23-03-2005 11:14									#181
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Good luck Snoddasmannen

	23-03-2005 19:45									#182
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quote: Originally posted by Snoddasmannen What's that super amph missile rover doing down in 2Nuts?

It set out last turn for Minas Tirith, where the new Mercury can pick it up

quote: And oh, wish me luck again today, I have a second interview with Opera That's one of the reasons I haven't been to active lately.

Best of luck in the second interview

	10-04-2005 05:37									#183
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Copied from the MY 2166 planning thread, so we can discuss this longterm strategy discussion here, and keep the planning thread exclusively for the stuff happening this year:

***

Having just looked at the turn (who will play it btw?), I'd even suggest to completely call off the framing operation.

Why?
The Gaians are in a truce with Yang... I guess the Morganites (or Angels??) asked the Hive to call off their vendetta with the Gaian Union. The Hive has received three new techs this year, so it's clear what they got in return.

This means the AFAIK two goals of framing Morgan would no longer work:

1> Trying to keep DAP out of Weasel hands. Even if we'd manage to frame Morgan, they could still get it from via the Gaians.
2> Let Yang do some dirty work for us by harrassing both the Gaians and Morganites.

Besides, look at the base build list of the Hive. All hab complexes and other builder stuff, for the first time in a couple decades. Do we really want to risk disturb Yang again and throw him back into war mode, this time with a 50% risk he's solely focused on us??


Oh yeah, if the Axis of Weasels does indeed get DAP, I'd return to my previous opinion: an invasion of Terrapeso would be suicide! I'd suggest to call a peace conference with the goal of really trying to sign a peace with the Weasels (or at least the Corporation; it's not like the Gaians can harm us).

Who knows we could still succeed in conquering the Corporation, but there would be little left of them after we're finished with them: they've got only seven size 3 three bases. You have to count two pops are lost to capture a base, so that means we'd get seven extra workers out of the whole operation.

This might still make sense if we were living in the situation of ten years back: The Corporation and Sparta the only great powers, with the Angels and Gaians only as spectators. Then defeating the Corporation could have meant winning the game.

But these last ten years the Angels have been popbooming. They have the same population as the Corporation, and their power bar has grown almost as high as the Morganites as well.

If the Corporation and we keep fighting, the Angels might very well run away with the game since they can keep focusing on builder production.

Therefore I advocate peace, so we can popboom ourselves.

	10-04-2005 06:47									#184
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quote: Originally posted by Maniac ... the turn (who will play it btw?),

Why don't you go ahead since it's a weekend - I can take over when the turn falls midweek, as I gather that's not so convenient for you

quote: I'd even suggest to completely call off the framing operation.

I agree - maybe we send that longstrider down to join the Gaian Expeditionary Force

quote: Besides, look at the base build list of the Hive. All hab complexes and other builder stuff, for the first time in a couple decades. Do we really want to risk disturb Yang again and throw him back into war mode, this time with a 50% risk he's solely focused on us??

Good point - and with the Angels pop-booming, and the Gaians likely not far behind, we need to focus ourselves on consolidation and pop growth.

This game is far from over, Tassadar's opinions notwithstanding

quote: Oh yeah, if the Axis of Weasels does indeed get DAP, I'd return to my previous opinion: an invasion of Terrapeso would be suicide! I'd suggest to call a peace conference with the goal of really trying to sign a peace with the Weasels (or at least the Corporation; it's not like the Gaians can harm us).

I agree. Let's crank up the diplomacy to full volume

quote: If the Corporation and we keep fighting, the Angels might very well run away with the game since they can keep focusing on builder production. Therefore I advocate peace, so we can popboom ourselves.

I agree. We did strike a major blow in getting rid of the PTS - that maybe cost Morgan the win.

One option left to us is in warring with the PK's, and enslaving them. We need to discuss this. (and as a corollary, do we change to POLICE and try to pact with Yang? - that'd prolly provoke the PK's to declare vendetta on us of their own volition!!)

