AAR: Humans (default random settings)

[bubicus]

I played as the Human Union on the default settings for a random map. I had played several practice games, but this was the second game I played to completion, and the first one I won.

I won on turn 200 with 502,870 points. 436,900 points were from Population Happiness. 65,970 points were from Glorious Victories.

I started out in the center of the map. My home planet was Ideal/Poor, so I knew I couldn't get a good start without finding one or two rich planets nearby because the costs for everything would be so high. Whether it was by great luck or by some fairness algorithm in the map generator, I don't know, but there was a Barren/Rich/Belt/Cloud planet (later named Troy) only 1 turn away, a Habitable/Rich/Cloud planet (later named Mycenae) 3 turns away, a Habitable/Cloud planet (Athens) 2 turns away, and an Ideal/Belt planet (Sparta) 2 turns away. This situation meant that I could create a strong core of planets that are near each other, so I could shuttle population away from my home planet and make Troy and Mycenae my centers while using the other planets as research and population bases.

I found myself surrounded by three races: the Cryons, the Teyans, and the Linkins.

For the first few turns, I built one transport and then started shuttling six colonists to Troy and then Mycenae. This guaranteed that I could build a mine and a shipyard at both locations (since 7 population allows a new planet to have 2 building slots). Once they were ready to build ships, I fortified them with 10 light missiles and 5 corvettes each, then left them alone for a little while so they could earn some money.

Next, I moved colonists and built up research on Sparta and Athens. I decided to concentrate on defense at first, because I wanted to get heavy missiles quickly to ensure that my core planets would not be attacked early. Once I had heavy missiles, I built one research base for each of the other techs, plus one more (for two total) for weapons because I knew I'd have to fight at least one of the three races at some point.

I went for destroyers pretty quickly. In previous games, I just built the biggest ships, but this time around, I had learned the advantages of the ships. In previous games, one or two NDomitables would kick butt alone against huge fleets unless there was a missile cruiser. It seemed like a single missile cruiser II could take out an NDomitable with one salvo! I decided that a bunch of expendable corvettes in a loose formation could prevent such a catastrophe. Furthermore, I noticed that destroyers carry missiles! I had not noticed that before. I realized that I could put a squadron of corvettes into caracole maneuvers, let them absorb missile and laser fire, and have the destroyers hit my opponents from long range with missiles.

My first test of this strategy was pretty successful. I declared war on the Cryons around turn 56. My force of 11 corvettes and 7 destroyers destroyed several cruisers and corvettes in the first couple of volleys. I had positioned my forces in two rows (destroyers in the rear), and I approached at a 45-degree angle. The AI had to wheel its forces to face mine, but it had also decided to charge my line, with the result that its corvettes and cruisers had bunched up at the time my first missile volley hit. I lost only two corvettes, I think. The AI ended up retreating, so I took out a few more ships during the chase and the Cryons never recovered.

As I was fighting the Cryons, I decided to make sure I was safe from the Teyans and Linkins. I tried to make trade stations on as of their planets as I could. This let me build up goodwill with them and also let me fund my war machine. At one point, I was making around 2500+ credits per turn, so I was able to upgrade my buildings and build a second fleet for defense.

By turn 118 or so, I had conquered the Cryons. I discovered another new thing: they're great for subjugation. Since they live best on icy planets, I just moved them to icy planets and moved my population to their non-icy planets. As a result, they would not rebel, riot, or suffer unrest! On icy planets, their base happiness was 3, so even with overcrowding, it would not go below 0. Even with low taxes, I could earn about a profit on each planet in taxes and foreign trade bonuses. Including the effect of low taxes, popularity would generally be around -2 to -4 (depending on the bureacracy penalty at the time), which doesn't seem to trigger unrest. I didn't even bother leaving space marines.

At this point, the Teyans declared war on the Linkins, and I had a defense pact with the Linkins and non-aggression pacts with both. I had to choose sides. I decided to honor my defense pact with the Linkins and break my non-aggression pact with the Teyans. Unfortunately for the Teyans, I had by this point added a mother ark and a survey ship to my main fleet, which by now also possessed several cruisers, a dozen destroyer IIs, three dreadnaughts, and a couple of missile cruisers. Not only could they not stand any assault, but my early research into psychic power paid off, as I was able to capture a few of their cruisers and transports. The combination of mother ark and survey ship meant that I could find their colonies with the survey ship, crush them with the battle fleet, then colonize the planet and repeat. (I *think* the survey ship was telling me where the enemy planets were. If not, I must have gotten information from a trade. Regardless of whether the survey ship helped me find enemy planets, it certainly helped me see enemy ship movement.)

