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As a PSA, I'll just mention that this update takes us up to 20 years from my current point in the game; almost finished with the backlog here. Episode III: 2500-2515  A massive and growing territorial edge has pulled us even in population, but that's it. We're still trailing in other aspects.  Expanded trade with the Sakkra and esp. the Psilons here. I'm rather shocked that they haven't started turning against us due to our size. Looks like we'll be able to keep growing.  Robotic Controls and, not longer afterwards, terraforming will hit soon. After that, the plan is to start building stargates.  29 planets, nearly half the galaxy under our control, and still growing. Also, our fleet is now costing a third less than what it did before, at the same size. Maintaining absurd amounts of missile bases isn't trivial, but it's not costly either. Such is the nature of a high-end economy.  Finally we're ready for the big upgrade that will take us from 6 to 8 BC per million. More ECM tech is all that's available next. Meanwhile Cryslon and Obaca both fall, and we capture a bunch of tech. Mk. VII Battle Computer is the only improvement, but we also get our current construction option, leading to ...  As it says, this will increase our tech level, giving cost and size improvements. That's all it does though, nothing new is available. We can keep at it until reaching Level 99, the best available. After that, nothing more can be done. With the new robotics, research will shrink to a minimum for a brief refitting period. Our research spending ratios will also return to normal. It took about two and a half years for the factory-building on the developed planets. In 2504, the top six in terms of production started putting resources into Stargates. As they finish, they'll switch to research and other planets will start theirs. Nothing magical about this approach; the basic idea is just to have some systems working on it while research efforts continue for most of the empire. It's not urgent, but convenient relocation of fleets across the galaxy would be nice.  As you can see here, it'll take our homeworld a few years to build one, but not long. Smaller planets will take longer, but for a developed world at this point it's not a huge undertaking.  This was inevitable. We may soon have another conflict on our hands. The Bulrathi put in their two cents as well. Perhaps our Alliance with the Psilons, or their Honorable personality, or both, are keeping them firmly on the side of peace. The Sakkra are advanced enough that they'd be a little tougher than the Silicoids ... but not that much tougher. I think our Knights could still easily handle things if there are problems there.  Another round of terraforming(+80M, up from +60) arrives in 2508. However Advanced Cloning is not of much use to us -- there's usually something better to spend the money on. Occasionally after a big troop transport we'll do this, but that's about it.  This is the last planetary threshold. I wish it were true. Instead, what happens is the Sakkra cancel our Non-Aggression Pact. In reality they just saved us the trouble of doing that ourselves later on. In 2510 the Bulrathi signed an alliance with the Silicods, and declared war on us. Their own death warrants as well. They were also allied with the Psilons, but they were willing to dissolve that. It's become time for us to just basically commit mass genocide now.  It's inconvenient to take that one yellow flag off the map, but we are not the slightest bit concerned about anything they may try to do. They'll be eliminated when convenient.  Our economies are almost equal now, allowing a rather absurd level of exchanges here.  This is a pretty massive leap; our current best is Class VI.  We're now getting into some truly absurd tech. This can be quite useful when an enemy design defeats efforts to destroy them by more 'traditional' means.  I noticed that the one remaining pathetic Bulrathi world had very little in the way of defenses -- so I didn't even bother sending the fleet. Most of our transports made it through, more than enough to commit my first act of genocide.  Check out the Psilons here. I expect that'll go back up, but that's just a massive hit we took. It's definitely enough to make me concerned. If they were to declare war, I think our missile bases would deter them, but it would be a while until we could get more advanced ships going. Hopefully they don't get too antsy while our alliance and trade boost it back up.  In an established, large empire this doesn't really matter, but still annoying.  Notice that the TRANS button is deactivated. Ajax is quarantined until the plague is cured: nobody can leave. The solution is the usual one -- transfer in funds, put everything in research. Millions will die every year until the cure is achieved.
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Jul 18, 2017 04:45
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That FF tech is a nice buff. Missile bases get the best shield tech, plus any planetary shields. So if you had Class X planetary shields and class XI Deflectors, that means you negate 21 points of damage. BUT! It gets better! Non-bomb attacks are halved when attacking planets. So a non-bomb weapon would need to do 43 points of damage just to scratch you. Weapons that halve shields fare a bit better, but most have low enough native damage that they still lose. So yeah. Barring bioweapon/bomber ships, Psilons will need to bring some seriously big guns to bear to eliminate 100 missile bases. Probably secure.
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Jul 18, 2017 07:37
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Nice to see how this series started! Too bad I only found this thread now, because when the discussion about ship designers in space 4x-games came up, I had the perfect candidate for one of Master of Orions forerunners: Imperium for the Atari ST. It was published by EA in 1990, 3 years before MO3 and a full 7 years before its namesake Imperium Galactica. It's probably the first space 4x with a ship Designer. Though to be fair, it was a rather rudimentary one: YouTube had sliders for engines, armor and weapons, which determined what kind of design you would gerne There even was a system of building up Tech Levels to get larger hull sizes. Like everything in Imperium, it worked badly, but it was there!
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Jul 18, 2017 14:16
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Libluini posted:It's probably the first space 4x with a ship Designer. Though to be fair, it was a rather rudimentary one: YouTube had sliders for engines, armor and weapons, which determined what kind of design you would gerne Was this user posting a) drunk 2) with a drunk auto-correct µ) as German? Stay tuned!
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Jul 18, 2017 15:14
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Close, it was what my confused German autocorrect thought "You" meant!
