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Eric S
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Las Vegas, NV
Jan 2002
time: 21:27
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My only AAR would consist of my very first game ever played at the easiest level, which I gave up on about half an hour into that disaster.
I started off just to the left of the center of the map. I immediately purchased a scout (something I highly recommend, even over an extra colony ship). I then quickly scouted every star within Colony-ship range of Sol using my Scout ship, Survey ship, and initial Colony ship, and was dissapointed to find only one inhabitable planet within that range. There were clusters of stars in each of the corners, and sure enough, that's were the AIs started. I continued to scout, but even after I set up the second colony, the only inhabitable planets I found were far too close to the Yor Empire.
So, there I sat, trying not to get anyone angry with me. The Drengin didn't like me on principal, but I got along with everyone else, so I started trading techs. It isn't as bad as tech-whoring of certain revisions of Civ 3, but it worked out nicely for everyone. Every time I'd research a new tech, call it tech A, I'd trade tech A for tech B with one race, then go to a different race to see if they had a tech I didn't have, and trade either tech A or tech B, or in some cases, both for tech C. By doing this I was able to stay ahead in the research game, even though I was doing less than my share of research. Mind you, it wouldn't have worked if I wasn't on good terms with most of the races. And I did have to hold my breath once as the Yor sent a fair-sized fleet of ships through my area to attack the Tolians (sp?).
I was drifting towards good because I'm too ethical for my own good, but the evil players were beating up on the good players, so I was about to loose my allies when a disaster of a different sort struck. If a UP vote comes up discussing setting up a Space Monster Amusement park, ignore the part where they say that the monsters might escape. They will. And they're nasty enough to take out any of the early tech ships IN LARGE NUMBERS. Vote for someone you don't like who is a long way away from you. As soon as I lost every spacecraft I had, I realized that I wasn't going to win, and rather than ride this one spinning into the ground, which I would normally do, I wanted to start a second game to find out how much of a fluke this one was.
I started on beginner, because I had a basic grasp of the mechanics, so felt that I didn't need the most basic level. The star distribution was much more even this time, so by the time all the civs had contact with each other, they all had about the same number of planets and similar population, except for the poor Altarians. I started off grabbing the most inhabitable planet in each and every system with inhabitable planets. Once I encountered borders, I started backfilling, dropping colony ships on the other inhabitable worlds. Then I started cranking out construction ships, grabbing every resource that I could get to first., then started upgrading the defenses of each of the starbases.
Can you see what I missed? I hadn't started trading yet, so my economy is rather weak. I just started up trade routes to get more money coming in.
Once again, noone is declaring war on me, but this time it's because I'm big enough to hit back, though I think I'm closer to a cultural win. In fact, two of the races don't have a single sector that they're culturally dominant in. The Altarians have a single sector, the Drengin and the Tolians have 2 or 3 sectors each, and I have the rest. I thought that having over 56 of 64 sectors would be enough to at least get the popup telling me I'm close, but I haven't seen it yet.
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26-03-2003 05:53
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