Alternatively - build creches, change to Dem and Planned, then produce colony pods like crazy as we grow (and maybe gift every third one to the Uni to get them growing too - every lab point they generate is like a super labpoint for us)

We can win by transcendence, with Zak's help

	10-04-2005 09:48									#185
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quote: I agree. Let's crank up the diplomacy to full volume

* Kassiopeia lets out a loud "Uh oh"

You can't just establish peace on the turn of a switch. This is going to require a lot of work, and even then it's probably not going to succeed. We have been on war footing for the past few years in such an intensity, especially with the PTS raid, I find it HIGHLY unlikely we'll be able to manage a peace. We'd have to make it really look like it'll be worth their while, which will involve craploads of groveling and gifting.

In other words, we need to make them want peace. That can't work out if we want it first. Feigning wanting peace is almost as good, but not quite.

Especially since we just now already declared another war on the Gaians! Sorting this out will not be easy, and I am loathe to state this again, not too likely to happen. Not now when the others are gaining an upperhand with the recent turns of events.

	10-04-2005 11:20									#186
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How about we propose peace while our troops are posed to strike another major blow to them? (Are we capable of making such blow? And what it would be - perhaps obliterating important bases?)

What I mean is:
- if they choose peace, we will show good will by withdrawing troops,
- if they refuse, they will suffer.

They can of course be cheating, feigning peace.. but we have infiltration on their build orders, so we are not blind. We can include military build limits in our peace diplomacy.

Last edited by sentry33 on 10-04-2005 at 11:30

	10-04-2005 14:23									#187
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It's unfortunate that the Axis of Weasels appears to be defending itself very well politically. We won't be able to hurt them much with air raids once they get SAM-units. A couple of SAM-rovers in their coastal bases could thwart our entire war effort.

So now we are preparing to go builder? I don't know, it sounds like the beginning of the end to me, but the Junta usually knows what it's doing

I don't think a peace with Morgania is any good though. Better to keep them on their toes.

	10-04-2005 15:14									#188
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Well, IF indeed we can not invade Morgan big time, perhaps we need to consider a different approach after all. BUT, that would mean we need some more prime real estate, to make up for our faction's bad builder capabilities.

If that is the case, I propose we take out Yang, claiming the Monsoon Jungle for Sparta. Sure, Lal is the easier target, but his land is far and not as great. With our current build up, we should be able to concentrate and swipe the floor with any AI n no time.

	10-04-2005 17:24									#189
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Hmm, yeah, taking out Yang might be an idea.

But I agree with Snoddasmannen, I don't like this general shift in direction. While we both know you Googlie and Maniac are good strategists, are you really sure we have a shot at victory if we start to muck about like a headless chicken? "Builder, no, momentum, wait, builder, or maybe momentum, I know, hybrid!, okay, I guess builder".

	10-04-2005 17:46									#190
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Hehe, nobody says we need to stop with Yang. You see, after he is dealt with (eradicated or forced to submission), we will have a land path to all other human-controlled factions. And we should be able to conquer Yang with what we already have. This means that going semi-builder while attacking the Hive should be possible. This would be in full accordance with a continued momentum strategy, while making our economy stonger at the same time. Plus, it has the good side of showing that we want to be friends with the other humans. A "Look, we turn our armies away from you to get rid of this great threat to humanity." kind of speach would be great to follow this. The only problem is, we have this Truce, breaking which will definately kill our relations with the other AIs.

Thoughts?

	10-04-2005 19:45									#191
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quote: Originally posted by sentry33 How about we propose peace while our troops are posed to strike another major blow to them? (Are we capable of making such blow? And what it would be - perhaps obliterating important bases?)

I checked it a few days ago, and by MY 2169 we could have the Tiger's Claw filled with a probe team and three combat units in Vander Eudaimonics. Nothing more though.

We could of course exaggerate, and eg say: If you don't agree to a treaty by MY 2169, we will invade at Vander Eudaimonics and Morgan Mussels (if the friendly approach fails of course ).

quote: They can of course be cheating, feigning peace.. but we have infiltration on their build orders, so we are not blind. We can include military build limits in our peace diplomacy.

Eg they can build as many SAM aircraft as they want, but no offensive needlejets (or only a limited amount to take on Yang if necessary).

quote: Originally posted by Snoddasmannen So now we are preparing to go builder? I don't know, it sounds like the beginning of the end to me, but the Junta usually knows what it's doing

quote: Originally posted by Modo44 Well, IF indeed we can not invade Morgan big time, perhaps we need to consider a different approach after all. BUT, that would mean we need some more prime real estate, to make up for our faction's bad builder capabilities.