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Jul 18, 2017 15:27
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Libluini posted:Too bad I only found this thread now Slacker!! :P OAquinas posted:Non-bomb attacks are halved when attacking planets. So a non-bomb weapon would need to do 43 points of damage just to scratch you. Missiles don't get halved either, just to clarify here. Or at least they don't seem to from what I've seen. Unfortunately we only have Class V shields, which reduces that number to a more manageable 33. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Jul 20, 2017 |
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Jul 20, 2017 03:10
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Episode III: 2515-2524 The new torpedoes are in, and it's time for our last missile upgrade. I say last because as it says, the Zeon is the best there is. We can always come back and get other stuff, but having maximum protection if the Psilons ever do get anxious is a good idea. The same year, 2516, we take two more Silicoid systems.  This is about the 8th time or so they've offered a peace treaty. We're still not interested. A year later, the Sakkra say hello. Mostly fusion beams, although there Ion Stream projector did some damage. Not really lasting though since it can't kill anything on it's own. We beat them off easily.  Well, crap. Figures that it would happen eventually though. Our trade deal remains intact, but we need to prepare for war. At high levels of tech I like to go for an all-purpose ship, capital-size. No point in beating around the bush. I didn't really want another torpedo ship -- but we don't have much choice. What passes for high-end weapons for us right now: ** Fusion Bomb -- A joke. 4-20 damage. They have only Class V Planetary Shields like us, but also Class XV Deflectors. That adds up to 20, so they wouldn't do any damage. ** Tachyon Beam -- 1-25 streaming damage. Against small ships that probably wouldn't have that much shielding, this would be ok. But considering they have better engines than us, we are probably not going to hit the high damage ranges, so anything with their best shields will take very little damage if anything from this. ** Heavy Fusion Beam -- 4-30. Again we probably end up in the lower half of the range. ** Pulson Missile -- 20 damage. It would take a lot of these to go anywhere with their shields potentially eating up almost all of it. ** Gauss Autocannon -- halves shields, 4 attacks of 7-10. 0-3 damage after taking into account their shields. Not great. ** Anti-Matter Torpedoes -- 30 damage, 15 after shielding against ships, 10 against planets. ** Hellfire Torpedoes -- 25 damage x 4 attacks. 10 and 5. Torpedoes are the only thing that can guarantee us they can harm the enemy. Hellfires will do twice or more the damage for about 50% more space. They are the only real option here.  Here's what I came up with: the Paladin. For a capital-size ship it doesn't have much in the way of weaponry: the Gauss I just threw on there to fill out the space. It can do a little something to strike/destroyer-sized ships. I focused on the bells-and-whistles here, giving this the best of everything. Except for armor, we're still quite a bit short of the best the Psilons can field. The Zyro Shield should give it a chance of surviving a certain amount of bombardment by their bases. If we wait until war comes, it will be too late. I must get on a war footing now. Research once again takes a back seat. The Paladin costs as much as more than 10 Knights; no planet can build one in less than three years. Getting the Zeon missile before we have to do much fighting will be crucial, so our research efforts will be refocused in that direction. Of course, since the project just started, it's going to still take some time. Hopefully it's enough. Another issue is that there is no such thing as a back-line planet anymore. I've been expanding what worlds have bases, but now they all will need them; the Psilons have unlimited(literally) range, a tech we haven't encountered yet. They can travel anywhere on the map. Probably the toughest question is how many systems to devote to shipbuilding, and how many to keep on research. Zeon missiles are by far our best chance to hold them off assuming they do attack, which makes research a bigger priority. All of the developed Rich planets will still build the ships, but we won't get many at first. The others will be on tech until the missiles arrive.  Another high-end tech that makes beam weapons far more effective. Important to remember that they lose accuracy, and therefore damage, at longer ranges.  After the latest ECM we get a crack at a truly ridiculous toy. The Technology Nullifier shown here is unfortunately something the Psilons already have, and can render an opponent's weapons systems nearly useless. However we're going for Robotic Controls VII instead. They didn't get that, and it's the top level of industrial expansion there is.  2521: tensions with the lizards have now boiled over. We also finish our first Paladin. There is no concern here: their tech is better than the Silicoids but as we've seen their ships are basically heavy fusion beams at worst, and they've only got a handful of planets. It won't be long until we turn our attention to them ... and something else in that neck of the woods.  Another year, another planet taken, and this. 'Klackon slime'. We were fast friends for like a century. Now we're slime ... because of our how big we've become. Okey-dokey.  Time for some of the dark arts. We pump up both security and our own spies -- let's steal whatever we can from them. Aside from the production invested, there's nothing to lose here. They hate us now and will go on hating us. Sucks to lose the trade income, but they lost it as well.  The year afterwards, we get the Zeon missiles. Good thing we rushed it. On the attack, matching this monstrosity known as the Mauler Device with High Energy Focus would give us a combination that could cut through any shielding. Also ...  It's been less than a decade I think but seemed like forever.  That ... is trouble. Almost 1400 cruisers is what jumps out there. Selia has some bases and is building more, but I'm pretty sure there's no way it survives this. At a certain point, and we're past it here, bases become of limited use. We will get a good look at their tech, which is vital, but I think we can probably write that system off. Tech spending goes back to normal now, and it's time to build a lot more ships. As in a LOT.  Escalon is the new rally point for the fleet. We've only got two Paladins right now, but the most lucrative 17 of our 41 planets have been switched over to producing them. That means about 4 or so per year on average. Have to get a handle on what the Psilons have, how effective our bases and these Paladins will be against their ship before formulating more of a strategy. Even though we vastly outnumber them in terms of territory, I'm not at all confident of winning this war ... Research is now less than a quarter of what it was, but that can't be helped.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUH2Him_fsM That ... was hilarious. They have a mixture of modern and ancient. I'm quite sure they could have taken Selia -- the AI does tend to be more scared of missile bases than it should be oftentimes. And they don't have any technology nullifiers out there. Neutronium bombs, tri-focus plasma, and mauler devices are all a lot more scary. Clearly they haven't put their best engines on yet either. A lot of these designs look fairly old.  The Sakkra and Silicoids joined the Psilons, surprising nobody. They combined for just 11 votes though. The Psilons still have enough to be a veto bloc by themselves.  We vote for ourselves, there being no point in playing political games anymore. The High Council is still divided, and it's going to stay that way until somebody wins by force. The die is cast.
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Jul 20, 2017 03:20
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Are you OK with us posting our strategies to win this, or future conflicts? Late game like this I've found a solution that wins most of the time.
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Jul 20, 2017 04:01
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Yeah, that's the thing with AI fleets: just because they have high level tech, doesn't mean they put it on everything. The top-tier stuff is bulky, and the AI tends to focus on purpose-based, cost effective builds. On top of that, it seems very prone to sunk cost fallacy, and will keep around ancient designs long past their prime if it has decent numbers of them. Gauss AC is probably one of the better weapons in the game, especially coupled with HEF. It'll do damage to just about anything, and it's great at chewing up destroyer spam. I remember that "hits all four shields" refers to a game mechanic that got scrapped for MOO 1 (that ultimately made it into MOO 2)--directional shields. So I'm not sure if that mechanic still actually works for 4x damage.
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Jul 20, 2017 05:15
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GuavaMoment posted:Are you OK with us posting our strategies to win this, or future conflicts? Late game like this I've found a solution that wins most of the time. Sure, have at it! I won't guarantee that I'll use it this time, but it'll be a few days before the next update most likely, so this is a good time for such things.
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Jul 21, 2017 01:05
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What's a Paladin? ... poo poo, wrong LP. 
