posted 02-12-99 01:13 PM ET        

On my first game I started as the PKs (with a leader named Lord Phlegm), librarian level, small world, iron man. I landed on my own private continent on the south side of the map and quickly engaged in a policy of expansion. My first scout patrol found a monument right next to the base.. NICE. And there were pods with lots of other goodies, until I found the one with mindworms that ate my scout patrol. anyway. It was slow going... the mindworms were going nuts and I even lost a city to them before things got under control. By this time I had two well-established cities, and I set one of them to build the human genome project.. a kickass wonder if you're the PKs, can you say automatic golden age? And I finally contacted a Gaian boat wandering around and bought commlinks for most of the other leaders. I got treaties pumped out with them all, except for the believers who naturally declared war for no particular reason, and combined with my democracy/free market I soon had a massive research effort going. (I called an election but the Gaians got elected instead, phooey ) And my capitol built the merchant exchange, giving me a whopping 8+ energy score on my home square alone. Plus my continent had Uranium Flats...

By this time the Spartans had crushed the Hive and the Morganites, who both reappeared somewhere else. I could see by the graphs that I was in a distant third in power despite my economic might. I pumped out a sea colony base and former, and put my ocean city near the Gaians. Then I built my first warship (and got that screen celebrating the fact... the Believers had beat me to it by 75 years or something) and it got promptly eaten by an Isle of the Deep. That planet penalty can really hurt... so I scrapped free market and started building up my military. (by this time I was getting neat inventions like missiles and plasteel armor) At last, I got doctrine: air power, so I commissioned a fighter, two air transports, and a unit called "Big Red Bomber" with missiles and nerve gas pods, just in case. The nearest enemy faction was Santiago so I picked a fight with her. A small body of water seperated our two islands. I loaded up two guys onto my air transports but then found I couldn't unload them without an airfield so I put a guy and a former onto a boat and shipped them off...

For being warlike, the Spartans were surprisingly weak. Their tech was pathetic but still. My lone missile infantry (with the help of air support) leveled Spartan HQ and two more towns before capturing a base intact, making the airfield unnecessary. I finally put my airline to use, shipping over units to the front (including a boil of mindworms I grew in a biology lab). But the spartans begged for peace so I took pity.. after all my guys ARE the peacekeepers. But now the University has declared war on me, so we're going to build an airfield south of their island and nerve gas the piss out of them...

So I'm halfway through the game, still at third place, 5 well-established cities plus the Spartan one, and a small but well-trained military. Back to the game for me.. i'll post what happens later!