While of course more real estate is always handy (especially the Monsoon Jungle), we don't need it for a succesful builder approach. True, we have a general builder penalty of bad Industry SE. However that doesn't mean the Spartans are completely unsuited for any kind of builder tactic: they can popboom. In fact, after getting Intellectual Integrity, I think they are the faction you can popboom with most easily and cheapest, with the exception of the Peacekeepers.

Due to the Spartan +1 Police, four workers can be controlled by two police units only. Then you only need a rec commons, and you're already at size 7, the hab complex limit (presuming the seventh worker is made a specialist).
Other factions can only quell two drones by police, meaning they have to use more expensive methods to get to size 7, such as psych spending, holo theatres, research hospitals, crawling in nutrients...

For that reason, I can rightly claim that in this phase of the game, the Spartans are the best builder of all human factions. All we need to do is build some formers, creches, tree farms and then switch to democratic.

quote: Originally posted by Kassiopeia But I agree with Snoddasmannen, I don't like this general shift in direction. While we both know you Googlie and Maniac are good strategists, are you really sure we have a shot at victory if we start to muck about like a headless chicken? "Builder, no, momentum, wait, builder, or maybe momentum, I know, hybrid!, okay, I guess builder".

AFAIK our strategy has always been rather momentum. So if we changed now, it would be the first time. Besides, personally I'm not suggesting we change to builder for the rest of the game. Just a period long enough to get most of our bases up to size seven, and then we can evaluate. Imagine: some 20 bases, times seven population...

Personally I think it would be the beginning of the end if we continued on our current strategy no matter what, without taking into account the changed circumstances. Sure, we have been succesful in containing the Corporation: their economy has hardly grown these last fifteen years, allowing us to catch up. But we have not been so succesful that we could take on all of Planet already. Our economy needs to grow before we can build and support the military needed to do that. The Spartans are flexible faction. Let's make use of that and change to builder for a while!

(Besides, as Modo says, there are sufficient targets so that our existing military doesn't need to rust. )

	10-04-2005 19:55									#192
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Preparing for popboom does not have to mean that we cannot take over Yang meanwhile. We have enough of army for that purpose - if we make peace with Morgan and Gaia

If this happens we can grow both horizontally (conquest) and vertically (popboom), and I think its what Maniac and Googlie intended

	10-04-2005 20:05									#193
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Heh, late post.. Modo and Maniac clarified it first

Last edited by sentry33 on 10-04-2005 at 20:28

	10-04-2005 20:44									#194
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Okay. I wanted to make sure, again, that we know what we're going into. Like with the war against the Gaians. Because it's always the poor guys down in the diplomatic corps who end up doing all the cleaning up afterwards.

	10-04-2005 20:49									#195
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You see, I have very little actual info on the way the game is actually going for us, so I need to get the information on the state of things out of you. That means I need to bicker and harass you every time you are going to make a large decision, so that I know the relevant facts. I can't engage in an argument over whether a strategy is valid, however, because I do not have the knowledge base (on the game or SMAC strat in general) to carry out such a debate. In other words, I'm not really here to make counterarguments or discuss, I'm merely questioning your decisions so that you'll give them a second or third thought.

I'm also slightly worried at the amount of effort I'm facing. Playing a pacifistic Spartan vis-a-vis diplomacy won't be easy. I guess we need to kick Snoddasmannen out of the position of Chief of Gaian Affairs too

	10-04-2005 20:55									#196
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quote: Originally posted by Kassiopeia Okay. I wanted to make sure, again, that we know what we're going into. Like with the war against the Gaians. Because it's always the poor guys down in the diplomatic corps who end up doing all the cleaning up afterwards.

With the unexpected truce between the Gaians and the Hive, I'd say the war with Gaia can be called a failure.
* Maniac tries to trip out of the room unnoticed.

However I'd say peace with the Gaians is not so important (in fact they'd be a nice target if we don't want to go to war with Yang again ). It's the Corporation that could prevent us preparing for a popboom.

	10-04-2005 20:59									#197
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We need some cleverness on all fronts for the Morganites to agree to a peace treaty. If they know they are within range of DAP, it's highly unlikely they'd agree to a peace, knowing they can again get the upper hand, especially if they recognise that your infrastructure is on a weak foundation. Mainly, we'd need to feed to them some sort of information through another source that would convince them that we are so strong that we could crush them and that peace is the only way for them to avoid that for the time being and to get a breather. Feigning strength is harder than feigning weakness, however...