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Jul 22, 2017 02:43
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Never played the MoO games, but I'm greatly enjoying the Le'ts Play  As for predictions, do you expect to have to genocide some more races here to win, or might there still be diplomatic victory?
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Jul 23, 2017 11:12
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Aesclepia posted:Never played the MoO games, but I'm greatly enjoying the Le'ts Play At this point, there's only 5 ways this plays out: 1) He votes for the Psilons and hands them the win 2) He genocides or takes over enough worlds with enough population to give him 2/3 the vote 3) He loses enough pop/worlds for the council to vote in the psilons 4) He ignores council votes and genocides everyone 5) He votes for the psilons/they hurt him enough to give them the voting edge, he rejects the vote, and then either genocides everyone or gets wiped out.
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Jul 23, 2017 20:19
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You say only 5 but that feels like a lot of options.
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Jul 23, 2017 21:49
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Really just being thorough. If he's ever in a point where he can win the council vote on his own then he's basically already won; just how much he wants to draw it out. He's just past the veto margin for pop, so he could conceivably lose just enough to lose the council without being in total death spiral...but odds are if he starts losing worlds then barring some game changer tech or random AI flub he's lost
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Jul 23, 2017 22:25
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A Black Hole Generator would do pretty nicely for thinning out some of those stacks of enemy ships. I once saw a guy wipe out a stack thirty thousand strong with black hole generators. They can be pretty absurd when dealing with swarms.
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Jul 24, 2017 04:27
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Thotimx posted:Sure, have at it! I won't guarantee that I'll use it this time, but it'll be a few days before the next update most likely, so this is a good time for such things. OK, so it's close to late game, and you have a very powerful enemy (Psilons) to deal with. The solution? BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS. They're nearly broken in this game. Start off by getting Bio-Terminator (every time it came up I was hoping you would research it). Then design a large ship with either: -lots of shielding, armor, missile shields (like the Zyro shield), engines, and inertial modifiers so that you can get to the planet in one move. OR -sub space teleporter, and basic/non-existant stuff for everything else like armor, engines and shields. Then stuff that ship full of bio-terminators. Use espionage to see what level of antidote the enemy has. Do some math to figure out how many bio drops are needed from this one ship to kill everyone on a planet. The answer is usually 'one'. Important and large targets (like Mentar) might need 3 drops to kill everyone. Assume that every ship is only good for one bio drop before being destroyed, and build enough ships to wipe out every. single. planet. at the same time. It's obviously useful to be at peace with the people you plan on genociding (like in your current game), to give you time to do this, and set it up so that every ship reaches every enemy planet simultaneously. Now for the attack! If you have the sub space teleporter, you go first, drop your bioweapons, killing everyone in one attack, and attempt to retreat. If you have to move to the planet conventionally, you're going to eat a facefull of missiles, hopefully survive to drop your bioweapons, and then try to retreat. If you pull it off and hit every planet at once, then the enemy empire evaporates. All their missile bases, gone. Their entire fleet, gone, and irrelevant during the attack. You hopefully have a few ships that survived the attack, which are now parked over an empty world. Use those guys to start murdering the smaller races. The diplomatic penalty doesn't matter because nothing can survive or stop your wrath. Even if they expand or capture a planet during your setup phase, their empire is crippled and should be easy to bio-bomb any surviving planets. The key is doing as much damage on one turn as possible so they can't try to rebuild destroyed worlds as you move on to the next. I was really disappointed with the bio-weapon nerf in MOO2 preventing this tactic from working in that game. Bioweapons are a chance to kill there, and not a very good one at that. Also Planetary Barrier Shields block bioweapon attacks. As a side note, I really enjoyed the Babylon 5 movie "A Call To Arms".
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Jul 24, 2017 16:33
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 That's... Wow.
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Jul 24, 2017 16:41
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GuavaMoment posted:Do some math to figure out how many bio drops are needed from this one ship to kill everyone on a planet. The answer is usually 'one'. What's the math exactly? I don't know how bioweapons work in this weird old game.
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Jul 24, 2017 16:44
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Mzbundifund posted:What's the math exactly? I don't know how bioweapons work in this weird old game. One unit of Death Spores, Doom Virus and Bio Terminators kill 1,2 and 3 population units respectively per attack. Bio Toxin Antidote and Universal Antidote reduce those numbers by 1 and 2 respectively. For example, to kill a 100 population planet you'll need 34 bio-terminators if they have no protection, 50 if they have the first bio-antidote, or 100 if they have universal antidote (which they almost always do). IIRC you can cram like 30-40 bio-terminators on a large ship at around this tech level, so you'd probably need 3 ships to kill this 100 population planet in one attack. I think the developer intention was to have a modest number of bioweapons on a ship that were used many times in combat to slowly whittle down a population in advance of a ground combat fleet. My strategy just takes it to its logical conclusion. If the enemy fleet is powerful, you don't have the luxury of using multiple attacks during combat, it needs to be as much damage done as possible at once.
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Jul 24, 2017 16:55
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Martian posted:
It's also how to win as the Liir in Sword of the Stars, provided you don't go insane managing dozens of identical cloaked ship w/ bio-missiles shoots enemy planet battles.
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Jul 24, 2017 17:00
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GuavaMoment posted:One unit of Death Spores, Doom Virus and Bio Terminators kill 1,2 and 3 population units respectively per attack. Bio Toxin Antidote and Universal Antidote reduce those numbers by 1 and 2 respectively. For example, to kill a 100 population planet you'll need 34 bio-terminators if they have no protection, 50 if they have the first bio-antidote, or 100 if they have universal antidote (which they almost always do). IIRC you can cram like 30-40 bio-terminators on a large ship at around this tech level, so you'd probably need 3 ships to kill this 100 population planet in one attack. That's incredible. So I guess the anti-missile defenses are because you're guaranteed to eat at least one volley of planetary missiles (maybe more from defending ships) on your approach to the planet? Does the AI ever develop ships fast enough to close on you with beams during their one action?
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Jul 24, 2017 17:04
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Mzbundifund posted:That's incredible. So I guess the anti-missile defenses are because you're guaranteed to eat at least one volley of planetary missiles (maybe more from defending ships) on your approach to the planet? Does the AI ever develop ships fast enough to close on you with beams during their one action? If you have the teleporter, you don't eat any missiles, but otherwise yes, they usually get one shot of missiles off on you that you have to survive. One attack from enemy beams aren't ever much of a concern to a large ship even if that does happen, which is rare. The worst thing they can do is have the repulsor beam and arrange in such a way that you can't physically reach the planet, but that's only if they go first.
