The Scoutmaster - SMACX AI Growth mod version 1.46

[bvanevery]

Details cold war

cold war

MY 2197.  Lal and I have a probe team battle where we each lost 1 unit.  Mine are cheaper to make than his though.  I've sent all of my relatively inexperienced probe units to the front.  They're still Veteran though.  I've got an Elite and 2 Commandos on home guard duty.

[bvanevery]

Details displeasure

displeasure

MY 2198.  Highly amusing that I can't make a Rec Commons to deal with a simple unhappiness issue.  I don't know how!  I have to use police and take the SUPPORT minerals hit.  I will do this with any base that experiences unhappiness at size 4.  Size 5 can make a Colonist.  Unless Deirdre happened to give me a free police unit, as happened in one case.

Details slog

slog

Lal and I each lose another probe team.  I'll be "in" one of his cities in 2 turns.  Possibly the other, if his probe defender doesn't heal soon enough.

[bvanevery]

Details penetration

penetration

MY 2200.  Lal kills his probe team attacking mine.  I steal B2 Industrial Economics from 1 city, but the other city has been stolen from and has a high security interlock.  There are no diplomatic consequences for my theft, so I guess the sunspots are doing me some good.  Now the trick is, how will I get to farther cities to steal more stuff?  I decide to send my Elite Infantry Probe Team into the field, since it moves 2.  I'm too lazy to build new units that move 2.

[bvanevery]

Details damn Cultists

damn Cultists

MY 2202.  Just as I finally show up to infiltrate the Cyborgs, a Cultist Rover has appeared.  And fungus is in the way of me going around.  Joy.  It could, in principle, go back up the road and kill me next turn if I wait here.  Or another unit could come down the road.  I back off.

Details what's the plan Stan

what's the plan Stan

I finally have a surplus of Clean Scouts.  I'm trying to take the Borehole Complex away from Deirdre, and I've got 3 of them out there waiting to make a new city.  This one is extra and has no purpose at present.  Clean Scouts are not good enough to smother an enemy that's at war with you.  My original idea was based on the long term Truces I had last game.  So what to do?  No kind of Scout is going to work on Yang, he'll just kill them.  So I figure I need to use plain Plasma units and accept the loss of SUPPORT.  My naval war with the Caretakers has also been distracting.  I'm doing fine with that, but it diverts the Scout-centric agenda I intended.

Details we don't know the meaning of fun

we don't know the meaning of fun

Popping pods at sea, I finally learn E1 Social Psych.  I get a weird graphical error while switching context to my web browser as well.  The tech is not supposed to be behind the rest of the dashboard.  Well let's see what Yang wants to do!  Oh, right, we're in sunspots.  Well I just kill his ship then.

I think I'm going to just build Rec Commons and other infrastructure, and forget about Plasma based smothering.  I don't even want to fight Yang.  Circumstances have just forced this fight on me.  I'll stall until the sunspots clear, and work on stealing from Lal.  Actual fighting, well I can wipe out the Caretakers at sea.  I think Obliterating their sea bases is the best policy, because if I don't, they're only going to steal from them and then mind control them.  They're a liability.  They will be annoying to pacify, will produce few to no resources, and will make no economic contribution to my empire.  In fact, they'll just increase the number of unhappy cities I have, due to the Bureaucracy penalty.

[bvanevery]

Know what?  This is an ok game.  It's not like I'm losing, or that anything I did in my initial spread was wrong.  I've got a solid empire core, I've got military capability, and I'm harassing my arch-enemy at sea.  I don't have any issues with my level of development at all.

But this is not a good After Action Report.  I said I was going to do, "Scouts".  It's in the bloody title.  In almost 100 years of play, what have I actually done with Scouts?  Nothing.  Not a damn thing.

There's no way I'd publish this on Reddit.  Talking about how I was going to do Scouts, then totally not doing them for almost 100 years, then going passive because sunspots are on and I can't go after my preferred enemy, and talking about Plasma smothering instead, but not actually doing it.  This is stupid.

I don't see myself going through these web pages and re-titling everything.  Nor editing a bunch of text to try to salvage and re-describe the experience.  For that kind of effort spent, I could just write a new, better focused AAR.

The idea I had in mind, obviously doesn't work.  I didn't anticipate that despite Clean Reactors being available at the beginning of the game, using Scouts for smothering requires a minerals surplus.  I don't have that surplus.  It takes a lot of production to keep a fledgling empire happy.  Even with Clean Scouts as my basic garrison unit, preserving my SUPPORT to a large extent, my people are barely happy.

Furthermore, no Scout will stand up alone in a war.  A Truce, yes, but not a war.  My last game was full of Truces and I didn't really think about war.  Frankly I stopped all wars before they got started, just taking enough cities every turn until the uppity snot faction sued for peace.  That's not how this game's been going at all.

This AAR isn't a total loss, because I did learn some new tactics.  I didn't know that a lack of diplomatic relationship, can be exploited as hard as I've done this game.  You can just walk your probe teams around!  How about that.  You can steal stuff without any negative repercussion at all.  My kinda strategy!

If you're the Alien, you can maintain silence with the humans for a very long time.  I already knew that from other games.  I just made better use of it in this game, than previous games.  Except that, when you suddenly decide you actually want to talk to the humans, you can't just turn on a dime.  Factions can declare war on you meanwhile.  And stupid things like sunspots can disrupt you further.

Fine, lessons learned.  I need a concept for a new AAR.  Something about "smothering" maybe.  I'm not sure what the sales pitch / hook should be.

But not "Scoutmaster".  I don't feel like getting laughed out of r/4Xgaming.  More seriously, I don't feel like having any perceptible drop in the quality of my AARs.  This is not a good one.  So it's over.