	10-04-2005 21:34									#198
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I do not think that Morganities can get upper hand, even with DAP

Point is that the war with them would tie us and them - making Angels and Gaians grow while we waste energy on each other

	10-04-2005 21:38									#199
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Yes, that has been a part of tactical consideration for a while. We founded our trust in the Gaians and Angels staying out of the conflict on that very premise, if I recall correctly.

We just need to convince the Morganites of that too, without pissing off our potential allies the Angels.

	10-04-2005 21:42									#200
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I think Morgan did not engage in peace talks, because they did not believe we actually wanted to sign peace (good intelligence or good intuition - no matter). With the assumption that a quick invasion is notpossible, I say we start the peace talks with both them and Gaia. We can use the Angels to organize things, as they themselves suggested.

If we want to issue threats, we better not tell them were we would attack. It is much better to just keep attacking targets of opportunity as if in preparation for a really big invasion. I assume Morgan is now ready enough to repel one-target attacks.

I think we do need to grow to keep up with the Morgan economy. And please, please, please, let us commit to that Worm project ASAP.

	10-04-2005 21:43									#201
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quote: Originally posted by sentry33 I do not think that Morganities can get upper hand, even with DAP Point is that the war with them would tie us and them - making Angels and Gaians grow while we waste energy on each other

quote: Originally posted by Kassiopeia We just need to convince the Morganites of that too, without pissing off our potential allies the Angels.

Would the "honest" approach work? Simply tell them that we attacked them because they were the most powerful faction at that time. And since they're currently no longer more powerful than the Angels and us, that we see no reason to further attack them. That, while we are confident we could succesfully conduct war against them, it would only weaken both of us compared to the rest. Or am I being too naive?

	10-04-2005 21:54									#202
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quote: Originally posted by Snoddasmannen So now we are preparing to go builder? I don't know, it sounds like the beginning of the end to me, but the Junta usually knows what it's doing

here are some other comments from long ago:

quote: originally posted by Zeiter in the How shall we Play thread I am also an advocate of making building a priority. However, I'm thinking of an unconventional approach. I've described this vision in other threads, so I'll just summarize it here: Basically, we can use a momentum strategy in the short term to augment our building efforts in the long run. We are already drafting plans for a University invasion. By conquering and subjugating the University, we can increase our mineral production (as well as labs production if we get Zak submissive) much more than if we focused on a purely builder style. Of course, we won't stop there, but we'll continue on with Lal and, later on, Yang and the others. If we can just maintain tech parity, our new industrial centers on the Uni/Lal continent will lead us to triumph in any war, especially when combined with our superior morale. I also advocate that we focus most of our efforts on building up energy credit and mineral production (especially mineral production). In fact, I think we should put the least amount of emphasis as possible on labs production, and instead rely on probing to maintain tech parity. Thus, I'm hoping to soon switch to police state, giving us loads of drone control and support, which will actually make us better builders. Yes, an unconventional approach, but the Spartans are almost perfectly suited for it. We are very much focused on building, but just in a different way.

and, from Kassiopeia:

quote: Posted by Kassiopeia in thesame thread I think that we should emphasise momentum but try to keep it in balance with our builder efforts - I voted momentum but I'm fine with a hybrid approach too. A good solid base on the area we're sitting in right now to get those rover swarms up and running. Making a run for the centre should be priority - we are the ones best capable of robbing Yang clean of what he has.

And from Maniac:

quote: Originally posted by maniac in the same thread I think we should play as a builder and explorer/pod popper/tech stealer until we get Intellectual Integrity. With that tech we can very easily get elite morale (Spartan inherent +1 morale, +2 from command center, +1 from high morale, and +1 from monolith), and then I think we should invade as many bases or factions as possible with eg some 4-1-1 elite (=> 2 MPs) troops. Once Air Power and MMI arrives on the battlefield, our elite land units become much less powerful again, so we should exploit this window of opportunity as much as we can IMHO

So it's not really an about-face to focus on a builder style for a few decades - it's really what we decided to do nine months ago

	10-04-2005 21:58									#203
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quote: Originally posted by Maniac Simply tell them that we attacked them because they were the most powerful faction at that time.