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Jul 24, 2017 17:09
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also mega lol if you think the AI in this game truly understands the concept of setting up a picket like that
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Jul 24, 2017 17:31
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Coolguye posted:also mega lol if you think the AI in this game truly understands the concept of setting up a picket like that Certainly not intentionally, but dumb AIs can surprise you with randomness that appears clever.
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Jul 24, 2017 20:48
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Yeah the AI does some really random stuff. They fortify their borders often enough that there has to be something in there making them do that, and then every once in a while they'll send most of their fleet to some random planet all the way across the galaxy that nobody else can reach in the middle of a war, essentially granting you a free hand on that front. Similar stuff in many parts of the game. They'll go after weird things, then in a different situation strike multiple high-value strategic targets simultaneously. The most likely conclusion I have is that there is just too much randomness in it to make it unpredictable. And it is certainly that, but less 'why would you do that. EVER' would definitely have been beneficial.
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Jul 24, 2017 23:54
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I think one of the funniest I've seen the AI do is get in an Alliance with someone, send a massive fleet onwards thanks to extra range from the Ally, break said alliance almost right away, and the fleet just vanishes out of existence once it arrives since it's way out of range then. Or just multiple AI sending troops at a single planet that lost most of it's population for one reason or another, and doing involuntary technology exhanges with one another. Alternatively two or more empires sending colony fleets at the same system and in sequence bombing the fresh colony of the other and resettling right away. And then there's always the rush of extreme longshot attempts at stealing Orion from the fleet that just took care of the Guardian, by sending unescorted colony ships at it. Oh, and sending off a big part of the population of a world about to be invaded, to some fresh colony off in the middle of nowhere, while I already have a fleet in orbit of one or both.
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Jul 25, 2017 14:33
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The funniest thing I've seen it do was definitely what the hrrshans pulled off earlier with using the alliance range to invade their ally.
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Jul 26, 2017 14:35
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Episode III: 2525-2549 Our numbers have gotten to the point where the Psilons' edge in the navy and tech has been overcome by sheer size.  In 2526, this is the first casualty as the big Psilon fleet shows up here, a recent acquisition from the Silicoids with no defenses. 18 Knight Cruisers were obliterated before they could escape. They'll do some damage on our frontier, but most of the planets we've conquered have defenses or are building them. In the grand scheme of things, this doesn't matter unless they knock out a lot of planets.  Another, more valuable planet a year later fell to a smaller force. Two dozen more cruisers, the even more antiquated Rangers, fell. That's little more than a savings on ship maintenance, but they didn't even get off a shot with their torpedoes. Until we get more Paladins out there, and maybe even afterwards, we have no hope of resisting the Psilon fleets. At the same time, we capture Morrig, leaving the Silicoids with only one planet. We'll leave it alone since the Psilons would just capture it right back. Probably won't hold Morrig either, but we'll try to build it up just in case.  What ships we do have are quickly relocated, thanks to our stargates mostly, to 'frontier' systems that the Sakkras are threatening. They've got nothing better than fusion beams on any design we've seen, but that's still enough to overrun us in numbers when we don't have bases in place. The ships are really fairly useless until we have larger numbers of them. Lost one Paladin, a drop in the bucket, in a test fight as they were able to wear it down. It shouldn't take many of them together though for the Hellfire Torpedoes to make an impact. Once we get shields and at least one base up, the lizards run, unable to penetrate our defenses. Offensive operations have ceased at this point. Right now I need to determine a reasonable 'critical mass' for our Paladins. The first tests will come against the Sakkra. After that, the plan is to go here:  This is by far the most lightly-defended Psilon system, which makes perfect sense. I don't actually want to take it yet, but since most of them have 80+ missile bases, it will serve as the best available test to see how our ships will fare against their defenses.  A few years later, 2531, and the Psilons take on another ripe target. This one would take a bit longer, but would be a big world for them. Fortunately they are running out of undefended systems to harvest. Up to a few dozen Paladins, and our ship maintenance at a midlevel amount of 13.4%, I decided it was time for a run at Collassa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4eGjR4lZ8A Well, that's not good. Their bases are completely immune to our torpedoes.  This however, was some good news. Advanced Cloning came in which was your basic who cares, but Complete Terraforming will gives us another 40M per planet. As the name indicates, it's the final flat-rate size increase. As for the Paladins -- if they couldn't do a thing against the Psilon bases, I needed to try them out against their ships. The 15 shield strength mentioned is just their deflectors: the Psilons must have at least Class X Planetary Shields as well. Only Zeon missiles would have a chance of getting through, and they'd do minimal damage so it's not worth it. Going after the planets they'd taken from us seemed as good an idea as any -- those would be the only ones without big missile defense. The good news is that we took the barrage from their bases quite well. The defensive abilities of the Paladin are fine, at least against bases ... they just can't harm them. If we can whittle down the Psilon fleets, then it would be worth finishing off the Silicoids, attacking the Sakkra, going after Orion even ... but if not, all we'd be doing is handing over more territory to the enemy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECHU-i9OHQI 2534. This was .. disheartening. Our missiles cannot even hit their ships at this point, at least the most advanced ones. They have a magic-level tech advantage. So we're pretty screwed.  Gee thanks. A year later we did fight off a few cruisers at Rotan, and acquired the Black Hole Generator. Lightning Shield, upgrade on our current Zyro, is up next. The BHG is a great late-game 'cheese' way to defeat a more powerful enemy, as it will destroy a percentage of their ships so long as we can survive long enough to deploy it. Also this ...  