I felt like I was dominating the game and I was sure I could take out another civilization after I finished with the Teyans. By turn 176, though, I discovered that the effects of bureaucracy really start to hurt as an empire gets big. Because of my smash-and-colonize strategy, the cost of bureaucracy was MORE than my entire fleet budget! In order to prevent crushing debt, I had to sell two of my Cryon planets to the Linkins. That gave me enough money to reach turn 200 with -731 dollars. :-p If the game had gone to, say, 300 turns, I probably could have gotten out of debt by developing the new colonies, but I'm kind of glad the game ended because I would not have looked forward to far-flung colony development again.

One important note: I think I finally figured out why the other races, including my close allies, hate me after a while, no matter how nice I'm treating them diplomatically. I think extermination has a negative effect on all other races' opinion of the player's race. It makes sense, I guess, but it wasn't in the documentation! It would be nice if the Exterminate button said something about diplomacy penalties in its tooltip in a future patch.


Lessons:

- destroyers are excellent in the early-game and mid-game when corvettes and cruisers protect them.
- Cryons are really good to defeat early and then colonize/move to icy planets, then sell.
- Expansion is expensive because of bureaucracy, so I should go slower next time.
- The Mother Ark kicks butt with a battle fleet! However, I should not overstretch my economy.
- The survey ship seems useful, but I need to try it out again.

[Ntronium]

Nice report. Nice to see someone posting a success story after starting on a poor planet, and playing as the humans.

[Flaviusx]

I note the game ended on turn 200 just as the bureaucratic penalty was about to crush to fledgling human empire. Bubicus optimistically thinks he could have ridden that out. He probably couldn't have. The humans have very severe limitations as to how far they can expand. They aren't made for large maps or long games.
 
In a smaller map with limited gametime they can do ok since these mask their weaknesses.

[bubicus]

Oh, I think I could have.  All I'd have to do is sell or give away enough colonies to have decent cash flow, then blast the heck out of them with fleets.  [:D]

And in a future game, I would definitely be more careful about which planets I would colonize, and I would sell off research bases as I maxed out the techs.  I didn't sell those off in this game, but I have learned how to play better since then.

On a large map and long game, I would probably defeat any race with "no bureaucracy" (so the other races will eventually slow down as well), re-colonize with humans as many rich and habitable worlds from those races as possible, make huge colonies for hard-to-manage races and then sell them off, and make trade and relay stations with as many other places as possible. 

Flaviusx, please post a map size and game length for me to try playing humans on.  [:)]

[Flaviusx]

I'm partial to 250 x 250, 24 players. 500 turns. That gives me the proper epically galactic feel.
 
I dare you to win with the humans on that. Double dog dare, even. Watch out for the Walden and Hun Yoon, they dominate on those maps. Staying in a little corner of the galaxy, selling off planets, and racking up glory points isn't gonna cut it when these guys bloom and begin to assimilate the galaxy into their massive empires...
 
 
 
 
 
 

[Iceman]

ORIGINAL: Ntronium
Nice report. Nice to see someone posting a success story after starting on a poor planet, and playing as the humans.

I don't think you ever understood the point correctly. In this particular case, it was a human player (not the Humans in particular), who can deal with it a lot better than an AI. Also, the 2 rich systems nearby helped a lot. If another AI would have gotten to those systems first, it'd be a different story.

Homesystems were fully randomized during beta. When I said they should be Ideal, you agreed. Why? Because it *feels* right. Same thing with Quality. Why should a race start in a poor system, unless there was a specific reason mentioned in the race's description? Say the Teyes having higher growth rate because their homeworld was poor is resources. OTOH, the Cryokon being expert miners but starting in a system where they cannot build mines is odd... And that's another topic, immersion. I *want* to be able to build a mine in my starting system. I can't if it's poor. It also doesn't feel right to have to pay double for anything built on my homeworld especially because I'll need to build things like arks and marines in systems with pop; and labs and whatnot. I can send pop to other systems nearby, but I'll be losing in-transit tax money, which is already short because most of my pop is producing only at 75%. ..
Granted, I can always restart the game, it only takes "10 seconds". Last night I started in a poor system. I had to restart 7 times, first 3 were poor, next 3 were rich, then poor again. I was about to give upwhen I finally got a normal one.
Sure it might have been situational, but this could be avoided, even if it was with a simple choice at game start between having normal or random homesystem quality.

It's a small thing, but one here, one there... Not making an issue of it, just explaining my PoV.