16-02-2003 21:18									#1
	Lessons from the Apolyton PBEM game Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

I thought I should post this so that Apolytonia has a better chance of surviving the early game. I suggest we heed all of these things:

1) Get a decent military EARLY. People will be less likely to gang up in you if you get a strong military early in the game. Upgrade multiple warriors to swords if at all possible. Thankfully Numidiam Mercs will serve to discourage people from attemting this, but the still need to get offensive unit sooner rather that later.

2) Do not overREX ourselves in early expansion. You risk making multiple teams mad at you by appearing that you are making claims on their territory, making defense more difficult and wasting valuable settler moves which means taking more turns before a decent military is developed and exposing ourselves to a potential early rush, even with mercs. OverREXing in combo with trying to put warriors in our cities to protect our GA only guarantees one thing: an early exit from the game.

3) Take all agreements involving alliances and non-agression pacts with a grain of salt. People will backstab based on the sole decision that its in their best interest. Do MPP's within the game itself whenever possible (when that option becomes available) IMHO it will make it more difficult for yoursupposed MPP partners to backstab since doing this will force a war declaration "in-game" and will make any violation of the treaty once we have been attacked obvious to anyone who has contact with them.

	16-02-2003 23:21									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Generally, some good advice.

Also, scout a lot up front.

Be honest in your dealings. If you make a mistake and tell something that is not true, fess up ASAP. This is important with diplomicy with any other civ.

Don't badmouth any one group to another. If you are upset with, say, CFS, don't go *****ing about it to any other team. ***** all you want here, but we should try and stay neutral as long as possible.

Don't forget research. Money will be very important for both trading and those upgrading of warriors, but it is not the only thing. We need to keep current (although I dare say not necessarily the leader).

Just some suggestions as well.

	17-02-2003 00:20									#3
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LOL... Lux invicta members should be very valuable members of advisors because they have plenty of experience to tell the leaders what not to do.

3/3 advice hits lux invitca's dead on! that hurts...

	17-02-2003 00:31									#4
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May I make a humble suggestion that we not found cities 1 tile away from other empires' cities and having units entering their territory unless we have the military forces to back it up?

In general, however, establishing an early enemy is a bad idea... let other people establish enemies so that WE can play the mediating role or the opportunist role at our leisure while the vultures are circling the clearly imperiled corpse of the combatants rather than BEING the combatant corpse being circled by the various opportunistic vultures.

Stay out of war and do not make moves that would clearly lead to war unless you clearly have a superiority of force and that you won't get ganged up on and wiped out... going toward war without a superiority of force is known as "suicide".

The problem is not REXing, it's threatening war while REXing. If you're going to threaten war, then build for war . If you're not going to be building a war machine any time soon, then don't threaten war!

I would have thought this obvious, but events in the PTWDG have proven otherwise.

There are many more miscalculations that I've observed in this game (on our own part as well), but too many of them are directly tied to current events for me to feel comfortable spilling the beans. I'm sure we'll talk more about them in the near future after the excrement has already fully hit the fan

	17-02-2003 00:41									#5
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Nah, go ahead, spill the beans.