There were no Psilons here by the time our Paladins arrived, but at least we can give them a bit of their own medicine from time to time. I'm trying to seek out an engagement with a small fleet of theirs to gauge how much damage, if any, we can do. Then I spotted a sizable fleet headed for Tyr; we could get there at the same time they did. Tyr is a developing rich planet in the extreme upper-right. They'll almost certainly win and take it, but that's not the point here. 2537 -- Silicoids want peace and get it, not that it really matters. Psilon spies blow up a few factories on Ursa, but it's just a blip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw2jp04XLYg Clearly we can do some damage to them, but very little. At least we chased them off, delaying them taking this rich world. I don't see any point in building any more Paladins. I think it's time for something else. We need the secrets of Orion, and the ones we have could well be strong enough to take on the Guardian. At least that way they'd go to some use. The fleet is sent to rendezvous at Argus, which will take a few years. All spending will be flooded into research in the meantime, tripling our investment there immediately to over 30k per year. The cloaking and displacement devices(latter esp) are just making things too tough on us. We need better ships to have a chance in a war of attrition. A couple years later, the Psilons came to Selia and Ursa. They unaccountably retreated from Ursa with their main fleet(dozens of capital ships, 1500+ cruisers, several thousand destroyers) but took Selia. In the process I discovered something profoundly stupid I'd been doing with the missile bases. I'd been leaving them on 'Scatter Pack' mode instead of switching to 'standard missiles'. The latter is the more effective Zeons, instead of Scatter Pack Vs: good, but incapable of penetrating Psilon defenses. Only one capital ship at Selia survived from an admittedly modest fleet. It still did this ...  The planet was mostly decimated from repeated bioattacks during the battle anyway. Next time I'll get a chance I'll demonstrate the switching of missiles. The Psilons still have enough firepower to overwhelm any fortress worlds -- but not without cost if I do things correctly. Meanwhile I am acutely aware that we cannot afford to keep gradually losing systems forever. Eventually the ability to support a large enough fleet, even with the right tech, to challenge the eggheads will be lost. Time is of the essence here. It's basically a race to develop and deploy enough of another, improved generation of warship. Two years later, in 2541, the assembled fleet leaves Argus. 65 Paladin capital ships, 140 Knight cruisers. Everything we've got. In two years' time, one of two things will happen; we will reap the rewards of Orion ... or the ship maintenance budget will drop to virtually nothing. Meanwhile four different new advances have reached the 'prototype' phase(i.e, some chance of discovery each year). Another crucial moment in our struggle is about to arrive. In the interim, Advanced Construction Tech III comes in, the least useful of our current research though it does give the cost and miniaturization as always. Meanwhile a big artifacts planet that we took from the Silicoids some decades ago, Zhardan, is finally online and gives a nice boost to research. And then, in 2543, it was time. Time to do battle with the Guardian. Here goes nothing ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbNICVnww24 Well that was rather anti-climactic. Generally a mid-level tech fleet(L 30 or so) can take the Guardian, but I've never fought it on Impossible so I didn't really know. Turns out that's basically still true. I'll have to try it again with a somewhat lower-level fleet in another game, if an opportunity presents itself. While the Death Ray is the sexiest of the new finds with it's obscene damage profile, the Proton Torpedo is worth serious consideration as well. It might actually give us the best 'bang for the buck' I think. 75 damage each, with the usual once-per-two-turns firing limitation, but it's a 12th of the cost and a 7th of the size of the Really Big Gun(tm). Obviously the time to use these is now before the Psilons steal them or something. Before we lose any more territory. Etc. Our new design will employ both, along with a bit of gauss to deal with destroyer ships. If one system proves far superior to the other we can re-design. The Excaliber(sp), ladies and gentlemen:  No shielding can withstand the levels of damage this monstrosity can dish out. The only question is having enough of them to survive long enough against the Psilons. It's slightly slower than the Paladin, and weaker in beam defense(due to the HEF instead of Inertial Stabilizer). Costs just a little more(5.3k compared to 4.6k), but has 10 Proton launchers instead of 11 Hellfire, 3 Gauss to 1, and of course the pair of Death Rays. Time to get to work on this. The Paladins remain in orbit over Orion, which we will colonize and at least make an attempt at defending. If the Psilons come in force they will overwhelm us, but we aren't going to just give it to them. The Knight cruisers are scrapped though, saving a bit of overhead; just about exactly 1k per year, or 2-3%. The hope is to go on the offensive in some limited manner in about a decade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEDH6ZI7HQ0 They came back to Ursa, and this time they didn't run away. Note at the beginning here the switch from S-Pack to Missiles at the bottom of the screen; this is what I was not doing before and it cost quite a bit. As you can see it basically didn't matter; they had enough firepower here to obliterate us with only one volley getting away, though I did take out some cruisers with it.  Ionic Pulsars came in which I don't really care about : InterPhased Drives are next here. They'll jump us from Warp 5 to Warp 8. The warp speed is nice, but far nicer will be the defensive bonus we'll get from more maneuverability in combat. You know of course what happened next: Ursa was glassed from orbit. The former Bulrathi homeworld was one of our best ship-producing worlds. Was. And then ...  Sure, why not. I don't think it will last long, but any reprieve gives us time that we desperately need.  *Sigh*. No we haven't, but whatever. Your time of relevance has long since passed. It's 2547 at this point, coming up on another charade of a Council vote. A century ago or more I decided that this game needed to end, one way or the other, via the 'Tyrant' path; either us or the Psilons will not survive to the end of it. The first 15 Exaclibers are on their way to Orion, and most of the Paladins will now head off in various directions to crush the pathetic Sakkra worlds. Once hostilities are renewed with the Psilons they may take some of these, but the more territory we have the better off we'll be. It shouldn't take very long at all to end the lizards. This proved ineffective. They've upgraded their bases to a total shielding of 12, just enough to absorb all impact from our torpedoes. Apparently I was incorrect; their damage is halved against planets as well. What resulted was a rather humorous situation in which their missiles(Merculite) couldn't harm us, but we couldn't harm them either. That leaves the Paladins with little useful purpose other than sucking the life out of the economy, so they were scrapped as well. Attacking the Sakkra would have to wait until we get some Excalibers in position. 2549 was a momentous year before the vote even came.  This is a heck of a weapon -- but now absurdly obsolete, packing just 10% of the Death Ray's punch. We also got the final step in Robotic Controls though(VII). Time for another industrial expansion. The next choice was between the Technology Nullifier and improving our Battle Computers. I'm going to want both, but went with the Nullifier first. Tri-Focus Plasma Cannon(20-50 damage times 3 beams) was next up in the Weapon tree. We've seen this in action on multiple Psilon designs. Also, with the Excalibers now approaching Orion, the Paladins were scrapped. This cuts our ship maintenance in half for the moment.  56 out of 106 votes. That's 15 short of what we'd need to win the vote, but as I said I'm not planning on doing that anyway. On the other side, 40 for the Psilons, 9 Sakkra, 1 Silicoid. Things have gotten very simple now. Soon the most destructive war this age of the galaxy has yet seen will commence. The pawns will be removed, and only the would-be monarchs will remain. Which of us comes out on top remains an open question though ...
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Jul 27, 2017 02:28
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By the way, I'm about 15 years ahead of this right now, plodding my way through the endgame. And I do mean PLODDING. I'll probably only do this one more time, two at most -- a drawn-out final confrontation like this. I love me some micromanagement, but everyone has their limits .