As I recall history, they inititated the belligerence by mind-controlling our SCC Hunter.

We can be "honest" by saying that we deliberated on what would be an appropriate retaliation, and as they were the strongest faction at that time ..... took out the PTS to cut them down to size ..... now we 3 (Morgan, Angels and Sparta) are all about the same, with the Gaians sure to catch up now that they have struck truce with Yang

	10-04-2005 22:23									#204
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A question: why Angels want to organize peace between Gaians, Morganities and us?

Ideas that come to my mind:
- they want to be updated on political situation to take advantage of it - by trading techs, and striking deals that 'balance' other powers against each other,
- they want to gain political 'trust' advantage,
- they do not want peace, and if possible they would subtly disrupt negotiations (feeding data that instills paranoia)

thoughts?

	10-04-2005 22:27									#205
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As far as I can see, for the Angels it isn't really advantagous that peace exists between the Corporation and Sparta. So I think we shouldn't count on them to start a peace conference (which they indeed haven't done yet ).

	11-04-2005 00:31									#206
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Here's what I've thought about :

- Declare a cessation of hostilities. A step between vendetta and truce, if you will. A phony war. It will allow us to test the waters and see if the Morganites and/or Gaians will bite.
- Suggest a white peace. The Morganites are the aggressors, but we have dealt quite a blow to them too. Restoring relations and simply ceasing hostilities without fiddling around with reparations etc. will speed up the process and probably work out the best for us in the end. It'll also make us look somewhat gracious.

Of course, we could make some demands to further test the waters, and then "downgrade" our desires out, so that it seems that we are giving away an arm and a leg for what we were planning all along. Old trick.

So the first step, IMO, is to send PMs to arginine and Chaos Theory, proposing a cessation of hostilities. "This would be the first step on the long journey to everlasting peace" or something. We should also consider issuing a public apology for the PTS raid. It's immaterial as far as gameplay goes, but it might rub the Morganites in the right direction. The loss of interfactional prestige won't be too big, I'd think, it might even make us look good. If we can time this to our switch to Democratic, to boot, we could try to throw in some RP line about reforming the government to a better shape.

	11-04-2005 01:28									#207
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As long as you make it look like we are giving away war reparations, yes - I say we should offer peace.

	11-04-2005 07:21									#208
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EDIT: Ignore the below - I fired up the original turn as a parallel-turn diplomacy exercise and tried to contact Yang - he won't talk

Posted by me in another thread, but maybe belonging here:

before we end the 2166 turn, how about selling Doc Air to Yang (if he'll talk to us)

Pros:

• we'll get some credits
  
• we (may) get some goodwill from him
  
• He'll get a different tech in 2167 - one that we maybe can pilfer from him
  
• he'll get another tech and that may be the one that Morgan, Angels and Gaians pilfer from him, thus maintaining our Doc Air supremacy for a few more turns
  
• we can try to frame the Gaians - or Morgan - for the techsteal
  

Last edited by Googlie on 11-04-2005 at 08:59

	12-04-2005 21:56									#209
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Sorry about just dropping in without properly reading through everything, but I'm in a hurry.

My question is, why do we want peace with the Morgans? Surely Morgan would be able to bloat far more without having to fear us. Are we that afraid of the other factions?

If we could make peace with Gaia, that would be nice, but I really don't want to give the Morgans any breathing room.

	12-04-2005 22:07									#210
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quote: Originally posted by Snoddasmannen My question is, why do we want peace with the Morgans? Surely Morgan would be able to bloat far more without having to fear us. Are we that afraid of the other factions?

Because, as much as I had hoped for this, we seem unable to invade in time (i.e. with full air superiority). Anything else would make the war too long, allowing the Angels and the Gaians to out-build us far too easy.

Instead, we want to make peace with Morgan soon, and pick the easier target, namely Yang. We can hurt the Hive badly even without making new units, so we could use the time to bring some infrastructure up for the long haul.

quote: Originally posted by Snoddasmannen If we could make peace with Gaia, that would be nice, but I really don't want to give the Morgans any breathing room.

Neither do I, but a protracked war, soon to become loss-intensive, would stall our development too much. A momentum strategy requires attacks to be quick and deadly. Remember what happened to Operation Barbarossa...