fri, 18 November 2016 05:48 |
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Re: Slow Boat to China has ended
By: nmid on Mon, 21 November 2016 07:26 |
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Re: Slow Boat to China has ended
By: schneck on Tue, 22 November 2016 21:40 |
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Re: Slow Boat to China has ended
By: Altruist on Wed, 23 November 2016 15:34 |
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Re: Slow Boat to China has ended
By: ludek on Wed, 23 November 2016 17:07 |
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Re: Slow Boat to China has ended
By: XAPBob on Sun, 27 November 2016 14:09 |
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Re: Slow Boat to China has ended
By: platon79 on Tue, 21 March 2017 02:49 |
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