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Jul 27, 2017 02:29
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I like how this one turned into a nice story: The plucky, high-production underdogs being unable to harm the tech wizards, and therefore doing a hail mary gamble towards an ancient repository of doomsday technology.
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Jul 27, 2017 05:36
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I believe the plodding part. Honestly, it's why I haven't moved up from playing small galaxies. It's not a sure win, but it looks like you've got a good shot. Looking forward to the conclusion.
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Jul 27, 2017 05:40
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Was gonna post about the "why the hell are you using scatter pack" flub when I saw you addressed it. Not sure if you've covered it, but the twitchy ships are using displacement devices, which make 1/3 of all attacks just miss outright. Which can be hell for every-other-turn firing torpedoes. For ships that tough, Black Hole Generator is one way to kill them. Another way is a tough ship with Ion/Neutron stream projectors. Those reduce the max HP of a ship by 20/40 % per hit....and if you hit them enough with it, Zeno eventually gives up and the ships get 0 HP and go pop. BHG is definitely quicker though. This is pretty cool. It's rare that you get to an endgame where the enemy has a tech advantage and isn't just rolling you completely/is getting rolled by you.
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Jul 27, 2017 06:29
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Thanks to your example, I've run off a string of wins on impossible, winning with all the good races. Though my current Bulrathi game is looking shaky....
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Jul 27, 2017 07:16
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nweismuller posted:Well, this game is the first 'MoO', but the series kept on mooing after this... The first... MOO....  Thotimx posted:By the way, I'm about 15 years ahead of this right now, plodding my way through the endgame. And I do mean PLODDING. I'll probably only do this one more time, two at most -- a drawn-out final confrontation like this. I love me some micromanagement, but everyone has their limits I hear that.  Got into CIv 4 recently, and I love how deep the game is, but man is it a time sink! Your updates are still solid, good mix of screenshots / text and info, in case you were wondering about that.Hellfires are basically the torpedo version of scatter-packs or auto weapons, they counter huge stacks of weak ships. Shield reduction comes before multiple hits, so you could've done some mental math and noted that 12 damage (25 base divided by 2 for shooting at a planet) wasn't going to hit a missile base. Ship shields cap at 15 of course, so a hellfire will always do at least 40 damage a shot (if it hits!), which is usually the best among torpedoes for damage : cost / space ratio. MOO1 seems to love denying players bombs, heh. I can't count the number of times the strongest one the game gave me was fusion and so I'd have to run at Orion early to get the death ray just to crack planet shields. Speaking of, I saw that mentioned earlier; but I read that the AI is programmed to never go for Orion in MOO1. Reason being is that all AI vs. AI battles are auto-calced (which leads to the weirdness you might see sometimes, of horribly inferior fleets winning), and despite being a beast the Guardian is only 1 battleship, so it doesn't count for many points. Not 100% certain there, but I've never seen it happen. OAquinas posted:For ships that tough, Black Hole Generator is one way to kill them. Another way is a tough ship with Ion/Neutron stream projectors. Those reduce the max HP of a ship by 20/40 % per hit....and if you hit them enough with it, Zeno eventually gives up and the ships get 0 HP and go pop. BHG is definitely quicker though. The pulsar mentioned in the last update works like that too, and they stack. It takes a surprisingly few ships in a stack to wipe out thousands of destroyers instantly by reducing armor and then firing a pulsar from a couple hundred ships. I wiped out a bugged bug stack one time with that, 32000 frigates gone in 1 turn.  That incident was also something we were talking about last update, how the AI will send ships a huge distance away sometimes. What's happening is the AI will sometimes try to be sneaky and send its biggest force at your furthest planet they can reach, with the weakest defenses (in MOO1 and 2, the AI always has omniscient mode turned on). Well, that time the Klackons had an alliance, so they sent 4 stacks with thousands of ships each at one of the planets in the back corner of my empire. The only problem was I had scanners, and they had at least 1 obsolete design in each stack... with retro engines. So I had 17, 16, 15, and 13 turns to get ready. GG, guys.
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Jul 27, 2017 17:11
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PurpleXVI posted:I like how this one turned into a nice story: The plucky, high-production underdogs being unable to harm the tech wizards, and therefore doing a hail mary gamble towards an ancient repository of doomsday technology. It's been one of the most epic games I've played; at various points I was confident I was going to lose/win, yet on it goes. BurningStone posted:Thanks to your example, I've run off a string of wins on impossible, winning with all the good races. Wow, maybe the wrong person is doing this LP then OAquinas posted:Black Hole Generator is one way to kill them. Another way is a tough ship with Ion/Neutron stream projectors. Those reduce the max HP of a ship by 20/40 % per hit....and if you hit them enough with it, Zeno eventually gives up and the ships get 0 HP and go pop. BHG is definitely quicker though. I thought about the BHG; I'll keep this advice in the back pocket in case it's needed. Wayne posted:The first... MOO.... Looks like it was terrible enough to go over a number of other people's heads as well. Wayne posted:you could've done some mental math and noted that 12 damage (25 base divided by 2 for shooting at a planet) wasn't going to hit a missile base. Well, I thought(incorrectly) that only beam weapons had their damage halved at the time.
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Jul 28, 2017 13:31
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Ahh, sorry about that, then, I thought we talked about that when the anti-matter torpedoes came up a little earlier.  Thotimx posted:I thought about the BHG; I'll keep this advice in the back pocket in case it's needed. Specials are really interesting in MOO1. You and the enemy can only ever have 6 "units" in combat at once (7 if you count the planet), so you can have between 0 and 6 uses of offensive specials, and the same number of targets. So you can double up on the warp dissipators and paralyze ships twice as quickly, stasis or black hole multiple stacks at once, and so on. It also feeds into Guava's strats earlier, since if you have multiple ships with bombs, missile bases will split up their attacks, increasing the odds at least one of your stacks gets through. The tradeoff to all that is of course that you can only have 6 designs at once, so doubling up for those shenanigans really stings when obsolescence sets in. But it is something you can take advantage of.
