Final Doom AU

[ete]

I feel like playing a game. Splitting off Final Doom and trying to bring down the monster I unleashed, using another monster. Will probably just post highlights.

[ete]

Empire's a mess. Obsoleting almost every unit, adding probe foil. Next step is trying to get an agreement with the University to unite against our true foes, get their tech for our war.


So much for that part of the plan.



Switching my production from mostly transports to actually useful stuff. Why does the AI love transports so? I swear, a hard cap on transport numbers and a per base cap on defensive units would improve the AI /so much/, just by forcing it to make non-useless things.



So much stuff to recycle. So much support costs being eaten.


End turn, nothing can move this turn, and Fascists die.


Yay, slightly better weapons, and antifungal formers!


Ohhh... this is a tough decision. Air Power is vital, but.. Neural Amp would be amazing, and Bioenhancement is awesome too.. I think I need Air though. May regret it if the Annihilators beat me to Neural Amp.

I'm being super-ruthless about disbanding units. Each infantry unit I get rid of turns something which will probably just die to a worm, and at most kill one or two, and gives me +1 mineral per turn as well as a one time bounty I can use to jump-start my infrastructure. For example, rushing a load of Network Nodes in order to cash in those AAs that are lying around..


aw, yeah. Best AA. And lets me start work researching


Next AA gives me:

Which is pretty handy. I'll go Green to blunt the Annihilator Psi attacks, and boost my effic.


Annoying, that'll drop the pop of a couple of my best bases. Some formers coming online, but not enough to repair quickly.


First Air unit, I'll be able to make the sea safe again with enough of these.

Infiltrated them with a naval Probe. They have a /lot/ of worms out there. And seven stealable techs.

One of which is this, which'll come in handy vs their Psi.

[ete]

Stealing all the tech.


Almost lost a stack of 12 units here due to carelessness and the fungus.. fighting them here is tough, but I can't afford to lose this base or I'll be down +1 Planet, and they'll be up by the same, thanks to the Manifold Nexus. That's a 20% combat penalty I don't want.


YEA. All that infrastructure is paying off and I'm teching reasonably fast now.


Some air power on the front lines.


Ah, the perfect tech to steal.. it'll be much more useful to me than the previous owner.


WTF?

Anyway, 16 turns in. I'm far from taking the lead, but feel pretty safe right now. They are building crazy amounts of worms, but soon I'll have Neural Amp, and with it the ability to safely take huge numbers of psi units on. I've got rushed tree farms and good forest, Exterminatus have AMAZING production. If you put it to good use, they can build shockingly quickly, and off that base.. who knows? Maybe a win is more than possible.

[Flux]

Will be reading this.
 

[ete]

This steal would be amazing.. if it was not for my main foe making almost purely Psi units, which reactor upgrades are useless against. Unlike Fusion it does not even help much with cost, only worthwhile on very expensive military units which I'm not making many of. Maybe nice for when I attack, and giving air units more range.


This is handy though. I'll take Knowledge over Wealth right now.


Huh.. it seems to have restarted everyone.

Now that I feel pretty safe from immediate danger (still fighting worms to the east, and bleeding sea formers to those damn locusts, but nothing to cause alarm), everything's going into infrastructure:





Handy, lets me use the crater better.


PSA is tempting, I do love probe immunity, but I just can't resist a tech that gives me the Cyborg Factory, CBA, and 'copters. With those I could start realistically planning an attack.


Or steal this and keep building hard. That works too.



Defenses holding up at my forward base. Working on clearing fungus, got a sensor up, roads being built. Will wait for more air support before pushing the worst of the fungus back.

[ete]

Excellent, I'll be able to handle defensive battles against worms very well now. I'm especially glad to have denied this to the Annihilators, if they'd got it this would have suddenly got a whole lot harder. Giving the Annihilators this and the offensive Psi boosting SP (the Dream Twister) was a major cause of me losing a previous SP, Apocalypse.


Probing them dry.

I had a look at the Annihilators production and what I found.. scares me. When they're dumping everything into units, it's not too bad, I can fight units with bombardment and air power. When the AI does this...








It's much harder to pull ahead with efficient investment.. because they're doing the same, with a vastly larger empire



More secret projects:


And, well.. see for yourself:



On the other hand, I have finally taken the lead on tech thanks to probes. And though I'm teching slower, the Annihilators massive research penalty is slowing them enough to let me not be left too far behind.



Overall, at the end of my twentieth turn of playing the Exterminatus.. it's going okay. If I had back to AI here, the Annihilators probably crush, but as a human.. I'm still mostly confident. I could lose if they keep building infrastructure, or if they go crazy with Locusts, or I let some probes through.. but I feel like I'm in a good position to move forward.

[ete]

I think I'll probably stop here or soon unless people want me to continue. 20 turns is the length of a normal round for Final Doom, and I don't enjoy the endgames as much since they tend to be very time consuming with less in the way of real decisions.

[Green1]

Do you have the save for this?

[ete]

Yep, here.

[ete]

Decided to play a bit more of this, 30 years on:



I had previously stabilized, though pushing the worms off that Eastern base took a while and some air power. Their Locusts seem to have mostly dried up, so I flooded formers and facilities and started setting up tidal/kelp, clearing fungus (especially south of the crater), and foresting hard. I picked up The Cyborg Factory and The Cloudbase Academy, with The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm soon to come.

Still way behind on military, but teching fast and not feeling too pressured. The Annihilators are building a lot of facilities so they're not falling too far behind in infrastructure, but their many small bases make them less effective than my large bases.

[Buster's Uncle]

[ete]

Another 30 turns:

Sea forming progressing well.


Pushing the worms back


The locusts are back (and some needlejets) so I'm having to divert some resources to taking back the skies. I'm also stealing a few hundred credits a turn with sea probes to prop up my economy. They're earning 680 per turn though to my 280.


They're still building really hard. I think their research penalty is holding them back though.

[ete]

On Planned I can't win air battles vs Locusts, and I really don't want to be at -3 Growth again, so for the first time ever I'm seriously using conventional missiles. It's going well, my industry can take one for one trades comfortably.

[ete]

Teching complete. Max or near max infrastructure at almost every base. All the lategame SPs.

The only question? How to end it.

I think in tribute to the monsters in this game, there's only one real option: All-out nuclear war.

But first, let's break the land bridge over which nightmares have been flooding for hundreds of years.



Much better.


Building the arsenal and that one nuke triggered massive global warming and native worm attacks.


But, just a few turns after the plans were decided, it's time. I have as many Planet Busters as they have bases.

[ete]

The Native worms took their revenge and fallout from targeting nearby bases destroyed some of my bases, but ultimately, all other factions were destroyed before I was consumed, despite my absolute focus on more Planet Busters and minimal defensive units.