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Jul 28, 2017 16:19
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Heads-up here: a lot fewer screens for this and more videos than usual. Just seemed the way to go for the goings-on, images wouldn't really have shown it as well. Episode III: 2550-2579  Looks like the Psilons scrapped some older ships recently as well; they had a bigger fleet bar a few years back. It's pretty much that fleet that is keeping them right with us overall. Just behind in production, tech is overall very close ... we've got this if we can overcome their combat superiority. Which is a massive, massive IF.  I've thought about going lower or higher on the missile bases; their purpose right now is basically that you can't just send a few pea-shooters to destroy a world. Anything sizable will run them over though. Ultimately I decided to stick with the same approach(100 on sizable worlds, proportionally less elsewhere). The maintenance rate is very slowly declining overall as the economy grows. 56k+ in total production and growing. That's just a bit of industry. The ship maintenance of 9% is for 27 Excalibers. That means about 80 or so of them before I'd cut it off at current levels.  Two big ones about to come in. The best missile shield(Lightning Shield) and the final terraforming one shown here, which would be a 40M boost per planet. The immediate task is the industry expansion with the final robotics tech we acquired, then smashing the two remaining minor races. After that, we'll look to take on the weakest targets we can find in Psilon territory, and escalate as warranted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMV8UarmRPc With dozens of worlds finishing up their new factories, Lyae was the last Silicoid holdout and we swept them aside. The space rocks are history, and our insect hordes will next visit the lizards.  A modest-sized Psilon fleet was inbound to Lyae, but more than we could probably handle. No point in losing ships, even a half-dozen, over this planet. They headed for the rendezvous point far on the right side of the galaxy, Argus, where the fleet would muster to begin the next campaign.  I'd long since given up really trying and taking funding out of it, but we finally got an espionage shot at the Psilons. Generally it's best to go for computers first since that helps you in future attempts. A random tech from the chosen field is acquired:  This will boost us quite a bit in terms of TL; we don't have all the standard research done yet in Computing, much less I or II here. I decided to put some funding back in to try and steal more for a while, see if we can get anything else to break. The next year, 2553, at Sssla(Sakkra homeworld). The Paladins had done no damage at all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdO5kOcG4Kc Easy button officially activated. Time to swat these bastards like the flies they are. How well the Sakkra ground troops would fight was not known, but transports were sent there and to two other systems right away. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKszaQHksM0 This was the first attack, at Bootis. 21M lost, 107M killed. They are better-equipped than the Silicoids, but not by much. A 5:1 kill ratio. We'll chew 'em up. The next year, the Psilons finally captured Lyae. They only got the Zyro Shield and Ionic Pulsar though; no plans for anything particularly great were there. Meanwhile we took two more Sakkra planets, Sssla and Xendalla. The latter yielded a weapon for our ground troops, but more importantly Class X Planetary Shields. That'll help resist Psilon bombardments and give our bases a chance to last a bit longer, inflict a bit more damage. Another year, and the Psilons steal Improved Space Scanner. Umm, who cares? Except that they are working on stealing our stuff of course. Still technically not at war, but we hate them, they hate us, etc. Also got Complete Terraforming, which is far more important news. Something else to invest in. The fleet buildup is being slowed by all of this, but it's going to be worth it. Planetology is the latest field to turn back for the earlier techs we skipped over, as we've reached the top of the tree there as well. Our latest Sakkra conquest also gives us Complete Eco Restoration(20 cleaned up for 1BC, even cheaper than what we had) and Battle Computer Mark X(VIII was our best). Quite generous, those lizards, as we trample their corpses to loot their industrial centers for this stuff. Invasion forces are en route to all three remaining planets under their control. They hilariously offer a peace treaty. No, it's time to kill you all now.  This is Pollus, another good planet(over 200M pop, ship producer), in the upper left. I decided when I saw the incoming Psilon fleet that it was time to stand and fight a bit here. Most of the fleet wasn't at stargates, being in orbit over various Sakkra or recently conquered worlds. What ships I could get there in time I sent though. I thought we might have a chance with the support of the bases on the planet. I already know the 82 Dark Star cruisers will be a pain in the arse. The Sun Fire is new, so I'm curious what they've thrown on those. 2557 -- In between, we finish Lightning Shield research. Class XV Deflectors are next. That'd be a nice big boost, and they are also good and expensive. Meanwhile we slaughter another 127M Sakkra and take Dolz. Two planets left, and no more research stolen; I think that's all they have for us. The sheer micromanagement at this point of getting 40 different planets into the optimal spending ratios for upgrading shields, industry, terraforming, etc. is rather highly tedious. It's an unusual perfect storm, but almost every planet(save the recently acquired ones) had to be adjusted every year for several turns. Additionally, I didn't expect any new tech anytime soon. The Lightning Shield wasn't enough for me to really want to design a new ship on it's own -- but the various tech advances, particularly the big leap from the one we stole from the Psilons, helped a LOT with miniaturization. As in, the Excaliber is now a third cheaper than it was. We can pack a lot more on. So it was time.  Used my own name for this one: it gave me the Paladin again and I didn't want to go there. Aside from the better missile shield, we've also got the upgrade to the latest battle computer here. Same rough weapon distribution: more than twice the torpedoes and gauss. I've found all three weapons to be valuable in various situations so far. While I've played most of the way in this and other games with a 1-weapon design, at this point diversification definitely helps. These are only about 11% more expensive than the Excaliber, and pack a much heavier punch. Then it was time to fight them off at Pollus. I had more ships there than I was expecting at least ... but they simply ran. *Sigh*. I really wanted to fight them. In any case though, the Sun Fire is really a bastard. Advanced Damage Control I think heals 30% of HP per turn for any ships that survive, Neutronium Bombs, Mauler Devices -- it's a royal bastard for non-Orion tech. Didn't get a chance to see the effectiveness of an alpha strike, but I did keep the planet.  It is now 2560, and the Sakkra are no more. It's just us and the Psilons. We now have 44 planets, while they have 25. Turns out there is only one uninhabitable in this galaxy. They also stole more tech this year; the Class X Planetary Shield. I don't think that will help them, as they very likely have better. There are reasons to wait before attacking them. We're not quite done with the latest economic buildup, to say nothing of mobilization. But I think there's just as many arguments against waiting, and at this point I basically just want to get this over with. We have a few ships still over each of the Sakkra worlds until they get defenses up and running. Since the Psilons have unlimited range, nothing they feast their eyes on is safe. The rest of the fleet will head towards relatively undefended 'frontier worlds' -- those without stargates or big base concentrations. Aside from taking territory away from the brainiacs, I want to force a battle that can be as much on our terms as possible and see how we match up. We have the numbers, so if the proton torpedoes and death rays can do enough damage to keep us from getting obliterated, we should be able to finally take these bastards down. In other words, it's on now. Finally. This war will determine the fate of the galaxy. It is quite literally us or them. No Council vote anymore; those require at least three active races. The first group of 29 dreadnoughts, most of them the older Excalibers, made way for Tyr -- that's the rich system in the upper right of the galaxy. We'll work right-to-left across the top there, where there are multiple potentially weak targets that are relatively recent acquisitions by the Psilons. Let's see how they respond. Right now the latest estimates give us 80-85% of their fleet strength, but 10 of the newer, more powerful Eviscerators were completed just last year as the shipbuilding is really starting to ramp up again. We should be able to rapidly throw more into the grinder over the coming years. The next year, the Psilons seemed to have figured things out as well. They attacked Simius and destroyed it. Easily. Technically we are still at peace, but only technically. The fleet had some 78 dreadnoughts and almost 500 cruisers. Probably the bulk for them. Not ready to take that on if I have a choice. 2562 was a waiting year while the fleet moved. In the interim, we stole another tech(Advanced Computers II), and the Psilons officially declared war. "Prepare to die Klackon scum". Right back at 'ya. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXtCzgfu7X0 Then in 2563 we struck back. There were very minimal presences at Incedius and Tyr, wiped out easily. The test ground battle was another matter. They have superior shields and weapons. It looks like it's going to be best for us to bomb out most planets, but we'll definitely take any, like Tyr, that have a minimal population.  Then I saw this. 152 dreadnoughts, 690 cruisers, 223 destroyers. Heavens. We don't have enough ships for me to risk taking that on, certainly not all in one place. Zhardan is a nice artifacts planet ... make that WAS, when this arrives. I transferred as much population as I could from there to the Tyr invasion ... and then the Psilons retreated at Zhardan. Um ... ok. Then this ...  It wasn't a big colony, but every one we eliminate is a little more stress on their core worlds. Only 11 ships in orbit. At this tech level it doesn't take much to burn a planet. And we've got lots of burning to do. Another Psilon fleet is two years away from Pollus, one of our big systems in the upper left. Less than 30 dreadnoughts, 235 of their Dark Star cruisers, but I think we can get enough ships there to at least put up a fight in that time. If they don't run. 2565: We destroy Morrig from orbit, a big terran planet, try to sneak some transports onto Lyae but a Psilon fleet arrives and shoots them down, and capture Tyr. On that last point they have transports incoming there so we'll have to hang out for a while. We captured three techs, including Industrial Waste Elimination, a state of utopia in which our factories no longer produce any pollution. It was very small as it was, but now it's zero. The primary Psilon fleet recolonized Incedius -- now it's a waiting game to see where they go. The following video is a little longer than usual(almost three minutes), but I left it unedited/trimmed. It shows one of the sets of battles, for 2566 in this case, in it's entirety. This kind of thing went on for a number of years with multiple encounters on an annual basis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW7Mh3jUa_E Well, our ships can definitely compete with theirs now, which is good. I'm starting to think I'm going to eventually win this. Lost a nice rich planet at Guradas, defended Pollus, won the attack on Helos and destroyed it later. It would seem to be a war of attrition now. We're going to go after some bigger fish, but the main idea is to attack more systems than they can defend, only worrying about protecting our own space when it looks like we'll have a reasonably favorable situation. Most important right now is the planet count: 43-22 in our favor. The next year that second number went down quite a bit. Three small planets(Lyae, Incedius again, and Volantis) were eliminated, as well as Kailis. You may remember early on in the game I was disheartened when I built a massive colony ship to go across dark space to an artifacts planet, only to have them take it from me a few years later. That was Kailis, almost 200 years ago. Now it's gone in a hail of torpedoes and death rays. The tide is definitely turning in our favor. I've still got maybe a dozen planets doing some research, but that's almost irrelevant at this point. Throwing more ships into the effort of spreading out and hitting every Psilon system we can is really the only thing that matters. The next year, four more systems went down, though they do colonize the empty planets some and one attack did fail. Also this ...  Rebellion is almost always the work of enemy spies: I'm certain it is in this case as I've seen them active blowing up the occasional group of factories or bases.  The latest chart shows they are down to 18 planets, three of which are recently re-colonized crap. I'm not even going to bother playing that wonderful game of whack-a-mole now until we've taken down all of their more productive worlds. They've got over 160 dreadnoughts now at Mentar ... while the empire crumbles around them. Smooth. A couple years later most of it headed off ... to make a new colony on Selia. Umm, ok? By 2572, their homeworld was the only significant presence they had left, with 3-4 worlds getting glassed each year. It was time to concentrate for one final battle. The Psilons were defeated, but the paperwork had not yet been delivered. A year earlier, I started an experiment on Obaca(170M max. pop, ultra rich). With planetary transfers, it could produce 123 missile bases per year. That's a bit ... perhaps I can test the limit there? At this point I stopped micromanaging the planets since it obviously no longer mattered, and sent literally every single ship I had from wherever towards systems close to the target. That was here:  That's ... a few ships. Their fleet strength is still larger than mine, and without the AI bonuses for Impossible they wouldn't even be able to pay for them all. 2573 -- I started researching Bio Terminator, last in the Planetology tree. Just for you, Guava! 2574 -- The Psilons blow up 17 factories on some random world, and offer me the first peace treaty in forever. How about get stuffed? 2576 -- They headed back to Selia for absolutely no good reason. Umm, ok, I'll attack now. It was really anticlimactic, but I'll show it anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIA5oW4PGC4 Then it was time to divide up the fleet and hit every Psilon world. Whack-a-Mole, or Mop-Up, whatever you want to call this. Time to kill em all. There is nowhere to hide now. Three years later and about a dozen more grasshopper worlds glassed later, it was over. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZkurziCOdk There's a couple small details different here from the 'diplomatic victory' ending. I particularly like the GNN AnchorBot(TM)'s sarcasm. Kaxal and his forces were triumphant at last! As I mentioned once before, this was one of the more epic games I've had. Somewhat unusual right from the point of the early fighting against the Mrrshan, and I felt like I was up against pretty much the whole way, until we conquered Orion. In this case it really did prove to be the key to the galaxy. It definitely worked in my favor that the Psilons couldn't really figure out what they wanted to do for most of it, but they still had the upper hand regardless. They really are a pain. So I'm 2-for-3 now. I decided to tackle the space rocks next: the most unique race Master of Orion offers. A preview of that challenge will be up next. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Jul 31, 2017 |
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Jul 31, 2017 00:36
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Complete anihilation. That was an amazing game. Looking forward to what you do with the rocks.
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Jul 31, 2017 01:39
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Nice work! That looked like a pretty insurmountable lead the Psilons had built up.
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Jul 31, 2017 02:06
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